Quality counts with sweet corn and pie crust

(Sweet corn is in season.  And there is good sweet corn and not-so-good sweet corn.)

Last night Robin and I had what may have been the best sweet corn of our lives. I bought it yesterday at the Iron Kettle Farm near Candor. Realize that we both grew up in Ohio, where it is an annual tradition to eat all the sweet corn you can possibly eat during August. But there is sweet corn and there is sweet corn.

I don't think I have ever had really good corn from a grocery store. To be at its best, sweet corn needs to be picked at the exact right time in its maturation, the so-called "milk stage", early in the morning when it is cool, and then those ears should be eaten within hours of being picked. With every passing hour after picking, the sugars in the corn are being converted to starch, so the ears become less sweet and more chewy as the clock ticks away. With really good corn, I simply grill it over charcoal while basting it with olive oil and it is fantastic--no butter, no salt, no pepper. And the corn we had last night was superb. I could have eaten a dozen ears.

But for the past couple of years, whenever I have corn on the cob at my daughter's home, her husband always asks me how it is. It is never very good for the reasons I provided above, and so I give him my agronomist's appraisal. "Just a little past", I'll say. Or, "Probably should have been picked 2-3 days ago".  And, "Should have been eaten yesterday". I try to be tactful and to hide my Buckeye State cockiness about this, but he is the one who asked. Mitch always thinks I am joking.  He responds, "There is nothing wrong with this corn. It has tasted like this all my life".  Now, Mitch is from Staten Island, so you can see how difficult it might be to explain agricultural factoids to him. The first time he visited our home when he and Amy were dating, he saw a hummingbird at our feeder on the deck and he thought it was a giant insect. See how challenging this is?  (On the other hand, Mitch knows a lot about the stock market, because he works on Wall Street.  He warned me about the low quality of Over the Counter stocks years ago, compared to more "blue chip" type equities, but I insisted on losing money.  So the keeper of the quality standard resides in different people for different things.)

With my daughter, the situation is almost as bad.  We have a recipe for pie crust in our family that came from my grandmother.  It is fantastic crust and, if made correctly, is every bit as enjoyable to eat as the fruit filling used in the pie.  But my daughter fails to appreciate this and thinks that a frozen pie crust bought at the local store is just as good.  Every Thanksgiving we go through the same routine when I ask, "Is this Grandma Mary's pie crust?", although I know for sure after tasting it that it is not.  She always says no, and who cares, and who can tell the difference, and that old crust contains Crisco, and it's fattening.

Am I being a turd about all this?  I don't think so, and here is why.  I believe there really are absolutes when it comes to "quality".  Most of us would have no argument about this if we were comparing a Mercedes to a Ford Pinto, an Armani to a Sears suit, or a Caymus Special Selection Cabernet Sauvignon to a Mogen David bottle of wine.  Corn and pie crust are not quite as obvious, and one could argue that accepting a slightly lower quality in one of these is not as important as the choice of a car or a house.  The irony in the corn and crust examples is that what I believe to be the higher quality choice may even be less expensive than the alternative; you are almost certainly paying a premium for the convenience of a ready-made crust, or for getting corn from the grocery rather than locating and stopping at a roadside vegetable stand.  So the issue is not about cost in these examples, it is mostly about a loss of collective memory. 

What bothers me about all this is that there seems to be a degradation of so many aspects of modern life, and it is almost always driven by what is convenient.  After a while, we accept the new lowered bar as normal.  Each generation of humans experiences a "ratcheting down" in their acceptance of the new normal, so that what was once good quality becomes just so-so, and almost no one remembers how it used to be.  The tough part is figuring out whether elderly people (the keepers of the past) really remember that an item was of higher quality in the old days, or whether it is just their failing or romantic memories of their youth .  And, of course, many aspects of life, like medical care, have gotten much better over time. 

This topic is actually a huge one, and can apply to many areas: the importance of high quality habitat in nature and the integrity of natural ecosystems, the quality of the food we eat daily, and the quality of the water we drink and the air we breathe.  For now, I've said enough and I need to keep my mouth shut.  In fact, last week we had dinner at my daughter's after she had just returned from the local grocery.  Half way through, Mitch said, "Aren't those tomatoes great?"  I bit my tongue, looked at my son-in-law with a big smile, and said, "I love ya man!"

Sense of place

(Today's post is not humorous, so set the dial in your brain accordingly.  It is a little deeper, and more heartfelt than usual.  But it is a Sunday (the 1st or 7th day of the week?), so I assume you might have a bit more time than normal for reading and thinking.  So top-off that coffee mug, put your feet up, and let the cat get comfortable on your lap.  Oh, and no crying.)

I love my property. I mean, I really, really love it. It is not that it is a particularly beautiful place, because it is not---typical 50-year old second-growth forest in upstate New York. My maple, ash, and aspen woodland is certainly not as dramatic as the Sonoran Desert in March, or as majestic as the Grand Canyon, or as awe-inspiring as the savannas of western Kenya. I have been to many truly wonderful places during the past few years, but after I am there for only a few days, wherever it is, I long for my 12 acres near Ithaca.

Where does that longing come from? I am not absolutely sure, but that feeling contains emotional, psychological, and biological elements. After all, I have lived on this land for 29 years now, and it holds many memories for me. My children grew up here. I can look at the yard in front of the house to this day and remember playing catch with my sons there 20 years ago. I can still see in my mind the other accoutrements of my children's activities: the old tree fort, the skateboard ramps, the rabbit hutches. I can hear their youthful voices. I can smile at the memory of all those undergraduates who I duped into moving my firewood from one place to another over the years. I remember my mother emerging ghostlike from a dense fog as she returned from escorting our kids to the bus stop down our long driveway, during one of her visits. So the place holds memories of events, and objects, and people who are now gone. Imagine how strong this suite of emotions must be for people who still give birth to their babies and bury their loved ones on their land. I assume the concept of “sacred land” must originate from this.

But the longing for my land consists of more than old memories. There is a relevant vitality about it as well, which renews me every single day. I have an evening ritual (at least during good weather), which I have described many times. With a glass of single-malt scotch and a good cigar in one hand, and a folding chair in the other, I go to some predetermined spot in my woods to sit for an hour or so. Well, I don’t just sit there—I use the scotch and cigar for their intended purposes. But mostly I watch and listen to what is going on around me and conclude that it doesn’t get any better than this.  My wife understands this about me, and she indulges me this evening ritual, even though she has much she wants to share from the day’s activities.

May and June are my favorite months, because the forest is alive, especially with singing, territorial songbirds. The migrants have returned from Central or South America. The resident species are rejuvenated with new hormone levels that make them interesting again. The vireos, tanagers, warblers, and chickadees are mine; they are not legally mine, but in every other sense of the word they belong to me and to my land. They live here, build nests here, raise their babies here, and eat insects or fruits that grow here. I love this place so much in the spring that I have all but vowed not to do any traveling during that time of year so as not to miss a single day.

I have learned much about myself and about the human connection to the land from my time on this hill. I have learned that the most enjoyable moments I spend all year are when I am sitting among those organisms near my home. Once you have the land, those moments are absolutely free. It costs you nothing, and it can be more fulfilling than anything I can think of to do in town.

I have learned that it is not the same for me to sit in a publicly-owned forest, even though it may be more beautiful to the unbiased eye—it is not mine. That sense of pride I have when sitting in my forest is not there. I am not allowed to cut trees for firewood, to manipulate the habitat to encourage the residence of certain species of vertebrates, or to build a bonfire for social gatherings on the public’s land. I am strictly a visitor and, as valuable as that experience is to most, it is not enough for me.

And most of all, I have learned how powerful the connection of humans to their land can be. By extrapolation, I can only capture a hint of the powerful emotions of all those peoples across the globe who are in conflict over “their” land, who are moved around by distant governments, by neighboring enemies, by degraded resources, by market forces, or by global climate change. Most of the time my professional and personal goal is stated as “conserving the earth’s biodiversity”. But in a very real way, my goal in conservation is to allow the unadulterated "sense of place" to flourish in a manner consistent with the antiquity of human cultures and races, and with all other species.

Is it Tuesday or Farmer's Market day?

(What the heck day of the week is it?)

When I worked at the university, it was not a problem remembering what day of the week it was. I had field biology lab on Monday and Wednesday afternoons, I lectured in conservation biology on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Friday, I had no class, and then came the weekend. Simple. But now it is a challenge, because one day pretty much seems like any other when you're retired, except that the stock market is closed on Saturdays and Sundays. If today is the day before tomorrow and the day after yesterday, which day is it? I give up, and so does the Management at DrTom's.

What can we use as benchmarks as to which day of the week it is? Today's cigar is a Dunhill Diamantes and yesterday's scotch was a 12-year old Aberlour. Does that make today Thursday? I filled the hummingbird feeders this morning and turned the compost pile with a pitchfork. Friday? Next week I have a urology appointment to check the plumbing and last week I had a neurology appointment to check the wiring. Saturday? If my sister-in-law is visiting on the 5th, and that is 10 days from now, what is the day today? But to answer that requires additional information. How many days are there in August, 30 or 31? Darn! I almost had it there.

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I even went to extreme lengths to find out this time. I drove into Ithaca to see if the Farmer's Market was open. That only happens on Saturday. Nope. I listened for church bells, cause that happens on the 7th day of the week. Or is that the first day of the week? Do the expressions on other motorists' faces look happy, like it is a Friday, or angry, like it is a Monday? Geez. I hate tinted windows in cars. I turned on the radio and flipped the dial, now almost in a panic, but light jazz, heavy metal, and pop stations don't talk about this sort of thing. I hear on the news that Ted Kennedy died yesterday. But what day was that? Tell me dammit!

At this point I decide to do what no self-respecting man ever does. I will ask someone. So I pull into a Citgo gas station, I run into the convenience store attached to it, and I ask the clerk. What day is this? "It is Pizza Supreme Special day, sir". What!!! We never learned that in primary school. That is NOT one of the seven names I memorized. I regained my composure, I gently grabbed her wrist and held it on the counter, and I looked into her eyes intently. Please.. tell.. me.. what.. day.. of.. the.. week.. this.. is. You know, like Monday or Tuesday or whatever. And she said, "just a minute, I'll have to ask the manager". Honest to God. The 20-year old kid from Ithaca College was as clueless as I was.

I returned home. I walked into the house and Robin said, "Hey, you wanna go to the movies tonight? It's Friday. We can see that Keanu Reeves' film." I sat down, on the verge of a headache and stared at her incredulously. How did you know what day of the week it was, I asked? "The cell phone". So we went to the cinema downtown, and saw "The Day the Earth Stood Still". What a dumb title. It didn't even tell us which day of the week that calamity happened.

(Note: if you want to really blow your mind, try figuring out when to take the recyclables to the curb here in Danby. They pick up only on alternate Mondays!).

Retirement and a lapse of personal hygiene

(I should take better care of myself.)

Since Management and I started working at home (I retired, she changed jobs), we have gotten a little careless about our personal hygiene and appearance. We don't shower as often, I don't shave like I should, and we tend to wear the same clothes until they holler out "wash me!". This slippage just happens, almost as soon as you no longer go to an office where you have to encounter co-workers, or customers, or students. I think the mechanism works like this: because I rarely shave, I almost never look in the mirror in the morning, and I don't see how frightening I appear. When I finally do look in the mirror after a few days, at first I don't recognize who I am seeing and when I realize it is me, I become horrified and then do something about it.

Of course, Robin and I have to look at each other as we pass in the hallway or meet for lunch, but we know that if we criticize the other, they will retaliate and we will both have to do something we don't want to do, like shave our legs. So we tend to remain silent about the shaggy appearance of the other, like the days when the U.S and the Soviet Union each had lots of nuclear weapons, but neither would dare use them first.

Sooner or later, we invite someone to the house and we clean up our act. Surprise visitors.......well, they just get a surprise. When the Jehovah's Witnesses showed up last week, I had a 4-day beard, I was wearing sweaty clothes from working in the yard, and I had a half-smoked cigar in my hand. I'm sure I smelled as bad as the nearby compost pile that was just sitting there (not cooking at 170 degrees). Maybe this is why the UPS man tosses packages into our garage from his moving truck. Maybe our seediness and our loneliness are related in some way. Cause and effect, or simply a spurious correlation?