What Is It?

How do we know if a new thing is a good thing? When we encounter something we’ve not seen before, what is the point where we can say to ourselves, this new addition to my life is a blessing?

I ask that question whenever I encounter something I don’t quite recognize in my garden. I know what I’ve planted, and where I’ve planted it, so when seed turns to seedling, or seedling matures, I’m ready for that growth. I also recognize the plants I explicitly don’t want, the fast growing invasive bermuda grasses and the stabby-stabby thistles and snaking vines that will smother or strangle my beans and ‘maters and herbs.

But when I go in a-weeding, I’m aware that every plant that rises unexpected from the soil of my raised beds isn’t an undesirable one. From prior years, squirrels and chipmunks have planted many a tomato seed, and my composted kitchen leavings are equally fecund. This year, three of my seven tomato plants were volunteers, all teeny tiny pop-in-your-mouth multicolored cherry tomatoes that were sweet as could be. I know and welcome those tomatoes, in the same way that I welcomed the volunteer cantaloupe that came up two seasons ago, and provided the seed stock for the ‘lopes I grew last year and this year.

Just because I don’t know what something is yet doesn’t mean I’ll just destroy it or reject it out of hand.

A month and a half ago, I was doing a deep weeding in one of my green bean plots. They’ve struggled a bit in the dryness early this season, yielding mostly seedstock for next year, along with a reminder that I need to be more aggressive in watering them if I want them to be less seedy. In among the beans were two plants I didn’t recognize. Deep green, with single lobed ovoid leaves, with a darker pigmentation at the branches. They weren’t weeds I knew, nor did I recognize their leafing as any of my more familiar volunteers. I could, I suppose, have just taken a picture of them and let the machine-mind tell me what they were, but where’s the fun in that?

I just let them be, because why not?

In their Exodus journey, the Hebrew people encountered all manner of new things, which one would think would have been a good thing, given their flight from enslavement. But faced with unexpected challenges and wilderness wanderings, people often look back to the imagined past and pine for it.

Through the sepia haze of hangry remembering, they thought back to their time in Egypt, which became in their imaginations a paradise of bread and meat. “If only we had died,” they complained. “Everything then was so great, and the portion sizes were huge.”

The word we hear as “complain” is a peculiar one in Hebrew.


Way-yil-lō-w-nū (וַיִּלֹּ֧נוּ) means “and they grumbled,” or to use the Yiddish equivalent, to kvetch. Like most Yiddish (which is a blend of Hebrew and Old German) kvetch is just such an emotionally onomatopoeic way to understand endlessly picking at something. It comes from an old German word meaning to press, or to squeeze. In the Hebrew, though? The root word of Way-yil-loh-nu is three letters: Lamed, Vav, and Nun (loon), which two thirds of the time means to stay, to remain, to lodge, or to reside. One third of the time, depending on the context and the word construction, that same root word can mean to complain and to grumble.

The relationship between those two concepts in the language is a little hazy. Why does staying in a place also mean to complain? It’s not clear. Maybe it has to do with ruminating or refusing to let something go. Think, for example, of the difference between “dwelling in a place” and “dwelling on something.” As someone who dislikes change, I know being obstinate doesn’t lend itself to cheeriness. But that that’s just speculation.

But in response to their kvetching, God promises that they’ll be fed, with bread coming from heaven. Moses conveys that message, and tells them to be prepared to receive meat in the evening and carbs for breakfast. So that evening, their encampment is filled with quail, which provides for the meat. Then, at morning dewfall, the ground is covered with a peculiar frost-like substance, one that remains on the earth after the dew evaporates.

We hear that the people looked at this strange substance and looked at each other in bafflement. In the Hebrew, the text tells us they pointed at the strange stuff on the ground and said two words: Man'hu (מן הוא), which means, in English “What is it?” So from that, we get the word manna. Manna means...literally..."What is it?"

“What it is is the bread from heaven,” says Moses in reply. “The stuff you were promised.”

We tend to think of manna as a gift and as a blessing, which it most certainly is. “Like manna from heaven,” or so the saying goes. But how do we encounter that which is strange or unknown to us? Are we always and invariably cynical, rejecting every new taste and every new grace with the same fervor as a five year old presented with something for dinner that is not three chicken nuggets neatly separated from precisely one dozen steamed peas?

Do we let our anxiety and our fear weed out the first growth of a new and gracious path in our lives?

If we know, with certainty, that a new path is pure poison, rejecting it is fine. We know the taste of greed and lust, domination and envy, lies and brutality and resentment. Sin is an old and familiar poison, and if we are not fools, we’ve learned to avoid it.

But if it’s something we’ve hoped for, it will always be a little unfamiliar, because we hope for things unseen. “What is this,” we ask ourselves, as we encounter it.

Like, say, those two odd little plants coming up in my green bean bed. I let them go, watched them go to flower, and then completely forgot about them for a while. When I was plucking some of my tomatoes for another batch of pico de gallo a few weeks ago, I glanced down, blinked, and saw what those plants were.

“What is it?”

What it was was jalapeno peppers, which I’d intended to plant at the beginning of the season and hadn’t gotten around to. Some of the seed from last year’s store-bought’n peppers must have made its way into the compost, and all of a sudden and in an unexpected way I had precisely the splash of caliente I needed for that evening.

When something promising appears unexpectedly before you, give it a little time.

Unplanned Obsolescence

We live in a time of peculiar and shaking newness, when the world around us sometimes seems to be changing faster than we have the bandwidth to process. We know, we all do, that so much of our economy is predicated on planned obsolescence, the idea that a given product is only going to be useful for a short amount of time. If you build a widget that does its widget-job perfectly, and that is so well built that it’ll be doing that job perfectly fifty years from now, you’re going to go out of business. So what we get are glass phones and cheap plastic, things that break or must be replaced.

"I'm sorry," says the tech company that sold you your router.  "We're no longer supporting your five year old and still perfectly functional Machine X with software updates.  That will, of course, possibly expose you to criminals who will get access to all of your passwords and drain all of your accounts.  Here's a coupon for 10% off our brand new Machine Y, as a courtesy to you for being such a loyal customer."

But things are getting weird.  

As AI models get more and more competent, and the big AI companies increasingly monetize their services, we're encountering a strange phenomenon.  AI does certain things, like coding and the testing of code, far faster than human beings.  Orders of magnitude faster, in fact.  Large Language Models and GPTs are now being used to improve themselves, a process we're calling Recursive Self Improvement.  The AI helps build a better AI to replace it, which then builds a better AI to replace it, and so on and so forth.  The RSI process is, obviously and recognizably, the camel's nose of what tech futurists once called "singularity."   

Singularity is similar to the way a supermassive star collapses into a black hole, becoming a point of unmeasurable density, in which our physics breaks down.  It's a state of matter that we can no longer meaningfully interact with.  There'll come a point where artificial intelligence isn't just faster and smarter, but is so much faster and smarter that we can no longer understand how it works.  We're not wholly there yet, but our feet are crossing the threshold.

In this odd time, one sign is that acceleration is overwhelming our cultural yearning for the new and the shiny.  Planned obsolescence is falling apart.  If a product cycle is annual, with minor upgrades, users can keep pace with it.

But if a product cycle is monthly?  Then businesses can't adapt.  You've only just heard of a thing, and are working to understand how to use it effectively for your work or your life, and then...boom...here's another version that's better, and with a superior interface.  And then another three weeks later.  And then another five days after that.

Why engage or commit to an approach, if one week later your competitors might take advantage of something better?  Why restructure your entire workforce to utilize a new functionality, only to have that functionality change three times before you've even had the second meeting of your restructuring taskforce?

As cries rise to slow down the pace of AI development, most of those cries are justifiably about safety.  But I do wonder if some of the motivation comes from realizing that hyperaccelerative recursive self improvement shatters our entire economic system. 

Good Apples, Bad Apples, and the Apples In-between

With the forced harvest of all of my apples following a recent storm, I faced something of a conundrum.

All of a sudden, I had six dozen early-harvest apples, all of which I had to gently pluck from our fallen tree before righting it.  Most of them had sooty blight, which cleans off perfectly with a washing.  I don't use chemicals or pesticides on my tree, so about a third of them weren't even close to edible, overcome by cankers, worms, or rot.  Those, I tossed into my sunflower patch, where they'll degrade and add to the soil.

Another third were functionally perfect, albeit a little greener than one would want for a Fuji.  Those could easily have come from a farmer's market or produce stand, and they went straight into our fruit bowl.  They've been delicious.

That final third was neither one nor t'other.  They weren't the sort of apple you'd just pick up and eat.  There'd be a deep bruise or a spot of rot on one, or a canker on another.  That portion of the fruit was unusable for human consumption.  The rest of the apple, though, was flawless.

Were one sorting apples for sale, those imperfect apples would be worthless.  No-one would choose them for purchase.  You wouldn't set them out for guests, or just snack on them.

But just because industrial agriculture has acclimatized us to hyperabundance doesn't pardon our failure to see value in imperfect things.  

I've just got the one little tree out front, and I get what apples I get.  I've tended it and watered it and pruned it, so not doing something with the blemished and slightly damaged fruit seemed a waste.    "What," I thought to myself, "would I do with these apples if they were the only food I had?"  I'd eat whatever could be eaten, of course.

So over the last week, I've used them to make two apple crisps, both of which have been utterly delicious.  The preparation did take a little more care, I'll admit.  I diligently sliced away anything foul or rotten.  In some cases, that meant half of an apple.  In others, I'd discover that what looked like a small surface blemish was, in fact, just the tip of an iceberg of decay.  That whole apple would be repurposed as compost.

For most of them, though, just a little cutting and paring yielded sweetness that was no less delicious than cosmetically perfect fruit.  

It reminded me, as things often do, of a little passage from Paul, where he talks about how we and our works will be tested.  Not every part of us is what it needs to be, after all.  We are none of us perfect.

But that doesn't mean we are utterly without value or purpose.

The Real George Washington

Here in the Nation's Capital, Donald J. Trump is now demanding that the Smithsonian tear down a piece of modern art in front of the National Museum of American History, and replace it with a towering statue of George Washington.  In addition, he is demanding that they immediately show respect for Our Founding Fathers by putting on a five year exhibition celebrating George Washington.  

Honestly, I think they should take him up on that.

Specifically, I think they should create an exhibit specifically focusing on the end of Washington's Presidency, and the process by which Washington prepared his farewell address to our fledgling nation. 

In that address, which Washington wrote with the help of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, Washington both blessed and warned the United States, counseling citizens to be wary of the forces that he knew would threaten our republic.  He was, in particular, wary of the rise of a particular kind of human being who would sabotage the country from within.  

Be wary, Washington wrote, of those who set us against one another, who rule only for their own faction, who usurp the powers of other branches of government, and who ignore the law when it's advantageous to do so.  Watch out for an oversized military, said the first Commander in Chief, and be particularly alert for the self-serving actions of "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" who see partisanship and populism as a way around the constraints of both virtue and the Constitution.

A well-crafted exhibit that centers Washington's wisdom and his hard-learned cautions might be a timely thing, eh?

To that end, you can read the farewell address at the link above.  I've drawn out a few key quotes from that address for your perusal and edification.  This being 1796, the language he, Hamilton, and Madison used is a little more convoluted that we're used to, but it's worth taking time to listen to his warnings.  They'd work well in an exhibit, I think:

1) A Warning Against those who foment Cynicism

"The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned, and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts."

2) A Reminder that a Bloated Military is a Threat to Liberty

"While then every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value! they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same government; which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence likewise they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other."

3) A Warning against "Designing Men" who Turn Region Against Region

"In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations—Northern and Southern—Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection."

4) A Reminder that Government must Serve All the People, Not Just a Subgroup

"To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute."

5)  Those who Ignore the Law or Manipulate it to Serve their Power are an Existential Threat

"All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

6)  Radical Partisanship Destroys National Unity

"I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty."

7)  A "Unitary Executive" is the Path to Despotism and Tyranny

"..the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

8)  The United States must be a Good and Virtuous Neighbor 

"Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all—religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?"

---

"In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish—that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But if I may even flatter myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good, that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism—this hope will be a full recompense for the solicitude for your welfare, by which they have been dictated."

Cutting Back the Ivy

Out in the front yard, my stand of sunflowers is beginning to fade, as Fall approaches and summer says a long slow goodbye.  The stand is still standing, which wasn't a guaranteed thing.  

A big storm recently blasted through, bringing down the little apple tree that grows right next to the sunflowers.  But the flowers, with a little forethought, are still beautiful, if a bit battered.  The tallest ones no longer tower vertically, now canting discernably southward towards the nearby sidewalk, having been pressed hard by near-hurricane-force gusts.

But not a one of them fell.

The reason: other plants grow in that sunflower patch.  Milkweed and common pokeweed are intermingled with the stalks, adding their flowers to pollinator buffet.  And woven densely through all of it is a densely interwoven tangle of wild grape and porcelainberry vines.  

Between the two of them and left to their own devices, those two vines will smother just about everything else around them.  Their vines snake up the sunflower stalks at a remarkable rate, growing inches a day.  I've thought about rooting them out completely, but they serve a particular purpose.

Instead, once a week or so, I'll wander by the sunflowers and trim away any vines that get within a foot or two of the flowering tops.  My assumption, when I began that process a few years ago, had been that the vine growth would help stabilize the sunflowers without my having to put in metal stakes and support structures.  I'd had one whole patch that I'd staked flattened by high wind years ago, so figured I'd try the natural approach.

The recent storm tested that hypothesis, successfully so.  The complex interwoven mass of vines gave stability to the helianthus.  None were lost, even if they do look a little worse for wear.

That does, of course, come with a caveat.  That organic support structure desires to make more of itself.  If I'm not careful and attentive to cut away that which is not necessary, eventually all I'd have is a huge green mass of ivy, ivy growing upon ivy.  Sucking away nutrient resources, strangling out all other life around it and smothering the flowers this gardener intended them to strengthen.

A bit like bureaucrats and administrators, I found myself thinking.  

Usury, Lust, and Power

 

Chorus:  

    Waste and void.  Waste and void.  And darkness on the face of the deep.

    Has the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?

    When the Church is no longer regarded, not even opposed, and men have forgotten

    All gods except Usury, Lust, and Power.

    - T.S. Eliot, from The Rock, VII

The Storm Harvest

The storm came late in the night on a Thursday, as I settled into bed.  The rain drummed heavy against the roof and spattered windblown against the windows, and the thunder went from a distant grumbling to sharp, angry, near relentless percussion.   Then the torrent grew stronger, and the howling roar strengthened, and the rain was going near sideways.  Following several spectacular claps and flashes, there was the familiar metallic belch of a transformer blowing, and the power went down.

I had, just the morning before, managed to get our old generator up and running.  Running it for just over an hour every month keeps the electric start charged, and keeps the gas from going bad, so I do that the first of every month.  On the first day of September, the little Honda had growled to life easily enough, but then sputtered and died just ten seconds later, after which it refused to start.  I realized the likely culprit: I'd forgotten to put stabilizer in the gas I'd gotten at the beginning of the summer.  The carb was clogged, again.  So I treated the fuel in the tank, let it set for a day, and prayed that this would solve the problem.

It did, thankfully, as the cacophonous storm that had just knocked the power out came before a day when the heat index was expected to hit 102 F.

But the task I'd left undone, despite having noted its likely necessity, was shoring up my little Fuji apple tree.  The branches on the south-facing side of the tree were heavy with fruit, but there was pretty much nothing on the other side.  "That," I thought to myself on more than one occasion, "could be a problem in a storm."

Which it was.  Looking out to a garden illumined by the strobing staccato of lightning, I could see that the tree had toppled in a seventy mile an hour gust.  "Oy," I thought to myself, lamenting the potential loss of a fine, productive tree.  "I'll check on that in the morning."

The next morning, I was busy with my usual post-storm routine.  I ran extension cords, got the generator purring, plugged in the coffee maker, then walked the dog through the quiet of a debris-littered neighborhood.  Upon my return, I transferred the coffee to a thermos, then hooked up the fridge to the generator.  I closed the south-facing blinds to reduce heat load, then plugged in a fan and an extension strip so's my waking family could charge their devices.  Coffee, refrigeration, cooling, and light?  Done.

Now, out to the fallen apple tree.  Inspecting it, I noted that the trunk was intact, and the root ball hadn't even been pulled fully from the soil.  As falls go, it was a minor one.  I'd looked up strategies for helping young trees survive being downed, and things looked promising if I acted quickly.

I got a five gallon bucket, which I filled up with dozens of nearly-ready apples.  They weren't quite as sweet or as crisp as they would have been three weeks later, but they were still tasty, as good as most store-boughten fruit.

Then I dug a couple of steel stakes out of my shed, placed them, and gently pulled the tree upright.  I secured it to the stakes with rope, being sure to both protect the bark and leave some slack for movement, as storms were again in the forecast for later that day.  The ground was still moist, and the tree took easily to being righted, so there seemed a good chance it might survive.

In the kitchen later that morning, I tended to the apples, cleaning and sorting them for storage and use.

A storm will shape and focus our lives when it arrives.  But it's better if we've done the work to prepare for it before that day comes.

An Ill and Gilded Wind

I was on my way back from picking up groceries when it caught my eye.

It was a golden car, a little stumpy and awkwardly proportioned, as if an otherwise sleek sedan had been compressed front to back.  The golden wheel covers gave it a cartoonish appearance, as if the wheels were wildly outsided.   As I sat stopped at a traffic light, this peculiar car crossed in front of me, turning left.  The driver, a young casually dressed Black man, was sitting in the driver's seat, looking down at a tablet.  Not once did he bother to look up.

His inattention to his driving didn't matter or alarm me, because I recognized the car.  It was a self-driving Cybercab, the latest product from Tesla.  They're being beta-tested now in a number of metropolitan areas, and might be on our streets by next year.  The final version will lack a couple of things we generally expect in a car:  1) A steering wheel and 2) Pedals.  They'll be hailable through a Tesla Robotaxi app, which will send a robot car to your house to drive you wherever you wish to go.  Or perhaps they'll just be your car, given that the regulatory environment now is a little spotty.

Full Self Driving is actually fairly sophisticated, and given the startling incompetence of many human drivers, I'm not quite as alarmed about the prospect of machine mind driver safety as some.  With that said, the reason I love driving is the act of driving, and the idea of cars that require no meaningful engagement or input from me just feels drab and joyless.  Yay.  More time to stare at our phones.

More on my mind is this: there are roughly two million Americans who rely on ridesharing or taxi-driving for their livelihoods.  Tesla's stated goal is to produce two million of these gleaming bot-taxis every single year, doing to ride sharing what ride sharing did to cab-driving.

Back in the day, I drove a Falls Church Yellow Cab for a while, having gone through the relatively demanding process of getting my golden Fairfax county "hacker's" license.  Note:  this was before GPS, before cell phones, back when you found your way to pick up a fare by reading a map.  Was it the best job ever?  It was not.  But it paid the bills for a season.

Normally, I'm psyched when I encounter a new car, particularly one that's...for now...rare.  It's like seeing your first Model T, or your first VW Bug.  

But as the quants, tech-bros, and equity-class come up with more and more ways to take work away from us, while their faux-moralist political enablers hypocritically curse the unemployed for their laziness, this brazen AI chariot arrives like an ill and gilded wind.

Okra Hospitality

The first part of the growing season this year wasn't exactly stellar.

The absence of rain in the MidAtlantic, coupled with twitchy temperature shifts?  My garden got confused.  Among the disappointments was the poky growth of my okra, which just didn't seem particularly motivated to do much of anything.  My first round of planting did nothing at all, even after I scored and soaked those dark ball bearing seeds, even though I waited until the soil was nice and warm.  The second round was a little more vital, but leisurely.  It came up, and rather than the startling rush skyward I'd seen in prior years, it took its sweet time.  

Now, though, it's finally getting close to shoulder high.  The coming of regular soaking rains and the end of drought conditions means my whole garden is happier, and those beautiful flowers and the resultant pods are starting to pop.  I've got to be out there pretty much every morning with a steel bowl, snipping and clipping, to ensure that I catch the fast growing seedpods before they get huge and woody and inedible.

Okra pods flash-freeze brilliantly, making them remarkably easy to gather and store long-term.  They don't need to be blanched, just lined up on a sheet pan and set in the freezer for a few hours, before transferring 'em into a gallon sized storage bag.   I could have okra enough to fuel regular meals of gumbo and bhindi masala for months, gallons and gallons of tasty nutty nutritious n'gombo, a chest freezer full of it.

But that's not the goal.  First, because I'm far and away the biggest okra fan in my family.  Mom likes a bit of classic batter-fried okra on occasion, being a Southern girl and all.  Rache likes bhindi masala, and is OK with gumbo, but...you know.  One okra-based meal on infrequent occasion is more than plenty in my house.  Sigh.

Second, because there are folks out there who do love it, who come from warmer-clime cultures...South Asian, Asian, African, and South American...where it's a staple.  So rather than harvesting to the edge of my field, I grow my okra with the intention of sharing much of it.  I put three-quarters of a pound or so of it at a time into nice breathable paper bags, write "OKRA" on the bags in a blocky hand-scrawled script, and take it to church with me.

Upon arrival, I'll place that bag or bags into my congregation's Little Free Produce Stand, which sets welcoming right next to our Little Free Pantry.  I wasn't sure, at first, if I'd have takers.  Okra does have a reputation amongst folks who haven't discovered the right ways to prepare it.  

But I needn't have worried.  Agricultural workers and lawn crews, day laborers and the folks who care for our elderly?  They know what to do with ki ngombo.  This last Sunday, for example, I set the bag out, walked the ten yards to my office, and as I was opening the door, an old SUV pulled up to the pantry.  What did those folks take?  The bag of ocra.  

It's a way of being generous and hospitable to the wayfaring strangers who find themselves laboring in a strange land.  Hospitality is, after all, one of the core Biblical virtues, a fundamental requirement of Torah and a bedrock non-negotiable moral imperative in the Gospel.  It's particularly good to offer up that grace now, in a nation that's increasingly forgotten that the Lord God, Creator of the Universe judges the soundness of our souls by such things.

The Names of the Dead

I whisper over to myself the way of loss, the names of the dead.  One by one, we lose our loved ones, our friends, our powers of work and pleasure, our landmarks, the days of our allotted time.  One by one, the way we lose them, they return to us and are treasured up in our hearts.  Grief affirms them, preserves them, sets the cost.  Finally a man stands alone, scoured and charred like a burnt tree, having lost everything and (at the cost only of its loss) found everything, and is ready to go.

Now I am ready.

-  Wendell Berry, from Jayber Crow, p. 353