Week 23

We've been dying - literally - to get back to normal. Nothing should feel "normal" again. As we have seen in these recent weeks, if we do this right, nothing can go back to normal. If we do this right, the voices I hear most prominently will have changed, the police will serve in a different way, new leaders will emerge, education will change, the rhythm of life will prioritize things differently. This can be said of both viruses plaguing our country - the coronavirus and racism. What I imagined at the start of this pandemic holds ever more true today: This shit is the fertilizer. Great things can grow from it. But if we're quick to move on, to hold our noses and wait for things to clear up so we can resume "life," we will find ourselves back in the same patterns that do not support our lives. We have to become uncomfortable in order to grow.

I'm often prone to soul searching, but it's felt different this time. Attending the Spokane protest rally last Sunday despite my serious concerns about the spread COVID-19 was one indication, but also the ways I've inwardly wrestled with my conscience daily. I have too often withheld sharing much on social media pertaining to racism, and I realized it was because I was terrified of being on the record saying the wrong thing despite good intentions. This week, through sharing despite my fears, I found myself learning in new ways. I was able to see my mistakes and through those mistakes, I learned better language to talk about anti-racism (including the term "anti-racism"), sought out black perspectives in ways I haven't before, and felt more anguish. I grew in confidence in my ability to support black lives and to become anti-racist. It is so much more than believing that white people and black people should be equal, more than photos that show us being friends and agreeing with each other. This is about action that ends centuries-old systems that harm the black community. It's highlighting where that injustice lives and raising our voices against it.

I'm worried that this will fade. Like everything else, I get hot on something for awhile and then I get distracted by other things. I hope that the things I'm doing now will keep me involved on an ongoing basis. I realized this week how my own role at work can be effective toward this effort. I've set up recurring donations to organizations that I feel are doing work that will bring results and keep me well informed. I'm also getting more involved in the election by adopting a battleground state (Wisconsin) to help connect voters to resources, like voting by mail.

Reading

This was what Darwin was trying so hard to get his readers to see: that there is never just one way of ranking nature’s organisms. To get stuck on a single hierarchy is to miss the bigger picture, the messy truth of nature, the “whole machinery of life.” The work of good science is to try to peer beyond the “convenient” lines we draw over nature. To peer beyond intuition, where something wilder lives. To know that in every organism at which you gaze, there is complexity you will never comprehend.

There are dozens of book lists going around right now, but the one I just finished was strangely appropriate for this moment: Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller. It's part memoir, part biography, and one of those books that is especially engaging to read because you really don't know where it's going. I recommend it.

Watching

On Friday, we watched Philadelphia. I had never seen it, other than that scene with a frail Tom Hanks blissing out in his apartment to an aria, as Denzel Washington looks on. Again, not on-the-nose racial protest fare, but message of it felt especially poignant right now: stigma, intolerance, systemic prejudice.

Making

I'm back to socks for the moment, socks that require concentration. My phone usage was up 63% this week so these kinds of projects are what I need right now.

Recipes

We got our first LINC box (CSA cooperative) this week and it contained rhubarb, arugula, fresh mint and lemon balm, asparagus, purple potatoes and carrots with feathery tops. I dressed some of the arugula with lemon juice and parmesan and put it on top of a pizza. I used the carrot tops and mint for a salsa verde to serve on charred carrots, and, the next morning, on eggs. The rhubarb got cooked and blended with strawberries, which is currently in the fridge and awaiting the ice cream maker. Some of the purple potatoes and asparagus went into the aforementioned eggs.

If you have any tips for how to use lemon balm, I'll take them! So far, I'm seeing recipes for tea and roast chicken.

Last night we made this sweet and sour tofu, recipe by Melissa Clark from her Dinner cookbook, which features fresh cherry tomatoes, scallions and corn. It was delicious.

And I made Dorie Greenspan's Cabin Fever Caramel Banana Bars. Yes, those are salted peanuts on top and it's quite good.