The Planet Will Be Just Fine Without Us

There was a recent article in the NY Times that the website Epicurious had stopped publishing beef recipes. They had done so for some time but no one apparently noticed until they announced they had done so. Then loads of folks got up in arms about it, which mystifies me. I mean, they haven't removed their old beef recipes - and how many ways does one need to have to cook something which is generally agreed not to be great for the planet or for human health if consumed too much. Personally, I applaud Epicurious for having done the obvious that so many others haven't.

I am aware that we are in a pickle if we don't drop our carbon emissions drastically in the coming years. There is an increasing amount of information about this in the media, but not a lot seems to be changing. I mean, everyone knows - or should - that flying is a really bad idea, but newspapers still have travel columns extolling a holiday in some faraway place. My WI magazine still advertises luxury cruises (also a climate nightmare). Recipes for beef continue as normal as well as all the cheap fashion shops with online outlets.

The UK government will ban sale of petrol and diesel cars in the near future. We've been discussing the purchase of a hybrid, should they still be available, when this car gives up the ghost. 

One could be forgiven for thinking, "Well, it's an 'emergency', but not really an "EMERGENCY." We do get a lot of mixed messaging. Like the fact that the UK government removed the tax breaks that had been attached to environmentally friendly purchases such as solar panels. That they set up a green housing scheme but then abandoned it shortly after. There has been a planning application approved for a new coal mine in Cumbria. The inconsistency is fairly confusing.

I do think we should stop saying 'Save the Planet', because the planet doesn't really need saving. Sure, we've wrecked a good bit of it and killed off an awful lot of plants and animals, if not entire ecosystems. However the planet was around long before homo sapiens developed and will likely be around - sun failure or major cosmic collision aside - for a terribly long time after we've starved or nuked ourselves out of existence. Other species will arise out of what's left and plants will overtake the empty cities and the planet will just carry on. I think Sixth Extinction is a better term, but perhaps we should make it even plainer: Extinction of the Human Race. 

I know that we humans are more attuned to thinking short term - looking forward to our next vacation, what's on my calender this week, what's for dinner tonight. Mind, the really rich guys - Bezos, Musk and even Branson all have space programmes. Presumably they've already given up on Saving the Planet and are looking for Planet B - or perhaps just a space station. I can't think of a less attractive proposition myself. Or perhaps they only want to offer a new sort of vacation. The ironic thing is that space programmes are even worse than airline flights for carbon emissions. So whether they are looking for a new home or just how to get away from this one for a while, they are helping to kill us all off.

Do I spend a great deal of time worrying about this? No. I don't expect to live long enough to see the really hard times. Also, I think we are fairly resilient in that we live - I was going to say 'quietly' but I think the word is 'modestly'. We eat very little beef, no lamb, more and more beans and grains and seasonal vegetables. We strive for a zero waste kitchen; our waste bin could be emptied every two or three months, but our recycling bin is much fuller. We seek re-uses for the packaging that comes into our house. We both wear our clothes to rags, walk for most errands, keep a car until no longer serviceable, haven't flown in two, perhaps three, years. I buy most of my clothes and books second hand. Neither of us routinely showers every day, but when needed - closer to twice a week. We wash our clothes after several wears and recently purchased a 'guppy's friend' washing bag. My crafting tends to be to make useful items, not just 'stuff' and I mend our clothes and household linens regularly. Our Christmas tree is at least 20 years old and the ornaments are from the mid-1940s on, bar the lights. We use brown paper wrapping or re-useable fabrics and Bill's kids are used to me retrieving bows and ribbons for re-use. In the past few years we've taken to exchanging food hampers rather than tat as gifts. I build a wishlist rather than buy every book or sewing kit I want and ask for these at birthdays and Christmas. I quit shopping on Amazon about three years ago. 

I looked into heating our house electrically and it would cost four times as much as using gas, so that hasn't changed yet. I could easily heat one room at a time, but Bill can't cope with that. The main need of our car is for Bill's walking expeditions, requiring him to meet up early on weekend mornings to obscure places, negating the use of public transport. I must admit I prefer to drive to any necessary places if it's pouring outside. I am in the habit of turning out the lights when leaving a room, but I sometimes forget and leave the oven on or time my jar heating badly when making jam. While we're both prepared to put on extra layers of clothing rather than turn up the thermostat (set at 19 C / 66 F), when my fingers are cold, I want be warmer. Our heating goes off at night. Our duvet is more than adequate in this temperate climate.

I still hope to meet my Norwegian cousins in the US and see the house in South Dakota and I still have family and friends in the US I'd like to see. I intend to make more trips at some point, depending upon how the pandemic goes. I would still like to see Norway and explore the area my Dad's ancestors inhabited. I can likely reach Norway via boat, but I can't envision boat travel all the way to the US. I know at some point I won't be able to manage long haul travel and there will come a point when I won't ever see my uncles again. As long as they are alive, I'm content to intend to see them, if that makes any sense. Perhaps only a procrastinator would understand that. 

Bill and I could potentially live in a much smaller house, however we have deemed this one to be our 'forever house'. Bill has already stated that if he survives me he is likely to sell and move closer to one of his children. Lately, however, he has come to appreciate the social contacts he has here and realises those would be hard to replace. If I survive Bill I expect to stay here for as long as possible - probably heating one room at a time. We are discussing what improvements are feasible to make the house more air-tight. 

Have you given any thought to reducing your carbon footprint?

Who Gives a Crap?

I suppose you've seen the ads on Facebook and elsewhere for Who Gives a Crap? I am always inclined to cringe a bit each time I see the name. I still remember coming home from 7th grade, feeling very cool and grown up and throwing out that word 'crap' in front of my mom. She promptly marched me to the bathroom and washed my mouth with soap. I was  too astonished at the whole process to resist, but I carefully watched my language around Mom from then on. 

I believe this is an Australian company. The advantages of ordering from them are 1) they donate half their profits to promote water, sanitation and hygiene projects in developing countries; 2) the come with pretty wrapping paper which can be seen in various craft projects; 3) it is delivered to your house via courier; 4) if you were so inclined, you could subscribe and never have to buy TP at the supermarket again. (However, you do have to get a bag to carry the stuff, make several trips upstairs and find a place for 48 rolls; in this case, the more loos you have, the better off you would be). 

I thought I'd give it a go, just out of curiosity. I ordered the regular TP, not the luxury bamboo type, though I might consider trying that later. Making a comparison with other toilet paper currently in the house will have to wait until we get another package down from the loft, as I never remember what qualities I've selected from the last shop. I tend to avoid brand names and definitely avoid anything scented. I sort of miss the pretty colours we used to get, but I gather this wasn't good for the environment. 

What I did do was weigh a regular toilet roll and a WGaC roll. The regular roll (quilted tp) weighed 85g. The WGaC weighed 182g. I noticed they were the same height, but the cardboard tube was much narrower for the WGaC roll. Also, the wrapping around the tube seemed tighter/more dense. I've noticed that the cardboard tube gets wider and wider with the off brands. In one case I saw that the rolls were also shorter. Mind, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about toilet paper, I just hate being ripped off. Also being treated as though I'm too stupid to notice such things.

That said, I did take note about how long each roll lasted. The ordinary one lasted from about mid-day on Wednesday to about mid-day Friday (2 days) The WGaC roll lasted from mid-day Friday to Monday evening (4 and a bit days), so a little over twice as long. This tp isn't quilted, it isn't very thick, but it's not the thinnest tp I've ever seen, but I do tend to use more of it than of the quilted.

Since I paid £36 for 48 rolls of tp, that is 75 pence per roll; the regular tp (according to Sainsbury's website) is about 25 pence per roll, but even if I use 50 pence in worth in the same time period, the WGaC is still slightly more expensive, which I don't mind given their charitable aims. My main concerns are two: 

1. Is the carbon cost of having it delivered to my house higher than having the supermarket deliver ordinary tp with all the rest of my groceries? (My guess is yes, but it is a guess).

2. What am I going to make with the pretty wrapping paper?

My Historical Life

Some of my (distant) cousins and I get together via email occasionally to share any small new finds - we found most of the major stuff - and just to check in generally. We are scattered from Ireland to Scotland, New York, England and both the east and west coasts of Australia. We were discussing what we would be looking for first when next year the 1921 British census is released. That got me to wondering when the 1950 US census will be released: 2022! I may have to disappear for most of next year...

One of my cousins was saying that she'd turned her attention for once to her husband's family history. She described his family as dysfunctional but didn't say why. Aren't we all, I'm thinking. She said that her mother-in-law was finally opening up about the family and that an uncle was gathering family photos, remarking that no one had ever wanted them before. We all treasure our skeletons far above all the 'normal' folks in our families so my cousin may manage to turn that family's self image around. 

I have always been in awe thinking about my grandparents and all that they survived: WWI, the influenza pandemic, the Great Depression, WWII, the polio epidemic and the pre-antibiotic era, not to mention that women only got the vote in the US in 1920. I've been a bit excited - weird, I know - to be living through a pandemic myself - and I was damned determined that Bill and I would survive. Then I got to thinking that actually I've lived through a lot of other things. 

I was in the third grade when JFK was assassinated (I skipped first grade). I remember having our Spanish lesson in front of the television when the principal came in and changed the station from the PBS channel to show the news about it. We were all sent home early that day. I remember thinking I should be happy to get let out early but I was sad and a little bit scared about what all this meant.

My generation at school narrowly missed the Vietnam war. I remember growing up hearing all the foreign names every night on the news and double digit reports of deaths almost daily. I was nearly numb to it up until high school when I realised people I knew might be in those casualty figures. A lot of my friends would be going to college and thus exempt, but not everyone could make the grade - or afford the tuition. 

Then there were the civil rights rights, the assassinations of MLK and Bobby. My parents were sympathetic to the plight of black people but we worried about whether the violence might impact on us. Judge Luther Bohanon determined that Oklahoma schools would be desegregated and this led to a certain amount of violence in high schools. Something like three deaths occurred in the early 1970s. This led to high school councillors proposing that kids could graduate early if they avoided study hall periods and earned extra credits in summer school. This charted my future: I took English Literature one summer and Algebra the next and I graduated in 1972 rather than 1973. I turned 16 two weeks after graduation and grown up life began for me when most had to wait until 18 or 19. I stumbled a lot.

I remember the US Presidents during my lifetime, though I can't name them in order. I didn't take much interest in politics - it just made people yell at one another - until Clinton. People were outraged at the influence Hillary Clinton had with her husband. I thought that sounded like a great reason to vote for him even though I knew nothing about his policies. I've learned more about the political history of the US by reading John Kenneth Galbraithe's World Economy Since the Wars and Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope. I was fascinated to read about things that happened during my lifetime that I only heard in passing at the time. 

I'm conscious that in the 1990 census I found myself as the main bread-winner who was also the Responsible Person in the family. My then husband had brought me a surprise 20-month-old step-son 17 days after our wedding and then informed me that 'child-rearing was woman's work'. So when I filled out the census form, I put myself down as head of the household. No doubt his son's descendants will remark that I must have been a difficult person. With any luck, I'll live long enough to see the release of the 1960 (76), 1970 (86) and maybe even the 1980 (96) US censuses!

And now I've lived through Trump and Brexit. We are now in the Covid Pandemic and the sixth mass extinction (climate change). It will be interesting to see how things unfold. 

Had you ever considered your Historical Life?

My Dad's Birthday

Today would have been my Dad's 103rd birthday, were such a thing even possible. Of course it is possible for a human to live to the age of 103 years, but not my Dad. His smoking, his diet and his sedentary nature all denied him that. Just as his half-brother, Albert, had his life cut short, only much shorter.

Albert - yes! I have an Uncle Albert! - was born three years before my Dad, almost to the day - on the 16th rather than the 17th of April. He was christened Albert Martin Brown in the Lutheran church on the 21st of January 1916. He is shown as resident in the Owatonna State School in the 1920 census. I'm told he was adopted in 1922 - at the age of 7. 

A letter from his mother, Marit / Mary, to the Minnesota state officials in 1939 tells us he has died from drowning at the age of 24. The people who adopted him apparently knew how to contact his birth mother. Having lost one son - she feels due to carelessness on the part of the adopting parents - she is desperate to know where her youngest son - my Dad - has been placed. It is a heart breaking letter.

Of course my Dad lived to the age of 71. His adoptive parents were anything but neglectful. And of course my Dad never knew he had a half-brother. It always strikes me as a bit surreal to think of all the things he didn't know about himself - and all the things I didn't know until someone dropped this piece of information on me and I pursued the story. It often crosses my mind that there are likely other things I don't know, or only think I 'know'.

I am practically wishing this year away when I realise I can obtain Albert's adoption information from the Minnesota Historical Society, or perhaps from the courts, I'll have to figure it out. It will then be 100 years since his adoption and the records will no longer be sealed. I'll then know the names of his adoptive parents and can look for his death certificate. Perhaps there will have been an inquest or other records to shed more light on the circumstances. I will be able to search for him in the 1930 census and perhaps there might be a marriage record, who knows? Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a photograph somewhere and I could see a resemblance to my Dad - or even to me? 

Bless him, he didn't make it to be in the 1940 census. How very much of life he missed out on, passing at 24. Makes me feel terribly ancient and extremely fortunate. Also to realise that even though I've always felt cheated that each of my parents died at the age of 71, they did get to experience most of what life was going to hand them by then, except perhaps something negative about growing old. So I'll not wish for what can't be anyhow. 

Happy birthday, Daddy.

Reading

When I returned home from the library last Friday, I unpacked my backpack to see which books had been loaned to me.  One of them, a biography, I had no memory of requesting. I knew neither the name of the author (Hermoine Lee) or the subject of the book, Penelope Fitzgerald. I decided to read it anyhow, given that Fitzgerald was known for having published her first book at the age of 60 and having won the Booker Prize aged 73. Another three of her novels were shortlisted; not a bad record for the author of nine novels. I'm always happy to be inspired by a late bloomer, given the number of things I still aspire to accomplish in spite of soon turning 65. 

Though I'm now barely into the second chapter - this book has tiny print and is not an easy read, I spent much of the first chapter referring back to the family tree at the front, which had annotations that didn't become clear until I'd read well through that chapter - I believe I'm going to enjoy this challenging book. Fitzgerald lived between 1916 and 2000 and grew up in an illustrious family full of Church of England bishops, Catholic priests and writers - her father was editor of Punch magazine. Fitzgerald described her childhood home well enough to make one bask in the cosiness of interwar England. 

"She recreated the vanished 1920's Hampstead of her childhood with pleasure and precision. 

The village - and Hampstead still felt itself very much a village - was a place of high thinking, plain living and small economies. The steep charming old streets were full of ham and beef shops, old bookstalls, and an amazing number of cleaners and repairers, all helpful to shabby refugees and literary men. There was even a jeweller's where one bead could be bought at a time, for all the Hampstead ladies wore long necklaces. The livery stables had only just turned into a garage...poets walked the streets, Stanley Spencer pushed his pramful of painting materials aimiably across the Health...

This was a Georgian childhood. The streets in her memory were not only full of poets in their 'wide brimmed black hats', but also of lamplighters coming round to light the gas lamps, muffin men in winter, and lavender sellers in summer, knife grinders and chair menders, pony-carts brining dairy milk from the farm at Highgate. Gazes the drapers had everything you needed in 'the button, woollen, stockings and knicker line'; Knowles Brown the clockmaker had a silver clock in the window in the shape of a spaniel whose tongue moved up and down with every tick; small shops sold 'pennyworths of licorice'. 

Hampstead was literary, poetic, artistic, rural, part-bohemian, part-genteel. It was not a bit like Bloomsbury...Hampstead was 'undemanding' and 'homely'."

Fitzgerald's father and his brothers all went to Oxford. Two of her grandfathers were vicars and then bishops. The cosiness of their time is in part due to their station in life as much as in the time in which they lived. I'm always rather envious of the descriptions of the gardens / orchards / vicarages / country houses, all down south where they actually experience summer most years. 

My local library has only a couple of her books, but the Lit and Phil has more, including The Bookshop. I see that Hermione Lee has also written biographies of Willa Cather and Edith Wharton, also two intriguing books, The Lives of Houses and The London Scene. I don't think I'll ever run out of what to read!

Vegetable Tangerine

Our next WI has started having Zoom coffee mornings with a theme. The next Saturday's theme is 'Positive things that came out of the pandemic'. I'm still thinking on this, but one of them I think is that people got re-acquainted with their kitchens. I think cooking from ingredients is a vital life skill and that it is idiocy to be dependent on eating out / fast food / processed convenience foods. I almost see it as a form of slow suicide. I've noticed the older I get the less moderate my opinions.

I can't say the pandemic reintroduced me to my kitchen, but rather it reminded me I had a load of cookbooks - and acquired more - with recipes I'd never tried. I started our WI's Food Group on Facebook and the lady who agreed to take it over - I can't run everything - felt that photos were important so I've tried to take pictures. Mine are never as good as hers - my kitchen must not have the right lighting, but Bill and I have enjoyed greater variety in our meals. 

The Food Group also introduced me to some new cookbooks called A Pinch of Nom. I guess 'nom' must be the British version of 'yum'? I like these books because they have calorie counts. I'm only interested in those under 300 calories. I generally find I can make the recipes faster each time I make them and find shortcuts. For example, I make cauliflower rice in the microwave rather than adding it to the chicken and spices in a Harry Dieters Fast Food recipe. 

One of Bill's favourites is from A Pinch of Nom and it is called Vegetable Tagine. I'm still working on finding shortcuts for this, but I already have substituted potato for the parsnip and swede I didn't have; also tumeric for the saffron I'm not likely to ever have and ground cinnamon instead of sticks. Also, this recipe says to use a large frying pan on top of the stove, not the conical shaped clay dish which is also called a tagine. The first time I made it I sent Bill after a pomegranate to garnish the dish, my first ever encounter with a pomegranate. I thought it was delicious, but awfully fiddly, even with instructions from the internet. Subsequent uses of this recipe have omitted that garnish.

 I struggle to say this word, wanting to make it tan-gine and then Bill turned that into tangerine. We're pretty silly around here sometimes. I wondered how one should actually say 'tagine'. It turns out that there are two ways, a British and an American pronunciation. The British word sounds like 'ta-ching' as in money. No doubt Bill will have fun playing with that as well. I notice the American pronunciation has a softer 'g', like the French use. Doing something other than way the French speak seems to be a hallmark in British differences. 

2021 Stack

Not having a lot to say these days, I thought I'd look at my photos for 'inspiration'. The first photo I took this year was of the books I got for Christmas. Hopefully none are from Amazon, but that's not in my control. I give Bill links to alternative sources and I know he feels much the same as I do about Amazon (or says he does) but I'm not sure where his kids stand. Mind, the presents they sent were all in variations of brown wrapping paper that can be re-cycled, so I'm hopeful.

The second photo is of a present from Helen, a cute idea but not likely to be used. It got a second photo because it has no name on the spine.

The Fashion of Film, Amber Butchart.  I'm a major fan of Amber Butchart and have been for several years now, ever since I stumbled upon the series A Stitch in Time. This book  like some of her others (I hope one day to have them all!) looks at categories of clothing that came out of certain types of films, such as Crime: Dressed to Kill; The Musical: Spectacular Fashion; Historical Epic: Dressed to Excess; Horror: Supernatural Chic; Romantic Drama: Seductive Style; Sci-Fi and Fantasy: Bionic Bodies; Art House and Independent Style with Substance. Unfortunately, I didn't come away with many ideas for clothes I might wish to wear, but there were lovely photos all the same.

The Weekend Crafter - Knitting, Catherine Ham. This is a book I found years ago at a thrift shop and it had several simple knitting patterns I meant to try. Unfortunately I must have loaned it to someone and it never came back. I would run into references to it and finally asked Bill to get me a replacement for Christmas. 

Cooking with Scraps, Lindsay-Jean Hard.  Unlike Hugh Fernley-Whittenstall's Love Your Leftovers, this isn't about mountains of meat but rather scraps of vegetables. Lately the cauliflowers Bill has brought home have been rather puny, more leaves than flowerettes.  However, I now cut off all the enclosing leaves and put them aside, which makes getting at the actual head easier (slides of roasted cauliflower are now a very popular main dish in our hosue). Then I slice off the green curly bits and steam them like I would spring cabbage or spinach. Finally, the white stalks that are left can be cut up into bits like sliced carrots or chopped (with the help of a Pampered Chef tool) finely to make cauliflower rice - a name Bill objected strenuously to until he realised how useful this was.

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein and The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. Something I can't recall dragged me back into my fascination with the interwar period, perhaps re-reading a Phryne book? I was dismayed to find that neither this biographical work or the cook book were available through my library, so I put them on my wish list. Sarah, Bill's youngest, was asking him what I wanted. I told him to tell her to surprise me with either this book or the cook book and she did surprise me - she gave me both. I've not read either front to back as yet, only dabbled here and there. I've been over run with library books for a while now, but I hope to make them a priority soon. They are very much of their time, but that is what makes them so fascinating. Apparently, Ms. Toklas was so awed by Ms. Stein's writing reputation that she didn't attempt to document her cookery until after the death of Ms. Stein. Can't say I've read any other writing by this august person. 

Alabama Studio Sewing Patterns, Natalie Chanin. I'm not sure this was a great idea. I was keen because I thought it came with a bunch of patterns. It does and it doesn't. The patterns don't work for every one's computer. Bill was thankfully able to make them work after a fashion. However, one either has to understand how to make them into tiles - which means you end up with 40 pages to put together with tape - or to pay for a specialist printer to give you a large pattern. I ended up doing a couple of them with a printer for about £10. So it's not really a great deal. Also, a lot of the patterns have to do with applique by hand, which is sort of their hallmark. Not my cup of tea sadly. I think I was blinded by the coolness of the reputation. I appreciate that if you live near Florence, Alabama, the vast array of 100% cotton jersey fabrics is seductive, but I can't see me paying $30 a yard plus postage and duty. However, I do hope that the patterns will help me to upcycle some of the thrift store sweaters I've acquired over the years.

Threads of Life, Clare Hunter. This was an excellent book that I've read about it elsewhere.