All the Bells and Whistles

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The Phrase Finder explains that the term has evolved to mean “attractive additional features or fittings,” and is often used in sales pitches for computers, cars, etc. The expression “appeared many times in the 18th and 19th century in literal references to warnings or promotional events. These contexts included citations about fire engines, the Salvation Army, circuses; anyone in fact that was trying to draw attention to themselves might do so using a bell or a whistle.” An interesting possibility about how it came to achieve the current definition is that the English cartoonist Rowland Emett designed “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” in 1968. That was about the time that the phase began being used in America for the current meaning.

 

Avoiding Risk is Dangerous

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Being a parent is a tough job, and the argument over how much to protect children is making it even tougher. The lead to an article by Jamie Siebrase titled “Turns out, risking too little might be the biggest risk of all,” made me smile. It says that Disney produces movies that open with parental death because they “get it.” “Parents—mothers especially—are a huge hindrance to fun creativity, adventure, exploration, and, well, everything ultimately resulting in personal growth.”

Hovering parents assure that no one touches their child unless they have had their hands sanitized. The children are “…strapped like racketeers to booster seats,” and on and on. The dangers faced by children aren’t new, but we are bombarded with round the clock reports of horrors that have occurred. That makes us want to be “responsible” by assuring our children are always protected. The result is that children don’t have fun and don’t develop the skill involved in taking calculated risks. Wil Richards, a “…former outdoor education professor…” writes that overprotecting children robs them of the opportunity learn and sets them up “…to fail spectacularly in later life.” They don’t learn that they will be required to stand up for themselves.

This is becoming a subject of much discussion and disagreement. Lisa Zamosky published a web article “Free Range Parenting” that describes how a columnist allowed her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone. Her description of the decision led to “…a mix of accolades and accusations from parents everywhere.”

So how much risk should you allow your kid to take? I’m certainly no expert, but I’d guess that’s where life’s lessons learned on the way to becoming an adult come into play. Let them climb the tree but help them make judgments about which limb might break. You also need to be prepared to fend off those who observe your child having fun climbing a tree and accuse you of being an irresponsible parent.

 

The Future of Food Could be Flavorful

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Third PlateDan Barber is a chef concerned about the farm-to-table journey of America’s food. He works with boutique farmers in upstate New York, including the Stone Barn Center for Food and Agriculture – a farm built in the 1930’s in a “Normandy style,” by wealthy philanthropist John D. Rockefeller to “preserve a memory – the place where he sipped warm milk from the lid of the milking jug.” (No matter how nostalgic, Ponderer does not recommend drinking raw milk, more especially the longer it’s been out of the cow.)

Barber is owner and chef at two New York restaurants, Blue Hill in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown (45 minutes from Grand Central Station). I visited his website at Blue Hill Farm.com before reading the book.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns is an elegant restaurant where jackets and ties are preferred for gentlemen. (Apparently fancy restaurants have given up trying to tell women what to wear.) In keeping with the ideal of serving the day’s harvest (and perhaps because of shortages for entree portions), Barber serves “multi-course tastings” for $138 to $198 per person. You’ll be happy to know you can buy Dom Perignon by the glass ($80). Most Americans are unlikely to dine here. But rich or extravagant people serve an important social function. They are the early adopters for things that become everyday benefits – air travel, electric cars, television, ocean cruises – so perhaps they can blaze the trail to better eating. Trends from expensive restaurants can affect the local grocery store, for example, designer pizzas are now available in your frozen food section.

New York is the right place for this venture – judging from my travels in lower upstate New York, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a farmer’s market or stand. Farm-to-table is a popular idea.

This is not a text book. It reads as conversation story-telling. Barber presents interesting stories about growing heritage varieties of crops and rotating crops and livestock to maximize soil fertility. This is not standard organic farming which retains the old American mindset: grow monocultures and serve slabs of meat with a few vegetables. It must be wonderful for a farmer to have the financial support to try these ideas and we meet many such farmers (at least one who, by the way, eats “hulking pork chops” and butters bread so thickly Barber “thought he was joking.”) Continue reading →

Strange Bedfellows

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This phrase refers to unlikely companions or allies; or usual opponents banding together. Dictionary.com says it is often used in the phrase “politics makes strange bedfellows.”

Bardwords quotes the phrase from The Tempest Act 2, Scene 2:

“Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is
to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout:
misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here
shroud till the dregs of the storm be past.”

They further say that “although set in different times many of the most famous quotes about life and love by William Shakespeare are still relevant today. Did you know that William Shakespeare is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary with the introduction of nearly 3,000 words into the language?”

Encyclopedia.com notes that the expression “adversity makes strange bedfellows” was an early 17th-century saying meaning that difficult circumstances will bring together very different people. So I guess Shakespeare can’t take all the credit. And the full phrase “politics makes strange bedfellows” was a mid 19th century proverbial saying. Wikiquote says the phrase “politics makes strange bedfellows” was used in print by American essayist and novelist Charles Dudley Warner. The phrase appeared in his 1870 book My Summer in a Garden.

Equating adversity with politics sure fits these days. Maybe it always has.

Enlightened Self-Interest and Climate Change

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earth climate changeThe Earth’s climates are changing. I’m an American. I’m currently “winning” in terms of climate, so change is likely to be bad for me. Efforts to mitigate the impacts will be important to me and to posterity. We can also reduce our ongoing contributions to the problem.

Huge international summits produce more media stories than useful action. The world carries too much political baggage from the age of European colonization and – especially for America – the Cold War. At climate conferences, westernized nations see attempts at revenge and emerging economies see ongoing imperialism. Talking is better than shooting, but we need many answers, tailored to specific problems or locations.

I prefer enlightened self-interest, so I was pleased to read that “plenty of entrepreneurs are not waiting for the diplomats. They are finding ways to cut carbon emissions and make money from doing it.” While some “carbon offsets” seem phony – a tree planted today can be cut down tomorrow – I like the idea of reducing greenhouse gases at the source.

“Methane is… a potent greenhouse gas that warms the atmosphere – cow manure is ripe with it – but [on an Oregon dairy farm], the methane is captured and funneled into a red generator the size of a mini-bus. The generator burns it to make electricity. That electricity is sold back to the local power company. The farmers get paid.” To reject this idea and say we should get rid of the cows is to miss an opportunity.

But the manure to methane project has another source of income. “FarmPower makes additional money just for taking that methane out of circulation. For every ton of that methane they capture they earn a credit worth about five to $10. FarmPower then sells those credits to anyone who has to lower their own carbon emissions, say, a coal-fired power plant.”

America has used the “cap and trade” technique for many years, for example, to reduce sulfur-related smog. In the late 1970s, a refinery I worked for paved dirt roads around its plant to reduce dust generated by vehicles and thereby allow the refinery to put dust out its stack. (Don’t laugh at dust. Inhaled dust particles are directly linked to health problems.) Continue reading →

America’s Forgotten History – Surprising, Important, and Sometimes Funny

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here is whereHere is Where is a fun read. Andrew Carroll had a file of clippings about events in “America’s great forgotten history.” He was also between jobs and between girlfriends, so he decided to visit the sites of events that have no plaque, no memorial, and may only be known to local historians.

Carroll’s style is conversational. He writes about his problems arranging his trips, contacting people who might know about the sites he is seeking, even his troubles operating the car’s GPS. While he is on the trail of some particular event, he is sometimes distracted by other places he discovers.

Carroll concentrates on little-known events that had an impact on the nation. For example, the first amphibious landing and ground campaign of World War II was on American soil. During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a Japanese plane crashed on Niihau, an outlying Hawaiian island. The pilot survived and the residents seized documents from his cockpit and held the pilot until authorities could arrive. Three residents of Japanese descent tried to help the pilot escape. There was a gun battle and a death before Company M of the 299th Infantry arrived on the island. Americans were “terrified” by the “sudden betrayal of their neighbors” by the three Japanese-Americans. The fact that Company M included loyal Japanese-Americans got lost. This event contributed to the internment of Japanese-Americans.

He also covers some famous Americans who have memorials that may be in the wrong place. Daniel Boone – who did not wear a coonskin cap! He wore a felt Quaker hat with a brim that came in handy shielding his gun barrel during muzzle-loading in rainy weather. A fifteen foot obelisk in Kentucky displays a carving of Boone in a coonskin cap, much to the annoyance of a local historian. He is also “peeved by the last image, of Boone fighting Native Americans… If anything, he was a peacemaker.” But the obelisk gets into the book because it marks one of two Daniel Boone graves. The other is in Missouri. The Missouri gravesite was raided and some bones brought to Kentucky. The original grave contained jumbled remains from several individuals and only some bones were retrieved, so Boone probably lies in both graves. Continue reading →