Smart Girls at the Party

(by Zuska) Aug 31 2011

Via Gerty-Z - thanks so much for alerting me to this site!

Smart Girls At The Party!

As Gerty-Z notes,

the tagline [is] "change the world by being yourself". Now, that already sounds pretty awesome. BUT, if you poke around you will find that it is set up by three super-awesome women: Amy Poehler, Meredith Walker and Amy Miles. They interview women and girls who do cool stuff

Valentine is a gardener.  And there are many, many more cool videos and other things on the site.  Share this with every young girl you know!!!!!!!!!!!

 

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A Farmer's Laments

(by Zuska) Aug 31 2011

Tomato season, no matter how long it lasts, always seems painfully short to me.  Real tomatoes, with all their juicy flavorful delight, are an incomparable treat.  I've been making sauce, tomato juice, a fancy tomato-and-melon soup, a simple and amazingly good tomato-and-green bean dish, tomato sandwiches, BLTs, and of course, just plain old sliced tomatoes with a little drizzle of olive oil and balsamic, and maybe some mozzarella and fresh basil.  Tomorrow I'm going to concoct a roasted heirloom tomato Bloody Mary mix for a friend of mine.  I know the tomatoes will be gone soon and so I eat as many as I can now.

I eat through the seasons courtesy of the wonderful farmers who come each week to the markets I frequent.  I eat what they are growing and have to sell; the Z-table features whatever they've got.  Today one of my favorite farmers asked me if I was a vegetarian.  No, I said, it's just that when there's so much good stuff available, we tend to eat more of it and go lighter on the meat.  (Side effect: cheaper, and better for our health. Mr. Z asked me once, "Am I becoming a vegetarian?"  Ha ha!  Veggie by stealth!)

At the market

Today at the farm market I got into a conversation about farming's travails with one of my favorite farmers. They did not suffer too badly from Irene.  Many young fruit trees were blown over by the wind and had to be restaked; the corn was blown down, but could still be harvested.  (He feels for the farmers with large corn crops that are normally harvested mechanically.  It will be much more difficult, if not impossible, to run a mechanical harvester across the blown down rows.  For sure they will only be able to go in one direction, not turn and go back and forth across the field like they normally do.  They'll have to make one pass, then turn and go all the way back up the field and start over.) Peaches took a beating, and the cantaloupes may be done, but the watermelons are harvested and will keep for awhile.  The blackberries came through unscathed.

Irene was not the main aggravation on his mind, however.  Stinkbugs were, and a new devastating invasive pest, the Asian spotted wing fruit fly.  Stinkbugs poke into ripening fruit and leave only a small blemish - the fruit could still be saleable - but the punctured skin leaks scent and juices that attract hornets and yellow jackets. The fruit fly, however, is a real nightmare.  Normally fruit flies are attracted to rotting fruit but these flies come to ripening fruit on trees and vines and lay their eggs, which mature and decimate the fruit.

The farmer said his raspberry crop was infested.  He had to pick off every fruit and discard them, spray thoroughly, and continue to discard ripening fruit for a week.  He said this new pest, combined with the stinkbugs, is making him rethink the whole idea of organic farming.  His family has tried to do organic farming, partly because they believe in it for the good of the land and partly because customers want it, but he is sickened by seeing the literal fruits of his labor ruined just before time to go to market. There was anger in his voice as he spoke about this, and about people who want to buy fruits and vegetables shipped from China because they are cheap, or because it's something interesting.  Every time you bring a fruit or vegetable in this country from China, he said, you are taking the chance to bring in another pest, and you are hurting me, and you are hurting agriculture in this country.  I wouldn't eat anything from China, he said.

He also talked about GM corn.  Worms get in to his corn, of course, and they do light spraying to control the worms, even though some of the "organic only" crowd fusses about this and hesitates to purchase oh noes! the lightly sprayed wormless corn.  He looked into a type of GM corn that is resistant to worms, but ended up deciding against growing it for three reasons.  (1) Lots of his customers don't want to eat GM crops. (2) They make you sign all kinds of paperwork to get the seed and grow the corn, and you are not allowed to save seed.  You have to buy it again each year, and it's just too expensive.  (3) It simply doesn't taste as good;  "Who wants to eat cardboard?"  He's not opposed to GMOs on principle, but is unwilling to compromise on flavor, and dislikes losing the autonomy of being able to save his own seed.  On this latter point: he talked about the issue of some GM soybeans that are designed with self-terminating seeds - they cannot reproduce.  He thinks this is madness, and is worried that making seed sterile is a trait that might spread into the wild population.  All in all, he doesn't see GMOs as providing any value for him at this time.  One of the main points of his operation is to provide the markets with locally grown food with a taste far superior to that in the supermarkets, which helps justify the somewhat higher price that allows him to make a living and keep going.  GMOs that resist pests but have no flavor are of no real help.

Time and again I am staggered to realize how hard the farmers work, constantly, day in and day out, to bring their produce to the markets.  The food they grow is wonderful.  It takes more time (and the money, and the utensils)  to prepare and cook fresh produce than, say, ordering take-out, or heating up a tv dinner in the microwave.  Everything in our lives is stacked against us devoting that time to food prep.  We are pushed toward the baguette dispenser and away from the bakery, but we owe it to ourselves and to the farmers, and to the kind of life we would like the children of today to have when they grow up, to resist that push as much as possible.  In some parts of Philadelphia, there are young kids who have never seen fresh vegetables and cannot identify them by sight. A world in which young children do not know what a tomato looks like, let alone how good a true fresh tomato tastes, is one we should feel shame to inhabit.

 

 

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"The Bakery of Tomorrow" Makes Me Want To Cry

(by Zuska) Aug 30 2011

A thousand years ago, when I was an undergraduate, there was one bank in State College, PA that had an ATM.  "Rosy, the 24 hour teller!" it was called.  The bank had to give the ATM a name and warm, friendly female persona to introduce this strange new concept to its customers, especially since they were charging them extra for the card they needed to use it.  Craziness, I thought.  Who in the world is going to pay for the privilege of having access to their money, when you can just go in to the bank and have a real teller give you your cash?  That silly thing will never catch on. Rosy!  What a hoot!

Many years and a skazillion ATM fees later, the bank has the last laugh.

Now, in my Sunday paper, I read about this horrifying development in the land of the baguette.

Jean-Louis Hecht [a] baker from northeast France has rolled out a 24-hour automated baguette dispenser, promising warm bread for hungry night owls, shift workers, or anyone else who didn't have time to pick one up during the bakery's opening hours.

"This is the bakery of tomorrow," proclaimed Hecht, who foresees expansion in Paris, around Europe, and even to the United States. "If other bakers don't want to enter the niche, they're going to get decimated."

There are only two machines...for now.  And people may scoff that it's not as good as the real thing...for now.  But just as we got used to paying for our own money, and scanning and bagging our groceries ourselves, we'll get used to this.  Monsieur Hecht says so.

"It's like with banks: Before, everyone went to a teller; now, everybody uses ATMs," he said. "It will be the same with bread: Today, everybody goes to the bakery. Tomorrow they'll go to the baguette dispenser."

We are too busy to wait in line for human tellers inside a bank, or for someone else to check out and bag our groceries.  We'll do it ourselves, 24/7, and never mind that the waiting in line used to contribute to someone having a job.  Never mind that accepting a half-tolerable baguette, because you can get it at any time of the day or night, will put bakers and their employees out of work.  Monsieur Hecht says his bread dispenser will change the lifestyle of bakers, letting them sleep in a little later, and imagines this desiderata justifies the technology, but what the bread dispenser will really do is dispense with baking.  As he says

"If other bakers don't want to enter the niche, they're going to get decimated."

It's deeply ironic that France, of all places, is discovering fast-food bread, at a time when many U.S. cities are beginning to rediscover the virtues of old-fashioned bread-making and bakeries.  At one local farmer's market near my home, a baker sets up a stall each week and those who would purchase bread from him had best get there in the first two hours of the market.  The bread goes before the cookies, before the croissants and apple dumplings and nut rolls and cannoli.  Even in my local Genuardi's grocery store, the Wonder bread languishes on the shelves but the "artisan bread" from the store bakery is snapped up early in the day.

Technology that decimates, that destroys jobs and gives lower quality food as its gift, is truly technology gone bad. The bulk of U.S. food culture is ample proof of that.  How much food culture will France be willing to sacrifice in the name of efficiency and convenience?  Or will they realize what they already know, that eating cheap crap on the run is no bargain?

 

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What Function Does Denial Serve?

(by Zuska) Aug 23 2011

The incomparable Hermitage has compiled the responses to her She-Woman Baby-hating carnival extravaganza!  There are many fine questions, with many excellent answers from the esteemed panelists.  I have learned tons from reading the responses to the questions.

This question in particular caught my attention:

3. What can we do when other women deny there are problems being a woman in science?

What to do indeed. Micro Dr. O recommends staying out of the way of that bitchy female greyhair, and looking for allies elsewhere.  Dr. Sneetch sez women in her field are mean, meaner than the men have ever been! And crazy too.  So there's two votes for fighting misogyny fire with misogyny fire.

Professor in Training observes sagely

Remember that there are also those that deny that Doritos are good for you. There are idiots everywhere.

She recommends you go on your way and concentrate on being a role model for the next generation.  Good advice!

KJHaxton reminds us to be strategic: put away the soapbox, focus on solutions not complaints, and bide your time until you've amassed power and status...then set to work on that institutional transformation.

GeekMommyProf rephrases the question:

When I read this question, I asked myself when was the last time anyone in real life (except my husband and perhaps a close personal friend or relative) actually took my concern to heart when I complained that I suspected someone had slighted me professionally because I'm a woman. The answer is -- I cannot remember.

She discusses what leads people, men and women, to dismiss individual incidents of bias, and recommends surrounding one's self with "supportive people of both genders" and moving on.

NicoleandMaggie say blame the patriarchy!

I totally agree.

While the patriarchy is indeed to blame, and denial comes from all quarters,  it seems to sting more when it comes from other women in science. One expects them to express some solidarity, or at least to be somewhat cognizant of their own condition, or at the very very least not to be actively functioning as apologists for the oppressors. But if the U.S. Republican party is able to muster up enough gay members to create the Log Cabin Republicans, then it ought not to surprise any of us that some women in science will remain – even throughout their entire careers – stubbornly, actively, willfully ignorant of the real facts on the ground for all women in science.

The question for me has always been, in what way is that denial functioning for them? What purpose does it serve for them?

I can't speak for all of them, but when I was in denial about the situation for women in science, that denial helped me think of myself as really unique – one of just very few women able to do this d00dly science stuff! And since I was sooooo unique, why, you could hardly call me a woman at all – I was really more of what you’d call an AlmostD00d. Which was far preferable to being a woman. To maintain my unique and therefore AlmostD00d status, it was important that there not be too many other women doing what I was doing. This all made it nearly impossible for me to develop friendships with other women in my field, or even to see senior women scientists as competent and worthy role models.  The denial also helped me keep on loving and admiring ALL the science d00ds around me, since I identified so strongly with them.  (Note that a healthy relationship with other men as human beings does not involve worshiping them as d00ds, but does involve getting to know them as individuals and liking them or not as individuals.) I had my head ass-deep in the patriarchy, and was a real asshole to other women as a consequence.  Men could rain shit on me 24/7 and I would still sing their praises.  (See: The Parable of the Wise and the Foolish Engineers.)  As Muriel Barbery writes in the The Elegance of the Hedgehog, "if there is one thing that poor people despise, it's other poor people".

So, to sum up: denying there are problems for women in science facilitates d00d-worship and belief in the self as an AlmostD00d, both of which stem from disparagement of women and loathing of the self for being a woman.

What can you do when other women deny there are problems being a woman in science? Feel sorry for them. Teach the young.

And now I insert a small plea: let us put to rest the myth of vampiric senior female scientists feeding on the fresh blood of a junior woman's hopes and dreams. Let us close the book on the tall tale of  the snarling wowolf who wounds us as no mere man ever would or could.  You have been ill-treated by senior scientists; hurtful remarks have been flung in your direction by colleagues.  When these things are done by women, and we ascribe the doing of them to their gender,  we are engaging in misogyny.  Yes, women deny that sexism exists; yes, women are subject to sexist bias in making hiring, evaluation, and promotion decisions.  If a woman who is a scientist treats you poorly, it is either because she is having a bad day, is an asshole, or because she is in the thrall of the patriarchy that has taught her to despise women.  It is not, however, because she is a woman.

Do not expect women to be your allies because they are women; do not depend on the love and support of all women to maintain your ego and belief in yourself; do not ascribe either the giving or withholding of sisterly support to the fact of womanhood rather than worldviews and belief systems. Sisterhood is powerful, but so, alas, is the patriarchy.

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Puree, Then Strain

(by Zuska) Aug 17 2011

I am a fan of farmer's markets, as most Zuskateers know, and I am grateful that I am able to enjoy their bounty.  As I have turned our diet to focus more and more on what I can bring home from the farm market, I've tried to get a bit more creative with the veggies and fruits.  This requires a few things beyond the resources to purchase said veggies and fruits. First, you need time - time to study out different recipes and decide which ones you want to attempt and how to go about them, time to undertake the various recipes, and possibly learn some new cooking skills along the way.

Second, you will need a good source of recipes.  If you have access to the internet (which, if you are reading this, I assume you do) you can always Google for a new idea, but I like having a book in front of me in the kitchen to page through for ideas. And my favorite veggie cookbook is Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.  It has tons of great recipes, but also it teaches you about veggies and fruits, how to choose and store them, and it teaches you techniques for preparing them, as well as how to make various sauces and dressings that will be good accompaniments.  It is not cheap, so if you can get it used, do so.  The only thing I do not like about this book is that sometimes I will get excited about a recipe on page x, only to discover that it needs a sauce on page y, which is based on some other sauce on page z, and then I give up, because it's too complicated.  Or, I just fudge it.  So far I have managed to live without making my own garlic aoli from scratch.

But every once in awhile I do get the notion to make some complicated thing just for the hell of it.  Well, not just for the hell of it.  Sometimes I find spending three hours in the kitchen making some complicated concoction very therapeutic - it helps me forget all the elder care stuff, the pile of paperwork on the desk upstairs that needs my attention, the phone calls I need to make on behalf of my loved ones (or to yell at my insurance company).  Gardening is maybe the only activity more mentally helpful than pureeing the hell out of a bowl of something.

So what have I been making?  Fruit has been in abundance, so I've been messing with that.  First up, Cantaloupe Soup.  Take your melon, chop up the flesh.  You'll get about 6 cups, but who's counting.  Take 1.5 cups of orange juice, and if you're a purist, you could fresh squeeze your own, but I grabbed the carton from the fridge.  1/4 cup lemon juice, and here I did go the fresh squeezed route because, oh, fresh lemon juice, so nice!  2 T. honey - something nice and fruity, or whateverthehell is on your shelf.  Just a little cinnamon, don't go overboard.  The recipe said 1/4 tsp but they are insane, it was way too much.  At little cinnamon goes a long way. It also called for 1/4 tsp salt and here I agreed with them - it does need that bit of salt.  Mix all this mess in a big bowl and get out your immersion blender if you have one, which I hope you are lucky enough to have one, because nothing gets the stress out like sticking an immersion blender into a mess like this, pressing the button and going whirrrrrrrr!  The final mess should be sweet and a little tart.  Chill, and when you serve, if you are an ultra fancy soul you can garnish with a little chopped mint but I didn't have any so we ate ours plain and it was just fab.

Next, the lemonades. We start with Blueberry Lemonade. Two cups H2O, 3/4 c. sugar, bring to boil.  Add peel of one lemon in strips, 2 c. blueberries: boil 5 min.  Strain through a fine sieve. Be careful, hot blueberry stuff will splash everywhere and stain. Go slow!  Add juice of 4 lemons.  FOUR!  Do not skimp.  Sometimes I strain a second time to make it ultra smooth, into whatever pitcher I am going to keep it in. Refrigerate.  Serve diluted 1:1 with club soda or H2O.  Imbibers may want to mix with a favorite spirit.  You can make this with frozen blueberries too.

Blueberry Lemonade


Watermelon Lemonade is just as good.  Puree about half of a medium-sized watermelon.  Not one of those really huge ones, just a decent sized one.  Here it is nice to use a blender if you have one.  It does the job and the seeds don't really get chopped up, so if you strain the puree into a bowl, they stay behind along with the flavorless pulp.  Add in the juice of 1 lemon, and 3 T of simple syrup (more or less, to your taste).  (Simple syrup is 1:1 water:sugar, which you will have to heat on the stove to get the sugar to dissolve, then cool before adding to your melonade.  You may have extra, you can keep it in the fridge for awhile, or put some in your hummingbird feeder.)  Mix it all up, cool, serve.  Some say dilute with water but I never do, I drink it straight. Delish, and very refreshing on a hot day.

Neither of those recipes takes terribly long to make - the worst part is cutting up the melon, and/or juicing the lemons, but if you have a good tool it's not too bad.  Don't get anything fancy, get an old-fashioned one that sits over a bowl with the cone you stick the cut lemon half over and push down on.  You know what I mean.  It catches the seeds and lets the juice run through.  Pour the juice through the strainer if you don't like the lemonade pulp, or not.

And now, my three-hour crazy recipe.  It is from The Heirloom Tomato Cookbook.  If you follow that link and look at the middle picture on the bottom row, you will see what I was trying to make.  This is how it came out.

Cold Golden Tomato Soup With Melon And Basil Essence

So, mine isn't as beautifully photographed and I left off the fried basil leaves because at the end of the recipe I was all "you want me to do what now?  In a half inch of olive oil? For six basil leaves?  I don't effing think so."   But I have to tell you, it tasted damn good.

Cold Golden Tomato Soup With Melon and Basil Essence

I don't know what the hell a Sharlyn Melon is so I just used the cantaloupe I had lying around.  That's why it's just "with Melon".

First, the ginger syrup.  1/4 c. water, 1/4 c. H2O, 1-inch piece fresh ginger peeled and grated.  Shit.  Drive to grocery store and buy ginger.  Return home, pour self glass of blueberry lemonade, grate ginger.  Mix H2O, water, ginger, bring to boil, boil about a  minute, sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and pour it into a little bowl so it will cool quicker.  (One pot, one bowl, measuring cup, chopping board and knife dirtied.)

Cut up three big ass "golden" tomatoes (that's yellowy-orange to you and me).  The tomatoes were each about the size of a softball.  Core them, cut out bad spots - do this over a bowl so you don't lose any juices.  Get out your immersion blender and puree that mess!  Yippee!  Then strain through fine sieve.  (Bowl, knife, sieve dirtied.  You will have to throw out pulp and rinse the sieve several times to get all that tomato-y goodness strained.)  Now strain the ginger syrup into the tomato yum.  Stir and refrigerate.

Cut open melon.  Scoop out seeds.  If you have a nice ripe melon, juice will puddle in the cavity.  You need a bowl to put this juice into.  You don't have a melon baller, so use a spoon to scoop out sort-of roundish-y cone-balls of melon, somewhere between twelve and twenty, depending upon how many people you are willing to share this with.  Do this over the bowl, catching the juices.  Cut up the rest of the melon and put it in a container to eat later.  Then drain whatever juices have accumulated, into your bowl with your cone-balls. (Cutting board, knife, spoon, bowl dirtied.)

Oh shit, you did not make basil essence yet.  Pack a half cup full of basil leaves.  Thank the Lord you have chives in the freezer because you do not want to wash and chop 1/4 cup's worth.  Mix these two herbs in your blender, or your immersion blender mixing cup, along with 1/4 c. olive oil and, crap, 1 T lemon juice, okay, there's half a lemon in the fridge, that should yield enough.  Puree the shit out of this.  Takes awhile.  Now what?  Now...strain through a fine mesh sieve?  Are you fucking kidding me? Okay, with great patience, you collect enough frigging basil essence to use in two bowls of this stuff, and since there are only two of you, good enough. Hey, the rest of that stuff would be awfully good on pasta to go with this soup, since I didn't plan anything else for dinner... (Measuring cups, immersion blender, immersion blender cup, lemon juicer, sieve, cup dirtied.)

Okay, pour cantaloupe juice into bottom of two bowls.  Arrange cone-balls attractively in bowl.  Ladle tomato-ginger goodness  over top.  Drizzle effing basil essence around. Those fried basil leaves can suck my cantaloupe cone-balls.  Serve.  Oh. My. God.  It is really, really, really good.

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Autonomy is a Luxury Part 2

(by Zuska) Aug 09 2011

Age and disability can rob us of our autonomy, as I talked about in my last post.  But you can also lose a piece of your autonomy when you enter into the relationship of being a primary caregiver for an elderly person.  The days when you organized your schedule around your own needs and interests are gone.  Now your schedule fills up with their doctor appointments, the places they need or want to visit, and the things you need to do for them: write a report of the doctor visit for other members of the immediate family; make sure they understand the doctor's instructions; print out a new pill schedule; pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy; balance the checkbook; write out the bills; check the investment accounts online; sort out the mix-up with billing from the doctor's office and insurance company; fight for reimbursement for an out-of-pocket cost; pick up a birthday card for them to send to a relative; transfer the old black and white photos from a no-longer-used wallet to picture frames they can look at; transfer the old slide collection to a digital picture frame, and show them how to use it; take them to lunch, take them to dinner, take them to church, take them to see other relatives; call the after-hours emergency number of the PCP for a worrisome new symptom; arrange for delivery of the new medication; make sure complete orders are faxed to the staff at the assisted living home; follow up with the staff to make sure the orders are carried out.

You will schedule your own doctor appointments and leisure pursuits around these responsibilities; you will schedule and reschedule and reschedule again your dentist appointment because there's always some new crisis that pops up just at the time you are supposed to get your teeth cleaned, and getting your teeth cleaned is never as important as congestive heart failure or dehydration or even the fact that if you just extended your visit four extra days, you could take her to that thing she's so interested in.

Through all this, you will put thousands of miles on your car, and you will spend thousands of dollars.  (Miles on car: 1392. Days away from spouse: 13. Gas, meals, bananas, lottery tickets: $917.44.  Hearing mom say "This is so nice! It feels like you're here!": Priceless.) You may end up quitting or losing your job, because you can't keep up or have missed too many days at work for elder care. Or your own disability may flare up or worsen. You may find that your relatives are grateful for all that you do, that they are unable or unwilling to do, or you may find that they resent and loathe you for all that you do that they are unable or unwilling to do.

I don't think, thought, that I can describe the cost of elder care much better than this video The Cost of Caregiving  from OneAway.org, which I found via a posting on Facebook from my good friend Alayna - thanks Alayna! It is a beautiful video, and as real as it gets.

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Autonomy Is A Luxury

(by Zuska) Aug 05 2011

A good day:  I arise at a time I chose.  Maybe I lie in bed for awhile listening to NPR, or maybe I get right up.  It was a cool night, so the window is open, and a fresh breeze blows through the room.  I go to the bathroom, the usual morning ablutions with toothbrush etc., and then I take a nice shower, wash my hair.  The soap is scented cucumber-melon - I got it at the farmer's market last week.  Out of the shower, I towel myself off and dry my hair.  Then I run down the stairs and out the front porch to scoop up the morning paper.  Back inside, make a pot of coffee - it smells so nice brewing.  What to have for breakfast today - do I want to spend the time it takes to make a fried egg or a small frittata, or just have some yogurt with nuts and berries?  Or maybe some oatmeal? I pour the coffee in my favorite mug, carry it with the paper and my breakfast to the dining room table.  The morning sun comes through the bay window, and the rhododendron bush moves a little in the breeze.  I like this table, an old oak beauty I found in an antique store and bought for far less than it was worth.  It reminds me of my mother's table, though no table can ever hold a candle to that one. I peruse the paper and have a second cup of coffee.  One of the cats is at my side, purring, begging for a spot on my lap, and I make room.  I start to think about what I might like to cook for dinner in the evening.

I'm aware that the autonomy I enjoy is a luxury that results from my living in the U.S., from not being poor, and from having had no trouble getting a "good" mortgage to purchase a nice house in a "good" neighborhood (e.g., intersection of race and class privilege).  But the type of luxurious autonomy I am thinking of today stems from another source, and that is the privilege of age and (relative) good health.

I try not to take mornings like this for granted, but of course I can't help it.  It's difficult to be constantly aware of how precious it is, to be able to walk into your own kitchen and pour yourself a cup of your favorite kind of coffee, in your favorite mug, whenever you want. Usually I try not to think about the time that may come, if I live long enough, when the cup of coffee will be poured for me, a weak brew in a plastic mug, and set down next to the breakfast I neither chose nor prepared, at a table without cats but with other people.  The breakfast will not have been preceded by a shower, but by a sponge bath from a pan of water in my room, brought to me after I was awakened by someone at the usual early hour.  (I will be efficiently showered in the evening while seated in a chair, twice a week.) I will walk slowly from that room to the communal dining room, with the aid of a walker, or perhaps be wheeled there in a chair if it is not a good day. The newspaper will have to wait for the mail delivery later on, and for someone to bring it to me, unless they forget and give it to another person by mistake. The window will not be open, because climate control is important.  If it is a nice day, and if someone has time, maybe they will take me outside to feel the breeze for an hour or so.

I will no longer be on my schedule, but on theirs.  I will be dependent upon their help, and I will have to ask for or be given nearly all the things I used to do for myself.  And all this will be only if I am fortunate enough to have the resources to pay for such assistance.

It is possible I will not live into old age.  Or, I will live into a robust old age and not require the services of assisted living or nursing homes.  But I cannot escape feeling much like Chuck Ross, whose blog Life With Father I just discovered via The New Old Age blog, when he says:

Maybe it’s a middle-age crisis, but, at almost 52, the 38-year age difference between Dad and me just doesn’t seem all that substantial anymore. And I find the possibility that he could just be me, aged Hollywood-style, simply terrifying. It makes me want to run, get away to that place of simple, oblivious living that is such a luxury to those who aren’t looking mortality in the face every day.

If I had kids, I might be wondering - will they come to see me?  Will they call?  Will they write?  How often?  If I must ask them to do something for me, if I need something - will they attend to my needs and wishes?  Or will they put me off, because their own lives are so busy, so much more interesting, so much less frightening?  What if I can't express myself to them as well as I used to - will they know how to listen to me?  Will they understand how my loss of autonomy makes me need them so much, but because I am Mommy, I am Daddy, it's so hard to ask, I don't want to be a burden?  Will my asking make me weak in their eyes, and will my need make them angry, resentful? Will they know how to help me, and help me hold on to as much of my autonomy as I can?

But I don't have kids.  So I  just wonder: what happens if my mother is just me, aged Hollywood-style? Because I'm pretty sure there won't be enough money.

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A Week's Worth...

(by Zuska) Aug 04 2011

...of migraines.  That's what I've had.  I think they are starting to wind down, more or less.  Sleep cycle getting back to something like normal.  Fingers crossed for getting in some blogging tomorrow.  Soooooo much I want to blather on about right now...okay, off to sleep, and see you soon.

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Hunger Relief vs. Poverty Relief: I Vote For More of Both

(by Zuska) Jul 26 2011

Last Saturday I came home from the farmer's market, made mega-veggie eggs for me and Mr. Z, and blogged about it.  Zuskateer Kea commented

All very well if you can afford it.

And she's right.  I am extremely fortunate both to be able to afford nutritious fresh produce, and to have good sources of it readily available to me. In parts of Philadelphia with high poverty rates, there are no grocery stores at all, and corner bodega shops may carry little or no fresh produce.  A recent series of articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer about efforts to support community gardens and teach young children about gardening and good eating habits revealed that many young kids in the city don't even know what fresh fruits and vegetables look like, and can't identify them by name when they are shown them.  This is an abominable situation.  Our young children, and the parents struggling to raise them, deserve better. Continue Reading »

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It's Mega-Veggie Egg Time Again!

(by Zuska) Jul 23 2011

This morning at the farmer's market, one of my favorite farmers had lovely long and thin purple Japanese eggplant available for the first time this week.  I scooped up several of them with pleasure, and brought them home to feature in a lunch of Mega-Veggie Eggs for me and Mr. Z.  Yay!  Of course, Mega-Veggie Eggs means the end of summer is within sight, hard as that is to believe on this hottest day of the year.  I thanked every farmer and vendor I purchased something from, for coming to the market in the heat.

I was glad I had included instructions for Mega-Veggie Eggs in that blog post last year, because I had sort of forgotten just what all I'd thrown in them and how I made them.  Not that it is a precise recipe - MVE is one of those things that's highly adaptable to what you have on hand.  Though I have to say, the little eggplants and a particular type of heirloom Roma tomato (from the same farmer) are a delicious combo.  You can see the tomatoes in the second photo in this post.

Looking up the description of MVE led me to read what I had written of sharing Duda's corn-on-the-cob with Z-mom last summer.  This most recent time I was visiting her, we got to have a meal at her house that featured Duda's corn, and she was sooooo happy!  (N.B.: this is not the large company Duda's Fresh Farm Foods, but the small farm listed at the end of this article.) There's no way of knowing if she and I will get to do this again this summer, so I'm glad we got to do it at least once.  As always, I wish I could pack up some of the wonderful things I brought home from the market and take them right over for her to enjoy.

I bought a flat of blueberries at one farm stand, and people kept asking me "what are you going to do with all those blueberries?" as if I must be crazy for buying so many.  But they seem like barely enough to me.  This may be the last week for blueberries.  Some we will eat now: in yogurt; by the handful; with sliced peaches.  Some we will give to Mr. Z's parents for their breakfast cereal.  Some we will freeze for smoothies and blueberry pancakes in the fall and winter.  I look at the glut of blueberries and I feel rich, and I also feel that more would be good, too.  Some peaches, a cantaloupe, and a few tomatoes will also go to the in-laws, and maybe a bean salad if I get off this computer and go down to the kitchen.

Good food to eat, loved ones to share it with, an exaltation of blueberries - these are riches indeed.

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Why You Should Write To Your Mother

(by Zuska) Jul 21 2011

A thousand years ago, when I went off to college, my mother wrote me letters, because there was no such thing as text messaging.  Why, there wasn't even any email, if you can believe it!!! She wrote real, actual letters, sometimes as many as three in a week.  "You've got mail" meant there was a paper envelope lying in a physical mailbox.  I got mail, and I got packages from home, and I was the envy of everyone on my dorm floor.

Z-Mom wrote to me, and I wrote to her.  As I moved on to graduate school, and then all over the place for various and sundry postdocs and other jobs, I continued writing letters to her.  During these years, "long distance" phone bills became an irrelevance as competition introduced one rate for unlimited calling; tethered phones evolved into cordless things; cell phones appeared and then became ubiquitous and then turned into smart phones and now threaten to make what we came to call the "land line" obsolete.  Z-Mom and I always talked on the phone a lot, more after it got cheaper to do so, but even with phone calls, we never stopped writing to each other. PC's, of course, also appeared on the scene during this time - my senior thesis was typed on an electronic typewriter, my dissertation on a Macintosh Plus - and they too got cheaper, faster, and ubiquitous. And email came along with them.

At some point, even Z-mom got a computer at home, and an email address (incorporating the name of her favorite candy bar).  She was happy to receive pictures of her great-grandchildren, and jokes forwarded from some friends in town, but she never really took to sending emails.  So Z-mom and I kept writing to each other.  I had gotten in the habit of sending her a postcard from every place I went, even if I was only there for two days for some less than glamorous business trip.  Greetings from Ames, Iowa!...  I've been in Austin since yesterday...  Greetings from Fargo, North Dakota!...

Those are the actual (totally fascinating, I know) opening lines from postcards I sent to Z-mom in October of 1999, June of 2001, and November of 2001, respectively. I know this because, as it turns out, Z-mom has apparently saved just about every card and letter I've ever sent to her.  I can look back through them and trace my travels, observe the ups and downs of my life and work as reported to her, relive events and even whole vacations I'd sort of forgotten. I went to Cape Hatteras in 2002?  Oh yes...that's when those undated photos in the album are from!

The most hilarious postcard I've found so far, however, is not one I wrote.  It's one my ex sent to Z-mom in November of 1991 while we were living in Europe, during the month I was away from him working at my German boss's collaborator's lab in Israel.  It reads in part

[Zuska] will be gone for another 12 days or so.  At least we talk often by electronic mail, which takes only an hour or less to get there, so we can even discuss things back and forth in the same day.  I wish everyone had electronic mail, it is really quick and easy.

Electronic mail!  The brand spanking new form of communication!  Takes an hour or less to arrive!  In the beginning of that same year, my German boss-to-be had wanted to communicate with me via this fancy electronic mail but alas! we did not have such a thing in my lab at Duke yet.  So we had to arrange the details of my postdoc, arrival in Germany, and the apartment he was taking for me via the other available high tech form of communication...fax.

I love what Z-mom's cache of letters and postcards gives back to me.  When I was much younger, I religiously kept a daily diary from about age 7 or so to age 17.  Then I fell out of the habit.  Writing to Z-mom has been something of a substitute, I now see.  There's a whole series of postcards I sent her from travels in Europe, which are wonderful to have, since the ex got most of the photos.

Above all I am grateful that she wrote to me so much when I was an undergraduate, for by doing so she taught me the habit of writing letters, and the tangible joy a piece of mail can impart when you are lonely and away from your loved ones.  Sometimes now we talk on the phone two or three times in a day, but I still write to  her.  All her life she has always enjoyed getting and sorting the day's mail.  You might think that now she is in assisted living and no longer has to worry about dealing with bills and banking that the urgency of the daily mail would drop away, but you would be wrong.  She is still just as eager for each day's mail delivery, and it seems more important than ever that it should contain something other than Reader's Digest asking her to renew now.  Every holiday, no matter how small, was an excuse for her to send me a card when I was an undergraduate, and so now I return the favor.  I haunt the Hallmark display in the grocery store to see what crazy special holiday cards are up next, and I buy one, and I send it off.  I look for "just because" cards that might give her a laugh, because laughter is good for you.  I buy "series" notecards - spring, summer, fall, winter; numbers 1 through 4 of a whimsical bug and flower illustration - and send them off in series, so she can anticipate the next one.

I write to her so she will have mail, but I also write to her for myself.  Not because someday I'll get to read my cards and letters again, and remember oh yeah, 2011 was the summer I put in the climbing rosebush, but because writing to her is a way I stay connected to her, a way of emulating her, a way of saying "this is a part of you that is also a part of me."

Postcard from Paris

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What Constitutes Blatant Sexism of the Most Egregious Sort?

(by Zuska) Jul 20 2011

I have not written a word in months, and barely read any blogs at all.  Even so the sorry outlines of ElevatorGate seeped into my consciousness.  If you don't know what I'm referring to, consider yourself lucky; if you need to find out, read Jennifer Ouellette's recent excellent post which talks about it in a broader context. I love everything about Jennifer's post and especially love her call to action at the end...and yet...I'm left brooding on part of it.  This part:

She was careful to say that she has not encountered blatant sexism of the most egregious sort, although she has endured unwelcome awkward flirting: a wink and a hand on the knee, lame attempts at playing “footsie” with her under the table during meetings, and of course, tacky double entendres. Even then, she cut the guys a lot of slack; it’s just social awkwardness, she rationalized, not a malicious attempt to make her feel uncomfortable — and yet, she does feel uncomfortable.

Ouellette is writing about a young woman who reports that she feels "constantly objectified" while working at CERN. Ouellette goes on to provide a very good discussion of the concept of a "chilly climate" and how it negatively affects women in science.  Yet I would argue that feeling "constantly objectified", having unwanted hands touching your body, goes something beyond a chilly climate and moves us into the territory of hostile work/learning environment.

What does constitute blatant sexism of the most egregious sort, if it does not include feeling constantly objectified, having men touch you when you don't want them to, and being treated like a sex object in professional settings?

Do we have to get raped to call it blatant sexism of the most egregious sort, and anything short of that is just a chilly climate?

Can we agree that rape is something beyond sexism - it is sexual assault, a crime - and that blatant sexism might include a whole host of things that fall short of rape but that are worse than a chilly climate?

Being subjected to unwanted touching means that your colleagues look at you primarily as a sexual object and moreover, a sexual object who is free game for their advances.  They need not ask beforehand, they need not establish consent - just reach out and touch someone!  If you like what you see, grab it and go.  After all, if you are rebuked, it can be written off as due to your social awkwardness.  Surely at no time in your twenty, thirty, forty years or more on this planet did you have the opportunity to learn any of the norms of human mating behavior, let alone how one conducts one's self in a professional setting.  You certainly have had NO opportunity to learn to think of women as human beings, that's for sure!!!

Ouellette includes in her post a link to this comic by Gabby Schulz, which is linked through the phrase "mirrored every internet comment thread".  Gabby's comic is titled "How every single discussion about sexism and woman-type stuff on the internet (and in real life) has ever happened and ever will happen, always, forever, until the earth finally falls into the sun. (Or until the patriarchy is dismantled.)"  But her whole blog post is titled "In which we betray our gender".  It may be worth thinking about why she gave it that title.

Here's the thing.  No matter what you say, no matter how nicely you say it, the d00ds are going to go batshit insane whenever you dare to suggest that sexism is afoot, and/or that one of their d00dly brethren has behaved poorly.  People who have some power and some relatively comfortable positions need to stop making excuses for the d00ds.  No, they aren't just socially awkward - they are fucking sexist assholes steeped in privilege who think they own any woman's body they see.  Ouellette gets this when she quotes the Social Network line that took my breath away when I saw the movie: “You’re going to go through life thinking girls don’t like you cuz you’re a nerd, when really it’s because you’re an asshole.”

But then...it makes me gnash my teeth in despair that in the middle of her excellent post, Ouellette has to stop and write this:

Let me be clear: I like men, and enjoy their company.

Because OMG, their wittle feewings might be hurt if they weren't absolutely sure and reassured all the time that every woman on the planet likes them!  All of them!  All men!  Even the assholes!  We can't just talk about endemic sexism and horrible incidents of harassment, no, we have to also say, "but hey, you guys, you know, it's cool, because I like guys, and I like to fuck them and all, so don't worry, whatevs." In which we betray our gender. Because if you don't betray your gender that way, you are a man-hating feminazi.  And no woman wants to be that, nosiree!  Why, the very woman who is the subject of all that constant objectification at CERN, who is discussed at the start of Ouellette's post, declares

I did not expect that CERN would start me on the road to being a cynical feminist, a type of person I previously dismissed, but which I now understand.

Oh dear.  So, becoming aware of the fact that you are being constantly objectified and being subjected to unwanted touching, and not taken seriously as a professional, and making the mildest of complaints about this situation, is equivalent to being a "cynical feminist"?  It's not, like, standing up for yourself?  Demanding decent treatment?  Just, you know, being a regular feminist?  Which is a good thing?

Well, so let me be clear: I like men who deserve to be liked.  Men who are worthy of my respect.  Men who treat women with respect, as autonomous human beings.  Men who are not groping gaping assholes.  Men who can behave like professionals in the workplace and educational settings.  Men who don't assume that because someone has tits and a pussy, she must be there to provide visual and other pleasures, not for any other reason.  Men who understand that it is necessary to establish consent before engaging in any kind of sexual behavior.  Men who understand women in the workplace are there to work.  Men who will call out other men on bad behavior.  Men who don't need their little egos stroked every five seconds.  Men who aren't so terrified by women who challenge sexist behaviors that they feel a compulsion to vilify them.  Men who don't abuse little kids, rape women, coerce their sexual partners, or bully, beat, or emotionally abuse women.  Men who resist the urge to mansplain.

I don't care who you are - the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a tenured professor, some fancy-ass physicist at CERN, the Pope, or my own brother - if you can't meet these MINIMAL expectations of decent human behavior, why the hell are you walking around calling yourself a man in the first place?  What you really are, is a man who hates women.

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Serving Notice...

(by Zuska) Jul 20 2011

...that I am about to set hands to keyboard and take up the blogging habit once again.  Zuskateers beware!

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Still Here...Sort Of.

(by Zuska) May 24 2011

Rumors of this blog's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

I made what I thought was an April Fool's joke funee, and found out some of my readers took it seriously, which wouldn't have been so bad, except I promptly entered one of those phases where blogging became next to impossible, so it really did look like I'd packed up and gone away.  That'll learn me, as my dad used to say, not to joke about serious stuff like blog network hopping.

Anyway, I am still, in theory, blogging at Scientopia.  It's just been the usual life madness.  A picture being worth a thousand words, here's what I've been doing lately.

This morning, the phone rang a little after 9 a.m.  It was the person from my neurologist's office who they've hired to work full time on dealing with insurance companies solely on the issue of getting approval for botox treatment for migraine.  She was calling to tell me that she has left numerous messages for my insurance company's rep and has not gotten a reply, and now it's my turn to try and roust them.  The insurance company has denied my request for coverage, claiming there is insufficient evidence to show that I've failed three alternative treatment options.  The neurologist's office says they've sent them the information.  The insurance company rep says they would be happy to talk with the doctor's office, and the doctor's office rep says they would be happy to talk with the insurance company.  This game has been going on since I got the rejection letter sent out on April 16.  I have until June 16 to get my appeal completed.  I am not optimistic.  I feel like I am swimming in molasses.  I will never reach the shore, and will drown in this sticky morass of everyone saying they are happy to help me if only the other person would do x, and the other person saying they have done x, and would be happy to help me but the other person needs to do y, which is what the first person said they can't do until the second person does x, which their office shows no record of it ever having been done, but if I could call them and ask them to fax x over, and the second person says we faxed mini-x and it's their own fault if it isn't sufficient because they wouldn't let us send more than mini-x and the first person says the second person should know that we need x and the second person says I can't get the first person on the phone and the first person says just ask the second person to call us and...and my head hurts.  It hurts a lot.

Five minutes after I got off the phone with the neurologist's office, my phone rang again.  It was someone from the endocrinologist's office.  They filed a claim with my insurance company for my visit a month ago.  The insurance company has refused to pay until they receive an explanation of benefits form from my Medicare insurance.  I don't have Medicare insurance.  The kind woman on the phone tells me "they are doing this to a lot of people.  You'll have to call and tell them you don't have Medicare, and ask them if they can reprocess the claim or if we have to refile, and then call me back and let me know."

I haven't even had a cup of coffee yet, and I have at least three health insurance phone calls to make.  Plus a form I need to fill out for my in-laws.  Plus the usual paperwork for Z-mom.  I look at the cat curled up on the bed and want to crawl back under the covers and sleep till noon.

A few weeks ago I called the toll-free number Mr. Z's company provides for its employees, for a health advocate service.  The person I first spoke to was very enthusiastic and sure they could sort out the mess and help me get coverage for my botox treatments.  She then transferred me to a nurse who listened for a few minutes and then told me that I should not be calling the health advocates, I needed to file an appeal on my own, and ask my doctor to write a letter for me, and if my appeal failed, then I should come back to the health advocates and maybe they could help me then.  A week later the nice person I first spoke with followed up by email to ask why I had not filled out the paperwork she sent me and I told her about my conversation with the nurse.  Oh no, she said, we can surely help you out!  Who am I supposed to believe, the phone screener, or the nurse who essentially told me to get lost?  What does this health advocate service actually do?

What good does it do for my neurologist to employ someone full time to work with the insurance companies on trying to get approval for botox coverage, if that person doesn't even know anything about the patients on whose behalf she is working?  When I first talked to this person, she didn't know that I'd had a migrainous stroke, and she seemed unaware that my previous insurance company had paid for my botox treatments.  When I tried to explain what I did to get approval from my previous insurance company and offered to help in any way with putting together my file for this insurance company, she was uninterested.  I feel like, I am just a patient, what could I possibly know.

What good does it do for the FDA to approve botox treatment for chronic migraine, if all the insurance companies then just drag their feet and stonewall as much as they possibly can to prevent anyone from actually getting coverage?  It's not like they didn't know this was coming.  I'm sure they all knew well before the FDA decision that it was likely to be approved, and the approval was issued in October last year.  And as of the first of this year, the insurance companies were all still claiming that they hadn't figured out how they were going to cover botox, what kind of coverage they were going to offer.  Seriously?  That's how you run your business?  You wait till the last minute and make it up on the fly?  Pardon me if I don't believe that.  That $1200 I had to pay out of pocket in February is a crime.

And I just can't afford it anymore.  So until the paperwork nightmare gets sorted out, no botox for me.  I just have to deal with the increasing pain and fatigue.  And I just have to hope that I can manage to get it sorted out by June 16.

Or maybe my non-existent Medicare will pay for it.

I guess I'd better stop ranting and get going on those phone calls.  The best health insurance in the WORLD! doesn't work itself out on its own.

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Song I Am Feeling Today

(by Zuska) Apr 10 2011

Apparently you can't embed it.  But follow the link and find the song I am feeling here.

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