Oregon - Astoria, and what The Corps of Discovery ate

In 1805 Lewis & Clark came to Astoria, or more precisely, to the mouth of the Columbia River where the city would be founded a few years afterward. In the next century, during World War II, my in-laws came at the orders of the U.S. Navy. Last week my husband and I made our first visit to Astoria.

Bunkhouse for the soldiers

We didn't stick around nearly long enough to satisfy my traveling style, which is marked by a desire to make a home for at least a week or two in every place I visit. But only a minute is required to introduce a thought or fact and pique my interest; that's what happened at the Fort Clatsop park where replica log cabins have been built showing how the Corps of Discovery sent out by Thomas Jefferson lived for their 106 very wet days there.

Astoria front yard with salal

I told the docent that one thing I'd remembered from reading about Lewis & Clark with the children more than ten years ago was that when the party arrived at the Pacific Ocean (it was November) they turned up their noses at the salmon, being meat-loving guys. Well, it wasn't so simple, she replied. Back in September when they were famished because game was scarce, they had traded with the Nez Perce Indians for camas root (camassia quamash) and dried salmon, which made them sick, so they associated that unpleasant experience with the fish....and besides, there wasn't a lot of salmon to be had at that time of year at the mouth of the Columbia.

field of camas in bloom (not my photo)

The woman was focused on taking down the flag and didn't even notice that I was asking questions: What was it about the camas root that was bad, why did the Indians give it to the explorers, and what was it doing with the salmon? She had made it sound like they were eaten together. So I had to do my own research when I got home, and of course more questions are raised the more knowledge one gets.
 
I haven't found anything leading me to believe that the men of the Corps of Discovery despised salmon. They didn't write a lot while they were at Fort Clatsop; it was a relatively boring life after the excitement of getting there, and the social life was lacking compared to the previous winter, as the coastal Indians were into commerce, not partying. But in the journal accounts before and after the uncomfortable camas episode there are many passages that mention the eating of salmon with no negative comments.

One thing they did record about the food at the coast was that they had obtained salal berry bread -- probably a "cake" of dried berries --  from the Clatsop Indians. That got my attention, because we had seen thousands of salal bushes on and near the Oregon Coast. The leaves may look familiar to anyone who has enjoyed bouquets of flowers from florists, because they are used extensively in flower arrangements.

Salal in flower -
Gaultheria shallon

Over the last few days Mr. Glad and I both have become engrossed in the journals of Meriwether Lewis and George Clark and others of the company, because of questions raised during our brief stop at the fort. I read on the blog of Frances Hunter, who has written at least one book on the expedition, that the reason the easterners had debilitating digestive ailments for a week after eating camas was that they were "unaccustomed to eating much fiber." But in the paragraph before, she wrote that because the hardtack supplies had been depleted, the men had for some time been eating more corn, beans, and squash than was usual.

An Astorian garbage can poses as a giant can of salmon.

Many people aren't aware of which foods have fiber and which don't, and maybe Hunter is among the ignorant. The "three sisters" of Indian staple vegetables have plenty of fiber, as do the berries that the soldiers had been eating all along. And while an excess of fiber might cause bloating and cramping, it wouldn't normally cause vomiting and diarrhea. But the explorers themselves did attribute their illness to the salmon and camas.

Lucky for me I ran into The Natural World of Lewis and Clark by David A. Dalton, which treats the aspects of Lewis & Clark's journeys that I'm currently wanting to know about. I learned that the main starch in camas roots is inulin, and the book explains how humans lack the enzyme to digest inulin in our stomachs. It goes straight to the intestines where fermenting bacteria digest it and produce gases, a process similar to what happens when someone who doesn't usually, eats beans.

The Indians had a way of cooking the camas root that has been shown to break down the inulin and make the resulting food more digestible: they cooked the roots in a pit for several days until they turned into a mush reportedly as sweet as molasses. The Nez Perce had digestive systems that were accustomed to this food, and they probably knew to eat it in moderation, while the Corps ate lots, being quite hungry at the time.

Later after they had success at hunting and ate some meat, they felt better, until they boiled some camas root -- note, they didn't deep-pit it -- and their bloating reoccurred. Eventually they figured out how to eat the stuff, which they came to consider a comforting part of their diet.

Dalton informs us about salmon in his book, as well, that in large quantities it has a laxative effect. So now I feel that I have a much better understanding of one little point of history, not about dates or kings or wars, but -- food!

If you are a stickler for historic detail, you might have noticed that the replica flag the docents now fly over the fort does not match the original in its proportions. This page shows all the flags in our nation's history. Most of them don't have proper names, but this one is called The Star Spangled Banner.

While in Astoria we climbed the 164 steps to the top of the Astoria Column, which gives a broad view of the rivers and town. A spiral of painted relief murals on its surface shows scenes from Oregon history, including this enlarged one below that I found online and that shows a Lewis and Clark event.

 I did love looking due south from the column at the large Youngs River, and at the smaller Lewis and Clark River to the right of it, flowing from the southwest. Even before they join the Columbia at its mouth, they make this beautiful scene.

The Lewis and Clark expedition has always captivated me. Because several of the party kept detailed journals, we who didn't accompany them can vicariously enjoy the fun of discovering rivers and flowers and people groups, while escaping the scary and miserable experiences. By this short and comfortable, warm and well-fed expedition of my own, I have by my plant-identification efforts and by spending a while in the land where they reached their goal felt a new kindredness with these brave men.

I'd like to read more of their journals, but I'd like even better to spend more days in this corner of Oregon next time. I would hope to discover a pretty blue camas flower.

Oregon - Granite Man, Pennyroyal, and Deer Brush

An hour before the race began

On the first of June Mr. Glad competed with other members of the family in the Granite Man Triathlon in southern Oregon. It was one of several events and meetings that formed the outline of a little trip around our neighboring state.

My husband was doing the swimming leg, as was the other grandpa of our Oregon grandchildren, and the two of them were the team captains. Our son and three grandsons made up the remainder of the teams, with the younger athletes compensating somewhat for the slowness of their elders. We womenfolk and some out-of-town kin were the support crew and also played with the baby (cute boy even if he isn't one of my grandchildren).

My favorite swimmer left of center with his hands on his hips

Perfect weather, and a lovely setting, with trees leafing out, flowers beginning to bloom. As we stood around on the grassy slope of Applegate Lake waiting for the race to start with the swimmers' portion, I had my first botanical experience of the trip. It started with a smell that only gradually broke into my consciousness enough to make me look down and search out what source my feet were tramping on.

pennyroyal - or not?

Pennyroyal was my first thought, as I picked off some of what was growing in the wild lawn, and in case you aren't familiar with it, I outlined one cluster in the photo below, in the lower right corner. Even so, you may have to click on the photo to see it.

But it doesn't exactly look like pictures of Mentha pulegium, though that pennyroyal is considered mildly invasive in California and Oregon. It doesn't even look like pictures of the Oregon "field mint" Mentha arvensis, which I looked at in case my sniffer is not able to distinguish between members of the mentha family.

Pennyroyal has what I'd call a sharper aroma than most mints, and this one under my feet had that distinctive smell that I have met many times in my life, often in the mountains. Was I mistaken? Its leaves do look in some ways more like Monardella odoratissima, whose common names include "Mountain Pennyroyal" - but not exactly.

This Applegate Lake variety looks like a cross between it and another mint, as I study it further. And that impression might not be too far from reality, because it turns out that pennyroyal has an ability to hybridize with other mint species, adding to its troublesome weediness. It may crowd out native plants and even threaten Oregon's commercial peppermint and spearmint crops, as I read in this article.

I learned a new word while reading it: allelopathy: a biological phenomenon by which an organism produces one or more biochemicals that influence the growth, survival, and reproduction of other organisms. I am familiar with this kind of influence from my experiences in gardening, but I didn't know the name for it. The latest instance is the way nothing much grows under my manzanita bush because of its negative allelopathic qualities. The authors of the article experimented by treating seeds of a rare Oregon plant with a weak extract of pennyroyal root, and found that the germination rate dropped.

Deer Brush near Applegate Lake, Oregon

I didn't know all of this bad stuff when I was lolling about in such a bucolic place; I was only pleased to have found a plant to check on as soon as I got home.

When we went out to the parking lot after all our guys were done (and some were done-in) I found another, a bush covered with honey-scented flowers. I thought it might be a type of Ceanothus, and I was right. But about the common name, I was wrong. I guessed Mountain Lilac, and it is in fact called that by some people, but maybe by mistake...? It's officially known as Deer Brush.

The flowers come in shades of light blue and white, mostly, and it's native to the western states. All of its uses are positive: animals eat it, the Indians made baskets from it, and it fixes nitrogen in the soil. Everybody likes this one!

Ceanothus integerrimus

Blowing over tulips and into turbines...

When the spring winds blow, the howling through the trees and the chimes of the patio bells drown out the call of the garden so that I can listen to the world's discussions on many matters, including -- wind! Wind power, to be precise, and wind farms.





I had no idea that those scatterings of wind turbines on the Altamont Pass east of San Francisco were called farms. When a new turbine is installed they even call it a planting. Altamont is the wind farm I am most familiar with, but now I've seen photos of much more beautiful and even brilliant settings for these harnessers of wind energy, such as tulip fields in The Netherlands.

Turbines neatly lined up along a canal or placed here and there among what is primarily a tulip farm don't impress me the way they do when spread over hills that would ordinarily be drab without them. In those cases, like the slopes in California that in summer turn golden brown -- or a brown that is just plain dull -- the wind turbines grace the slopes with dynamic art.

I haven't taken the time to exit the freeway and drive to a good vantage point, but I think that one man who did got some lovely pictures that capture the beauty. The most artistic photographs cost more than I'm willing to pay for permission.

Several colorful photos are on the Pattern Energy site, gorgeous shots of their turbines at installations in Manitoba, Nevada, California and Texas. And some of these pages I'm linking to tell the stories of wind farm controversy in more depth than I will, so you might like to visit them for that reason, too.

The problem with the turbines is that they kill birds. The ones on the Altamont Pass kill more raptors than any other wind farm in the world, including the protected Golden Eagles, of which the world's largest breeding population lives in this area.

This article explains that worldwide the deaths from wind turbines are a small fraction of total bird deaths from run-ins with manmade structures such as office buildings, power lines and our houses; who hasn't experienced the dismay of hearing a small bird hitting - whack! - against a window? Even nuclear and fossil-fuel plants kill more birds than these converters of wind energy.

But it has been found that the more modern wind turbines, which are taller and slower, kill a much smaller number of raptors. So the old ones are being replaced. Bird and bat mortality are the topics of this site, annoyingly formatted but with useful links and an explanation of why Altamont wind turbines have been particularly deadly for birds.

Driving along Interstate 5 in California, we more than once have passed a truck carrying one turbine blade. These things are huge!

 Here is a photo of a "re-planting" of a turbine.

If I were to take a trip past those fields of wind turbines this month the scene might be greener and wetter, something like this.

The labor and intelligence of mankind that is applied to growing tulips results in a product that gives delight to millions of people. The wind turbine is an elegant result of technology, a thing of beauty in itself for its simplicity of design, but also as a symbol of man working with nature and using the gifts of the Creator. Thanks to God for putting some of His own creativity into us His creatures. May the glory go to Him.

The Hungry Soul - How Science Disappoints

Previous posts on this book:

1) The Hungry Soul - Intro (Why I love this book)

2) The Hungry Soul - Struggle to Stand

In the Introduction to his book, Leon Kass writes of his purposes: "I hope to provide evidence that the modern corporealists -- those who deprecate or deny the soul -- and their modern rationalist or humanist opponents --those who deprecate or deny the body -- are both mistaken, both about living nature and about man. I seek such evidence in an examination of eating."

Here the author conveys an understanding of reality that is more in line with orthodox Christianity than that of many who profess Christ, for he sees that we are unified creatures; our bodies are essential to who we are, not just shells that we hope to escape. He even goes further than what I would assent to, stating that his meaning of "soul" is "primarily not a theological but a biological notion!" (Yes, he put that exclamation point there himself.)

You should know at the outset, however, that I use the term [soul] advisedly and without apology, even though I know that it will cause most scientists to snicker and many others knowingly to smile. These skeptics need to learn that it is only because they in fact have a soul that they are able to find such (or any) speech intelligible, amusing, or absurd. Indeed, only the ensouled -- the animate, the animal -- can even experience hunger, can know appetite, desire, longing.

It is not, then, only the scientists who are giving us only part of the picture, but also the teachers of humanities (I don't want to call them humanists, as their vision is too stunted), whom Kass and his wife would call colleagues, as they both are themselves university professors in the humanities.

…the humanities have long been in retreat from the pursuit of wisdom. Analytical clarity, logical consistency, demystification, and refutation; source criticism, philology, and the explication of thinkers solely in terms of their historical and cultural contexts; and the devotion to theoretical dogmas – formerly romanticism and historicism, nowadays Marxism, deconstructionism, multiculturalism, feminism, and many other “isms” – all these preoccupations keep humanists busy with everything but the pursuit of wisdom about our own humanity.

James Le Fanu

While I was in the middle of thinking about Kass's book, I heard another writer on scientific topics interviewed on Mars Hill Audio. James Le Fanu is a physician and author whose book The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine won the Los Angeles Prize Book Award in 2001. He was speaking in the interview about his recent book Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves.

Le Fanu is also concerned about the reductionist and unsatisfying science that purports to tell us all there is to know. Before the notion of science appeared in the early 19th century the idea of the metaphysical was part of the common sense of mankind. Galileo and Newton and Kepler had an instinctive recognition that whatever science couldn’t explain, there was "something beyond." Their study of Natural Philosophy was encompassed in the larger whole of the love of wisdom.

Nowadays, says Le Fanu, science is boring, and "to be a career scientist is to be in a very small hole," as they are so specialized in their work, and in their education there is nothing like the older biology textbooks that were "full of awe and wonder and astonishment." Le Fanu said that in the scientific journals he reads and in his talks with scientists, he has not noticed that any individual scientists are fully appreciating the mystery and glory of the human being.

But we assume that at least some of those scientists leave their holes each night and go home to prune the roses, eat a tasty dinner and play with their children, showing what Kass calls "the disquieting disjunction between the vibrant living world we live in and enjoy as human beings and the limited, artificial, lifeless, objectified, representation of that world we learn about from modern biology."

As Kass is seeing the non-material aspects of our humanity demonstrated through the very material and natural activity of eating, so Le Fanu sees them revealed ever more obviously by the recent discoveries of science. Everything we learn seems to show how amazingly complex and unknowable by scientific study is "the most important part of the human experience...the nonmaterial thoughts and ideas and feelings and relationships..all the sorts of things we do the whole time...."

I loved listening to someone who is knowledgeable about the latest breakthroughs in the world of science talk about the "five cardinal mysteries" of the human experience. I ordered his book and have been relishing it on every level. Here is another man whose own soul is well-rounded and developed enough that he is a good writer, a practicing physician, and a person who can wonder at the Creation.

If we had a few more men like Kass and Le Fanu, true Natural Philosophers who don't reduce life and reality to systems and ideologies, but who are willing to be open to that Something Beyond, the world would be a better place. Perhaps some of the upcoming homeschoolers who are getting a foundation in the kind of Poetic Knowledge that Charlotte Mason and James S. Taylor teach will have the ability to benefit from their scientific studies and to find them not boring but joyful.

The Hungry Soul - Why I Love This Book

Any self-conscious emotional eater might take notice of a title like The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of our Nature. I had the added attraction to the book that came from having heard the author's warm and thoughtful voice on the Mars Hill Audio Journal as he was being interviewed on an altogether different topic.

Leon R. Kass, currently a professor at the University of Chicago, was appointed to chair the controversial President's Council on Bioethics at its creation in 2001 and remained on the council until 2007, during which time he wrote Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. Though he is naturally called a bioethicist, he prefers the term humanist, because it better conveys the breadth of his concerns. Kass is also a medical doctor, but this is not a book about eating disorders any more than it is a cookbook -- rather, it is a pondering of "the truth about our human situation."

At the outset I must submit that there is no way Kass can tell us the whole truth, because he ignores Jesus Christ who is The Truth. Christ reveals the Father to us, being His "express image," and He was the only fully human person who ever lived on earth, showing us as He did what man can be when he lives in constant communion with His Father as humans were meant to do.

Given this severe omission, one might wonder how I could find such treasures in Kass; I have to admit that this book has to be one of my ten favorites, at least of non-fiction, and the numerous notes and underlinings I've made in pencil and in red and blue ball point show how much I am still interacting with the material. Each time I read a section (with a different writing implement at hand) I find morsels of bread on the path leading in the direction the author wants me to go, and also see other lanes he probably isn't even aware of. As I walk along I eat the tasty bits that have been laid out with care, wanting to race ahead to whatever is at the end of the trail, but resisting that urge for a while so I can savor the food and enjoy the stroll, all the while making note of the forks in the road and the byways I need to explore later on a return trip.

I really think I could come back to The Hungry Soul again and again and find more philosophical paths to explore, but if I wait to share my discoveries I'm afraid the tale will never be told. So I will begin the telling, even though I'm pretty sure I haven't chewed on these ideas enough to do justice to what the most eminent reviewers hail as "an intellectual feast" and "a profound and brilliant exploration."

Kass is Jewish and does reveal his belief in a Creator. He wrote this book to demonstrate through the human activity of eating that man has a soul, refuting the claims of corporealists that we are only material beings and that all our thoughts are nothing but electro-chemical events. 

This introductory post is a good place to list the chapter titles or topics that I may draw from in future posts, though just the foreword, preface and introduction are the kind of appetizers from which one could make a full meal.

1. The Primacy of Form
2. The Human Form
3. Host and Cannibal
4. Civilized Eating
5. From Eating to Dining
6. Sanctified Eating

I can't help but notice how the sights along this philosophical journey are related to other trails and books I've encountered, and of course I'll have to mention those, too, in postings to follow.

As an example of humankind who are the crown of God's creation, Kass himself is proof of his thesis. The fine mind and heart that are expressed in his writing testify to the fact that men were made in God's image. And the reasoned and well-written arguments he makes, or even the questions he gently asks, are clear and flowing. It's a pleasure to follow him when all the paths seem to lead me to God.

Part 2 - Struggle to Stand
Part 3 - How Science Disappoints

Around the Net

When Joanne at  Seasonal Hearth  was in the Netherlands she and her family rode bicycles a lot, and they took so many pictures of bicycles of all sorts everywhere, it adds up to give a feeling for the country where the population of bikes is greater than that of people.

On this blog about Words, I learned that I possess philoprogenitiveness, and it has been one of the greatest stories of my life! I don't always read these posts, but they come daily...Now that I've been so encouraged by this one, I might check in more often. If I had known the word amphibology it would have come in handy when I was grousing about grammar recently.

Some people can drink milk their whole lives seemingly without  any problem (though my husband's chiropractor thinks it's the worst thing for anyone) while others can't digest it. Via Touchstone I ran into this article about population migrations and where the gene for lactose tolerance came from. I'd like to read more about it.

My favorite prize from recent web wandering is a daily posting of poems from the George Hail Library in Rhode Island, each one accompanied by a picture and brief introductory notes. It's more reliable than the online poem-a-day I used to read, and the blog host has some pleasing parameters for the sort of poetry she likes to share. Here is a recent one that I love. If you click on the title you can see the photo and comments as well:


THE PATIENCE OF ORDINARY THINGS

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

~ Pat Schneider, American poet and writer

Animal, Vegetable, Weed

When my husband saw the sizable box of books I had packed for this trip to my daughter's house, he wondered why I would need so many. My answer, "Because my brain is so tired right now, I can't imagine wanting to read any of them, so I can't know what my appetite will be when it returns, and I want to be prepared."

I came prepared for the journey, too, with The Message Bible on CD, My Antonia, Miles Gone By, and the latest Mars Hill Audio Journal on CD's to choose from. I started out with the Mars Hill disk, because it's usually very relaxing for me to stretch my brain, gentle as the exercise is when one is only eavesdropping on other people's conversations.

This edition had a lot of discussions on the topic of beauty, the host said in the introduction, and in a small panic, I hit the button to eject. No, I wasn't up for that--it sounded too difficult to even follow along with. What would be easier? How about, Tell Me a Story, and one I am already familiar with. My Antonia was a good choice, as it turned out, very soul-nourishing in the story and the lovely writing. And it was Beauty--not discussed, but the reality.

The last few days I've been living in the reality of beauty and a lot of other things that people, including me, like to theorize and philosophize about. I haven't picked up any of those books that I thought I might read or think about or write thoughtful reviews of. I've been chasing around a ten-month-old who is a major explorer of his world, and maybe it is in two ways keeping me in the Grammar phase of my stunted version of classical education. You know, where you learn the facts and language and data that you will work with later.

It's always a blessing to have little children around who are discovering everything for the first time, as it makes me notice the details of my surroundings freshly. Today I gave this guy, whom I will nickname Scout, a piece of used waxed paper that wasn't really dirty, and after he fiddled with it a minute or two it tore in two. He had been looking at one piece of paper, and suddenly there were two pieces, and he was obviously surprised to see the smaller piece move in his hand far away from the original.

Babies aren't wondering philosophers. They are scientists without even a theory, in the research stage, gathering information. I've been able to do some of that kind of mental work this week, as in learning the names of oak trees. I also took a picture in the forest of a bush with pink flowers, and when I went looking for oaks in the shrub and tree guide there was a picture of it, and I have now memorized it--well, at least for this week--Douglas spiraea.

Douglas spiraea

When Scout was exploring the back yard he came upon a weed (spurge) that I knew I should know the name of, so I looked it up in Weeds of the West, a marvelous tome that I am very pleased is now in Pippin's collection. It's a book several of us in the family had our eye on for a long time before someone actually took the plunge to invest in such an unappealing title.

I looked quickly through the whole book yesterday, and learned quite a few facts that have no relevance to any philosophical book review I might write, but they were so pleasing to me! My objective was to make a list of all the weeds that I already knew by sight, which surprised me by how long it was. A whole series of Weeds blogposts could be written on the links to childhood memories and events.

Then I was surprised to find in the weed book a flower that is also always in the mountain wildflower guides I've been consulting for years, Corn Lily or False Hellebore. It was about then I suspect I was moving into the Logic Stage, making connections and comparing one word with another, drawing conclusions using my data.

This plant is deadly and noxious, for a fact (Here's a historical bit about that from Wikipedia: "The plant was used by some [Native American] tribes to elect a new leader. All the candidates would eat the root, and the last to start vomiting would become the new leader."), but some of the things I thought I knew about it aren't true, and in the middle of writing this blog I am realizing that I still don't have the facts straight enough to tell any more about it.

About other weeds, I learned that what I thought was Black Mustard was actually Radish; these are cousins someone got mixed up and taught me wrong. Nutsedge is a cute name for an ugly weed in my own garden. I'll be content to study the most broad Grammar of Plants for the rest of my stay here on earth.

Which brings me to the second reason hanging out with children keeps me at their level: time. When I am scurrying about during naptimes to do little pieces of chores, just keeping up with the physical bare necessities, my mind is flitting about and not in the mood for a certain kind of thinking, which I hesitate to call "higher."

I don't seem to be able to settle in, under deadlines, and tackle a question of theology or philosophy in such a way that I can write about it. I'm using all my mental resources doing philosophy and theology on a fundamental level that is more in keeping with my stage in life, when my body demands more sleep, and my brain loses thoughts instead of holding them. When I wake up from a nap, or when Scout goes down for a nap, the names of the flowers are still there in the nature guide, the trees and clouds are still handy for contemplating right outside the door.

Play--what Scout does--is when you do things with no immediate goal in mind. I can't have an agenda or a syllabus when I am minding Scout while he experiments. So I try to look around and pay attention at least as well as he is doing. I'm glad I've arrived at a place in life where the order and complexity of the universe are certainties to me, and every flower and rock is a gift from the Creator with the potential to draw me to Himself. It might even be an advantage to have a tired brain when enjoying that kind of Beauty.

Baby Toys

It's so much fun to watch babies as they do their scientific experiments. That's always how I have thought of the work they do as they play. When nothing uncomfortable is distracting them they can work for long periods repeating tests on the materials in their lab to learn about the properties: how things taste or feel on the gums, what sounds they make when knocked together, and so forth.

Seventh Grandson is with us for a few days and I brought out my boughten baby toys, some homemade ones, and the usual kitchen gadgets and cardboard boxes that babies love.

This contraption made with leather and blocks might have been made by Baby C.'s own mother for her little sister many, many years ago. Or maybe for a nephew, maybe even by a different aunt. One of the children did set me straight on this but I seem to persist in holding to my Scrambled Maternal Myths.

Perhaps the project was inspired by the book, No Bored Babies. I love to give the book to older children in a family where a new baby has just arrived, providing them one more way to be involved in caring for the younger brother or sister. The author shows many ways to take inexpensive raw materials like cardboard or cloth and make toys appropriate for the increasing skills and changing interests of children in their first couple of years.

When children start playing outside by themselves they collect their own materials, the favorite being sticks. As I was getting ready to load Baby C. into his car seat, I noticed that his parents have thoughtfully already supplied him with his own First Stick, carefully chosen and sanded for safe science experiments.

Steel and Magnets

I had been debating about whether to load up my new refrigerator with art held on by magnets. I didn't want to risk scratching the stainless steel surface, so I had halfway decided not to decorate it. Then when sorting through all the stuff I've stashed here and there over the last few months, I found the darling butterfly magnets that Herm gave me for my birthday, in anticipation of my new kitchen. They have a soft backing, so I ran downstairs to put them on. But they wouldn't stick at all!

B. had just come home from work, and we puzzled together as he saw me try to attach them to the microwave instead. Nope. They don't hold on there, either. Isn't steel magnetic? Made of iron? Is this really stainless steel, or some knock-off? The magnets do stick to my powerful range fan hood, so there they sit, brightening up the back of the stove.

When I googled this subject the first article I found was written on a blog of stories by journalism grad students at Columbia University, and stated that some stainless steel appliances are not magnetic because they "are made of high-grade stainless steel and don’t contain iron." What?? I don't know very much, but I always thought steel was made of iron. So I went on searching.

From what I read here, it appears that various metals can be added to the steel (that is, yes, mostly iron) in small amounts, to make it rust-free. One of the metals that often goes into the alloy is nickel, which also alters the steel in a way that negates the magnetic quality. I'm guessing that my range hood doesn't have nickel. But it does have butterflies.

 

Snap, Crackle, Wisteria Pop

As Husband and I were lingering over our soup this evening, the sharp cracks began to interrupt our conversation. Our wisteria is at the peak of bloom, but some seed pods from last summer are hanging on. Just now, after a winter that was wetter and longer than usual, followed by several windy and warm days, they are exploding and shooting their seeds across the yard.

I went outside just before the sun went down and caught some pictures. Here is the evidence on the patio, along with fallen blossoms.

This picture shows two pods, one unopened, and one and seemingly just waiting for the wind to bring its seeds down.

At right, one seed sticking out from its pod, holding on by a thread.

It must be a complicated formula that tells the pods when to burst open, or a certain number of hot and cold contractions, combined with humidity, that determines why some shoot in the spring, and some in the fall.

One September our neighbor whose yard backs up to ours phoned us after dark and said, "I am really afraid; it sounds like someone is shooting at my house!"

We told her it was the wisteria. Hers always blooms way earlier than ours in the spring, being on the east side of her house, while ours is on the west, and in its own tardy micro-climate. They probably do their seed-scattering alternately as well.

We are kept busy pruning or sweeping, smelling or listening to this vine through all the seasons of the year. It's a great back yard resource!

Review: For the Time Being

Giacometti said, "The more I work, the more I see things differently, that is, everything gains a grandeur every day, becomes more and more unknown, more and more beautiful. The closer I come, the grander it is, the more remote it is."

This clip from the book is as good an introduction to Annie Dillard's book For the Time Being as anything I could write. I've been struggling for months now to write a simple review, but I'm not equal to the task. It occurred to me that I could let Dillard speak by transcribing some passages (in boldface) from the book. I hope they are not enough to be copyright-infringing.

There is always a lot of factual knowledge, especially of geography, history, and natural science, in her books. In this one you learn things about Mao Tse-tung, about the Aztecs, the Romans, and grotesque birth defects. Many statistics about natural things and about what percentage of us are dead, and many stories and sayings of Teilhard de Chardin, who I think is a kindred spirit to her: Do you suffer what a French paleontologist called "the distress that makes human wills founder daily under the crushing number of living things and stars?"

Annie Dillard does suffer this way, as many theologians may suffer from contemplating mankind, the universe, and the finite mind's inability to take it all in, much less neatly organize it and find ultimate meaning. Augustine said to a group of people, "We are talking about God. What wonder is it that you do not understand. If you do understand, then it is not God."

If the mystery of life makes you uncomfortable, if you like a good reductionist dogma, I don't think you will enjoy Dillard in most of her writing. Even I tire of her eventually, as she sometimes appears to be a woman who could be described by II Timothy 3:7: "Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." She likes to see how everything is connected, and I agree, it all is connected, but we have been given the key to the mystery in Jesus Christ, who reveals the Holy Trinity to us, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.

Several Jewish theologians down the centuries figure in this particular compendium, her favorite being from the Ukraine in the 18th Century:...the Baal Shem Tov delighted in the spark, the God within. This is not pantheism, but pan-entheism: The one transcendent God made the universe, and his presence kindles every speck of it. Each clot of clay conceals a coal. A bird flies the house. A live spark heats a clay pot.

The thousands of wealth have fallen with wonders, said Rabbi Nathan of Nemirov. Do you find this unclear? It certainly sounds like the sort of thing thousands of wealth do.

And Buddhists: They say there is a Buddha in each grain of sand. It is this sort of pop wisdom that makes the greatness of Buddhism seem aggravating.

"God is in the details" might be Annie Dillard's motto, as she does always bring all these bits and pieces to bear on a quest for the Ultimate. Every event, every piece of matter, can speak of God. But not in its specialness--rather, its ordinariness. However, It is literally sensible to deny that God exists.

These times of ours are ordinary times, a slice of life like any other. Who can bear to hear this, or who will consider it?

The closer we grow to death, the more closely we follow the news. Year after year, without ever reckoning the hours I wasted last week or last year, I read the morning paper. I buy mass psychotherapy in the form of the lie that this is a banner year.

So, we are not the center of the universe, but there is meaning, and it has something to do with a transcendent God, not foggy pop wisdom and not a gnostic sort of dualism. The thing to do is to engage, to plunge into life in all its materiality and chaos, and make yourself useful.

As Martin Buber saw it--writing at his best near the turn of the last century--the world of ordinary days "affords" us that precise association with God that redeems both us and our speck of the world.

[Teilhard] "Purity does not lie in a separation from the universe, but in a deeper penetration of it."

[In an introduction to an account of birds mating in Galilee] Our lives come free; they're on the house to all comers.... God decants the universe of time in a stream, and our best hope is, by our own awareness, to step into the stream and serve, empty as flumes, to keep it moving.
 
The first book I read by Dillard was An American Childhood, the story of her youth in the mid-20th Century, and I'd have to say that God used it to make me consider all the many details of my own childhood and how they combined in a significant story that God was writing. In all her books I have read I am impressed with her vision of the sacredness of matter, even while she can't figure it all out. She accepts her own embodiment and relishes her sensate being, which of course feels more real than the intangible.

[Teilhard] "If I should lose faith in God, I think that I should continue to believe invincibly in the world."

[when we who are alive now are dead] the living might well seem foolishly self-important and overexcited.

One reason I have spent a ridiculous number of hours trying to write about Annie Dillard, is that the quality of her writing seems to demand a comparable response. She doesn't waste a word; there is no fluff, and I know that she has a reason for juxtaposing the paragraphs on sand and death and Chinese warriors just so. Surely I could study this one book like the Bible, and keep getting more out of it.

I would get not just philosophy and theology, but also whatever the evasive thing is that one learns from reading a lot of good writing. In The Writing Life she teaches by example, both by relating her attitude and ruthlessness toward second-best work, and in the way she respects the language and makes the most of its potential.

I still haven't looked up all the words--at least 25 in 204 pages--that were completely new to me, including einkorn, heiratic, schleppernish, and geomantic. Saltate is one I will remember, as Dillard used it three times, first to describe the action of sand: Mostly, the continents' streams and rivers make sand. Streams, especially, and fast rivers bear bouncing rocks that knock the earth, and break themselves into sharp chips of sand. The sand grains leap--saltate--downstream. Later she uses this word, which can also mean to dance, along with another new one, knap: Jerusalem....we have come saltating to worship here--to knap ourselves round.

I'm not sure I could come up with a good closing paragraph if I gave it another hour's effort. My apologies for the inferior review that took me so long; I justify it on a principle I'm not sure Annie would agree with: Any job worth doing is worth doing poorly, at first while you practice.

So I will close with another snippet from the book, a thought that I'm confident is connected to everything else I've put down here. It's mostly a quote from John Muir in 1869:

"What can poor mortals say about clouds?" While people describe them, they vanish. "Nevertheless, these fleeting sky mountains are as substantial and significant as the more lasting upheavals of granite beneath them. Both alike are built up and die, and in God's calendar, difference of duration is nothing." 

A Hard-Working and Loving Man

Thanks to Sandy at Junkfood Science for introducing me to Dr. Norman Ernest Borlaug at his passing from this world. He lived an inspiring and humanitarian life in the field of agriculture, with which I feel a fundamental connection because my father was a farmer, another one who worked hard out of love. These pictures are of the fruits of his labors, and of the road we lived on in California's Central Valley for most of my childhood.

All of us should feel that link, because we depend so critically on those who grow our food, but in these days when the percentage of the population devoted to agriculture is shrinking, I'm afraid the portion who never think of the farmers is on the rise.

While you are on that website, check out her many other articles on a broad range of topics about which she does the research and lets her readers in on the stories behind the often-misleading headlines.

Science and Health and Death to the Infirm

Today I just want to pass on to you a blog that I much appreciate:

Junkfood Science

Critical examinations of studies and news on food, weight, health and healthcare that mainstream media misses. Debunks popular myths, explains science and exposes fraud that affects your health. Plus some fun food for thought. For readers not afraid to question and think critically to get to the truth.

The recent blog post by owner Sandy Szwarc concerns aspects of the current healthcare reform bill: "This legislation is the culmination of efforts since 1938 to change what the public would once have viewed as morally repulsive into something accepted." And it's about our parents and grandparents and other older people who need our care and protection. I commend this particular post to your reading in their interest, but you might want to check out other topics Sandy has covered. I know that every issue is tackled in a way that clears the fog drifting around and through my own mind.

Savor your Bread and Pizza

Life is so complex. Even simple wheat is not to be taken for granted, as you can read in this news article that explains the time bomb threatening the world's supply, and the multi-faceted challenge of making sure that we can continue to bake our bread.

Sure, there are other grains, but none that contains near the amount of gluten as wheat. Gluten is that unique substance that makes pizza dough (at left) such that it can be thrown in the air and stretched to bake into not only a crusty, but a chewy crust.

And if you've ever tried to avoid gluten in your diet, you might agree with me that the best breads require it. If we have to switch from wheat to rice or rye or triticale, I think there would be a lot fewer homey scenes like this one.