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bread & butter pickles
had fun canning pickles with sarah today. our second year. only took us 3 1/2 hours for a batch and a half of dills & a bit more than double batch of bread & butters. i had a request for the recipe and so i thought i would provide both sarah’s mom’s recipe & the recipe i used off the internet. turns out they are identical except for how much sugar and cinnamon they take and sarah leaves out the celery seed. so the brine takes: 1/2 cup kosher salt, 2 1/2 cup white vinegar, 2 cup apple cider vinegar (i use bragg’s unfiltered mostly),2 1/2 to 4 1/2 cups sugar (i used agave nectar last year to good effect), 2 tbsp mustard seed, 2 tsp crushed red pepper, 1 1/2 tsp celery seed, 1-2 cinnamon sticks (i broke mine up), 12 all spice berries, 2 pinch ground (i fresh ground 2 berries last year & a touch of star anise), 12 cloves, pinch of ground cloves (fresh ground 2 cloves last year), & 1 tsp turmeric (i substituted yellow curry last year). for the pickles you use twice as much cucumbers as sweet onion and green pepper slices. last year i also used red peppers (i think pimento), banana peppers,& poblanos. last year my cukes (thanks betty) were a couple of weeks ago so i limed them according to the instructions on the pickling lime package. this year and the first batch were probably less than 24 hours off the vine before going in the jars and stayed crisp all year.
adventure can be inspiring
Its a hot day outside and enjoying some rare ac at home “relaxing and enjoying the work of justin verlander” to use the commentary without the expressed written consent of major league baseball. Its a slow game though and with only evenings and weekends for entropy control and to advance projects it seemed a good time to blog. as i said a post or two ago i am committed to blogging weekly if for nothing else to give the computer enough time online to do updates. i feel like my last couple read like that too.
Overall, i’ve been a little low energy which is not unexpected but inconvenient as the world expects me to jam, all day almost every day. i’ve been on top of that but not much else, personal life items i’ve left without the attention to detail and positive effort they require. but today i am tired but a good kind of tired. not as tired as verlander, its 98 in KC and he’s over the century mark and a fast hurler. in his defense he’s in much better shape, which sort of relates to what i’m going to be blogging about. adventure can be inspiring.
friday i lit out of work right on time and threw some things together for a float trip with eric and trevor. we were going to go camp somewhere close and then float the grand, conditions permitting. [verlander’s getting some rest after an inge error cost him his shut out, there’s bases loaded with a 1 run lead] i loaded a lot of stuff since i had the space and time and wasn’t exactly sure what the camping would be like. i also gave everything a good solid drink in the garden because it was supposed to be hot and stuff was thirsty. i also found this ginormous tomato horned worm and squished him. he’d done some damage and i feel like there’s at least another one but i can’t find him. maybe tonight when its in the shade.
at close to 6 i decided i would see if i could load the boat. if you’re not a regular reader i have short and stubby plastic canoe that slides nicely into the back of the popster’s f 250, one strap and its secure. its really growing on me. my brother got it for a float with smokey down the big muddy and its both short and has a huge keel which makes it maneuverable for a solo boater. also makes it convenient not to have to strap it on top. plus people are always impressed with all the cup holders. john calls it “the Cadillac of cheap canoes”.
but i never got to see if i could load it myself because mark, who i knew was a possible drove up and helped me load it and ably strapped it down. i have a thing about scraps and am majorly inept for having been dealing with them my whole life. its probably a complex but i’m almost 500 words into this post and haven’t even left yet so i got to pick up the pace. mark followed me over to trevor’s and we had a PBR in the front yard and strategized. the grand was flooded and there was no nearby camping so we decided to do locust creek through pershing state park. [the royals announcer gave a nice run down on victor martinez, he came to the tigers not up to potential, got in ‘short stop shape’ and this year he’s an all star. cabrerra has also dropped some pounds (but he was a monster last year big as a house)]
mark rode up with me and it was nice to reconnect as we both have been through some stuff and could relate and we had a good talk about grief. we stopped in macon for mexican food. i got alleged tamales which were either these little deep fried things which were pretty good or a mass of corn meal with an array of chicken and hamburger. not bad but not tamales. i also realized i forgot fido’s bowl, remembering i had let it be when i thought to pack it in case he wanted to eat before the treat. i walked over to walmart and got some iam’s little dog cereal and a couple of other things.
so with all that we rolled into pershing state park pretty late. it was an rv kind of park but the entrance was empty so we were off by ourselves and they have showers. not bad really for $11 i think for a nonelectric site. i didn’t want to chance setting up the tent not really knowing if its mine. john and i both had Marmots and he had packed up the camping stuff conflating our things and i couldn’t remember what model i have. so i decided to just sleep on the cot which was a bad idea from the start because of the mosquitoes and not packing a sheet. plus the raccoons were persistent and fido was barking and facing off and i didn’t get to sleep until they called it a night at sunrise, except for the four stuck in the dumpster. [valverde holds the lead and the tiges go into the all star break in first beating out the hated cleveland racists] so maybe 2 hours sleep tops.
but i woke up a little groggy but feeling good. eric makes this coffee concentrate and i mixed it strong and everyone enjoyed the can of condensed milk i broke out. a camping trick i learned from the popster who liked to live large. it was also good with the oatmeal mark made with lots of chopped almonds as it sweetened it up a little. i read the paper and drank my coffee and felt human enough to do the dishes. we drove south to find a pull out, checked out a little iron bridge and talked to a local who didn’t know anything about floating conditions. we drove south and found a spot and left the red truck.
we drove up to 36 i think and went west to the first pull off and found a good put in place. this is norther missouri bottom land. flat and rich mostly agricultural. there’s a nicely maintained riparian zone down the creek and it was muddy but of a goodly size. trevor saw a flat turtle and we both encountered a snake at the first log jam. it looks like he was fishing were everything just suddenly comes to a halt. we looked around and he disappeared. we ended up with a fairly lengthy portage which we did with good sport and a lot of gratitude as we ran into some really great wooded wetland with some really big old beach trees that certainly predated settlement. they didn’t look as big as the biggies in the spot of alleged old growth in Houston Woods in Ohio but they were really good sized and it was a mature forest.
we pushed through both poison ivy and stinging nettles to get back to the creek and were glad to get in the water and ended with no ill effects of either except from some nettle-itch at the time which is invigorating if you can look at it right. we ended up having 2 more portages and saving a third one by lifting the canoe over a fallen log at the third obstruction. nonetheless we all had fun and the portages made it more of an adventure, our own voyage of discovery and a good time was had by all.
especially fido who enjoyed his first float. he enjoyed being off leash as we scouted pull outs and put ins and had been on a swim and was reluctant for me to grab him up and throw him on the canoe. He jumped out once preferring to swim or run along side but he got used to it. we stopped to pick a couple of ripe blackberries (in a week or 2 it will be an excellent float with a lot of berries pickable by boat. I had fido on a leash when we picked berries or he would have abandoned the expedition.
I bet he’s glad he stayed though cuz we hiked in out of the way places, swam when we got hot. one nice place had a shady log and there was one of the few bluffs and the creek had carved out a nice deep swimming hole. fido swam across even though it was wide and deep with a strong current. he is a doughty sailor dog just like bichon frise’ are supposed to be. we had lunch really great cheese and avocado on black bear bakery bread which were very yummy. i wish i would have brought my first tomato though, although we may have that for dinner tonight. kevin made hummus and tabbouleh.
at our lunch stop i really struggled. i sank into the mud up to my knees and lost a shoe and was really stuck for a minute. had to have help to scramble up the muddy bank to the luncheon log. it really struck home my desire to get into better shape and the need to be way more on it now that i am getting older. i’ve been cutting myself to much slack for having a hard life and still need exercise more and eat better. i was more convinced when i was the only one that was completely done in (except for fido) at the end of the day. eric was kind enough to drag my boat out and carry it up to the truck.
but the adventure was fun. it could have been an ordeal which that uncertainty is a prerequisite of adventure. we were all resourceful, flexible and laid back so we would have rolled with whatever and made it work but it was big enough to be a challenge but doable enough to be pure fun. we all enjoyed some country cooking and had the buffet and i ate good. but not so good as has been my habit of late.
been pretty on it today too. slept hard and good and woke up refreshed and feeling like i’d done something. drank coffee and read the paper. roasted my first batch of beans, an ultra-light Guatemalan that looks awesome and i’m eager to try. i’ll let you know in a day or two how it is. then i mowed the back yard before it got to hot, got some laundry hung and made it to the wabash farmers/art market. got some sweet corn, cucumber for the humus, and some peaches (pricy but good). decided to skip malick’s new one but saw it was playing through thursday so i might still catch it. been thinking about asking someone out. haven’t done that in many years.
the good life
I haven’t blogged for a while and felt like I should put something up. I have been a little emotionally drained for the last couple-few weeks and motivation has been a little harder to come by. I am certainly meeting expectations and even advancing some projects but sometimes come short up against what I would like to do. Two months since The Popster passed so I guess I’m right where I should be. I had a week or two with just the dogs when coincidentally john and kevin both went back to california to get there stuff. John’s things are here now and tonight’s after work project is to help kevin move his things. They have cleaned the garage which is looking better then it has for a long time. I opted out of that process to spend the time in the garden. John moved up some book shelves into the living room and am looking forward to seeing his library join mine for a time. He also has two paintings by Gonzalez Gonzalez a London painter Dr. Tod was into in the 80s. Having not even finished painting I have not got onto getting things for the walls. He paints faces that look like abstract water colors at first glance. There’s one with a little yellow that we’re hanging in the living room as that really pulls the face out, and there’s a blue and violet one, that I’m not sure I see the face in yet, that we’re putting up in john’s room.
We’ve had our first string of hot, unrelentingly hot for better than a week. Its slowed me down a bit as I get used to it. Mowed the lawn, back on saturday and front on sunday. Had to find the sweet spot between the evaporation of the dew and before it became to damn hot. My neighbor John broke out an old push reel mower yesterday. We both agreed it was quite a work out. I hope he sticks with it. Its a chore but so is going to the gym and that costs money. It makes me think how much all these time saving devices really cost us more. With the introduction of vacuum cleaners and dish washers and the like they’ve just increased the standard of what a clean house is, not to mention the rise of square footage of the average home, and how much time do we save if labor saving devices take out the physical effort so we have another chore of having to go to they gym. simpler is better and the old ways have their wisdom. I could have a bigger garden if i used a rotor tiller but you can’t dig down 2 feet any way but a shovel. My 2 feet of top soil tells me its been worth the effort.
Yesterday I mostly rehabbed the big garden bed. I weeded, harvested a nice little jar of radishes and planted my black plum tomato. The compost is coming along and I have a lot to use. i also jazzed up some of the extra soil from the tree planting and added some more soil around the peach tree. John looked up Belle of Georgia and its a red skinned white stoneless peach that comes due in August. I’ll let you know how they turn out. I also swapped the hose onto the rain barrels and watered that way rather then by 2 1/2 gallon can. That was so much easier and I am going to use so much more rain water which takes more out of the fall on the roof and run madly into bear creek process. i can see adding multiple barrels if I keep using goodly amounts of water. last year was wet, but still I only got to the bottom of the barrel once.
I also picked strawberries and made round two of strawberry pancakes. This time I used Jiffy Mix and I am definitely sticking to scratch from now on. Its hardly any harder and its quite a bit cheaper and way better. I almost stirred in a little extra baking powder after the first cake came off the grill but just stuck with it. They were good nonetheless with the stanton boy’s local eggs over medium and real maple syrup and organic butter.That led to a lively discussion on if that means anything. I bought it because butter was $4 and organic was $5. When i can get regular for 2-3$ then the price differential doesn’t seem worth it. John’s proposition is that corporate cows making corporate butter is so off that organic practice becomes meaningless. My argument is that cows eat a lot of corn, unfortunately and my understanding is that organic animals are fed organic feed and that makes a lot more acreage of organic corn a slight improvement over our normal monoculture nightmare food production system. It also increases the chance that our milk cows are grass fed by changing those relative economies.
Dinner was altogether much better as we were well over 90% local and 20% from the backyard and all agreed that it was good. I roasted my first beer can chicken. I brined it with salt, brown sugar, and some unfiltered apple cider vinegar. then I stuck an open can of budweiser up its yahoo and sat it on the grill. For the grill I had a big fire on one side and added a lot of soaked hickory chips which provided the bulk of the flavor. It was yummy with a crispy brown skin. I also made a packet with the first of the new potatoes (reds and whites) and a couple of baby turnips, with half a garlic snape, some fresh fennel root, & oregano. kevin put together the asparagus packets. sarah brought some trout and a pasta salad (our pasta is where we lowered our local percentage besides incidentals like butter & salt).
Its been really fantastic and again I thought that no one was eating a better meal no matter how much money they had. I like living the ‘good life’ and showing it can be done with just a little bit of labor and gumption. alright well maybe a bit more than a little but we can all take steps down a path of sustainability.
chilly saturday
it was a pretty good saturday, rainy and cool, but after a taste of the heat and humidity it was kind of welcome. we’ve had an extra dog for a few days, a short term fostering kind of thing. he’s a scottie that we’ve been calling Gitmo. he’s uncut and pushy so he was running the pack for a couple of days, then they all started calling his bluff. shadow (my brother john’s aussie) kicked his ass john reports. even fido isn’t intimidated now and smoky has been pulling back her lips and snapping her jaws at him. he’s mellowed out now that he’s settled in. we were worried how he’d do with max the uncut old pit next door with only a dilapidated chain link fence between them but they got along fine. max is mellow. Gitmo likes to fetch and with smokey and fido in chase it gets pretty chaotic. fun though.
got out early to run errands and go to the market. saw an old client walking in the rain and gave him a bit of a ride. he was taking a bicycle riding class to earn a free bike. gotta love columbia. it was drizzling a bit but stopped before i made it to the market. stocked up on my local food stuffs. had to go up to a quart on the honey so i could get it in a glass jar. hard to eat a quart of honey before it stiffens, but we’ll do our best. listened to an older lady rave about bee pollen and the suburban type lady standing next to me asked if she ought to get a jar as well. i just shrugged. he had some literature out, “nature’s most perfect food” that i’d seen as place mats a truck stops of my childhood looking largely unchanged. the honey guy, a german immigrant by accent, talked about the vagaries of pollen collection its variance based on flower availability and some years the bees only make enough for themselves.
noticed chicken and beef up substantially, probably following the prices in the grocery store. got some ground round and whole chickens. going to bake one of the latter today. planning on stuffing it with lemon and apple wedges and sage, oregano, tarragon, & wild onions from the back yard. maybe some little pats of butter under the skin. throw in some red potatoes and cauliflower the side. also unfroze some extra pumpkin i froze and baking a pie.
and of course i got my spring veggies, chard, lettuce mix, asparagus, bean sprouts plus eggs. also trying marjoram again, going to ameliorate the soil a lot more. don’t want to pay $3.00 every year. i learned marjoram is kin to oregano and almost bought a cross between the two, but i have more oregano then i can eat already and put it in damn near everything.
after my errands i made chili. nothing better on a wet and cool day. i forgot to soak beans so i had quick soaked some pintos (boil for one minute, let set and hour or so, drain out liquid [less gassy]). i put them on to cook with some red curry powder, salt and cayenne and made john and me some poached eggs and cleaned up some of the strawberry seconds ($2 quart best deal ever) i got for desert.
when the beans were mostly done, chopped up some stew meat smaller and browned with vidalia onion and celery. added some canned tomatoes of various types, a can of kidney beans, chili powder, cumin, jalapeno, some smoked hot peppers, smallish onions with green tops (from the market they’re getting bigger every week), and a little agave nectar to soften the bitterness of the tomatoes. set that to simmer all day, came out good.
hung my clothes on the line even though it was cloudy and cool once i saw the rain was likely done. they’re still out they’re, i’ll bring them in after the wind blows out the morning dew. sarah and trevor came over and we drank a little champagne with strawberries (cleaned up the rest of my seconds and added a cup of my own, more then i expected for only the second pass). after chili and cornbread (thanks kevin, excellent) we went on a field trip to an abandoned mobile home park trevor had eye balled from the highway. the dogs enjoyed the excursion as well. we took a roundabout way home and it reminded me of explorations of childhood.
3rd best drinking water in the world
its been a really beautiful saturday. started it with a really good papua new guinea light roast from Kaldis. very yummy and read the paper, such as it is in this brave new world. kevin and i went to the market and got lots of great stuff: spinach, mixed salad greens [has little baby bok choy], asparagus, arugula (a smaller package a little goes a long way), and some other salad stuff. also got a pack of orange marigolds for the tomato patch and a Patric chocolate bar. hit them up for info on slave labor in the harvest of cocoa and they said only on the Ivory Coast and they don’t buy from there. i got a frequent buyers card in case they’re good. also got some apple butter.
stopped by nancy’s garage sale fundraiser and it was nice seeing everyone gathered for a good cause, got some books (mostly for work), some lavender dryer sachets, and wrapping paper. made steal cut oats in the rice cooker with some raisins. john was unimpressed so i’ll probably work them out of the rotation for the foreseeable future as kevin’s not much of a breakfast guy. though he is into the local bacon i also got at the market this morning and am going to make up tomorrow with some grits and eggs over medium.
it was beautiful weather wise and got two loads of laundry done on the line and managed to finish digging out the bed by east side of the house. i’m out of finished compost so i just added coffee grounds. the dirt there was pretty decent so they’ve had some stuff there before but its been a minimum of 6 years since it was worked. there was a lot of maple tree roots i had to dig out. i dug up the lilies i move every year out of the front yard and planted them around the perimeter and then put in 8 brusel sprouts [thanks erica who sprouted them from seed and even delivered] . i think they should look cool together and i am hoping to use the lilies to keep the dogs out. i’ve got a couple more brussel sprouts i am going to weave into where the strawberries fade out buttressed by more lillies. gonna put in the rest of the lillies inaround the most dog trampled strawberries. speaking of one of them is pretty red so i should have my first one in a few days or so. can’t wait. i almost bought a $6 pint of them at the market but decided to wait for my own. got many gallons last year and there are more so i am optimistic.
my neighbor henry flagged me down while digging up lillies and gave me a couple of forsythia bushes and lopped for me. after seeing the ungainly clump that i put in the ground a few years ago from him he must’ve figured he’d better just do it for me. his yard is looking amazing, really coming along. i’ve got a fair chunk of stuff to get in the ground, wouldn’t mind mowing my lawn but will probably wait on that.
john has all three rain barrels operational now, hopefully. he added a washer and it seems like we’ve got it now. we walked through the garage and talked about an organizational plan. john has been knocking out the projects. he got a dog waste compost set up in the back corner of the yard that is really great. buried a garbage can surrounded by rocks with holes in the bottom. add poo until there’s enough and then added 1/3 of a package of septic tank conditioner. “i’ve never bought a bottle of bacteria before”, john said. has a lid. might move the hydrangia out into the new dirt pile by the composter to make room for the second of mom’s rose bushes. it will be nice to get them in the ground on mother’s day.
be kind to our one big mother, you know the one with oceans and stuff.
then i cooked dinner. parboiled crocker apple brats also from the market in Flat Branch brown ale, made red potato packets with red onion, and asparagus packet with baby garlic, green onion, a little tomato, lemon juice and a little olive oil. also did a nice salad and kevin got brat buns which were very festive. i served it with my first batch of sun tea with green tea and a bag of ginger.
i got a little too much sun but it was probably good to try to adjust to the coming heat. spring has been wonderful but summer temps are rolling in.
nuclear power and me (part 2)
The police arrived on the scene rather quickly. Traffic was backed up and I and 5 or so others were handcuffed to the cement barrels. We were chanting: “One, two, three, four, don’t pollute our lake no more, five, six, seven, eight, shut down fermi smash the state”. The crowd of protesters strung all over the countryside realized where the action was and started to arrive. The police came with bolt cutters and we were clipped out relatively easily. (We couldn’t raise the $100 for stove pipe to complete the barrels according to design, otherwise they would have had to bust through all the concrete.) We got bailed out though because it took long enough for the cop cars batteries to die from running all the lights. the road was still blocked for better than an hour.
I hit jail with such an incredible since of relief. i was so tired and stressed from organizing this monster event jail was a blessing. I wondered about what my life had become. The police had taken to putting us in a separate holding cell where the phone was “broken”. This had been their policy since an activist, john i think, did a tv interview over the jail phone. I heard reports of the tripods, the police just pushed them over and maced people when they hit the street. john whose plan had been to handcuff himself to the first cop car filled with protesters had been preemptively maced and arrested just because and the cops were intrigued by the handcuffs.
The cops were pissed. taken off guard and outside their experience. They are not used to having people say “no”. They were not used to detroit anarchists pelting them first with doughnuts later with stones. They were not used to photographers catching them being rough. They arrested a couple, real professional journalists. My friend Roger yelled out “don’t mace her pig!” A cop came over and yelled in his face that if he stepped in the road he would be arrested. Roger yelled back “ok I won’t” and the cop pulled back and hit him. six cops beat him down with sticks while Roger lay on the ground yelling I am not resisting, I am not resisting. They squirt mace, lots of it in his eyes up his nose in his ears down his throat until he vomited. then they arrested him and charged him with felony assault. I kid you not. i saw the video. roger was convicted at trial for assault. crazy world. they say spittle left his lips when he yelled ok i won’t.
We all chanted bad cop no doughnut when they brought roger in. we chanted and sang all night. we did a hed hum that was transcedent. we slept in a big pile like puppies when they wouldn’t give us blankets. we all refused bail because it wasn’t offered to Roger and a photographer who was beaten and also charged with assault. if you didn’t know it if the cops beat you up they charge you with assault to justify your injuries. pricks.
there’s more to the story but little about nuclear power. i was disillusioned by the whole thing. mostly roger. i realized my policy of creating conflict situations to radicalize people was reckless and costly. i didn’t think i had it in me anymore. constant court support plus my own legal involvement long after the cameras went away made me think. the plant opened largely without incident. on christmas we got santa (Terry Carpenter) arrested with an elf (Marie Mason) and an indian (Jesse Deerinwater). my mom and both my brothers. that’s where you had to be if you wanted to see the trapps on christmas.
the following summer other activists picked up the torch for another big action and i felt i had to carry on though my passion was gone. spent the summer in detroit organizing and we brought together a similar coalition. we again did multiple arrest events. our big finale was a full on non-violent assault on the plant. we had two ladders hidden and planned on going over the fence. one was a cooling tower sculpture with a ladder and a long ladder swathed in paper with slogan written on it. both of these were feints to draw the security so two of us could throw blankets over the barbwire scale the fence and climb the power towers with handcuffs and a banner. Our cooling tower ladder was pegged right away and seized by the cops. the other fooled them and we got three over the fence but it didn’t draw off the security. rather than get pulled off the fence i went around to the camera crews and said there would be an action at the custer statue in 15 minutes. Me and a kid from kansas drove down there, climbed the custer statue and handcuffed ourselves to his stirrup. Oh and I forgot to mention the guy who showed up with scuba gear who was coming in from the beach to climb the reactor building and plant an earthfirst! banner on the roof. we were all scared when he never showed. violating a nuclear security zone is a federal felony. he was a strange guy with a crew cut, no activist credentials and a trunk full of high tech gear. everyone thought he was a plant so i palled up to him. i did with all the suspected infiltrators. put em to work, take em under my wing, embrace them watch them. when we got out of jail i called his emergency number in chicago and he answered. he said he was picked up by “federal authorities” and questioned. “don’t worry they’re not interested in you” he said. they’re after squatter and the greenpeace bigwigs. speaking of greenpeace it was hiroshima day and no greenpeace parallel action. but on nagasaki day they dropped giant banners down the cooling towers. hadn’t told us which was good on them because we had likely been seriously infiltrated.
It was sweet. more arrests, probation, lack of money and i ultimately drifted out of full time radical environmental activism. i saw where it was heading. i was getting tired. the chronic poverty and constant travel, the stress. mostly i was tired. tired of hitting my head against a brick wall.
I did some other stuff, small protests, conferences, teach ins and such. when davis besse in Oregon Ohio had their incidents 3/4″ of stainless steel all that was left in their corroded containment vessel. so close. all i did was put it in my chap book. i might have went to one protest.
When I had my manic breakdown I even questioned my antinuke stance. I had apocalyptic visions of the breakdown of transportation, the end of coal, and cried for those hospital people without electricity. my mom told me to snap out of it and remember who i was. she was right. its insane. japan proves this if ever there was a doubt. if the smoking hell hole of chernobyl hadn’t already told us what we need to know. shut em down. watch the waste forever. teach our children to do the same. everything else is an unspeakable crime that we all bear guilt from as the lights burn.
nuclear power and me (part 1)
The recent events in Japan have had me engaged in thinking about nuclear power in a way that I have not for many years. I have had an intimate connection with nuclear power for pretty much as long as I can remember growing up in fermi country on the eastern shores of lake erie. My earliest memories of nuclear power is the propaganda comics we would get once a year in science class when detroit edison covered the education.
the fermi 2 nuclear power plant went from planning to construction to trying to come online when i was in high school. having had it be a presence for as long as i could remember i never thought to ask why it was called fermi 2. i mostly remember the coloring book with mickey mouse riding in goofy’s jalopy and telling him to air up his tires to save energy. goofy preferred the smooth ride of under inflation. i also learned about background radiation and the unreasonable fear ignorant country people have of things that are new. nuclear power was the promise of the future. even my hot wheels went nuclear. tired of having to go to the imaginary gas station every so often the cars switched to nuclear fuel. a handful of powder and they’d run for life. aircraft carriers ran on it. silly scared people who don’t know nothing.
In 7th grade science class Mr Lowney organic asparagus farmer did his own bit on nuclear. He presented its dangers and promises (fermi 2 was running into billions over budget and years behind schedule at this point) and told us about fermi 1, the day we almost lost detroit. when we moved to debate i was the only proponent. fermi 1 was an experimental fast breeder reactor not the really cool GE Mark 2 reactor we were gonna get. sure there is risk from radioactivity but there is risks in not having electricity too. try running your hospital without it and see who loses more lives. sure waste is a problem but gosh darn it we’re just getting smarter every day. I already knew you couldn’t win debates with teachers but i felt i held my own. the voice of reason.
In 11th grade i had technical writing and we did a speech to persuade. I was eager to do nuclear power because i already knew the material and had already waded through a lot of science for an english class. the pro nuclear position was already taken so i was forced into taking anti-nuke or having to learn something. I prided myself for the easy way out and the little as possible model of formal education. I was crushing a novel a day in that era so i can see how school work was an obstruction. I was also hanging out with scott woodward at the macomb branch library and decided to do some research, bone up on what’s happening since 7th grade (fermi 2 is still over budget and still under construction).
I am horrified by the facts because i had not yet come to understand the sublime in the face of nuclear horror. I read the Monroe Evening News article from the day after the near meltdown of fermi 1 after perusing the day we almost lost detroit and learned about the china syndrome. It was one paragraph long from the second page and said plant operators handled an incident in an admirable fashion according to training. Kudos to them.
Mostly though it was the waste. I learned that spent fuel means that it has become so highly radiated that it can no longer be used. That with its half life it would be two hundred thousand years until it was safe and we have no idea how to safely store this shit for any where of even a fraction of that. I learned there was enough low level radiation waste to pave a coast to coast highway and that every nuclear waste storage facility radiation had migrated into the ground water. I was horrified and convinced. I was anti-nuclear. the first brick had popped out of the right wing wall i had built my political ideals.
Ultimately I would question a system that would devise such a monstrously fiendish boondoggle on us country folk with a taste for walleye. Why did we need a nuclear power plant when we already had the third biggest coal fired plant in the world? How were we selected to be the environmental sacrifice zone? jesus pushed me over the edge with his words “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. bam, like a stroke of lightning i knew war was wrong and i was off to the races. from right wing republican to anarchist within days as i followed the obvious implications of being anti-war. I rejected anarchy as naive and ultimately evolved into a democratic socialist type until my ultimate embrace of decentralization and participatory democracy and that i was really back to being an anarchist. having been everything now i don’t see it changing.
Fermi 2 ultimately got close to opening. in my research i found out about nuclear protesters as not just historical relic but as happening now. Well sort of. I went to some 1o people protests mostly old nuns. I bought some buttons and told them i wanted to help. I waved a sign or two. Wow 12 people with signs or the finishing touches on your 6 billion dollar investment. the plant opened with fits and starts and the 10 people went away. I went to college.
The first gulf war changed my brother john and me. John wanted to hang a banner when i got home from the psych unit afternoon shift he had painted “wage peace” on a sheet and wanted to climb a power tower and hang it the night the bombing started. “high voltage message” and peace was on the front page along with the war. never doubt a small group of dedicated people could change the media message in a small town paper. we went to protests and were part of a million people saying no to war. it was life changing.
After the war we drove down to east liver pool ohio and protested a toxic waste incinerator coming on line with martin sheen and all. Discovered SEAC, the student environmental action coalition and started organizing anti-statist pro-planet radical environmental events. it was great. changed my life. we were all in.At Frankies, this club in east toledo a door man said he was gonna jump off the martin luther king bridge for the anniversary of steven biko’s death. He said he jumped all the time and just swam to the docks, once he did it 7 times in a row. I remembered i’d seen one of his early ones in the paper. We jumped that night and it was cool. my brother was there and thought since it hadn’t been in the paper for awhile we could probably put anything we wanted in the paper with a little planning.
We looked in the calendar and the anniversary of fermi 1 was coming up. we sent press releases and organized a march from international park to the center of the bridge. Joe Mold and I got up and held a banner gave a short speech and took off our shirts and jumped in. no tv, the trucks were late and we felt we risked arrest if we waited. We swam to a sail boat to avoid the cops and sailed away drinking grog and glad we didn’t die in the cold maumee in october.
After I got my masters i was aimless and ended up being a full time field organizer for SEAC, hitching around Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri teaching kids how to cause trouble for a good cause. Jousted with NAFTA, the wise use movement, made a lot of connections, and got my first death threats. the woods is a dangerous place to be antilogging and lead country does not want anti-lead activists cleaning up flood damage. they’ll shoot you for wanting to pick up garbage if you don’t agree with him.
Fermi 2 ran on until christmas day 1993 the turbine threw a blade (a big un) and it ripped around the containment building. shut it down and some water got contaminated. i was home for christmas and john was still in town. better coverage then fermi 1. we both thought they would dilute it and dump it in the lake. really, what else are you gonna do with that stuff??? John was on it. organized some protests and a public hearing and 700 people turned out. started blockading the plant with bodies, people getting arrested.
I was field organizing in the ozarks as things heated up that summer when they wanted to dump the water in the lake. I came home early and called in debts from all the kids whose backyards I had been busting my hump to save and finagled SEAC to sponsor an event The Grassroots National Action Festival, we got the local coalition (CRAFT -Citizens Resistance At Fermi Two, great acronymn), the radical version we had spun off when CRAFT wanted to say no to stupid stuff we wanted to do (Zebra Mussel Alliance), and Green Peace and Earthfirst! who never worked together. we had a lot of energy and we had ruled the local media for months. My mom never really respected our choice to be radical activists until people she watched on tv started to call the house to find out what’s going on. it was beautiful.
I had gotten arrested in a blockade get dragged off scenario. There were two gates and we could only force arrests by blocking both. It got routine. Fermi was getting ready to come back on line so we decided to throw everything we had at it. In the woods we cut down 6 30′ trees and made tripods. We made three barrels filled with cement with pipe through the center big enough for an arm intersecting a piece of rebar. We bought handcuffs, steve merrix got an employee discount at the adult bookstore. we used the tools we had, could borrow, or steal.
The event came. three big protests in three days. we hit detroit edison headquarters with a handful of high profile arrests. We covered the statue of general custer (unfortunate favorite son of monroe michigan) with yarn weaving a web of peace over the nuclear war machine. (fermi 1 was a fast breeder to make bomb stuff and was defended by the Nike nuclear missile base which became a park which we reserved to camp our protesters [it really is all connected]. We brought up as guest speaker a native activist who was opposing a consortium of power companies trying to site a dump on her land. (detroit edison dropped out shortly later). On day 3 we borrowed Mark and Mike’s anti-nuke bus (no we won’t use it for anything illegal, its cool). we loaded up our team, the tripods and the barrels. We had announced we would blockade the plant at 2:00 pm on a sunday afternoon. the police were out in force and lined up by the gates with the media ready for a nice but big typical thing like we’d been doing.
We stopped in the road leading up to the plant and threw up three tripods with activists chained to the top within two minutes while the police looked on in disbelief. We drove the bus up the road pulled on to the main one dixie highway and pulled the bus across both lanes and stopped traffic. We pulled out our barrels and started to block the road, “roads closed folks”. One lady said her son had a little league game so we waved her through. a dude in a truck said he was going to work. “sorry the roads closed”. “I’ve got a tire iron that says its open”. “Hey get a camera on that guy he says he’s gonna hit me” as i handcuffed up to the barrels. The road was closed, the plant was blockaded as promised over a month ago at 2:00 on a sunday afternoon.
to be continued….
“From Here I Go Crazy-Come Down On your…”
David A. Smith friend and poet wrote me a cool poem and sent me the only copy back on 11-21-10. Its been sitting on my coffee table but looks like personal correspondence so no one has been reading it. Thought I would share it here since I am home sick today and feeling restless. Head cold I think, with my scratchy throat turning into a cough and my sinuses starting to ache. I caught it early and have been aggressive with rest and fluids but i have been under a bit of strain for a time so i shouldn’t be surprised. We still largely reap what we sow in this world. I was starting to write i’m putting it in as a prose poem and ignoring the original line structure but looking at it looks significant so i will keep it. Enjoy and thanks Dave.
From Here I Go Crazy – Come Down Off your…
Found you on the floor in an empty apartment
dark it was in there – Could tell you were the
color blue barely in this dream. I asked you what was
wrong as I could tell you were drowning inside.
How you come to be here alone, empty I wondered
aloud, you told me a full apartment in the building turned
on you. Said they’d kill you. But here you were.
they there, closed door; open door here, thankfulness
in my heart. Did’nt question. care, ask how you
escaped; only what happened. The we were in the
mist of manic you state how Jesus has nothing on
you; better than Budda in your non-existent mind
your body of flesh immortal; Mohammad a neo-phyte
who need walk in your shoes, all this as espousing
philosophy
kumquat curry chicken
Its been frenetic for this blogger and haven’t had a chance to post in ages. I made a trip back to Michigan and Ohio, blew up my truck, brought Johnny Watson back with me for a house rehab (the house not johnny) and so have been occupied from rise to bed all day every day and for the foreseeable future. And yet faithful readers in my 20 minutes of downtime before work i want to tell you about kumquat curry chicken, a collaborative effort of two nights ago.
In a blender put in 3/4 pint of de-seeded kumquats, , 1/2 cup vidalia onion salad dressing, 1/2 cup water and pulp that shit up. Take 3 large chicken breasts clean and wash and remove excess fat. Pound with the hammer down to 1/2 inch and chunk up. Season 1/4 cup olive oil with 3/4 head of garlic and 3/4 cup sweet onions. Brown the chicken add most of the kumquat puree (save the rest for a salad dressing on another day) and simmer with a lid on to keep the temp up. Hope you knew to start the rice cooker after the blender and before browning the chicken with 1/2 white rice (for the kids and old people) and 1/2 sprouted organic brown rice. Put in a little extra water (plus butter and salt of course) so the brown rice gets good and done. Meanwhile slice an organic carrot into some frozen peas with some mrs dash and basil and set to cooking. when the rice switches to warm mix in some smooth peanut butter to thicken (you can use tahini if you haven’t made salad dressing out of all of it like i have). you want enough in to make it creamy but not so much that you get much peanut taste just a tiny little mystery hint. Citrussy goodness. I needed to add salt but it was so flavorful some didn’t notice. Good, largely good for you, and quick enough for a weeknight if you’ve got a little help and a lot of good company. Pairs well with Pepsi Cola. For best results pull up all your linoleum and underboard. Standing on springy mossy smelling plywood makes you think you’re cooking in the deep forest.
from computer fast to thanksgiving feast
its been a little minute since i’ve posted anything. i was without a computer. i broke my power cord in the same place that i broke the last one so i decided i needed to change my computer usage and it took me a few weeks to get my desk moved and set up in the spare room so i could try to move most of my computing and all of my plugged in computer time in the office. but what i found was i kind of enjoyed not playing on the computer. freed up some time which i promptly wasted reading novels, re-read snowcrash and the diamond age both just as good a second thoughtful time through. floated the lemine river the last 12 miles before the the 2 miles before the mouth of the missouri. loverly it was. saw a beautiful bald eagle, piliated woodpecker and great hawk and great blue heron sitings. floating is a misnomer though as if we would have allowed for current we would probably still be there. there were places were the leaves had fallen and they just stayed there, very beautiful. patches of color but mostly bare so you could see through the woods like you can in winter. some pretty bluffs. nice big easy river. not a lot of motor boats on a cool fall day. dad finished the new compost bin. its a lot bigger a square plywood box framed with two by fours and a plywood bin. today at lunch i raked leaves and layered them in with the house coffee and scraps and started shoveling in the top layers of my compost that’s been going. i think there’s probably a fair bit finished down below and i’m gonna mix it in to make the leaves go faster. should have enough capacity to hold all of my fall plant material at once. i want to use the compost to turn up a couple of beds hopefully of spinach, lettuce, and kale. still need to harvest the horseradish but its still green so i’m letting it grow. i bought alcohol to process the witch hazel tincture, european style not distilled like i’ve always used. i’m waiting for it to lose the rest of its leaves and i’m going to prune off suckers. also have a pretty darn local thanksgiving feast in the works. brenda and heather are driving down bless their hearts. i ordered a pasture raised bobtail white, next year i’m going to heritage, but i’m excited nonetheless, littler than a factory bird but realer and there’s only going to be four or so. plus i’m gonna do mashed taters, red if there’s some left. i’m going to hit the market first thing. i’m also doing sweet potatoes cubed and cooked in a little water in the cast iron skillet with spinach, fresh chopped ginger, freshly ground star anise & nutmeg (my bastardization of a recipe i had at Jack’s Steakhouse on HT3’s b-day dinner [a very cool affair with live piano, a beef mushroom wine soup, a wine soaked local streak, the sweet potatoes, and a baked alaska for two{suitable for four}]). and butternut squash with brown sugar, butter and roasted nuts (not pecans this year’s don’t come out for two more weeks.) cornbread dressing with fresh roasted chestnuts and the nasty bits of the turkey (neck and organs [i love my family]). some type of cranberry dish, maybe just the canned kind (not the tube though). also will have the homemade bread & butter pickles that get better and better as they sit. got a bottle of a nice italian red. taking the day before to cook. sightseeing and an AA meeting on black friday, the first day of winter market with brenda and heather (those pecans i mentioned and a breakfast burrito) and then see them off with two days of weekend to clean up and deal with leftovers and relax before the grind. life is sweet. i am blessed and looking forward to a full holiday season at my own home for the first time in my life. greetings to the national christmas tree which is winding around wyoming enroute to columbia to spend the night at the holiday inn. sorry i won’t get across town to get you a commemorative ornament. know that i love you just the same.
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