Being Thankful

Over the years I've pontificated on Thanksgiving on this forum, discussing my personal history with the American holiday and how we watched the personification of gluttony evolve to where it is today. But yesterday, Thanksgiving 2016, was my son's first Thanksgiving, and we spent most of the day at home. I cooked a feast, but not an unreasonably large amount of food.

I deboned the turkey like you would for Turducken, brined it heavily for a short time, slathered the inside with compound herb butter and rolled it with twine. Roasting three pieces---two small thigh/drumstick combos and the larger double breast roast---with no stuffing or bones, goes so quick. It takes maybe an hour to 75 minutes.

My cousin living in London reached out for some advice: she wanted to throw an American-style Thanksgiving party for about a dozen people, and she wanted there to be too much food. I typed up some ideas and sent them to her. Her dinner is tomorrow--Saturday for anybody reading this too far from now. In England they have their American-Thursday-Special-Holiday on Saturday.

Then I started to think about for what I'm thankful.

My Boy is healthy and growing like a champ, outgrowing his bouncy seat ahead of schedule and into the highchair:

I'm thankful to still be learning. I just learned about the Ruke-man's newest book, a collection of short fiction, due out next May:

I just learned about (and located) the Saturday-morning-cartoons-meets-Michel-Foucault's-philosophy masterpiece "Coyote's Gospel", presented in Animal Man #5, from 1988:

And I just learned about the caracal, a breed of exotic cat. I went down the rabbit hole of research upon finding an article titled "Rare Breeds of Housecats" with the accompanying photo:

THESE ARE HOUSECATS? PETS?!??!! ARE YOU SERIOUS!??!!?

That's what my brain was doing when I saw those kittens. 

Pets? Eh, sure...maybe...depending on where you live...and how much meat you keep on hand...

In the exotic-pet world, narrowing the gaze to cats, the caracals are popular, but not as much as the serval or ocelot, both of which I've heard of. The caracal is a wild cat from northern Africa to the Middle East up to Turkey. It will grow to about 40-50 pounds and eat 1 to 2 pounds of meat a day.

The article made sure to remind you to keep them away from your pet birds.

I'm also thankful the Cubbies won the whole enchilada; thankful I don't hate the Cowboys new QB and RB rookie combo; thankful our neighborhood changed the times that tickets get handed out, thereby alleviating some of the issues with overnight parking.

I'm thankful California voted for decrim.

I'm thankful for books like The Stranger and Leaves of Grass and Gravity's Rainbow, and that at least academics have recognized Narrow Road to the Deep North as the masterpiece it is and awarded its author enough funds that he'll be able to avoid having to find work in the mines.

I'm thankful for author and professor Viet Than Nguyen's essay on how the establishment Democrats need to start listening to the radicals and artists in the constituency after this last election. See what playing it safe can get you?

I'm thankful for Durand Jones and the Indications self-titled album:

I'm thankful my cats can actually peacefully coexist for at least twenty minutes:

And I'm thankful to be married to an awesome lady who does more work than I can imagine. She does right by the kid, runs her own business, grows artistically, and stays as sassy and sexy as ever.

Was this inventory corny enough?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Also, I couldn't resist one of the Black Friday memes:

Also also: here's a link to a celebratory deal originated by AdBusters back in the Dubya era. 

Heirloom Botanicals

We've been getting all sorts of crazy heirloom orchard apples lately in our farm delivery boxes. After a recent box had five varieties of apple inside, I decided to set them up and take a picture, and then label them and showcase them here.

One reason is that I wanted to unpack the term "heirloom orchard" apple. There has been talk among people I know about what actually constitutes an heirloom apple. This conversation coupled with an internal desire to figure out my own favorite apple variety were the main motivators here.

One apple that I first had while living in New York and instantly fell for, as do most who ever try one, was a honeycrisp. With oversized cells that burst with a sweet and tart juice with every crunching bite, it's easy to see the popularity. The honeycrisp is awesome.

But it was created in a lab in Minnesota in the '60s. It was an accidental seedling that was set for the rubbish bin before being salvaged. It was patented in the '80s and finally brought to the market commercially in the '90s.

It would seem funny to me choose this as my favorite apple without even a quick glance through the ranks of "heirloom varieties". 

The following picture shows and labels the five varieties we got that Thursday night in alphabetical order:

After doing some research, the entire idea of heirloom variety is worthy of discussion.

On our trip to the apple orchard and pumpkin patch a few weeks ago with Cassius, we picked a big bag full of pippin apples. The russeting around the stem was awesome, but such a thing turns off most consumers at markets these days. The pippin was developed in the late 1600s on Long Island and became a favorite of the colonists. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson loved them, and Jefferson even lamented in a letter from Paris that they had no apples that compared to their pippin.

The ones we picked were all awesome, and we didn't even wait for them to be really good, as their flavor develops while in storage.

In any case, the pippin would likely count as heirloom, while the honeycrisp usually represents the newer order.

So, from the picture above:

The Arkansas Black was developed in the mid 1800s around Bentonville, Arkansas. Apparently in the apple connoisseur world it is either loved or hated, with no middle ground. Most likely it is a cultivar that started as a winesap seedling. I find the flesh dense and crisp with a little sweetness, but a dry sweetness. I can't imagine anyone hating it. I think it's safe to call it an heirloom variety, and since the winesap is claimed as one of its ancestors, that's probably also safe to claim as heirloom.

The Braeburn, I was surprised to learn, was discovered in 1952 on Moran's orchard in New Zealand. Thought to be a cross between a Lady Hamilton and a Granny Smith, I find them delicious. Tart and juicy with a creeping sweetness, this apple is easy to overlook. Heirloom? Only slightly older than Honeycrisp, so I'd guess not.

Then the Cameo...I really like the cameo. It's easy eating, similar in tart and sweet to the Braeburn but different in crunch style, it probably doesn't qualify as heirloom because it was discovered in 1987 (!!) on a guy---Darrel Caudle's---property in Washington state.

Granny Smith apples, I just learned, were cultivated by Maria Ann Smith in Australia in 1868. She died two years later, but some of the local apple farmers extensively planted her cultivars, the lovely tart greenies they called 'Granny Smith'. This variety is likely ranked second on global scale cultivation, and has done many varieties like the pippin harm, in that they are not russeted, are larger, and more intense in flavor.

The last one is the oldest variety on this list, the Winesap. It looks like it was known during the colonial period, and possibly came from New Jersey. Like the pippin, it stores better than most other apples, but in today's age of refrigeration that is less necessary. I found the flavor in the same dry-sweet and crisp category as the Arkansas Black, but with less intensity.

Like the pippin and winesap, we were lucky enough to get our hands on some Orleans Reinettes, a French variety that was popular back in France in the 1770s and is being grown stateside recently in the rush to preserve these old apples. They were awesome. Less awesome were the Calville Blanc's, which was a bummer because the apple was cultivated in France in the 1600s. The ones we've been getting were a little mushy.

The following is a list of otherwise hard to get apples that we've been getting this season in our boxes, to go along with the nine varieties mentioned above that have at one time or another, been arriving in our box (pippin, honeycrisp, Arkansas Black, Braeburn, cameo, granny smith, winesap, Orleans Reinette, and Calville Blanc):

1. King David (introduced 1893, Washington County, Arkansas)
2. Mutsu (1948, Mutsu Provence, Japan)
3. Golden Russet (early 19th century, upstate NY)
4. Gravenstein (17th century or earlier)
5. Grimes Golden (1832, Virginia)
6. Jonagold (1953, upstate NY)
7. Rome Beauties (early 19 century, Ohio)
8. Gala (1934, New Zealand)
9. Fuji (1932, from the research labs in Fujisaki, Japan)

I'm not trying to make the case for how we should define our concepts of heirloom botanicals. I just love apples and love nerdy rabbit-hole diving, and love seeing the information on the 18 (!!) different kinds of apples shipped to our apartment over the last two months all in one place.

Also, I wanted to talk about something else.

If you're down for a revolution, I'm ready to put in the work. Otherwise...apples!

My favorite apple exists as a list that is ever fluid. But three varieties will always occupy spaces:

• Granny Smith
• Honeycrisp
• Pippin

And maybe the King Davis or Orleans Reinette can be added, but their season is short. Possible the Cameo, too...or the Braeburn...that first gigantic Mutsu I had was pretty goddamn fantastic also...

The Obama Illusion and an Election Postmortem

So...what now?

Right?

There are too many things to get to after an election night like the one last week. If you value dignity and decency, the thinking on "our" side goes, then this was a catastrophic night where the world we thought we lived in crumbled down slowly around our heads.

Sounds a bit melodramatic, no?

It should. In hindsight the signs were all there.

Electing Barack Obama was not the norm, it was the capturing-lightning-in-a-bottle moment when the world we wanted came into being for a brief moment. An electrifying and brilliant orator, a charismatic and charming young guy---a black guy even---a fucking cool guy came along and snagged the moment and was the world.

Nevermind he was as white as he was black. And some of his policies were not favorites of mine. But, hell, he got a pass on most of those things in my book because he was the man. He was given a broken down mess and he did his damnedest to fix it. He got troops out of the Middle East (mostly), he watched Seal Team 6's Go-Pro as they shot Osama bin Laden in the goddamn face, he took on healthcare and got 22 million more people insured (with mixed results I hear).

But he represented The Future. He was The Future.

But we can't ignore the general trajectory of this country in the years between the last "cool guy" to leave the White House in Jimmy Carter.

Reagan, Bush I, Slick Willy, and Dubya. Yikes. The lone Democrat on the list did a bang up job finishing the dismantling of the social safety net started by Reagan. And he got impeached!

I had been saying during this campaign that Donald Trump was the exact candidate the Republicans deserved, seeing as they have been pandering to the worst in people for so long, but especially hard since the Karl Rove/Dubya years. Trump was the logical result of that direction.

Stages of Grief

When I saw everyone at work on Wednesday dressed in black, like somebody had died, it made me feel a little better. A person wasn't what we mourned, rather an idea. Our idea of what America was, or is...what we thought we could love about it. The idea of "Looking Forward" was met with the guillotine.

Corrie and I didn't watch the results like normal people. We put it on in between episodes of Nurse Jackie, but it was pretty clear what was happening. "Cass deserves better than this shit," Corrie was saying. "Weren't we past this? Wasn't George Dubya enough for you assholes?" she yelled at the television. Obviously, eh, No and No.

As for Cass deserving better...

He's a baby and will be nearing kindergarten by 2020. Norm asked me about the election back in July when we visited Sacramento and I told him that Trump is the bastard the Republicans deserve and if he somehow wins, then he's bastard we all deserve.

That "somehow wins" part...that's a sticky wicket...

Getting Perspective

One thing helping me with perspective at this moment are my charges. They have some ridiculous notions about what the future holds for them.

Some are convinced that Trump is sending death squads to come and kill them within 9 months. Some are convinced that martial law will be declared just so law enforcement will be allowed to shoot anyone on sight. 

What?

I mean, it'll get worse before it gets better, but death squads and martial law?

Then I realize that these kids don't come to these conclusions in a bubble, and how have we, as adults, been talking about this election? Has it been reasonable?

I let my kids talk about it for as long as they wanted. But I realized that they've only really known Obama as President. They were born after 9/11 for the most part (!!!) and have no real connection to the dark days in the years after that and before that magical November night in 2008 that I wrote about as one of the first posts ever on this site, A Beautiful Sight.

They've only ever known the country as the Land of Opportunity, and hear about the Land of Oppression in history class or on the news with the police shootings. This makes it a little more real for them.

Treating "Them" as Jokes

Raise your hand if "Trump Voter" was a thing of ridicule for you, was a stereotype of a redneck bigot. Hillary and the Democrats never took Trump, or his supporters, seriously. I know I didn't, and I'm not a Democrat or a die-hard Hillary backer.

Apparently some of those supporters were working class folks for whom the alienation from the political machine is fucking real. Millions of working-class people who voted for Obama did not vote for Hillary---they either voted for Trump or stayed home.

These were the people Bernie Sanders referenced in a recent interview. He said it was simply shameful that the Democratic party lost these voters. He also spoke to the clarion call put out by Trump: "I, [insert your name], alone will help you. I alone will bring you work. I will do it."

Of course it's all bullshit, but people were serenaded. That's what the Democrats never get.

The Electoral College

When was the last time a Republican won a popular vote? Was is Bush in '88 or Bush in '04? It looks like it was Democrats Clinton in '92, '96, Gore in '00, Obama in '08 and '12 and Clinton again in '16.

At least we have that, right?

President Orange Roughy

So...sitting in the White House will be a person who has no domestic policy experience, no foreign policy experience, no education plan, and no healthcare plan beyond undoing the Affordable Care Act. The person is openly hostile to environmental activists, minorities, and women. He's groped women, bragged about it, and bragged about how some women aren't attractive enough to grope. He lost nearly a billion dollars in a single year, so we know he just great at business.

His campaign was full of bombastic calls about interning and kicking out 12 million people and banning an entire religion from entering the United States. His own supporters who weren't confederate flag waving mouth-breathers have said things like (in NPR interviews), "Oh, he doesn't mean those things, he's just trying to be outlandish."

Do you know what that means, Trump-voter? That means you recognize he's a demagogue, and that's something you like about him! I guess being a demagogue is better than being the next Hitler...

When the best thing you can say is: this politician is a demagogue, things don't look so hot.

Don't get me started on Mike Pence, the let's-defund-AIDS-research-and-pour-money-into-coversion-therapy asshat.

And what does "Make America Great Again" really even look like? Should it be "Make America White Again"? Are there going to be new jobs magically arriving? Maybe a complete destruction of NAFTA and super high tariffs on Chinese imports will spawn those gigs. For what it's worth, I can't say I'd fight that too hard.

What does a Trump presidency look like? Either Republican business as usual (we're all screwed); or crazy Hitler-esque Trump (we're all screwed, but worse); or do-nothing-pre-9/11-super-vacation-Bush (we're only as screwed as we are right now); or...or...I'm trying to figure out that one. I'll get back to you.

What really does it all mean?

For you Obama was either great or the devil or somewhere in between, but did he bring you groceries? Did he pay the gas bill? The day to day shenanigans that we all do, and have to do, are affected very little by the orange-faced turd-blossom person sitting in the Oval Office.

Did what we think we saw as the possibility of our country get squashed the other day?

Yup.

I think the silver lining is that after the dark Bush years and the hopeful Obama years that we actually expected the country to get it right. 

That's progress, right?

One Last Thing

What I told my kids that made me nervous for their future had little to do with what happened last Tuesday. It's what happens in 20 years, when the hundred million baby-boomers all begin to need Social Security and medicare, and our working class people are still living at home paying off college degrees that they can't use because the nice-pay middle-class work has disappeared.

What happens then? Especially if Trump dissolves Social Security even more, or privatizes it, or some other fuzzy-headed Republican idea...

I told my kids that at least one adult in their life needed to tell them about it, if only one.

Sounding the Big-Picture alarm...

Was Game 7 the Greatest Baseball Game Ever?

Game 7 of this year's World Series was played the other night, and I watched the majority of it with the sound turned off, thankfully missing the drivel coming from Joe Buck. Mainly we have the television off when the Boy is awake, but Game 7 between the Cubbies and the Indians?

I say mainly because there were times when I angrily turned off the tube, quietly cursing the Cubs' manager Joe Maddon. As the game progressed, it became clear that it could be in the pantheon of Greatest Games Ever, and then, as it ended, how could you argue that it wasn't the Best Ever? Sure Mazeroski and Jack Morris and Joe Carter...but...

The Stakes: Representing the American League was the Cleveland Indians, owners of the longest drought for World Series Championships in the AL, having last won in 1948. They lost the World Series in 1995 to the Braves and in 1997 to the Marlins, but were so bad for so long that they inspired one of the best baseball movies ever with "Major League".

Now, while that World Series drought for the Indians is bad, it had nothing on the Cubs. The last World Series they were even in was in 1945, which they lost in seven games to Detroit. The last championship they won was in 1908, an over-a-century of futility, the longest drought in American professional sports, and possibly sports in the world. Few teams have remained so popular without ever winning anything.

Game 7s are weird things, and especially in the World Series: an entire season coming down to one game. A marathon of a season, from March until October, then two more weeks, and then one more week, and after all that, everything comes down to 27 outs.

The Ramifications: One team was ending an historic drought, but both teams are on the cutting edge of the data analytics revolution. How about that Theo Epstein, the architect of both the 2004 Red Sox and this Cubbie team?

The Game: Lead off homer by the Cubbies, ala Jeter against the Mets in 2000, 1-0 Cubs. Indians tie it at 1. Cubs go ahead, and sit at 5-1 when the Cubs pitcher, Kyle Hendricks---who's pitching a helluva game by the way---walks a guy with two outs.

Cubs manager comes out and removes Hendricks (who had only thrown 60+ pitches) in favor of game 5 starter Jon Lester. Lester walks a guy, throws a wild pitch, and then another, bouncing one off the dirt and into the head of the catcher, allowing two runs to score. 5-3 now, Cubs leading.

This is the first time I turned off the television in a rage. But silently.

Whatever, right? Back and forth until the 8th inning with the Cubs now ahead 6-4. The Cubs' fireballing but overtaxed closer---also a hard-to-root-for-charges-against-dropped kind of guy---Aroldis Chapman serves up a two-run homer to soft-hitting center-fielder Rajai Davis: Tie game.

Crowd totally goes apeshit. I shake my head as Corrie emerges from the bedroom. The Boy is down, but still the TV is muted. "It's karma. You can't root for Chapman," I tell her.

No score after the top and then bottom of the 9th, which Chapman pitches. I thought he was going to lose the whole season right then, obviously out of gas. This guy throws 102 regularly, but in those moments looked like toast.

THEN A RAIN DELAY!

Holy shit, the tension! A full season, a full World Series---seven games!---and now extra innings, and now a fifteen minute rain delay! (It was seventeen minutes.)

When play resumes the Cubs just keep coming. They scored two hard fought runs, taking an 8-6 lead. In the bottom of the 10th, the Indians scored a run and got another guy on base. The score was 8-7. with the season-winning run at the plate. The hitter was a defensive replacement from earlier and was getting his first at-bat of the game.

He chopped a ball to third-basemen Kris Bryant, who looked misty-eyed as he fielded it, throwing the runner out easily.

Game over, World Series over, longest drought in professional sports...over.

So...there was game 7 in 2001, when the D-Backs beat Big Mo and the Yankees, and Jack Morris pitching 10 innings in game 7 in 1984, and Bill Mazeroski beating the Yankees in game 7 in 1960 with a walk-off homer---all fantastic and classic WS Game 7s.

But these stakes? These teams? These starved baseball franchises? A game that was heart-attack-inducing every five minutes?

Has any game ever been better?