Nomads, Long Beach 2, CA (9/24/2023)

Welcome to my second posting that discusses our visit to the Long Beach and Los Angeles area. As of the writing today (9/24/2023), we finished with the trip to the aquarium and the yarn store (the Alamitos Bay Yarn Company). Donna was impressed by the wool store (they had some rare Dutch wool); and honestly the aquarium wasn’t bad. I have been to a few other aquariums and in my opinion the one in Baltimore is still the best; however, this one was absolutely good. The nice thing was that it concentrated its effort on the Pacific and had a lot of touch and feel stuff for kids. However, despite its great quality, it somehow conveyed its age (25 years-old).

We visited the Rancho Los Alamitos. This was a great place housing one of the oldest ranches on the west coast. We had a history talk and then wandered through the gardens. I was blown away by the Morton Bay fig (Ficus macrophylla) trees. These trees were enormous and had an impressive root base. We loved walking from the rose garden to the vegetable garden. Eventually we popped into a desert type garden, ending up in a more native garden with an artificial stream. It felt that we eventually needed to be kicked out because it was nearing closing time.

It blew me away on how may restaurants there were in the area. So what did we eat? Indonesian, Japanese (ramen), (south) Indian, Chinese, Korean (tofu soup), Cambodian and of course contemporary American. Moreover, we had some magnificent donuts; there are a lot of Asian owned donut stores in the area. I mentioned in my previous post, that we encountered a few (13 or 15) between the home and the church where the ordination took place. The most exotic was the Cambodian fermented fish stew that I had for dinner. Our daughter told us that many people she talks with never cook, but only eat out. I can believe it. There are so darn many different restaurants in the area, that I think you can eat out every day of the year within a 10-mile radius of where they live and never visit a place more than once.

General impressions? The area where the kids lived is very ethnically mixed. But they spoke about Cambodian, Mexican and other street gangs. There are a lot of Taco stands (legal and pop ups, most probably entrepreneurs that run a taco stand without a health department permit), and indication to me that some folks are probably unemployed and are earning a living this way and that the area is thriving. Here I am only guessing, but a taco stand beats being homeless, which we were constantly reminded of. On both sides of the block where my daughter lives had a homeless camp or at least a place where two or three homeless were living. One group had a children’s play pen. I did not see a kid in it, but I did not look very long, not wanting to be accused of staring. It just reminded me that children can also be homeless, no matter what age they are. I wrote a little about homelessness in my previous post. Finally, the smog. We did not experience it or were not bothered by it, but only noticed it when we drove into and away from the area.

A little more about the homelessness. Of course we saw the occasional person who missed out on admission to a mental institution, maybe a few illegal alien, entrepreneurs who can make more money panhandling than holding a regular job, or what might appear as a drug addict; however, I am sure that I was also running into folks who had been kicked out of their rental home or apartment because they could not keep up with the rising rental rates, or lost their jobs. I find it difficult to distinguish amongst them all and it is therefore difficult deciding who legitimately deserves a handout and who is going to abuse it. In other words, it is so difficult to show empathy and compassion. I am therefore trying to do that in this blog and make you all aware of it and show compassion and love for mankind. I do not believe we are being overtaken by homelessness, but this is a sign of what politicians argue about but do not want to compromise to everybody’s detriment. I’ll leave it at that for today, but let's resolve to be a little bit kinder and understanding towards each other.

At Los Ranchos Alomitos

At the rancho

The homeless behind our daughter's townhouse

At the yarn store

Are we part of a holobiont? (7/29/2023)

If you haven’t been living in a hole in the ground, you must have heard about the word or concept called microbiome. Microbiome is defined as the community of microorganisms that exists in a particular environment. These can include fungi, bacteria, other singular cellular organisms and even viruses. When we look at us humans these are our gut bacteria and everything else that is down or better in there. Moreover, it seems that even our hands, our body and every other part of our body have a unique microbiome. The microbiome on our left hand might even differ from that on our right hand. Being a baker, I listened to a podcast on sourdough breads and it seems that every sourdough baker has a microbiome on their hands that is unique to the sourdough starter they use.

The microbiome seems to be responsible for a lot of things in our life including gut health; our resistance to diseases; dementia at older age; and even our mental health. It appears we have more (micro)organisms in our gut microbiome than cells in our body. We are what is considered by some scientists a holobiont.

A holobiont is defined as an assemblage of a host and the many other species living in or around it, which together form a discrete ecological unit. In other words, we as individual humans and our microbiome together are holobionts. There is still some controversy about this concept of holobiont and even my spell checker does not know the word yet.

What medical science is slowly telling us is that if our microbiome is off, we get in all kinds of trouble. The simple issue maybe diarrhea or other stomach upset. It may include weight loss or conversely in folks who suffer from obesity. As I mentioned above, it seems that Alzheimer can even be linked to our microbiome being out of balance, or at least it can excel the mental decline or onset of dementia in some. We can change our microbiome with the food we eat, and this is where the concept of not “not every calorie is the same” comes from. We are hopefully also all learning about probiotics (fermented foods rule), prebiotics, and now even post-biotics. All parts of a healthy nutrition that is good for gut health. Folks with CDIF (or Clostridium difficilus), a very virulent bacterial infection may even require a fecal or poop transplant to get a healthy microbiome from someone else implanted in their gut. Which might be the only way to shake this disease.

Anyway, I want to stop here, and write more about the concept of holobiont. This idea, an assemblage of a host and other species living together in some form of harmony is interesting to me and to a lot of scientists. I think this is what makes it so darn controversial. One of the reasons is that if we look at it on a large scale, we can look at an island or even the Earth as a holobiont as well, and that everything living on this earth are part of that assemblage. Ah, we are quickly entering the world of Gaia and I think this is where the whole concept of holobiont runs into trouble. Gaia is more metaphysical; it seems to be more the believe in the divine personification of the Earth and the matriarch of all things in existence. Modern pagans believe Gaia is the Earth and she is the spiritual embodiment of the Earth. In other words, scientist that consider the Earth a holobiont are skating on thin ice and can be accused of being pagans or some other form of religious heretics.

However, the concept is an interesting one. Like our gut with diarrhea, the earth can also get or be out of balance when the assemblage of species gets out of balance. An interesting concept isn’t it? It is somewhat Malthusian, but I am beginning to believe that we are exceeding the carrying capacity of the earth; the carrying capacity is the number of individual humans the earth can safely handle before things go awry. In my eyes, we humans could be considered the E. coli of even CDIF of the Earth. There are just too many of us, and the Earth is sick! That is what I think we are seeing, global warming, the weather is going bonkers; everything seems out of balance. Even today there was a report that the gulf stream that keeps western Europe warm may be diminishing and put Europe in an eventual deep freeze. Strange days indeed! Have we reached the point of no return? I don’t know, only time will tell.

During our hike last week we encountered communities like this.  Although not a holobiont, the lichen on the rock are a perfect union of algae and fungi living together in perfect harmony.  In addition I just loved the community of plants.  This was in Grayson Highland State Park. 

 

Charlottesville (3/10/2023)

This week’s goodbye tour took me to Charlottesville. It has been a while. Our previous scheduler always complained that Charlottesville was so expensive for us to stay at, moreover, it was thrown in the western region of the state on our schedule, and it showed that we were having too many classes out west. I always tried to argue that the town is very central and could pull in a lot of students from everywhere. Luckily our new scheduler, Lee was easy to convince.

Truthfully, I think I was correct, the class pulled in students from Woodstock (VA), Hampton, Richmond, Culpeper, Appomattox, and the region around Charlottesville. It was good to have folks in the class that I had not seen in a while.

The nice thing was that I had a social calendar while in town. Usually during my travels, I am alone, and since I am somewhat of an introvert, I do not mind eating on my own in a restaurant and being alone. I love to people watch, or even maybe talk with folks next to me. Some trips I make with my colleague Doug, who might take over some of my classes when I retire in June. However, while I was alone on this trip, I had people to meet and talk to. The first evening I met with old friends from Newport News who moved to Charlottesville some 7 years ago. Then the first day of classes the guys from Albemarle County invited me to go out to lunch with them. That evening I met an ex-colleague for dinner. The second (which was the last day) I had lunch with a colleague who was driving through town after her appearance in traffic court nearby. Wow, what a life for a loner introvert.

I just realized that I did not take any photographs in Charlottesville this time around, so this blog will become a restaurant/hotel review. I basically have two main hotel chain brands I stay at; one is the Holiday Inn and the other the Hilton. While the Hilton is more luxurious, I find that some of the Holiday Inn allow dogs in their hotels. Since we are dog owners and now, we are in the process on buying a conversion van and are considering some serious (semi) RV-ing, I need to accumulate hotel points in a chain that allows me to bring dogs. You get it, I stayed at the Holiday Inn near the I-64 interstate highway. I have always liked the place, and it has only gotten better, except it has also gotten more crowded. So crowded in fact that it was difficult to find a parking spot. Reading about boondockers or folks that travel in RVs from free-to-free sites, I am wondering if there were a few staying here in the parking lot. Folks were having charcoal grills lit in the back of their trucks and having fun. More power to them for not getting caught by the hotel staff, if that was the case.

So where did I eat (I am not going to report on breakfast)? In order:

• The Beer Run
• Bodo’s Bagels
• Chang Thai
• Durty Nelly’s Pub

They were all different and all pretty good for different reasons. The Beer Run was difficult to find for an out-of-towner like me. There was hardly any signage and the parking appeared below the building, which I never found in the dark. As you can expect, beer was plentiful, and my eyes went to chicken pot pie. This was more or less a deconstructed chicken pot pie, but nonetheless very good. While their draft beer selection was decent, their bottled and canned beer selection was out of this world. When I mentioned to locals in my class that I ate there the night before, many told me that next time I need to try the nachos and the stout infused brownies.

I had eaten at Bodo’s before and it is still great, service is fast. I had their lox bagel. My only complaint is that it was messy. The cream cheese was a little runny.

Chang Thai was great. It appears to be a relatively new place. I actually have photographs of an inspection I did of the place when it was under construction. Good service, good food, at least what my friend and I had. I am a duck basil fanatic, so I could not skip that when I found it on the menu. They allowed us to sit there for two hours and catch up. No pressure.

Durty Nelly’s is something else. You step into the place, and it is dark. When your eyes get used to the place you figure out that it is a dive bar. The music of the day was some good old-fashioned blues: Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and alike. I was in heaven. I had a Reuben, and truthfully, it was so-so to OK, but one day, a few days after I am still alive. I got fed and I can tell you it was good. I would love to go back for a beer and just hang. The food was fair, but maybe dinner is better.

Again, no photographs this time, but all places I would go back to and visit again when I return to Charlottesville. But then there are so many other restaurants to try in this great town.

December 2022 (12/15/2022)

December: it is that time of the year again. Many of the “How to blog” websites tell you it is time to write a year in review post. Should I, or shouldn’t I? I am writing this as I am sitting in my hotel room in Lynchburg, under much better circumstances than my last visit to the area around the end of March. It was the same day we put our dog Jake to sleep, and I had a rough time driving and staying here. I drank and ate too much that evening, and it wasn’t even satisfying. Oh well, isn’t that the case that many drunks or overeaters feel afterwards? Did I learn anything from that? Tonight, I did, I just had one and a half beer and some nice Japanese food. Back in my room before 7 and now behind the keyboard.

While I am not sure if I will publish this post tonight or even during my stay here in Lynchburg tonight or tomorrow evening, I do feel compelled to write a little bit about the year and about life in general. Life this year has been good. We are back from COVID (although I read it is back in an upswing); we are wondering at times if we had it in June when we suffered from a summer cold but tested negative, once. I decided to take part in a medical experiment and took an experimental RSV vaccine. Our daughter got married and we are still paying for it. Oh well, it was worth it and fun. A week before the wedding we moved my 95-year-old father-in-law from independent living to assisted living. In other words, July was an absolute blur. It was an insane three weeks for us, but it was Nietzsche (I think) who said, “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” We definitely gained a lot of strength in July, and we are still drinking wedding beer, or better I am using it as the liquid in some of the bread I am baking, in particular my rye bread.

From this year’s posts you can see that I still travel for work and teach. Again, today my supervisor wanted to know how long he can still rely on my or in other words, when I will retire. Loyal readers know that I struggle with this. I enjoy teaching, but then I feel I also need to spend more time with my bonsai trees. I have a greenhouse now, and it looks like that I am getting more serious about those darn little trees. Yes, I have been dabbling around with them for the past 34 years, and in a way, so little to show for. For all those years, I should have had some magnificent trees; but I have ignored them for extended periods during those years. They were pot bound and that does not help their development.

So yes, I am still kicking and screaming, working, complaining that I am getting old and decrepit, politically active, baking bread, hiking, forest bathing, and bonsai growing. I love my beers, although it seems that my taste is changing from IPAs to black lagers. I am getting bored with American restaurant food (I assume that this is because I am eating out so much during my travels) and I am starting to like Japanese food best.

While not a true a look back on the past year, I hope this is somewhat of a review of my life to-dated. As I alluded to in a similar post last year, maybe it isn’t very Buddhist to look back (and live or dwell in the past). It may be better to live in the present and prepare for the road ahead. As I recently mentioned, I am in a good place mentally, I have been feeling happy lately. Hopefully 2023 will be as good or even better. But who knows, I might get inspired to write another post this year. Cheers!

Having breakfast at the hotel (The Virginian by Hilton in Lynchburg).  This is absolutely a nice hotel.  I visited two microbreweries: 3 Roads which was OK and Star Hill, a satalite brewery from the main one in the Charlottesville area which was great.  Lunch was in Rustburg and dinner at El Jefes Tacos (good) and Mizumi Japanese Bistro (absolutely great). 

Abingdon or Hotels 11. (6/10/2022)

My latest trip was uneventful for a change. No mass murder, no start of a new war, it was boring, or at least nothing to be glued to the TV for. Although, I think there was a shooting at a hospital in Oklahoma, but that one received only minor attention after what happened in Uvalde, Texas. Not that it should become so common place that I should call it uneventful; however, the media hardly covered it because the atrocities in the small Texas town and the screw ups by the police and the Governor still dominated the news.

Enough, I want to step away from that for a change of pace. This past week brought me to Abingdon, a town in Washington County, in southwest Virginia, approximately 10 miles from the Tennessee border. Now if you think that this is the far end of Virginia, think again. Some of my students had to drive an hour and a half form the farthest tip of Virginia, near the Cumberland Gap area in Lee County. To think that when I left Abingdon Friday morning at 8:30 to return home I had to travel 8 hours. This included lunch and switching out my state car for my personal vehicle in Richmond.

Knowing that my retirement age is approaching, I have been inviting one of my colleagues to join me and co-teach my classes with me, or at least attend them and learn. My regular compatriot grew up in Abingdon, so he was thrilled to join. Although his mom (as he calls her) still lives there and he visits her regularly, it was funny to see that I had to show him where all the good restaurants were for lunch and dinner, or even where the town’s microbrewery was (darn they changed the location of the entrance and the tasting room). I like to treat myself to an ice cream from Dairy Queen after class, and I had to show him where that was (near the turn to mom’s place). We spent three nights in town and had fun together on two of them. One of the evenings he visited mom and I spent time on my own. That evening it rained, but not hard enough to prevent me from walking from my motel room via the Creeper Trail to one of my favorite restaurants in town (128 Pecan).

We stayed at the new Holiday Inn Express, which was great. Rooms were new, clean and up-to-date. It is in a newly developed area next to sports fields that are connected to the Creeper. I saw them develop the area two and a half years ago (pre-COVID) and thought it would become a sub-division of some sort. One of the evenings, my compadre and I had fun trying to figure out the post development hydrology and stormwater management of this and a site downstream from this site. It seemed messy and kind of screwed up. It is difficult, at times, to leave your work in the office at the end of the day, isn’t it?

My nice, updated room at the Holiday Inn Express.  The view was something to be desired, but OK.

Restaurants we visited were Bella’s Pizza and the Hardware Store (BBQ) favorites of both of us (both definitely get a high 3.8 or 4 stars out of 5). Lunch was at some Mexican joint (ok) and Milano’s. Both lunch spots were new introductions to our Abingdon native and he (we) liked Milano's that much (also a 3.8 for sure) that he swore that he needed to bring mom to Milano’s for dinner when he is back in town. 128 Pecan has been a favorite of mine for a long time, and it did not disappoint me again on this trip (4.2 stars out of 5).

Then the piece de resistance: Wolf Hill Brewery. While they moved to a new taproom two years ago, I found that the atmosphere of the old funky place had disappeared. This tasting room is clean, sophisticated and dull in my eyes. But the beer remained the same and is still good. Their hours appear different and they lost their taco food-truck, one of the things I was looking forward to. A COVID casualty according to the lady behind the bar. Naturally, we got there right before trivia started, so the place filled up and I never had a chance to sample a second beer. We just wanted to get out of there before the noise started. Oh well.

I realize that this has become a travel log, so a little more. After Wolf Hill Brewery and dinner at the Hardware Store my friend decided to show me the sights around town. It was not what a warm blooded guy had secretly hoped for (just kidding); regular readers know that I am a sucker for nature. However, in the back of the training room were four (cheesy) paintings of a mill and he had recognized it as the mill at White Mill, just 4 miles west of downtown. During dinner, the server told us that grits served by the restaurant were milled by the mill which had recently been restored. This had triggered my friends need to show me the mill in real life and off we went. A nice country drive later we visited the mill and got to walk around it, look at nature and take a few photographs. On the way back we observed a grove of dead trees and speculated why this happened; a subject we brought back the next day in class: flooding caused by beavers, herbicide drift, who knows?

Common Ninebark blooming just below the mill at White Mill, VA

Just a bench at White Mill, VA

The mill and White Mill, VA.  I took the photo from the bench above.

Altogether, I had a good week. At times it is nice to have company on my travels. Other times, being an introvert it is nice to travel alone. But I did enjoy the company this time around. For sure it was nice to have a fellow driver behind the wheel. I am getting older and I noticed it when I got home, I was beat.

My excuses to those of you who were looking for more depth, politics, philosophy or whatever in this post. At times it is good to be light hearted and write an account of my travels; a diary of sorts. The original objective of my blog was a photo blog and an account of my travels through Virginia. Moreover, I can’t be a philosopher every day.

So how is your first pandemic going? (3/30/2020)

So how is your first pandemic going? At least for many of us it is, unless you are 102 years old and reading this darn blog, and if you do, you are out of your mind. I guess I am not counting HIV, SARS, Ebola and whatever else we had between 1918 and now. I am not telling you that those were not severe, but this one eats the cake. 

I have been social distancing for two weeks and a couple of days now. At least I get to see my wife at the end of the day. When I walk the dog, I get to see the regular folks walking down the street, and we greet each other from a distance. I also get to say hello to my coworkers every day during our check-in. This weekend we had a virtual dinner date with friends where we sat down on “WhatsApp” and had dinner together. Then we had a Zoom church service and a Zoom church meeting afterwards. While fun, rewarding and satisfying, nothing beats a one on one meeting with friends or colleagues. So, euphemistically, I will keep calling it house arrest. 

So how else do I cope with it all? I noticed that I am reading more. I am really enjoying a book entitled “The Invention of Nature, Alexander von Humboldt’s new world” by Andrea Wulf. I have increased my time on the social networks, watch more bonsai video podcasts and while in the beginning I did watch more news, that has diminished somewhat over time. I know the drill now, I know it will be a matter of time we are all going to get Covid-19, or the Corona virus. 

Why am I so certain about catching the darn virus? I think it is unavoidable. I just hope that I don’t catch it when the virus is at its peak, and I need to fight someone for a ventilator. I also hope that when I get it, they figured out what the medicine is to treat it, or maybe that they have developed a vaccine. Lastly, viruses that don’t mutate very fast, and this one does not seem to do that, are supposed to lose their potency or virulence after some time; that is after replicating in other people’s body over and over. In other words, the famous flattening of the curve. But enough of that. I want to report how my life in the pandemic is going. 

It was nice this week to be able to get out twice. I quickly ran out to mail two letters, get fertilizer for my bonsais and medicine for Jake the dog. It was nice to see people in real life, let me tell you. The second time was to take my father-in-law to the ophthalmologist. I stayed in the car but managed to sneak away to the Starbucks drive through for a cup of coffee. A real treat after two weeks without a Starbucks visit! It felt awkward to drive; the roads were relatively empty, except of course the drive-through at Starbucks. I think it took me 10 or 15 minutes to get through it. But it was worth it. 

Finally!  My first store bought Starbucks in a cardboard cup in two weeks!  I missed that face so much.

At home, life has changed; I have graduated from weekend cook to almost fulltime cook. I bake bread whenever I think it is needed. In the past it was mostly on Fridays. I am now the main dog walker and do not have any issue getting my daily 10,000 steps in. 

The latest bread I made: an 80% biga bread.  We are really enjoying this one.

While as a boy from the tropics I do like the heat, I don’t like it that it is getting warm that quickly, because it means that tick and mosquito season is almost here. It means that our back yard and the woods behind our home are going to be that haven for those pesky critters again. It means either pesticides on your body or no more walks in the woods until sometime in October. No we do not treat our yard, because we have bees. It means walking through the neighborhood with all its excitement as I mentioned in a previous blog post <here>. But truthfully walking in the neighborhood is fun. You learn a lot about talking with your neighbors; you need some social interaction. 

Probably the strangest thing is that I have taken up the routine of showering around 4 pm in the afternoon. It was something my mother used to do, and I am not sure if it is genetically ingrained or why it is. There are not many things that my mother did that I am particularly proud off and would like to mimic. However, it allows us to sleep a little later, get the coffee going and my wife of to work and get my day started. On top of that I always remember overhearing Jo-Jo, a female co-worker of mine in the 1990s telling Kathrine, another female co-worker how she would never allow a man sleep in her bed who had not showered before getting in bed. Moreover, if he blew his nose in the shower (without a tissue I assume), he would be kicked out of the house immediately; I am not sure if she even allowed him to put his clothes on. The idea of getting in bed clean always stood with me; I wonder if that is why my mother did it. But sorry, I do blow my nose in the shower; I know, this is too much information. 

I have cleared this nose in plenty of showers and sinks in my life and will continue doing so.

Oh well, just reaching out to all my readers about my (and your) fucking first pandemic experiences. Are we worried? Not for ourselves as much as for our 93-year-old father-in-law who is getting more and more depressed in self isolation. Hope you are all doing well medically, physically and mentally. Hope you all have enough toilet paper and have not yet killed a spouse, kid, pet or other loved one (canary?). Stay tuned and let me know how things are going with you.

Climate change alarm bells are going off (11/27/2019)

It was again in the newspaper today, we are experiencing a climate change crises, or better a global warming crises.  The United Nations issued their report on Tuesday November 26, it seems, which tells us that during the past decade the global average temperature has already risen 1 degree Celsius or for us non metric stone-age folks 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit.  Moreover in the age of Trump the CO2 emissions in the USA last year have increased 2.7%.  This seems to be a reversal from what we were trying to do under the Obama administration of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  This alone should be reason for impeachment, if not by us, at least by our children or by the unborn children he is trying to protect to gain brownie points with the religious crowd.  But is seems, they be damned once they are born.

My wife and I were discussing whether it would behoove us to eat more vegetarian.  But then I was thinking, living here in Virginia would it be better for the environment to eat tofu produced in California or chicken and pork slaughtered here in Virginia?  Yes, those animals eat plant based food and produce a lot of waste.  However, the transportation cost from farm to my dinner plate surely must be less and thus the energy to transport them.  This is an interesting debate to have with yourself and to question with everything you do.  I really think we have to live more purposefully; make decisions in our every day life, with the environmental end in mind; and be concerned about leaving a livable planet for future generations.

A colleague of mine bought a large property with a home on it that might not be the mansion that many of us would want to live in.  It is a simple home; however, like her handle on Instagram which includes the word "homesteader", she and her husband decided to make is a homestead and try to become independent to some extent.  The first year they were there, they raised chickens for the slaughter, planted a garden, which did not do very well (the soil was to heavy), planted an orchard, all the fish in their pond died, but they had fun trying to find solutions and at least make a start.  I really think this may be a way of fighting the global climate change crisis, grow things locally and if you grow enough, maybe you can sell some of it at a farmer's market or barter.  She chronicled it all on Instagram.  Granted she is not there yet.  A lady down the street seems to want to do the same on her half acre lot.

I myself, what am I doing?  Our yard is wooded, and our vegetable garden is somewhat of a failure since it is mostly in the shade and we are still working stiffs.  I promised myself that I would revive it when I retire.  We try to heat with wood whenever we can, don't use fertilizer or pesticides.  For the rest we do eat vegetarian one or two days a week (no tofu form California though).  I bake my own honest bread.  Can we do better in battling global warming?  I am sure we can.  I would love to put solar cells on our roof; however that would mean cutting trees, which would raise the internal temperature in the house in summer (more air conditioning?).  On top of that, mature trees take out more CO2 out of the air than lawns or smaller trees or young trees.  It is all a question of alternatives.

I just love the profile of this tree on Yorktown Beach.  Again, trees are very productive in removing CO2 and other pollutants from the air. 

But again folks, we need to be aware of what is going on.  We are so close to that point of no return.  The UN says global emissions need to fall by 7.6% starting in 2020 to meet the Paris climate accord.  And then to see we increased it by more than 2.5% last year.  Let's resolve to live purposefully and as I mentioned in one of my posts, "Plant a tree" and consider climate change in our every day decisions, from eating to sleeping.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

You are what you eat (3/12/2019)

Recently, our minister Andrew reminded us in one of his sermons of the four main elements of this world:

1. Air (Wind)
2. Water
3. Earth
4. Fire

I am not sure what the correct order is, but who cares? The fascinating thing was that I realized that at least every molecule of air and water has probably passed through every person in history, the good ones like mother Theresa and the bad ones like Hitler, Mussolini and my (not so) all-time favorite Idi Amin. I acutely became aware that I was connected to everyone in our sanctuary at that moment, and that I probably had shared at least one or two air molecules with each one of them that morning already.

Water, as Reverend Andrew reminded us, may actually (partially?) originate from comets and connects us to rest of the universe. I remind my students of its unique properties as a solvent, but in particular of the fact that it is the only chemical compound (that I am aware of) that expands when it gets colder. Since a lot of my guys work for the Department of Transportation, this is a fact that is not lost on them. Expanding or freezing water is the origin of potholes in our roads and the source of their job security.

There is not much I can share with you about earth and fire, except that they are the origin and we cannot live without them. I have witnessed the virtual lack of life on the core of the earth in an area of Newfoundland. The Tablelands Areas of Gros Morne National Park is amazing; this area had no (top)soil or earth, and visible life was scarce. It looked like Mars; and word has it, NASA seems to has tested there Mars rovers there.

This picture was taken by my wife during our trip (2017).  To the right is a wetland pocket where some low vegetation is possible but the majority of the Table Lands look like what is in the foreground.

In my workshops I often tell the attendees that “you are what you eat.” No, as most of you know I do not teach nutrition courses, nor do I give motivational talks hoping they lose some weight or get healthier. I sometimes do get a standing ovation after taking for six hours straight, which I find terribly embarrassing to tell you the truth. Most of you know I am somewhat of a dilatant: a sailor; bread baker; cyclist; naturalist; biologist; photographer; a shin kicker; and amateur philosopher; and a teacher. In other words, I can talk about a variety of subjects for hours. So yes, I could probably give a health talk and yes some of my students could stand to get in shape (but so could I) or stop smoking. But when I mention “you are what you eat” I do this in context of my workshops on soil, plant nutrition and establishment.

The latest bread I baked.  It is a banana sourdough and was an interesting bread to make.  No artificial ingredients: bananas, flour, water, salt and natural yeast, that's it.  Honest ingredients, you are what you eat! 

What I tell my students is that when you give your plants a good, healthy, nutritious soil you get healthy plants, or a good vegetative stand, like a lawn. But is you give them a crappy soil you get a crappy vegetative stand or sickly plants. Makes sense doesn’t it? One way of achieving this is by adding organic matter to the soil. Organic matter or compost kick starts the soil microorganisms that are so sorely needed for a healthy soil. This is why I got so angry in this blog at my neighbors for bagging their leaves.

One way of ensuring a healthy soil is by taking soil samples and getting them analyzed by an accredited lab. They should be able to let you know what nutrients are missing in the soil and what you need to add to make it better. I am no enemy of synthetic fertilizer, except for the fact that it takes a lot of energy to produce or transport some of them. But in fact, I really do not think there is a heck of a lot of difference where the nitrogen or phosphorus comes from. However, I am in favor of sustainability. Moreover, a lot of the organic fertilizers bring in micro-nutrients and organic matter which are good for the soil and thus for the plants.

I am no friend of pesticides or chemicals that control weeds and bugs. For one many of these chemicals break down and seem to transform to estrogen type compounds. Honestly, estrogen is not something I want to have a lot of in my body. In addition, I strongly believe that we are all connected in this world and that we depend on each other. Many of these chemicals will travel far and impact and harm more folks and species than we ever intended.

So, where am I going with this post? Talking to my students in workshops, I tell them you are what you eat. The plants they eat represent what they are being offered in the soil. Water, nutrients, organic matter, contaminants and agricultural chemicals including pesticides. We are what we eat: those plants, or animals who eat those plants, the (contaminated) water that we drink. We are the top of the food chain, unless you get mauled by a mountain lion or a grizzly. But in the case of those mountain lions or grizzlies, don’t you want to offer them the cleanest, least contaminated food possible? But in any case, those contaminants are not good for your health neither for for those creatures below in the food chain or potentially above you. Let’s just try to keep our environment clear, our air, water, earth … and fire!

My "Go to" bread (2/14/2019)

In various posts <here and here> I have mentioned that I am a home baker. I have posted pictures of my breads on Facebook and Instagram and I am a member of two bread baking groups on Facebook.  Recently, I was asked by a friend of my wife why the bread her daughter was making had a horrible crumb (it was crummy and never stayed together).  So my wife volunteered my "go to" recipe and asked me if I would be kind enough to share it with her.  In other words, I spent an afternoon typing it up in a way that someone else could execute it, after which we thought I might as well publish it here on my blog.

This is my latest bread.  It is slightly different.  Instead of 300/600 whole wheat/bread flower (see the recipe below), I did 300/50/550 with the 50 being buckwheat flower.  Buckwheat makes the bread taste slightly nuttier, but more crumbier (looser).  Buckwheat has no gluten and gluten makes bread stick together.

So this is my go to bread.

First, I work in grams and baker's percentages, and for those of you who do not know how that works let me explain it.  Don't worry, I also have the recipe in cups, but that is so less precise and often the reason why things fail.  You need to buy a scale that works in grams if you want to be a serious bread baker; they are cheap (mine was $16 and is good enough).

How do bakers percentages work?  Solids like flour and oats (in this recipe) together are always 100%.  Some bakers just say let's start with 1000 grams, but sorry, as you will see, this recipe starts with 1020 grams.  The liquid you add makes the baker's percentage.  You add water (sometimes milk, beer or cider) and the ideal is about 70% to 80%.  If you want a baker's percentage of 70% you would add 700 grams of liquid to 1000 gram flour (solids).  Less liquid (60%) makes to bread denser and heavier more liquid makes it softer and more open. High moisture breads, 80% or higher makes foucaccia.

In the recipe below you have 1020 grams solids and 760 grams water which give you a baker's percentage of 760/1020=75% (whole wheat and oats are thirstier than only white flour).

This recipe uses oats. I sometimes use Bob's Red Mill 10 grain cereal instead, or cracked rye, a mix of the two, or of all, just keep it to the 120 grams.  The other day I actually put in 120 grams of baked sweet potato, this made a very nice tasting bread, especially when toasted.  There is a lot of moisture in a baked sweet potato so you could reduce the water a little (say by maybe 10 or 20 grams; just experiment) or add a little flower (not too much).

As I mentioned, I will leave the cups in the recipe, but I found it not accurate enough, and it gives you not enough dough to sufficiently fill two 9 inch bread pans. In the grams recipe I have increased everything by approximately 20% to get a nice loaf for our standard U.S. 9 inch pans.

Bakes 2 loaves (again, the grams recipe is more accurate and is 20% more than the cups recipe)

• 1 cup oats  ...  120 grams
• 2 cups of boiling water  ...  760 grams
• 1 Tablespoon molasses or honey  ...  2 Tablespoons for the grams recipe (lately I have not been using any honey or sweetener)
• 2 teaspoons salt  ...  8 grams
• 1 cup whole wheat and  4 1/2 cups bread flour (all-purpose flour is ok too)  …  900 grams (300 whole wheat and 600 bread flour) 
• 1/2 Tablespoon instant yeast (I only use instant or bread machine yeast, which does not need blooming)
• 1 Tablespoon butter or oil, plus more for the pan  …  2 Tablespoons (I use coconut oil, but lately I do not use oil at all.  Fat makes the bread softer; just do not use an oil with a strong flavor like olive oil)

1. Place the oats in a large bowl. Bring water to a boil and pour 200 grams over the oats. Stir in the sweetener and butter if you are using it. Let stand and cool for 20+ minutes (make sure it is cools to 110 to 100 degrees). When it reaches that temperature stir in the yeast.

2. While the oats mixture is cooling mix the flour with the remaining cool water.  Mix and knead just enough to incorporate all the flour and water together. Let the mixture rest (covered) for 15 to 30 minutes.

3. Mix the oat mixture into the rested dough and add the salt. Knead in the bowl until a shaggy dough comes together, then pull out onto a floured work surface and knead, adding more flour as needed, until the dough is no longer sticky and relatively smooth (the oats won't make it completely smooth), about 15 minutes. Resist adding more flour in the beginning, it will start out very sticky, but after 10 or so minutes it should get less and less sticky.

4. Shape the dough into a ball, place back in the mixing bowl, cover with a dish cloth and place in a warm, draft-free spot (like a turned-off oven) to double in bulk (about an hour).

5. Butter two standard loaf pans (I use Pam or some other cooking spray). When the dough has doubled in bulk, gently pull it out of the bowl onto the work surface. Carefully cut the ball in half. Do not knead, but gently fold and shape the ball into a loaf shape the length of the loaf pans. Place each piece of dough into a pan, cover anew with the dish cloth and let rise until doubled in bulk (about an hour).

4. Remove from the oven, if that is where you were letting the loaves rise, and preheat to 425. Approximately 5 minutes before the loaves go into the oven place a roasting pan on the bottom rack in the oven with some water in it to create steam.  Remove the dish cloth and place the pans in the oven.  I score the loaves with a sharp knife. When putting the pans in the oven watch out for the blast of steam!  Bake for 20 minutes with the steam.  After the 20 minutes remove the baking pan with the water (watch out for the blast of the steam) and continue baking for another 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and enjoy, The bread will keep in a bread box for 4 to 5 days or can be frozen in plastic freezer bags.

About kneading:

I love kneading, it is very meditative. But there is also folding and I am really starting to like that technique. This involves a quick knead in the bowl in the beginning to get everything incorporated and then letting the dough rest. After a half hour you grab the dough (with wet hands) at one side and you pull it over itself (without tearing the dough) and you go around on all sides for a few times. You then rest the dough for a half hour and repeat. You do this three or four times and then you rise it for an hour and pan it. This method it often done with sour dough and if you do it with yeast (as I do it with this recipe) I half the amount of yeast, which makes the first rise (or proofing) go much slower (approximately 2.5 to 3 hours). Some books say let it double others say triple the size. YouTube is full of demos on folding of dough and shaping of dough into loaves.

Bread making is fun and so much healthier.  For me it has become flour, water, yeast.  Nothing more and maybe just a little salt (yeast needs salt to function properly), no additives, nothing.  Healthy, honest bread.  At times, I may knead some sesame seeds, flax seeds or sunflower seeds with it.  But only do that when shaping the loaves at the end.  Enjoy!

"Zeeee" said the woman (9/24/2018)

“Zeeee, zeeee, zeeee” spoke the woman in a low, somewhat low husky but hushed voice to me. The owner of the restaurant asked me: “Can I buy it from you?” What the heck was going on? Well, let’s start at the beginning.

I was in Blacksburg this week; home of Virginia Tech. I was teaching two different inspector classes and as usual consulted Yelp for a place to go out for dinner. I have found Yelp to be a fairly reliable travel companion when it comes to finding good to sometimes even funky places to eat. Well, when Yelp told me there was a Tibetan restaurant nearby called Himalayan Curry Café that has four and a half stars, this former dweller of the Himalayan Mountains had to go and try it out.

As my regular readers know, my wife and I lived in Nepal for about a year and a half. My job took me up on the Tibetan Plateau of the Mustang district at regular intervals. I have written about my wonderful encounter with a Tibetan scholar/Lama and about my experience getting dehydrated in a snowstorm at 12,000 feet elevation. There are many more stories I can tell from being up there. I sometimes feel that his blog is turning out to become somewhat of my personal memoire, combined with observations of current events and some of the more natural things around us.

Getting back to the story. When I got to the restaurant, it was obvious a place for a university crowd. A cut above one of those take-out Chinese restaurants that your see in every strip mall, but less than a regular Indian restaurant. You either get takeout, or they end up serving your food on styrofoam plates and you eat it with plastic utensils. To me, the menu looked very Indian; however, in fine-print on the side were some Tibetan dishes which immediately caught my attention. I ordered momos, a dish of Tibetan steamed dumplings; lentil soup; and a samosa (yes that was Indian). While paying, I asked the proprietor if he was from Nepal. “No” he answered, “we are from Tibet.” We made a little additional small talk and that was it. 

With the lentil soup finished it was time to attack the momos.  The black sauce is a hot chili sauce which is very good.

All dishes were out-of-this-world delish (later, I rated the restaurant a five star on Yelp). The momos were filled with beef, in Mustang mine were filled with Yak meat or mutton, but boy did I recognize the taste. Tibetans are Buddhist and they will eat beef (or cows) unlike the Hindus, for whom the cows are considered holy. I remember so well being with the Buddhist population and Tibetan ethnic groups in Nepal; they are so very different than the Hindu population of the lowlands. One of the more interesting memories is that of sleeping with an entire family unit in their home during a very cold evening. I was taking a visiting scientist around the districts I was working in. Everyone on mats on the floor, of course, with their head towards a central fire. In the beginning I was somewhat distrustful, but that was completely baseless. When we woke up in the morning, the first thing that happened was the passing around of a cup of warmed up peach brandy. This brandy was distilled at an agricultural experiment station nearby. After that the lady house started making the famous butter tea, made from tea leaves, yak butter, boiling water and salt (an acquired taste for sure). Memories of a night and early morning I will always carry with me. 

The one time we visited the area we landed smack in the middle of a Buddhist ceremony.  Here monks are tooting their long horns in a procession.

Another picture of the ceremony male and female monks in the ceremony while the villagers are looking on.

But I digress again. After finishing my dinner, it was time to leave and I walked over to the trash bins to deposit my dirty plates and dinnerware. In the meantime, a Tibetan couple had come in and sat down in the far corner and the owner of the restaurant had joined them and they were talking. I waved at them and the owner asked me if I enjoyed my food. I told him I did and decided to walk over and show them the ring I bought from a Tibetan gentleman when I was in Nepal some 35 years ago and that I wear on my right hand. The instance the lady of the couple saw my ring she hissed those words to me: “Zeeee, zeeee, zeeee.” We knew the stone in the ring was a Z-stone, but her reaction was amazing, and it was the first time I had an independent confirmation. 

Here it is, the ring I wear every day with the Z-stone.

The lady continued: “That is a precious stone.” This was where the restaurant owner asked me if he could buy the ring from me. The lady’s husband chimed in telling me that a Z-stone gives the wearer power and the bigger the stone the more power it has. According to the owner, the power flows from the shoulder to the hand and goes “pow.” It seemed none of them had a Z-stone and it is very desirable in their culture, because it gives you power and fends off evil. We talked a bit more about things. It seems that I met all the Tibetans in Blacksburg that evening; a fun, interesting and delicious evening indeed. A wonderful throw back to a time 35 years ago, but still fresh in my memory.

Some of the things you can only remember when you travel.  To quote Mohammed: "Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you traveled."

Richmond (10/29/2014)

The one nice thing about working downtown in a larger city is often the sheer choice of places to eat lunch; although, there seemed to have been less choice when I started working in Richmond 5 years ago.  Yes you still have your Wendy’s, Hardy’s, Subways and Quiznos, but I think I have seen other places open, and then also, there has been an explosion of food carts.  Your choice is amazing, from an Indian food cart, to authentic Mexican tacos, to a Thai cart, a cart with more gourmet-like tacos, to carts that serve all kinds of wraps and salads.  It is really neat.  Contrast this with recent fights they had in Newport News about the placement of food cart placement.  I really wish there were more, as long as they are safe; but that is probably self regulating at least when they don’t kill their customers.

Regular readers of this blog know that I love to go for a walk during lunch time and I am always amazed by some of the big lines at these carts.  It is the social place to be; every so now and then on my walks I run into people I know.  They are patiently standing in a line at a cart and it is fun to talk to them for a bit.  Other times, the people standing in line take up more than half the sidewalk and it is difficult to walk.  But then on the sidewalk on the other side of the street are all the smokers and that’s a pain as well.   Breathing in secondhand smoke has been moved from the work/office environment to the environment where people do their lunch-time exercise or wait in line at food carts.  Somewhat ironic I would think, and it is the reason why I often escape to the park along the James River, or I walk around capitol square.  I need my walk and very often my Starbucks fix. 

Finally, another thing that is fairly common on the streets around lunch time are the beggars.  It is a shame that we still have people that need to collect money on the streets.  There is a lady who sells wilted roses, a guy without legs and your assortment of beggars that sit on the curb smoking cigarettes.  Being an ex-smoker, I do not think I would give to smokers in support of their habit, over food.  Others may say that giving them money support their begging habit and makes them lazy (see the article by Robert Reich that I reference below).  But so be it.  It is just sad to see that in a country as this there is still such a discrepancy in income or maybe a lack of income for some that people still need to beg.  It is a harsh reality, and it still makes me feel uncomfortable seeing them.  It amazes me too that there is such a lack of compassion and empathy (see also the article by Robert Reich).

Anyway, this is my entry to the weekly challenge by Cee Neuner.  This week’s challenge was to photograph feet.  Maybe not the best picture, but all these people are waiting at one of the favorite food carts in the area.  I like to take a picture at the time the challenge comes out.  This is not my best, but it shows what I meant when writing about the carts.  Actually amazing that everyone has their own space in this photograph and that there is obviously very little interaction going on in line.  To me everyone appears to be lonely in a crowd.

Farmer's Market (8/9/2014)

Every Saturday in the spring, summer and fall we have a farmers market in Yorktown.  We go at least a couple of times a month to buy vegetables, fruit and occasionally some seafood.  We either go by bike, or we go by car.  When we go by car we bring the dogs and take them for a walk along the waterfront.
There is all kinds of things available at the market, from wine to BBQ spices to art; you name it.  there are even a few home bakers that sell their ware.But truthfully I am not that interested in that.  In the past years I served on the board of the Virginia Food Systems Council a great organization that encourages the reduction of food deserts, the consumption of regionally grown food, and in that way keeping the carbon footprint as small as possible.  An organization they worked closely together with was the Virginia Farm to Table group.
Both groups are wonderful and I really encourage people to explore their websites.  One campaign they had was the $10 per week campaign, where people pledge to by at least $10 worth of locally grown food.
Anyway here are two photos of our market.  It was a great day and yes we took the dogs.  There were all kinds of dogs; most of them were friendly.  There was even an older gentleman taking pictures of all the dogs.

Fairfax (7/7/2014)

From the annals of the wacky.  When visiting all these exotic spaces in this great state of Virginia, I try to eat at local restaurants and avoid the chains.  Not that I have anything against particular chains (if you need me I can probably be found at the local Starbucks, and while traveling, Panera is a likely lunch stop); but why not experience the local cuisine. 

This week in Fairfax I had a chance to do just that and ate at a local Indian restaurant called the Bombay Bistro.  While I am usually a lamb vindaloo fanatic, I decided to go for something different and when for the tandori rockfish.  I took this photo after I took care of the poor animal (I'll be entering this fish into a photo challenge that I love to participate with).  The meal tasted great, the service was good, it was an overall very pleasant experience. 

We were teaching a stormwater class in Fairfax and the other days I spent with the team in more chain like restaurants, but then I am a bit more adventurous.  We had a good time, watching Germany win against Brazil and my team (Holland) loose against Argentina on the big screen.  Oh well.