Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Green Tomatoes
Having just moved to Burlington, Vermont, there are a number of things that have struck me as new, intriguing, and exciting. The beautiful geography is an obvious example, a lively and vibrant community is another, and then there's a certain put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is attitude toward social responsibilities that is both refreshing and challenging at the same time.
One of the consequences of said attitude is a strong emphasis on locally grown food, an idea which I had romanticized about while living in suburban New Jersey that is a surprising reality in a part of the world where the growing season is only five months long. True, food might cost a bit more than it does at Walmart or the local chain grocery store, but the satisfaction of actually going and buying your produce from the farmer who grows it is not without value.
Some of the local gems I've sampled so far are a few breads from various local bakeries, feta cheese from a goat farm, pesto, home-brewed root beer, fresh jam, clover honey, humus, an organic, free range chicken, a hodgepodge of various produce, and of course the ubiquitous maple syrup. Hands down, however, my favorite treat has been the pints of multi-colored cherry tomatoes available at any one of the dozen or so farm stands at the market.
Prior to my first trip to the Burlington Farmer's Market, I hadn't realized that tomatoes came in colors other than red. I was accustomed to the standard variety, flavorless red tomato--the kind that caps a burger at McDonald's. As a cook, of course I knew of cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, and have had the privilege of enjoying a backyard heirloom tomato now and again but aside from that rare seasonal treat, my experience of tomatoes was largely negative. At best, they could be seasoned, cooked down, and dressed up into a nice Italian gravy, but to eat the chalky, bland, fleshy fruit on its own was something which held little appeal to me. That is, until I had my first yellow cherry tomato...
The shocking complexity and breadth of flavor that greeted me as the skin of the tomato burst between my teeth almost stunned me. That something I had regarded as bland was as dynamic and full of flavor as this little tomato was a revelation. Upon experiencing the purple, green, orange, and red varieties, I was further floored. Not only did they come in different colors, but there were different flavors too!
One night while talking to my roommate about home-brewed beer, he admitted that while he may have never brewed an award winning beer, his own adventures in brewing caused him to experience beer in an entirely different way than he had before. Now, when he drank a beer, he noticed a quality which had gone unnoticed before--freshness. As he was explaining this to me, he mimed drinking a beer, and then smiled and said, "Somebody made this. When you taste a good beer, you can tell that there was a person behind it who cared about the flavors, the ingredients, and the freshness. When you taste a normal beer, it's missing that."
That, I realized, is what is so amazing about the tomatoes here. Sure, having variety and freshness is essential, but what distinguishes these tomatoes from the ones on a McDonald's burger isn't the difference in color, texture, or size. It's that I can actually taste that somebody grew, cared for, and harvested this tomato, and it just so happens to be the same guy that's thanking me as I hand him a few dollars for the food that's going to sustain me for the week.
One of the consequences of said attitude is a strong emphasis on locally grown food, an idea which I had romanticized about while living in suburban New Jersey that is a surprising reality in a part of the world where the growing season is only five months long. True, food might cost a bit more than it does at Walmart or the local chain grocery store, but the satisfaction of actually going and buying your produce from the farmer who grows it is not without value.
Some of the local gems I've sampled so far are a few breads from various local bakeries, feta cheese from a goat farm, pesto, home-brewed root beer, fresh jam, clover honey, humus, an organic, free range chicken, a hodgepodge of various produce, and of course the ubiquitous maple syrup. Hands down, however, my favorite treat has been the pints of multi-colored cherry tomatoes available at any one of the dozen or so farm stands at the market.
Prior to my first trip to the Burlington Farmer's Market, I hadn't realized that tomatoes came in colors other than red. I was accustomed to the standard variety, flavorless red tomato--the kind that caps a burger at McDonald's. As a cook, of course I knew of cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, and have had the privilege of enjoying a backyard heirloom tomato now and again but aside from that rare seasonal treat, my experience of tomatoes was largely negative. At best, they could be seasoned, cooked down, and dressed up into a nice Italian gravy, but to eat the chalky, bland, fleshy fruit on its own was something which held little appeal to me. That is, until I had my first yellow cherry tomato...
The shocking complexity and breadth of flavor that greeted me as the skin of the tomato burst between my teeth almost stunned me. That something I had regarded as bland was as dynamic and full of flavor as this little tomato was a revelation. Upon experiencing the purple, green, orange, and red varieties, I was further floored. Not only did they come in different colors, but there were different flavors too!
One night while talking to my roommate about home-brewed beer, he admitted that while he may have never brewed an award winning beer, his own adventures in brewing caused him to experience beer in an entirely different way than he had before. Now, when he drank a beer, he noticed a quality which had gone unnoticed before--freshness. As he was explaining this to me, he mimed drinking a beer, and then smiled and said, "Somebody made this. When you taste a good beer, you can tell that there was a person behind it who cared about the flavors, the ingredients, and the freshness. When you taste a normal beer, it's missing that."
That, I realized, is what is so amazing about the tomatoes here. Sure, having variety and freshness is essential, but what distinguishes these tomatoes from the ones on a McDonald's burger isn't the difference in color, texture, or size. It's that I can actually taste that somebody grew, cared for, and harvested this tomato, and it just so happens to be the same guy that's thanking me as I hand him a few dollars for the food that's going to sustain me for the week.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Yahoo News
During his five-month captivity in northern provinces of Kunduz and Takhar, the freelance journalist thought he would never get out alive.
"I thought I would be certainly killed, so I tried to prepare myself to face it," he recalled. His fear reached its peak in late June, when the captors issued an ultimatum to the Japanese government, threatening to kill him if their demands were not met within 72 hours.
When the time passed, and there was no sign they were going to kill him, he started to think he could survive and gain freedom at some point.
"Although it was frustrating that I didn't know when that might be, my fear of death gradually faded and I felt better," he said.
Tsuneoka said after that, anger rather than fear helped him survive the ordeal. Even though his captors fed him well and never used violence, he repeatedly thought about how he could retaliate against them.
"They are a bunch of thieves just trying to extort money from Japan," he said.
The rest was boredom. He had nothing to do but sleep, gaze out the window to see birds or count ants crawling on the dirt floor, when the young militants were not around to talk.
Tsuneoka was kidnapped in April, when he traveled to a Taliban-controlled area in northern Afghanistan, and was released Saturday night to a Japanese Embassy.
Man... imagine that.
"I thought I would be certainly killed, so I tried to prepare myself to face it," he recalled. His fear reached its peak in late June, when the captors issued an ultimatum to the Japanese government, threatening to kill him if their demands were not met within 72 hours.
When the time passed, and there was no sign they were going to kill him, he started to think he could survive and gain freedom at some point.
"Although it was frustrating that I didn't know when that might be, my fear of death gradually faded and I felt better," he said.
Tsuneoka said after that, anger rather than fear helped him survive the ordeal. Even though his captors fed him well and never used violence, he repeatedly thought about how he could retaliate against them.
"They are a bunch of thieves just trying to extort money from Japan," he said.
The rest was boredom. He had nothing to do but sleep, gaze out the window to see birds or count ants crawling on the dirt floor, when the young militants were not around to talk.
Tsuneoka was kidnapped in April, when he traveled to a Taliban-controlled area in northern Afghanistan, and was released Saturday night to a Japanese Embassy.
Man... imagine that.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Fresh off the "Yahoo News" Press
"KABUL, Afghanistan – The new top commander in Afghanistan is talking up a weapon that has been kept in the shadows for years — special operations missions to kill or capture key insurgents — to try to convince skeptics the war can be won.
More than previous commanders, Gen. David Petraeus has released the results of special operations missions — 235 militant leaders were killed or captured in the last 90 days, another 1,066 rank-and-file insurgents killed and 1,673 detained — to demonstrate the Taliban and their allies are also suffering losses as NATO casualties rise.
Petraeus told reporters traveling Friday with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, that in the past 24 hours, special operations forces carried out eight missions, capturing three targeted individuals. Four more were believed killed or detained, Petraeus said.
Accentuating the positive is part of Petraeus' media style, developed when he commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and was widely credited with helping turn the tide in that war."
SATURDAY: 4 SEPTEMBER 2010
Credited for turning the tide in that war? Or just turning our perception of it?
More than previous commanders, Gen. David Petraeus has released the results of special operations missions — 235 militant leaders were killed or captured in the last 90 days, another 1,066 rank-and-file insurgents killed and 1,673 detained — to demonstrate the Taliban and their allies are also suffering losses as NATO casualties rise.
Petraeus told reporters traveling Friday with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, that in the past 24 hours, special operations forces carried out eight missions, capturing three targeted individuals. Four more were believed killed or detained, Petraeus said.
Accentuating the positive is part of Petraeus' media style, developed when he commanded U.S. forces in Iraq and was widely credited with helping turn the tide in that war."
SATURDAY: 4 SEPTEMBER 2010
Credited for turning the tide in that war? Or just turning our perception of it?
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The Long Road
Embarking on the hero's journey is like walking along the edge of a knife. Go too far and you risk insanity, don't go far enough and you risk complacency. It's a necessarily lonely road too--there's only room for one to walk it yet it cannot be completed alone.
Friday, August 27, 2010
The Trouble With Infinite Growth
Consider the earth as a closed system. In order for its collective economy to grow, it needs to expand the services rendered and goods produced. The only way to expand services rendered is to increase the amount of goods produced (b/c the money from services must come from somewhere, i.e. tangible goods). The only way to produce more goods is to harvest more resources, otherwise (if you are just recycling resources) you can't have net growth across the whole--if perfectly efficient, the economy would remain stagnant, in reality it would shrink. When you consider that simple fact that for economies to grow in perpetuity they need a continuous supply of fresh resources, the impossibility of an infinitely growing economy becomes evident. We live in a finite world with finite resources and that's not a political statement, it is a statement of fact. Combine the need to consume ever greater amounts of resources with a ballooning world population and an already stressed ecosystem and it seems that we are racing head first into a brick wall.
The world economy is an immensely complicated organism, but the fact that a growth based economy cannot possibly continue ad infinitum in a closed system is undeniable. in order to stave off systemic failure (both societal and environmental), we need to transition away from a growth oriented world economy towards a steady state economy--one which takes into account the finite nature of our planet's resources.
The world economy is an immensely complicated organism, but the fact that a growth based economy cannot possibly continue ad infinitum in a closed system is undeniable. in order to stave off systemic failure (both societal and environmental), we need to transition away from a growth oriented world economy towards a steady state economy--one which takes into account the finite nature of our planet's resources.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The Morality of Fly Fishing
NEXT TIME YOU JUDGE A CATCH AND KEEPER:
As an 11 year old I was sent to my first overnight camp, a one night "Introduction to Fly Fishing" where I learned how to cast, tie a few knots, and even dissected a fish. At 15 I joined my father and grandfather on a week long fly fishing trip in Montana. I fly fished regularly for the better part of 10 years before I ever considered the moral status of fly fishing--and I loved it.
There is something about fly fishing that makes it special; something about standing in a river repeating the same motion over and over to the soundtrack of one of those "Nature Sounds" CDs that is so supremely soothing and peaceful that the experience is quite unlike anything else I've ever done. For me it is a sort of meditation, a stress release outlet--that is, unless I've managed to catch myself a fish.
You see, I'm a terrible fly fisherman. Seldom in a season (with the exception of my time out in Montana) do I catch more than one or two fish a year. But when I do, my adrenaline responds instantly and all of the singing birds and soaring eagles in the world couldn't distract me from what--in the moment--seems to be my sole mission in life: to land that fish.
Initially I always confuse the feeling of the weight of the fish in my net with elation, but then after looking down into the net and seeing this beautiful silver and speckled creature with its mouth opening and closing as if it were gasping for air, its eyes almost seeming to avoid my own, and with my fly hooked into the corner of its mouth, I cannot help but feel a pang of guilt. I would release the fish feeling worse off than I would have if I hadn't caught anything. "But at least I released it," I would tell myself while thinking disdainfully of those fishermen I often see walking back to their car with three trout strung through their gills.
The distance between a catch and releaser and a catch and keeper could not be greater. Typically, the latter is a fly fisherman and the former a lowly spinner, or even worse... a bait fisherman!
The fly fisherman who practices catch and release views himself as a steward of the river: he never litters, lands his fish in the textbook manner (always minimize the time the fish spends out of the water, cut the line rather than retrieve a swallowed fly, etc), follows all of the rules (which are designed to protect the fishery after all), and can be counted upon to glare contemptuously at anyone removing his precious trout from the river. On occasion, he's even been known to deliver the occasional lecture or two about releasing fish "so that someone else might have a chance to catch it."
So then, for any reasonable and responsible fisherman catch and release is the rule of thumb, the default setting for those of proper sensibility. Catch and releasers held the moral high ground--or so I thought.
Two years ago, a friend whose opinions I value and respect challenged the morality of my fishing hobby as incongruous to my own stated world view. He pointed out that in order to fish for pleasure, one had to view themselves as above nature, or at least above the trout that I claimed to respect. For someone who lamented the loss of man's sense of place within nature and who constantly preached against the dichotomy of man and nature (as only a twenty three year old can) I immediately and regretfully recognized my own cognitive dissonance. Did this spell the end of my illustrious fly fishing career?
As I was in Idaho at the time of this revelation (with a three day stint on the roadless section of the St. Joe in front of me) I set out to work manufacturing a defense of my revered hobby--cognitive dissonance be damned! At the time, I had just finished a book which discussed several indigenous groups and their relationship to their world; among them was a group of Inuit who believed that each seal that they hunted and killed was in fact the same seal which would continue to come back and give its life to feed their family provided they treated the animal with respect and cared for the local environment. To them, an unlucky hunt was not the result of a lack of seals but was the result of improper behavior on the part of one of the hunter's families. Now while I certainly don't consider each trout to be the same trout dumb enough to be caught by the likes of me annually, I did recognize that I had discovered a potentially fruitful line of inquiry.
I already ate fish somewhat regularly and tried to do so as responsibly as possible, but as anyone who is aware of the state of the worlds saltwater fisheries knows, this is often difficult to do. What if then, I supplemented my own diet (which already included fish) with trout that I caught myself? Certainly, this would be no less moral than if I bought a fish at a supermarket, which would obviously need to be killed in order that I might be able to eat it. The only real difference would be that I would be doing the killing directly by my own hand, rather than indirectly by purchasing a plastic wrapped, deboned filet from the supermarket.
And to preempt the moral vegetarians response: no, I do not think it would be better if we didn't eat meat at all. Plants are living things too after all; just because they aren't as easily anthropomorphisizable and we have less in common with them than we do with animals doesn't mean that they are any less worthy of life than a fish or a cow--though I admit that we could certainly eat LESS meat. That brings me to another benefit of fishing for my own food, by involving myself in the process of obtaining my own food--in addition to increasing my own self reliance--I am also made acutely aware of the actual cost of the food on my plate. I have to kill that fish with my own bare hands, I have to deliberately and directly end its life in order so that I might eat it and live. Certainly I can be accused of over dramatization (and am often guilty of that), but in this instance it is really as fundamentally simple as that.
Unfortunately however, I knew this was all just intellectual masturbation and as a result, I hadn't fished in over two years because I knew I was a fraud and a hypocrite if I did so. After all, if my motive was to obtain food, even if I wanted to do it with my own hand there were many easier, cheaper, and (for the fish) less painful ways of catching trout.
Fly fishing for me was still on morally shaky ground when I decided to join a friend on the river this past weekend in spite of all of my intellectual misgivings (because I recently discovered the futility of trying to live a perfectly moral life). We were on my home river, the West Branch of the Delaware, where I've caught a grand total of one fish in my entire lifetime (as I stated previously, I'm a terrible fly fisherman) and I was having my usual luck. After about an hour of fishing with an emerger, despite not seeing a single rise or mayfly on a river known for its prolific hatches, I decided to pull my line in, find a cozy rock, and sit in the river and just watch it drift by. My buddy was fishing a hundred yards or so upstream directly under a bald eagle nest and having a pretty good time so I knew I had some time to get comfortable. I sat on a boulder about a foot under water and with my feet on the ground I was able to rest my arms on my knees. At only about two feet over the surface of the water, I was able to see the myriad of tiny bugs that flew just over the waters surface. After a few minutes, I watched a beaver swim up to a pile of brush on the side of the river before it disappeared into a hole that I hadn't noticed just in front of where I had been fishing--as if I needed the additional challenge! I sat there for about a half hour when the river's hypnotic effect began to take over and I lost myself in its steady lull. A piece of pollen flew by in a steady wind, pushed down to just above the waters surface it was light enough to float on whatever breeze occupied that intermediary space between the atmosphere and the river. A pair of red winged black birds danced like fairies in and out of a tree on the bank as swallows darted over the river after their dinner. The hillside in front of me was frosted in the light of the low sun, the shadows of the trees contrasting with the sun's golden rays. High above a turkey vulture soared in a thermal. In the river tiny trout caught a break from the current in the eddy created by my legs and I watched as they scoured the rocks and fed on mayfly nymphs. And there I sat, the fading sun warming my face as I realized that most people wouldn't appreciate the beauty of this moment. Most people wouldn't know that red winged black birds love the water, that swallows can make maneuvers that would make fighter pilots blush, that an eagle sound more like a seagull than a hawk, and that the river has an entire world, an entire language that can be understood by those willing to listen.
When we fly fish, we are a part of that world, we must be fluent in that language. In order to catch a fish you need to know what it is eating at that particular moment and what it might be eating in an hour. You have to know how big the flies are that are hatching down to the sixteenth of an inch and you have to understand their life cycle. As a fly fisherman, you have to stalk your prey. You must be careful not to alarm the fish. You have to place a fly that is as light as a feather in a spot the size of a dinner plate from twenty or more feet away, all the while making sure to avoid any drag from the line as the various currents attempt to pull the fly off its path. You have to watch the birds for signs of a hatch and skim the water for aquatic insects and read the currents and features of the river to locate prime trout habitat. In order to catch a trout you must be conversant with what it is like to actually be a trout. Fly fishing doesn't separate man from nature, it places man squarely within it.
True, there is a certain amount of dissonance between the art of fly fishing and the act of releasing a fish. I cannot argue that it isn't simply making a game of that fish's life, but I can certainly understand why so many people find it virulently appealing. And true, we are always a part of nature and a part of the ecosystem, but with most of life lived indoors in an attempt to hermetically seal ourselves off from nature the disconnect between ourselves and our ecosystem can seem insurmountable at times. Fly fishing requires an intimate relationship with the natural world, a fluency in the language of the river, and an empathetic understanding of the life of a trout. The difficulty of fly fishing ensures that only those properly initiated into this world are privy to the esoteric secrets of how to catch a trout, an initiation most perfectly consummated by tasting a trout caught by your own hand.
As an 11 year old I was sent to my first overnight camp, a one night "Introduction to Fly Fishing" where I learned how to cast, tie a few knots, and even dissected a fish. At 15 I joined my father and grandfather on a week long fly fishing trip in Montana. I fly fished regularly for the better part of 10 years before I ever considered the moral status of fly fishing--and I loved it.
There is something about fly fishing that makes it special; something about standing in a river repeating the same motion over and over to the soundtrack of one of those "Nature Sounds" CDs that is so supremely soothing and peaceful that the experience is quite unlike anything else I've ever done. For me it is a sort of meditation, a stress release outlet--that is, unless I've managed to catch myself a fish.
You see, I'm a terrible fly fisherman. Seldom in a season (with the exception of my time out in Montana) do I catch more than one or two fish a year. But when I do, my adrenaline responds instantly and all of the singing birds and soaring eagles in the world couldn't distract me from what--in the moment--seems to be my sole mission in life: to land that fish.
Initially I always confuse the feeling of the weight of the fish in my net with elation, but then after looking down into the net and seeing this beautiful silver and speckled creature with its mouth opening and closing as if it were gasping for air, its eyes almost seeming to avoid my own, and with my fly hooked into the corner of its mouth, I cannot help but feel a pang of guilt. I would release the fish feeling worse off than I would have if I hadn't caught anything. "But at least I released it," I would tell myself while thinking disdainfully of those fishermen I often see walking back to their car with three trout strung through their gills.
The distance between a catch and releaser and a catch and keeper could not be greater. Typically, the latter is a fly fisherman and the former a lowly spinner, or even worse... a bait fisherman!
The fly fisherman who practices catch and release views himself as a steward of the river: he never litters, lands his fish in the textbook manner (always minimize the time the fish spends out of the water, cut the line rather than retrieve a swallowed fly, etc), follows all of the rules (which are designed to protect the fishery after all), and can be counted upon to glare contemptuously at anyone removing his precious trout from the river. On occasion, he's even been known to deliver the occasional lecture or two about releasing fish "so that someone else might have a chance to catch it."
So then, for any reasonable and responsible fisherman catch and release is the rule of thumb, the default setting for those of proper sensibility. Catch and releasers held the moral high ground--or so I thought.
Two years ago, a friend whose opinions I value and respect challenged the morality of my fishing hobby as incongruous to my own stated world view. He pointed out that in order to fish for pleasure, one had to view themselves as above nature, or at least above the trout that I claimed to respect. For someone who lamented the loss of man's sense of place within nature and who constantly preached against the dichotomy of man and nature (as only a twenty three year old can) I immediately and regretfully recognized my own cognitive dissonance. Did this spell the end of my illustrious fly fishing career?
As I was in Idaho at the time of this revelation (with a three day stint on the roadless section of the St. Joe in front of me) I set out to work manufacturing a defense of my revered hobby--cognitive dissonance be damned! At the time, I had just finished a book which discussed several indigenous groups and their relationship to their world; among them was a group of Inuit who believed that each seal that they hunted and killed was in fact the same seal which would continue to come back and give its life to feed their family provided they treated the animal with respect and cared for the local environment. To them, an unlucky hunt was not the result of a lack of seals but was the result of improper behavior on the part of one of the hunter's families. Now while I certainly don't consider each trout to be the same trout dumb enough to be caught by the likes of me annually, I did recognize that I had discovered a potentially fruitful line of inquiry.
I already ate fish somewhat regularly and tried to do so as responsibly as possible, but as anyone who is aware of the state of the worlds saltwater fisheries knows, this is often difficult to do. What if then, I supplemented my own diet (which already included fish) with trout that I caught myself? Certainly, this would be no less moral than if I bought a fish at a supermarket, which would obviously need to be killed in order that I might be able to eat it. The only real difference would be that I would be doing the killing directly by my own hand, rather than indirectly by purchasing a plastic wrapped, deboned filet from the supermarket.
And to preempt the moral vegetarians response: no, I do not think it would be better if we didn't eat meat at all. Plants are living things too after all; just because they aren't as easily anthropomorphisizable and we have less in common with them than we do with animals doesn't mean that they are any less worthy of life than a fish or a cow--though I admit that we could certainly eat LESS meat. That brings me to another benefit of fishing for my own food, by involving myself in the process of obtaining my own food--in addition to increasing my own self reliance--I am also made acutely aware of the actual cost of the food on my plate. I have to kill that fish with my own bare hands, I have to deliberately and directly end its life in order so that I might eat it and live. Certainly I can be accused of over dramatization (and am often guilty of that), but in this instance it is really as fundamentally simple as that.
Unfortunately however, I knew this was all just intellectual masturbation and as a result, I hadn't fished in over two years because I knew I was a fraud and a hypocrite if I did so. After all, if my motive was to obtain food, even if I wanted to do it with my own hand there were many easier, cheaper, and (for the fish) less painful ways of catching trout.
Fly fishing for me was still on morally shaky ground when I decided to join a friend on the river this past weekend in spite of all of my intellectual misgivings (because I recently discovered the futility of trying to live a perfectly moral life). We were on my home river, the West Branch of the Delaware, where I've caught a grand total of one fish in my entire lifetime (as I stated previously, I'm a terrible fly fisherman) and I was having my usual luck. After about an hour of fishing with an emerger, despite not seeing a single rise or mayfly on a river known for its prolific hatches, I decided to pull my line in, find a cozy rock, and sit in the river and just watch it drift by. My buddy was fishing a hundred yards or so upstream directly under a bald eagle nest and having a pretty good time so I knew I had some time to get comfortable. I sat on a boulder about a foot under water and with my feet on the ground I was able to rest my arms on my knees. At only about two feet over the surface of the water, I was able to see the myriad of tiny bugs that flew just over the waters surface. After a few minutes, I watched a beaver swim up to a pile of brush on the side of the river before it disappeared into a hole that I hadn't noticed just in front of where I had been fishing--as if I needed the additional challenge! I sat there for about a half hour when the river's hypnotic effect began to take over and I lost myself in its steady lull. A piece of pollen flew by in a steady wind, pushed down to just above the waters surface it was light enough to float on whatever breeze occupied that intermediary space between the atmosphere and the river. A pair of red winged black birds danced like fairies in and out of a tree on the bank as swallows darted over the river after their dinner. The hillside in front of me was frosted in the light of the low sun, the shadows of the trees contrasting with the sun's golden rays. High above a turkey vulture soared in a thermal. In the river tiny trout caught a break from the current in the eddy created by my legs and I watched as they scoured the rocks and fed on mayfly nymphs. And there I sat, the fading sun warming my face as I realized that most people wouldn't appreciate the beauty of this moment. Most people wouldn't know that red winged black birds love the water, that swallows can make maneuvers that would make fighter pilots blush, that an eagle sound more like a seagull than a hawk, and that the river has an entire world, an entire language that can be understood by those willing to listen.
When we fly fish, we are a part of that world, we must be fluent in that language. In order to catch a fish you need to know what it is eating at that particular moment and what it might be eating in an hour. You have to know how big the flies are that are hatching down to the sixteenth of an inch and you have to understand their life cycle. As a fly fisherman, you have to stalk your prey. You must be careful not to alarm the fish. You have to place a fly that is as light as a feather in a spot the size of a dinner plate from twenty or more feet away, all the while making sure to avoid any drag from the line as the various currents attempt to pull the fly off its path. You have to watch the birds for signs of a hatch and skim the water for aquatic insects and read the currents and features of the river to locate prime trout habitat. In order to catch a trout you must be conversant with what it is like to actually be a trout. Fly fishing doesn't separate man from nature, it places man squarely within it.
True, there is a certain amount of dissonance between the art of fly fishing and the act of releasing a fish. I cannot argue that it isn't simply making a game of that fish's life, but I can certainly understand why so many people find it virulently appealing. And true, we are always a part of nature and a part of the ecosystem, but with most of life lived indoors in an attempt to hermetically seal ourselves off from nature the disconnect between ourselves and our ecosystem can seem insurmountable at times. Fly fishing requires an intimate relationship with the natural world, a fluency in the language of the river, and an empathetic understanding of the life of a trout. The difficulty of fly fishing ensures that only those properly initiated into this world are privy to the esoteric secrets of how to catch a trout, an initiation most perfectly consummated by tasting a trout caught by your own hand.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
From Yahoo Sports
Having occurred only 16 times since the modern baseball era began in 1900, pitching a perfect game is among the rarest feats in sports. It's the Holy Grail for pitchers, earning them a one-way ticket to sports immortality and a permanent spot in the history books.
But for 24-year-old Wade McGilberry, there was a more, uh, practical motivation: $1 million, which is exactly how much the Alabama man just won for throwing a perfect game in MLB 2K10 for the Xbox 360 and PS3.
"It was actually my wife who convinced me to go for it," he said in a statement. "I never thought I'd actually win a million dollars playing a video game, it's all still sinking in for me."
But for 24-year-old Wade McGilberry, there was a more, uh, practical motivation: $1 million, which is exactly how much the Alabama man just won for throwing a perfect game in MLB 2K10 for the Xbox 360 and PS3.
"It was actually my wife who convinced me to go for it," he said in a statement. "I never thought I'd actually win a million dollars playing a video game, it's all still sinking in for me."
Saturday, May 1, 2010
From Yahoo News
At times, these injuries are infamous enough to inspire a nickname, such as in the case of Glenallen “Spiderman” Hill. The outfielder – who has coincidentally played for eight different teams – got his nickname from an incident spurred on by his apparently severe arachnophobia. Early in his career, while with the Blue Jays, Hill was having a violent nightmare about spiders. While still asleep, he tried to escape from the phantom spiders and fell into a glass table. This nightmare gave Hill cuts on his toes and elbows, carpet burns on his knees, landed him on the 15-day DL and bestowed upon him his nickname.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Mystery and Religion
Life is an absurd game in which there are no explicit rules and the only purported answers come from institutions, our religions in particular; but that's not how a relationship with God is supposed to work. Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, Mohammed, all found God for themselves and their lessons to us are not ends in themselves but are instead paths to the divine ("I am the Way"). Even the great scientific prophets Newton, Einstein, and Bohr (among others) blazed their own trail and broke with convention. Evolution does not arise from status quo but from revolution. The great prophets were not themselves divine anymore than you are or I am. They each forged their own path to the divine and THAT should be the true goal of any spiritual life; not to be a devout follower but instead to be a spiritual hero, boldly confronting the great mystery of life.
Friday, January 22, 2010
The Evolution of Me
It never ceases to amaze me how much progress we make as individuals. Have you ever looked back five years and wondered what the hell you were thinking? How could you be so naive, so stupid? What about the "you" of last year? Last month?
Often I look back at myself and can barely recognize the person that I once was. How could I have thought such thoughts? I often laugh at the naivety of my former self but really, is that not the guiltiest sin of all? The true naivete is in thinking that right now I have arrived at some sort of truth superior to the truths of my past.
So I look back at the things that I said, that I wrote--even on this blog--and sure, I cringe at some of my baseless assumptions, magically-arrived-at conclusions, and wild ideas but I also value them as a testament to the evolution of me. After all, will I not someday view the "me" of now in the same light?
I am not some static politician having to defend ideas that I once had thirty years ago; I am me, an ever evolving, always growing person capable of making mistakes and dedicated to the subjective experience that is life.
Often I look back at myself and can barely recognize the person that I once was. How could I have thought such thoughts? I often laugh at the naivety of my former self but really, is that not the guiltiest sin of all? The true naivete is in thinking that right now I have arrived at some sort of truth superior to the truths of my past.
So I look back at the things that I said, that I wrote--even on this blog--and sure, I cringe at some of my baseless assumptions, magically-arrived-at conclusions, and wild ideas but I also value them as a testament to the evolution of me. After all, will I not someday view the "me" of now in the same light?
I am not some static politician having to defend ideas that I once had thirty years ago; I am me, an ever evolving, always growing person capable of making mistakes and dedicated to the subjective experience that is life.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
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