slowly she turned

Living the Slow life in North Carolina

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  • Sunday morning coffee pot post

    Actually, I wrote a long one yesterday that I lost and didn’t have the heart or the patience to rewrite it.

    We are in the middle of the holiday season, which brings out the imp in me, because I love to bug people who love to shop and who hate the phrase “Happy Holidays,” so I try to use it as often as possible.

    My favorite holiday of the season is Festivus, celebrated on Dec. 23. From Wikipedia, here is the story of the origin of Festivus according to Frank Costanza.

    Frank Costanza: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.

    Cosmo Kramer: What happened to the doll?

    Frank Costanza: It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born: a Festivus for the rest of us!

    Kramer: That must have been some doll.

    Frank Costanza: She was.

    Excuse me while I get a tissue. This lovely story gets to me every time.

    In our house, after the airing of the grievances, we have to pin Miss Jazz, which makes it a fairly stress-free ritual.

    I have not yet erected a Festivus pole, but there are actually such things for sale. Yes, even the sacred holiday of Festivus has been sullied with commercialization. I guess I could buy one of those leg lamps to illuminate it.

    I would love to celebrate Buy Nothing Christmas if the others in my family would go for it. Mostly, they have, but we still buy presents for my mother, my grand-nephew, and my brother-in-law. Two of these have been covered.

    I don’t mind buying a perfect, unexpected gift for someone but the obligation of having to buy something for somebody on a particular day no matter what really bugs the crap out of me. Especially if they are difficult to buy presents for. My mother usually is a toughie, and will let you know if your present is not up to snuff. It’s more of a respect thing with her, I think. She grew up in the Depression and gifts mean more to her. Fortunately, she told us exactly what she wants this year.

    Gifts to charity don’t do it in these cases. Personally, I would love a gift to a worthy organization like Heifer International or Oxfam in my honor.

    When people stress over the dozens of gifts that they “have” to buy each Christmas, I thank God that my family has never emphasized “stuff” at Christmas. As kids, we got presents but never loads of stuff. We would much rather get together over a good meal, sometimes in a nice place at the beach, than worry about shopping for each other. We are not rich, but we know that we are blessed, and that is enough.

  • I made a very tiny batch of paper last night – only six small sheets but that’s better than nothing! It didn’t bother me so I think if I use a small vat so that I don’t have to carry a heavy container of pulp then pulling and couching the sheets should be okay. I even found that I could wash out my equipment in a dishpan and toss the rinse water outside or in the houseplants, so I will be able to do it inside on cold days too. I can press the sheets with weight on top of cardboard on the floor and now that I have this drymount press my paper is flat and even and I can dry it in 15 minutes. Making small batches will be easier on my back anyway. So I’m pretty happy about this.

    I think that I’m going to try acupuncture for the pain in my hand if it takes a turn for the worse but actually last night was the first time in a while that it didn’t wake me up in the middle of the night, so maybe it is getting better.

    I haven’t tried bookbinding since Journalfest but will give that a go some time in the next few days. Thank goodness I’m starting to see some progress!

  • A rant.

    Oof. Just ordered a new HP laptop from HP online. I think that I’m getting a good deal, and I hope that this laptop lasts until I get it, but man, was that a frustrating experience. For one thing, the website froze up by the time I was ready to order it. So I gave them a call. Now, I fully expected a long wait to get a rep, but surprisingly, the wait was not long. It was the order with the rep that took forever. At first I really thought that I had a garbled connection. And she spoke English reasonably well. I’m not so naive to think that I’m going to get an American on the phone, since our free-trade loving politicians on the left and right sent our mid-range jobs overseas.

    So, this woman not only is trying to upsell me (expected and shut down quickly), not only immediately trying to put my email down for a newsletter, not only immediately quotes me the most expensive shipping rate, but she is SLOWWWWWWWW. I tell her that I don’t have much time, I get off the phone a couple of times to take care of somebody quickly, I watch as a order that I should be able to rattle off in five minutes takes 35 minutes to complete. She repeats back every letter in every word slowwwwwly. E as in Edward. S as in Sam. She needs my credit card’s customer service phone number. What? Why? She puts it in wrong and spends five minutes figuring that out. I threaten to cancel my order if we don’t wrap it up quickly after 30 minutes of this.

    The best part was this bit which sent me over the edge.

    “How will you pay?”
    “Visa.”
    “Papul?”
    “What? Visa.”
    “Papul?”
    “What are you saying? Visa!”
    “Papul?”
    “No, not Paypal! VISA!”

    Jesus. This is why I hate politicians. Democrats and Republicans let business do this to us. It’s their fault mental illness is on the rise.

    Thank God I no longer have to do business with AT&T, but I learned how to deal with their customer service. I put on my broadest Southern drawl and said, “I need to tawk to sumbody in the U.S.A.” And I was surprised when it worked, but it did!

    Anyway, I hope to have a new laptop in a couple of weeks that will be able to handle the 21st century. I’d like to have a CD/DVD drive again, and be able to open more than one web page at a time, and play iTunes. I got out under $500 including shipping and tax. It’s my Christmas present to myself. I checked the website, since she didn’t send me an email with the order details as she promised, and it looks okay.

  • Saturday a.m. coffee pot post

    I picked these in the Back Forty yesterday afternoon from the vines that I didn’t pull down in October. Can you imagine how many I would have gotten if I hadn’t picked every slightly filled out bean and pulled out half the vines then? You can never quite be sure what the right gardening thing to do is in North Carolina in October. A couple of years ago I picked an eggplant on December 1.

    Now I’m trying to decide what to take to this potluck tonight. I have asparagus left from the casserole I made for Thanksgiving, and I could buy mushrooms and recreate that. Or I could add butterbeans and field peas from my freezer to these fresh butterbeans. Or I could buy more goat cheese to add to this really delicious farro salad. I plan to make a big pot of chili for the week ahead.

    Other than that, I’m reading a Dennis Lehane novel, loving my kittehs, working on photography projects for this online class, and binding some books over the weekend. I’m thinking about thawing out some paper pulp and making a small batch of paper tomorrow. What are you doing?

    Guido was chasing his tail, and now he is chasing Lucy back and forth through the house. You’d never know that he was an old man. Theo decided to join in the fun, which effectively stopped the game. How sad. Miss Jazz hisses at everybody, including me. But they’re getting there. It’s much better than it was – they all sleep together which says a lot about the progress.

    Here’s a couple more photos from the beach. The pampas grass has naturalized through the area between the dunes and the houses.

    Added much later from 2021:

    My mother was on the walk with me. “Take a picture of that. Take a picture of that. Take a picture of that.” So I took a picture of her.

  • A Sunset Thanksgiving, 2009

    My sister hosted our family in a rental oceanfront house at Sunset Beach this Thanksgiving.

    When asked what was the favorite thing he had on his plate, my grand-nephew Jake said “butterbeans!”

    That’s my boy. He’s a bit of a hambone.

    We met a new member of the family – Casey, a rescued Sheltie.

    We didn’t get to stay long, but it was quality time.

    This is everybody but me and Casey.

  • Buy Nothing Day

    Take the Plunge:
    You know what they say: a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. You feel that things are falling apart – the temperature rising, the oceans churning, the global economy heaving – why not do something? Take just one small step toward a more just and sustainable future. Make a pact with yourself: go on a consumer fast. Lock up your credit cards, put away your cash and opt out of the capitalist spectacle. You may find that it’s harder than you think, that the impulse to buy is more ingrained in you than you ever realized. But you will persist and you will transcend – perhaps reaching the kind of epiphany that can change the world.

    BUY NOTHING TODAY.

  • Tomorrow we’re going to head down to Sunset Beach, where my sister rented an oceanfront duplex and is hosting Thanksgiving for my family members. We’ll swing by my mother’s house on the way and pick her up. I don’t have to take much – I made the asparagus casserole that has become my holiday dish, and I’m bringing fruit and marinated goat cheese from Goat Lady Dairy and two different tasty dips from Zaytoon. Mama will bring cornbread dressing and butterbeans and probably a half dozen other things including desserts if I guess right.

    The weather is supposed to be beautiful on Thanksgiving Day, which is good since we’ll have to come right back. Sandy has to work on Friday. If I really want to I could probably catch a ride back with my sister on Saturday, but I think that I’ll come back with Sandy. I’d just as soon be at home right now anyway. I have a lot of artwork to do, and Mr. Theo needs to be scratched.

    Don’t forget – buy what you need tomorrow because Friday is Buy Nothing Day. It amazes me when I hear people complain about having to get up on Friday so early to go shopping. Seriously. Do they not know that they have a choice? Just because something’s on sale doesn’t mean that you have to buy it. I swear it is like zombieland out there. People would rather suffer than change or think for themselves.

  • Sunday sweep

    I don’t know why it is so much more compelling this year, but the leaves have really caught my attention in a big way. There are many varieties of oaks and maples around here, and the differences between them fascinate me. I bought some gelatin yesterday and hope to spend some time after Thanksgiving making gelatin prints.

    Something else leafy has come to my attention through the papermaking list – gingko leaves make great paper. Cooking for a few hours in soda ash, beating with a mallet, and a quick trip through the blender will produce a nice pulp all by themselves. Since I’m lucky enough to pass a gingko tree on my walk to work, I’ve been gathering leaves. It is a female tree, and what they say about gingko fruit is true – it smells extremely nasty. Gingkos are so interesting – they are ancient, totally in a class by themselves and have gender. I’ve pressed some leaves for future use in monoprints and embedding in paper too.

    Theo is now in my lap. He is a sweetheart, but he is a normal cat too. I’ve accused him of faking the angelic personality to infiltrate our home only to release his inner demons after settling in. Among his sins: stalking and attacking Sir Guido, sticking his butt in our faces when we sleep, scratching the furniture, and pawing at the mini-blinds behind the bed to wake us up when he wants something. Actually, these things don’t happen every day, but I just thought I’d let everyone know that he ain’t no saint. He does play and cuddle with Lucy, and all the cats are as relaxed around him as they are with each other, which doesn’t mean that they are good buddies, but they aren’t hostile either. He is a real pleasure, other than the occasional sins, which we are training him out of, hopefully. He wasn’t all over me constantly yesterday, so I take that as a good sign that he now feels at home.

    When I wasn’t food shopping, cooking or doing laundry yesterday, I finished up preparing the pages for my next journal. I decided to save the mining camp book cover and maps for another book idea, and used a 1964 “Geography of the World for Young Readers” that matched the colors of my pages nicely. It was almost in new condition and had maps on the inside covers. I collaged the book jacket and other maps on a few pages and will bind the cover on just as it is with a tape binding. I think that I have a woven inkle band that will do nicely. Binding the book is my favorite part but it is hard on my hand to hold anything for long. Once I punch the holes for the bindings, I will have two books ready to be bound.

    I also printed out a lot of small photos to go into my little Alaska travel journal and had fun pasting them in. I started to make a larger altered book that would hold this journal in a niche in the cover, and have larger pages to hold brochures from the trip and niches for pebbles inside. I have some great glacial pebbles and quartz crystals that I gathered at the Skagway River. The crystals are very delicate and break apart easily.

    I wish that I could make paper. The weather is still fine enough that I could wash out my equipment with a hose. I have a plethora of already made pulp filling up a small freezer, and Charlie brought me okra stalks and more artichoke heads. I can make paper inside, but it is the cleaning that is the issue – you can’t wash this stuff down a sink without clogging up your drains. I know that my hand will not be able to take the pressure of holding the mould and deckle and couching. I feel very impatient about the slow progress of my healing.

    Speaking of the weather, last month I picked all the green tomatoes and butterbeans of any meaningful size and began pulling out the plants until my hand stopped me. Now I’m finding relatively large green tomatoes and butterbeans that are filled out on the remaining plants. We did have a frost in October but apparently not in my back yard, which has its own weird little microclimate. I have tomato plants merrily growing out of the compost I laid down in one of the beds. I’m so tempted to dig them up and pot them inside for the winter, mainly because I am curious as to what they will become. We have enough broccoli to have for a side dish a couple of times a week. This is the broccoli that I grew by seed and planted this past spring, so it has taken up a lot of valuable space in the garden. I’m glad that it is finally producing but it will be only planted in the winter beds on the shadier side next year.

  • Uh-oh, organic certification woes again

    Received this press release from the Cornucopia Institute, one of the best corporate watchdogs for organic issues. What makes me want to weep is Organic Valley’s entry into the fray on the wrong side. OV products are my go-to when I can’t find local dairy products that come up to my humanely-raised standards. GMA and OTA don’t surprise me at all – the Organic Trade Association has not been on the side of consumers for a long time.

    11/19/09
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    Contact: Mark Kastel, 608-625-2042

    Food Manufacturers and Organic Industry Lobbyists Circle the Wagons
    Defend Organic Scofflaw in Court to Protect Corporate Takeover of Organics

    CORNUCOPIA, WI – Two powerful lobby groups in the food industry, The Grocery Manufacturers of America and the Organic Trade Association, recently intervened as friends of the court in a federal consumer class-action lawsuit accusing the nation’s largest supplier of private-label organic milk of consumer fraud. In what has been described as “the largest scandal in the history of the organic industry” USDA investigators, in 2007, found that Aurora Dairy had willfully violated federal organic standards. However, industry lobbyists are now concerned that convicting Aurora will set a dangerous legal precedent. Aurora bottles private-label organic milk for Wal-Mart, Costco, Target, Safeway and many other grocery chains.

    In August 2007 Bush administration officials were widely criticized for overruling career staff at the USDA and instead of decertifying Aurora as staff had recommended, banning it from organic commerce, the corporate dairy was allowed to continue in business under a one-year probation. Now agribusiness lobbyists are concerned that citizens prevailing in court, alleging fraud, will set a precedent necessitating large corporations to incur added expenses to more carefully check the sources and credibility of their organic suppliers.

    “Due diligence by food manufacturers and retailers is the heart and soul of what maintaining the integrity of the organic label is about,” said Mark Kastel, Codirector of The Cornucopia Institute, the farm policy research group that initially exposed the corruption taking place at Aurora.

    In an internal document, the Organic Trade Association told its membership that, “OTA is taking this action in order to protect consumers’ access to organic products and the guarantee by organic farmers, producers and processors that their valid organic certificate fully demonstrates that their product is considered organic when marketed.” Lobbyists from the Grocery Manufacturers also were concerned that if the consumers prevail in this legal matter it would become, according to a copy written article in Sustainable Food News, “prohibitively expensive to continue developing organic products.”

    “This type of rhetoric is just a stick in the eye to the ethical participants in this industry who make it a point, in their everyday course of business, to judiciously assure that their products meet not only the letter but the spirit of the organic law,” added Kastel.

    Just like Aurora Dairy, Wal-Mart and Target were both found to have misrepresented organic products in the marketplace and were the subject of separate USDA investigations.

    “Yes, it does cost more money to legally and ethically participate in organic commerce, said Will Fantle, Research Director for Cornucopia. “One of the reasons that big-box retailers are able to undercut their competition on price is they refuse to hire, train and adequately compensate management and frontline employees who know anything about the organic law.”

    Aurora produces private label, or storebrand milk, for about 20 of the largest grocery chains in the United States.

    In an ironic twist to this story Organic Valley, the nation’s second-largest organic milk marketer and a cooperative, is receiving criticism for its underwriting of a brief supporting Aurora’s position. The farmer-owned cooperative provided the financial support allowing the Organic Trade Association to file its amicus brief opposing the class-action lawsuit brought by consumers in over 40 states. The consumers allege that they were defrauded by the Colorado-based Aurora Dairy corporation.
    >
    > The news of Organic Valley’s involvement was a shock to some of its co-op members including Kevin Engelbert, a nationally recognized organic leader and dairy farmer from Nichols, New York. “Can this possibly be true? Has OV made a pact with the devil? I know OTA is controlled by the big money interests,” said Engelbert. “The 14 willful violations [by Aurora] prove that some organic certificates aren’t enough to demonstrate that a product is organic when marketed. The ‘organicness’ of questionable products must be challenged when necessary to maintain organic integrity.”

    The Cornucopia’s Kastel said he was “flabbergasted” that a cooperative owned by family farmers would stick up for a corporation at the heart of the biggest scandal in history in the organic food industry and he characterized Aurora as a “bad actor” and “bad aberration” in the industry where consumers can generally trust the organic label.

    “Aurora’s factory farm milk has injured the vast majority of Organic Valley’s own farmer-members by depriving them of markets for their milk and unfairly driving down retail pricing. Earlier this year the cooperative cut the pay price to its members and required its farmers to reduce production because of a milk surplus in the marketplace — a surplus that would be much smaller if Aurora legitimately managed its dairy cows like Organic Valley’s ethical dairy farmers,” Kastel added.

    Cornucopia analysis, and USDA research, suggests that as much as a third of the nation’s organic milk supply comes from giant factory farms. Another organic factory farm operator, Dean Foods, the country’s largest milk marketer, and an OTA and GMA member, has been widely criticized in the organic community for procuring much of its milk for its Horizon brand from mega-dairies allegedly breaking the same rules as Aurora.

    “If you connect the dots here you have to wonder why the management at Organic Valley is getting into bed with Aurora, Dean Foods and the most powerful lobbyists representing corporate agribusiness,” Kastel lamented. “Not only would Organic Valley membership benefit from Aurora being banned from organics, but if the lobbyists concerns are true, and some of the largest corporate players that have been playing fast and loose with the rules decide to exit the organics, that will only pump up their brand’s market share.”

    The friend of the court brief, opposing a lower court ruling, which was funded by Organic Valley, expresses fears about a precedent should consumers be compensated for any fraud committed by Aurora. Melissa Hughes, an in-house lawyer for Organic Valley, told the editor of Sustainable Food News, that if the appeal is upheld “it could have vast implications on retailers, processors, handlers, and ultimately consumers.”

    Analysts at Cornucopia strongly refute the contention that the Aurora matter would leave all organic marketers open to tort complaints by consumers. “Obviously, there is strong evidence for these consumers to believe they were defrauded by Aurora and the supermarket chains,” Kastel said. “This is an exceptional situation not indicative of the industry as a whole.”

    Kastel cited the fact that Cornucopia sent certified letters to every one of Aurora’s retailer customers informing them that the reputation of their store’s label was at risk and encouraging them to take action. Only two marketers, the Publix supermarket chain in Florida and United Natural Foods International, the largest organic food distributor in the country, did the due diligence necessary and switched suppliers.

    “The organic certification documents alone are not enough if evidence is brought to a marketer’s attention that some kind of improprieties are taking place,” Fantle added. “There is always the possibility that collusion or incompetence has taken place on the part of the supplier, certifier or the USDA.”

    A comprehensive investigative story that appeared in the pages of the Washington Post referenced the Aurora matter, and a cozy relationship between the powerful Washington lawyer and lobbyist for Aurora, Dean and the OTA, and the former director of the organic program at the USDA. Alleged malfeasance at the Department has sparked the interest of Congress and an expanded investigation is currently taking place by the Office of the Inspector General at the USDA.

    “Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 charging the USDA with preventing fraud; protecting the interests of ethical industry participants and consumers,” observed Cornucopia’s Kastel. “The obvious allegation here is that the regulatory branch, the USDA under the Bush administration, failed to properly enforce the law. It is appropriate for citizens who feel they were defrauded to seek a judicial remedy,” he added.
    – 30 –

    MORE:

    When the nation’s largest organic milk producer Aurora dairy, with five “factory style” farms, in Colorado and Texas, each milking thousands of cows, entered the marketplace in 2004 they proudly stated that they would make organic milk more “affordable.” What they didn’t tell their customers was that their products would be more affordable, allowing them to undercut competitors in the marketplace, because they wouldn’t go to the expense of meeting the strict federal regulations governing organic marketing.
    >
    > In 2007, after investigating legal complaints filed by Cornucopia about Aurora’s organic livestock practices, USDA staff concluded that Aurora had “willfully violated” 14 tenets of federal organic regulations. Aurora was found by federal investigators to have been illegally confining their cattle to feedlots, brought in conventional cattle that could not comply with organic regulations and, most seriously, selling milk labeled as “organic” that did not meet the legal requirements.

    In its formal letter to the company, USDA staff at the National Organic Program stated: “Due to the nature and extent of these violations, the NOP proposes to revoke Aurora Organic Dairy’s production and handling certifications under the NOP.”

    But the powerful Washington-based lobby of Covington in Burling, representing Aurora, worked with the Bush administration officials at the USDA to instead allow the $100 million corporation to continue in the organic business with a one-year probation and some modest changes to their operations

    The “sweetheart” settlement between Aurora and the USDA provoked a consumer led effort to seek justice in federal courts. Nineteen separate class action lawsuits were brought against Aurora and several national grocery retailers selling Aurora’s suspect organic milk including Wal-Mart, Target and Safeway. The lawsuits claiming consumer fraud were eventually consolidated into a single case in the federal district court in St. Louis. Earlier this year, federal court judge E. Richard Webber dismissed the lawsuit on procedural grounds. An appeal has since been filed seeking to bring the merits of the lawsuit, which have not been heard, back before the court.

    “OTA’s action, apparently backed by CROPP [Organic Valley], infuriates me,” said Kevin Engelbert. “I hope every person and organization that belongs to OTA drops their membership immediately.”

    The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit farm policy research group, is dedicated to the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community. Their Organic Integrity Project acts as a corporate and governmental watchdog assuring that no compromises to the credibility of organic farming methods and the food it produces are made in the pursuit of profit. The largest portion of its funding comes from individual members, mostly family-scale organic farmers. They can be found on the web at http://www.cornucopia.org.

  • I’m a bit typing impaired this week, since I decided to tape up two fingers on my left hand in an effort to speed up healing. The silliest things make my hand hurt, and some perfectly understandable things too. I need to be reined in.

    Yesterday I spent several wonderful hours painting watercolor papers with acrylics to make background pages for another larger journal. The book that I am upcycling for this journal is a guide to Colorado mining camps and towns. It has a lot of interesting hand-drafted maps in it. So for the rest of the pages I’m going to collage in some of the maps from the book and paint washes over them.

    After lifting up and out the heavy section of deck to get into the basement to check for flooding and change the filter in the furnace yesterday, Sandy and I have decided to get rid of the deck and make a patio of the large cement slab underneath. The deck is old and rotting and it is so difficult and unsafe to get to the basement that we don’t think it is worth it, and we don’t have the money to replace it. I had a hard time helping yesterday because of my hand and Sandy almost took out his knee falling down trying to do most of it on his own.