The Intro

A brief explanation: back in the old days, folks thought that eating an eggplant could drive you insane. The Italians named the fruit melanzana, which is derived from the Latin mala insana or "mad apple. " (see this and this for more information on eggplant history and eggplant recipes). As a member of the nightshade (Solanaceae) family, which includes more volatile members such as Jimson Weed and Deadly Nightshade, eggplant contains small amounts of a toxic alkaloid called solanine which has made people ill and in the past has made people nervous about our purple nightshade friend.

All of this is somewhat beside the point. I am not really nervous about a little eggplant.

I am nervous about where things in our world and our environment are headed; nervous and maybe a little angry. This nervousness has prompted me to work on learning to be self-sufficient and I'll talk about the whole old-lady canning, baking, mushroom hunting, and chicken raising behavior later. And this nervousness has prompted me to regularly consider the continuing environmental and societal failures of current farm and agricultural policies when alternatives have been proven to be economically viable. More specifically, some farmers have succeeded at maintaining and increasing output without destroying soil, polluting land, and creating enormous amounts of waste (see Joel Salatin's closed-loop system articles on the bottom right-hand side). And I'll likely talk about some of this later on.

So here is the deal: I think having information (happy and upsetting) is important. And this is a place where I can do that. Last week I sat through a lecture on "Education for Sustainability" by a representative from UNESCO/United Nations University where he talked about the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the legislation that stemmed from the spill (the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, and the shift from single hulled ships, to double hulled ships). The presenter talked about how the consequences of this shift were not fully considered and, on the coasts where the non-active single hulled ships were left, men work all day pulling the ships on to the land and salvaging the materials to build other boats and structures. Yet the oil sludge still inside these tankers seeps out into the ground and down the coast, killing fish and causing members of the local community to lose their jobs. These fisherman are then forced, in a vicious cycle, to make a living salvaging materials from these ships.

I want to talk about reconsidering consequences and shifting our tunnel vision from its short-term comfort zone to long-term consequences. And I want to talk about reconnecting with each other and the world around us. It will be, at times, a little touchy-feely and I apologize for that. But touchy-feely isn't always bad. As Mr. Forster puts it in Howard's End: "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."

Part of not living in fragments means finding the good stuff around us and sharing it with folks. This will also be about good, not intense and not preachy stuff. Don't be worried.

Today's Recommendations:

1. See There Will Be Blood and cringe at Daniel Day-Lewis.
2. Eat the green papaya salad at Pok Pok with the crazy spicy crab sauce.
3. Bake this lemon olive-oil cake.
4. Read David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster."
5. Listen to Otis Redding's "These Arms of Mine" and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and don't let the January sky make you feel sad or caustrophobic.