대구에 또 있는 마이크

Check it out!

2012-02-09T20:39:00.000-08:00

Sometime back in the fall, I hosted a pair of Couchsurfers - Yuma from France and Vineta from Latvia, a pair of Salsa dancers doing a several-year word tour. They happened to come at just the right time to experience a Daegu Green Living eco-film night and a sweet sweet Daegu Green Consumers Network Vegetarian Dinner for the Earth. It was cool to be able to share this stuff with a pair of random but interesting and well-traveled folks. They have been keeping a sort of running video diary of their whole tour. If you skip to about 7:30 in the following video, you'll see everything that I showed them! It's like a free trip over, minus the jetlag!

AND YOU ALSO GET TO MEET MY PET IGUANA!

about whom I meant to post, but never did.

Anyhow, have a look. My section is only about 6 minutes long, and it totally rocks, even though I talk like a robot.

PS Thanks Yuma and Vineta! Happy travels ^^

Another Bike Milestone

2012-01-14T06:22:00.000-08:00

Well, I got no excuse for the recent paucity of posts. I do indeed have a lot of stuff worth writing updates about - the end of the semester, my decision not to renew my contract, future (un!)employment opportunities, another 10 day retreat, veg night recipes, movie night successes, fragments about Korean, and so forth. However, for the moment, I'd like to brag a little bit, and perhaps worry the parents and grandparents in the process.

I have long been completely certain that biking around town is faster than busing. The combination of heavy traffic, bus stops, stoplights, and indirect routes slows buses pretty severely, so it isn't much of a surprise that whether I'm just heading downtown (6km) or all the way to the burbs (12km), it only takes me half as long on my cycle. Even on trips as far as 70km, if you count the time from house to bus stop, bus to subway, subway to intercity bus terminal, city to city, bus terminal to bus stop, and then bus stop to destination, I can usually come out about even. One of my favorite things is to head downtown with some coworkers, waiting with them for the bus in front of our apartment, then racing (safely, of course) downtown; I invariably arrive in 15-20 minutes, them in 25-35. Factor in the time they have to spend waiting for the bus and walking from the bus stop to whatever destination downtown, and I come out the clear winner.

Tonight, though, I did myself one better. Having just split up with some friends after dinner, I was on my way home, when I heard a yell from across the intersection: "HEYYYY MIIIIKEEEEYYYYYYYY." Sure enough, my coworker Niall and his wife were cabbing it home. I'd often been fortunate enough to cross paths with a bus following my same route, but never a car, so I figured this was a pretty rare chance. I pedaled full-speed for a solid 13 minutes, luckily managing to hit green at the two big intersections between home and downtown, and pulled into our apartment entrance at the exact moment my rivals popped out of their cab. I cackled with glee as they pondered, out loud, how two scrawny legs could manage such a feat. Maybe the meditation supercharged me somehow? Or maybe it was the curry and herb tea I had at dinner, or the recent tune-up a mechanic buddy gave my bike? Or the nifty little nylon toe-warmers that were my compensation for staffing 6 of the 8 Daegu Bike Festivals this year. Who knows?

In any case: getting exercise, saving money, saving the world, and saving TIME! How about that?

Jang Gi-ha, part 3

2011-12-21T23:56:00.000-08:00

Here's the last in my brief series of translations of Jang Gi-ha and the Faces' stuff. This song is called "그렇고 그런 사이," which more or less means "A relationship that is just kind of ummm." The official title looks to be "Another Relationship," which makes it sound like the singer feels ambivalent about the relationship, perhaps because he's been in a long string of them or something. The feeling I get from the song, though, has more to do with the ambiguity and the awkwardness of trying to make the relationship status explicit. My Korean friends have told me that the lyrics are pretty vague, anyhow.

Note the fantastic video. The title says that there are English subs, but I don't see them. If they're there, I hope mine are better...

The sun came up blazing in the bright blue sky

The weather's the same as yesterday

but something feels a little different

Everything you've been enjoying

up until now

has vanished into thin air.

But even so,

it's not like you can just sit around crying.

You know?

Come on, I'm the same me

that you so so so wanted.

From this instant, all the things

that you've been hoping for

are going to happen, one by one.

Since I'm gonna give you

everything you want,

don't you head off

and start snooping around.

Since I can give you

everything you want,

don't even think about anything else,

even when you're asleep.

If you wanna know why, well, starting today,

Because you and me, you and me, yeah

if we're gonna put it into words, you and me,

we're like that now.

Because we're like that now, yeah, we are.

It is kinda weird to say it but

we're like that now, we are.

We're like that now.

Since I'm gonna give you

everything you want,

don't you head off

and start snooping around.

Since I can give you

everything you want,

don't even think about anything else

even when you're sleeping.

...

"Behold, my friends, the spring is come"

2011-12-02T17:14:00.001-08:00

While at a thrift shop in Wisconsin not so long ago, I picked up a book called "Great Speeches by Native Americans," figuring it would make decent bathroom reading. You know, lots of stuff a page or two long, no complicated arguments, no plot. It's turned out to be quite interesting, though. \ Also, infuriating. I never really knew much about the Native Americans until I started reading Derrick Jensen, who talks quite frequently about how so many tribes managed to live in more or less the same places for thousands and tens of thousands of years without depleting them. Somehow my high school textbooks managed to omit this stuff, in addition to most of the stuff about how westward-bound settlers and the Army that cleared the way for and protected them deceived, pillaged, killed, etc, in order to expand. Maybe it was in there, but not much? Or maybe not much attention was given to it? Or maybe I just wasn't ready to hear it? Not sure, but I think that if more students were exposed to the words of the conquered and vanishing Indians, and encouraged to think about them and look for modern parallels, we might become a more humble, considerate, content country.

So, here's an especially striking speech from Sitting Bull, chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux, from around 1875:

"Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has glady received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! Every seed is awakened, and all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.

"Yet hear me, friends! we have now to deal with another people, small and feeble when our forefathers first met with them, but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break, but the poor may not! They have a religion in which the poor worship, but the rich will not! They even take tithes of the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse. They compel her to produce out of season, and when sterile she is made to take medicine in order to produce again. All this is sacrilege.

"This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side. Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threated to take that from us also. My brothers, shall we submit? or shall we say to them: "First kill me,before you can take possession of my fatherland!"

This one in particular struck me as relevant because of the clear connections to Occupy Wall Street. I also recently downloaded a movie called "Nonpossession," about the life and thought of Venerable Beob-seong, a Korean monk whose obituary I wrote about here. I'm thinking of doing the subtitling myself and showing it downtown this month or next.

Jang Gi-ha, Part 2

2011-11-27T18:19:00.000-08:00

Here's another song, this one from their second album. Another one that, despite pretty simple lyrics, isn't so easy to translate. Maybe none of them are. Enjoy!

I Watched TV

All the way till my eyes went bloodshot,
I watched TV. (Watched it.)
Ah, ah, ah,
Just sat n watched.

Those people on TV,
they're all happy and sad
Good talkers, too. (Good talkers.)
Ah, ah, ah,
real good talkers.

Whether it's a drama,
a talk show
Comedies,
no matter what. (No matter.)
Ah, ah, ah,
no matter what.

For that moment
while I'm doing it
I don't have a worry
in the world. (Not a one.)
Ah, ah, ah,
not a
worry
in the world.
But why,
in that tiny tiny instant
it takes
for the
credits
to pop up...
Or even
in the time it takes
to go
from one commercial
to the next
That little instant, so short
It's like
it's hardly there
Ah, ah, ah,
ah, ah, ah.

In the end,
till my eyes went bloodshot,
I just watched TV. (Watched it.)
Just sat and watched.

And when I watch,
Man, I laugh a lot. (A lot).
Ah, ah, ah,
quite a lot.

Even if the people on TV
tell jokes
that aren't really all that funny. (Those jokes.)
Ah, ah, ah,
still,
I laugh
a lot.

But why,
in that tiny tiny instant
it takes
for the
credits
to pop up...
I watch
and watch
and then there's nothing to watch anymore
So I switch the channels
up and down
Then once I turn it off
ah, ah, ah.
ah, ah, ah.
ah, ah, ah.
ah, ah, ah.

All the way till my eyes went bloodshot,
I watched TV. (Watched it.)
Just sat n watched.

Those people on TV,
they're all happy and sad
Good talkers, too. (Good talkers.)
Real good talkers.

Jang Gi-Ha and the Faces

2011-11-24T00:37:00.001-08:00

I have been falling behind on my interpreter of pop culture duties. Please let me introduce you to one of my favorite Korean bands, 장기하와 얼굴들, and the title song of their first album, "My Life Is Pretty Easy":

To celebrate the end of the semester, I showed my students an episode of Flight of the Conchords (Season 1, Episode 1: Sally, for all you fans in the know). Most of them don't find it at all funny - it seems to me that dry humor and awkwardness are extremely difficult to carry over in translation. How do you know if you're missing all the nuances or if the content is deliberately ironic and simplistic, and, therefore, deep and significant? Thus, I don't expect my own (very) rough translation to do justice to Jang Gi-ha. Nor, actually, do I think that I even understand fully. This translation is the result of many most likely annoying Q&A sessions with my friends.

I'm gonna tell you something really surprising.
Listen up.
You probably
won't be happy
when you hear it.
Wanna know?
My life is pretty easyyyyyyy
I got nothing to worry about
My life is pretty easyyyyyyy
That's right, not a single care.

I'm gonna tell you something
I'm almost sure
You'll find unpleasant.
There's no way, tonight
you'll just plop down in bed
and get a good rest.
Wanna know?
My life is pretty easyyyyyyy
I got nothing to worry about
My life is pretty easyyyyyyy
That's right, not a single care.

This next one, you'll definitely
not want to believe.
You'll really wish
that it weren't the truth.
But
I think life is fuuuuuuunnnnnnnn
Each day is pretty nice.
I think life is fuuuuuuunnnnnnnn
Every day kicks ass.
I think life is fuuuunnnnnnnnnnn
Each day is pretty nice.
I think life is fuuuuuuunnnnnnnn
Every day kicks ass

It's great.

My life is pretty easyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
My life is pretty easyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
I think life is fuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
I think life is fuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
Each and every day
Is really...meh!

November's CSBS

2011-11-23T23:01:00.001-08:00

Apologies for the delay - with the help of my good buddy Niall, I cheffed for the Green Consumers' Network Earth-friendly Veg Night two Tuesdays ago, but I left my camera there at my friend's house and didn't get it back until the subsequent meal. Blogging about the 1KFTFFF has also kept me quite busy, as you may have noticed.

Last time, I was feeling a little guilty about my veg night offerings. Everyone liked everything, but the last-minute canned tomatoes and well-traveled chick peas and coconut milk made me a bit uncomfortable. Plus, I kind of slipped up and used some (decent) eggs from my CSA in the Pad not-quite-Thai, forgetting that just because I'm not as vegan as I once was doesn't mean that I don't have to follow CSBS protocol. Thus, this time, I resolved to shift ever closer to local and seasonal ingredients.

Sometime until about November 10th, everyone was talking about "Indian Summers" and wondering when the cold would hit. Then, it did, so Niall and I opted for something warm and hearty. We also wanted to keep it simple, given that it was a school night. Here's what we came up with:

The usual hummus recipe (yeah, I know, not local, but it was a special request and appears to have become tradition), this time with some spinach blended in. The taste didn't change much, but the color was nice, and it was probably a bit healthier. Served with sliced bread, carrots, celery, cucumbers, and bell peppers.

Niall's carrot/ginger stew. Stir-fry a bit of onions and garlic, then add in a bunch of carrots, ginger, water, and maybe a sweet potato or two to increase the creamy factor. Simmer for a while then blend it up and season with salt and pepper. Nice and warm, goes down easy, and has a nice kind of kick. Almost certainly good against the cold. And...uh...VERY easy to digest, yaknowwhattImean?

(one benefit of cooking soup: napping opportunities)

My lentil soup: admittedly not the prettiest thing I've ever cooked up, but definitely among the most delicious. Again, sauté some onions and garlic, add in some potatoes, carrot, and celery, fry for another minute or two, then add in a bunch of lentils and slightly more water than is necessary to cover them. Drop in a few cubes of your favorite vegan bullion (or use stock to start with) and cook for 30 or so minutes, checking every now and again to make sure the water hasn't boiled off. When pulled off correctly, the potatoes absorb the broth and turn out all creamy and delicious, nicely balancing against the heavy graininess of the beans. Squeeze a little lemon juice into the soup for some extra awesomeness and you're good to go.

And...that's all!

Astute enough to notice the unusual decor? This time, rather than dining at our usual headquarters (known as the "Un-awkward Warehouse"), we gathered at friend and dependable member Bohemian's house in order to warm it. After the nice meal, we hung out and I taught everyone a card game ("Oh Hell") that I learned this summer staying with my family out west. Ever tried explaining the rules to a card game in a foreign language? When there are people who don't know the difference between Ace, King, Queen, and Jack present? It's a chore, but once you've mucked through it, very satisfying in that hey-we-all-share-the-basic-elements-of-humanity way.

In any case, Bohemian, congratulations on the new place and the completion of all repairs.^^

Oh, and happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I thank you for reading and caring about me even though I'm so far away. There's a song lyric that has been more meaningful to me for the last five years than just about any other, and now seems like a decent time to share it:

"I do not exist," we faithfully insist,
Sailing in our separate ships and from each tiny caravel.
Tiring of trying, there's a necessary dying,
Like the horseshoe crab in its proper season sheds its shell.
Such distance from our friends,
Like a scratch across the lens,
Made everything look wrong from anywhere we stood.
And our paper blew away before we'd left the bay.
So half-blind, we wrote these songs on sheets of salty wood.

(MewithoutYou, "Messes of Men")

Hope all is well with everyone!

Team Happy Bear Cooks: Mike's Garlic Shoots

2011-11-18T00:39:00.000-08:00

As the point of the whole 1KFTFFF was to help Hansik popularize Korean food, we Happy Bears figured that we ought to supplement our packed eating schedule with a bit of cooking, too. After all, though everyone deserves to be introduced to all the wonders of Korean cuisine, not everybody is fortunate to live close to a Korean restaurant. While we can't deliver to everyone in the world, the least we can do is spread the word.

Andy and Anina have both already posted about their contributions: Gosari (Fern Bracken) and Yeongeun (Lotus Root).

I myself contributed two dishes, both of them quite easy.

First off, a very simple salad I learned from my friend Mina, the chef of the weekly "Vegetarian Dinner for the Earth" at my local branch of the Green Consumers Network. Just take a sweet cabbage (단배추, pretty similar to a Napa) and chop it up into chopstick-friendly chunks. Then, make a sauce of perilla oil, perilla seed powder, and salt. Once you've matched the proportions to your preferences, pour the dressing onto the leaves, then mix with your hands, squeezing everything with just enough pressure that the sauce evenly coats and permeates the cabbage, but not so hard that you crush them into a mush. The result: a rich, oily, and yet light salad that fits right in with the sweet, salty, and pungent side dishes around it. Unfortunately, my coworkers were busy cooking and my hands were busy squishing, so I didn't get any pictures of this one.

Second, another one of my favorites: sautéed garlic stems (마늘쫑 볶음). These were complete news to me the first time I tried them, but I immediately fell for their savory simplicity. To get started, chop the stems up into pieces about 1.5 inches long; again, just right to be picked up with chopsticks. Fill a frying pan with just enough water to cover them, then boil for about two or three minutes, just to soften them up. Move them over to a colander, drain out the water, and heat up a bit of sesame oil. One it's warm, drop in the garlic stems, and, if you are a big garlic fan, slice up a few bulbs and drop those in as well. Lightly brown the outsides of the stems, and before they get too droopy, pour in a bit of soy sauce. If you've got a sweet tooth, now's the time to add the sugar. Either way, once the liquid has mostly cooked off, remove the stems from the pan and sprinkle them with sesame seeds - for extra punch, crush them as you sprinkle, as this will release more flavors, in addition to making it easier for your stomach to absorb all the goodness.

That's all! Serve with rice, soup, and other side dishes for a splendid meal.

Garlic stems pre-sauté

The finished product

Also present:

Seasoned bellflower/balloonflower root (도라지 무침)

Don't recall exactly, but this looks to me like 시금치나물 (blanched spinach with garlic and sesame oil)

A bit of fresh fruit. We were lucky to find local figs in the market the previous afternoon.

All the side dishes in one shot! Those are Tanya's tiny little sweet-n-spicyy anchovies in the top-left, a mayo/sunchoke/carrot/cuke salad at top-center, and my cabbage and perilla salad at top-right.

The spread, including Greg's spicy oyster and mushroom soup!

We were truly happy to be able to share our food with one another and with the translator, driver, and TV crew who worked so hard to make our food tour possible. Thanks, Hansik and KBS^^

Old School Tofu

2011-11-17T15:06:00.000-08:00

This may not sound very cosmopolitan of me, but all the way into my early-mid twenties, I was pretty scared of tofu. I harbored an apprehension that I still can't elaborate on, one which I can only excuse by incriminating myself further: I was also scared of oranges until I was about eighteen, hash browns and refried beans until twenty, and eggs and tomatoes until twenty-two. If you doubt me, get in touch with my college roommates. I'm sure they'd be happy to confirm.

Living in a foreign land, one learns to get over such childish fears, partially because it'd be a waste of time to be abroad without sampling the local cuisine, and partially because you have to get pretty good at a foreign language before you can really be picky when ordering. Korea is particularly good for expanding culinary horizons, because no matter what you order, you're likely to wind up with a smörgåsbord of vegetable-and-other side dishes you didn't exactly ask for, most of them so unfamiliar that you won't have had the chance to form any prejudices about them. Most days, I thank Korea for having helped me learn to eat outside the box, so to speak.

Back to topic: I eat tofu so frequently now that I can't imagine there was a time when I refused to eat it at all. It's not that I really love the stuff - actually, I have some apprehensions about it, having read that overconsumption can lead to hormone imbalance, that the soybeans are often GMO, and that it's not safe for humans to depend so greatly on a single plant. Nonetheless, it's everywhere and just about unavoidable, and considering that people have been eating it for hundreds if not thousands of years, it's almost certainly safe when eaten in moderation as part of a balanced died. I had it on its own with just a little spicy sauce as a side dish for Makkeoli (rice wine) last night; the previous weekend, I had it sprinkled with sesame seeds and served with roasted laver and stir-fried kimchi as a compliment to some noodles; it's in just about every vegetarian soup that doesn't contain seaweed; and when it comes in my CSA every month, I turn it into croûtons or just lightly sear it at breakfast time.

After all these years of eating tofu without quite knowing what it was , I was happy to get the chance to participate in the process of making it at Joseon Village. After waking up early, having a light breakfast of fruit, and wandering around a bit getting a feel for the place - as I detailed in a different piece, "Applied Food Ethics at Joseon Village," we happened upon a lady sitting in a hot, smoky, not-quite-indoor-not-quite-outdoor kicthen. She was perching over a giant cooking cauldron which had been excellently designed to be fully integrated into the building's heating system so that not a single ounce of wood would be wasted. She was swooshing around a frothy, white liquid, made by grinding soy beans that had been soaked over night and then adding them to water. They need to be boiled to be cooked thoroughly, and need to be stirred lest they burn to the bottom of the pan. Greg offered to jump in and take a turn.

Greg hard at work.

After boiling the beans and stirring them continuously for the better part of an hour, taking breaks whenever our eyes welled up with tears from the smoke, it was time for the next step: separating the ground beans from the liquid that had absorbed much of their taste and nutrients. I took a giant cloth bag perforated with tiny holes and held it open while the woman scooped out the contents of the cauldron. The sediment remained in the bag, while the liquid escaped through the holes and down into our pot. At the end, I lifted up the sediment-filled bag, and we poured the thinner liquid into a giant rubber tub.

We then sat a big wooden press on top of the tub, plopped the bag of sediment on top of it, and squeezed out all the remaining liquid, leaving us with one tub of very dry grit and one bucket of very beany juice.

Another kitchen worker skimmed some of the liquid off of the top, sugared it, and served us all bowls of fresh, warm, sweet soy milk right on the spot.

Our translator, Ziyeon, with the goods.

After we allowed the same stuff in the red bucket to settle for a while, it turned into this:

Sundubu (순두부), a thin kind of tofu often added to soups. More or less like Silken stuff back home, I believe.

Then, to turn it into the stuff we're used to - the the stuff that come in cubes and holds its shape more or less like Jello - we used this little contraption.

Everything is again poured into a bag, which is itself set inside a little wooden box. The box is closed, a weight is set on top, and left for a few hours. All the liquid drains out (it didn't occur to me to ask what they do with this) and the weight and frame mold the tofu into its eventual form.

Fortunately or unfortunately, we didn't have an hour to wait around. We headed right off to visit some perilla plants (separate post here) and some chickens (and here), all of which we ended up eating (parts of).

In case you're wondering what happens to the grit, worry not: on a conscientious farm, none of it goes to waste. There's a soup called 콩비지찌개 (Kongbiji Jjigae / Bean Grit Stew) that combines the grit with fermented soybean paste, chilli peppers, and a few other vegetables. The grit can also be used to make awesome kimchi pancakes, slightly thicker and more filling than ones made with flour. Or, it can be fed to animals or returned to the land as fertilizer.

All beautiful options. Though, of course, you can also just eat it straight:

Tanya enjoys getting fed by I don't know whom!

Perilla: A Korean Treasure

2011-11-16T18:39:00.000-08:00

It's nearly impossible to me to pick my favorite Korean food. So many different kinds exist, covering an expansive range of tastes, smells, textures, and cooking methods. Plus, since just about everything you order is served with several side dishes, you almost never eat just one kind of food in isolation. However, if pressed (slight pun alert!), there might just be one food I love more than the others. I appreciate its fecundity, admire its versatility, savor its scent, and might be happy eating it in some form at every meal for the rest of my life. Had I been more eloquent as an elementary schooler, I might have spoken this way about Pizza Combos. Now that I've matured a bit, though, I prefer Perilla.

Although foreigners and dictionaries here often refer to Perilla leaves as Sesame leaves (the Korean name, 들깨, is pronounced Deul Kkae, which literally means "wild/field Sesame), Perilla is not in fact all that closely related to the Sesame plant . Rather, it belong to the mint family - a fact to which its extremely fantastic smell testifies. Once, while volunteering on a Korean farm in the dead of winter, I was asked to help the farmer round up some leftover stalks and weeds from last year's harvest. I expected the long-dead, decomposing material to reek of decay (which is, if you care to get philosophical about it, just the smell of another form of life), but as I raked the stems and leaves into piles, I found myself surrounded by an aroma familiar but fuller and richer than what I remembered, tinged with just a bit of spice. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to eat the source, or bathe myself in it.

The plant in question was, of course, Perilla, also known in English as "Beefsteak" for no apparent reason. I love Perilla so much that, when I first decided to sign up for the tour, before the details of the trip were all filled in for us, I was hatching plans to drag my team to a Perilla farm for the whole time, so that I could learn everything there is to know about the plant. How do you grow it, and when? How does it produce so many seeds, and out of which orifices? How hard is it to harvest them and turn them the products you find on store shelves? If I walk through a field of Perilla, might I pass out and wake up thinking I've made it to heaven? Is it possible to die of olfactory satisfaction?

Those plans didn't work out (actually a pretty fortunate turn of events, considering how awesome the rest of our food tour was), so you can imagine my joy when we stumbled upon a worker at Joseon Village hanging out next to a big pile of what looked from afar like nondescript sticks.

If you could smell it, you'd already know, but since Google hasn't added that service to blogs yet, I'll zoom in and show you: here lies treasure.

These are the stalks of the almighty Beefsteak plant. It had originally looked like this,

but the leaves had already been harvested, to either be eaten raw along with meat, rice, and garlic, to be made into kimchi, or to be battered and pancake-ified. (I also use them in lieu of basil when making my own Korean version of pesto.) As if that weren't enough, though, the plant has more to give: inside each little pod rests a seed, a little pocket of nutrition and deliciousness. Each Happy Bear made an attempt to master the patented ultra high-tech Joseon Dynasty Perilla Extraction Method, i.e., grab a handful of branches, set a little basket under them, and thwack 'em with a stick. The seeds and pods drop off into the basket, as shown below. Then you do a bit of sifting to get rid of the inedibles, and, voila, you've got what you were after.

What can you do with these seeds? It'd be better to ask what you can't do with them. First of all, if you're famished or greedy, you can eat them straight. The seeds don't have all the savory herbiness that you find in the leaves; rather, they're rich and creamy and smooth. One of our team members - Andy, I believe, who was having his first taste of pure Perilla - commented that they tasted like walnuts; at which point Tanya's face lit up. Due to her nut allergy, she had never been able to taste walnuts and had long wondered what they were like. All of a sudden, she had run into their approximation in the form of a long-lost Korean step-cousin.

I'm trying to smile, but my mouth is full of seeds. This must be a what a bear feels like when it at long last gets into a beehive.

If you've got a little more patience, you can grind them into a powder or press them into an oil. The powder is often added in small to seaweed or soybean paste soups to give them a bit of hearty sweetness and to counterbalance any salt; or, it can be used as the main component of a noodle broth, as in the fantastic-if-under-known-about 들깨칼국수 (Deulkkae Kalguksu):

I hope you'll pardon a slight digression on how great this dish is, particularly for veg*ans such as myself. Imagine: a giant bowl of thick, formidably chewy noodles, in a sauce that reminds you of Alfredo, only slightly thinner and minus the greasiness, indigestion, and regret. Steamy, creamy, and oh-so-filling, the broth is made by adding powdered perilla seeds into a savory stock (most restaurants include meat in the broth, but all you need to make a purely vegan version at home is a bit of vegetable boullion); the perilla seeds are packed full of good stuff like plant protein, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin A and E, and dietary fiber, all of which are important nutrients to have in your diet, vegetarian or not.

And there's more: crushed and powdered seeds (들깨가루, Deulkkae Garu) are also used to make a creamy topping for various side dishes, most notably fern bracken and lightly pan-fried tofu. Speaking of which, when pressed, the seeds release an oil (들기름, Deul Gireum), which is exceptionally useful when stir-frying at low temperatures and a represents a great domestic alternative to olive, canola, and other oils imported from afar. There's also one more awesome recipe I'm looking forward to telling you about, but it's kind of top-secret, so you'll have to wait for my post about the meal that my teammates and I put together for our final day's breakfast.

If you're interested in incoporating some Perilla into your diet, you shouldn't have too much trouble. You can find perilla-broth noodles many noodle shops, particularly now that the summer is over and iced bean-broth noodles (콩국수) are off the menus. Grain/bean/seed stalls at traditional markets usually have the seeds by the bucketful, and the oil and powder are available at most local/organic/health food shops as well as, of course, at the megastores. Ah, and one more thing: Deulkkae is traditionally known in Korea for helping people fight off colds and sore throats. Go find yourself a source before the winter sets in!

Applied Food Ethics at Joseon Village

2011-11-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

Vegetarians, myself included, often think they have the market cornered when it comes to eating ethical. Killing is bad, causing suffering is bad, and being selfish is bad, so the less meat you eat, the better, end of story. While I do think that for the most part these premises are correct, and that the world would be a better place if everyone tried to keep such principles in mind while making decisions about food, much of my reading and living over the past two years has complicated my notions about what I ought to be eating. My experience at Joseon Village was no exception.

Joseon is the name of the dynasty that ruled over the Korean peninsula – North and South – between the end of the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries. To quote from wikipedia, “The Joseon's rule has left a substantial legacy on the modern face of Korea; much of modern Korean etiquette, cultural norms, societal attitudes towards current issues, and even the modern Korean language and its dialects stem from the traditional thought patterns that originated from this period.” Andy was right on, then, when in his article about the traditional heating systems at Joseon Village he said that he felt we had been sent back in time.

Our bedrooms

We turned in pretty early the first night, having gorged ourselves for most of the day, so I woke up early, determined to explore and get in some good photos before our whirlwind food tour recommenced. As I ambled around, I made an effort to take in all the sights, sounds, and textures of the place. Maybe it's the lack of cars zooming around, or maybe it's the fact that there are no buildings so tall that I couldn't have climbed with my own bare hands; something about Joseon Village feels distinctly human. Things are small and simple: a rabbit hutch with ten inhabitants here, a stable with two cows there, a few chicken coops, some peppers out to dry, pots of fermenting vegetables and sauces. Tall trees, huge rice paddies - everything that's big is also natural, inspiring a sense calm awe and proper proportion. The TV camera guy started following me around, taking footage of me taking pictures of just about everything. He asked me how I felt, and I told him it was nice not to be surrounded by asphalt, concrete, plastic, and glass.

Still full from the previous day's escapades, we snacked lightly on apples, persimmons, and mandarins for breakfast, then got on with the day's work. The first stop was the kitchen, where we observed and helped out a bit with the process of making tofu (details in a separate post). Then we took a stroll and got to do a little hands-on work with perilla, one of my favorite substances on the planet (details also in a separate post). Next came perhaps the most intense experience of the tour, when the five of us told the crew that we wanted to be the ones to kill the chicken that would be prepared for our lunch.

This was the first experiment in food ethics. It's easy to say that we do or don't have the right to kill animals, but it's much harder to do look the issue in the face. Being present at, and being involved in, the moment of slaughter gives you a much truer connection to the feeling and meaning of the act, and furthers your insight into the questions of whether and under what circumstances the taking of innocent life may be justified. Greg, a former vegan and current "there's-no-name-for-this-but-I-try-to-consider-the-effects-of-all-my-food-choices," was the one who snapped the generous bird's neck. His thoughts and impressions can be found here.

After the kill, we dunked the chicken's lifeless body into hot water, swished it around for a minute or two, then pulled it out, plucked it, chopped off the feet and head, removed the organs, and sent it over to the kitchen to be made into Dakdoritang (Greg's post here), chicken soup in a spicy broth loaded with red pepper flakes, potatoes, onions, and other vegetables. We also had Baeksuk (Andy's post here), a milder chicken soup with a few more herbs, and a nice assortment of side dishes.

The highlight for me, though, was that I had the good fortune to sit down across to the owner/philosopher regent of the village, whom I had been thinking all day was just an eccentric who liked to pace around wearing odd hats.

I had had a funny, if tense, conversation with him earlier in the morning. As he walked by the five of us and our translator hanging out and messing around with tofu, we greeted him. Hoping to make a joke at our expense, he said, in Korean "You're in Korea now, you ought to be speaking our language." To which I replied, nonchalantly "OK, not a problem for me." He cracked a big smile, gave me an enthusiastic hand shake, asked me how I had gotten so good, and invited me to come back anytime.

We went our own separate ways for a while - that conversation actually took place before the chicken slaughter - but we started chatting a bit again when he sat down at the table. I asked if they grew all the food nearby, and he said of course, that he and a team of about eight others, including his wife, took care of it all. Then, thinking back to the time when I lived in a similar eco-village in India where we composted all our (human) waste, I asked him about the toilet system in his village. Somehow this really set him off (in a good way): he mentioned how they used to have a traditional composting system, where you just do your business into a big pit, but that city people weren't careful enough, and kept dropping their keys and cell phones in and demanding the staff go get it. They also apparently used to draw their water from a well, but the younger guests often took to dropping stuff in and ruining it for everybody. It also seemed to me that he mentioned something about someone committing suicide, but he was on such a roll that I couldn't stop and ask him for clarification. He continued, complaining that they used to serve real traditional Korean food, with different spices and with kimchi over a foot in length. In the old days, people would have stuffed the whole thing into their mouths; now, though, they want it cut up into bite-size pieces before it's plated. A lot of guests in the village even bring in their own snacks and ramen; if the The Chief (his name is written in Chinese characters on the business card, but I can't read it) sees them, he kicks them out, saying they clearly don't know how to appreciate his village. What a guy!

That was just the beginning. He went on to explain why he thinks that our general lack of appreciation for is a serious problem. Up until recently, most people spent a significant portion of their time working with food, either by sowing, harvesting, hunting, preserving, or preparing. Household relationships were also culinary ones; men, women, and children would each have their separate roles, and would work together towards the common goal of feeding one another. It was the man's responsibility to provide the food, the woman's responsibility to cook it, and the kids' responsibility to do whatever they could. This may sound a little sexist, but The Chief insisted that the system of obligations was mutual, and that different roles didn't mean different statuses. True, women were expected to cook; but, by the same token, men were required to return home to eat. Not eating a meal that had been cooked for you was as great a sin as not preparing a meal for your family in the first place. If a man missed a meal and wound up eating leftovers and complaining that they didn't taste great, shame on him for failing to place appropriate value on his wife's work and on the food itself. If a man was strong and wealthy, and his children in good health, then all credit would go to the woman, who was clearly feeding them well (in addition to all the other work she would have been doing to maintain the household).

This was all very interesting to my modern ears. I do have a few reservations about what he said. In particular, I doubt that men and women really need so many pre-defined expectations and set-in-stone rules in order to cooperate, and I wish that I had had the opportunity to talk to my two female teammates about the guy's speech. Still, every day I think about the ethical and environmental implications of what I eat and where it came from, but I find it harder to keep in mind that there's a whole 'nother dimension to the story, which The Chief got me thinking abotu: that my food choices and eating habits affect my family, my community, and spiraling outwards, my society as a whole.

Now, in our age of instant noodles and microwave pizzas and canned beverages, all of which are pumped full unpronounceable ingredients combined in factories using processes we can't imagine, from plants picked and planted by we don't know who, how is it possible to be authentically, deeply grateful for your food? Who can you look in the eyes and thank? Who can teach you the history and the meaning of what you eat? How much other knowledge is left for parents to pass down to their kids? And what pretext can bring the family together repeatedly, day after day, year after year? We often think that we're saving time, effort, and money when we pay others to do the majority of our food work. We're often right. But we also pay for this convenience with our health, with the health of our relationships, and with the health of our environment. I don't know what the answer is, exactly (edit: there's surely more than one answer), but I'm glad to have been given a chance to continue looking for it.

Why Kimchi Is Good for the Soul

2011-11-08T20:41:00.000-08:00

I never gave much thought to kimchi before I moved to Korea. Just miles from my house, there were loads of Korean restaurants and Asian supermarkets where, unbeknownst to me, thousands of foodies (did they exist in the 90's?) and Korean expats must have been getting their fix. Personally, though, if it couldn't be cooked in the microwave or toaster oven, I just wasn't interested.

How strange then that, now, I see so many fantastic things about kimchi, and almost, if resentfully, have to nod my head when Koreans say that it just might be the perfect food. First of all, it's just great to eat. Spicy like salsa, crisp like an apple, sour like movie theater candy - no matter what you're eating, something about kimchi will compliment it. Second, it's versatile. Eat it raw, eat it stir-fried, drop it in a stew, make pancakes out of it, slap it on your burger or pizza. Third, it's healthy. Made (in its most basic incarnation) with cabbage, salt, red pepper paste or flakes, and a bit of shrimp or anchovies, it's got nutrients a-plenty and calories a-few. The fermentation process loads it up with all sorts of little bacteria that provide your body with nutrients that you might not get in a diet of exclusively raw, cooked, or processed foods. Fourth, it lasts. Whether you make it yourself or buy it elsewhere, you can keep it refrigerated for up six months in an air-tight container. It may grow sour, but it would require some serious neglect for it to grow inedible. Fifth - and this is a somewhat subtler point - cabbage can live in the ground long into the winter, even surviving when the temperatures drop below freezing, which means that it thrives long after sweet potatoes, pumpkins, and carrots have given up the ghost. Over the centuries, during the months of December, January, February, and even March, when there wasn't really a lot of stuff to harvest, cabbage and Kimchi probably saved a great number of Koreans from starvation. Now, we're more likely to think in terms of food independence, but either way, it's unarguably a good thing to have some grub growing nearby.

So, what would a Korean food tour be without some time spent immersing oneself in cabbagey glory? As I detailed in my last post, Lee Hee-cheon of White Crane Farm was kind enough to let us swipe a few of his cabbages (even though technically they were just babies whose time hadn't quite come), which we then took down to the restaurant run by his wife, Park Yang-yoon. Mrs. Park is a fantastic cook: as interested in her husband in providing clean, safe, healthy food, but probably a bit more talented when it comes to making it scrumptious.

Thanks to a giant bibimbap spread earlier in the afternoon and some raw carrots and garlic just before at the farm, we Happy Bears needed to work up a bit of an appetite before we could begin chowing down. So, Mrs. Park set us up with a table outside the restaurant and gave us a crash course in making kimchi. The photo record is somewhat incomplete, since all of us were busy washing and chopping and slathering, but here's the gist:

1) Chop the butt off of the cabbage and remove the outer leaves, which were the most exposed to dirt and bugs. These leaves can be cooked and eaten in sides and stews, but apparently don't make great kimchi.

2) Then cut the whole head in half along the vertical axis. Make another cut like you're going to quarter it, still along the vertical axis, but stop about 2/3 of the way down. This allows you to open up the cabbage for the next step, without completely disassembling it.

Andy and Anina work on Step 1 while me, Greg, and Tanya work on 2.

3) Rinse the not-quite-quartered heads thoroughly, then rub salt on each and every leaf. This kills bacteria and opens up the pores, allowing the spices to soak in later.

Andy's a'washin', Tanya's a'saltin'

4) Stack all the wet, salted cabbage halves and then apply pressure by leaving a heavy rock or pot on top of them. I guess it takes some time for the salt to do its work.

5) Prepare the sauce. Normally, red pepper paste, ginger, garlic, shrimp, and anchovies, but we also chopped up some other veggies for extra goodness.

Knife skill contest time.

6) Don your plastic gloves, let you burn off your fingers. Lie the cabbage on its back (with the outermost leave touching the plate) and lift up all but the last leaf. Rub some sauce on it, and also on the back of the leaf above it. Let the next one down and repeat, making sure to slather a bit of spice on the front and back of every leaf.

This stuff was still in the ground, alive and growing, less than 2 hours beforehand!

7) It's ready to eat! Or, you can wait a few days/weeks/months.

As if the act of eating weren't reward enough, there's one more thing I'd like to point out about kimchi. The actual process of making it was also a blast! I knew two of my team members going into the project, but I had never even exchanged emails with the other two, let alone met them. We were all friendly, but, personally, I didn't quite know what to talk to them about while we were listening to the farmer and chopping our own cabbage heads off. But, when we joined together to make Kimchi, we really hit it off. All being involved in learning something together and, even more, sharing knowledge and hints and tips while working towards a common goal, gave us a comfortable atmosphere in which to get to know one another. When you're on opposite sides of the table preparing kimchi with someone, there's no need to ask awkward questions and try to figure out what you've got in common. You're already there, together, doing the same thing. It's all right in front of your eyes. The bond is more instant, and more tangible, than any "me too." It's much easier to come together over production than consumption.

I'm sure everyone else has good, if not quite this exotic or preposterous, memories of this sort. Cooking with parents in the kitchen, with the extended family over the holidays, with roomies in college, or out at some backyard barbeque. Whatever the specifics, just hanging around food with other people is one of the simplest and most satisfying pleasure life affords us. This is also one of the pleasures that we risk losing as we outsource our cooking to restaurants and corporations, leaving independence, tradition, and solidarity by the wayside. I feel lucky to have had the chance to realize this. And also to eat (some of) the following:

Tofu, fresh kimchi, and steamed pork

From 12 o'clock, going clockwise: candied lotus roots, cucumber pickled in soy sauce, radish leaf kimchi (I believe), old/sour cabbage kimchi, sauerkraut (first I'd ever seen in Korea), fern bracken with perilla dressing, and, in the middle, pickeld garlic.

Time to eat!

Translator, foodie, foodie, chef, farmer, foodie, foodie, foodie

Team Happy Bear Goes Organic

2011-11-02T16:05:00.000-07:00

At Hangukjib, my teammates and I got a chance to put our own meal together. Not all the way from beginning to end, since so many of the vegetables had already been sautéed for us, but, in any case, more than usual. By learning about the people, history, and techniques that lay behind it, we had deepened our relationship with our food, and had been reminded once again that everything we eat can be appreciated in various ways. We can enjoy the taste, of course, and get lost in the sheer beauty of the dish, but we can also develop respect for and gratitude towards the people who put it together. We can note our sense of nourishment and satisfaction after the meal has been completed. Last, but not least, even as foreigners we can feel ourselves embedded in hundreds of years of history. Bibimbap was formerly eaten in various incarnations by peasants, by kings, by the bereaved. Now it's being eaten by people like us. The world is indeed a strange place.

Even such a deep experience, though, fails to address what is for me the most important question: what was the effect of my meal on the earth and all the other beings on it? Did it do more good than harm? Are the practices that brought it about sustainable? Are my choices contributing to others' ability to eat well, or am I detracting from it? Of course I want my food to bring happiness and wellbeing to me; but if it does so at the cost of sickness, deprivation, or destruction for others, I'd prefer to opt out.

Luckily, we're not caught up in some zero-sum game in which our health necessarily results in other's misery. It is possible for eating to benefit the earth and everybody on it. Or, more accurately, it's possible for farming to. Good farming, on a small scale, done with care, attention, knowledge, respect, and patience, can rehabilitate land, recover topsoil, recreate space for animals to graze on, and restore health to people. Team Happy Bear wanted to see this kind of work up close, in context, and in action, so Hansik graciously offered to take us out of Jeongju and into Jeong-eup to meet Lee Hee-cheon.

Meeting Farmer Lee

Farmer Lee started 백학농원 (White Crane Farm) some-teen years ago (that's a direct quote, not my memory faltering) because he wanted to feed his family food that was healthy and safe. I asked him if he had done conventional farming before switching over to organic, to which he replied, more or less "I would never farm anything except organic. What's the point?" Here's a dude who understands what it's all about! Non-organic farming methods, in the long run, create and exacerbate a host of seemingly disconnected problems, from oil depletion to water pollution, from topsoil loss to political instability, from starvation to obesity. Organic, sustainable agriculture is the only foundation upon which we'll be able to build strong, healthy, enduring communities in the future. If I were more of a historian, I might also try to make a similar claim about the past. In any case, Farmer Lee said that he had been successful: his kids are healthy and energetic, and his land is becoming more fertile year after year.

It would take a full year on an organic farm to really begin understanding anything, but, unfortunately, we only had a few hours together with Mr. Lee, so we quickly got down to business in the cabbage patch. He explained that he doesn't use any chemical pesticides or fertilizers. Instead, to control bugs, he creeps through his fields, searches for clues like eaten-up leaves and little insect droppings, spots the invaders, and plucks them out with a pair of chopsticks. It does sound like a lot of work, but actually, it's not particularly harmful to eat a leaf that bugs have already nibbled on. In fact, Mr. Lee says, the fact that bugs eat it means it's probably good enough for us, too. Would you want to eat something that even a roach wouldn't go near?

This is neither here nor there, but it was at about this point that Mr. Lee picked a grub off of a piece of cabbage and said that it was probably pretty healthy, since it had been feasting on organic food. Greg then took the grub and scarfed it, more or less blowing the farmer's mind. Apparently he hadn't been given the full dossier on Team HappyBear!

Andy hoists a cabbage-trophy. In less than 4 hours, it will be Kimchi...

After harvesting some cabbages together, we walked down the hill, flanked on either side by persimmon trees just about ready to lose their leaves to the autumn and their fruits to hungry tourists. We moved on to the next stop: the carrot and garlic patch. The five of us all planted garlic together by pushing cloves about an inch into the dirt then covering them back up, while Mr. Lee explained that, as deplorable as the plastic (they call it "vinyl mulch" here) is, it helps the plants a lot by retaining moisture and warmth and keeping out weeds, which essentially steal nutrition from the garlic, keeping it from growing as big as it might. It's still not clear to me whether this kind of farming can really be called "organic" in the fullest sense of the word, but it's a whole lot better than the alternative.

Working up an appetite / earning our keep

Me and Tanya after eating a fresh clove of garlic each, wishing the cameras were equipped with smell-o-vision technology.

After planting garlic, we dug up some carrots, scrubbed them off on our pants, and, much to the amazement of Farmer Lee and the Hanisk crew, chowed down on the spot. Some were a little concerned about the dirt, but we told them: not only is organic produce healthy; so is the soil it's grown in. After all, all the vitamins and minerals in fruits and veggies come from one of two places: the soil, or chemical reactions within the plant. (Botanist friends: correct me if I'm wrong here). Our smiles and "mmmmms" probably did more than our arguments to overcome the crew's skepticism, but either way, they joined us, munching on the freshest and healthiest carrots they'd probably ever had. Unfortunately, I was too busy eating to take any pictures.

Slight Change of Plans Regarding the 1KFTFFF

2011-11-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: NEVERMIND THIS POST. I'm gonna post everything here, and post whatever seems to fit well onto Hansik. I'll also be posting everything over at our team blog, http://happybeareats.blogspot.com. Tune in over there if you want to see how Anina, Andy, Tanya, and Greg's takes differed from mine.

_____________________________________

From now on, all my posts regarding the First Korean Food Tour for Foreign Foodies are going to appear exclusively on the Hansik website in the Hostpot Review section. My team has made this decision in order to make sure that our posts are pulling traffic towards the Hansik site, rather than away from it. It should also make it easier for the people at Hansik to see how hard Team Happy Bear is working.

Thus, the post just under this one about brekky has been reposted here.

Eventually, after a ten day or two week delay, everything will get republished here; in the meantime, though, please follow the links I post to my articles on the Hansik website.

Much appreciated! Happy vicarious food tourism!

The Hungry Vagabond Gets Treated Like a King

2011-11-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

Whenever I tell Koreans that I'm a veg*an, they generally ask the same question: what do you eat? Most of them don't seem to realize that Korean cuisine is full of awesome vegetarian goodies: pancakes made with green onions, chives, kimchi, potatoes, or lentils; noodles hot, cold, creamy, or spicy; all kinds of soups porridges; tofu in various guises. Then, of course, there's also 정식, or Jeongsik, or Table d'hôte, or the "set meal." No matter what you call it, it means rice, soup, and anywhere from, say, five to thirty-five side dishes, almost all of them veg-friendly.

However, the king of Korean vegetarian fare is, without question, Bibimbap (literally, mixed rice). Normally, I wouldn't take it upon myself to write about it, given that it's probably the simplest, most well-known, and most widely-diffused Korean food out there, with the possible exception of LA Kalbi. Thanks to Hansik, though, I recently underwent the most extreme and regal Bibimbap experience of my life:

Bibimbap with a master. This Granny (a term of respect in Korean) has been making Bibimbap for 52 years and claims that her mother invented it, or at least the high-class version.

Your standard Bibimbap - even the one I ate on the airplane on the way over here nearly five years ago, which, incidentally, was the first Korean food I ever tried - is vegetable heaven. Julienned vegetables like sauteed radish, carrot, and bracken, along with steamed and seasoned spinach, some bean sprouts, and a bit of roasted seaweed sit atop a bed of rice. Throw an egg on top if you'd like, drop on a dollop of red pepper paste, and stir it all up. Voila: a natural, low-maintenance, delicious vegetarian meal. At a cheap restaurant, this will run you about 3 dollars; at a fancy one, closer to 6.

For Kings, or, in this case, a bunch of vagabond foodies, Bibimbap can really be scaled up. Check out our table above: everything I just mentioned, plus sweet and spicy balloon flower root (it's OK if you have no clue what this is), sauteed zucchini, sautéed shiitake mushrooms, thin-sliced egg, mung bean jelly, ginko nuts, pine nuts, crushed sesame seeds, and a special broth made right there at the restaurant.

Some of the high-class toppings

Listening attentively to half a century of wisdom.

Being that everything will eventually get all stirred together, you'd think you could just throw in all the ingredients any which way. It's not so, though! The master insisted that we put each ingredient in its own place, paying particular attention to color symmetry. White radish slices and bean sprouts should be on opposite sides for optimal aesthetic appeal; sauces and nuts at the end to give it that just-completed look.

Me, Greg, and Tanya enjoying the lesson. Unfortunately (for them) Andy and Anina had not yet joined the festivities.

Can you believe I made that?

It turns out that even mixing it requires a particular technique. In addition to stirring everything up and mixing it evenly, one has to be sure to smush it together just so, in order that the perfect balance of soy sauce, sesame oil, and pepper paste will be mashed in to each grain of rice.

I got a little help from the boss on this one. Oh my god was it good.

It turns out, then, that Bibimbap has a fairly unique quality: no matter who puts the dish together for you, the final result is the outcome of your own skill. Even if you go all the way to Jeonju, search out the "Hangukjib," (the name of this restaurant) and order the most deluxe bibimbap on the menu, it's up to you to make it or break it! I see a little something symbolic in this: money can't buy you the best bibimbap; only familiarity can. Good food calls for good cooks, but also for good eaters, eaters who know something about the story and the theory of their food. Eating is consumptive, of course, but at its best, it's also participatory. More than many other places I've been, Koreans seem to be intent on holding on to this respectful, if not quite reciprocal, relationship between eater and eaten. Not as much as they should, given how many treasures their cuisine contains, but enough that just living and eating here as made me aware that people can, in fact, approach their food in different ways, some better than others. I owe many thanks to this Grandma in particular, and to others like her all around the country, for helping me learn how to really enjoy and appreciate food. Now, go get a bowl for yourself.

Me, Tanya, and Greg with two generations of Bibimbap Matriarchs.

Food Tour Day 1: Breakfast

2011-10-30T16:34:00.000-07:00

While some people skip breakfast, others call it the most important meal of the day. Nonetheless, people in both camps have something in common: whether you eat breakfast or not, you probably do so in a hurry. Who, other than housewives and hagwon workers, has time in the morning to actually put together a meal? Picking, choosing, scrubbing, slicing, boiling, frying, and other chores eat up precious time that could be used for more pressing tasks, like finding matching socks and remembering where the #&^( your keys are.

The perceived inconvenience of eating a real breakfast, caused by such maladies as greater distances between home and work, the necessity of dual-income households, and a general lack of interest in culinary independence, has brought us such wonders as Frosted Flakes, Bisquick, and Gogurt. In other words, our pantries have been overrun by corporations. If you can find a single breakfast food in your home that hasn't passed across several state borders and through numerous processing facilities to get to you, count yourself lucky.

It wasn't until my mid-twenties that I developed an interest in eating food without logos, slogans, characters, jingles, boxes, or wrapping. Somehow, even as a graduate of a pretty good university, I still believed that a healthy breakfast consisted of a serving of my cereal of choice (preferably one advertising how many vitamins had been added to it), a cup of pasteurized, homogenized skim milk, a piece of toast, and a bit of meat or an egg, either way, full of antibiotics. Eventually, writers like Michael Pollan furnished me with the intellectual stuff necessary to recognize that I had been wrong all along, but it was life in Korea that gave me the impetus to start making changes. No Waffle House around the corner*, no Tony the Tiger beckoning me from the other end of the aisle, no decent bread, no bacon at all. I was often tempted to just forswear my morning meals altogether, but given that I didn't start work until 3PM, that didn't seem like the best option.

Instead, I took a hint from the people around me. Or, at least, from the ones who weren't neck-deep in Western Food Orthodoxy. They ate rice, beans, nuts, stews, fish, vegetables steamed and raw and fermented - in short, the same basic stuff they ate all the rest of the time. The same flavors, too: where we tend only to have sweet and rich in the AM, Koreans also incorporate salty, sour, bitter, and whatever else you can come up with into their morning meals. Here, there's no giant conceptual gap between food that is to be eaten before the earth has done half its day's rotating and food that is to be eaten after; it would be something close to meaningless for a restaurant to advertise, IHOP-style, that it offers breakfast around the clock.

Adjusting to this new style of eating was a little weird at first, and to be honest, I still hate eating rice in the mornings, but after a short while I found that the barriers were far more psychological than physical. Once you can let go of "tradition" - which isn't actually tradition, because the modern breakfast is almost completely a product of Kelloggs and 20th century food transmogrification technology - you open yourself up to a world of delicious and nutritious possibilities. Even someone as environ-mental as myself, all wrapped up in a quasi-veg*an, anti-corporate, organolocavore lifestyle stuff, living in a strange land far away from home, has plenty to eat.

Here's a typical example. It can be put together in ten minutes, eaten in fifteen, and cleaned in two. More importantly, its nutrition is packaged in whole foods, which means it's more synergistic, more available to the body, and more likely to keep you satisfied until your next meal. I don't know what they eat for breakfast, but my coworkers, most of whom probably eat breakfast later than me and then start class with me at 9AM, often head to Subway (yeah, we have one on campus) for their footlongs right when class gets out at 10:50. My stomach, on the other hand, is hardly even rumbling at 11:40 when the faculty cafeteria opens; I wouldn't go over before 12:30 if it weren't for the mad rush that begins at noon.

Eager to see this magic plate that I've spent the last half-hour talking up? Please, remember that I never said it was much to look at.

The substance of the meal comes from the sweet potatoes, all nice and chewy; the bite comes from dipping thee crisp carrot sticks and mini peppers into ssamjang (made of soybean paste, red pepper paste, and sesame oil), and the richness comes from pan-fried tofu with a perilla oil and powder sauce. Have a cup of tea first and and, if you're still hungry, a piece of fruit after, and you're good to go.

Fair enough, there's some prep work involved - taking care of the sweet potatoes ahead of time, and, even more, all the embedded labor in the sauces and oils. But who can't squeeze in ten minutes on a Sunday night to prep breakfast for most of the week? And surely the process of making sesame oil is a little simpler than the process of making Smart Start. Further, for those in a real hurry, you could replace the tofu with nuts or a hard-boiled egg. Another benefit of meals like this include that they change throughout the year according to whichever vegetables are fresh, cheap, and in-season. It's easy to replace cucumbers with carrots, to visit the market and buy any of hundreds of varieties of hand-made side dishes, or to incorporate whatever your CSA box happens to bring (quail eggs for me this morning^^). This means that we stay closer to natural rhythms and further from artificial preservatives. Which in turn, means, that we're closer to health, food independence, and sustainability. Sounds like killing ten birds with one stone to me.

Team HappyBear Eats Its Way Through North Jeolla Province

2011-10-30T06:42:00.000-07:00

If this post never gets finished, it's because my stomach exploded and I dropped dead with a giant smile on my face.

Like the other members of Team Happy Bear (don't ask about the name), I spent every moment between 5:00 Friday morning and 7:30 Sunday night doing something related to food. You name it, we did it. Shopping. Buying. Harvesting. Killing. Seasoning. Slathering. Cooking. Debating. Discussing. Eating. Enjoying. Thanking. A full month's worth of preparations, tons of plans made and canceled and reworked, all came together for a crazy three-day, two-night bonanaza covering seven meals and several hundred kilometers. I'm too exhausted now to go into the details of what we ate and where, but I'll just say that the trip was a dream come true: me and four foodie friends getting chauffeured around, following traditional Korean food from farm to market to table (to belly), relishing in its simultaneous simplicity and complexity, exploring its endless reworkings of what often looks to the uninitiated like a limited sets of ingredients, and learning about the history, methods, and thought behind it all.

The next ten days will be filled with my attempts to recall, review, and recreate all the experiences that are still whirring about in my mind. Keep checking back - lots of interesting stuff to come!

Students say the darndest things

2011-10-26T03:42:00.000-07:00

I was doing a little lesson on time yesterday. First, I we went through some pronunciation stuff, in particular differentiating between "thirteen" and "thirty" and the like. Then we played a game where I called out a time and the students had to draw it on a clock on their little mini-white boards (which are, by the way, absolutely the most revolutionary teaching tool I've found for increasing student participation, understanding, and retention). I would tease students (cheerfully) if they drew, for example, 2:50 rather than 2:15, and their teammates would heckle them until they corrected it. Lotsa chuckles.

Then I started working on alternate ways of saying the times. I wrote on the board, "5:00," asked "What time is it?" and got them to say both "It's five o'clock" and just "It's five." Then I drew up "5:15" and elicited "five fifteen" and, after a bit of work, "quarter past five." Next, as you might expect, was "5:30." "Five thirty," most of them say. Then one wiseass, with a big grin on his face:

"Two quarters past five."

Maybe you had to be there? Anyway, it was awesome. Sometimes I love my job.

October's CSBS

2011-10-19T15:40:00.000-07:00

It's been several months since I was responsible for one of the veg nights. I was supposed to run one in September, but we decided to turn it into a potluck for someone's birthday party, which then got canceled at the last minute, at which point Mina took over and did her usual thing. This week, though, it was all me. And Niall, my Irish coworker/sous chef.

I had no real idea what to make. Having done a few theme meals before, - Indian with Mathan, Italian on my own - I thought about trying to find some other cuisine to work with. Being that we're on a break from school this week (not entirely sure why), I asked one of our Japanese teachers, Yuka, if she'd come help out. She said yes. I asked her what she'd like to prepare, figuring that she would have some awesome Japanese veg dish in mind. She suggested a barley and bean salad. I was a little surprised, but...sure, whatever. As for the other stuff...everyone always requests hummus, I wanted to get back into lentil soup, and I've been making some pad thai-ish stuff with the happy eggs I got from my CSA, so I figured I'd throw that in too.

Nowadays, we usually have about five to seven people at the dinners. Nice and cozy, and fairly easy for the cook. This week, though, was exam week at a lot of colleges and grad schools around, meaning that people had a bit more freedom too shift their schedules around. So, fortunately or not, I was cooking for 12. Have a look:

This picture doesn't exactly show it, but I had to load my panniers, backpack and manpurse to just about the bursting point. Good to know for future biking trips though - with another bag or two, it looks like it probably wouldn't be too hard to carry a supply of simple food for a few days.

2 mile ride to the GCA hangout (i.e. "The Non-Awkward Warehouse")

Item 1: Barley and Bean Salad.

You need: Barley, assorted beans, chives, parsley, garlic, salt, pepper, oil, vinegar
You should: Prep the beans (I used kidney and garbanzos) by soaking the night before, then pressure cook several hours in advance and set aside in a colander so that they regain a bit of their firmness. Cook the barley, rinse it off, chill it a little with possible, then mix together with the beans. The original recipe called for 1/2c barley to 3 cans of beans, which I thought was a little ridiculous. I tripled the barley and doubled the beans. Added in a half cup each of the chives and parsely, though more would've been OK, then mix up the dressing separately and add on. I also had a million sprouts lying around the house, so I dumped them all in. I'm sure you could throw in any leaves you wanted for even more excellence.
The verdict: Awesome. Koreans are often pretty finicky about their rice, and though barley is a traditional crop here, people rarely eat it without mixing it into rice. Also, considering how bean-heavy the salad was, I wasn't sure how everyone would take it. Nonetheless, good reviews all around. Another friend to whom I gave some leftovers told me it was the best thing I had ever made. It takes a little planning, but all-in-all is not that difficult, and is one of those great "toss in anything you have and it'll probably work out ok" recipes.

Item 2: Thai-style lentil soup.

You need: 2c Lentils, 2 cans of tomatoes, 2 cans coconut milk, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, turmeric
You should: Cook the lentils for about 25 minutes in one pot while you work on the sauce in another. For the sauce, briefly sauté a bunch of minced garlic and ginger, then, before they get too smoky, add the tomatoes (the recipe called for jalapeños too, but I couldn't get any), stir in the coconut milk, add a bit of each of the Indian spices, and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Once it's all melded nicely, mix it into the lentils and cook them together for another 20 minutes, or just let it simmer til the rest of the meal is ready to go.
The verdict: Everyone seemed to like the dish. The consistency was awesome, and the acidity of the tomatoes and the creaminess of the coconut went together nicely, though it all came out a little bland for my taste. We did drop in more easonings and even a spicy pepper near the end to try to adjust the taste, but it wasn't quite enough. Maybe a bit more ginger in the sauté, even a bit of onion? And a splash of lime juice at the end? Easy enough to make in big batches, and nice and warm and smooth going town, but it needs a little work.

Dish 3: Variation on Pad Thai

I wasn't sure if I was going to need to make the this one or not since I don't have too much experience cooking for twelve. After churning out four big bowls of salad, a giant pot of lentils, and two plates of bread and toast, for some reason, we felt like we'd need more. So we went for it. It turned out to be completely unnecessary, but...

You need: Noodles, bean sprouts, garlic, ginger, onions, tofu, shiitake mushrooms, eggs, oyster sauce, Thai spice mix
You should: Slice the tofu into strips and sauté on its own until it gets a little crispier and chewier, then set aside. Sauté the onions, garlic, ginger and mushrooms, while getting the noodles started on the other burner. Boil the noodles until they've got about five minutes left, then add in the bean sprouts. After five minutes, if you can, remove only the bean sprouts, and mix them in to the sauté. Cook for another minute or two, then toss in the eggs (already beaten) and scramble for a bit, adding in the noodles at the very end. Sprinkle in the oyster sauce - just a little, it might be stronger than you think - and a load of salt and pepper and Thai spice mix.
The verdict: Everyone said they liked it, but personally, I had some reservations. It wasn't quite as good as the stuff I've been making at home recently. The oyster sauce was a little too salty and there wasn't quite enough Thai kick to it. Should've used even more seasonings and crushed up some peanuts as a topping. That said, I love adding bean sprouts in with noodles - it cuts down calories, adds protein, and also slips a little crispness into the noodle mush. Plus, it's easy to get organic bean sprouts and they require much less work to grow and process than noodles do. Anyway, I have a feeling this will become a decent dish after a few more tweaks and iterations. In any case, not too bad for something that started as a way for me to empty out the fridge...

Not pictured: hummus. You probably all know how to make it, but, anyway, here's how I do: (excuse the preceding/ subsequent excesses of colons:)

You need: chickpeas, olive oil, tahini, garlic, onion, salt, pepper, other spices
You should: soak the chickpeas the night before. Pressure cook 'em for about 10 minutes; while that's happening, sauté up some garlic and onions. When the chickpeas are done, strain them, but don't throw out all of the liquid. Blend up the chickpeas, tahini, olive oil, sautéed stuff, salt, pepper, and whatever spices you want (this time I went with chipotle seasoning from home, but cumin and lemon also work well). Add in water and blend until you get it to the desired level of fluffiness. Sprinkle with a little more spice and oil on top.
The verdict: Thankfully, hummus is a novelty here and nobody knows how blase' it is or how hard it is to make one that will actually impress anybody. It always goes over well at the veg nights, though, and I think it's now kind of become expected that I'll bring some. This time, I added in more water to fluff it up and get a little more mileage out of the beans. I still want to move my cooking a lot more towards local ingredients, though. Maybe next time I'll try it with perilla seeds and oil? Or make my own tahini.

Not pictured: toast.

You need: Bread.
You should: Slice. Insert into toaster oven. Plug in. Turn dials. Don't burn.
The verdict: I think I've mastered this one.

Soooo..........

The eaters, clockwise, starting with the peace-sign dude:
Bohemian (nickname), dude I don't know, Ok-bin, Niall, Gyeong-ho, Yong-seong, Bo-mi, Su-jeong, So-yeong. Mi-na is in the back behind the counter, I'm behind the camera, and Il-mi is running late.

Time to chow down^^

Occupy Wall Street here in SK

2011-10-19T03:55:00.000-07:00

Some of you may have been wondering whether the OWS stuff has made its way over here. Indeed, it has. I haven't personally read any of the local coverage, but I've been spending a lot of time (i.e. even more than usual) with my Green Consumers Alliance pals, who are up to speed on this stuff. Apparently, somewhere near one thousand people gathered in Seoul last Saturday to show solidarity with the global movement and to air their grievances.

Here in Daegu, a whopping three people (including one of my GCA friends) went to the main park downtown to protest. I considered going, but I've heard that foreigners here can be deported for being present at protests, even peaceful ones. That and I had to clean my house in preparation for a party that evening. In any case, my friend and her friends sat on a blanket and repurposed a delivery box from "Crazy Chicken" to say "Capitalism Gone Frickin' Crazy" (liberally translated), then asked passers-by to write notes, which they collected in the box. They're still deciding what to do with the notes - send them to the government? To Samsung?

I happened to be at the GCA for lunch when a sociology professor from Kyungbook National University stopped by. We had a little chat and I showed her the following set of graphs from MotherJones, saying that they really clarify the meaning of a lot of the numbers that we hear about the top one percent and the bottom ninety and all that. I asked whether any graphics like this were circulating in Korea and she said definitely not, and that she would use them in upcoming classes and lectures. Lookit that, me teaching something to a professional sociologist.

It left me wondering, though, what the income distribution is like here. When a Korean lifts a sign saying "We are the 99%," how much does that say about how much they've been disenfranchised, or how much money has been redistributed regressively? Most Koreans I know are fairly cynical about politics; as I've mentioned before, I've never heard anyone say a good word about the president, nor do I hear much news or discussion about parties or hot issues or campaign stats. It seems like the foregone conclusion is that the rich and powerful will stay that way.

So, I was surprised to see this: a few Koreans at the Seoul protest holding signs that say, left to right, "take over neoliberalism" (not quite sure what that means) and "tax unearned speculation profits heavily," with a comment stating that Korea falls in the bottom third of countries in terms of family income distribution (lower is closer to equal), meaning the top 1% take home about 10% of the income. The number for the States is more like 20 or 30, depending on which metrics you use. I suppose the number seems realistic, considering how few homeless people, ghettos, and slums you see.

Another interesting stat from that page is that the unemployment rate is only 3.2%. That one I have a hard time believing - or rather, the stat is clearly calculated with a funny formula. I say this because, here, university students often put off graduation until they've secured a job. Many people will study for a year or two, then take a year off to go learn English in Australia and another year off to study for the standardized test they'll have to take to enter their field (be it medicine, education, the civil service, etc), and then return to school only once they've passed the test and even lined up an employer a year down the road. There's such a stigma to graduating without having a job already waiting for you that a lot of seniors, if they haven't found a company to hire them, will drop classes during what would have been their final semester and stick around for another. I assume that the official stats count such individuals as students, and not as people who want work but can't get it.

No particular conclusions or thrust to this post...just a bit of stuff on my mind. It occurs to me that maybe I ought to leave my money in the banks here rather than in the US though.

Hello, Latvians!

2011-10-15T03:06:00.000-07:00

A quick check of my blog stats reveals that this week my blog has been visited by 215 people in Korea, 140some in the US, and 43 in...Latvia? Next is Canada with 4.

Latvia's all time visit count: 57. Something weird is going on, but I can't say I don't like it. I do have one Latvian acquaintance, with whom I speak Italian from time to time.

Romans, l'hai fatto tu? Grazie mille.

1KFTFFF

2011-10-15T01:13:00.000-07:00

(mission statement and foundation history flow chart)

Ever since the way old days when I found myself writing about corndogs and fish-shaped pastries filled with sweet red bean paste, I have considered it one of my Universe-given missions to disseminate all sorts of information about the goodness of Korean food. As my thoughts about food deepened, and as my convictions strengthened, the sense of duty became so strong that I even made a new label on my blog: 맛난Masticatables. Having just clicked on it, though, I can report that I am unarguably a giant failure*. All the recent posts deal with shoddy airplane food, amazing group dinners that are nonetheless atypical, or impromptu posts of whatever I just made for lunch. I did have a good run of breakfast posts, and recently wrote an article about Perilla for my other blog. I believe I also had a total grand-slam of a post on my trip to make Kimchi last winter. My guess is, though, that you're all still....hungry for more?!

I hope you don't mind if I mix my metaphors, because a food marathon is on its way. Yes, I am proud to report that some friends and I have been chosen to participate in the 1st KOREAN FOOD TOUR FOR FOREIGN FOODIES. Hansik Foundation, charged with the task of "propelling the diffusion of Korean culinary culture, nurturing the Korean food industry, and effecting the globalization of Korean cuisine." I think you'll agree that I was born for this job, and working hard at it before it even existed.

The contest will look a little something like this: over the five weekends in October, five teams of five foreign bloggers will each head to a different region and execute a homemade plan meant to showcase all the wonderful qualities of Korean food. My team - consisting of myself, my friend Greg (also known as SandfordWrites for those of you who monitor the comments section), his wife Sarah (I'm pretty sure it's with an h), and two other people they know - has selected Northern Jeolla province, renowned as the home of Bibimbap (rice and julienned vegetables all mixed up with sauce**) and Jeongsik (rice and a billion different side dishes**). We'll spend the final Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of October letting Hansik (which means "Korean Food," by the way) shuttle us around to the restaurants, markets, and farms of our choosing; film us as we eat and experience; put us up in hotels; and give us time to write about it all. We'll be blogging daily during the contest as well as intensely for ten days afterwards. We're also supposed to use Facebook, Twitter, and other newfangled stuff to spread the goodness. The team that does the best job gets a cash prize, though, to be honest, I'm more interested in having some pressure to kick me into high-blogging gear.

A word on how excited I am about this contest: extremely. I haven't looked up the competition (though I do have access to a list of other teams, including their names and their websites), nor do I know exactly how the "best" team will be determined, but I do know that very few people take their food as seriously as Greg and I do. We both think, talk, read, and write about food incessantly (I'm currently reading Wendell Berry's The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture), we've both spend precious summer vacation time weeding endlessly at WWOOF farms, and we both pretty much believe that nothing is as important for the health of individuals and societies as their relationship with the land that sustains them.

I'll stop putting words into Greg's mouth, since he has his own blog space, Electric Kimchi, and just concentrate on what I personally want to get out of this project. I see Korean food as a powerful antidote to the prominent Industrial Food Culture that has overtaken much of the first world over the past half-century. I grew up only wanting to eat fast food. I mean PURE fast food, as in I would throw a tantrum if there was a single slice of iceberg lettuce on my burger. Despite spending summer in a town where thousands of illegal immigrants slaved under the hot sun picking broccoli, I had no idea that everything I ate started in the dirt and passed through someone else's hands before reaching my plate. Nor did I know why rice and beans went together. And even though my closest friends had fruit trees in their back yard - so many that we had to play hopscotch over downed plums and apricots while chasing each other around - I never understood that jam is actually a technology. The fact is, the foods and the cooking methods we grow up with generally go as unquestioned as the language we're born into. Not because you're afraid to ask questions, or because someone tells you not to; just because you don't realize there's anything to ask anything about.

When you learn a new language, though, you question absolutely everything. Why do they put their last names first and first names last? Why do they put verbs at the end? Why don't they say "a" and "the" all the time? Why do they use different sets of numbers to count money and people? Likewise, when you run into new foods: Why in the world do they eat like this? Why are they obsessed with burying stuff in the ground and letting it rot for months on end? How come I can't find a decent block of Cheddar anywhere except Costco? Where did all the forks go?

Something slipped under my radar for the first 25 years of my life: there are reasons that people eat the way they do. Of course I understood that poor people ate little, and plain, while the rich ate more and prettier. But it took immersing myself in another culture**** before I finally took in the point that our diets are products of place, tradition, and even worldview, embodiments of wisdom handed down from generations past. To be honest, if the world isn't taken over by Korean food, it will probably be a good thing; after all, we should really all be eating primarily things that grow well wherever we live. However, if we continue to ignore the value of foods and processing methods that have existed for hundreds if not thousands of years, if we ignore the complex web of relationships between food, people, and culture, then we do so at our own risk and to our own detriment.

Korean food is exotic enough to get people to open their eyes, and delicious enough to get them to open their...upper esophageal sphincters. In order that it may open some closed minds, too, my friends and I are intending to milk all the meaning we can out of our three days together, to give ourselves as much opportunity as possible to expound on that which powers us. Vegetarian buffets, bibimbap specialists, multi-course extravaganzas, organic farms, homemade meals, and, of course, some rice wine and pancakes to top it all off. I plan to gain 10k, work off a third of it on the farm, a third of it through blogging, and a third of it by hiring a new personal trainer with my prize money.

So, check back often! And if you have friends who are interested in this stuff, or who might become so with a little pressure, help me out! I'll be monitoring the number of hits each post gets so that I can report back to Hansik on how hard I've been slaving for them.

In Korean, right before you eat, you're supposed to tell the cook (or whoever is buying for you), "잘 먹겠습니다," which means more or less "I will enjoy this meal." I predict I'll be using this phrase a lot in the weeks to come.

Thanks to Hansik for giving us this awesome opportunity!

------------------------------------

*Actually, let me give myself a little credit: I taught several friends and relatives a Korean dish or two on my most recent trip, and my mother cooks her own Korean food weekly now.

**Clearly I'll have to work on my descriptions.

***This is a polite way of saying that I had to learn Korean before I could see how f***ed up English is.

****Actually, it took me immersing myself in two different cultures; my first six months in Italy apparently didn't do much to wake me up on this front.

Assa v2

2011-10-14T21:54:00.001-07:00

An English friend was out getting her hair cut and called me for some interpretation assistance.

Hairdresser: Hello?
Me: Hi, just tell me what you need to and I'll tell my friend.
Hairdresser: Well...
Me: But please give me an easy explanation.
Hairdresser: Huh?
Me: I mean, don't use hard words. Speak slowly.
Hairdresser: Why? You're Korean.
Me: Nope, American.

Will I ever get tired of posts like this?

You Are What You Read

2011-10-12T22:36:00.000-07:00

I can't remember a time when I wasn't a bookworm. Perhaps, with a writer for a mother and a lawyer/avocationalhistorian-cum-theologian-cum-renaissance man for a father, it was inevitable. I am pretty sure I was reading Steven King in elementary school and Michael Crichton by middle school, and, in high school, under the influence of some friends and a list of the 20th century's best books, developed the ridiculous idea that to be a worthwhile person I probably had to read all of them. That feeling stayed with me through college and just about all the way up until I read Michael Pollan and Derrick Jensen and went mental for the environment.

It's only fitting, then, that I recently became a book, with the help of HUMAN Library. I'll let it speak for itself:

What is the Human Library?

The Human Library is an innovative method designed to promote dialogue, reduce prejudices and encourage understanding.The main characteristics of the project are to be found in its simplicity and positive approach.

In its initial form the Human Library is a mobile library set up as a space for dialogue and interaction. Visitors to a Human Library are given the opportunity to speak informally with “people on loan”; this latter group being extremely varied in age, sex and cultural background.

The Human Library enables groups to break stereotypes by challenging the most common prejudices in a positive and humorous manner. It is a concrete, easily transferable and affordable way of promoting tolerance and understanding.

It is a “keep it simple”, “no-nonsense” contribution to social cohesion in multicultural societies.

(end quote).

My friend Sunny, pictured on the left here, encountered the Human Library at some point during his travels (he also spent some time in Sadhana, though not while I was there) and, last spring, brought it back to Kyungpook National University, just a short walk away from my apartment. He, like so many Koreans in their mid-twenties, is frustrated by the rigidity of Korean life: your first eighteen years are spent prepping for college entrance exams, and then which school you attend essentially determines your station in life. After graduation, you try to get a job with one of the big companies (Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, LG...), which will require you to work sixty-or-more hour weeks at a job that most likely is unsatisfying and almost certainly isn't good for the planet. There seem to be few people voicing alternatives, or even openly talking about the pointlessness of such a system. Sunny decided to try to open up a space for such discussion, and he asked me to help.

The way the Human Library works is this: people who have something they want to share volunteer to be "books," and give themselves a title indicating what they want to talk about. People who want to listen sign up to be "readers." A maximum of two or three readers sits down with one book, and the book starts. And continues for about thirty or forty minutes, free of interruption. At the end of the alloted time, there are a few minutes for questions, then, after a short break, the second round starts. Some books may receive a new group of readers, while others may become readers themselves. The listening and talking go on for a few rounds until the readers have absorbed enough for one night, or until the books have talked themselves hoarse. Then the afterparty!

As awkward as it sounds, the project is actually really nifty . First of all, there's the obvious aspect of people being given the time and space to freely discuss experiences and ideas that matter to them. Such topics are hard to broach at work, at dinner, or at a bar, and we should probably all have more time in our lives set aside for serious reflection on matter of political, social, and moral importance.

More interesting than the content, though, is the way that the format enhances it; all of the unusual limits on the (non)conversation serve to make it much more satisfying, because designating a time, place, topic, speaker, and group eliminates a lot of the normal barriers to deep communication. For all the good that back-and-forth dialectic can bring about, it also limits our ability to communicate, since speaker and listener so frequently interrupt each other, ask questions, and steer the conversation one way or another depending on what they want to get out of it. Further, we're accustomed to trying be impressive, entertaining, or interesting, and thus often tailor what we say, and how we say it, to what we know about the listener. Thus, often, both parties are left having been unable to say what they really wanted (though we're so used to this that we may not notice it).

The format of the Human Library effectively removes all of these obstacles. All of the roles and topics are set in advance; the book has promised to give, and the reader, to accept. At the end of it, both are changed. The book, having finally been guaranteed a listener, has now experienced really being listened to, has had his whole story accepted unconditionally. He has been given a real chance to make himself understood, and, interestingly enough, in the process of doing so, has also come to a better understanding of his own feelings and experiences. Constantly forced to decide on his own what is worth bringing up, what is worth elaborating on, and what needs emphasis, he finds out almost accidentally which submerged meanings are begging to be allowed to rise up on their own.

The reader, symetrically, having promised to accept whatever the book wanted to give him, has had a chance to experience real listening. We are so full of our own ideas, objections, prejudices, interests, and enthusiasms, that we often fail to acknowledge that others exist in their own right, not just to satisfy or entertain us, that they have their own inner worlds as rich and complicated as our own. This failure prevents us from knowing and understanding them, and keeps us sealed up in our own little thought bubbles. The reader, having momentarily been able to step out of his, may see certain aspects of the world or of himself in a new light, or may realize that other may perceive him and his actions in ways he hadn't anticipated.

At the end of it, the giver has received and the receiver has given, and it's almost impossible to say who has given or gained more; what's clear is that giving and taking doesn't always have to be a zero-sum game. Having come to this realization through the same process, a powerful feeling of mutual gratitude binds both parties.
This free exchange of experience, understanding, acceptance, and sympathy generates confidence, strength, solidarity, and hope.

At the risk of deflating all that rhetoric a little (actually, it's all making me very uncomfortable), here's a list of some book topics from the two events I've participated in.

"What I learned from my travels," "College life and human rights," "Tiny things can change your life," and mine, "In Sadhana Forest." (What I actually talked about will have to wait for another post.) Not pictured: "College students and the green consumers' alliance" and "A country boy's experience in the Auroville community."

Ever seen such happy books?

PS I've been meaning to write this entry since I did my first Human Library event in April! I just did my second one last night. I guess that tipped the scales. Check out the difference in ponytail length...

On Steve Jobs

2011-10-11T02:21:00.000-07:00

There's something funny about how being absent from my blog for an extended period makes it harder and harder to return, as if there were some sort of pressure mounting for a comeback post. There are a bunch of things I've been wanting to write about, particularly after having received much unanticipated blog-support from friends and family back home, but I've been, as always, pressed for time due to classes and events and traveling and all. But where to start? Something light, meant to help everyone forget the fact that I've been slacking on my blogligations? Something heavy, to show that I take the blog itself seriously and am not concerned by a month gap here and there? Or a long preface, which I am finding more and more difficult to continue justifying?

On with it! Today's topic: Steve Jobs. I realize it's ridiculous for me to sit around and point out what's wrong with a guy as talented, creative, and successful as Jobs was, and I'm wary of furthering my own image as "the guy who is never happy and is determined to ruin everything for everyone else" (henceforth, to be abbreviated to "curmudgeon."). But I really wish the whole world (by which I mean, everyone on Facebook and everyone writing articles about Jobs) would step back from its Jobs-reverence and think about the meaning of this reverence itself. What does it say about us, our culture, and our values, that more mourned the death of Jobs than of Wangari Matthai? [Disclaimer: I hardly know anything about this woman and even had to look up her name. I am far from unaffected by all the developments I'm about to gripe about.]

Most of the praise for Jobs concentrates on his entrepreneurial qualities. He was a college dropout, got replaced for being a little too wild, then came back to replace his replacement and create one of the most successful companies of modern times - indeed, a company so strong that it has, so far, weathered America's recession/depression better than just about any other. He blended aesthetics and pragmatics, creating computers and devices with more options, functions, and power than had been thought possible. He mastered marketing to such an extent that many people know they want they next iPhone without even knowing what it will be capable of. [Personal aside:] I don't know what it's like in America, but I have one (Korean) friend here who's been waiting for the iPod 5 for months or a year or whatever, and is now worried that its release might be delayed. I suggest she just buy a 4, to which she replied, "then all of my waiting will have been in vain." It's impossible to doubt the genius of someone who inculcated this sort of brand loyalty in so many.

And yet, in many ways, he was a follower, and is a sign of our own readiness to follow. He played into and capitalized on the absolute worst, most destructive aspects of our culture: our need for constant entertainment, and constant upgrades; our addiction to size, speed, and sleek; our superficiality, and our willingness to turn a blind eye.

Jobs mounted an attack on immediacy, and continuously virtualized more and more of our world: no matter where we are, who we're with, we can choose to be somewhere else. Given the number of alternative sights and sounds available to us at any given moment, what are the odds that our real, physical surroundings are the most interesting? My students, sitting five feet away from me in class, fiddle with their smartphones under their desks, talking to friends in the next building about what they did this morning or what they'll do tonight. People don't move to let me out of the subway, because, ears full of music, they can't hear me say "excuse me." Pedestrians cause accidents on the sidewalk because they can't hear cyclists' bells; cyclists cause accidents on the road because they can't hear drivers' horns; and drivers cause accidents because they're watching sports and soap operas rather than the road. I quit going to the Daegu Language Exchange because one guy kept pulling out his iPad every four seconds GoogleMap some place someone had mentioned to find some pictures of it on Facebook. He had forgotten that the point of the language exchange was...well...to talk to one another.

Of course, most of the above can be classified as annoyances, all of which existed in some guise before Jobs and before Apple, even if some of them do cost people limbs and lives. But there are more serious consequences, too. As "The Dark Side of Steve Job's Dream" points out, Jobs may have been the brains behind every iPad, iMac, iPhone, and iPod, but he certainly wasn't the brawn that stood on the factory line for ten hours a day putting them together for a pittance. Nor will he be the one to dig through the next shipment of year-old, already outdated electronic junk that hits the 3rd world's shores in search of a few ounces of reclaimable metal. He will, of course, be one of the ones that has to deal with more plastic particles in his water and more poisons in his air, but then again, so will everyone else. Only he became a billionaire, rich enough to isolate himself from most of the damage he was complicit in. Where are the tweets of distress for all of those can't escape the consequences quite so easily? And for those who won't be able to?

Of course, Jobs is not alone in all of this. Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Creative...any company dealing in electronics is equally implicated and equally guilty*. This is precisely why I called Jobs a follower. He was a leader, sure, but at the front of a pack that's long been driving us right off of a cliff. As the author of the article "Steve Jobs Was Not God" points out, we should save our praise for those who make a real contribution to the present welfare of the unfortunate or to the long-term welfare of mankind, not to those who make life just a little bit easier or snazzier for those who already have it pretty good. Jobs did a great deal to destroy the environment, and perhaps a greater deal destroy our ability to care.

In order to solve ethical, political, and environmental dilemmas, what we need is a sense of connection to the people and the places that are affected by our decisions. I can't help but feel that iGadgets, for the most part, both symbolize our near-complete failure on this front, and help push our chances of success even further away.

----------------------------------------------------

*Ever seen The Story of Stuff?

As-ssa!

2011-09-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

is the Korean word for "oh yeah," as in the phrase you utter when you do something completely awesome, or things fall into place just perfectly.

The other night, I was down in Busan (Southeastern coast) visiting some friends. After an evening of eating, drinking, hanging out on the beach, swimming, frisbee, and hula-hooping until midnight, we were getting a taxi home. I was on interpreter duty:

Friends: Tell him to go to Busan National University.
Me: (convey to driver)
Driver: Shall I take the highway or the surface streets.
Me: (convey to friends)
Friends: No idea.
Me: They don't know. And I don't know because I'm not from around here. Just take us whichever way is fastest and easiest.
Driver: Ok.
(a few minutes pass)
Driver: So you're from Daegu, eh?
Me: Huh? Yeah. Wait, did I tell you that? Didn't I just tell you I wasn't from around here?
Driver: Yeah, but you seem like you're from Daegu.
Me: You mean my pronunciation?
Driver: No, not that. Just a feeling.

Total as-ssa moment, right?

On the other hand, it makes me realize: I'm ten weeks away from having been here for five years.

My Bread and Butter

2011-08-25T22:42:00.000-07:00

Alright, let's recommence with the food posts!

I will commence commencing by commenting that the food that American Airlines and Japan Airlines on the way back from LA was nothing short of atrocious. I think I would have preferred a ten dollar discount on each flight.

For example,

A salad made with about 90% iceberg lettuce and a few carrot shavings, and a main consisting of steamed carrots, cauliflower, beans, and white rice. No sauce, no nothin. I just mashed in the mini stick of butter and some of the salt and pepper. It was edible, but given how much effort it looks like the airlines are putting into their standard meals (e.g. personal pan pizzas!), I sort of felt like I got the short end of the stick.

Thankfully, the salad did come with a bit of dressing. A whole four-tenths of an ounce of it, inside of a glass bottle that itself probably weighed four ounces. Where is the sense in that? I realize it's ridiculous to complain about such minuscule details when the practice of flying itself is so environmentally rapacious, but come on. The plane is already loaded with bottles of cola, juice, tea, and so forth; why not have one for salad dressing, too?

A vegan cookie that pissed me off because the area of the section devoted to listing the ingredients was about 80% of the size of the cookie.

More ridiculous pita action. One with tomatoes and cucumbers, no sauce. One with...sliced kiwis and strips of red bell pepper? I felt like there was a kindergarten class in the back assembling my meals.

But enough with the griping! As soon as I got back home, things improved drastically. For instance,

Mixed black rice with kimchi, an awesome sweet-savory eggplant/zucchini/pepper side dish that Chris made for me, and braised* tofu and peppers in perilla powder.

Looks artsier this way.

Then, Monday afternoon, my CSA box came in. (I have been meaning to do a post about that business, by the way.)

And then, the crown jewel!

I haven't gone shopping yet, since I want to maintain fidelity to my favorite organic shops, which I only visit on Mondays while I'm out on other bidness. Thus, I've been mostly scrounging by at the school cafeteria, which on Wednesday night meant I ate only a bowl of seaweed soup. Everything else on the buffet was meatly.

A few hours after getting home, as my belly grew rumbly and I contemplated making popcorn (again, no fruit in the house yet), my doorbell rang. It was my neighbor Mathan. It bothers me that he prefers using the doorbell, which makes all sorts of noise and activates a peephole camera and takes about 2 seconds to turn itself of, rather than knocking, but I'm not going to let that come between me and authentic Tamil food.

I opened the door to find him holding a bowl, the contents of which were obscured by a tissue. Pushing it towards my face, Mathan told me that he and his wife Deepa had whipped a little something up and wanted me to try it. I sniffed through the paper, and despite not having had it in more than a year and a half, identified the smell of Poori in under a second!

Poori is a deep-fried south Indian bread. Oily, light, crispy, and usually served with a spicy, saucy potato dish - somehow the fatty crisps and the spicy mush complement each other just right.

Instead of potatoes, though:

Deep-fried tofu! Tough on the outside, creamy on the inside, permeated by a sauce that was so good I no longer remember what it tasted like.

In an effort to be a kind and gracious neighbor, I washed the bowl, headed over to Mathan's, invited myself in, and helped myself to thirds and fourths. Deeeee-licious.

Anyone else ever received surprise deliveries of amazing food? I'm thinking it should be a trend. I am thinking of exacting some very hummusy revenge on them in the next few days...

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*also, expired. 10 days past the date. A little stinky, fetid even, but probably good for the digestion.

Idealism in action!

2011-08-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

I realize I write much more about the theoretical aspects of teaching than about what actually goes on in my own classroom. There is something a little absurd in the out-there-ness of my beliefs about what education ought to look like, and the shenanigans that go on daily at my school.

Example 1, from a class of 13 nurses-in-training: After a getting-to-know-you interview game in which the students ask each other question's I've prepared, I split them into teams, asking each team to make up two questions for me.

Student 1: Why is your hair long?
Student 2: Why you come Korea?
Student 3: Out of all the students in this room, who has the prettiest face?

Example 2, from a class of 12 engineers in training: Same situation (yes, I do the same thing with each class.

Student 1: Where you come Korea?
Me: You mean "when?" When did I come to Korea?
Student 1: Yes, yes, when you come Korea?
Me: In 2006. About five years ago. First I lived in Chilgok for two years, then I went traveling. Then I came to YJ about two years ago.
Student 1: Ok.
Student 2: Where your first kiss?
Me: (only dirty thoughts)

Example 3: (Background: it's trendy to have weird or even nonsensical English written on your shirt. The trendiness and level of nonsense may even be proportional.) The following was written on one guy's shirt today.

MEN DRESS

alike all over the world

At first, I thought this was pretty bland. A bit of funny (if intentional) irony, in that the shirt points towards the uniformity of Korean shirt culture while at the same time entirely participating in it. Also interesting from an international perspective, as it made me reflect on how women in India have been slower than men to adopt western styles, and how even the Indian women I know here in Korea often wear saris around, though their husbands generally wear khakis and dress shirts.

Then, during an activity (running dictation, to be specific) in which the kids were all standing up and darting to and fro, I saw the back of the shirt:

-----------
they dress to be annoying to other men

Ba-dum-ding!

Actually, though, I liked the shirt. It made me think and laugh much more than it annoyed me, which means it didn't serve its purpose. Self-aware and yet self-defeating. Iiiiiiinteresting....

Hooray for minor linguistic successes!

2011-08-19T00:55:00.000-07:00

Clearly, I spent a great amount of time on my the'Merican sojourn not speaking Korean. I did manage to show off in front of friends and family members a few times (in Korean supermarkets and bars), but for the most part my summer language training regimen consisted of listening to Kim Kwang-seok*, writing about** ten postcards, and an occasional Facebook chat. So, naturally, I have been curious as to the amount of drop-off my Korean level has suffered.

Thus, I kept my ears peeled on the flight to Narita. There happened to be a pair of Korean teenagers sitting behind me, and I understood most everything they were saying. So well, in fact, that I picked up a new word! They were talking about time changes and jet lags and all of a sudden said the words for "date," "change," and "line" back to back to back. I realized: I totally just learned how to say "International Date Line." 날짜 변경선.

My mind is a freak, sometimes.

A pudgy little Korean kid is currently watching me (here in the Tokyo airport) as I write this, surreptitiously sneaking glances at my screen.*** I just turned to him and said in Korean "Wanna look?" Totally stupefied. He ran off and sent his older brother, who is also just a little kid and who sits down next to me without saying anything. I explain to him that I'm writing a blog. I am pretty sure that he can't read that I just wrote that they're pudgy. We talk for a minute or two. They're 8 and 12, in the first and fifth grades. From Gumi, a city an hour west of Daegu. Cute kids. The older one asks me: Can you speak Korean? I try to communicate that I have been speaking with him in Korean for the past five minutes, but I guess I'm not quite good enough at it to be a successful smartass. They asked my seat number and said that they used to be in that row, but then switched seats so they sit together with their parents. Their mom just came by. Apparently she'd been on a walk looking for ice cream, but couldn't find any. Maybe she'll come back with a snack?

Upcoming post: American Air has the least satisfying vegetarian meals imaginable.

*Author of such fantastically uplifting tunes as "Love that hurts too much isn't really love," "Oh misery," "the first time I saw her cry," "a story about an old couple in their sixties," "a letter to the overcast fall sky" and "I loved you, but..."

**Clearly, I mean writing approximately ten posctards, and not writing on the subject of ten postcards.

***Clearly, it is he and not I that is glancing surreptitiously. I am obviously staring obviously at it. What a mess of a pair of sentences. [I fear I may never get Wittgenstein's Mistress out of my head.]

Hello Pencils, Hello Books

2011-08-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

Well well. I am writing to you from the airport in LA. My trip is over. I can’t believe how much I managed to cram into this summer:

7 States (and one district)

13 cities (counting LA’s Korea town)

12 close friends (including two phone calls)

Several new ones

2 grandparents

3 parents

8ish friends of parents

5 Aunts

4 Uncles

2 parent’s cousins

9 cousins, 8 cousin-in-laws

15 cousins’ kids

25+ used book / thrift shops

10+ farmer’s markets

11 books (read)

6 buffets (devastated)

5 pounds

3 card games learned

4 cribbage opponents

3 dishes propagated

1 mountain scaled

1 day at the beach

5 plane rides

2 train rides

3 bike rides

4 public transportation uses

2 hitchhikes

1 couchsurf

1 identity theft incident

8 hour spent on the phone resolving it

1 bank account terminated

0 dollars not refunded

1 pair of shorts

Countless (and constant) meals, snacks, feasts, outings, innings, walks, talks, sits, chats, discussions, common interests discovered, BS sessions, debates, catchings-up, reminiscences, what-ifses, and plans.

And, as much as it weirds me out to say it, I felt almost the whole time that a strange series of Karmic alignments was taking place. Friends from far away visiting the same town I’d already be in; other guests departing just before I’d arrive; holes in schedules opening up; vegan restaurants around the corner; farmers’ markets on weekday afternoons; books turning up, and places turning up in them; deja vu concerning beets; and too many others to list. It doesn’t seem possible to explain – someone would have to know every relevant intangible about my path and my hopes in order to decide whether any one event would qualify as extraordinarily improbable or not. Not to mention that a long enough string of slightly improbable events is itself extraordinarily impossible. I am pretty sure that I've stopped making sense.

(Apropos of which, I highly recommend the book "Wittgenstein's Mistress," which David Foster Wallace called the best work of experimental fiction of the 20th century. Having read them all, I concur.)

Back to what it was that I was talking about: It seems to me that the possibilities are: 1] these events are indeed karmic; or 2] the events are not karmic, but I’m more inclined than I used to be to interpret them as such (and to ignore ones that don’t fit the pattern); or, most interestingly, 3] somehow I’ve become better at making things feel meaningful.

Anyway, it feels a bit redundant to be going on about this, given that if you are reading this right now, you are likely one of the people referenced above and don’t need to read up on exactly what you and I did on the trip. But, I assure you, whoever you are and whatever we got up to, it was excellent and I thank you for it.

I would say I’ll be back to do it again next summer, but chances are I’ll be heading to Pyeongyang! Yeah! See you in another couple years. Unless, that is, you’re in the market for some good old South Korean hospitality...

I've also noticed that my blog posts have been few and far between this year, despite/because of/most-likely-due-to how much more intellectually and socially active I've been. I've got a lot I'd like to do this semester - get back into studying Korean, do a little more exercise, work harder on the other enviro blog - but blogging here more is also definitely near the top of the list, thanks mostly to lots of kind words and encouragement from friends and family and friends of friends and friends of family %c.

I will go ahead and suppose that that just about wraps it up.

PS There's a giant mystery rodent marauding about the California countryside.

Finally, congratulations, Andy and Chrissy!

I Miss Hangugeo

2011-08-08T09:39:00.000-07:00

My time here in the'Merica has left me a bit nostalgic for Korean. Just want to say stuff all turn around then say having to is so fun!* I suppose other foreigners find that this makes stuff like shopping and riding in taxis incredibly frustrating. I, on the other hand, naturally ahbor taxis and shopping, so mixing in a little bit of linguistic intrigue makes them bearable for me.

So, in honor of this sentiment, I present to you a rap by 마익흘 (Michael) about the basics of the Korean alphabet. Note that even though I spell my name a little differently (마이클), it comes out the same.

*That's approximately what "It's so fun to have to take eveyrthing you want to say and then say it in reverse" comes out like in Korean.

Are you tired of Veg Night news yet?

2011-07-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

This post shows a selection of goodies from two separate dinner: that of June 22^nd, when my turn came once again to host the Green Consumer’s Alliance vegan dinner, and that of June 29^th, when one GC invited the rest of us over for a housewarming potluck.

The Indian meal I cooked with my neighbors Mathan, who grew up in Tamil Nadu (the province in southern India where Sadhana is located) and now works at Yeungjin with me, and Suzie, whom I met in Sadhana and then suckered into coming to Korea, left me a little disheartened. Most everyone enjoyed the food, but apparently to Koreans every food that contains cumin (i.e. my chili, my bean burgers, my kidney bean curry) or cilantro tastes the same. I suppose it’s not too different from the way foreigners here, after a few months, tend to get smacked all at once by the monotony of red pepper paste, soy sauce, and soybean paste. In any case, I resolved to try something different next time.

Not too long before - on my birthday, actually, which was pretty crazy and merits its own post - Sandy (the owner) at Buy the Book (the shop where I do the movie screenings) gave me a bunch of lasagna noodles, so I had Italian on my mind. I also happened to have a Tuesday off, since my stewardesses had all gone on some sort of field trip. Thus, I spent a good part of the day working on whipping up polenta, minestrone, and pesto.

The polenta I bought from Foreign Food Mart in Seoul and felt a little guilty about using at a GCA event, since eating local and seasonal are nearly as dear to me as eating stuff without faces, if a bit harder to put into practice. But, I consider it justified, since the point is to help people explore alternative cuisines, and in particular to help people realize that eating vegetarian isn’t at all as limiting as it may seem at first. So, I mixed the polenta (which is just ground up corn, as far as I know, maybe treated somehow to make it cook quicker later) into boiling, lightly salted water, stirred and added until the consistency came out right, then spread thin on an oiled baking sheet, topped with a bit of salt, hoil, and herbs, and baked it until slightly crisp. Actually, it would have been better to pan-fry it, but I was cooking for ten and didn’t have time.

The minestrone was a snap: chop up onions, celery, carrots, tomatoes, zucchini, and probably just about whatever vegetable you’d like (I’m betting acorn squash would have made an excellent addition), throw them in the slow cooker with water, some bouillon cubes and other seasonings, and come back and check in six hours. Adjust the seasonings and, when serving time comes close, depending on the rest of the meal, you can also add some chickpeas (I like to steam a lot at once and then freeze a few for emergency hummus or whatever else) or macaroni to make it a little heartier.

Three notes:

I don’t feel so bad about using imported spices because they’re pretty light, a little goes a long way, and because they’re pretty hard to substitute for. On the bad-for-the-environment scale I’m betting a giant container of Basil is about as terrible as a 2 liter bottle of coke.
The recipe calls for canned tomato paste, but I generally avoid canned stuff, with the exception of coconut milk, which, yes, makes me a hypocrite in light of (1) above. I also don’t like thinking about how much of the tomato skin, juice, and flesh must get tossed out when making tomato paste. So, I just used some tomatoes that I had frozen and sitting around in the freezer. The result may have been a less intense taste, but you wouldn’t have known it from all the smacking of lips!
Maybe steam the carrots a little first. They were a bit too crisp relative to the other stuff.

I’d like to introduce the next dish by way of a problem in metaphysics. Say you’ve got a boat made of a large number of planks of wood. You name the boat “Il Pesto.” One piece of wood starts rotting, so you replace it with a newer piece of the same kind, shape, curve, etc. You’re still content to call the boat “Il Pesto,” no? Another few weeks go by and you do it again. And again. And again. Eventually, every piece of wood has been replaced, and not a single of the original ones remains. But you’re still calling the boat “Il Pesto.” Is that ok? If not, at which point did Il Pesto stop being Il Pesto? Or, if so, what was that name referring to in the first place? The shape? The use? Nothing at all?

Aside from demonstrating that I would still probably struggle to get a B- in Philosophy 101, this aside is meant to ask you to consider whether pesto is still pesto if you swap out the basil, pine nuts, and parmesan and swap in sesame leaves, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and nutritional yeast. If you say yes, great. If you say no, it doesn’t matter what you call it anyway.

If you’re willing to cast your skepticism aside and have a crack at this philosophically unsound dish, then: throw some seeds onto a hot pan (no oil necessary.) While they’re roasting, throw a bunch of sesame leaves into the blender and shop them up pretty fine. Once the seeds are ready, add them into the blender with olive oil, salt (just a tad, since the leaves are already a bit salty), pepper, and nutritional yeast. The result looks like pesto, tastes a bit like pesto, goes on top of macaroni like pesto, and in fact will pass for pesto if you serve it to Korean people who have never even heard of it before. I therefore feel comfortable declaring it A TOTAL SUCCESS.

The right bowl was probably mine. I'm a big fan of my own cooking, apparently.

(I have been feeling a bit disillusioned with photography lately. Please forgive the ugly shots.)

Actually, that wasn’t the end of the meal. Nor was it the beginning. The first course was a salad, which Suzie threw together. Second came the polenta, third (actually, simultaneously) minestrone. Fourth was the pesto, and fifth was spaghetti with a tomato/eggplant sauce that Suzie whipped up. Sixth was dessert, which was a little complicated, and probably impossible to replicate in the west, and I don’t have any pictures of it anyway. If I make it again, I’ll let you know.

The Italian feast was such a success that I decided to make use of the momentum for the potluck the following week. You may notice that the previously mentioned, oh-so-inspirational lasagna noodles failed to make an appearance. It was hard enough to conceive of pesto without parmesan; how in the world could one make a lasagne without ricotta or mozzarella?

Well, in my CSA (about which I later intend to write a self-congratulatory post, fear not) box at the end of June, I received some organic Korean soy bean tofu, which kind of looks like ricotta if you drain it, drop it in a bowl, plunge your hands in, and squish it all up as if (I was trying to think of an apt analogy, but I can’t think of any other circumstance in which a normal person does something like this). So, I snooped around on the net, found a few recipes and hints, and got started.

First off, boil the sheet noodles and prep your fillings: roasted tomato sauce, sauteed onions and shrooms, sauteed zucchini (WHOA I just realized that in Italian this literally means “little pumpkins,” while in fact in Korean pumpkins and zuchhinis and watermelons and other gourds all have a certain syllable, “bak,” in common) and semi-firm tofu, drained, mixed with parsley and basil and squished up.

Then, do your layers. I don’t think it really matters much, as long as your first two layers are sauce (so nothing burns) and noodles (so there’s some modicum of stability to the whole thing). I messed this part up pretty bad, putting in way too much sauce at the bottom and failing to accurately judge the depth of the dish, resulting in a less-than-symmetrical(-if-still-pretty-edible) pie. Ah, on the top, spinach, tomato sauce, and nutritional yeast will yield a nice crusty layer, which is not at all like bubbly cheese, but still quite pleasing.

Before and after baking.

The lasagna was a giant smash. My guess is that most Koreans, who generally find things with too much cheese far too rich, would prefer the vegan version to the original; surprisingly, though, some non-vegan foodie friends of ours also had great things to say about it.

Also served at the potluck that night: rice, Korean eggplant, baby pumpkin, and mushroom side dishes; caribbean pineapple and ginger black beans; banana, nut, and tahini fruit salad; and banana bread.

I have come to enjoy these Veg Nights – the food, the company, the regularity, the solidarity – so much that I can hardly believe I lived here for nearly three years without them.

Things that came to mind while I was sitting in the Busan airport reading Wendell Berry and eating trail mix

2011-07-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

Something struck me just now. Something about how plastic comes between us. Sure, it’s nice to have a way to keep your carrot sticks clean, your pre-made salad mixing with nothing other than itself. But to the extent that plastic keeps things clean, safe, inside, enveloped, vacuumated, it keeps them independent. This strikes me now as so obvious as to not need saying; this is indeed the very point of it all.

Things in plastic don’t need stewards; they don’t need people. Thus, people who buy things in plastic don’t need people, either. I mean, of course they do, somewhere along the line, but that just means that the only people they need are distant ones, invisible ones. We need people absent.

The effect of me biking to the market so that I can shop for food with no plastic is, unexpectedly, that I wind up meeting people. Chatting with the lady as she scoops out nuts and figs and banana chips. Showing her my odometer as it rolls past 1000km, sharing that little slice of pride, telling her my parents, whom she met one time, are going to enjoy some of what she’s selling me when we hop on a plane and fly to see their parents; maybe grandma and grandpa will try some of it, too. Meeting her daughter, who’s there working for the summer. Realizing that she has a daughter, has a family, is the head of a family, is a member of a family, a person in a family, a person, a person with all the fears and dreams and hopes and frustrations and joys that I’ve got. She wishes me a safe trip, I wish her a nice summer.

Or, I could buy a bag with a cartoon peanut on the front.

An entirely predictable if unfortunate occurrence.

2011-07-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

The whole story isn’t worth telling, but here’s some dialogue, mostly faithful:

Me: Please check the rest of my flights and make sure I’ll have vegetarian meals.

Counter lady: I see the meal requests for the other five, but not for the one you just got off of.

Me: OK, but I wasn’t able to eat on the flight I just took. Can’t I get a voucher or coupon or something?

CL: We don’t do that. You should have requested a vegetarian meal in advance.

Me: I did. I called and they told me I was all set.

CL: Did you call the airline directly or did you do it through a travel agent?

Me: I didn’t use a travel agent for anything.

CL: Well, we're not showing a request for a vegetarian meal on your flight from Busan to Tokyo.

Me: I know. That's exactly the problem! Of course I made the request. Why would I ask for five vegetarian meals and one meat meal?

CL: How would we know what you want?

Me: You are Japanese but have nevertheless learned perfectly the art of stupefying your customers with large amounts of sass. I’ll go slink away and drown my flabbergastedness in fistfuls of banana chips.

In all fairness, before this conversation, the stewardess on the plane had apologized profusely about the mishap and gone and nabbed one of these little goody-boxes from business class.

(Exactly one eighth of a mouthful each of six vegetables/mystery substances.)

I also got a vegan dinner and a vegan breakfast (in that order) on my Tokyo-Dallas flight:

The dinner was one of the lamest curry-biryani combos I've ever had. Neither tasted like anything, nor did the flatbread or iceberg lettuce salad. I've got to give them some credit for the inventive (not quite sure what other word to use) glob of fruits, nuts, cinnamon, and grated coconut

Breakfast was a little on the miniscule side, but I'm not one to complain about artichokes and honeydew. Looking forward to many more varities of splendid produce that for whatever reason don't make it to Korea.

Anyway, my first post from the US in just about two years. Woohoo! I've already heard soldiers talking about impending strip club visits, lighthearted but xenophobic jokes from customs officials, and parents telling their children to shut up and go sit down in arbitrary places. I am pretty sure that my fitful sleep schedule over the past 36 hours, and the ensuing crankiness, are to blame for this selective listening. C'mon homeland, show me somethin' good!

Wrapping Up

2011-07-04T14:17:00.001-07:00

Wow, it's been almost six weeks since the last post. Unbelievable. I've been up to a lot of stuff, including

- researching and blogging a bit on the site for my Daegu Green Living group, which now has about 50 members.
- receiving and enjoying and organizing an organic CSA box from the company Heuksalim, which I visited over the winter.
- attending and occasionally cooking for the Green Consumer's Alliance Vegan Dinner night
- spending a weekend with the alternative school that began with the camp back in March (about which I still haven't finished writing)
- spending another weekend with Heuksalim for their 20th anniversary party
- taking another trip to Seoul to visit my old friends and some new ones
- showing an eco-film or two downtown
- attending two weddings, the differences between which are very interesting and worthy of a blog post.
- hanging out, playing board games, making burritos and beer with some new friends
- trying to keep up with a school schedule that got somewhat messy after we had to schedule some make-up classes following a few public holidays
- attending a youth forum at the big university nearby and listening to three hours of speeches in Korean, then heading to the afterparty and spending the evening drinking and talking with 25 strangers, all Korean.
- caring for a billion plants on my veranda
- finding ways to cook all my perishables

All of these things deserve posts of their own (the fact that I honestly believe this says something interesting about me), but the fact of the matter is that, as most of you probably know, I'm leaving for the US in just about an hour! I don't know if I'll have time or even be inclined to write about these things while I'm on the road, or if I'll remember them when I get back. So, let this post, scrawny as it is, memorialize these last busy but rewarding six weeks, in which I was too busy doing stuff to write about it. Maybe it's good to live a less meta-life every now and then.

Two other things I want to share with you, but don't quite know how to fit in.

1) While bicycling around yesterday doing errands, my speedometer/odometer topped 1000km! That's since the beginning if April, when I bought a new battery for the . The timer says that over that period my average speed was 17.4 km/h (damn stoplights), max speed was 62.4 km.h (quite a thrill), and total riding time was about 55 hours.

2) I've been wanting to put up videos and translations of the Korean music I've been listening to lately. Here's one, short and sweet.

"Pigeon"
by Crying Nut

(I know the title of the youtube video says "Dove," but that's clearly wrong, though now that I look it up, apparently they're the same.)

Hey pigeon,
Where you goin?
Come on,
Dance with me.

Hey pigeon,
Where you goin?
Come on,
Drink with me.

PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
PIGEON PIGEON PIGEON
ETC

HEY PIGEON
(And so forth)

Of all the things about Korea that it's my privilege to be able to enlighten you about, I'm not sure why I chose that one. Except that IT FRICKIN ROCKS, MAN! Maybe the deep ecologist in me (no time to find a youtube video of deep ecologists putting on animal suits and reconnecting with the nature spirit, but I'm sure you can find one if you want) likes the costumes at the end. Or maybe I'm still in my screamo phase.

Growth and Scarcity; Wisdom #12

2011-05-21T16:58:00.000-07:00

Again, a response to a comment. After my first post about the Upo camp, Andy wrote the following:

"One thing you said really struck me, and probably is/could be the subject of books, "...and environmentalists need to protect the land and animals that can't protect themselves (and, because we depend on the ecosystem, this amounts to protecting us, too).[end of Andy quoting me]"

How absurd is it that the only people who care about whether or not we destroy the planet are labeled environmentalists, and often viewed as a little crazy? As you mentioned in your parenthetical comment, it is about much more than protecting plants and animals, it is protecting the way we have lived for thousands of years. How is it that the general population doesn't get it? Even more confounding is very smart people in politics actively campaigning against protecting the environment. WTF are they thinking?"

There are a few books that I know of that address this conundrum; some of them are explicitly about it. I've mentioned most of them before, but two are particularly relevant: Jensen's Endgame and Slater's The Pursuit of Loneliness.

(Fortunately or unfortunately, the question seems to have everything to do with everything I've been reading and thinking about lately, and I'm not confident I can present my would-be-views coherently. Here's a shot:)

The absurdity Andy so rightly points out doesn't look so absurd if you buy into one thing that we all, at some level, buy into: growth is good. A tenet, an assumption, a piece of dogma, a pathology; call it what you will, it takes a brave and willing-to-be-ostracized soul to deny it. If you were to ask an alien watching us from above, an alien trying to divine our motives by analyzing our actions, "What is our society's primary goal?" it would be impossible for him/her/it to give any answer other than "to get bigger."* Presidents can weather the storms of infidelity discovered, lies exposed, debt expanded, soldiers lost; but can we doubt that if a president ever so much as whispered the phrase "GDP growth might not be an unmitigated good," (under his breath, to the First Lady, in the privacy of their own bedroom) we'd hear immediate calls for his impeachment? If there's one thing that the Blue States and Red States can all agree on, it's that a good year is a year in which the GDP grows, and a great year is a year in which it grows a lot.

GDP growth translates, on a personal level**, to an increase in the amount of money earned, and thus the amount of money available to spend. Thus, as crude as it may sound, a good year is a year in which we earned and spent more money than the last. Spent on what? On products that have themselves grown, if figuratively. As delightful, as expected, as natural as increases in the GDP are: increases in the size of our monitors, increases in the capacity and compactness of our iPods, increases in the speed of our processors, the length of our buffets, the horsepower of our engines, the range of exotic fruits available at the supermarket, the number of functions on our wristwatches, and the shininess of everything from refrigerators to pumpkins to BMWs.

To make more things available to more people - isn't this a noble goal? Isn't that the meaning of Democracy? Aren't we more free if there are more things that we're free to choose from? If you say yes (and we almost all do, implicitly), then of course you can't help but see people who want to slow, limit, or stop growth as ideological foes.
How can environmentalists claim to be defending people's well-being, when doing so depends on reducing the amount people consume and the amount people consume determines how well-off they feel?

I think most Americans are already aware, at some level, that their level of consumption is unsustainable. Even if you haven't seen the most powerful statistics - things like how it would take five earths for everyone to consumer like us, how we as five percent of the world's population use twenty-four percent of the world's resources***, how one American consumes as much as three hundred Ethiopians, how increased technological efficiency has historically led to more consumption of resources, not less, how getting calories from wheat is about 200 times more water-efficient than getting calories from beef, but how intensive wheat/rice/corn/soy production it itself a major cause of of our environmental crisis****, and the rest of the "dreary litany," as Gatto calls it - it's not too hard to figure out that fossil fuels are limited and depending on them for everything from necessities like food, heating, and transportation to luxuries like electronics and travel isn't a good idea.

So, the obvious question is, where does this "growth is good" mentality come from? Why is growth regarded as so good that we are willing to pursue it in the face of mounting evidence that it may just kill us all? It's too easy, too self-serving, to pin the blame on "human nature," theories of innate selfishness, or man-as-virus metaphors; such universal claims strike me as ways to dodge guilt, to avoid dealing with an issue which is, at bottom, a cultural one, one that we're responsible for. It's not true that all people, in all times, have been as ravenous, acquisitive, and growth-focused as we are. It's not true that our current dilemmas, however intractable they may appear, were predestined. Rather, they've come about as the result of certain decisions made and strategies pursued by political and business leaders in decades and centuries past.

Slater highlights one in particular: scarcity. In order to deal with an overabundance of goods and productive capacity, capitalists (I apologize for the vaguely, or, to be honest, overtly conspiratorial tone. I'm not well-versed enough in history to back up everything with names and dates, so if you want to know where I'm coming from, in addition to sources I've already mentioned, do check out footnote no.5*****) had to turn people away from the easily-satisfied desires, towards more evasive ones:

"Hunger, thirst, and sexual desire in pure form can be slaked, but the desire for a body type that never existed but was invented by cartoonists cannot be slaked. Neither can the desire for fame, power, or wealth as such. These are inherently invidious needs; they are satisfied only in relation to the deprivation of others. Furthermore they are purely symbolic and hence have no logical consummation. A man hooked on fame or power will never stop striving because there is no way to gratify a desire with a symbol. One cannot eat, drink, or copulate with a Nobel Prize..."(100)

Desires for things like sustenance, community, friendship, sex, and love are relatively easily satisfied; all you need is another person, or a group of them. Furthermore, in contrast to the "invidious needs" above, these desires might be called "altruistic", since satisfaction of any one of them for one individual results in satisfaction for another as well. In this case, satisfaction of desire is free, complete, sustainable, and maybe even infinite. Now, though, in the interest of business, these desires have been largely - well, is there a word for "sublimated" but with the opposite connotation? "Displaced?" "Mediated?" "Alienated?" In any case, it is now products that promise us many of the satisfactions that, in reality, can only be granted to us by other humans - try to think of one product or one advertisement you've seen recently that doesn't play on the desire for sex, love, warmth, or pride, and how ridiculous the advertisements look when not done subtly enough.

Once we've fallen into the trap of identifying possession of and interaction with products as the source of satisfaction, we've implicitly accepted that, since the number of products isn't infinite, there's not enough happiness to go around. And, again, to quote Slater, "Once the concept exists that there is not enough, people will begin to deprive each other of what there is."(96) People are now willing to work - to do things that nobody in their right mind would ever do, if unconstrained - in order to get what satisfaction they can; and, even so, it isn't enough. Thus, we need Economic Growth, which provides a sort of temporary relief: insofar as we understand it as "lifting all boats," it allows us to believe that everybody must have become a little bit happier.

Of course, this is a farce, because we are trying to use symblols to satisfy real desires, we can't help but fail - the same desire we thought we had just satisfied will surface again next time we see another advertisement preying on the same perceived lack. And, because we perceive the amount of satisfaction to be limited, every winner generates a loser (my purchase of a 2011 Lexus decreases the value of all 2010 Lexuses, and I'll get my comeuppance in 2012). Lastly, even if our entire society wins by increasing GDP, this growth is only ever achieved by depleting natural resources, and generally by destroying the livelihoods of the people who live near them.

I don't believe that this kind of analysis is beyond most people. (Maybe I just don't want to believe it.) Even before I could articulate it, I remember feeling a vague, uneasy kind of emptiness when shopping for clothes in middle school; when fighting the hordes at Best Buy at Christmas; when thinking about what I wanted to buy with my money, and why I wanted it. We all recognize the shallowness, the silliness, the fruitlessness, and most of all, our own complicity. (I hope.)

So, to go back to Andy's question - why are environmentalists sometimes seen as a little crazy? If, as I just asserted, everybody has some inkling of it, why aren't those who articulate the problem and attempt to confront it hailed as speakers of truth rather than as wackos? Slater, one more time, writing about the 70s but strikingly relevant today:

"The same emphasis surrounds our fear of radicalism today. Draft resistance, peace demonstrations, black militance, hippie communes, and student protest are disturbing not because they provide a serious physical danger (equivalent to, say, driving a car) but because we fear having our secret doubts about the viability of our social system voiced aloud. It is not what happens abroad that generates hysteria, but rather what appears to be happening within ourselves....these considerations suggest that the fear of radical movements in America derives much of its intensity from the attraction that such movements have for their opponents - an attraction that must be stifled." (4,6)

If the environmentalists are right, if growth is wrong, then everything is wrong.
How you've been brought up has been wrong; the work you're doing now is wrong; the life you'll give your children will be wrong; and so on. Perhaps worse, if things are wrong, they need to change. Work needs to change. School needs to change. Food needs to change. Technology needs to change. Social arrangements need to change. If these are the real implications of environmentalism, the burden, in terms of cognitive dissonance, may just be too much to bear.

It's worth noting that this is not just an attack on conservatives or deniers; many environmentalists are caught up in this, too. In my opinion, anyone who thinks that sufficient change will be achieved by encouraging people to purchase new, "environmentally-friendly" or increasingly efficient products, is still failing to see the whole picture. A Prius is better than a Hummer, but a society in which people need, want, and expect Priuses is doomed just the same, if not quicker.

Does that bring us any closer to beginning to answer Andy's question? There're a lot of pretty brazen, controversial assertions in there, and perhaps even some leaps of logic. Call me out. I don't want to be right!
__________________________________________________
*This reminds me of the beginning of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: After observing the Earth from a distance, an alien comes to the conclusion that the world is primarily inhabited by automobiles, and names himself "Ford."

**Almost. Actually, as I think just about everyone reading this blog knows, the benefits of increased GDP accrue primarily to the people who already have extremely high incomes. Nonetheless, if the passage doesn't reflect the truth of the lower- and middle-classes, it represents their aspirations.

***Kudos to you if you noticed, as I just did, that those are actually the same statistic.

****Please read Lierre Kieth's The Vegetarian Myth. Don't swallow everything she says, but do read it.

***** At the risk of recommending one (four?) too many references, I suggest Adam Curtis' documentary series "The Century of the Self," which covers the ways that Freud's theories of the unconscious, by way of his nephew Edward Bernays, became the underpinning of modern marketing.

I See Through You

2011-05-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

I just made a cabbage and carrot curry so spicy that it took me about 25 minutes to eat one bowl. Between bites sand wiping my face off on my shirt, I watched a TED presentation on smiling. The presentation wasn't that interesting and kind of scratched me the wrong way, like so many TED talks do. Does this guy really deserve a standing ovation for taking seven minutes to tell us that people who smile more are longer-lived and better liked than people who smile less?

Anyway, at the end of it, I still hadn't finished my meal, so I perused the comments section and found an interesting link: Spot the Fake Smile, a test/experiment where you can gauge your ability to guess whether a given smile is genuine or faked.

Before you start trying to interpret the smiles, the test asks you: is your general worldview optimistic (1) or pessimistic (7)? How confident are you in your ability to judge correctly - low (1) to high (7)? After some debate, I answered 6 (pretty pessimistic) on the first and 5 (slightly confident) on the second. But then, I started thinking. What sort of statistics are they keeping these numbers for? Are they figuring out for themselves whether self-identified optimists or pessimists are better at interpreting faces? If so, I figured, pessimists would probably be worse. They're more wrapped up in their own problems, less likely to trust others, and less likely to see good things when they're there. I then guessed that I would get something like a 10 - i.e., as good as guessing - on the test.

To my surprise: "You got 18 out of 20 correct."

Possible explanations:
1) Most of the samples were fakes, so that my tendency to identify smiles as fakes was vindicated by the test's lack of balance. (Information provided after the test proved that this was not the case, though I won't tell you which, lest it interfere with your results).
2) My pessimism, agoraphobia, and constant eerie feeling that this or that person is a sham have some basis in reality.
3) Cumin, mustard seeds, ginger, cabbage, carrots, chili peppers, onions, or some combination thereof, greatly increases your ability to spot fakes.

or,

4) Maybe optimists are better at picking out fake smiles, and I'm actually an optimist who just thinks he's a pessimist. Is there a word for this?

An interesting tidbit that comes up after the test:

"Most people are surprisingly bad at spotting fake smiles [I'd love to know what the average score is]. One possible explanation for this is that it may be easier for people to get along if they don't always know what others are really feeling.'

Amen to that!

Kitchen Repertoire: Expanded

2011-05-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

I know I sort of ended the last post abruptly, and I promise I'll get back to Grandpa Egret and his nefarious plan to free the minds of the youth, but for the moment I'd like to take a break from thinking too hard about education and the environment and focus on my other passion: scarfables.

One of my favorite things about the Green Consumers Alliance weekly Vegetarian Night (for the Good of the Earth), in addition to the simple pleasure of meeting the same people in the same place week after week and having the opportunity to talk without being pushed to buy anything, is that it gives me that little kick in the pants to try something new. It's too easy, when I'm home, to make the same old stuff: stir fried veg with noodles; curries; blended soups; mushroom and eggplant sandwiches; monster salads. When I'm cooking for others - and especially others that I regard as truly "other," that is, people with significantly different cultural backgrounds - I feel some slight obligation to impress them as much as I can, to expose them to things that they haven't yet encountered. To do this well, though, I myself often have to learn something new.*

This time around, I decided to continue experimenting with beans by making bean burgers. Despite coming up on 2 years vegetarian (tomorrow!), I've probably only made bean burgers about three times, and it must be said, they were pretty terrible. Beans themselves don't have a particularly good flavor, and mixing them with flour to get the right consistency resulted in an odd kind of super-fibrous donutish monstrosity, which I ate with a grimace and would be ashamed to feed to others.

So, I looked up a few recipes, did some experimenting with them in the days leading up to the event, and settled upon the following.

You need:
2 cups dried kidney beans / 4 cups cooked
Vegetables, 1 each: onion, slightly-smaller-than-medium potato and carrot, bell pepper, clove of garlic.
Spices: Whatever you want. I used cumin, oregano, salt, and pepper.
1 cup or so, bread crumbs (preferable) or flour.

You should:
1) Soak the beans in advance if necessary, then boil/pressure cook them until soft.
2) Dice and grate and crush the vegetables.
3) Stir-fry vegetables together with oil and spices until soft.
4) Puree the vegetables, smash the beans.
5) Combine beans, vegetables, and bread crumbs a bit at a time, and form burgers.
**Actually, the recipe above is a little too vegetable-heavy, but I tend to cook whole vegetables and eat leftovers (or just eat everything) rather than leaving half behind. I think about 2 parts beans to 1 part vegetables, in the final mix, is appropriate. The vegetables are so wet that if you put in too many, you'll have to restore dryness by adding flour an
6) Add oil to the skillet - to save washing, you can use the same pan you did the stir-fry in - and throw the burgers on on low. I like to drop the patties in, slosh them around a little to make sure the bottoms are coated with oil, then flip them over immediately to make sure that both sides get the treatment. Shake the burgers around every minute or so to make sure they don't get stuck, and flip them after three or four. Once it seems like the burgers have been warmed all the way through, turn up the heat to medium and sear both sides.
7) Plate, serve, feed, eat.

Steps 2-6

If done right, the burgers come out with a consistency similar to ground beef, though a bit dryer. Dense, grainy, charred on the outside, a bit crumbly to the bite. It occurs to me - if you're interested in reducing your meat intake, but not going all the way veg, why not just make these with beef instead of beans? I bet replacing half of the meat with sauteed, pureed vegetables would make the burgers both tastier and lighter.

The group is happy.

Curious about the sides?

Quinua salad: quinoa, cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, olive oil, lemon, salt, papper.

Roasted onion rings topped with garlic slices, stir-fried eggplants and mushrooms with Italian seasoning

Side-salad: about seven kinds of leaves, plus cukes, carrots, bell peppers, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, perilla seeds, and avocado oil.

Salsa: Suzie's recipe. Peeled tomatoes, cilantro, onions, garlic, bell peppers, all hand-diced.

Also, as another experiment, I froze a few of the burgers to test how they'd keep. The result, plated with a mushroom-asparagus sautee and some avocado:

I think next month I'll go for Italian. Risotto, minestrone, sesame leaf pesto, and some eggplant bake maybe? Suggestions welcome...

_______________________

*OK, I know I said I wasn't going to talk about education, but does anyone else see an analogue here? When I don't have any particular motivation, it's hard for me to bother learning a new recipe; even my curiosity generally isn't strong enough to overcome the inertia. But as soon as the activity is linked to a meaningful event, purpose, or group of people, I'm happy to spend several hours figuring out something new. Schools are inefficient because they mostly fail to activate the sort of motivation that allows meaningful learning.

Upo Wetlands English Camp 2011: Context

2011-05-17T16:18:00.000-07:00

After all these discussions about alternatives to school, I feel like now's a good time to post something I've been sitting on for about two months. Way back in December, a friend I met WWOOFing put me in touch with a woman, Sunny, who works as a wetlands conservationist and homeschool teacher in Busan. As if that weren't cool enough, she also speaks English perfectly and has a Master's in linguistics. Needless to say, the moment I met her, I knew she had something to teach me.

She told me about an old man, a retired school teacher name Mr. Lee - or "Grandpa Egret" if you'd like - who lives in the Upo Wetlands and is concerned about the tensions and conflicts between the locals, who have been fishing int the wetlands for generations and want to continue to do so; environmentalists, who want to protect both the land and the migratory birds it hosts every year; and the government, which, since it controls the dams (which control the water levels, which control the number and kinds of fish and birds in the region), has to act as an arbiter between them, deciding which group's interests are more important for the region.

The situation is complex, and to be honest I didn't ask about it as much as I should have (mostly because I was nervous about trying to do some real teaching, but I'll get to that later.) What I understand, though, is that President Lee's pet project, called "Four Great Rivers," - the goal of which is to build canals joining together some of Korea's largest waterways, thus allowing goods to be moved back and forth between Seoul, Busan, and everywhere in between, without increasing stress on the already-congested highway system - is having disastrous effects on the environment. The project requires building dams, rerouting streams, and, dredging out and deepening river beds, all of which interfere with natural water- and eco-systems. As water is harnessed so that humans and industry can use it, it's routed away from comparatively "useless" places like wetlands, which dry out, shrink up, and finally disappear. On top of that, deepening a river affects the speed of the water - recently, a dam broke due to the additional pressure, leaving the city of Gumi without water for four days - which determines both how the water interacts with the river banks and what sort of animals can live there.

In particular, Sunny and Grandpa Egret told me about birds: the combination of the Pan Korea Grand Waterway (as the project is known in English); standard industrialization and urbanization, which pollute water; and wetlands-reclamation projects like Saemangeum, leave migratory birds with fewer places to stay on their trip from Sibera to wherever it is they go down South. When the birds, left with few other options, congregate at higher densities, they wind up consuming so much of the aquatic life - whether animal, vegetable, or in between - that the ecosystem doesn't have a chance to regenerate to full capacity between when the birds leave and when they return again. After a few years like this, wetlands once teeming with life simply die (Silent Spring hits home here, too), leaving the birds with even fewer places to go, forcing them into even denser patterns of movement and overconsumption, and so on.

Thus, environmentalists pushed for the Upo Wetlands, which plays temporary home to a wide variety of migratory species, to become a protected area, a refuge for birds who have to fly further each day this year than they did last year, and will likely have to fly even further each year than the previous one in the foreseeable future. While the protective policies put in place, which include restricted access to the wetlands and bans on outsiders fishing for leisure, are probably good for the locals who have been fishing in Upo for generations, they also cause some problems. After all, as the cost of living goes up, and as it becomes impossible to provide directly for oneself those things that society presents to us as necessities - cars, computers, electronics - fishermen have two choices: try to remain content with whatever relatively low level of consumption their work permits them, or catch and sell more fish and keep up with the Joneses. Even if the fisherman is a hermit like me, chances are that his wife, children, and other forms of social pressure and shaming will all but force him to take the latter path.

So, how can the fisherman fish more? Having lived in Upo for generations, the fisherman know, more or less, what level of fishing is sustainable; they've probably been fishing at just about that level for generations. The only way to increase intake without compromising the long-term viability of the environment is...to change the environment. This means asking the government to open up dams, which will bring deeper water, and more and bigger fish.

Sounds good, except for two things. First, diverting the water from other sources, and even building the dams in question in the first place, has probably already adversely affected other wetlands, somewhere, meaning that the whole thing may just be a zero-sum game. Second, more water - oddly enough - means less* wetlands, since the area will come more and more to resemble a lake. The birds that come to Upo, though, don't need lakes. They're evolved to thrive in shallow waters - perhaps because they need to lay their eggs close to water, perhaps because of dietary preferences and limitations, or perhaps because of some other reason. In any case, wetlands birds like wetlands, and if Upo become a lake, the birds will go elsewhere, further exacerbating the problems I've already mentioned.

What's the answer here? Both groups have legitimate claims - fisherman need to protect their own livelihood, and environmentalists need to protect the land and animals that can't protect themselves (and, because we depend on the ecosystem, this amounts to protecting us, too). It's not exactly right to say that there is no one answer, since, clearly, there are things that the government can do that are good for everyone (including the animals), and things that aren't good for anyone. However, it is fair to say that no one decision will solve the problem. As long as there are fishermen, birds, and governments, this tension will persist.

Thus, what Upo needs - what all of us need, everywhere - is not only intelligent decision-making from those in power, but people who are knowledgeable about and who feel they have a stake in the health of their environment. Only if people like this exist, speak out, and act, is there any possibility that the conflict will be, if not resolved, then at least navigated successfully. The dedication that allows one to do this, though, seems to me to have only two sources: love and pain. Pain at seeing the land, plants, and animals you love vanishing; loving them so much that, rather than turning away from the pain, you acknowledge it and do what you can to stop it at the source.

So, how do you find or make or mold people like this? In our age of flashy fashion, manic cartoons, and portable entertainment, how do you convince people that the call of a bird and the scent of a pine needle are worth paying attention to, worth caring about, worth being willing to feel pain for? I have read that children in indigenous communities who grow up with a TV in the house find it easier to identify Disney characters than indigenous plants.** Certainly, most children (as I myself once did) would prefer an hour of Nintendo to an hour of bird watching. Overcoming these tendencies in ourselves is hard enough; how can we hope to do it in the young, too?

Grandpa Egret has an idea. And asked me for help. Knowing what I know, how could I refuse?

___________

*Or "fewer?" What do you think, is wetlands a countable noun? Just in general, or in this sentence, too?

**Try it yourself - look out your window and name the first ten plants you see. And ones you planted or bought don't coun't. To make it harder - by which I mean, more realistic, more revealing of the knowledge we've lost - name things you can do with those plants, other than look at them or burn them for heat. Now, name five characters from your favorite TV show. Heck, I bet you can even name five characters from a TV show you hate. I haven't watched Frasier in ten years, but I still know that his brother's name is Niles, his dad's name is Martin, and that HIS DOG'S NAME IS EDDIE. Am I right or Am I right? WTF.

It Took A Week To Write This

2011-05-16T19:04:00.001-07:00

Again, thanks to everyone for your input. There’s so much good stuff in the comments I just reposted, it seems like responding would be a full-time job, and I hardly even know where to start. I’ll try to do the best I can, though, taking on themes rather than individual comments.

The System Works, Mostly

This point is hard to combat convincingly, since it’s really about data, and you’ll have to read a fair amount before there’s anywhere near enough data to combat the prejudices and assumptions that schooling has built up in us. Some facts (if you’re willing to regard them as such) that struck me are:

Works like Paine’s Common Sense and Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, both written before a unified school system existed, sold so well that we can be sure literacy rates were much higher than we usually assume. People were not illiterate before the creation of the public school system.
In the early twentieth century, it wasn’t strange for elementary schoolers to be reading Shakespeare, Thoreau, Twain, Franklin, and other such authors – none of whom, by the way, learned to read or write in a public school.
Children given the right kind of safe, supportive atmosphere can learn to read in about 30 hours. And yet,
The literacy rate is incredibly low in the US, despite official statistics putting it at 99%. Gatto provides data from the military, which tests incoming soldiers’ levels to make sure that they can read and follow instructions on varios devices. In 1932, 98% of those tested passed at at least 4^th grade proficiency. In 1942, it was 96%. In 1951, 81% (yes, by the same standards.) In 1973, 73%. This despite the fact that the amount of teacher training, time spent in school, and money spent on students increased each year. Now, although the official rate is near-perfect, studies that don't involve asking people directly "can you read?" often result in rates of sixty percent or less.
Many other countries school their children less, spend less per child, and still achieve higher literacy rates. As did the United States, one hundred and fifty years ago.
The system itself was initially theorized, created, promoted, and funded by the titans of industry, for the good of their industries. Here’s a rather nefarious quotation from Rockefeller:
- In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [of intellectual and moral education] fade from our minds and unhampered by tradition we work for our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science . We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets, or men of letters . We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors ,preachers, politicians, statesmen – of whom we have an ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple---we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way. (Cited by Gatto, Weapons of Mass Instruction, 8)

Exceptions may reasonably be taken to this; maybe making literacy isn’t the best measure of whether or not our education system is doing what it should (but then what is?), or maybe other things, and not school are to blame. This is certainly true; it would be unfair to pin the whole problem (well, the whole host of problems) on only one aspect of our society. On the other hand, though, this almost leads one to a position of saying that we need schools to protect our kids from advertisements, drugs, television, violence, etc. Clearly, that’s not something they can do.

What Will Happen to Kids, and the Rest of Society Without School?

The fear that unschooled children will become wild, illiterate, unrefined, unemployable, hedonistic beggar adults is somewhat understandable, but doesn’t seem justified to me. First of all, “despite” our schooling, a frighteningly, despair-inducingly high proportion of individuals in our society turn out this way anyway.

Second, the fact that people who don’t undergo a formal system of preparation/indoctrination may be unprepared to do for society what we’d like them to is not something that a democratic society ought to be proud of. While I hesitate to support the original provocative quotation (which got us all into this beautiful mess) by turning to yet another provocative quotation – I think there’s something important in this passage from Philip Slater’s 1970 book The Pursuit of Loneliness, which blew my mind in much the same way as Jensen’s Endgame and Henry’s Culture Against Man.

“Some of this resistance [i.e. resistance to the changes in social structure proposed by the hippies and radicals of the late 60s] comes from the old culture’s dependence upon the substitutes and palliatives that its own pathology necessitates. ‘Without all these props, wires, crutches, and pills,’ it adherents ask, ‘how can I function? Without the “extensions of man” I am not even a person. If you take away my gas mask, how can I breathe this polluted air? How will I get to the hospital without the automobile that has made me unfit to walk?’ These questions are serious, since one cannot in fact live comfortably in our society without these props until radical changes have been made – until the diseases that necessitate these palliatives have been cured. Transitions are always fraught with risk and discomfort and insecurity, but we do not enjoy the luxury of postponement. No matter how difficult it seems to to engage in radical change when all is changing anyway, the risk must be taken.” (151)

We need the school system to keep our society on track, but the track itself leads us to results that are neither desirable nor sustainable. We shouldn’t let our fear and our instinctive latching on to the status quo blind us to these facts and prevent us from thinking about large-scale, thoroughly thought-out, constructive changes that can be made.

People Need to Get Educated, Somehow / Learning Only Happens in Schools

If people don’t go to school, how and where will they learn? A knee-jerk response to a straw man argument. Nobody, not even the most radical of writers, is suggesting that we outlaw education and encourage children to soak up TV all day long. Rather, we need stop thinking of schooling and education as equivalent, and to broaden our concept of the latter so that it includes things like playing with friends, participating in the management of a household, finding ways to amuse yourself during long days, creating your own projects, finding your own mentors, exploring your environment, and watching adults perform tasks that are personally rewarding and socially useful.

Insofar as there is a need for places dedicated to learning– which there certainly is - we don’t need a one-size-fits-all, monolithic institution bloated with rules and preconceptions about what’s worth learning, who’s ready to learn it, and how long it should take them to do so; we need an open, democratic one that allows communities (to the extent that they still exist) to decide what to teach their kids, and how, and when, and where.

It’s true that, if set free, kids may not start to intentionally devote their time to developing an integrated, whole self. Kids don’t need to, though – that sort of enterprise is for people who are already able to recognize that somehow, somewhere, they were fractured (ahem..). If given a fair shot, (which, yes, includes limiting access to TV and video games and other pernicious influences, though perhaps these things wouldn’t seem so stimulating if school weren’t so boring) kids will naturally and organically learn the things that are important to them. The very reason that we quickly learn to drive, flirt, and masturbate is because they activities whose values we experience directly. Kids need to be given a chance, though, to find out for themselves what is important. Once the motivation is there, they can learn just about anything.

The Burden’s On the Student / Kids Need Pressure

Paradoxically, this response was often placed in the vicinity of the one above. One the one hand, it is said, students need school to get an education; on the other, if schools don’t do it well, the kids should just try harder and make use of their other time to learn. This looks like me to blithely accepting the fact that many children are forced to waste away inside concrete buildings for at least ten years.

If individuals kids are responsible for their own education, though, why not let them be really responsible for it? Instead of saying “you’re responsible for learning what we think you should learn,” why not say “you’re responsible both for figuring out what it is that you need to learn, and then for actually learning it, too”?

Why should it be up to the student to make the best of a bad system? Why not let him, and his family, and the community that he’ll eventually be a part of, create a system that suits their needs? There’s a difference between being encouraged, or even forced, to practice piano by your parents, who know and love you, and by teachers who, through no fault of their own, can hardly help but ignore your emotional needs, and who may even blame themselves for this and then begin to resent you for making them feel that they’re not up to their task. We all know that even parents can push too hard and ruin a child’s desire to learn something; it seems to me like our system of schooling, based primarily on fear of failure and humiliation, mostly does the same.

It’s true that the onus is on the learner, in the sense that no learning will happen if the learner doesn’t want it to. But it’s on society, and the institutions of learning in particular, to make kids want to learn, which means showing them the value of education. Kids are smart, smarter than we think, and they see through the lies we tell them (and ourselves) about what they’re doing in school. They know, better than most of us like to admit, that their time in schools is largely being wasted by people who themselves didn’t reap the promised benefits of their own ten-to-twenty years spent preparing to take test after test. As long as this fundamental discontinuity exists, schooling is a farce; true learning is based on authenticity.

Anyway, The System Won’t Change

This assertion has some force behind it – the system is indeed gargantuan, and even if we admit it's in crisis, it seems that we’ve got so much invested in it that we can’t just throw it away. Better to undertake smaller changes, to chisel away the defects.

To quote Slater again, though: “An action program must thus consist of two parts: (1) a long-term thrust at altering motivation and (2) a short-term attempt to redirect existing institutions.” (153)

What this means to me is that we need both small, pragmatic changes like reorganizing desks, using different textbooks, training better teachers; and big, sweeping goals like rethinking the fundamental goals of the system, which may mean rethinking the fundamental goals of our society. There’s no point in chiseling away if we don’t have something beautiful in mind that we want to create.

Wow! A contender for the longest, most through, most thoughtful, most interactive, most rewarding post ever! I feel like I’ve gained a lot from writing it. Thanks, folks.

Vanishing Responses

2011-05-16T18:15:00.000-07:00

I got several email copies of comments, but several of them appear not to have made it onto the blog. As the comments were all thought-provoking and informative, (and fodder for my next post), I'd like to respost them here.

From AZ:

I am moved by these last two posts, Kroy! (even more by your responses to the comments on your post, than by the initial post itself!) It all makes me want to have a hand in these changes, to think about how to re-make education, but where to begin? I had many of the same thoughts after reading the "Faulty Towers" article in The Nation about the crisis of higher education. It feels hopeless, even as there are these concrete ideas.

All this has also made me think about one of my favorite This American Life episodes of recent memory, Kid Politics. I actually loved all the stories in it, but was very stimulated by the one on the Brooklyn Free School. You should check it out.

From David:

Typical school day = 8 am -> 3 pm (minus an hour for lunch) = 6hrs.
24hrs per day - 8 for sleeping - 6 in school = 10 hrs of free time.
Even with a draconian 6 hour school day, that seems like a lot of free time to engage in free thinking, spiritual growth, and various caterpillar to butterfly transformations.

Whether it's due to society or due to 13-year-old brains, most high schoolers (let alone grade schoolers) aren't concerned with philosophy and unique personal development. They're interested in figuring out how to talk to girls, pass their driving test, and get the hang of masturbation (actually, most master (no pun intended) that pretty quickly). Most spend their 10 free hours per day playing video games and watching TV -- hardly the school system's fault.

The biggest factors in shaping our youth and creating free thinkers are parents and friends. Just look at us, whether it's Andy's cheapness, Mike's beardness, or Jeff's Jeffness our parents are to blame (or applaud?). The way to get a 10-year-old thinking is to turn off the TV and offer boardgames, a sketchbook, and/or a trip to the museum (or farmer's market, or community garden, etc).

Yes, it would be nice if schools taught about environmentalism and current events a little more (I'm pretty sure I blogged about that once upon a time), but a little good parenting goes a long way in ensuring everyone eventually finds their place in the world.

Finally, I feel like no matter how society "shapes" the first 18 years of someone's life, the true transformation will occur starting the day they hit their college campus, and is not complete until at least a decade later. I don't know a single person--myself included--that was not profoundly changed by their college, and early adult experiences.

College really isn't that different than high school--you need X number of units, everyone's graded, and competing, you're encouraged to show up to class, etc--yet we see the world in a completely different way in a short amount of time. I don't know the science behind it, but I'd image this has to do with our minds being fully developed, and poised to finally take in the world around.

Heck, I personally am still transitioning. The things that are most important to me continue to evolve, as are the ways I prefer to spend my time.

From Greg, who noticed the issue himself and reposted another comment, which looks like it's sticking around this time:

It's common sense to me.

My wife's brother is an agricultural engineer. He didn't fit into school and never did well but when he had the opportunity to get an apprenticeship to a farming machine company he really achieved. He work art time and studied engineering which required advanced math.

I have to politely disagree with what jefe said. I don't think Gatto wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If Gatto wanted to abolish the school system then I would agree with it. Gatto is speaking about making adjustments so we can fill other sectors of jobs with qualified applicants.

Its not really a matter if its about what Gatto wants or what we want. The truth is, are these changes necessary. I would say that they are not unnecessary but necessary either. But they need to come from somewhere wither from goverment or from business.

We have a lot of academically educated people with no jobs because the job sector for their jobs are unfilled. BUt we have a ton of demand for trade jobs.

The solution is good for children. My thinking these days is my own education, though its admirable what you are proposing for our children. Many of us had problems in school that we just had to deal with at the time. Some of us our looking for re-education and we can't get far.

Clinton had this to say about our structural problems. It is a pragmatic offering with what we have right now.

"For the first time in my lifetime, literally in my lifetime, when coming out of a recession, posted job openings -- that means they'll hire you tomorrow morning if you can do the job ... are going up at twice the rate of job hires. ...

There are two reasons for this. One is more than 10% of us are living in houses where the mortgage is worth more than the home, so we can't move. And that's cutting down on labor mobility, which has always been a big strength of America. But that's way the smaller problem.

By far the bigger problem is the jobs that are open don't have applicants that are qualified to do them. There's this huge skills mismatch. [There was a] huge college dropout in the last decade because costs went up 75% after inflation, and because the economy went down people had to drop out to work, and they cut back on a lot of intensive skills training.

We ought to have a list of every job that's been vacant for more than three weeks, by state, and just give 'em the money to train people immediately. And they ought to be able to do it while they're on unemployment. Give it to the employers if the community colleges and the vocational programs won't do it. ... You know how many jobs that is? Five million. The unemployment rate could go down under 7% if no bank made a single loan [and] if no corporation invested any of their surplus cash -- if we just made sure that tomorrow we had qualified applicants to go fill every posted job openin"

What is clear is that our lack of flexibility is hurting us and keeping many from going into professions that many of us would rather do or give us time to try on different things without a huge debt to pay off.

(My response will be posted shortly...)

Some suggestions re: education

2011-05-10T16:35:00.001-07:00

Again, replying to a comment on the recent series of posts about Holt, Gatto, and alternatives to schools.

Gatto’s solutions (that word is too big – maybe “suggestions” or "proposals" would be more accurate) include things like:

Easyish stuff:

Shorten the school year. If schooling is bad, then less schooling is less bad. Free up the summers or winters for kids to work, play, volunteer, or study alone or with a group of their choosing.
Vary the school year; mandate only that kids have to attend school, say, 180 days a year. That way, kids who are interested in some seasonal activity, or whose parents have jobs related to the seasons can be free to attend or help out.
Turn one school day per week into a volunteer day on which kids visit farms, gardens, habitat for humanity projects, orphanages, old folks’ homes, hospitals, or something else. They can learn hands-on, on site. Plus, this will help to reinstate the sense of community that is largely lost when kids are pulled our of real life so that they can “learn” from books and blackboards and abstractions.
Replace one day a week with an apprenticeship day. Kids can visit and hang out with parents, parents’ friends, or other professionals or tradesmen as they work. Again, children are more likely to develop curiosity about and interest in something if they actually see, smell, hear, feel, and manipulate it.

Tougher ones:

Don’t make school compulsory. As it is, parents and children who disobey schooling laws are threatened with jail time. But it’s undeniable that, for many kids and in many cases (though probably not yours and mine), school is completely useless. If a child or family feels that such is the case, let them make their own decision about it. (Holt cites statistics, albeit old ones, that show that dropping out of high school doesn’t correlate with career failure, once you’ve controlled for other variables like race, family income, and location.)
Revive the idea of apprenticeship. If a child has an adult who’s willing to take him/her on, let it be. Chances are the kid will learn all the relevant science, math, social studies, etc along the way, once he/she has seen the need.
Give money directly to students, rather than to schools. This serves two functions: first, to reduce the amount funds wasted by excessive admin and corruption at the higher levels; and second, to increase the consumers’ amount of choice. Gatto doesn’t speak of vouchers directly – maybe that wasn’t a hot word pre-2000? - but the idea is that, again, individuals can do a better job of deciding what’s good for them than the government can. If children hate or fear their school, it’s unlikely they’ll be learning anything there; but as it is, schools have no incentive to make them happy, only to make them work. (Of course, it’s impossible to “make” twenty-five kids happy by shutting them up in a room with an adult they don’t know and then trying to control them,) Then, families will be able to influence schools with their dollars(/vouchers), rather than with mere complaints.
Increase the amount of cost-free, condition-free public facilities like libraries. Expand libraries to include places to practice music, art, carpentry, or to show films and have group discussions, etc. Many of these resources are now locked up inside of schools, where they go largely unused. This has the benefit of opening up learning to everyone and anyone, not just those who have been deemed the appropriate age for learning.

This one is a little more vague, but: reduce the competitiveness of school as much as possible. It seems to me that the whole point of grading is to make it easy for colleges to pick students to admit, and the point of colleges is largely to give companies a shortcut in deciding who to hire. Why should the beneficiaries of the grades, the backbone of schools, be the companies who will employ individuals, rather than the individuals themselves? Why not put the onus of finding a good employee on the company? To quote Jeff's last comment, some teachers are "able to get their students to perform "better" than others." Certainly there are some good things about this; but one should admit that for every winner who manages straight As, there is a loser who can't and who will suffer in the college and employment processes later. However, had the "loser" been given an opportunity to explore his own interests and develop his own potentials, he might have managed something a little better.

Granted, none of these suggestions can be instituted overnight or without first making some changes in transportation, safety, and other kinds of infrastructure.; perhaps even in the nature of work and our ideas about the importance of efficiency. This may all be difficult, but it's also all worth aiming for. I can’t think of a nobler goal for a society than cultivating the intelligence, creativity, and happiness of its youth. Nor can I think of a better way of creating a society worth sustaining.

Is Gatto being unrealistic?

2011-05-10T06:31:00.000-07:00

This is a response to the previous post, Wisdom #11, which provoked some thoughtful and much appreciated comments from two of my most dedicated readers. I hesitate to post my reply here since it seems to give me the upper hand in the discussion; but if I relegate it to the comment page, which as far as I know isn’t tied into the RSS feed, it’s possible that it will go unseen.

So:

Andy and Jeff, thank you both for your comments. I realize that it's hard, for several reasons, to have any sort of substantial back-and-forth via a blog. This has been increasingly frustrating for me as my posts have grown more critical and less lighthearted in nature. For that very reason, I'm happy to have a chance to engage a little more deeply.

First of all, the quotation I chose was of course one of the more provocative, rhetorical ones. If I were able to post the whole book, or several of them, I would; then you would see more of the technical side, by which I mean details about what's wrong (for example, historical figures about literacy rates, social mobility, incarceration...), what alternatives there are (open schools, home schools, un-schools), and how those alternatives have played out in practice. Holt's “How Children Learn” is a fantastic analysis of what children are really learning inside of the elementary school classroom; his “Freedom and Beyond” looks more at the system as a whole and also discusses some alternatives schools; and Gatto's work unveils the history of the institution. All of the books are short (ie 250 pages or less) and well-written.

I have to say, I think that the "I turned out alright" argument falls flat on its face and amounts to ignoring the fact that different groups of people experience the school system in different ways. Of course, some make it through OK - but is that because of the system, or in spite of it? Remember, the three of us are upper-middle class white guys. Most of our parents have post-graduate degrees, and all have stable, relatively high incomes and a lot of choice in life. I'm lucky that my parents had the luxury of considering the quality of the school district in question when choosing where to move; and then, even after buying a house in a relatively good district, they worked to get me enrolled in an advanced program, open to only about twenty-five kids in my age group (out of the the thousand or more at the four schools in my county). I know your stories are to some degree different, but I also know that your parents went to great lengths to get you into the best schools they could. Not everyone is so fortunate.

You're right to point out that an alternative system might fail to prepare children for a lifetime of participation in the modern economy - but that's exactly the point! Life in the modern economy means, for most people, doing work that they don't care about for bosses that don't care about them (and who are in the same predicament). Not to mention that most modern work involves somehow degrading the ecosystem (not to mention the worker) in order to create and distribute products that nobody really needs. Conventional schools train people, emotionally and philosophically, to accept this state of affairs. Why support an institution that supports such a terrible system?

You both argue that school is about learning to think, not about learning specific facts. I agree - as does Gatto, as does Hoolt - that that's the way things ought to be. But that's not what most modern American schools are teaching most modern American children. They teach children obedience to authority that doesn’t care about their well-being; to evaluate themselves in terms of the grades they receive; to accept and complete arbitrary assignments; that the fundamental rule of life is competition; and, above all, that learning is work and work is boring, painful, and without meaning or joy. Most of these ideas are so repulsive and so unnatural, it’s hard to believe that anybody would buy into them if they hadn’t been closed up in a school for twelve years. Once they have thoroughly internalized what schools have to teach, though, it’s easy to see why alternatives would look so unrealistic.

Of course, you can’t change an institution as gargantuan as schooling and keep the rest of society static. The point is not to stop all schooling and then expect the world (or rather, our part of it) to continue as normal. That’s what I love about these writers – they do a great job of tying together a lot of problems. Resource depletion; environmental destruction; vapid consumerism; persistent racial disparity; urban destitution and suburban malaise; and so forth. If any of these problems are to be solved, starting with the institution that does the most to mold our populace's attitudes, abilities, and expectations about the world seems like a good idea to me.

Wisdom# 11

2011-05-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

A selection from one of my recent favorites, John Taylor Gatto. The book is called Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, and the essay "We Need Less School, Not More."

Almost all of my free-thinking-time this semester has been spent reading things in this vein and trying to figure out how to incorporate them into my work and life.

"Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your road map through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important: how to live and how to die.

"What’s gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is one right way to proceed with growing up. That’s an ancient Egyptian idea symbolized by the pyramid with an eye on top, the one that’s on the other side of George Washington on our one-dollar bill. Everyone is a stone defined by its position on the pyramid. This theory has been presented in many different ways, but at bottom it signals the worldview of minds obsessed with the control of other minds, obsessed by dominance and strategies of intervention to maintain that dominance.

"It might have worked for the Pharaohs but it certainly hasn’t worked very well for us. Indeed, nothing in the historical record provided evidence that any one idea should dominate the developmental time of all the young, and yet aspirants to monopolize this time have never been closer to winning the prize. The humming of the great hive society foreseen by Francis Bacon, and by H.G.Wells in The Sleepeer Awakes, has never sounded louder than it does to us right now.

"The heart of a defense for the cherished American ideals of privacy, variety, and individuality lies in the way we bring up our young. Children learn what they live. Put kids in a class and they will live out their lives in an invisible cage, isolated from their chance at community; interrupt kids with bells and horns all the time and they will learn that nothing is important; force them to plead for the natural right to the toilet and they will become liars and toadies; ridicule them and they will retreat from human association; shame them and they will find a hundred ways to get even. The habits taught in large-scale organizations are deadly.

"Individuality, family, and community, on the other hand, are, by definition, expressions of singular organization, never of “one-right-way” thinking on a grand scale. Private time is absolutely essential if a private identity is going to develop, and private time is equally essential to the development of a code of private values, without with we aren’t really individuals at all. Children and families need some relief from government surveillance and intimidation if original expressions belonging to them are to develop. Without these freedom has no meaning.

"The lesson of my teaching life is that both the theory and the structure of mass education are fatally flawed; they cannot work to support the democratic logic of our national idea because they are unfaithful to the democratic principle. The democratic principle is still the best idea for a nation, even though we aren’t living up to it right now.

"Mass education cannot work to produce a fair society because its daily practice is practice in rigged competition, suppression, and intimidation. The schools we’ve allowed to develop can’t work to teach nonmaterial values, the values which give meaning to everyone’s life, rich or poor, because the structure of schooling is held together by a Byzantine tapestry of reward and threat, of carrots and sticks. Official favor, grades, or other trinkets of subordination have no connection with education; they are the paraphernalia of servitude, not of freedom.

"Mass schooling damage children. We don’t need any more of it. And under the guise that it is the same thing as education, it has been picking our pockets just as Socrates predicted it would thousands of years ago. One of the surest ways to recognize real education is by the fact that it doesn’t cost very much, doesn’t depend on expensive toys or gadgets. The experiences that produce it and the self-awareness that propels it are nearly free. It is hard to turn a dollar on education. But schooling is a wonderful hustle, getting sharper all the time."

I highly recommend everything I've read by Gatto (Dumbing Us Down, A Different Kind of Teacher, and various essays online) as well as by John Holt (How Children Fail, Freedom and Beyond, and more), who was writing about similar stuff forty years ago. Even if I weren't a teacher, I would still find it all very illuminating. After all, who can reject the idea that the way we educate our young reveals what we hope they'll become once they're grown? Don't all of our political, social, and environmental issues have some root in the way that children in our society spend their fifth through eighteenth years?

I'm now off to Seoul to exchange some more books at the Seoul Nat' Uni library, hang out with old friends, and spectate upon the Buddha's Birthday festivities. Peace!

As if I needed more proof that I'm not as smart as I like to think I am.

2011-04-26T16:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a little drawing of my bathroom.

The black up top is a ceramic counter that runs along the back wall; the dark blue ball is the sink; the brown blob is the toilet; the red block is the door; and the light blue ball is where the tap and shower head are installed.

As is typical of Korean bathrooms, there's nowhere to put a little cloth mat, since there's no real distinction between places that should be wet and places that shouldn't. It takes a certain amount of skill to ensure that you don't soak the TP (mounted on the wall between the door and the loo) and your appliances when you shower. The problem is by no means insurmountable, and is even accompanied by certain benefits (no worries about dripping in the ought-to-be-dry zones, no sudden freezing after opening the shower curtain, no stinky, moldy bath mats). However some foreigners prefer to try to restore some order to the bathroom by hanging up a curtain. When doing so, you've got two choices.

In a bathroom like mine, the short-axis curtain allows the toilet to be used when someone else is in the shower:

On the other hand, the long axis curtain keeps water away from the sink and toilet, reducing griming and eliminating the need to wipe things down quite so often:

I originally had the former setup, but due to an inebriated bathroom scuffle in the aftermath of the Idli Party, the curtain came down and was sloppily reinstated in the lower manner. At first I thought it a little ridiculous, but I soon came to appreciate it. In addition to the cleanliness benefits, it prevents you from having to stare at yourself in the mirror for the duration of your shower-and-dry-off time every morning.*

The downside is, it cuts your showering space about in half. For the last 3 months, I've been showering with my back scraping up on the plastic sheet, or getting sprayed directly in the face, or standing up on my tippy-toes to get a nice full blast to the armpits**.

If you nodded your head just then, well, sorry to say it, but you are a nincompoop! I don't know how it has possibly escaped me until now, but there's a solution to this problem that's free, instantaneous, easy, low-tech (actually, no-additional-tech), and completely obvious. Can you think of it?

?

?

?

The answer is:

Turn the shower head and take a step sideways!

Look how brilliantly the hypotenutal shower stance solves all your morning hygiene problems! Each inch you move to the side provides you with (CHALLENGE: PROVIDE ME WITH THIS NUMBER, OR AT LEAST THE FORMULA) X inches of extra space in which to shower. I am pretty sure that there's an exponent in the works, so it's a good deal!

According to my calculations, this post is about 98% random and worthless, but the remaining 2% reveals something interesting. I think it actually demonstrates how deeply we can become stuck in certain patterns of thought, how much we accept certain things as given, even when the solution lies right in front of our eyes (or beside to our dripping posteriors). Whence the assumption, despite overwhelming evidence, that the 90 degree angle, perfectly perpendicular to the wall, was the best one? I must have take the shower head out of its socked and returned it there at least four or five times a day for three months, and yet it never even occurred to me that less symmetry might do me some good. What was it that prevented me from even considering stepping out of line?

How often do we put up with little, slightly annoying things just because we think that either there's no solution or that it's out of reach? How often is our ability to think of solutions cut off by our assumption that there's some weight behind or reason or justification for the status quo?

It may be a stretch, but it seems to me like there's a parallel here between these tiny little inconveniences that we could easily deal with, but don't, and larger social wrongs that we could also play a part in righting, if only we weren't so used to stomaching stuff we're fed up with. Of course, for me, vegetarianism comes to mind first. Many may be unaware of the environmental effects of modern meat production, but my guess is that very few are unaware of, or, if they would let themselves admit it, unsympathetic to the plight of the creatures involved. But, we accept the act of eating meat as a necessary evil; we've always done it, and others always do it, and so, assuming it's normal, or justifiable, or whatever, we assume that fixing the problem is harder than it really is. To be honest, though, with just a bit of dedication, it's not very hard to make the change. Reduce one meat, give one up, switch one for beans, switch one for tofu, and try a new restaurant or dish, and you're probably 90% of the way there.

I have much less experience dealing with other forms of stepping out of line, unless you count turning off the TV, foregoing shopping and most other forms of consumption, and doing my utmost to walk and bike everywhere within reason, so I don't think I have any more specific advice to offer. Just...allow yourself to acknowledge when something is wrong. Chances are, fixing dealing with it will be easier, and perhaps more satisfying, than you think.

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*It's not that I think my body is particularly atrocious, but that I've been fortunate enough to spend about 3 months not looking at mirrors in Sadhana and 10 days at a time during Vipassana sessions, and it's incredible how far it goes in helping you to act naturally, feel comfortable, and worry less about how other people perceive your appearance.

**I first used the word "armpit" in conversation in Korean last night, discussing traveling in India and the different scents one may encounter. (Linguistic milestone).

What the hell do vegans eat?

2011-04-25T04:55:00.000-07:00

As always, I'm a million posts behind on things that I feel are significant, like the WWOOFing I did last summer and how my thoughts about teaching have been evolving lately and what the status of my bean sprouts is. However, being a bit tired and lazy, how about I tell you what I am eating at this very moment?

Let me pose a question: what would you do if you had potatoes, asparagus, green beans, and garlic, all on the verge of going bad, a bunch of leftover kidney beans that you couldn't finish so you froze instead, and of course the usual assortment of beans and spices? Would the end product look something like this?

If so, would you write a self-congratulatory post about it?

Here's what I made, and how:

Bread:
Bought from the store across the street. They have a special bag they give out for baguettes, nice and long. It's made out of paper with a plastic window and is meant to be disposable, but I have been reusing the same one for about 3 months now. Usually I just buy the baguette, tell them I don't need a bag, and carry it home barehanded. This time, I took the bag with me and stuffed the baguette into it in the store; the middle-aged co-owner looked at the high-school aged cashier beside her and said "Hey, learn from this guy." We had a small discussion about reducing trash and she called me awesome.

Hummus (enough for 4 big eaters):
2 cups (dry) chickpeas
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 onion, diced
6 cloves of garlic, sliced
Juice of 1 lemon
4 tsp tahini
olive oil, salt, pepper.

1) Fry cumin seeds for a minute or two, add the onions, then garlic once the onions are almost soft.
2) Put everything in the blender, along with a little water (I use the water the chickpeas were boiled in). Blend it up.
3) Refrigerate.

Couscous
Too simple to make a separate ingredients list.

1) Mince garlic and fry until lightly browned.
2) Add water, salt, and frozen beans.
3) When the water begins to boil, turn off the flame and drop in the right amount of couscous. Enough that you can't see any standing water, but not so much that the grains don't stick to each other if you shake the pan a bit.
4) Cover and leave for five minutes or so.
5) Uncover, turn on the heat, and cook again for 5 minutes or so to dry it out and make it less mushy. Done!

And, the star of the show:
Roast Potato, Asparagus, and Green Beans
I learned this one watching my Italian host mother, Donatella, when I lived in Padova. She only used potatoes, but this works too.
6 baby potatoes, quartered.
2 handfuls of green beans**
5 spears of asparagus**
Rosemary, salt, pepper, other Italian spices.

1) Preheat oven to about 180C (350F).
2) In a mixing bowl, drizzle potatoes in oil and toss with spices.
3) Bake potatoes for 25-30 minutes.
4) In the meantime, cut the asparagus into 1.5 inch rods and mix in the same bowl and spices.
5) Turn the potatoes and add in the asparagus. Cook for 10 minutes.
6) In the meantime, cut the beans into 1.5 inch rods and mix in the same bowl and spices.
7) Bake for another 15-20 minutes.

Result: the best asparagus and green beans I've ever tasted! The rosemary, when baked, gives everything a fantastic aroma and sweetens the dish. The potatoes come out nice and crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside, while the beans and asparagus shrivel a bit, so that the skin is slightly tough and the inside highly succulent. Much more moist than when simply sauteed.

WOW!

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*There are an infinite number of ways to deal with raw chickpeas; I seem to wind up doing it differently each time. Today, on my lunch break, I boiled them for 20 minutes, then turned off the stove and let them soak for several hours while I was at work. Then I came home, changed the water, and boiled them for 30 minutes more.

**This is arbitrary, it's just the way these things are packaged and sold here.

The 대구녹색소비자연대 Goes 국제적인

2011-04-22T17:10:00.001-07:00

(The Daegu Green Consumers Alliance Goes International)

Back in December when I first started attending the DGCA's weekly vegetarian meals, it was an all-Korean affair. There were small hints of globalization here and here - some American folk music on the record player, pasta salad on the menu - but, by and large, domestic dominated. Not because of any prejudice or lack of desire to open up; just because the group didn't advertise much and because of the cook's preferred dishes. Oh, and nobody there speaks much English.

For better or for worse, my arrival initiated the process. I brought a friend along on my second trip, went alone on the third and received a request to cook the following week, and along with two vegan pals of mine, served up dinner on the fourth, introducing the group to the wonders of hummus, baba ghanoush, and lentil soup. The meal, while challenging the taste buds of a few of the regulars, went off well, and ever since then, my friends and I - or, when I'm out of town, just my friends - have been guest cheffing about once a month.

Recently, Mina, who coordinates the Tuesday dinners, asked me if we could make it offic, and change the name once a month from "Vegetarian Dinner for the Earth" (지구를 위한 채식밥상) to "Mike's International Vegetarian Dinner." She said that it had been a year since they had started, they all knew each other too well, she was getting tired of cooking the same old meals (which are always awesome, if you ask me), and thought things needed to be shaken up a bit. Unable I refuse to help an activist in distress, I happily volunteered myself and my friends. Now, the deal is: Three nights out of the month, Mina will cook her usual excellent vegetarian dishes using local, organic ingredients from one of the cooperatives that supports our group; on the third Tuesday of each month, though, I'll suck up a little bit of guilt about extra carbon* and imported food, and do what I can to prove to the group that vegetarian cuisine can be exciting, varied, delicious, and even downright hedonistic.

Thinking that the inaugural meal would probably set the tone for ones to come, I decided to internationalize the meal thoroughly by bringing along two co-chefs: Mathan, my neighbor, coworker, and friend from Tamil Nadu, India, and Niall, my coworker from Gallway, Ireland.

Here are the three of us, hard at work:

And here's what we put together, for a cost of less than five bucks a person:

In no particular order, the dishes are:

Rajma Masala (Kidney bean curry)

Fried rice with bell peppers

Tomato and onion chutney

Coconut chutney; Indian rice; raw onions with cumin powder and lemon juice; raw cucumbers and tomatoes; and cilantro.

The meal was met with near universal acclaim. Those who had been to India recognized the taste, and those who had only been to Indian restaurants in Korea recognized our superiority. Some fell for the beans, some for the rice; for me, it was the coconut. Even Mathan, who spent his first twenty-five years eating authentic Indian cuisine, said everything tasted as good as what he and his other Tamil friends make when they miss home. There was one woman, who had never tried Indian food before, who wasn't a huge fan, but I'll just win her over with something else next time.

We subdivided the labor, with Mathan assuming responsibility for the fried rice and tomato chutney, me for the bean curry and coconut chutney, while Niall did duty as a double souz-chef. Thus, regretfully, I can only present you with two recipes.

First, Rajma Masala, adapted from this recipe:

1 cup of (pre-cooked) beans, 1 tomato (not quite diced), 1 onion (diced)
3 cloves of garlic, about an equal amount of ginger, 1 or 2 spicy peppers, minced
1 tsp cumin seeds, 1 tsp coriander powder,, 1/2 tsp cumin powder, 1/2 tsp garam masala, 1/8 tsp turmeric, salt

(I don't pay much attention to spice proportions, partially because I don't want to bother with measuring and partially because stuff always comes out fine anyway. The important thing with Indian, I find, is to go really easy on the turmeric.)

1) Fry the cumin seeds over a medium flame for a minute or two in the cooking oil of your choice, then add the onion, turn the flame down, and give it five or ten minutes to get soft and translucent.
2) Add the garlic and ginger and cook for a minute or two.
3) Add the chilis, tomatoes, and all the spices except the salt. Roast for a minute or two.
4) Add the beans and about a cup of water. Salte to taste. As the water boils out, mash in the pan so that it becomes a little thickery.
5) Once the water has boiled out, you're ready to serve.

This recipe will give enough for about two people, if you have rice and something else on the side. I like it so much - particularly the rich, creaminess of the beans and the bite of the little chunks of ginger - that I could probably eat the whole thing myself. For the group, I tripled the recipe and added about an extra cup of beans to make it a little more hearty and filling (never a bad idea when you're cooking for ten).

Second, the coconut chutney, passed to me by word of mouth from Mathan's mother in Tamil Nadu. I don't quite remember the proportions, but something like this.

1.5 coconuts, cut into fingernail-sized pieces.
3 hot chillies, cut similarly
10 cloves of garlic (could be wrong on this), and about half that much ginger.
Tamarind (about equal to garlic)
2-3 tbsp split chana dhal
A few pinches of salt

Combine in food processor with a good amount of water. Keep blending and adding water as necessary, until it becomes a kind of dense, grainy cream, much heaver than Baba Ganoush. This chutney has a really interesting flavor: creamy and rich from the coconut, a little crunch due to the dhal, spicy thanks to the chillies, and a deep tang courtesy of the tamarind. It's amazing if you have time to chill it and let the flavors settle together before serving.

So, that was that. The next event will likely be held on the 9th or 16th of May, depending on whether or not I go out of town for our school's sports week. So, I've got at least a few weeks to think about what to serve. I'm thinking of trying my hand at bean burgers. If you know a good recipe, or have another suggestion, let me know!

May you all soon enjoy a delicious, home-cooked, eco-conscious meal with your friends!

More press!

2011-04-12T07:47:00.001-07:00

Now, in addition to having published two articles, I've been quoted in one. The Korea Herald, one of Korea's biggest English newspapers (if not the biggest; really, I have no clue) recently ran an article on veg*anism here in South Korea.

Here's what she got from me:

"Daegu Vegetarian Club is soon to start group dinners, and the Green Consumer’s Alliance organizes a weekly vegetarian dinner there. They discuss the ecological significance of food."

and

"“I know Korean food now far better than I did when I was eating meat, since the limitations you accept by becoming a vegetarian encourage you to seek out new options,” said Roy. He often eats meat-free dinners with his friends, most of which eat meat, and recommends that everyone try a vegetarian restaurant once a week to experience new dishes."

As well as a link to my Daegu Green Living blog! Woohoo!

Some other Korean vegan bloggers (including Mipa of "Alien's Day Out," whose blog I of course follow steadfastly) were also quoted. Hurrah!

While I'm excited about having been able to bring my views to a large audience and about having managed to get some exposure for DGL, I feel a little uneasy about the interview process itself. The author contacted me through the Facebook group "Vegan Korea." Or, rather, she contacted the group admin, who sent out a message asking if anyone wanted to be interviewed for the article. I volunteered, and the author sent me a list of questions, which I answered at length. I'm not at all disappointed that she pared my answers down - that was completely expected and justified - I'm just a little weirded out by how little my identity was checked. Is it really possible to find decent sources by sending out a Facebook message asking who wants to contribute? Of course, we vegans are an inherently trustworthy bunch*, so in this case I'm sure everything will work out OK.

I dunno, it's midnight and I don't feel like raining on my own parade. Vegans 3, Industrial Food System Complex 1 Billion. Things are lookin' up!

*Facetious comment!

Brought to you by a Chinese character

2011-04-05T23:59:00.000-07:00

I believe a while ago I wrote an extremely entertaining post about the etymology of some Korean scatological terms.

Well, recently, another one has come to the foreground in my life. I hereby introduce to you:

雜
잡
Jap
(pronounced like "chop," but with a j)

I would make it a million times bigger if I knew how.

It's the Chinese character for "mixed up" and it's in some of my favorite Korean words, like:

Jap-chae (mixed vegetables,): an excellent veganifiable dish made of sweet potato noodles, thin-sliced spinach, carrots, onions, mushrooms, peppers, all tossed with a light sesame oil dressing.
Jap-gok (mixed grain): rice and split legumes of various kinds, all mixed together. So much healthier than white rice!
Jap-peullaseuteek (mixed plastic): the bin where you throw out your unrecyclable recyclables
Jap-cho (mixed grass): weeds
Jap-nom (mixed indecent fellow): bastard, son-of-a-bitch

And, most recently
Jap-saeng-gak (mixed thoughts): monkey mind, ie random, distracting thoughts that come up of their own accord while you're working or meditating.

Vipassanagain

2011-04-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

Beop-sung (a Korean monk): Silence is the path by which a human becomes himself. For us to become anything at all, we must learn the silence of the seed buried in the ground.

John Taylor Gatto: The children I teach have no time... After television, schooling sleeping, and eating, they have only about nine hours each week to spend on growing up.

Blaise Pascal: All of man’s unhappiness stems from his inability to stay alone in his room.

Like to try a little experiment? Turn off your jukebox. Close your eyes. Direct your attention to your nostrils and the area just under them. Breath slowly, naturally, and see if you can feel the air moving across your skin as you inhale and exhale. No need to count, or visualize, or say "in, out," or anything like that. Just breathe and feel. Try to keep it up. Only for a minute or so. Go!

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Did you try? How long did it take for your first random thought to pop up? What was it about? Some recent conversation? Some person in another place? Some bit of work you need to finish? Maybe something a little more distant in time? How long did it take you to notice that you were thinking about something other than the present moment, and how long did it take you to return to your breathing, if you did at all. How long did it take for the next thought to pop up?

Are you at all curious about, or bothered by, the fact that you don't know how to just sit down and be completely in the present? I am. I have been, ever since my sophomore year of college, when I first ran into Pascal, his Pensees, and the aphorism I quoted above. I suppose there are several ways to take this statement, but what struck me was this: we're always looking for something outside ourselves to provide us with entertainment, or solace, or happiness. Who can even imagine simply sitting, with no books, no TV, no work, no conversation, and simply experiencing being for a few moments? Why is so much of our action at bottom just distraction? What are we distracting ourselves from? Why is it that, even when we are alone, in the dark, in the quiet, our minds insist on jumping back and forth between the past and future, between memories of pain or pleasure, fears of failure, dreams of success, and thoughts of little, banal tasks that we'd rather not be bothered with?

So, yes. If you're curious about this, please read on. I would like to tell you about Vipassana. Again. But better than I did last time. I think I can.

Last time, I wrote a lot of objective stuff - about the place, about the schedule, about the theory. Maybe that's because last time, that's all that I really took in. I spent most of the time shifting around on my cushions, trying to find a pose I could hold for an hour. Any time that wasn't spent shifting around, I spent doubting and debating and disproving the contents of the lectures. By the sixth or seventh day, dismayed by a perceived lack of progress, I felt that the technique wasn't for me and more or less fizzled out. It was too late to go home, but I was too tired to try to meditate, so I mostly just looked out the window and listened to the chickens.

On the final day, once the silence had been lifted, I overheard a conversation between one of the new students (a man in his 30s) and returning student (a guy slightly younger than me). The new student asked the old one why had decided to do Vipassana a second time. The returning student replied "because I had forgotten how much it hurt. This is the last time." I thought to myself, "Wow. What strength. He knows how to differentiate between something being too hard and something being just plane wrong; how look at something and and say 'that's not for me' rather than 'I'm not good enough for that.' He doesn't feel weak or inadequate, and doesn't equate choosing something else with giving up."

That was more or less my mindset when I left the first course; I still felt, for very hazy reasons, like meditation was something I ought to be doing, and something I ought to be able to do, but I wasn't sure if I could. I didn't meditate at all after returning home, let alone keep up a daily practice like the teacher suggested. I felt conflicted about whether or not to do it again, and was relieved to see that the one course offered in Korea this winter had been canceled. I thought I could push off the confrontation for another semester at least.

How wrong I was! As I may have mentioned in mid-February, the manager of Nunbisan Village, where I lent a hand tending chickens for a few days, knew a teacher nearby who was running an unofficial/unlisted course. He offered to call the teacher on my behalf, sign me up, drive me there, and stay for a day or two. I had already been sort of freewheeling around the province for two weeks, bouncing and forth between Nunbi, another research organization called Heuksallim (the subject of an eventual future post), and Heuksallim's farm, sort of sleeping wherever there was someone to host and entertain me. Having sort of already given myself up to circumstance/fate for the duration of my trip, I figured the opportunity was too special to pass up.

It turned out to be a good decision, or rather lack of a decision. My experience this time was completely reversed - rather than fizzling out and going home disappointed and frustrated, I came out of the course energized, lighter, and happier, so much so that friends who saw me upon my return said that my face and voice had both changed. After the first course, I wanted to want to meditate, but didn't; after the second, I just plain want to, and have been. At the beginning of the semester, I managed to wake up at six each morning and do an hour; now, things are in full swing and work keeps me fairly exhausted, which means I only manage to medidate for two or three hours in a good week. Sometimes I'm too tired, and sometimes I forget how nice it is and just let myself get distracted, but when I finally come back, sit down, wrap up, and start to breathe, I think to myself: "Finally. What took me so long?"

I hesitate to talk about it, since I don't think I can really do much to communicate such subjective and internal changes without sounding like I've gone off the deep end. This is particularly true over a distance, when all you've got is my words, and you can't see directly whether or not I've changed in the ways I'm mentioning and in other ways I havnen't. And yet, I want to try, since I think the courses have helped me to feel happier, more stable, more energetic, and more hopeful. After all, what's the point of blogging, if not to share this kind of stuff?

--------------------------------------------

Vipassana is at once the easiest thing I've ever done, and the hardest; maybe it feels hard because it sounds so easy. No duties, no distractions, no diversions, no mundane concerns of any sort for ten days. Doesn't that sound like a dream vacation? Au contraire - it's extremely tough. Or rather, you let yourself make it tough. In talking with the other participants after the program, I found that not a one hadn't contemplated giving up and going home, whether out of boredom, pain, depression, frustration or something else. I realize this paints a bleak picture, but remember: most people overcome these obstacles, very few leave the course, and many go back for more.

There are two main segments to a Vipassana course. The first, Annapanna, takes up about the first third. Annapanna is what I asked you to do at the beginning of the post: attempt to empty your mind of thoughts by focusing on breathing. Other meditation traditions ask meditators to focus on counting, visualizing, or repeating a mantra; Vipassana, which aims to give us direct experience of the truth about our minds and bodies, asks the meditator not to activate his or her will at all, to only sit and observe the truth of the body in each instant. Is the air passing through the left or right nostril? Is the breathing deep or shallow? Does the air you draw in scratch your lip? Does the air you breathe out warm it up? At first, sensations are faint, if present at all; thoughts pop up and distract you, and as soon as you realize it, you clear them away and go back to breathing. As time goes on (Vipassana meditators do about ten hours of meditation each day), you become more sensitive, feeling differences in humidity, temperature, and forcefulness of breath, in addition to unrelated other sensations: tingles, tickles, twitches, and so forth.

The point of all this is to develop sensitivity so that you're ready for the latter two-thirds of the course, in which you practice Vipassana, the observation of things as they really are. In less metaphysical terms, this means sitting and mind-patrolling your entire body, part by part, for whatever sensations may occur. At first, you notice the things you'd expect, big stuff: cool breezes, flies landing, beads of sweat, your pulse, and, of course, terrible, seemingly unbearable leg and back pains, the kind that kept me squirming throughout the first course. You have to struggle to focus on areas where there's apparently no sensation; but the longer you stay at it, the more sensitive your mind becomes, and the more you can feel things you didn't even know existed. You come to realize that these sensations are always present, on all parts of the body - how could it be otherwise? We all learned in middle school that our bodies are composed of organs, and organs of tissues, and tissues of cells, and cells of tinier parts, and that those parts are composed of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of subatomic particles, which are made of smaller stuff yet. Every single one of these components is in constant action, whether it be physical, chemical, biological, or intentional. Why is it that we don't feel the heart beating, the skin breathing, the mitochondria contracting, the cells dividing, the electrons orbiting, and the quarks blinking in and out of existence a million times a second?

This sounds so odd that I think a little allegory might be useful. When I first started trying to meditate, long before I knew anything about Vipassana or before I had even discussed meditation with anyone, I had some interesting experiences with my pulse. If I tried to focus my attention on one of my fingers, my pulse felt strongest there; if I moved to, say, my kneecap, then after a few seconds, my pulse would move too. No matter where I directed my attention, my pulse followed. I didn't quite know what to make of it, and I didn't know who to ask, so I just kind of let it be. It wasn't until recently that I realized what should have been obvious from the first: my pulse never moved at all. My pulse runs to every part of my body all day, every day, at every moment, and if it didn't, I wouldn't be around to notice the problem. It was only my awareness that had changed; after a few seconds of calibration, of quiet observation, sensations that are usually too subtle to be perceived become easily noticeable.

As with the pulse, so with other sensations, though not all of them are so easy to identify. Parts of the body stretch and compress, heat up and freeze, buzz and go into paralysis. As you learn to pay attention to the sensations, and to ignore the ones that occur on parts of the body you're not focusing on, you feel more and more of them, including ones for which we lack words. You may eventually feel your entire body vibrate, or petrify, or even dissolve. You may be able to observe sensations inside your body, not just on the surface. (I experienced some of these and not others; I won't tell you which. It's not particularly useful to talk about what any given individual felt, since all of us are so different in terms of physical and mental experience. Reading about others' experiences only makes you jealous, which will hamper you from developing on your own. Suffice it to say, I had enough to let down my doubt and let the technique take me where it would.)

You may still be asking, so what? You could probably postulate a good evolutionary reason why we wouldn't want to be aware of these sensations all the time. How could we avoid predators if we spent all day reveling in our particles' vibrations? How could we remember the past and plan for the future if we were completely mesmerized by the present? I constantly asked myself questions like these during the first course, rather than just giving the technique a shot; I still ask them now. But, if you let go of them for a time, you come to realize that it's not an all-or-nothing scenario. Being able to experience your body and mind as they are doesn't mean that you're unable to react to what already did happen or provide for what is likely to. On the contrary, understanding the way your mind has been conditioned to react to sensations like these makes you all the more powerful and effective.

Actually, I've only explained about half of the course so far. A great deal of time and energy is spent on developing awareness of sensory perceptions, but this awareness is not an end in itself. The point of the whole enterprise is to give you direct experience of the transience and therefore absolute arbitrariness of these sensations. Strong or subtle, pleasant or painful, novel or not, all of the sensations vanish shortly after they appear - and this is more true the more time you spend observing them. An unpleasant sensation may be unpleasant, but fearing it, fighting it, and generating aversion towards it only multiplies the effect. Why choose to multiply your own suffering? Likewise, a pleasant sensation may be pleasant, but it's guaranteed to vanish; all the anticipation, expectation, and craving that you generate for it will eventually be for naught. So, when your face starts to itch, don't scratch it; when your mind starts thinking about what you should do next weekend, don't indulge it; when your goes numb and feels like it may explode, don't move it; when you start to feel an infinite number of pleasant subtle sensations all over your whole body, don't get attached. Keep in mind that it will all go away.

If you can learn to treat all sensations with this kind of objectivity, you've already taken the most important steps towards remaining balanced in the face of larger, more complicated, emotional issues. After all, moods and emotions fluctuate every bit as much as the random sensations on your skin. I recall being extremely depressed on Day 2, so much so that I thought of running away from the course and visiting a therapist friend in Seoul; so happy and overwhelmed by gratitude on Day 6 that I couldn't fall asleep; and so angry on Day 7 that rather than meditating I sat with fists tightly clenched for two hours. And yet, nothing had really happened to me during that period, or at least, nothing that could justify jumping around from despair to elation. The dizzying ups and downs were all of my own making. Just like the pain in my right knee, the one the kept me squirming throughout the first course, the one that mysteriously vanished sometime during the second, the one that hasn't come back since.

Treating the pleasant and unpleasant alike may sound like a recipe for total ambivalence - another of the thoughts I wrestled with for far too long - but it's not. It teaches wisdom, understanding, and peace. Longings become mere "would-be-nice-ifs," frustrations become "oh wells," annoyances become trivialities; not all at once, and not all the way, but enough to make a difference in how you feel. Now, personally, I feel more free to go after things I believe are of value and to ignore things that aren't, less hampered and dismayed by setbacks, more grounded in times of conflict, and more patient and compassionate in general. I'll admit that I don't exactly understand how equanimity in the face of low-level bodily sensations is supposed to generate total piece of mind; then again, I don't know how hitting clicking the little orange "publish" button will transmit this post to you. I've just clicked it enough times to be pretty sure it will. Likewise, I've spent enough time meditating to be fairly convinced of its effects.

I don't expect these words to convince anybody of anything. Not only are the words poorly chosen and sloppily organized and incomplete; they're also too distant, too abstract, too impersonal, too forced. I could write on and on, trying to define terms better, give livelier examples, and make tighter arguments, but I don't think it's worth it. Words can only take us so far, and in many cases are even counterproductive. A year ago, just listening to this stuff would probably have turned me off. In fact, I still hold doubts about maybe half of the things I wrote here, probably even more than when I began writing. That said, enough happened to me during the course - from new sensations to extreme mood swings to the total disappearing of what had been such an unbearable pain - to convince me of the soundness of its basic premises. And since then I have felt different, better, more confident, so much so that I wish I had found Vipassana earlier. Had I gone into the first course with even a tiny, vague, endorsement such as this from a person I knew and trusted, I think I could have opened myself up and learned more, and more quickly, saving myself a lot of wasted time and struggle. While in the end the only thing that matters is your own experience, in the beginning, words from a friend can count for a lot.

I'd like to end with one more conversation I overheard. Vipassana meditators maintain silence all day, but have a brief opportunity to speak to the teacher and clarify issues of methodology. I often stayed to talk for a minute or two, and usually the teacher called me first, maybe because I was one of the returning students, or maybe because I was a foreigner, I have no way of knowing. One night, though, he called the guy next to me up first instead. I tried not to listen (as I said above, it doesn't do you any good to know how enlightened or pitiful the next guy is), but I couldn't help it. The man, also a returning student, wanted to go home. He said he was tired, and depressed, and not getting anywhere. Here's what the teacher said:

"You've already come so far. You've finished one course and are halfway through another. Most people live their whole lives not even knowing a wonderful technique like this exists, never having a chance to meet it. Particularly in Korea, where other forms of Buddhism have taken hold, and been degraded. You must have done so much good, built up so much positive Karma in a past life, to have had the good fortune of encountering these teachings in this one. Don't throw it away."

I believe you can take that as a compliment.

Green peeve 1: Staggered automatic doors.

2011-03-21T22:38:00.001-07:00

I know I'm critical of a lot of things. Mac n Cheese, shopping malls, plasma TVs, my school's English book, and all that stuff. However, I do make an effort to be constructive, to do more analyzing and informing than complaining. That is, until today.

Because, even though I know useless complaints about tiny details won't get anyone anywhere, sometimes it just feels good.

So here's one thing that's been pissing me off lately:

Homeplus (basically a Korean Walmart, owned about 20% by Korea's Samsung and 80% by England's TESCO, or so I hear), being a gigantic store, has gigantic entrances. Whether for fashion or insulation or some other purpose, the entrances always have two layers of doors. That is, you pass through the first set into a sort of antechamber, and then, after about two or three more meters, you pass through another set and into the store proper. Maybe because doors are difficult to open, or because shoppers are too exhausted after agonizing over which of the seven thousand varieties of Pringles they really want, or because touching things is dirty, some of the doors are automatic.

But that's not the peeve. I have come to accept that there are a billion stupid, crappy, destructive things about the world that I will never be able to change. I just go about my business and avoid them as much as I can. Plain old automatic doors go into this category.

No, the problem is not with the doors themselves, per se. It's with their arrangement. Have a look at the diagram:

INSIDE

AAAAA/AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH/HHHHH

HHHHH/HHHHHGGGGGAAAAA/AAAAA

OUTSIDE

(Legend:
AAAAA:Automatic sliding door
/: Gap between doors
HHHHH: Hinge door
GGGGG: Glass plate. )

In an effort to use my body rather than electricity, I usually go in through the first set of HHHHH doors. Notice, though, that I can't continue straight through, because the next set of doors is AAAAA! For no good reason that I can think of, I am cornered into an environmentally unfriendly act, like when they drop two tiny, pointless strips of beef into the would-be-vegan soup at the faculty cafeteria. Of course, I can try to take the H-H diagonal path; but even then, it's hard to avoid tripping the A sensors across from me. Theoretically, it would be possible to enter at H, slink spy-style until the center of the G's, cut into the middle before I trigger the A's on the right hand side, and then pop in through the other set of H doors. But, in the real world, I'm already white, ponytailed, and usually wearing torn-up clothes appropriate for bicycle rides ( during which nobody will see me for more than about three seconds at a time). I don't need to appear any more freaksih by looking like I'm playing hide-and-seek (alone) in the store entrance.

Unable to realize my low-impact ambitions, I tend to opt for the freegan strategy: wait for someone who has no qualms about using AAAAA doors and the sneak in right behind them. Nice and close. Creepily so. Sure, I go through the door that I hate. But I don't cause it to open, and therefore don't contribute to any pointless use of fossil fuels. Just drafting, along for the ride.

Veritably, life is like a hornet's nest.

Does anyone else out there have any particularly peeving green peeves they just want to vent about? Or suggestions for me? Or other ways that you apply this dumpster-diving methodology to your life?

DGCL's CSBS at my house! Almost!

2011-03-20T05:30:00.000-07:00

Sometime back around December, as I must have mentioned, I started frequenting the "Daegu Green Consumers League"'s Tuesday-night "Vegetarian Dinner for the Good of the Planet." Each week, we gather at "The Warehouse" (the name of the meeting place), and a woman named Mina cooks a meal for us. There are about five regulars (I now count myself among them) and another five or so who come from time to time. Nobody else - except my buddy/neighbor/co-chef Suzie - is a vegetarian, but everyone tries it once a week in order to reduce the strain they know meat-eating places on the planet.

Last week, Mina went on a trip and wanted to cancel the event, but I wasn't gonna let that happen. Instead, I coerced Suzie into helping me host. So, we invited the League over for dinner. Here's what we made:

An unplanned leftover salad (my creation)! Mini sprouts, baby greens, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, old bell peppers, a few kinda squishy cherry tomatoes, a beet I didn't know what to do with, and roasted perilla, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds. Dressed with olive oil, white wine vinegar, and some Italianish herb mix so kindly procured and exported by my mom.

Croutons made with multi-grain sesame bread, olive oil, and just a hint of salt and pepper. All credit to Suzie for these.

Suzie's pumpkin/carrot soup, with just a hint of curry.

Potatoes Donatella-style. I learned this from my host mom in Padova in 2005. Just cube the potatoes, swish them around in a mixing bowl with a bit of oil, salt, and rosemary, and then roast them for an hour. Suzie added a little twist: steam the potatoes first, so that they're a little squishier on the inside, but still nice and crispy outside.

I also woke up at 6 that morning to makee a giant pot of chili in the slow cooker - kidney beans, black beans, tomatoes, tomato paste blended together with an onion/bell pepper/garlic/red pepper powder sautee. It came out tasting OK, but was a little ugly, so there's no picture.

For dessert:

Some fresh fruits (yes, unfortunately, mostly imported, but all bought at about 11pm the night before from the shelf of past-expiration date stuff that the store was going to throw out anyway...) that we used to make:

Low-energy CHOCOLATE FONDUE, the heat source for which was just 3 tiny little candles. Amazing.

And here's everyone having a great time:

This was my second time co-hosting the event with Suzie. It's a bit stressful in the moments beforehand, trying to whip everything up in the one-hour gap after work and before everyone shows up, but it really winds up being a blast making good food for your friends - particularly if you can make stuff they're not likely to have tried, even if the ingredients are all available.

Ah, also, the whole meal cost just about 5 bucks a person, and that's counting about five servings of leftover chili, too! I deceive you not!

Mina's out of town next week, too, which means that the 지구를 위한 채식 밥상 is coming to my place.

The menu is:
-Suzie's roast sweet pumpkin appetizer (uncharted territory for me.)
-Indian style cabbage curry (I made a test batch today - easy and delicious^^)
-Thai style curry with potatoes, coconut milk, and whatever other vegetables are available when I swing by the organic shop tomorrow (also going to be a bit of an experiment).
-Mixed-grain rice, perhaps with some sweet potato slices mixed in for good measure.
-And perhaps, if everyone is lucky, my patented peanut-banana-soy milk-powder of roast grain supershakes.

Can I just say, nothing beats food with friends?

2011-03-19T18:51:00.000-07:00

The following article was printed in In Daegu, a new newspaper from the makers of Daegu Pockets.

The full text and Korean translation follow.
To download the pdf, click here.

Have you ever been sitting at a Daegu bus stop, watching the ticker and wondering why the bus you’re waiting for doesn’t seem to be getting any closer, when all of a sudden a packmof shiny spandex-clad cyclists races by? Hundreds of men, women, and children riding bikes of all different types and sizes, from giant unicycles to low-riding, stylized tricycles, from million-won designer models to that rusty one that has been lying on its side next to KNU’s North Gate for at least three months now. What are they all doing?

Welcome to the Daegu Bike Festival. Funded by Daegu City Hall and organized by the Daegu Council for Local Agenda 21 (맑고푸른대구21추진현의회), the DBF is an opportunity for cyclists of all shapes and sizes, ages, races, and levels of ability and dedication to enjoy themselves while at the same time demonstrating that Daegu is indeed a bikeable city. From humble beginnings in 2006, the DBF has grown into an event that regularly attracts hundreds of riders, and sometimes more – over one thousand people participated in last October’s event, the Daegu Bike Rally, a leisurely 25 kilometer course from Daegu World Cup Stadium to the main gate of Keimyung Univeristy. (Actually, all the way to the cafeteria. Followed by free lunch.) Other rides last year included a scenic ride along the Nakdong River in May and a loop from downtown to Dusan intersection and back to celebrate Daegu Car-Free day in September. Every ride begins with signing in and picking up your raffle ticket and ends with dozens of gifts, ranging from the small (helmets) to the big (bicycles) to the just plain strange (environmentally-friendly frying pans).

The DBF represents more than just a chance to win some free stuff, though. For the chronically lost, the process of finding the starting location, following the course, and making your way back home from the destination is an excellent way to learn the layout of the city, while the chronically bored may encounter restaurants and shops that might otherwise have gone unknown. If thoughts of giant carbon footprints weigh heavy on your conscience, DBF events may be a chance to get started doing some good. If you’re interested in bicycles, bike fashion, or bike-mounted gizmos, you’ll have plenty to feast your eyes on. For those looking to meet other bicycle enthusiasts to arrange rides with, there’s no better place to be. If you like to feel important, you can ride at the front of the pack, right next to the police escorts. And if you’ve been waiting for an opportunity to parade around in public wearing spandex, well...you aren’t alone.

The final DBF event of 2010, a 14-km ride along the banks of the Geumhogang River, took place in November. DBF will begin its 2011 campaign on March 26th (hopefully the cold will have passed by then) with a ride starting out in front of the West District Office (서구청). The exact time and course have yet to be decided; for up-to-date information, and to register for future events, have a look at http://www.ecobike.org.

DBF events are always free of charge and always open to one and all. So far, few foreigners have heard about or participated regularly in the festivities. This year, let’s ride together in order to raise awareness, while at the same time helping to make a cleaner, healthier, more friendly Daegu.

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If you're interested in finding out about eco-friendly restaurants, shops, and events in Daegu, please visit http ://noksaeksari .blogspot .com or find the group 녹색살이대구 / Daegu Green Living on Facebook. Feel free to stop by one of our monthly Eco-film nights, held downtown at Buy the Book.

대구 버스정류장에 앉아서 전기 간판을 바라보며 당신이 기다리는 버스가 왜 오지 않는지 궁금해 할 때, 갑자기 반짝이는 스판덱스를 입은 수백 명의 사이클리스트들이 순식간에 지나가는 것을 본 적이 있나요? 남녀노소 할 것 없이, 다양한 사람을이 다양한 자전거 – 커다란 외발 자전거에서 누워서 타는 세발 자전거까지, 백만원을 호가하는 명품 자전거에서 경대 북문에 3개월 이상 망치되어 누워 있는 녹슨 저전거까지 – 를 타고 다닌다. 신기하지요? 그들은 무엇을 하고 있을까요?

대구 자전거 대행진 (DBF)에 온 것을 환영합니다. 대구 시청의 재정 지원을 받아 맑고푸른대구21추진협의회가 진행하는 자전거대행진은, 체격과 나이, 인종과 실력, 참여 경혐과 상관없이 많은 사람들이 즐거운 시간을 보낼 수 있다. 동시에 대구가 저전거로 쉽게 다닐 수 있는 도시임을 입중할 수 있는 좋은 기회이다.

2006년에 시작된DBF의 처음은 미약했지만, 계속해서 많은 사람들이 참여하면서 이제는 수백 명의 사람들이 참여하는 행사가 되었다. 작년 10월의 대구 자전거 랠리 (대구 월드컵경기장에서 성서계대정문까지 25km코스를 편안히 따라간)에는 천명 이상이 참여했다. (사실, 계대 안 식당까지 갔지요. 밥을 공짜로 먹기도 했고.) 작년 행사에는 5월의 낙동강을 따라 간 코스와 9월 “대구 차가 없는 날”을 경축하기를 위한 시내에서 두산오거리 일주를 거치오는 코스가 있었다. 모든 행사는 접수하고 경품권을 받는 것으로 시작되며, 수십 개의 경품 – 작은 것 (헬멧)과 큰 것 (자전거), 이상한 것도 (친환경 후라이팬) – 을 선물하는 것으로 끝난다.

하지만DBF는경품을 얻는 기회만 있는 것은 아니다. 길치에게는, 출발지를 찾고 코스를 따르고 집에 다시 돌아 가는 길을 찾는 과정에서 우리의 대구광역시의 모습을 배울 수 있을 것이다. 또한, 만성적으로 심심한 사람들은 알 수 없었던 식당과 가게를 맞닥뜨릴지도 모른다. 자동차가 뿜어내는 오염에 대해서 많이 고민하는 사람들에게는, DBF는 좋은 일을 시작할 기회가 될 수도 있다. 만약에 자전거와 저전거 패션, 그리고 최신 자전거 악세서리에 관심이 있다면, 구경할 것들이 많을 것이다. 자전거를 좋아하는 친구를 찾는다면, 이보다 더 좋은 곳이 없을 것이다. 주목받고 싶다면 경찰 호위대 바로 옆에 타면 되고요. 마지막으로는, 스판덱스를 입고 잘난 척할 핑계를 찾는다면, 이곳으로 오세요. 당신이 혼자가 아니다.

2010년의 마지막 행사는 11월 금호강을 14km 따라 가는 코스이었다. 2011년의 캠페인은, 추위가 지난 다음에 3 월26일 서구청 앞마당에서 시작될 예정이다. 그행사의 시간과 코스는 아직 정확하게 정해지지 않았다. 그래서 자세한 정보를 찾고 싶거나 앞으로 진행될 행사에 신청하려면, http ://www .ecobike .org에 접속하면 된다.

DBF은 늘 무료로 진행되고 누구나 참여할 수 있다. 지금까지는 대구 자전거 대행진에 대해 잘 알고 정지적으로 참여하는 외국인이 매우 적었다. 올해는 저전거를 같이 타는 것을 통해서 사람들의 인식을 높이는 동시에 더 깨끗하고, 건강하고, 사랑스러운 대구를 만들도록 노력합시다.

______________________________

다른 친환경 식당, 가게ㅘ 행사를 더 알고 싶다면 http ://noksaeksari .blogspot .com 방문하거나 페이스북에서 녹색살이대구 / Daegu Green Living 이라는 그룹을 찾아 보는 것이 도움이 될 것이다. 매월 시내 Buy the Book에서 상영될 친환경 영화 관람에 누구든지 환영합니다.

Some slightly good news for pigs, amidst lots of really terrible news.

2011-03-19T18:34:00.001-07:00

Wrote this for the other blog, but it's personal enough to reprint herre:

_________________________

I believe that we all have our "veg buttons." Soft spots that, when poked, make us cringe a little more than we expected, that activate our introspection, our guilt, our sense of right and wrong. If the right veg buttons get pushed, and often enough, and at the right times, one begins to feel differently about vegetarianism. One doesn't immediately begin to think it's absolutely right, or that it's the only way, but automatic reactions and unquestioned assumptions - "they're not human," "out of sight, out of mind," "I need it," "I have a right to it," open up, get exposed, become vulnerable. A little prodding feeling - maybe there's something to this? Those who try it aren't crazy. It becomes something to consider seriously, and even try.

For me, there were three such buttons. First came a plain piece of paper taped to the wall at my parents' church, saying that it takes tens of thousands of gallons of water to get a kilogram of industrially-raised beef. It didn't change my behavior at all, but it has stayed in my head for years and years. What's the point of taking short showers, and wishing that others would too, when my occasional trip to Outback uses up more water than a month's worth of hygiene habits?

Second was a truckbed full of pigs that I saw here in Korea. I wasn't even out in the countryside - actually, I was on my way to Costco. There were four or five pigs in the back of a decent-sized truck. They weren't squished in or anything. But one pig - and there's no pretty way to say this - had what I can only describe as a couple giant malignant ass polpys. (Ok, to be honest, I could also describe them as giant rectal warts.) I should probably describe them in detail for multiple impact, but I couldn't do it justice and the mere thought of trying makes me want to vomit. I didn't go veg for another year or more after seeing them, but from that day on, each time I sat down to grill some pork, the image floated up in my mind. Could this very bite be from that pig, or one just like it?

Third was something Michael Pollan said about poop. Before agriculture depended on chemical fertilizers, it depended on natural ones; feces were a resource. Animals evacuate, bacteria break down, plants absorb, animals eat, and evacuate again, and humans step in every now and then to skim a little surplus off the top of the process. Now, though, the bacteria don't break down poop, because it goes to giant lagoons where nothing can grow, not to fields where other lifeforms can make use of it. Thus, whatever nutrients are in the poo are unrecoverable, wasted; we have to turn to chemical fertilizers, and the oil that it takes to make them. The fertilizer runs into rivers and oceans and disrupts natural patterns; the oil burns off into the air and does the same. Things may have not been easy or perfect or ideal before before, but somehow, for some reason, we took a closed-loop solution and made two, if not three or more, problems out of it. Now we have a waste problem (what to do with all that shit?), and a fertility problem (how can we grow enough to feed all these animals). The answer is right in front of us. We spent millennia living with the answer. How can I keep eating meat when I know it contributes to this kind of ridiculousness?*

So, those were my veg buttons, or at least the big ones, the ones I remember, the ones I still think about. It seems that, recently, many Koreans have had their veg buttons pushed - not by churches or polyps or Pollan, but buy the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Reports of millions of pigs and hundreds of thousands of cows being killed, often buried alive; speed bumps that shoot up geysers of chemical baths, and highway tollgates that get you from both sides; quarantines and canceled trips; chemical-soaked carpets in train station; increased food prices. According to this article,, "Disgust over FMD gives boost to vegetarianism" from the Jungang Daily , interest in vegetarian (and even vegan!) eating practices is on the rise**. The vegetarian buffet at Seoul National University's music school is filling up, and visits to the Korean Vegetarian Union website have quadrupled. The outbreak has shaken some people from ignorance into awareness, and some from awareness into action. If there's one good thing that can come out of the various crises we face - whether they're related to the environment, to energy, or to livestock - it's this: they make us face up to what we're doing, or what we're allowing other to do instead. They force us to confront our actions, our systems, and ourselves, and the necessity of changing them all.

What a good time to be trying to find a role as a vegetarian/environmental activist in South Korea!***

_________________________

*I know that the solution is not easy, and that there's no way now to just capture all the shit and take it Idaho.
** I owe the link to Mipa at Alien's Day Out
***At first I wanted to make a joke, starting that sentence off with "It's a bad time to be a pig, but..." Then I reconsidered. Too lewd?

It's the first ray-ee-nee day, of the year.

2011-03-19T17:06:00.000-07:00

A one month post dearth! A deep, unsightly gash in my blog's epidermis! The agony of a stifled desire to write, to share to good news, to recount excursions undertaken and lessons learned. To record anything and everything, for you, for me, for posterity. Time lost, thoughts unrecoverable, a black hole in my memory. And perhaps, lacking news from me, in your heart as well?

If so, I apologize. I'll make it up to you.

Today, I intend to put an end to all of the above. Because:

It's raining.
And I've got a sore throat.
And a giant pitcher of homemade honey jujube tea.
And a bag full of muffin top cookies made by my friend Sandy.
And, for the first time in what feels like forever, not a single obligation.
And a billion things that I want to share.

This post is just preliminary though. First, I think I need to take a nap and make a list and pot some plants. Then I'll be back.

In the meantime, watch this video! I originally started this blog thinking I'd be telling my friends what South Korea is like. How people live, how they play, how they talk, what they eat, where they go, stuff like that. All the little, mundane trivia that constitute "knowledge" of a place and its people. Over the past year, though, I think I've replaced whatever amount of "cultural relaying" that I was doing with a bunch of stuff about my fauxboing and experiments and opinions.

Which is to say, this video is a million times better than any official "Sparkling Korea" (I could do a whole post on ridiculous city monikers) toursit-lure video I've ever seen. Maybe it's just the histper-friendly soundtrack and editing, I don't know. But the way the scenes are cut to the beat, and the way the protagonists reappear a few times, makes the video feel like it comes from the heart (whereas official ones tend to feel like they came from the boardroom.)

Do You Know South Korea? from David Dutton on Vimeo.

(If you'd like, compare it to the official ones, search for "Korea Sparkling" or "Korea Inspiring" on YouTube.)

12000 Chickens.

2011-02-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

2011 has been a slow year for blogging so far! I'd like to think it's because I've been keeping busy...

After the Idli party, I spent a few more days with Sadhana friends, then took a couchsurfer from Colombia, Jorge. A really nice, cool guy. He stayed for a week and we hung out a fair bit; I really had nothing to do except study Korean, write another article for Daegu pockets, translate it, and eat the candy he brought as a gift. After a week or so, he and his friend Isabel (who was staying with another host) found their own place near another university, where they're going to TA for Spanish classes while taking an intensive Korean course. I have already told them that they can repay my kindness by cooking me an occasional vegan Colombian dinner. Next semester is shaping up nicely...

I had planned to head off on my farming excursions around the beginning of February, but as Lunar New Year fell on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, the farmers asked me to postpone my visit until the following Monday. So, I spent Korean New Year alone recuperating from about 5 weeks straight of being excessively social (Christmas group trip, New Year's group trip, continuous Upo wetlands camp prep meetings, early January visit to see friends in Seoul, various environmental things in Daegu, Tobin's visit, Idli party, Couchsurfers), napping and reading and studying Korean and cooking and such goodness.

So, come Monday the 7th, I came out to NunbiSan Maeul (Snow-Rain-Mountain Village), a chicken farm about 3 hours northwest of Daegu. I found out about Nunbi not through WWOOF, but through Seon-ju, a Korean friend I met in Sadhana. She spent most of the last 5 years visiting different kinds of communities - Buddhist, self-sufficient, sustainable, et. al. - in Japan and southeast Asia, and she knows of some stuff here in Korea too. She hadn't been here yet but asked me to check it out.

"Chicken farm" isn't exactly the best way to describe Nunbi, but I don't know what is. I can't post any pictures now, but later I'll show you the 7 buildings, each divided into 10 or 25 smaller rooms, holding a total of abotu 12,000 chickens. You could walk a circle around the whole set of buildings in about five or ten minutes; it's not too big, but it's big enough that the chickens have ample space to walk, jump, exercise, and do their chicken culture stuff.

The design for the coops was apparently invented by a Japanese farmer named (something like) Yamagasi - I've only heard the name in passing and haven't seen it written yet. Wooden beams run the length of the back of each coop; the chickens jump up onto them to sleep, and since they're about a foot off the ground, the chickens can poop without stepping in it and dragging it all around. The water is in a tray at the front of the coop, far from the feces. The space in the middle has some troughts for food, and on the left and right side, hanging off the walls, are big triangular boxes. The base of the triangle is filled with hay, and the hypotenuse blocks out sun and light, so that the chickens have a dark, soft, warm place to lay their eggs. When the farmers/workers/members of the community come in, all they have to do is open up the hypotenuse, grab the eggs out of the hay, and move on. Because the boxes are so nice, the chickens hardly ever lay eggs on the ground, which mean few get stepped on, missed, or wasted.

The eggs that Nunbi produces are fertilized, which means that if they were left alone they'd hatch into baby chicks. This may sound a little cruel - actually, the chairman of the community, when he heard about my veganism, said that he'd rather eat unfertilized eggs than fertilized ones, which is an argument I understand - but the truth is that fertilized eggs mean happier chickens. Here at Nunbi, the ratio of roosters to hens is about 1:12-15, which gives an egg fertilization rate of about 95%. I'm not sure what the "natural" ratio would be, but in many standard (sterile) egg operations, the hens never encounter a male and thus never get a chance to mate or have a child. To me, this looks like their ability to express one of the fundamental traits of animals is being denied. Not only the physical acts of mating, conceiving, and laying, but also the social acts of courting, competing, showing off, or however chickens get on with it. I don't think one has to know the details in order to acknowledge the justice of allowing them some amount of freedom. Furthermore, even if roosters were present in most egg-laying operations, mating would probably be impossible, since the conditions are so cramped that the chickens can hardly move around, let alone strut, play, or mount one another. Fertilized eggs don't guarantee that the chickens have space to move, but they raise the likelihood. Finally, chickens in standard egg operations don't even live through full life cycles. After being caged and manipluated and worn out (by antibiotics, "enhanced" feed, and non-natural light cycles), they're killed as soon as their productivity drops. Most of these chickens, bread for egg-laying ability and not survival capacity, wouldn't even survive if let loose, even into good conditions; their bodies are weak, and since they never saw adult chickens foraging or mating, they have no clue how to get by. Fertilized eggs mean, at least to some degree, that the chickens have been allowed to express some of their chicken-ness. And there's no such thing as animal welfare without this freedom.

So, for 2 days, I woke up at 6:30, put on some nice tall boots, and went outside to pour hot water on the faucets, which freeze every night. Once they faucets are operational, the water is turned on so the chickens can drink. (In the non-freezing months, it's always on). Then I went through the coops with the young chickens, who haven't quite adjusted to the "don't lay your eggs in your own poop" system. I would throw a few handfuls of seed into the corner, and and with the chickens distracted and scattered, I was able to clearly spot and pick up the eggs that had been laid on the ground. If I saw a chicken preparing to lay an egg anywhere other than in the egg box, I picked it up and moved it to the egg box, both for its own comfort and ours. After a time or two, the chickens pick up the habit, and by the time they're six months old, they hardly lay on the floor at all.

Breakfast at 8:00, then back to the chickens at 9:00. We opened up the rooves to let the sunlight in, then one more round picking up eggs from the floor - yes, they lay them that frequently - then gathering from the egg boxes. A room with 100 chickens might produce about 50 eggs overnight. The eggs are set into temporary cartions, and then we drive them down to the little factory, where they are stored for the moment. Then we weigh out a bag of feed for each room (10 to 20 kg depending on the size of the room and the age of its inhabitants) and set it out in front of the door. Then we head in for lunch and a nap.

At 2pm, back to the chickens. They have a special long coo for when they're hungry, which I don't think I can transcribe. The tone is kind of plaintive (maybe that's just me projecting) and moves from low to high. Entering the coop, I'd toss some feed in one corner to get them out of the way, flip over their troughs to empty them out (chickens are not the brightest animals and often stand and poo inside the trough while eating), and then fill them with new goodies.

After that, miscellaneous time. On the first day, we made a special snack out of the eggs that were too ugly or damaged to sell. We boiled several hundred defective eggs, then mixed them (shells and all) with some organic nutrition supplements and some rice husks, and then I donned my boots again and stomped on the stuff until it got kind of pasty-clumpy. It was like taking a bath in a tub of scrambled eggs; I was half salivating and half ready to puke. Then we distributed it to the young chickens as a sort of protein supplement.

The idea of feeding eggs to chickens struck me as somehwere between stupid and inhumane. But, actually, if you watch chickens, you'll quickly see that if you accidentally break an egg in their presence, they race over and gobble it right up; this has been explained to me as an attempt to recover the protein and other nutrients that their bodies jettison each day in the process of laying. They won't break intact eggs open - that would be a truly stupid, maladaptive habit - but eggs that have no chance of developing into chicks are fair game.

The next day, for the older chickens, we fed them something one of the farmers called "corn kimchi." They had grown corn the previous summer and kept it fermenting for months and months, kernels and cobs and stalks and all. The rancid, rotten, stinky smell means that the corn is full of little living bacteria, probiotics, which are good for the chickens' digestion and overall health around this time of year. They loved it.

After that, one more round of picking up ground eggs. Then all the eggs are brought to the factory, which has fifteen meters of conveyor belts that bring the eggs through six or seven different machines. The machines wash the blood, feathers, dirt, and poo off the eggs, sort them according to size, enter all sorts of statistics into the computer, and then drop them into cartons.

While the people in the factory are setting up the eggs for distribution, the people outside get the chickens ready for bed. Turn off the water, close the roofs, lower the windscreens, and coax the chickens into their sleeping spots (stragglers who attempt to sleep away from the flock often catch colds, so it's important to put them all together). Once the sun sets and the chickens are OK, the workers can head in for dinner.

Nunbi has an interesting dynamic. About ten or twelve people work here; some of them are alone, living in the dorm, eating communal meals, while others live nearby with their families. Together they produce between eight and ten thousand eggs a day, all of which are sold to Hansallim ("One Life," or maybe "Korean Life"), an organization that runs a chain of environmentally-friendly supermarkets. Regardless of his or her role, each worker receives an equal share of the profits, after some has been set aside to donate to local causes and for the development of the facilities. The people who stay in the dorm - actually, "research center" - hang out together in the evenings, drinking tea and chatting and reading and practicing "Guk-seon-do," a reportedly ten-thousand year old Korean style of Tai-chi/yoga/martial arts/meditation on Wednesdays.

I've only spent 3 of the last 10 days at Nunbi and have a lot to write about Heuksallim (Saving the Soil), the organization where I spent the rest of my time. But, it's nearly lunch time, and after I eat, I'm heading off for another ten days of noble silence. That's right, my second Vipassana of the year! I didn't think I'd have another chance until next summer, but the founder of Nunbi knew about an unlisted course happening not to far from here and set me up. I'm not sure whether I'll volunteer (i.e. cook, clean, etc, meditating only about 3 hours a day) or whether I'll full-on participate (ten or twelve hours of meditation daily), but either way, I won't be back until just about March. See ya then...

16평, 26명 (Sixteen Pyeong, Twenty-six Myeong)

2011-02-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

This post is about Idli. And Dosai. And potlucks. And international friendships. And claustrophobia.

Ask anyone who's spent time at Sadhana to relate some of their best memories to you, and there are a few things you'll definitely hear:
- Dance parties and bonfires
- Living, eating, working, and playing with a group of amazing if eccentric people from all over the world
- Wiping with your hand.
- Tropical fruit salad for breakfast every morning (papaya, pineapple, pomegranate, banana, guava, chicoo, orange, coconut, cilantro, mint...)
- Skipping first work during the week or breakfast on the weekends to bike into town for Idli and Dosai.

Four of those things are self-explanatory, one is awesome but, unfortunately, unspeakable, and one may be a mystery to some of you. It's this last one that I'd like to explain.

When we think of Indian food, we generally think of stuff like tandoori, vindaloo, palak paneer, aloo gobi, channa masala, etc, served with raitha, naan, roti, paratha, and chapathi, and maybe a lassi at the end. What we aren't usually aware of, though, is that this stuff is all north Indian, and not representative of the country's cuisine as a whole. North Indians have left home and spread around the world a bit more than southerners - there are surely historical and political reasons for this, such as Delhi being in the North, but I really have no idea - and, thus, so is their cuisine.

Due to the different climate, and particularly the difference in rainfall, the south grows different crops and eats different fare. The dependable monsoons, and the water they bring with them, make the environment more suitable for rice and less suitable for wheat. This is why, in Tamil Nadu, naan, roti, and chapathi are generally found only at slightly largel "hotel" restaurants. When you want to run down the street and find the closest, cheapest, hole-in-the-wall, this-is-what-people-who-work-in-the-fields-eat, sort of place, idli and dosai are what you get.

For lack of better comparisons, I'd say that dosai are more or less rice pancakes and idli are...ehr...rice muffins? Anyway, without further ado, here's what they look like, and then there's how you make them:

1) Mix long-grain white rice and urad dahl, 2:1. (1 cup of rice and 1/2 a cup of dahl will make enough batter for about 20 idli, or maybe 6 dosai.)

2) Soak for 24 hours. Make sure to put in plenty of water, since lots of it will get absorbed. (You can start with hot water to make sure it all gets soft.)

3) Blend mixture together until it's a bit foamy and not too grainy. Add water slowly, lest it get too runny.

4) Add more water and soak for another 24 hours. You should be able to smell a little sour scent - this means it's fermenting properly.

The batter can be preserved in this state -if the ambient temperature isn't too hot, you can leave the batter out for a few days, while if it's warm, you can store it for a week or so in the fridge.

To turn the batter into idli:

5a) Start boiling a bit of water in a large pot, or pressure cooker if you have one.

6a) Use a little bit of oil to grease your idli steamer trays (visible in my hands there.)

7a) Spoon out a bit of broth into each idli mold.

8a) Stack your trays up and start steaming. Be vigilant about the water level - if it touches the idli, they'll get soggy, but if it all evaporates, you'll probably burn the pan.

9a) In a non-pressurized, covered pot, it should take about 10 minutes. I suppose less in a pressure cooker.

10a) Take them out, slide them out of the tray, and start over at 6a).

Or, to make dosai:

5b) Heat a little bit of oil in a thick skillet.

6b) Drop in a ladlefull of batter - not too thick.

7b) Fry, flip, and fry again.

That's the end. Now all you need is something to eat them with. I suggest...

Inviting 25 friends and telling them each to bring something Indian-ish. Chutney, sambar, curry, any of the north Indian stuff mentioned above.

It will help if a third of them are from the motherland.

Clear off your computer desk and set out a buffet.

Chow down!

nice nice nice

2011-01-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

Not much to write about of late.

My Scottish coworker and the-better-part-of-a-year cynic and vegetarian buddy Andy left the country after three years. The week preceding his departure was full of plantnappings, furniture nabbing, pancake gorging, and rice wine till 6AM. One fine night, five of us went through eleven kettles of rice wine and one of each pancake on the menu (spicy chive, green onion, potato, kimchi, split pea, sesame leaf) except cabbage. There was much talk about death, breathing, zen, the grave, goodbyes, environmentalism, Sadhana, and some other slightly-less-couth topics.

Tobin, a fellow American whom I met in Sadhana Forest, took his sweet time meandering around India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Japan, and Seoul, and finally made it to his real destination (my living room) sometime around the middle of the month. He hung out for a week, had a really great time (if I may say so), participated in the first ever giant party in my house (25 person, hundred dosa, thousand idli [admitted overstatement] Indian potluck), and then headed off about a week ago. I hesitate to write about the experience because, for one, I am pretty sure he'll be reading this at some point, and, for two, because he's just that sort of friend that one has nothing but loads of good stuff to say about, and I'm generally not comfortable giving other people compliments (i.e. I give them to myself quite well), and particularly not in front of an audience as GIGANTIC as mine (proof).

The very next day, a pair of Couchsurfers arrived from Colombia. Jorge and Isabel. Jorge's now staying in what was once Tobin's spot, while Isabel is staying with another host nearby. I've been enjoying showing them around town, taking them to meet my friends at excellent restaurants, cooking various foods from them - from Korean to Indian to random stuff from my fridge - learning about Colombia, and realizing how much my Spanish skills have atrophied since 2002. It's been a bit of a burden having guests for about a whole two weeks now, but it's also been really nice to reconnect with an old friend, meet someone new, and share my life and time and food and social circles and bathroom day-in and day-out.

Then, this morning, I headed back to my old neighborhood (Chilgok, where I lived in '07-'08) and met up with Mr. Kim, the manager of the "Farmer's Marketplace." Back in March or so I saw the store while on the bus and have been frequenting it since then. When I got the bright idea to start showing films, I started dropping off advertisements there, even though foreigners hardly visit and middle-aged Korean women who do the shopping for their family are never going to come to my Saturday-night screenings. The cashier lady asked me once, nicely, why I bothered biking around and doing screenings and if I wasn't just tiring myself out, and without thinking I told her that I just mostly felt compelled, that I didn't know what else I would do if I weren't doing "this." (I learned an important fact about myself at that moment.) We talked briefly about how pitiful we are in contrast to the influence of major agro-corporations, then I put the minipumpkins and sweet potatoes in my bike bag and pedalled off.

Sometime in December - I remember because it was the first big snow of this winter - I stopped by again to do some shopping on my way to meet a friend. It was some sort of customer appreciation day, so after brushing the flakes off my ridiculous orange parka, the cashier lady took me to the back of the store, where pork was a-grillin'. I enjoyed a bit of grilled rice cake and kimchi and some homemade rice wine that hadn't been fermented quite as long as it should have, and wound up meeting the manager, along with a local artist, a former school principal, and some other guy, all related to the Daegu eco-scene in some way or another. Now that I write this, I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before, in the post about things coming together.

Anyhow, it was on that day that Mr. Kim said that we should have tea together. And it was at that moment that he explained to me that the Korean phrase "let's have tea" means something like "maybe we have something in common, let's try to get to know one another," whereas "let's have a meal" means "let's cement this relationship" and "let's have a drink" means maybe something along the lines of "let's get drunk and vent and then make some plans." I accepted and vague tea-related promises were made.

Actually, though, I think it's a little weird just to have tea, so I called Mr. Kim last night and arranged a lunch meet for today. I grabbed the bus out to Chilgok, gave myself nausea trying to finish the appendix to Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, did a little shopping at the Marketplace, then was taken to "Nok-ya-won," an awesome little restaurant I wish I had known about back in 2006 when I first came.

They served us green tea, then jeong-sik, which has of late become my favorite kind of Korean meal. Literally "decided meal," jeong-sik is kind of like the soup du jour, except that rather than soup it's 10 or 15 or 20 vegetable side dishes served with rice. The specific dishes vary according to the restaurant, the location, the season, the prices at the market, and I suppose the cook's whims and specialities. Included in today's lunch:

-Noodles and radish in vinegar/red pepper sauce
-Black rice and mushroom porridge
-Sticky sweet potato noodles with sliced vegetables
-Sauteed mushrooms
-Thin-tofu soup
-Slightly stronger tofu in red pepper paste
-Sweetened dried radish
-Sesame leaf kimchi
-Sweet lotus root
-Grated carrots, bean sprouts, and spinach
-Doraji (some awesome root) in a sweet red pepper sauce
-Donnamul (little crisp leafy guys, stem and all) in a thin soybean paste and onion sauce
-Some little fishies
-Just a tiny bit of steamed pork, leaves, and dip
-An awesome kind of sliced root with peanut sauce, which I had never tried before
-Another vegetable with some crazy seasoning I can't begin to describe.
-And I think two or three more that I can't quite recall.
-Not to mention that the rice - multi-grain, with pumpkin and sunflower seeds and ginko nuts too - was wrapped up in a lotus leaf and then steamed.

My lord, it was good. And Mr. Kim paid (12 bucks each) while I was in the bathroom.

While eating, we talked about Mr. Kim's path from anti-goverment demonstration in his college days to a few years doing politics with an independent party to (I'm not sure, my Korean isn't anywhere near as good as I'm making it out to be) to finally operating this marketplace and trying to raise environmental awareness through volunteer programs, farmstays, movies, and other strategies. We also talked about the communities I'm intending to visit in the coming weeks, and how so may aspects of community here have collapsed, that most people don't even realize it, and what the best way to go about addressing that problem is. I explained to him what WWOOFing was and offered to connect him to my persimmon farmer down South, and he offered to connect me to some "famous" environmentalists around here who do documentaries and other things that I didn't really understand. I asked him if he knew about CSAs (I hadn't found a Korean farmer yet who did) and he said that actually his marketplace is a sort of CSA and that some of his customers have direct relationships - which means they've met face-to-face and even worked in the fields side-by-side with- the farmers who supply the store. Excellent!

After lunch, he dropped me off at another eco-friendly shop, where I buy my laundry detergent and other stuff. I'm on good, maybe somewhat flirty terms with the (female) manager there, and since I was buying stuff for friends as well as myself, and my bag was stuffed and I probably looked pathetic (the nausea still hadn't/hasn't gone away), she gave me a solid 20k won discount (on a 70k won basket of goodies) even though I've never bothered signing up for a membership card.

She also introduced me to the guy behind me in line at the checkout counter, who happens to be a farmer on the mountain nearby. He also happens to be one of the store's suppliers for soybean paste, red pepper paste, and other fermented foodstuffs. She told him I was interested in farming, and within 30 seconds of meeting me he offered to let me come to his farm and check out both his organic plots, where he grows enough to feed his family, and his processing facilities. He also offered to give me a ride home. Equal parts nauseous and grateful, I accepted.

On the way home we chatted about this and that; his 11-month old son, his time in Australia, his farm in the mountains, his family, Korean hospitality, his sister's Canadian husband eating really spicy peppers, how Finnish people can't handle kimchi, the virtues of raising your own food, what to plant come April, how nice sweet potatoes are, and so forth.

What I draw from this is that, even though I feel ridiculous sometimes [edit: most of the time], talking to people about this "group" called Daegu Green Living that is still at this point just me, throwing around flyers indiscriminately, chatting with owners, interviewing interns, writing articles, taking pictures of foods and signs and postponing putting them up on the web, it really does seem like a lot has come of it. Things and opportunities I didn't expect and couldn't have predicted in advance. The more I put myself out there - sharing my opinion, making efforts to fix things, deciding not to hide my values - the more I seem to meet and connect with similar people. And the more those people seem to respect me and want to help me and connect me to other people they know. I suppose it shouldn't really come as a surprise, since there's no way any of this could happen if I just sat around in my little turtle-shell of a home studying Korean (which I do do sometimes). Nonetheless, it's pleasant. It's nice that, despite all the things that make me curmudgeonly (see recent post about Foot and Mouth, as well as my recurring references to Jensen and probably most posts with the "Wisdom" label), there are
people in my immediate vicinity who share my concerns and ideals and hopes and frustrations. It's also nice to know that there are more people than I know of who are, in their own ways, going about doing the sort of stuff I am.

I don't know what else to say. Just, "nice."

대구에 또 있는 마이크

Check it out!

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Jang Gi-ha, part 3

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Jang Gi-ha, Part 2

Jang Gi-Ha and the Faces

November's CSBS

Team Happy Bear Cooks: Mike's Garlic Shoots

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Perilla: A Korean Treasure

Applied Food Ethics at Joseon Village

Why Kimchi Is Good for the Soul

Team Happy Bear Goes Organic

Slight Change of Plans Regarding the 1KFTFFF

The Hungry Vagabond Gets Treated Like a King

Food Tour Day 1: Breakfast

Team HappyBear Eats Its Way Through North Jeolla Province

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You Are What You Read

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My Bread and Butter

Idealism in action!

Hooray for minor linguistic successes!

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I Miss Hangugeo

Are you tired of Veg Night news yet?

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An entirely predictable if unfortunate occurrence.

Wrapping Up

Growth and Scarcity; Wisdom #12

I See Through You

Kitchen Repertoire: Expanded

Upo Wetlands English Camp 2011: Context

It Took A Week To Write This

Vanishing Responses

Some suggestions re: education

Is Gatto being unrealistic?

Wisdom# 11

As if I needed more proof that I'm not as smart as I like to think I am.

What the hell do vegans eat?

The 대구녹색소비자연대 Goes 국제적인

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Vipassanagain

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12000 Chickens.

16평, 26명 (Sixteen Pyeong, Twenty-six Myeong)

nice nice nice