Mental illness is a Charnel House from which Nobody Escapes Unscathed.

We took our cat Sammy to Sakonnet Vet last night for his rabies booster and checkup and Dr. Pete Belinsky told me about this amazing article.

by Roger Cohen

My father came home from work and found the bedroom doors closed. He thought little of it. June was often in bed. He fixed himself a whiskey, sat down with the papers. It was a mild summer’s evening, sunlight glinting through the trees, clouds of gnats against the fence. June’s cycles were running at three-month intervals. With luck, come September she would be active again. Sydney tossed the papers aside. He tried the bedroom door. It was locked. He raced around to the other door, from the bathroom.

It was locked. He ran outside. The net curtains were drawn. The windows looked sealed. On closer inspection, one was very slightly ajar.

My mother lay sprawled on the bed, a bottle of gin beside her. She had taken large doses of doxepin and Valium, washed down with the gin. Her arms were thrown back behind her head.

Her pupils were scarcely responsive, her breathing shallow. The suicide note written to my father was beside her bed: “You are made to do great things, make immensely useful discoveries to aid all mankind and I’m leaving you to continue unimpeded by my burden. I so much hoped to help you and to help you and to love and adore you ...” June survived, just. The emetic effect of the gin probably saved her. She vowed to us all that she would never again “resort to such a drastic step.” But death was always the cajoling voice in her ear.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story

June tried to kill herself again on June 15, 1982. Again there was a suicide note. Again, she survived, barely. At last cancer took her on Jan. 2, 1999, at age 69.

Mental illness is a charnel house from which nobody escapes unscathed. My parents’ marriage, in its last two decades, was filled with terrible silences and fierce eruptions. After the loss of my mother, I had to find vitality at any price. Every relationship was a mausoleum in the making.

Roger Cohen is a columnist and the author of “The Girl From Human Street,” a memoir, from which this essay is adapted.

SundayReview | Op-Ed Columnist NYT The Battle to Belong: Depression and an Immigrant’s Struggle to Assimilate JAN. 9, 2015
source

Proper Tools

Her life her life had taken on the shape of a terrible mistake. She hadn't been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided, that was it. She'd been given a can of gravy and a hair-brush and told, "There you go." She'd stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush.
― Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore

Usually she ordered a cup of coffee and a cup of tea, as well as a brownie, propping up her sadness with chocolate and caffeine so that it became an anxiety.
― Lorrie Moore, Like Life

Masanobu Fukuoka

My nephew Wes told me about this book he was loving, yesterday.

The One-Straw Revolution

Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008) was a farmer and philosopher who was born and raised on the Japanese island of Shikoku. He studied plant pathology and spent several years working as a customs inspector in Yokohama. While working there, at the age of 25, he had an inspiration that changed his life. He decided to quit his job, return to his home village and put his ideas into practice by applying them to agriculture.

Over the next 65 years he worked to develop a system of natural farming that demonstrated the insight he was given as a young man, believing that it could be of great benefit to the world. He did not plow his fields, used no agricultural chemicals or prepared fertilizers, did not flood his rice fields as farmers have done in Asia for centuries, and yet his yields equaled or surpassed the most productive farms in Japan.

In 1975 he wrote The One-Straw Revolution, a best-selling book that described his life’s journey, his philosophy, and farming techniques. This book has been translated into more than 25 languages and has helped make Mr. Fukuoka a leader in the worldwide sustainable agriculture movement. He continued farming until shortly before his death in 2008, at the age of 95.

After The One-Straw Revolution was published in English, Mr. Fukuoka traveled to Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States. His interest turned to rehabilitating the deserts of the world using his natural farming techniques. This work is described in detail in Sowing Seeds In The Desert (2012). Mr. Fukuoka is also the author of The Natural Way of Farming and The Road Back to Nature. In 1988 he received the Magsaysay Award, often referred to as the “Nobel of Asia,” for Public Service.

This revolutionary book presents Fukuoka’s plan to rehabilitate the deserts of the world using natural farming, including practical solutions for feeding a growing human population, rehabilitating damaged landscapes, reversing the spread of desertification, and providing a deep understanding . . .

New York Review Books
The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming
Masanobu Fukuoka, introduction by Frances Moore Lappé

Call it “Zen and the Art of Farming” or a “Little Green Book” Masanobu Fukuoka’s manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book “is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical. It is an inspiring, necessary book about agriculture because it is not just about agriculture.”

Trained as a scientist, Fukuoka rejected both modern agribusiness and centuries of agricultural lore. Over the next three decades he perfected his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort.

Whether you’re a guerrilla gardener or a kitchen gardener, dedicated to slow food or simply looking to live a healthier life, you will find something here—you may even be moved to start a revolution of your own.

responses:

Only the ignorant could write off Fukuoka, who died two years ago at the age of 95, as a deluded or nostalgic dreamer…Fukuoka developed ideas that went against the conventional grain….Long before the American Michael Pollan, he was making the connections between intensive agriculture, unhealthy eating habits and a whole destructive economy based on oil.
—Harry Eyres, The Financial Times

Every now and then you read a book which is so inspiring and such a pleasure that you feel impelled to stride down the street shouting “read this!” Well, I’ve just read The One-Straw Revolution and I urge everyone to buy or borrow a copy without delay.
— Tom Hodgkinson, The Idler

The One-Straw Revolution is one of the founding documents of the alternative food movement, and indispensable to anyone hoping to understand the future of food and agriculture.
— Michael Pollan

With no ploughing, weeding, fertilizers, external compost, pruning or chemicals, his minimalist approach reduces labour time to a fifth of more conventional practices. Yet his success in yields is comparable to more resource-intensive methods…The method is now being widely adopted to vegetate arid areas. His books, such as The One-Straw Revolution, have been inspirational to cultivators the world over.
— New Internationalist

The One-Straw Revolution shows the critical role of locally based agroecological knowledge in developing sustainable farming systems.
— Sustainable Architecture

Japan’s most celebrated alternative farmer…Fukuoka’s vision offers a beacon, a goal, an ideal to strive for.
— Tom Philpott, Grist

Double-Chocolate Bundt Cake

Double-Chocolate Bundt Cake from Food and Wine
© Quentin Bacon
Contributed by Kate Neumann

Many Bundt cakes are heavy and buttery, but this one is surprisingly light and incredibly moist under its silky chocolate glaze. Strong-brewed coffee in the batter intensifies the chocolate flavor while cutting the sweetness.


Vegetable oil spray
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 tablespoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup strong-brewed coffee
1 cup buttermilk


Preheat the oven to 350°. Spray a 12-cup Bundt pan with vegetable oil spray. In a small saucepan, melt 2 ounces of the chopped chocolate over low heat, stirring constantly. Scrape the chocolate into a medium bowl and let cool slightly. Whisk in the oil and sugar until smooth, then whisk in the egg.
In a small bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Add half of the dry ingredients to the chocolate mixture along with 1/2 cup of the coffee and 1/2 cup of the buttermilk; whisk until smooth. Add the remaining dry ingredients, coffee and buttermilk and whisk until smooth.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake in the lower third of the oven for about 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs attached. Let the cake cool on a rack for 10 minutes, then turn it out and let cool completely.
In a small saucepan, bring the cream to a boil. In a heatproof bowl, combine the remaining 3 ounces of chopped chocolate with the corn syrup and butter. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and let stand until melted, about 5 minutes. Whisk until smooth. Let the ganache glaze cool until thick but still pourable, about 5 minutes.
Pour the ganache over the cooled cake. Let the cake stand until the glaze is set, at least 30 minutes, before serving.

Pecans

Our friends moved to Georgia and sent us roasted and salted pecans. They were so delicious We ate the whole tin in two weeks!

from Wikipedia
Pecans are an excellent source of manganese and a good source of protein and unsaturated fats. Like walnuts, pecans are rich in omega-6 fatty acids, although pecans contain about half as much omega-6 as walnuts.

A diet rich in seeds can lower the risk of gallstones in women. The antioxidants and plant sterols found in pecans reduce high cholesterol by reducing the "bad" LDL cholesterol levels.

Clinical research published in the Journal of Nutrition (September 2001) found that eating about a handful of pecans each day may help lower cholesterol levels similar to what is often seen with cholesterol-lowering medications. Research conducted at the University of Georgia has also confirmed that pecans contain plant sterols, which are known for their cholesterol-lowering ability. Pecans may also play a role in neurological health. Eating pecans daily may delay age-related muscle nerve degeneration, according to a study conducted at the University of Massachusetts and published in Current Topics in Nutraceutical Research.

Roasted Peanuts

My friend traveled to the south 2 years ago and sent me a package of raw peanuts in the shell. I froze them until today when I decided to bake the house warm. They are delicious.

Michelle Wilson's Radio Show WICN Worcester Jazz

We're enjoying the great radio show hosted by Michelle Wilson 6AM-9AM Monday through Wednesday mornings. She has great taste!

Black and White Breakfast

I feel like a southern cowboy having black coffee and grits for breakfast.

I know it's cold because the boiler comes on only when there's a danger of the pipes freezing. That's wicked cold. I'm wearing thermals and a fleece blanket tied at my waist, my fleece hat yellow scarf and zipper fleece jacket over my zipper vest.

I love the cold!

Climbing the Wall

Being stuck on the side of El Capitan can be both freeing and confining — not unlike a lazy day on the couch, minus the cold, the occasionally brutal winds, the periodic chunks of ice that fall like meteors and the stress of preparing to continue one of the great climbing expeditions.

That is why they do so-called ledge yoga, performing poses to stay limber. For as much exhilaration as the men get from climbing, and as much downtime they have between surges, there is one thing they desperately miss from the horizontal world that many might not imagine: a place to take a few steps and merely walk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/sports/on-el-capitans-dawn-wall-climbers-downtime-is-surprisingly-routine.html

Pediatric Gastroenterologist's Research

“We think we know what’s in the medicine itself, but in the body, once you take it, it could potentially do something,” said Dr. Robert O. Heuckeroth, a principal investigator and a pediatric gastroenterologist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Most children taking PEG 3350 do not report behavioral or psychiatric side effects, he emphasized. Still, Dr. Heuckeroth and his colleagues want to know which children may be more susceptible to these adverse effects. “We will do our best to get a clear answer about whether or not there are detectable components and metabolites in the blood of children taking the medicine,” he said.

“People are incredibly emotional about this topic,” he added.

Ms. Chittenden says she supports the new study, but not without reservations. “To knowingly put a product that might contain ethylene glycol, or degrade into it, into the body of a child is still worrisome,” she saidArticle

Jazz improvization in the Kitchen

My two sourdough dutch oven breads came out great. Bill says they are like pullman-loaves because they were baked covered (until the last 20 minutes). I decided to keep the oven on and roast a gigantic halved eggplant that I bought last night and season a few of my cast iron pans.

I never know what I'm doing, I just do stuff. I call it jazz improvisation in the kitchen.

In winter I bake to keep warm. In summer I still bake because I love to bake. My 1960's vintage Thermador oven gets so much use the hinge broke a few months ago. I hope the other hinge holds on.

When I had a potbelly wood stove I would simmer beans overnight on it. Sometimes we fantasize about making a wood stove possible in our house but we have issues more urgent, like holes in the roof.

We like to get the freshest grains and store them in our freezer: 50 pound bags of oats and flour at the bakers supply warehouse in Lincoln RI.

My smoke alarm went off. I was seasoning my cast iron pans while baking the eggplant and the shortening started to smoke. Now all the windows are open.

It's always an adventure in the kitchen. As it should be. We might have guests coming but I don't know yet. Do I vacuum or wait to hear. Wait. Vacuuming is always last on my list. Perhaps I should sew dinner napkins. The last time I made them was 20 years ago and they are all rags now. I need to sew a wearable pouch to carry my inhaler. We have miles of denim from old jeans, and a few bolts of mattress ticking. Na. I'd rather do my work.

Double Dutch

Both of my Dutch ovens are greased with huge sourdough blobs rising in them. I put them in a cold oven and turn the heat up to 450 degrees. They will be done in 50-60 minutes.

Sweet Bread Day

Every muscle in my back is reminding me that I spent a few hours shoveling slush yesterday! I don't mind, I love to use my muscles.

I got up and made french toast for Bill using the leftover Portuguese raisin sweet bread from Tony's Fall River Bakery. Bill needed a nutritious breakfast he could eat while driving. My grandmother loved to make us kids french toast whenever she visited us in the suburbs.

All of the snow has melted because it is warm out. I even heard thunder. Tomorrow it will be very cold while we play music outside!

Memory Laps

One week, while riding home, I took my sister Amy’s Barbie doll, tied her feet to the end of my beach towel, and lowered her out the way-back window, dragging her behind us as we drove along. Every so often I’d reel her back in and look at the damage—the way the asphalt had worn the hair off one side of her head, whittled her ski-jump nose down to nothing.
-David Sedaris

Davis Sedaris

As I grow older, I find that the people I know become crazy in one of two ways. The first is animal crazy—more specifically, dog crazy. They’re the ones who, when asked if they have children, are likely to answer, “A black lab and a sheltie-beagle mix named Tuckahoe.” Then they add—they always add—“They were rescues!”

The second way people go crazy is with their diet. My brother, Paul, for instance, has all but given up solid food, and at age forty-six eats much the way he did when he was nine months old. His nickname used to be the Rooster. Now we call him the Juicester. Everything goes into his Omega J8006: kale, carrots, celery, some kind of powder scraped off the knuckles of bees, and it all comes out dung-colored, and the texture of applesauce. He’s also taken to hanging upside down with a neti pot in his nose. “It’s for my sinuses,” he claims.
-David Sedaris, New Yorker

Rolling in Dough

My double batch of sourdough is climbing out of the two buckets. Do I make a pizza? Calzones? Or rolls for the highway department?

Sunday Morning

I was drinking tea when heard the snow shovel. I dug my shovel out from behind my summer umbrella, and raced outside. I like to be the first one to shovel! I shovel paths for my husband, and Keith our beloved mailman, my dog Lily, and the oil man. It's is heavy slush and I broke a sweat immediately. I stripped down to my sleeveless cotton zipper vest and black thin cotton khakis and shoveled out my neighbors. Its these little kindnesses that say 'I love you, neighbor.'
This week has been discombobulating. My energy is downshifting which is good for my work because I can sit still concentrate for longer stretches. Yesterday felt like Sunday and the day before that felt like a Monday. I still wake up at 4 by habit but try to roll over and dream until 6ish. I promised the highway department I would bake for them. I always need an audience! What should I make? Wine biscotti? Sourdough rolls? Or Carrot cake?

From the Mouths of Babes

"I know why. . . People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life, like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?” The 6-year-old continued, ”Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stay as long.”

Rhode Island Athletic Club

This new club is reasonably priced, super friendly, super clean and involved with donating to many local charities. Tell your friends. Support a great well-run local business. Ask for Mike.
Join here.

Swimming in the Snow

Asthma, allergies, ice and snow. The pool is still there for you! Article

Eggs; a Nutrition Powerhouse

Article

2% Milk

Two-percent milk sounds healthier than "whole" milk. But you may not realize that it still has more than half the saturated fat of whole milk. Here's what's in a cup of milk:

Whole milk (3.25%) = 150 cal., 8g fat, 5g sat. fat
Reduced-fat (2%) = 130 cal., 5g fat, 3g sat. fat
Skim (nonfat) = 80 cal., 0g fat, 0g sat. fat

Food Fix: If you like whole milk, blend it with 2% for a while, then 1%, then skim, until you get used to the taste of nonfat milk.

-WebMD

The Marching Milkman Band

Happy New Year everybody!

The Marching Milkman Band will be playing outdoors, perhaps in snow, this Tuesday evening
at 6:30 PM in front of Union Station in downtown Providence. We will be part of the
celebration by Seth Magaziner of his fresh inauguration as State Treasurer at Bar Louie!
Many other celebration parties will be happening throughout the city - all are open to
the public, right after WaterFire is lit.
http://www.golocalprov.com/news/make-it-in-rhode-island-inaugural-schedule-of-events
http://waterfire.org/blog/january-6th-2015-inauguration-2015/
http://www.barlouie.com/locations/Providence.aspx?locationName=Providence

Come and cheer us on!

http://StayTunedDuo.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, Jan 6th, 6:30 PM
RI General Treasurer Magaziner's Inaugural Party
Bar Louie, 1 Union Station
Providence RI 02903
http://waterfire.org/blog/january-6th-2015-inauguration-2015/

Keeping the City Clean and Safe

“Keeping our city clean and safe is my number-one priority,” Diossa said. “The Nuisance Task Force has been a strong element of our administration.” He said the city has had meetings with the landlords of troubled properties and violators receive heavy fines in Central Falls Municipal Court.

Jerzyk said the city has identified 85 problem properties. He said many of them are vacant or abandoned, while others are centers for drug dealing and are susceptible to dangerous fires in the tightly packed city of 19,400 residents.

City officials met with two property owners on Fletcher Street about continuing issues that were bringing down the quality of life for other residents on the street. He said tenants in one of the properties were constantly throwing bags of garbage onto the property. He said the garbage created a fairly serious rat problem. After talking to the landlord, Jerzyk said three large trash containers were put in place and the garbage issue was eliminated.

At another address on the same street, tenants were drinking heavily and urinating in the yard. The task force also addressed that problem and it was quickly resolved.

Article on Central Falls in the Prov Journal