September 2012 – Into the Woods

English muffins

Onion sandwich on English muffin

During the heat of summer, I slacked off on baking. On a shopping trip to Whole Foods, I broke down and bought some English muffins. They were addictive, so I resolved to start making them when cooler weather returned.

The English muffins from Whole Foods were only marginally decent. They were made largely with white flour. At least the texture was right. I was foolish enough, while feeding my addiction, to try Thomas English muffins from a regular grocery store. They were totally not edible. I should have composted them, but I gave them to the chickens. For one, they contained all kinds of adulterants, including fats and emulsifiers (in the form of mono- and diglycerides) to give the bread that horrible brioche-y, cake-like texture that the hordes of non-coastal America seem to like so much. You know, Wonder bread. Or, in these parts, Bunny bread.

As a matter of fact, when we quote Marie Antoinette as saying, “Let them eat cake,” what she really said, in French, was, “S’ils n’ont pas de pain, qu’ils mange de la brioche!” As pure language, that translates to, “If they don’t have bread, let them eat brioche!” Brioche, of course, is bread — a soft cake-like bread. Culturally, this is probably not translatable, but I strongly suspect that the reference to brioche contained an insult to the type of bread peasants preferred, if they could get it.

Anyway, English muffins take a long time to make, and they’re a pain in the neck. But they have many virtues. For one, because they’re destined for the toaster, they can be put in a bag, popped in the fridge, and kept for days. Fresh from the toaster, you’d never know they were made five days ago. For two, if you make them yourself, the best ones are 100 percent fat free, unlike their competitor for breakfast bread — biscuits.

If you want to make English muffins, I’d recommend starting with this recipe from King Arthur Flour and modifying it to your taste. But notice that even King Arthur brioche-ifies the dough with egg, butter, and sugar. Horrible! I make my dough with nothing but whole wheat flour, water, yeast, and a bit of sugar to feed the yeast. For a proper bread texture, you can’t go wrong with those simple ingredients in your dough.

I think I’ll also make some bagels this fall. It’s been many years since I’ve made bagels, but they’re not much more trouble than English muffins.

Regulatory capture

Americans pay four times more than the French for Internet and cell phone service

The last time I posted on how Americans are being ripped off on the cost of Internet and cellular service, the U.S. ranked around 11th, as I recall, on Internet speed. Now we’re 29th and still falling. As the article says, this is because of regulatory capture. It’s just one of the ways we all pay for the fact that our Congress has been bought.

If Americans only knew anything about the rest of the world. But they don’t.

Revolution

In “Revolution,” the suburbs take on the look of medieval villages, with crops everywhere and chickens running loose.

I’m a great fan of dystopic and post-apocalyptic literature and movies. When good writers let loose their imaginations on where trends might be leading, or what a post-industrial world might look like, they always come up with something interesting.

Now, usually I’m years behind on stuff like this. But thanks to Hulu, Apple TV, and an improving Internet connection, I was able to watch the first episode of NBC’s new series “Revolution.” The first episode was broadcast last week, and I think the second episode, which I have not yet seen, was broadcast last night.

I’m not yet prepared to give it a good review. I haven’t seen enough of it. But so far it’s worth watching.

Technology arrives slowly in the sticks

The iPhone line outside the Verizon store at Madison-Mayodan, 7:45 a.m.

I bought an iPhone 5 today. But there’s a story there.

For the past four years, I’ve used a cell phone that weighs 10 pounds. This is because, when I first came here to live in the woods, nothing else would work. A powerful phone with a real antenna was required to get a signal. At the time, Alltel was the best option in local cellular service. Two years ago, Verizon bought Alltel. Things have been slowly improving after a new Verizon tower came on line about three miles away. Then finally a fiber optic cable was brought in to that tower, and things got even better. Those of you who live in populated places have no idea what rural people go through to get decent cell phone service, not to mention broadband Internet.

I had no choice but to retire the 10-pound Motorola digital bag phone. Verizon sent me a letter saying that all the old Alltel devices would no longer be supported after the first of the year. The timing coincided nicely with the release of the iPhone 5. I was the second person in line this morning at the Verizon store at Madison-Mayodan. I had guessed that there would not be an insanely long line at a rural Verizon store, and I was right. The nice guys inside even opened half an hour early at 8 a.m., which was the official release time for the iPhone 5 on the East Coast.

Here at the abbey, my Verizon signal strength fluctuates from one to three bars. However, I’ll mainly use the iPhone when I’m out and about, so the middling signal I get at home is not a big deal.

The iPhone 5 is cute as a bug. Did you know that the release of the iPhone 5 will actually cause a noticeable boost in our slow economy? By some calculations, the billions of dollars generated by the iPhone will add a .33 point boost to this year’s GDP growth.

My awesome bag phone, now to be retired to the attic

Season total: 44 quarts

I canned a bunch of sauerkraut today. It’s a shame to have to can sauerkraut, because it’s a living fermented food. But there was no way I could eat it all before it went bad. It is outstandingly good sauerkraut — all organic from the abbey’s spring cabbage, made with with sea salt.

I’m done canning for this year. My total production was 44 quarts of food — tomatoes, green beans, pickles, sauerkraut, and homemade chili made from tomatoes and onions from the garden. Forty-four quarts is not exactly slouchy, but it’s also nowhere close to a what it would take for real self-sufficiency. Still, it’s a lot of payback from the garden. There’s food put away, plus more than four months of the year when I bought no produce (other than garlic) from the grocery store.

I learned a lot about sauerkraut this year. In the past, I made it with cabbage I’d bought up in the mountains. This year it was my own cabbage. It was in the crock the afternoon after I picked it. Not only was the kraut much tastier, the fermentation process was much cleaner. There was no sign of mold or scum. Freshness makes a huge difference.

Foyle's War

Foyle’s War, no doubt, is old news to many of you. But I don’t have cable or satellite. It’s Netflix that provides the entertainment at Acorn Abbey, and so I always run a few years behind.

This BBC series has been through seven seasons, starting in Britain in 2002. It was brought to the United States by Masterpiece Mystery. An eighth season is in the works for next year.

When I first started watching Foyle’s War, I saw it as filler entertainment — something to watch when there were no more blockbusters on my Netflix list. But I quickly became addicted to it.

The series follows the British all the way through World War II, starting in May 1940. We see the war through the lives of a detective, Christopher Foyle, and the people in his life. There is a core cast that appears in each episode. But the supporting cast is different in each episode. The cast and acting are superb. During the course of the series they must have employed all the best character actors that Britain has to offer, plus some major stars who appear in only one episode. The casting is so rich that you get big-name actors like James McAvoy in minor roles. I expect Maggie Smith to show up any episode now.

The series is set in the Channel town of Hastings — as in the Battle of Hastings during the Norman Conquest. When England is threatened, Hastings is ground zero, so it’s a great choice as a setting.

The scenery is incredible. The houses and sets are beautiful. The antique vehicles are impressive, with regular appearances by antique aircraft including Spitfires.

The series also is a wonderful education on World War II. I’ve read a couple of books lately on World War II, so this series has fit in nicely. We begin to actually feel the fatique and bravery of the British as the war wears on and on, with World War I still fresh in their minds.

It’s television at its best. Not to be missed.

Rural culture, rural politics

Our No Fracking in Stokes organization, which has been very successful in focusing attention on the dangers of fracking, had a picnic Saturday for our active supporters. We did it in the style of an old-fashioned church picnic. Church picnics aren’t as common as they used to be, I think, but people around here sure remember how to do it. We also invited local politicians and local musicians.

Ric Marshall, who is running the the North Carolina Senate

Nelson Cole, who is running for the N.C. House of Representatives

Davis Chapel, built in 1922, is no longer used as a church. It’s a historic site that has been restored and remains in use for community events. Stokes County doesn’t have a lot of jobs, and it doesn’t have a lot of money. But when it comes to culture, we are extravagantly rich.

Is it true what they say about America?

Al-Ahram

My recent post about Wallace Carroll left me thinking a great deal about Mr. Carroll, and so I thought it was time to read Persuade or Perish again. I had not read it since I was in my early 20s. I was too young then to understand the book very well, and I knew next to nothing about World War II.

So I’m rereading it, and I’m about halfway through. I’ll write more about it later, but the passage below struck me as so important and so visionary, and so relevant to what is now going on at our embassies in Africa and western Asia that I’m going to quote several paragraphs from the book.

It really sheds light on how we are paying the price for America’s ugly image abroad, especially in the Islamic countries. It’s not that we lack a propaganda campaign aimed at those parts of the world. It’s also about what we do. As Mr. Carroll wrote, “the most effective propaganda is the truth.” How absurd is it that some raggedy-ass, hate-filled filmmakers operating in the shadows in Southern California can so easily define this country abroad? That ugly image of America sells abroad because of what we have done and are doing. Their memories are longer than ours. For us, it’s far away. For them, it’s very close to home.

From Persuade or Perish, by Wallace Carroll, published in 1948:

“Such a strategy of persuasion — I believed it then and I believe it now — is essential if the United States is to succeed in its paramount aim of assuring a just and lasting peace. It must replace the old narrow concept of international relations as an exchange of correspondence and courtesies between governments. It must proceed from the realization that behind the governments are the peoples, and that it is more important to win the hearts of men than the cold and formal approval of their rulers. American foreign policy will be successful only to the extent that it can convince the people that American aims are in harmony with their aspirations for peace and freedom and personal liberty.

“The best starting-point for a strategy of persuasion — if the lessons of North Africa and Italy are valid — is an awareness that a democracy like the United States must keep its acts in harmony with its words. For a dictatorship like Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, this is not essential. A dictatorship can talk about a glorious New Order while it is girdling a continent with concentration camps. It can denounce interference in the affairs of other nations at the moment it is seeking to destroy their governments by fomenting strikes and riots. The aim of the dictatorship is to confuse and divide. The aim of democratic America will always be to unite. When an American government is guilty of actions which confuse other nations, it defeats its own ends. That was shown in North Africa and Italy where American actions gave rise to misunderstanding of American purposes and weakened the bonds between the United States and its allies in war and peace. Later events showed that even in our domestic policies contradictions between our acts and words can lead to confusion abroad and thwart the aims of our foreign policy. It was the widespread belief abroad that the United States was moving toward reaction after the war which caused its fine words about democracy and liberty to be received with skepticism and hampered its efforts to rally the great coalition of peaceful nations on which the future welfare of the world depends.

“The events which I witnessed in London [1941-1944] convinced me that policy and persuasion are one, or that persuasion is simply an extension of foreign policy…

“The policy-makers in Washington, however, like the diplomats who serve them in the field, must be men who are sensitive to trends of feeling and opinion out on the periphery. As our mishaps in the Mediterranean campaign showed, the United States cannot afford to be dependent upon policy-makers and diplomats who are deaf to even the most violent expressions of human feelings. Without sympathetic reporting of trends of opinion from the field, the policy-makers will be exposed to grave miscalculations. Given such reporting, they will be able to keep American actions in harmony with the hopes of free peoples.”

The stink of propaganda

One of the authors of the study, Ingram Olkin, has been doing propaganda work for corporations since the 1970s.

When the story first came out on Sept. 3 about the Stanford study that slammed organic foods, was I the only person who caught a strong whiff of propaganda?

At the time, there wasn’t much that a non-expert could say in response. One just has to wait for experts to have time to respond. The unfortunate thing is, the responses never get the buzz that the original propaganda splash gets.

The article, by the way, was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. You can’t even read it without a pricey subscription. But clearly someone at Stanford made a big publicity push before the article was published, to get highly spun articles into the press, articles like the one in the New York Times.

The most damning piece of information to come out so far is that one of the authors of the study, Ingram Olkin, has been doing corporate dirty work since the 1970s. He was behind much of the data cited by tobacco companies that denied the link between cigarettes and cancer.

Some in the blogosphere are connecting dots that would link the release of the Stanford study to the campaign against California’s proposition 37, which would require the labeling of genetically modified foods.

There also have been responses from academics at other universities. But these things are slow. It’s going to take more time for all the dirt on the Stanford study to come out. As for the science and statistics involved, I’m not qualified to judge. But keep in mind that the Stanford study did not involve any new research. It was a “meta-study,” a statistical crunching of numbers gathered in previous studies. And it was just such statistical mangling that Ingram Olkin brought to the science on cigarettes and cancer.

One thing is for sure: the ugliness of the outpouring of smugness, self-righteousness and triumphalism from the propagandists for industrial agriculture. The smugness and contempt just ooze from a couple of these essays in the New York Times by Lomborg and Wilcox. I thought it was us organic types who were supposed to be smug.

Political propaganda generally can be shot down rapidly. An exception was the propaganda around weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It took months for the lies of the Bush administration to be exposed. Scientific propaganda is always slow to be shot down. Science works slowly. That’s why the disinformation campaign about cigarettes and cancer went on for so many years.

In cases like this, it’s important to check back in — in a week, a month, six months, a year. It will take that long for all the dirt to come out about this Stanford study.

Update: How scientists spin the results of their studies.

Unmanageable chickens

There are three escaped chickens in the circle — Josephine, Fanny and Fiona.

First it was only Josephine who was escaping from the chicken fence. Then she taught Fanny, Fiona, and Helen how to do it. Evangeline, the rooster, has never escaped, nor has Patience. The rooster is just too dumb, I think. And Patience is from an older, more proper generation of chickens for whom such behavior is unthinkable. Patience had a solid, old-fashioned upbringing.

I still am not certain how they’re doing it. And I soon discovered that, not only can they get out, they also can get back in. This goes on many times a day now. I’ve stopped rushing out to scoop up escaped chickens. What good does it do? I thought it better to try to keep an eye on them to try to catch one of them in flagrante delicto and discover their secret passage.

One of the things I’ve dreaded is that a chicken would find herself trapped outside the fence at dusk. Tonight that happened. Josephine was running back and forth along the bottom of the fence on the woods side, frantic to get back inside, calling out in fear and frustration, after everyone else had gone into the chicken house to go to bed. On the woods side, the fence is up against a thick thicket of briars, blackberry, and poison oak. There’s just no way I’d go in there to retrieve her. I tried to entice her toward the gate, but every time we got near the corner of the fence she’d turn and run back into the thicket. I thought that if I watched her long enough, she’d eventually find her way inside and reveal her secret as well.

After throwing herself repeatedly against the fence in a state of panic, finally she started to climb, with those strong chicken feet. Up she went, as though climbing a ladder, all the way up six feet of welded wire fence. Then she perched on top, holding tight as the fencing wagged in and out. After she got her balance, she flew down into the orchard. Then she strode, clucking and grumbling, up to the chicken house and flew inside.

Now what in the world am I going to do with a bunch of fence-climbing chickens?

Seriously, this is Ken’s doing. He trained them to be curious and bold, and sassy but sweet, to question authority, to push their boundaries. And while Ken is off somewhere pushing his own boundaries, here I am trying to round up rebellious, fence-climbing chickens and get them safely to bed.

Ken, maybe chickens that like to climb fences would enjoy a long hike? I could overnight them by Fedex…