YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THE SPENT HEN

I am doing research for a direct mail letter on the appalling fact that the school lunch program is sold a large amount of chicken from used up egg laying hens, which is also traditionally used in dog food and compost. I came across a gem of a paper called RUNNING HEAD: Spent Hen Meal for Layers, which basically investigates the question, can you feed your dead garbage chickens to your live chickens? Answer: Yes.

Conclusions: Nutritionally valuable high-protein meals can be
produced from whole spent hens using conventional rendering
procedures. Such meals may be safely used at levels up to 10%
in diets for laying hens provided good analytical procedures are
followed to determine nutritional content. Due to the high level
of residual fat and the highly unsaturated nature of this fat, it will
be necessary to insure that adequate amounts of a suitable
antioxidant is used during manufacturing to prevent rancidity
development.

No more chicken for me, thanks.

Among the pitfalls of Gchat

Me: Hey, is the guy in this doctored political ad recognizable?

MS: BUSH
Is it Bush?
BTW, i just sent that BUSH IM to WF.
Accidentally
Is it Bush?
Come on i think it’s kind of a problem if it is Bush
Sara?

Me: It’s not Bush
So you just IMed WF with nothing but “BUSH”?

MS: Yes!

Me: Did you explain it?

MS: Nope
I said “that was supposed to go to Sara”

Bienvenido a Miami

Disgruntled laptop user looking for an outlet: “I’m from Key West and we say when you come to Miami you’ve left the United States. You may not realize it, but you’re in Cuba right now.”

Me: “I had a great mojito, so maybe that explains it.”

This is 1,500 years old (and other interesting things I saw today)

I picked it up on the ground outside an archeological mound and handed it to Dr. David Periera. Oh, this is from the Foundation period, he  said. It´s probably 1,500 years old. Good eye!

How about that.

The Cordillera Oriental and two rebuilt Inca grain silos. They have doorways in them because the first four that the archaeologists rebuilt were vandalized by people who tore down the walls to see if anything was inside.

Not very  spectacular, but these are original Inca foundations, all in a row.

And this is a black figure of Christ on the cross, wearing a rainbow sash, being carried down the street in Quillacolla, followed by a brass band.

A health exhibit in the public square, complete with hand drawn informational posters, put on by the military police. Other posters included communicable diseases and vaccinations.

And apparently the story here is that unions of taxis and suchlike will decide on a saint who should protect their vehicles, and then they perform a ritual to that saint. That ritual being to decorate your car with baby dolls, llamas and cutlery and drive it around the public square.

En cafe

Sitting in D’Kaffe on the Avenida Prando, drinking cafe latte and agua con gas. I’m writing and taking some time for myself before it gets dark and I turn into a pumpkin who has to take a taxi anywhere.

I sneeze. At the next table there is a rotating crowd of men, anchored by two guys who are playing with gadgets–a phone, a watch, a camera.

One says “Salud,” when I sneeze and then in Spanish asks if I like his spandex sleeve that is printed like a tattoo sleeve. I can’t remember the word, so I say in English that it’s weird and they laugh and forget about me. They leave.

I’m writing about the morning’s trip to see Inca ruins and reconstructed grain silos. Because the site is out in the country and the tourist center is under construction, I have go to the bathroom behind some scrub, which is treacherous because it all seems to have thorns.

Then two return and my friend with the fake tattoo sleeves says something, and the only part I understand is “novio.”

“A letter to your boyfriend?” his friend translates. They move from their table to the couches and the first produces a stack of more spandex tattoo sleeves to show to someone else. They’re drinking Jack and diet cokes.

I wish I hadn’t quit studying Spanish when I was 16.

Week one, some reflection

Friday evening, one week after arriving in Bolivia, I´m sitting in the Casa International living room with Thomás´s two dogs. He is out with this wife and son, bowling, for family night. I´ve just finished The Girl Who Played With Fire, and I´m covered in dirt and paint from the worksite, but there hasn´t been any water for the last two hours. And so I kill time.

We´ve nearly finished the first two pieces of our mission–the digging of the garden and the painting of one previously very orange, very ugly set of shelves. Although we did break the mirror, which we´re replacing, and I ran out of paint before giving one of the doors a second coat. Today we also helped Claire, another foreign vounteer there, drown a mouse and set traps.

Last night, John, Thomás and I went to a wine bar around the corner to have Bolvian wine and chew coca, which Thomás carried in a green plastic bag in his vest pocket. You take a small wad, maneuver it into your cheek, add a little baking soda and just let it be there.

Almost instantly my mind felt clearer and the baking soda made my tongue go numb. The only other documentable effect was that we drank three bottles in a few hours and walked out like it was nothing.

Llama fetuses in the withcraft section of La Cancha, one of the world´s largest open air markets. These are apparently part of offerings made to Pachamama–buried at the site of a new house, for example. But the arrangement all depends on what sort of protection or good fortune you are after. And it´s a gruesome corridor to walk down.

There are also little packets of good fortune–tiny dollar bills and other things made of gold colored foil mounted on a piece of cardboard–that are made to be carried in wallets or in your car.

I had fingered a little  owl figurine back in the handicraft section and asked Jean Carla if she could find out what it meant. Wisdom, said the seller–tyical. And for 5 bolivianos, I bought it.  Something you can always use.

Most of the graffiti here is people signing there names or occasionally putting penises on people´s security walls.

Cochabamba may not have the most spectacular scenery, and I may be forgoing some of Bolivia´s more exciting sites–Lago Titicaca, the Amazon basin, the salt flats–but it´s spring and it is full of flowers.

The worksite

We got our tour of the worksite from Caroline, a woman with a head full of dreadlocks trailed by her son Zion. She´s the orphanage´s nutritionist and wife of the founder, though she points out, orphanages aren´t just for orphans.

All of the kids here are 5 or younger and are, as she puts it, “affected by AIDS.” They have it, or their parents have it and are unable to care for them, or their parents had it and passed away.

There´s a psychologist and a social worker and the kids are getting regular medical care. The orphanage is small: only 12 kids that live on site and as many as 6 that come for day care. The idea is to give quality over quantity and for it to feel like a home, though Caroline says it doesn´t yet. There´s been some staff turnover, maybe it´s the AIDS thing, maybe it´s the late shifts, she´s not sure.

And there are two projects they have had on their list but haven´t had time for. One is to start a garden in the yard where they would grow fruits, vegetables and herbs, and the other is to repaint some furniture inside.

¨So you came from America to paint a bookshelf?¨ This was Thomás, the proprietor of the Casa de International where we´re staying and John and I are having Chilean wine with him over cheese empanadas and fruit salad.

We laugh, because it´s true and a little absurd, but I like it. Rather than me coming in to do poorly what they are already doing well–caring for these kids–I´m able to work on  something they haven´t been able to do and wouldn´t spend money on.

Whether or not we´ll finish is another matter. Between siestas (which I love), the fact that there are only two of us, one of whom is 85, and the short time we have, I´m not sure we can pull it all off.

But dammit, I´ll try, because the people here have made the kind of committment to this cause that I´m not willing to. So if I can do something that makes their work better in some way, then it´s worth it.

Though in a country where labor is cheeper than powertools, this means sanding off paint by hand and digging holes with pick axes. At least the weather is great for working outside.

In other news: the doxycycline no longer makes me want to throw up every morning, but it´s probably a waste to be on it at all because I haven´t seen a mosquito since I got here.

Fotografías!

My first view of La Paz out the window of my taxi from the airport. Mount Illimani in the background. This road is the most spectacular view of the city, clinging to the walls of the canyon and filling it in.

A lovely square in La Paz that I stumbled upon while trying to get somewhere else. That is the Legislative building across the way, and the president´s house is next door, I think.

Coca tea from the cafe at the coca museum. Maybe it is my imagination, but I do think I got less winded walking back up the hill to the hostel, so I´m inclined to believe the hype.

First meal in Cochabamba, the local dish pique macho. A carnivore´s delight: Beef, chorizo, sausage, a chicken drumstick, thick slabs of grilled cheese and cow udder mixed with some peppers and sauces and such. Cow udder: unremarkable.

Cristo de la Concordia: Actually taller than the statue in Rio. Also, the jacaranda tree is my new favorite.

This is me peering out one of those holes. You can go all the way to Jesus´ shoulders, but you´re now allowd in his head.

More Jacaranda tree. It´s too misty to see, but the Cordillera Occidental is over there.

Later in the day, less misty, here´s the Cordillera Occidental as seen from the window in my room. ¿With a view like that who can complain?

Now off to eat my leftovers from lunch: a kebab of chicken, beef and bacon. I foresee eating a lot of meat the next two weeks. But Bolivia is too poor to afford hormones for livestock, so I´m pretty ok with it. Also, there´s the deliciousness to make it go down easy.

I plan to try guinea pig at some point. Probably tongue also.

Place of party

Someone outside the post office thought I would be interested in this party. I think because I am white? 10pm to 6am, baby–and Mario will be there?

Also there seemed to be a memorial service happening inside the post office, which threw me at first. I was like ‘my high school Spanish teacher would be ashamed I didn’t remember, but I looked up the word for post office in the Rough Guide, and I know correo is it.’

Have been shopping because I just can’t help myself: pens from a stall on the Prado, travel Kleenex from an old man standing on the sidewalk selling nothing else, and llama shaped bottle openers and a silver ring on “gringo alley.”

I fly to Cochabamba in just a few hours. The adventure continues.

The legend of coca

This is an exerpt from the legend of coca, first transcribed, purportedly, in 1921:

I shall give you a gift for your brothers.
Climb up that mountain
Where you shall find a small plant
One with much strength.Guard the leaves with much love
And when you feel the sting of painIn your heart, hunger in your body
And darkness in your mind
Take rhem to your mouth
And softly draw up its spirit
Which is a part of mine.
You will find love for your pain

Food for your body
And light for your mind

Furthermor, watch the leaves dance with the wind and you will find answers to your queries.

But if you torturer, who comes from the north
The white conqueror, the gold seeker
Should touch it, he will find in it only poison for his body
Madness for his mindfor his heart is so callous and his steel and iron garment.
And when the COCA which is how you will call it
Attempts to soften his feelings
It will only shatter him
As the icy crystals born in the clouds
Crack the rocks
Demolish mountains.

Nervous?

I wasn’t nervous until the travel agent who booked my ticket made a courtesy call to ask do I need anything, am I excited? Nervous?

Well, now that you mention it, I might throw up. Or maybe that is the lingering after effects of last night’s two martinis on an empty stomach. Hard to say.

Here’s one thing for me to obsess about: I never did by supplemental traveler’s health insurance, and the doctor at the travel medicine clinic told me it would cost a minimum $25,000 if I had to be airlifted home in a medical emergency.

Aaaaaahhhh. Also, I got one thing done on my to do list and this time tomorrow I’ll be in the airport. Breathe. I have to admit, I feel like I’m learning to ride a bike again and I’m getting cold feet.

World’s highest microbrewery

I chose a hostel for my one night stay in La Paz solely on the offer of free beer from the world’s highest microbrewery: http://www.theadventurebrewhostel.com/

Details, details.

Just received info on my placement in Bolivia. I’ll spend two weeks volunteering with Fundacion Niños con Valor in Cochabamba, a home for kids with special needs, including HIV. Activities include gardening with the kids who plant their own fruits and vegetables, painting furniture and helping in the house with babies and toddlers.

Babies!

Just 5 more days until I go. Still working out a few details, like one question was can I count on being able to use an ATM in Cochabamba or do I need to bring all my money with me? But I think it’s safe to say there’ll be at least one here.

Another: Which weather website do I trust: Weather Underground or Weather Bug, whose daily highs for Cochabamba differ by more than 10 degrees?

Layers seems like a good plan.

Today PMS, tomorrow the world

Why the female hormones are so unfair: At 8 this morning, I thought it was such a pity that in the digital age you can’t really set your work on fire, and by 5 I’m like “I love Stoneyfield brand strawberry probiotic super smoothe—so much!” And thinking about what shoes to wear tomorrow.

I go to Bolivia in 1 weeeeeek. I hadn’t even thought about how to take money with me before this afternoon. That seems like an oversight.

I’m buying a certain someone gelato tonight to make up for being a crab.

January 26 (and 27)

Straddling days. From The Assasin’s Cloak: An Anthology of the World’s Greatest Diarists

January 26th, 1930

When we made up our six months accounts, we found I had made about £3,029 last year—the salary of a civil servant; a surprise to me, who was content to live with £200 for so many years. But I shall drop very heavily I think. The Waves won’t sell more than 2,000 copies.

Virginia Woolf

January 26, 1938

For no reason at all I hated this day as if it was a person—it’s wind, it’s insecurity, it’s flabbiness, it’s hints of an insane universe.

Dawn Powell

January 28, 1933

Death to you is not death, not obituary notices and quiet and mourning, sermons and elegies and prayers, coffins and graves and worldly platitudes. It is not the most common experience in life—the only certainty. It is not the oldest thing we know. It is not what happened to Caesar and Dante and Milton and Mary Queen of Scots, to the soldiers in all the wars, to the sick in the plagues, to public men yesterday. It never happened before—what happened today to you. It has only happened to your little boy.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Google books has all of February up online.

New tradition of Sunday home-cooking installment #1: Joel’s house, Cashew tofu and Szechuan string beans

CASHEW TOFU

Ingredients:
my cookbook calls for 1 liter of vegetable oil, I used a little over half a quart of canola
1 block of tofu
3 cloves of garlic
3 red chilies
1/4 cup of bean sauce (the recipe is vague, but I used Lee Kum Kee’s Black Bean Garlic Sauce per my friend’s suggestion)
1/4 cup of sugar
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. mirin
2 Tbsp. ketchup
1 1/2 cups roasted cashews

In a pot or wok, heat the oil until very hot. Rinse the tofu under cold running water, pat dry, then cut into pieces. Add tofu to hot oil an dfry until golden-brown, about 3 minutes; remove from oil with a skimmer, and drain on paper towels. When oil is cool enough to handle, set aside 1/2 cup, and store remaining oil for another use.

Peel and finely chop the garlic. Wash the chilies, removing the stems, then finely chop. In a small bowl, combine the bean sauce, sugar and chilies; mix well, mashing the beans.

Heat the reserved 1/2 cup of oil in a frying pan or wok over high heat. Add the garlic and stir-fry until golden-brown. Stir in the bean sauce mixture, soy sauce, mirin, ketchup, and enough water to reach desired sauce consistency (a few Tbsp. water, I think). Add the tofu and cashews. Simmer for about 4 minutes. Serve immediately over rice.

Served with quinoa.

SZECHUAN STRING BEANS

Ingredients:
1 1/2 lbs. green beans, ends trimmed (although we used a fraction of that, along with 5 ozs. of fresh spinach)
3 Tbsp. tamari or soy sauce
1 Tbsp. toasted sesame oil
1 Tbsp. mirin
1 tsp. sugar
2 Tbsp. peanut oil
3 shallots, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp. peeled and minced fresh ginger (although we forgot)
3 Tbsp. minced scallions
1 tsp. red pepper flakes

Lightly steam the green beans until just tender, about five minutes. Rinse under cold running water to stop the cooking process and set the color. Drain and set aside. In a small bowl, combine the tamari/soy sauce, sesame oil, mirin, and sugar and set aside. Heat the peanut oil in a wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the beans, handful at a time, and stir fry for 30 seconds, transferring the cooked beans with a slotted spoon to a platter, until all of the beans are cooked. Let the oil reheat, then add the shallots, garlic, ginger, scallions, and red pepper flakes and stir fry for 10 seconds. Return the beans to the wok and stir fry for 30 seconds. Add the tamari mixture and stir fry until the beans are hot and coated with sauce, about 30 seconds. Serve immediately.

Art Of Cake

This turns out to be the enduring source of the pleasure I find in the kitchen. It’s the one that was there from the start: the connection to my mother who not only fed her children well but taught me how to feed my own just the way her mother had taught her. In his great work, James Beard somewhat radically positioned himself as the heir and celebrant of a long line of American woman cooks, from Miss Leslie to Fannie Farmer to his own mother, and there must have been something in this unexpected male affirmation of female inheritance that registered with me.

That tumultuous era, and the new conditions of family life it imposed, obliged me to try to be like [my mother] in some measure. I’m lucky that it also permitted me to feel it was all right to want to be, even though I was a boy.

Michael Chabon, Manhood For Amateurs

Make your bed every day

Went to see Sonia Sanchez read at a small bookstore on 13th street. You have to be disciplined, she said, you have to make your bed every morning before you can excel at poetry.

I write haiku every morning, she told us, and stepped away from the microphone to rummage through a bag and produce a little notebook—a birthday gift from someone who knew her habits—and read a few “New York” poems straight from the journal.

“Kisses are wasted on the young,” she read.

So, inspired by Ms. Sanchez:

5 Haiku For Winter In Philadelphia:

1.

Salt and ice on side
Walks tread commuting feet, we
Stroll again in May.

2.

I find that I obsess
Over plans and eye contact
More than usual.

3.

Concrete city canyons
Echo with footfalls after dark
Hemmed in by stars.

4.

A book in my hand
And a song in my ear
As I wait for you.

5.

The cold bores me, but
Spring is months away and my
Heart refuses to bloom.

To do list for the remainder of 2009

1. Go grocery shopping today (coffee, kale, eggs, broth, something for lunch the next two days before Xmas break).

2. Buy the Yankee gift I’ve put off getting until now that it’s 5 days to Xmas.

3. Finish A Short History of Tractors In Ukranian.

4. Start and finish three other books selected for brevity in order to accomplish last New Year’s resolution of reading 12 books in ’09.

5. Continue to lose weight while on vacation and drinking beer (I don’t understand it, neither do I question.)

6. Make sure to go to the gym a few times (see #5).

7. Dig out last year’s resolutions and face the hard facts.

8. Celebrate! But not like in ’07-’08. Let’s not do that again.

This is Halloween.

PEX halloween party Saturday night = 1 Fishtown warehouse of swings, alcohol, colored lights, mattresses, a stripper pole, house music, and people running around in crazy costumes. Also a few topless chicks.

True story: I got bored and went home early.

Favorite costume: dude dressed as a Pantone swatch book.

Hello, old friend.

Was on my college campus today for the first time in 3 years. But only to drop off papers with the oncologist and to eat lunch at the Panera Bread.

And a $10 charge for paperwork, geez.

Lemonade

I admire my mom’s attitude toward cancer.

Popping the last horse pill of antibiotics the night before the morning’s home enema before the surgery. She laughs and says “Well, in 12 hours it’ll be over and I’ll be awake again going, boy that hurts.”

For some reason I have chosen this moment.

I’m comparing myself to adulthood. I have no dependents and own nothing of great value; no house, no car, no children, no spouse.

I look into the next five years: I don’t see a house or a car, a marriage or a family.  But abstractly, in the future there are medical bills and tuitions, deaths, births?, plane tickets and U-haul trucks—all floating out there as un-nows but maybe-somedays AND THEY WILL COST ME SOMETHING.

And I’ve chosen this moment to worry that I won’t be ready.  12:09 on a Tuesday.  And, productive or unproductive, all I can think about is the number of margaritas I can consume in a single weekend and wonder what the dollar value of those drinks would be—plus interest—in 2014.

Cat storage.

Oh, hai. I put myself away for u.

Currently reading

I was inpsired by the men at the pier to attempt a hymn to the intelligence, peculiarity, beauty and horror of the modern work place and, not least, its extraordinary claim to be able to provide us, alongside love, with the principal source of life’s meaning.

-Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

This dude tends to find me when I need him. Like The Art of Travel, which found me in a bookstore in Seoul when I was feeling purposeless and adrift in the world.

Then on Thursday, I wandered over the “inspirational” table at the Borders on Chestnut street; I had a 25% off coupon and was thinking about the future. There he was again. I put back the other book I was carrying and took the subway instead of walking, just so I could start reading right away.

Once, he explains, the term “calling” meant a calling from god. Now, most of us pursue a secularized version of this idea, through which we expect to find the same meaning as service to god from working at a desk.  Ambitious!

It reminds me of Mike Rowe’s (host of Dirty Jobs) column in Forbes:

In the long history of inspirational pabulum, “follow your passion” has got to be the worst. … What a crock.

Why do we do this? Why do we tell our kids–and ourselves–that following some form of desire is the key to job satisfaction? If I’ve learned anything from this show, it’s the folly of looking for a job that completely satisfies a “true purpose.” In fact, the happiest people I’ve met over the last few years have not followed their passion at all–they have instead brought it with them.

It’s a dirty job, and I love it!

Man, I love that show.

Brew

I gave in to the temptation to drink the first cup of coffee to drip through the machine.  Now the rest of the pot will be weak, but every cup after is always chases the pleasure of that first sip anyway.

Trying to quit coffee after 2:30 because I read in Glamour magazine that it will help you sleep more regularly. A great source for life goals. Further, just by sleeping 7.5 hours every night, according to the cited study, one could lose as much as 6 pounds without doing anything else!  Tempting!

Was talking to Justin—principle negative influence behind my failing in this goal most days—about how there is a singe 4 month period in all of my adult or pre-adult life in which I was out in the world by 8 every weekday and 9 on every weekend.  And it was the four months that I was in India.

There was too much going on to sleep through it; also, Bushpo-di would have been offended if I didn’t eat her breakfast.

It’s a little dispiriting to think that I had never before, and have not since, had the motivation to get out of bed in the morning, and that I can no longer operate in the world without at least 48 ounces of brew.

Something to work on.

1 am in our household: ghostbusters, sleeping cat.

The cavalry was out

To make sure no uncouth youth organized over MySpace to terrorize South Street again this weekend, on Saturday night, the street was completely shut down.

Buses, paddy wagons, mounted police and officers chillin’ at every intersection. The officer Melissa approached would only be vague about the “juveniles” and their underage drinking.

While I do support a proactive attitude toward crime, it’s hard in the city of Philadelphia to not feel like such a single-minded dedication of resources to the Center City bar district might be a little pennywise, pound foolish.

But what do I know.

15 foods to boost your metabolism, so they say

http://www.ecosalon.com/boost-metabolism/

This mostly describes my diet! Minus turkey and grapefruit.

Which may be an indictment against the truthfulness of story.

Also, what is that a picture of that goes with the green tea? Some kind of moon rock?

on accomplishment

One of my Fulbright classmates just finished grad school (which I know because of gchat) and I feel like I’ve done less with my life…

Mother’s day.

My mom was hard to reach.

After trying the house phone, her cell, and my dad’s cell—for the second time—I thought maybe I wouldn’t bother. What a manufactured occasion anyway, and my mom hates the obligations of holidays.

Then I thought about how three years ago I was worried she’d die of cancer while I was living abroad.

So I called again and caught her. She’d had to work. Had gotten margaritas with Dad after. “We do what we can,” she said, and we talked for a half hour about my sister’s impending graduation, house plants and the rugs she can get cheap from work, if we need more rugs.  She has an olive green one in mind for me.  And probably half the actual time of our conversation is—as is customary—the silences between topics until we can think of something else to say.

I’ve been delegated the responsibility of making reservations for lunch on graduation day.  Let’s not forget.