WHAT SCIENTISTS DO

Of course simply living simply is not possible in 2011. There are things to be concerned  about.

At Harvard a couple of weeks ago, a group I belong to, New England Science Writers, was meeting in Jefferson Hall to hear physics professor Gary Feldman talk about the recent CERN (hadron collider) experiment that described measuring nutrinos traveling at speeds faster than the speed of light. The press had a brief heyday with that, and one of the NESW members asked Feldman, who’s a member of the MINOS project at Fermi Lab in Chicago – one of the few places on earth equipped to test the French-Italian results – to interpret the findings. It was a delightful talk, and Feldman was clearly convinced  that “mistakes were made,” understandable mismeasurements, which will be tested and explored by the MINOS group. That’s how science works, day-to-day.

But a side note to our Harvard trip turned out to be equally deightful. We arrived  early, and were poking about to make sure we had the right place and time.  Across the hall from Jeff 256 was Jeff 257, the office of Professor Emeritus Richard Wilson, with a handwritten note on the door: “Dick won’t be in for the next few days. “

But “Dick” had left an invitation for folks to help themselves to a handful of interesting publications in his Outbox, including a reprint of a talk he’d given earlier this year on the Fukushima disaster and its lessons, as well as a wonderful book he published in 2001 called Risk-Benefit Analysis. At one point in the book, he calculated the relatively high risk of being a U.S. president by dividing the number of presidential assassinations by the number of president-years served by our 44 leaders. Even though it’s a high-risk job, he pointed out that people continue to line up and apply for it!

Turns out that studying risk has been one of Wilson’s longtime passions, and he now considers himself somewhat of an expert on “dangerous things.”  We were intrigued with his voice, and decided to see if we could find him actually speaking on the Web. Sure enough, we located a brief interview with Andrew Revkin of the NY Times.

In the end Wilson was engaging, but may also have felt a bit adrift. The time has passed, he said, when politicians and policymakers paid attention to the scientists. Back in the 50s and 60s, during the threat of nuclear war, they had listened, he said. But somewhere, somehow scientists have lost their bully pulpit, he admitted ruefully. Still, he keeps his scientific voice out there. We’re happy to hear it. It’s important to have all the facts we can.

SIMPLY DELICIOUS

THE ANTIDOTE TO yesterday’s Jenny Holzer Truism might be this one:

IF YOU LIVE SIMPLY, THERE IS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT

Living simply has great appeal as the days draw down. Last week, after three days of power outage, and still appreciating the wonders of heat and electricity, I wanted to make an old-fashioned, healthy treat for our  morning garden club meeting.  I had already bought some really good oatmeal and some fine pecans, and wanted to make the World’s Best Oatmeal Cookies.  So I Googled for a recipe, and found that ALL were advertised as the Best Oatmeal Cookies Ever!  It took quite a while to check them all out, but I finally found one to that looked promising. With many thanks from Journey to Crunchville, here's the recipe:

• 1 cup butter, room temp
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs, well beaten
• 1 TBSP (yes, tablespoon) vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 3 cups oatmeal (old fashioned, not instant)
• 1 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Directions

1. The key is to soak the raisins. This makes all the difference in the world. Beat eggs and vanilla together, then add the raisins and stir. Soak for an hour or two. Just walk by a few times and stir it while you wait.

2.      Preheat oven to 350 F. Cream butter and sugars with mixer. In a separate bowl combine flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger & nutmeg. Stir the dry ingredients until well blended. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture and mix well. Now add in the egg & raisin mixture. Then add oatmeal and chocolate chips/nuts and combine well. Form into balls on cookie sheet and chill 15 minutes so they don’t melt flat when you put them into the oven. Bake until just set (8-10 minutes). Let cool on cookie sheet for 2-5 minutes or until firm enough to transfer to wire rack.

The extra spices give an edge, but the vanilla “marinade” in the raisins made the cookies unforgettable. I’ll never go back to unmarinated raisins!

Talk about a simple pleasure.

RANDOM THOUGHTS FOR SHORTER DAYS

HUNKERING DOWN in November, it’s a good time to reflect on the blessings we are given in this short life. It’s a time for the human spirit to supply the bounty that Nature so amply provides in the warmer months.

PLANTING FALL BULBS is a hopeful act. When you’re young, you look forward to spring, when you’ll be able to see them bloom. When you’re older, the sneaky thought crosses your mind that spring might be held without you, and you realize you only hope you’ll be there to attend the festival.

ANOTHER GREAT LINK FROM DOMINQUE BROWNING: here's a video by a free-spirited, creative pair of New Yorkers who quit their lucrative day jobs to pursue their passion, and they’re urging us all to ride passionately through life.  Here’s to the joy of cycling!

Which brings me to another Jenny Holzer Truism:

                       fear is the greatest incapacitator

A true truism if ever there was one. We all know that, yet our fears persist – and rule our lives.  Why do we let this happen? Consider this ...

Today the NY Times Magazine published readers’ responses to Dan Kois’ recent article “Lynda Barry Will Make you Believe in Yourself." One reader, who had attended one of Barry’s writing workshops, wrote she would “never forget how she talked about the critical voice inside our heads. She said that if someone walked up behind you and said the story you were writing was stupid, you wouldn’t listen to them, so why do you listen to the voice inside your head telling you that very thing?”  Kois also has a starter kit of Barry books at the Times Blog. This is a woman who wants to make you see that life is worth living. In fact, it may be even more than that – you might even see that you ARE living if you’re following your passion!

TRUISMS

MY GO-TO BLOG, the one I must read whenever I can, is Dominique Browning’s Slow Love Life.  I have followed Dominique over the years, first in her books (before Slow Love, she wrote Around the House and In the Garden, Paths of Desire, and many compilations of work from her days as editor of House and Garden magazine, where I always treasured her monthly column.)

This past week her blog introduced me to Jenny Holzer, a conceptual artist who had collected a set of maxims she called Truisms from 1979 to 1983. A truism, according to Merriam-Webster, is “an undoubted or self-evident truth; especially: one too obvious or unimportant for mention.” According to Holzer, it's her "Reader's Digest version of Western and Eastern thought."  I decided to take a look at a few of them.

There are several that start with “If” -- perhaps a good place to start:

                    if you aren't political your personal life should be exemplary

Well, I have never considered myself political, nor is my personal life exemplary. Moreover, in 2011 being "political" seems to be about being a bit contentious -- knowing more about "solutions" than I would ever claim to understand. So let's think about exemplary.

May Sarton, in her later books A House by the Sea or  Encore, a Journal of the 80th Year,  wrote warmly of friends who lived “exemplary lives” – a phrase I deeply admired at the time, and a category where I did not belong. I’m just a simple trudger, a laborer in the vineyards, trying to meet the next deadline, get the garden planned and planted, the meals prepared – oh, and if I have a little extra time, help with a local fundraiser. But crusading with a passion? Dropping everything to save humanity? Hard to know where to begin.

Jump to a New York Times piece this past September about the resurrection of Kenyon College in Ohio. The article quoted Horace Mann, Kenyon’s first president (1859-59), in a statement from his 1859 commencement address that became the college motto:

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.

That would given anyone pause, but for me it evokes another memory. Early in my career, I worked with a number of  physicists, many of whom had earned graduate degrees with R. Victor Jones, now Robert L.Wallace Emeritus Professor of Applied Physics at Harvard. My colleagues  were advancing the frontiers of applied science, getting published in Phys. Rev. and the leading engineering journals, doing interesting work, making good salaries, raising children...  But every time they would bump into Vic, his greeting was always the same: “Hello (Tom or Ramon or Mike).  What have you done lately for world peace?”

Who of us can measure up?

111111

A MAGICAL DATE, a time of new beginning. It's what a friend has called the "sticks" season, when the leaves are (mostly) down, the plants are dying back (but not yet cut away) and the "bones" of the landscape are revealed.

A fast-moving storm pushed through with lots of wind and just a little rain -- enough to darken the ponds to a mirrored surface. The stream is flowing between the ponds and the lower pond shows the trees reaching down into the earth as well as up toward the sky. It's a time of reflection.

The change of air brought the temperature down from the mid-50s to 39, so it's a bit cool to sit out and contemplate the serene face that rests against a maple, just off the patio deck.

In the garden, aconitum napellus (monkshood, wolfsbane) is the last flower to bloom. It’s a time of pagan omens, with a haunting November full moon. The world moves widdershins, as the sun retreats. The afternoon daylight can no longer be saved, and darkness falls too soon. 

We'll plan to spend more time indoors, with warming fires, and pull out the recipes for soups and stews. November brings us down toward the winter solstice,  a time when the human spirit helps to bring back the sun.

BOUNTY

It's Labor Day, and time to make a special seasonal recipe: Todd English's August Tomato Tart. The recipe is in "The Olives Table", his wondrous collection of recipes from the Olives Restaurant, and he warns that this dish  "should be made only when beefsteak tomatoes are at their peak, in August and September. "

Beefsteaks are Jack's go-to tomato. He'll chop three or four of them, add some cucumber, and mix with balsamic vinegar and a little olive oil, salt and pepper. That's lunch.  And the garden is swimming in tomatoes.

Todd makes his tart in a cast-iron skillet, which gives a great crisp crust. Lacking the right skillet, I use an old standby pie dish. On the stovetop, I start by sauteing chopped bacon, then thin sliced red onion with some crushed garlic cloves.  I harvest fresh rosemary, mint, and basil from pots on the patio, chop the herbs together.  Then I turn on the oven and assemble the pie: I partially bake the crust, spread sauteed bacon and onions on the bottom, add the sliced tomatoes, sprinkle the herbs along with salt and pepper, then crumble feta cheese across the top. In just ten minutes, the autumn feast is ready.

Oil-cured black olives would also be good -- maybe next time!

SEPTEMBERING

Suddenly it's fall. The last roses are blooming, as expected.


But wait! The autumn anemones -- always a sign of September -- are already past their prime.




In fact, it's not yet Labor Day, and we seem to be missing the gentle, seasonal decline that I remember. Tropical storm Irene (as she was in our neighborhood) pulled leaves and branches from the trees last week, and the maples' few remaining, stressed leaves are turning rusty brown.



Now it looks as though Hurricane Katia will make landfall this week. Folks in North Carolina, where my mother witnessed her first-ever hurricane last week and went four days without power or phone, may have another dousing in their future -- to say nothing of the millions in the mid-Atlantic and New England states, which are still reeling from Irene's damage.

Meanwhile, Lee is drenching New Orleans, and spawning tornado and flood warnings in the south.   The weather seems to be climbing on the bandwagon to join all the other disasters our weary world is experiencing. . .