It's Break Time

Great news! We brought Anne home from the hospital yesterday, a week after she was born. She's breathing, eating, sleeping, and doing all else newborns are supposed to do; she's a delight.

I went into pre-term labor on May 7th (a little less than six weeks early), but my midwives admitted me to the hospital, and we were able to hold off delivery (via C-section--Anne was obstinately transverse) until May 13th, which means she was born at 35 weeks instead of the usual 38-40 weeks. Though she had some extra time inside, Anne was born with slightly premature lungs and had to be whisked away to the NICU almost immediately (though she first scored a 9/9 on her Apgar, thank you very much).

While on breathing assistance (C-PAP), Anne perforated a lung and had to be transferred to a much larger hospital for careful monitoring. Her lung healed quickly and well, and after a few days she was able to breathe room air without any help. She graduated yesterday, and we brought her home with much pomp and circumstance.

Life is now a perpetual three-hour cycle of feeding, changing pants, napping, and snuggling, leaving little time for anything extracurricular; as a result, I'll be taking a very extensive maternity leave from most things internet-related. Streamlining is the key to a peaceful life, I've found. And life, though busy, is very, very good right now.

But I couldn't leave all my contestants hanging without letting you know the results of the Luisa Trivia Quiz. Here are the correct answers, followed by the announcement of this year's winner.

1) Misspelling 'the' as 'teh' is a bit of Internet slang I like to throw around in order to feel hip and with-it. 'Teh' means 'THE' in all caps, with connotations of ultimate status. For example, "Coldplay is teh kewl" means "Coldplay is the coolest" in regular slang.

2) The correct answer is d) RFK, Jr. I love Jack Ryan and Jack Bauer, but, um, they're not real. I adore Alice Waters, but am glad she chooses to focus on what she does best: preaching the gospel of eating locally, seasonally, and well. Al Gore is my personal hero, but he's already been elected President. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., with his near-mythic pedigree, and who heads up the environmental watchdog group Riverkeeper, is my current dream candidate.

3) The best TV show of all time is Firefly.

4) Four of my six brothers have the middle name 'Michael.' The fifth has it for a first name.

5) Scott Card would probably have a conniption if he ever read this, but I think he peaked early with his second novel, Treason, published way back in 1978. It's tightly and imaginatively plotted, with none of the philosophizing in which he tends to indulge. It's a fabulous read; I highly recommend it.

6) Anyone who made reference to Simon & Garfunkel's 1967 hit "Mrs. Robinson" (or to Paul Simon or Art Garfunkel) scored a point.

7) The name of our band was Tetra Ruby, and we rocked it, baby, covering songs by everyone from The Cocteau Twins to Erasure to Nancy Sinatra. I'll give anyone who mentioned 'Tetra' a half point.

8) Styrofoam is evil, but functional. PowerPoint is pure evil with no redemptive features whatsoever. If someone made a PowerPoint presentation that featured clowns and lifelike baby dolls, I would take it as a certain sign of the impending Apocalypse.

9) "I am the son and the heir."

10) Morrissey is making reference to a line from George Eliot's Middlemarch, "To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular."

11) The correct answer is d) "Don't Fear the Reaper." I never get tired of watching this sketch; Will Ferrell and Christopher Walken slay me.

12) "Manuela Run," from Toto's first album, is by far my favorite Toto song. It was never a hit, never even a B-side. But it's pure pop greatness.

13) Part of Rattle and Hum (a) was filmed at a concert at ASU in 1987; I was there. It was great, but U2 was way better when I saw them on their War tour at the Cow Palace circa 1983.

14) The real question is: why does anyone use straight needles? Circulars work great for knitting in the round OR knitting back and forth. When you use circulars, the weight of the work stays in your lap, instead of hanging off the end of the needle, as with straights. You can also use two circulars whenever double-pointed needles are called for. And you don't have to use your forearms as much, so knitting in tight quarters--on the subway or the bus, or on the couch surrounded by your kids--is much easier. Getting off my obscure soapbox now.

15) The correct answer is b); Daniel's middle name is 'Jude.'

16) I know where to find Noggin and The Weather Channel. The rest of cableland? It is a puzzlement, but I'm never in charge of the clicker, anyway. Newsflash: as of this week, I now know which channel is Sports NY.

17) Robert Redford is a beautiful man. I love Keanu despite his many shortcomings as an actor. Dennis Quaid is hotter than July as the dad who makes it to The Show in The Rookie. Denzel makes me cry each and every time I watch the Titans in action. But it is 'Marky' Mark Wahlberg (e) as the indomitable Vince Papale who rocks my sports fantasy world--yes, even with those plaid pants he wears at the beginning of the movie. Maybe I'll pop in Invincible later tonight....

18) The correct answer is c) Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel; all the rest allude to John Bunyan's classic in some way. Read Pilgrim's Progress! It's fantastic, and it's a cornerstone of Western cultural literacy. Once you read it, you'll see references to it everywhere.

19) The correct answer is c) an Old Timer with Cheese (medium rare, if I can get them to agree to that), with nothing on it but mayonnaise and mustard, and a Chocolate Shake. Ketchup comes on the side, and I dip the burger in it as I go. Now my mouth is watering.

20) Sally in When Harry Met Sally has very specific requirements when it comes to menu choices. And why shouldn't she? If you are going to pay someone else to prepare food for you, shouldn't you be able to get it exactly the way you want it? Well? I rest my case.

Scoring:

1 point: Mary-Laure, Millie, Dawn, SidneyMin, and Adriana
3 points: Poodlegoose
4.5 points: Melissa and Radioactive Jam (1 extra point given to RaJ for high entertainment value of answers)
5 points: Brillig (gets extra credit for submitting her comment a second time after Blogger ate the first one)
6 points: Pezmama, Artemis, and Goofball
7 points: Charrette
9.5 points: Ronnie (emailed his fabulous answers)
10 points: Annette and Jenna

And the winner, at 11.5 points, is Anjmae, who also emailed her answers. Anj, I'll give you your prize when you get here! Thanks to all who played; reading your responses helped keep my spirits up during my nine-day hospital stay.

I don't know when I'll be back, but I'll be in touch. Love to you all!

It's Go Time

If this post is up, it means I'm off having the baby. Woo-hoo! Let's hear it for that whirlpool tub in the labor room.

To keep busy while I'm gone, try your hand at the latest version of Luisa Trivia (just for extra entertainment, last year's quiz is here). The commenter with the most correct answers will receive a fabulous goodie box from me, which is already packaged up and ready for Patrick to pop in the mail once you supply your address to me via email.

NO online cheating is allowed: no surreptitious use of Teh Google, Teh Wikipedia, Teh YouTube, or Teh iTunes.

And believe me: if you cheat, I WILL KNOW.

1) Luisa is a fanatic about correct spelling, grammar, and usage. Why does she use the intentional misspelling "teh" in the rules above?

2) If Luisa believed in throwing away her vote, which of the following great Americans would she be most likely to write in as a candidate this November?

a) Jack Bauer

b) Jack Ryan

c) Alice Waters

d) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

e) Al Gore

3) In Luisa's opinion, what is the best TV show of all time?

4) Four of Luisa's six brothers have the same middle name. What is it?

5) Orson Scott Card has written some terrific books. Which of the following of his novels is Luisa's favorite?

a) Ender's Game
b) Lost Boys
c) Treason
d) Seventh Son

6) Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

7) When Luisa was in college, she sang in a band. What was its name? (Hint: it is also the name of a popular fish food.)

8) Which does Luisa hate more: PowerPoint presentations or styrofoam?

9) In the Smiths' hit "How Soon is Now," does Morrissey sing "I am the sun and the air," or "I am the son and the heir?"

10) The line in the previous question refers to a passage in which great Victorian novel (that happens to be one of Luisa's favorites)?

11) Which song is featured in Luisa's favorite Saturday Night Live sketch, "More Cowbell?"

a) Loverboy's "Everybody's Working for the Weekend"
b) Santana's "Black Magic Woman"
c) Bachman Turner Overdrive's "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet"
d) Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper"

12) In Luisa's opinion, the very best Toto song is:

a) Manuela Run
b) Africa
c) Rosanna
d) No Toto song at all

13) Luisa was present at the filming of part of which great rock concert video?

a) U2's Rattle and Hum
b) Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same
c) The Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense
d) Pink Floyd's The Wall

14) Why knit with circulars?

15) Which of the following (all, coincidentally, to be found in Beatles songs) was NOT vetoed by Patrick in baby name negotiations of years past? (Think middle names, people.)

a) Eleanor
b) Jude
c) Martha
d) Prudence

16) Luisa has only two cable channel numbers memorized. To which two stations do they correspond?

a) Sports New York
b) Noggin
c) The Weather Channel
d) The Food Network
e) Turner Classic Movies
f) VH-1

17) Luisa is a sucker for a great sports movie. Which one of the following dreamy underdogs does she love best?

a) Robert Redford in The Natural
b) Keanu Reeves in The Replacements
c) Dennis Quaid in The Rookie
d) Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans
e) Mark Wahlberg in Invincible

18) Which of the following does NOT make reference to Luisa's favorite book, John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress?

a) Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray
b) Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
c) Look Homeward, Angel, by Thomas Wolfe
d) Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
e) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, by Alan Moore

19) Every time she has gone to Chili's in the past twenty years, Luisa has ordered precisely the same thing. Which is it?

a) Baby Back Ribs with Ranch Dressing on the side and a Sprite with no ice
b) Mushroom Jack Chicken Fajitas (hold every single bell pepper) and a virgin Piña Colada
c) Old Timer Cheeseburger (with mustard and mayonnaise only) and a Chocolate Shake
d) An Awesome Blossom (with ketchup instead of the regular sauce) and an ice water with lemon slices

20) Because Luisa is so particular when ordering at restaurants, Patrick lovingly likens her to which of the following quirky movie characters?

a) Amanda in Adam's Rib
b) Jo in Funny Face
c) Judy in What's Up, Doc?
d) Sally in When Harry Met Sally
e) Annie in Annie Hall

I Never Metafiction I Didn't Like

I've been pondering all things meta this week.

Well, not all things. But definitely many things meta-related-to-the-arts.

I've been playing a game inside my head as I've done the dishes or driven people to sports practices or tried to get back to sleep in the middle of the night after going to the bathroom for the fourteenth time.

(It's just one of the many crazy games I play all alone in this head o' mine, another being "List all the adjectives with the suffix '-id.'")

The game is this: list all the films about film. Now all the songs about songs. Now all the poems about poetry. Now all the theater about theater. And now (my favorite part) all the fiction about fiction.*

Ready? Go.

Films About Film
(or TV About TV)

The Player
Singin' in the Rain
The Truman Show
30 Rock
Studio 60
The Simpsons
Stranger than Fiction (borderline: a film about fiction writing)

Songs About Songs, Singers, and/or Singing

"Hey, Mister Tambourine Man" (The Byrds)
"Thank You for the Music" (ABBA)
"Sing a Song" (Earth, Wind, and Fire)
"I Write the Songs" (Barry Manilow)
"If Music Be the Food of Love" (Shakespeare/Purcell)
"Piano Man" (Billy Joel)
"Rock and Roll Band" (Boston)
"Killing Me Softly" (Roberta Flack)
"The Day the Music Died" (Don McLean)
"This is Not a Love Song" (Public Image, Ltd.)

Poems About Poetry

"Essay on Criticism" (Alexander Pope)
"Don Juan" (parts of it; Lord Byron)
"Ars Poetica" (Archibald MacLeish)
"The Uses of Poetry" (William Carlos Williams)
"There is no frigate like a book" (Emily Dickinson)
"The High-Toned Old Christian Woman" (Wallace Stevens)

Theater About Theater

All That Jazz (Well, okay. It's a film about theater.)
Kiss Me, Kate
The Taming of the Shrew
The Producers
A Chorus Line
42nd Street
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Hamlet
Picasso at the Lapin Agile
The Mousetrap

Fiction About Fiction (and this would be my wheelhouse, people)

The Princess Bride (William Goldman)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke)
Little, Big (John Crowley)
Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio)
Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Italo Calvino)
Anything written by Jasper Fforde
The Neverending Story (Michael Ende)
English Music (Peter Ackroyd)
The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
An awful lot of Kurt Vonnegut
And a whole bunch of that Pratchett genius
Leaf by Niggle (J.R.R. Tolkien)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket)
Atonement (Ian MacEwan)
The Dark Tower, etc. (Stephen King)
Possession (A.S. Byatt)
The Book of Three (Lloyd Alexander)
A Princess of Roumania, etc. (Paul Park)

What about you? Can you add to the lists?

*LDS readers, here's a fun study topic: revelation about revelation. And extra credit: revelation about Revelation.

Seven Up? On the Rocks.

My apologies, Soap Opera Sunday fans: this weekend was too hectic for me to write the thrilling conclusion of "The Princess and the Pauper." I'll do my best to get it posted in time for Mother's Day.

My new blogpal Paul tagged me for a meme last week, and I promised I'd play. I've participated in many memes in the past several months; I just went through my entire "Dancing With Myself" tag file to refresh my memory as to what I've already revealed in this setting. The result is that I'm a little discouraged. I'm not sure what else I can disclose that will be the slightest bit interesting and fresh. But here's my best shot.

1) I have a phobia of spiders; here's how it came about. When I was eight, we lived in an old house on a really cool piece of property. In the bedroom I shared with my sisters, there were French doors to the outside, but the doors were so completely covered with thick ivy that they couldn't be opened.

Our bunk bed was up against the doors, so I could see through the glass panes as I lay in bed. Guess what liked to nest in that dense foliage? Many, many black widow spiders. So I'd lie in bed, terrified to look at the poisonous little things hanging just a few inches from my nose, but more terrified NOT to look at them. Because what if one somehow got in through a crack while I wasn't looking? Gah.

2) If I went to live on a desert island and could only take one cosmetic with me, I would choose brown eyeliner. This is assuming that lip balm would be considered not a cosmetic, but an essential, life- and sanity-saving substance. If forced to choose between eyeliner and lip balm, I would pick lip balm every time.

3) When I was 18, I stayed up all night one night reading The Clan of the Cave Bear. When dawn came and I turned the last page, I felt sick and dirty. It was the grossest book binge ever. I'm not sure why; I've read books far worse since. It was probably the 'all in one gulp' factor.

4) Two horrendously bad movies that I love are Made in Heaven, starring Timothy Hutton and Kelly McGillis, and A Time of Destiny, starring Timothy Hutton and William Hurt. Timothy made these movies back to back; it must have been a tough time for him, since the critics despised them both. But I adore them. The last time I checked, neither was available on DVD, but I still hold out hope.

5) I once saw Timothy Hutton in real life (he lives not too far away from us). He was at The Red Rooster buying his son an ice cream cone.

6) I've never eaten a Cheeto. But I'd be willing to try one if Jenna were willing to try escargots, foie gras, or frog's legs. Yeah: it's never gonna happen.

7) I feel as big as a house right now. And not your average Cape Cod or bungalow. No. I feel like a super-duper McMansion on a postage-stamp-sized lot, the kind you see in places like Rancho Cordova, Sandy, or Schaumburg. My only comfort that in four to six weeks, I'll lose at least ten pounds or so through a Miracle Diet I've used several times before. And what a miracle it will be; can't wait to see you, Baby Girla.

Thanks for the tag, Paul! I know many of my readers have done this meme recently, so I will tag only newbie Charrette this time around. Charrette, it's your first meme! Will you play?

Fascista Friday: Author and Attorney

If this is your first time reading a Fascista post, please read the disclaimers first.

Thanks to everyone who has written to me with requests and suggested topics. I've made a list (sorry, Brillig; no spreadsheet yet) and will address them in the future. Keep 'em coming! I love your feedback.

I'm a writer; Patrick is a lawyer. Today I take on the misusage of two words related to the professions we have chosen: 'author' and 'attorney.' Despite what you probably hear in everyday conversation, neither word can stand alone in describing what someone does for a living.

An author is someone who creates something, as in the following examples (emphasis mine):

"The author of our salvation was made perfect through suffering."

"...it will be necessary to provide affidavits establishing the commission of the crime and the identity of the fugitive as the author of the crime."

"As the author of Moby-Dick, quite possibly the greatest American novel, and slippery protomodern works like 'Bartleby the Scrivener,' 'Benito Cereno' and 'Billy Budd,' Melville is a towering presence."

Notice that in the preceding sentences, the word 'author' is always followed by 'of [something].' Let's say that I'm at a swanky Manhattan cocktail party, the kind where as a conversation opener, someone invariably asks, "So, what do you do?"

I would normally answer, "I'm a writer," but I could also use the words 'novelist,' 'lyricist,' 'poet,' or 'essayist,' depending on which part of my body of work I feel like highlighting. I would never say, "I'm an author," full stop/period. Never.

The word 'author' demands a modifying prepositional phrase describing the creation. I might say later in the conversation, "I'm the author of Shannon's Mirror," or "I'm a co-author of the essay collection Silent Notes Taken," or (let's all cross our fingers together) "I'm the author of ZF-360, a fantasy novel being published next year by [reputable publisher]."

This means that the creator of the course title of a class I took my freshman year of college, "Major British Authors Before 1800," employed incorrect usage. Why would an English professor, of all people, fall prey to such folly? I have to assume that s/he thought 'Authors' sounded somehow more weighty and important than 'Writers.' And in fact, Fowler points out that a large portion of usage errors arise from the desire to dress up language; insecurity is often the sorry parent of this desire.

People misuse the word 'attorney' for precisely this reason. 'Lawyer' has had negative connotations from at least the time of the translation of the King James Bible ("Woe unto you also, ye lawyers!"); these connotations obviously persist today ("A lawyer, a loan shark, and a garbageman are in a bar..."). But here's why 'attorney' should not be used as some kind of distancing euphemism.

Patrick went to law school, earned a Juris Doctor degree, and passed the New York State Bar to become a lawyer. But all this didn't make him an attorney.

An attorney is "a person legally appointed by another to act as his or her agent in the transaction of business." This is why when someone grants you a power of attorney (though you may not be a lawyer), you are authorized to act in behalf of that person in specific instances. In this case you would be an attorney-in-fact, as opposed to an attorney-at-law.

If Patrick has no clients, he is not anyone's attorney. Fortunately for us, he does have clients; he is Bill Brohn's attorney, for example. (Trivia: the Attorney General is the main legal adviser to the government.) So, at that same swanky cocktail party, modest, self-deprecating Patrick will declare that he is a plain, ordinary lawyer, not an attorney, and endure the inevitable jokes that ensue.

Can you think of other professions that get dressed up with fancy words to make them sound more important? Other than the two I've addressed here, I can only think of 'sanitation engineer.' Let me know.

**UPDATED** I am in no way saying that all those who use 'author' instead of 'writer' or 'attorney' instead of 'lawyer' are doing so because they are pretentious. These are common, everyday errors that the unwitting can easily pick up through linguistic 'osmosis.'

Yard Version 6.0

It will be seven years in June since we moved to the country from Manhattan. In 2002, I began what has since become a yearly occurrence: a quest to remake our yard in rather dramatic fashion. In my Garden Journal, I still have a copy of the first ambitious proposal I wrote early that spring after having read several gardening and landscaping books over the winter.

I should note here that I had very little practical knowledge of these matters other than what I gained while 'helping' my grandmother in her yard when I was ten or so. We'd never had a yard of our own, having lived in Manhattan for the first eleven years of our married life. Patrick, who did a lot of lawn mowing and other yard chores for his parents when he was a kid, was far more experienced than I was.

My vision was big, but we started small, with a 4x4-foot garden plot in the sunniest area of the yard. Back then, most of the yard was in the deep, dense shadow of a line of 40-foot-high Norway maples. Grass wouldn't even grow under them, due to the lack of light and the fact that Norway maples' roots are so shallow that they compete with lawn for water. For me, having grown up in the relatively treeless Central Valley of California, cutting down a mature tree was well nigh a sin, so I tried to work with what we had.

Please, never plant Norway maples. They are horribly invasive, for one thing. But another, more selfish and practical reason not to is that they have a bad habit of choking themselves with their own perversely circular-growing roots. They are also prone to a really gross blight called Black Spot. Between these two factors, we've had to remove six huge maples altogether; only one of them remains. The good thing is that we still have two huge oak trees, a mountain ash, and a Japanese maple standing. Another good thing is that we have at least three years' worth of great firewood stacked along the fence. But the best thing is that we now have plenty of sun in our yard--and a lot more flexibility as to what we do with it.

Between 2003 and 2006, I experimented with raised bed 'lasagna' gardening, with varying degrees of success depending on how much time and energy I had to spare in any given season. (I had Daniel in May 2004; that was not a great year for the yard.) Raised beds are a terrific solution for anyone dealing with rocky, clayey soil. You should see the piles of rocks we've unearthed over the years in this whole yard-remaking process; I now know exactly why my ancestors all left New England and moved West just as soon as they could.

In those years I also started a perennial border along a 100-foot section of fence that borders our busy road, planting about 25 feet per year. This border has been a reasonable success, despite the near-constant battle with ground ivy, one of the most evil weeds known to man. The roses, irises, peonies, and lilies have been well worth the trouble, though.

We even planted a few dwarf fruit trees a few years ago. Last year was the first that we literally harvested the fruits of our labors; my kids are still talking about those three or four blissful days of fresh peach indulgence, and they look forward to more this season. We hope for a few cherries and apples to boot.

Via this blog, I officially declared last year "The Year of the Garden." We had just finished the second (and final!) major renovation of our little house, and I was excited to turn my attention and energy once again to the yard. I decided to scuttle all of my amateur garden designs and pay a professional to help me. Because the front yard was at that time the sunniest area we owned, our designer drew up a plan for us that put all of the vegetable beds and fruit trees there. So we did.

Alas, last year, a well-organized cell of ninja deer caught onto what we were doing; we hadn't had much of a problem with them until then. Within a couple of nights, they laid waste to most of my carefully nurtured seedlings, disdaining only the squash and the African Jelly Melons. One lone Charentais melon plant survived by hiding among its spiny, exotic cousins; we harvested exactly two (admittedly delicious) melons last year.

Since I can't camp on the porch every night with shotgun across my knees, I knew we had to make major changes once again. As I write, workers are fencing off the now-sunny side yard with seven-foot-high deer fencing; other workers are grinding out the massive stumps of the once-proud maples. In a couple of hours, a pal of ours will be here to consult with me about grading and leveling the new garden and play yard areas.

In the next few weeks, we're moving the raised vegetable beds and all of the fruit trees, as well as the entire perennial border. We'll plant evergreens along the road fence for year-round privacy and a row of Lombardy poplars along the lane for a little taste of France. (Yes, we know that poplars can be problematic, but we're willing to gamble in order to fulfill an aesthetic dream of Patrick's.) We'll aerate, top-dress, amend, and overseed the lawn area while we're at it.

I've made long lists of what to buy, what to move, what to plant, and how to phase it all in and coordinate it. The long-suffering Patrick is, as usual, footing the entire bill. The whole process is as complicated as choreography, but when it's done? I think (hope, pray) it will be great.

"We fail forward to success," as Mary Kay used to say. If that's the case, our yard and I are due any season now. Let's hope that Version 6.0 will be our break-out year. Is it all worth the pain, work, money, and aggravation? If you could smell the lilacs I just cut (pictured at the top of this post), I think you'd agree that, yes, it is.

Better Than Money in the Bank

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."

--J.R.R. Tolkien

My illustrious blogpal Deb recently quoted an excellent article by Heather Havrilevsky on salon.com:

Lately I've been buying beans. Not canned beans, mind you: Dry beans. Bags of dry beans that only cost 65 cents, beans that have to be soaked overnight, beans that you have to sort very carefully to make sure there aren't any chunks of gravel in there.

This is my response to an impending recession, my move to scale back and batten down the hatches for the coming economic storm.

Heather, I'm totally with you, babe. In fact, I may have a bit of an edge in the dried bean department. Let me 'splain.

For decades, leaders of my Church have been asking members to set aside food, water, and money to be used in times of emergency. When we lived in a 900-square-foot apartment in Manhattan, we stored what little we could, but when we moved to a house with a basement, we knew it was time to start following the counsel we'd been hearing for years. We took the 'building up' phase slowly, but now we're in the happy situation of being able to rotate and maintain a year's supply of food for our family. (Have I mentioned recently that there will soon be eight of us? Yeah. That's a lot of food.)

It's quite a comfort knowing that we could feed our family if disaster struck. It wouldn't have to be an earthquake; I've known families who ate well using their food storage for months on end when jobs were lost or providers were disabled. I know other families who 'practice' living on their food storage alone for a few weeks at a time, just to make sure they can do so comfortably. (This is a good way to find 'holes' in your storage that can be filled later.) They then bank the cash they would have used for groceries during that time, which adds to their emergency savings.

I've heard of some bunker-mentality folks who buy guns so that they can "protect what's [theirs]." This attitude is anathema to me. Theodore M. Burton said,

Some members of the Church have said to me, “Why should we keep a store of food on hand? If a real emergency came in this lawless world, a neighbor would simply come with his gun and take it from us. What would you do if a person came and demanded your food?” I replied that I would share whatever I had with him, and he wouldn’t have to use a gun to obtain that assistance either.

My dear friend C had quite a bit of fun poked at her by movers when she and her family relocated to Puerto Rico and took their massively bulky food storage with them. But when a hurricane laid waste to their side of the island months later, they fed their entire neighborhood for the two weeks it took for power and transportation to be restored.

If something similarly devastating happened here, I'd immediately let our neighbors know they were welcome at our table. (Just another reason for you to buy the house that's for sale next door, people.)

My food storage isn't perfect; we need more honey, for example. But here's what we've got.

Wheat:

Yep, we actually eat it. I have a wheat grinder and a bread machine, both of which get regular use. I also have an awesome Wheat Berry Salad recipe that I make a lot in the summer. We've also had sweetened cooked wheat berries for breakfast in times past. It's rib-stickin.'

Other Bulk Items: Above are buckets with sealed mylar bags inside for super long storage: oats, other grains, beans, etc. That stack is three buckets deep.

Here are the 'open' buckets, with these awesome 'Gamma Seal' lids on them.

I have a few freeze-dried things in #10 cans, but not a ton, because we don't really like the stuff. Tip: don't store what you won't eat.

Deep Freezer:

We generally buy our grass-fed meat and pastured poultry in bulk: a few chickens, a side of beef, a whole hog or lamb, etc., at a time. We need to find a new supplier this year. In years past, I have also blanched and frozen excess garden or CSA greens and squash for winter use. This year, I hope to expand to putting up frozen fruit.

Garden: I've got a post in the works about this year's garden; but for now, here are our seedlings. I started the tomatoes and herbs a few weeks ago. The cucurbits, planted last week, are just starting to sprout. I'm trying to rig up my light above them, because it's supposed to be cloudy all week.

Equipment:
In addition to the electric wheat grinder, I have a food dehydrator, a hand grain grinder, a sprouting kit, and a large thermos (passive heat for grain cooking and yogurt making). I didn't photograph them, but we also have two 55-gallon drums filled with water and a siphon to go with them. I also love that we have a creek running behind the house; I have a lot of water purification tablets, if need be.

Books: Could I write a post like this without mentioning the books I own on the subject? Doubtful. All these are incredibly useful; they are, clockwise from upper left: Keeping Food Fresh, Eating Off the Grid, Nourishing Traditions, Cooking with the Sun, The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book (buy it used; it's the best whole grain bread book ever, but it's now out of print), and (the book with the best title of all time) Apocalypse Chow. If we lost power for days or simply couldn't pay the propane and electric bill, I'd still have a plethora of options for food preparation.

While we're on the topic of books about food, let me put in a plug for Michael Pollan's latest book, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. It will certainly make my Top Ten Books Read list this year. It is a clear-eyed look at modern America's unhealthy relationship with "edible food-like substances," and proposes simple solutions not only to what Pollen terms "orthorexia" (an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating), but also to our rapidly expanding waistlines, our continent-wide health crisis, and global environmental issues. LDS readers: this book dovetails beautifully with a certain Section 89 (except for a couple of paragraphs on red wine).

We have ample food here at the Perkins Homestead, and plenty of cheer and song to go with it. Stop by any time!

SOS: The Princess and the Pauper

This post is intended to be part of Soap Opera Sunday, Brillig and Kate's ongoing series celebrating the melodrama in ordinary lives. I'm not sure whether anyone else is playing this week, but that's okay. I'm used to dancing with myself. Names in the following story have been changed; I don't need operatives from a Middle Eastern nation-state hunting me down. But all the other details are absolutely true.I met Dara in choir our junior year of high school in the early spring of 1982. Sitting next to each other in the alto section, we must have been a study in contrasts: me, busty with extremely short, bleached hair and wearing concert T-shirts and torn Levi's; her, tall, slim, and unfailingly elegant in the latest European fashions. All the girls in choir wanted to be Dara's friend, but English was her distant third language after Arabic and French, and this proved to be quite a barrier when she first arrived.

I had an edge; I'd studied French since third grade, and while far from fluent, didn't mind hacking that beautiful language to bits in the struggle to understand and be understood. It turned out that my year-long course of study and competition in Debate ("Oil Conflicts and Solutions in the Arabian Peninsula") also served me well; no other girl I knew could name all of the United Arab Emirates, for example.

Dara was from Beirut; she had come to California to live with her older brother and her sister-in-law when the Lebanese Civil War escalated in early 1982. She was justifiably heartbroken and terrified about what was going on in her country, and the fact that I could actually find Lebanon on a map made her feel like someone in America sympathized.

The first time I slept over at her house, I asked her what her father did; she replied that he was a minister. I remember thinking, "No wonder she's so strict about her prayers--her father is an imam." I nodded and smiled politely, and we moved onto other topics.

But not many days afterward, when we were in Taco Bell (of all places), a middle-aged woman saw Dara and immediately fell down at her feet, hugging her ankles and moaning. It was the only time I ever saw Dara flustered. She bent down and hissed Arabic into the woman's ear; the woman immediately jumped to her feet and, bowing repeatedly, backed out of the restaurant and fled.

Dara recovered her composure, but once we got back to her house, I asked her what had just happened. She sighed, pulled a big box out of her closet, and gestured for me to open it. Inside were piles of different Arabic magazines with Dara on the covers. "You're a model? That's so cool!" I exclaimed in French. She shook her head, sighed again, and started to explain.

Though Dara was hesitant at first, the details soon came rushing out; I think she was relieved to share her many secrets with someone. It turned out her father wasn't a minister; he was a Minister with a capital 'M,' a member of the Lebanese Presidential Cabinet. Dara's family was an ancient and royal one; she wrote out her very long and exalted title for me in Arabic and in English on a piece of binder paper (I still have it); it included phrases like 'Serene Grace' and 'Princess of Mekka,' and even the ball-point ink on the college-lined surface looked regal.

She had been engaged since birth to the Crown Prince of one of those little countries I'd studied; once she turned 18 and graduated from high school the next year, preparations for their royal wedding would begin. And the final bomb she dropped that afternoon? Her best friend Stephanie, with whom she had had several long and involved telephone conversations in lightning-fast French in my presence, was none other than Princess Stéphanie of Monaco.

I'd been hanging out with a real princess. The Hans Christian Andersen, Grimm, Perrault, and Andrew Lang I'd been reading all my life were scant preparation for this; I was stunned. Dara made me swear not to treat her any differently and not to tell anyone at school. She was enjoying a relatively normal life--minimal and unobtrusive bodyguards, no paparazzi--and she planned to savor it for the next year or so. I agreed, and life went on.

Dara's English improved rapidly as the end of the school year approached. She started spending time with Melanie, another girl from choir. In May, Dara's parents moved to our town (and just in time, too; in June, Israel invaded Lebanon and laid siege to Beirut). Dara's brother had bought and furnished a house for them in preparation for their arrival, and it happened to be next door to Melanie's in an exclusive subdivision on the other side of town from my house.

I didn't mind Melanie, but she actively disliked me, so the three of us didn't do much together that summer. This was fine; I had my weekly Dungeons & Dragons group and a boyfriend whose parents had cable, making near-24-hour worship of the newly minted MTV possible. It never occurred to me that Melanie might try to sabotage me when I was otherwise engaged.

Staying over at Dara's was always a treat. A beautiful swimming pool surrounded by lush flowering shrubs graced the back yard. Gorgeous Persian rugs and paintings covered nearly every surface of the interior. The exotic foods her mother prepared were delicious: flatbread with labneh; shish taouk; and my favorite, lahmadjoun, a pizza-like disk of dough spread with minced, spiced lamb, tomatoes, and onions.

The cold water that came out of their refrigerator dispenser was somehow scented/flavored with roses. And Dara's bed was a marvel: the king-sized waterbed (remember, it was 1982) had a featherbed between the mattress and the Egyptian cotton sheets and was topped with a lofty, silk-covered down comforter. It was the most insanely luxurious thing I'd ever encountered.

Then there was her car. Dara would have preferred something sportier, but her brother maintained that a big American sedan was much safer for her to drive. Consequently, the vehicle in which we cruised around town, blasting cassettes of Dara's beloved Bernard Sauvat, was a huge, swanky boat of a Cadillac.

Even with all these perqs, I loved Dara for herself. I couldn't get enough of her stories of a life so wholly other. She was kind, funny, and interested in more than what went on in the confines of our small Central Valley town. I enjoyed her company, and I think she valued mine. I always listened when she lamented over the latest bombing of her home city. I tried to comfort her when she confessed her worries about the eventuality of marrying someone so much older than she was. She cried in my arms that horrible week in September, when Princess Grace died and Bachir Gemayel was assassinated on the same day.

All this bonding made what happened in November that much less comprehensible to me....

To be continued next week, in fine SOS tradition!