Gratitude-Tastes Like Health

Content warning: Recent events involving hate speech

Thanks giving

I am feeling very conflicted by thanksgiving this year. As I've discussed before, I feel like holidays centered around forgetting/rearranging the truth of what Europeans have done to American Indigenous people are awkward at best. The American continent was won, in part, by genocide and brute force against the Native peoples of this land. This is a constant, recurring battle and it continues at the Standing Rock encampment today. For my part, I have made a modest donation to Standing Rock.

PartnerPenguin brought to my attention a science fiction retelling of Thanksgiving that I really like. Hope you do too.

Conversely, I also am in love with the idea of setting aside a day to be grateful. I have a personal (albeit lazy at times) practice of writing out three things I am grateful for each day. For my birthday this year, I asked everyone who posted on my Facebook timeline to tell me one thing they were grateful for in the past year. Really amazing things have happened in my friends lives, from just being in a better place than where they were before to having babies and excelling in their careers. I think setting aside a day for people to come together for the express purpose of sharing what they are grateful and thankful for is an amazing practice. If you're comfortable, I would love to hear one thing you're grateful for this year.


I just wish it wasn't so interwoven into the death and sorrows of other humans.

Empathy Experiments

Perhaps to no one's surprise giving out free hugs landed me with a free illness. w00t. It is this weird chest-cold thing unlike any I've had in the past. So far I've been mildly out-of-it sick for 8 days. I think I'm finally on the mend today, but if it gets worse again I'll go to Urgent Care this weekend.

Due to this illness I have limited my interactions with folks, particularly at my synagogue because there are people in that group who have compromised immune systems. It is really really challenging to not be able to receive hugs when I really really want hugs.

It seems every week since the election has brought some fresh trauma. This week's been no exception with CNN's headline fuckup. That clip really rattled me. It rattled me, in part because I spent much of the day looking at news websites; trying to compare and contrast their content. Turns out, it doesn't matter how you slant it, traumatizing words are still traumatizing.

With Facebook's recent words on fake news, and their emotional manipulation experiment, I've been far more critical about my news consumption. I find NPR to have good coverage, and to be pretty reasonable on their reporting. Recently I've been exploring CBS and ABC. What is your approach?

I feel that part of the problem is the normalization of hate-speech in mainstream media. I feel like I vaguely knew that people hate Jews but I have been shielded, very intentionally, my whole life from such people. I really need to credit both my parents for that. I have been a lot more aware of hate speech and actions against LGBTQ+ folks. Yet until this week it has not been personal. I am a straight passing bisexual Jewish woman who does not come across as anything but generic white woman. I am intentional about not affiliating myself to the wide world as being Jewish or queer. But all of a sudden, I feel so exposed. So vulnerable. And so scared.

As a form of protest that I feel comfortable with, I have been preparing my house to be a respite for my marginalized friends. I have gotten rid of tons of clutter, that made my home feel more full than necessary, and made me feel like my house was 'unpresentable', a feeling I've struggled with since childhood. Cleaning, especially cleaning areas that have not seen the light of day in some time, feels very productive.

I am grateful to myself for expending my energy in this manner as we have already hosted the first friend in need. Several of my friends are beginning to experience attacks against them for being their true, authentic selves. I hope that my house can continue to be a haven for them, even if it just a place to read quietly. Maybe this is not as grandiose a gesture as going around giving out free hugs, but for right now it's what I can manage while sick.

Recipe: Soup That Tastes Like Health

As part of my healing process, PartnerPenguin and I invented a new kind of soup. Here is one VERY me recipe so maybe you can make it for yourself or your loved ones when they get sick. A helpful note is that we get produce that is often irregularly shaped so I will give size measurements based on my hands. I have small hands.

Ingredients: 
1 large onion (fills both my hands when held), diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 small or 1 large carrot, diced
3 branches of celery, diced
Olive Oil to cover the bottom of a pan (2-3 Tbsp)
Pinch salt
Fresh ginger root, 2 knuckles in length
4 cups broth (we use 1 Tbsp Better Than Bullion Chicken with 4 c. boiling water)
5-6 pestels of saffron (don't ask, we just had it lying around)
pinch of coriander
1 sweet potato, two fists wide, 1/2-1 in pcs
1/2 a handful of fresh parsley, chopped
1 yellow zucchini, whatever shape/size you want
1 green zucchini, same
1 freakishly large radish (fist size) or small batch of normal sized radishes
Green onion stalks, cut up for garnish

Preparation:

Add oil to the pan and warm so water dances when shpritzed. Add onion, garlic, carrot and celery. (We were experimenting with how lazy we could be and still have a good product.) Add pinch salt and turn over constantly, sweating the onions. Add pinch coriander and the saffron. Continue turning over ingredients regularly. Should develop a nice golden hue.

With the ginger: peel as best you can and cut in half. Cut into the pieces without breaking them apart so there is lots of surface area but only 2 pieces to fish out. You will thank me for this. Any other way of putting ginger in soup and you wind up with a mouthful of ginger.

Add the ginger to the pot.
Add the broth/bullion.
Add the sweet potato. Probably add some more water because 4 cups isn't enough to cover the whole thing.

Add the zucs, parsley and radishes. Make sure most of the ingredients are covered with water.
Bring to a boil, then lower to simmer.

Simmer for about 2 episodes of Steven Universe (25 minutes).

Soup is done when sweet potato is soft. Garnish with green onions and a pinch of salt if you prefer. Tastes like health!!

Music

And to close out, here is a performance that always makes me smile. Watch some, watch all, and dance. ^___^ Plus, everything is better with a glockenspiel!!

Free Hugs

::hugs::

::deep breath::

I am going to start this blog again. I have been in hiding for some time, trying to heal and trying to figure myself out. But I feel like things have gotten to a point where I need to be seen again, heard again and connected again.

My struggle over the past 9 months of unemployment has been one of identity and self discovery. Coming away from TLoTH, I felt like I didn't belong. To be honest, I'm still don’t understand where I can find work that treats me with assumed competence, respect as an equal and where I know they will acknowledge my contributions.

Since the election I have gone back to doing something I haven’t done in a very long time: holding a sign that says “Free Hugs” and giving people hugs. It started on election day and since then I’ve been mostly standing in front of the City Hall of Key Route City. This act of resistance and protest contrasts many other folks very legitimate decision to march en mass. Don’t get me wrong, I am angry. I am hurt. I am afraid. But I also know that I have the capacity for empathy and compassion.

Part of what inspired me to write today was a conversation I had last night with some friends. We touched on the idea that certain sections of liberals are having difficulty communicating with people in opposition to themselves.

This is a similar issue I have noticed with academic scientists. There is a distance from beginner’s mind, a distance from legitimizing the other people’s perspective that exists among many scientists. In science, there are hierarchies of who is entitled to an opinion. A professor or a senior scientist has more publications on a topic and therefore their opinion on the subject matters more than a novice. This creates a community where individuals are inherently unequal and to become “equal” one must sacrifice their life for a few years to obtain a PhD to hold a legitimate opinion. There is also a competitiveness built into the nature of (limited) scientific funding where there are “winners” and people with “better” ideas.

Scientific knowledge, and subsequently expertise (as the knowledge required to gain expertise is limitedly distributed) are quantifiable, known entities. Everything is count-able. As Brene Brown refers to in her Huston TEDx talk, “If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.”

And I use Dr. Brown specifically because what I have been thinking and acting and talking about the most recently has been empathy. (She has a great video differentiating between sympathy and empathy.) Empathy is less quantifiable than what people studying hard science tend to be willing to accept. It is not quantifiable, so therefore much of the scientific community pretends it doesn’t exist.

The big sticking point is that there are no "winners" or "better" with empathy or compassion. People outside the scientific community hold opinions and do not understand/get upset when they are dismissed by academics. People within the scientific community tend to just assume ignorance and discount what those outside academia say. It is fine to discredit an idea on the basis of merit within academia, because everyone in the community agrees upon what "merit" means and agrees that certain proof is required for an idea to hold merit. Outside of this community, however, many others feel like their opinions are equally valid and just dismissed by the elite because they're haughty and full of themselves.

In my view, empathy is the only way. Compassion for people who are scared for their lives, for the lives of their families, for the future of their children is what is currently needed. There is also compassion needed for those celebrating. The people who wholeheartedly supported the President-Elect into office need to be embraced as well. Reminding everyone that those around them are human is important. When we all know those around us are human, we will be better equipped to stand up if/when violence or hate-actions occur.

In order to hold this view, I have need to acknowledge my own privilege. PartnerPenguin has a job that ensures we stay afloat. My basic needs are met every day. I am working solidly at the third rung in Maslow’s triangle. I feel shame in my comfort but also power in being able to give out hugs on a regular basis. (Also to note: I am kind but not stupid. I have steel toed boots when I go out in case anything goes awry.) My decision to act non-violently and in my own time is somewhat part of my upbringing and somewhat due to my current position of privilege.

So that’s how I’ve been this past week. What have you been up to?

And, as usual, a song. Today it’s Of Montreal’s “It’s Different for Girls”