Reflections on the UCSB Shooting

I know I'm interrupting my (very delayed) series explaining Transition Lab curriculum.  I'm going to earnestly endeavor to continue the series tomorrow, but for now, I hope you'll pardon me.

I usually avoid reading the news, because most of the time, what I find there hurts.  I, like most humans, do not like to hurt.  I’m not saying that I think it’s bad to read the news, or even that I should refrain from reading the news simply because it’s painful.  I’m not even saying that avoiding things that hurt is actually a good idea.  I’m just saying that I don’t read the news much.

Sometimes, though, something happens that is actually impossible to ignore.  An environmental disaster floods Facebook with righteous indignation.  A law passes which activates a volley of justifiably defensive op-eds on the Huffington Post.  Six young people are killed; a grieving father’s face appears on every screen, the hashtag #NotOneMore floods Instagram, and I hear the constant murmuring of the gun control debate approach a deafening roar.

Finally I cave – I consume with ravenous energy the multitudes of articles, posts, and stories at my fingertips.  It’s late at night, I have to be up early, but I can’t stop myself once I start.  It’s a painful, gut-twisting blend of anger, sadness, confusion, fear, and morbid curiosity that drags me on, clicking through link after link.  The salient quotes start to ring in my ears, the same set of details spin a thousand different ways, and the simple fact of the act itself disorients me and leaves me sitting helpless in my bed with tears pouring down my cheeks.

I’m so, so sad for the students that lost their lives, including Elliot Rodger.  I’m so, so sad for the father whose face has become synonymous with deep wound this act reveals.  I’m so, so sad for the people who bear witness to the anguish of the shooting, in person and through the seemingly endless web of coverage.  And, more and more, I’m sad for all of us who live in a world where things like this happen.

 Part of the pain I feel comes from an unbearable energy, a desire to defend myself and my loved ones, to lash out with anger, to campaign to “fix this,” by demanding gun control, or advocating mental healthcare reform, or maybe even buying a small handgun to defend myself, or, screw it, we need to melt all the guns in the world because they’re awful and no one should die by having a piece of metal shot at them with a small explosion.  The point is, I don’t know what to do, but I feel I must do something.  Inaction burns in my veins; my skin actually itches with inactivity.

But what can we do?  Bereaved father Richard Martinez calls us to use our constitutional rights to petition our government leaders for stricter gun control – for the restriction of semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles to military use.  I watch as my friends polarize into their respective pro-gun and anti-gun camps; incendiary missiles of verbal abuse begin, they trade barrages of slanted data, they both quote the Bible.  They sling hate at each other.  We don’t know how to react with anything other than hate to what we see as an evil act by an evil man, perpetuated by an evil system.  Incidents like these make the evil in the world impossible to ignore, and I don’t think we should ignore it.

In the wake of one of the horrific shootings of the last five years, (I wish I could remember which one, but maybe the fact that I can’t speaks to the shocking frequency of these events) I was over at a friend’s childhood home, having dinner with her and her parents.  The TV was on, broadcasting a debate between pro-gun and anti-gun representatives.  My friend and I were making dinner, watching the debate as we chopped vegetables.  We listened to the anti-gun argument in silence – I was vaguely aware of my friend nodding in unison with her parents, and, for the most part, I was nodding too.  I found a lot to agree with: the power that guns harness fills me with respect bordering on fear, and I want to be safe from people who have them and want to use them to hurt people.  And then there were some things that I didn’t fully agree with, or that made me a little angry and confused.

Then came the other side of the debate, and suddenly the air was thick with noises of derision.  My friend’s dad’s voice rose in a wave of contradiction, and suddenly the atmosphere in the kitchen became tangibly tense, and filled with frustration and helpless anger.

I was, perhaps naively and/or selfishly, upset by this turn of events.  I had come over to have a nice dinner with my friend, and to cook for her parents, who I deeply respect.  My vision for the night comprised vignettes of playful teasing, beautiful food, good-natured debate, and, overall, love.  The thick, palpable hostility in the room felt jarringly dissonant with the presence of my dear friend, for whom I hope I would be brave enough to actually take a bullet, standing beside me, almost elbow to elbow, cutting up vibrantly colored vegetables that we were about to eat together.

“I can’t believe this is even a debate,” my friend said, practically shaking with anger.  There were tears in her eyes.  “I just…don’t understand why anyone could possibly think we need guns.”  I don’t remember the rest of what she said, but her anger and judgment toward the NRA and all gun-owners was difficult for me to stomach.

At the time I didn’t understand the pain I felt upon hearing her words.  I lamely offered a few counterpoints, but I didn’t know what to do.  I certainly didn’t disagree with her, but I didn’t feel like I totally agreed with her either.  My overwhelming desire was to stop talking about it – to continue cooking together and let all that anger fade into the past.  So I changed the subject and we continued cooking, and ended up having a nice night.  I think her dad read us some French poetry.  They’re a wonderful family.

It worked out okay, but I wish I had responded differently.

I wish I had pulled my friend into my arms and hugged her tightly until her tears soaked my shoulder and neck.  I wish we had kept talking about it, that I had been able to voice what I was thinking: “When I see you hurting so badly, I feel a deep, tender pain too, because I love you and I want you to live in a world where you have all that is good and beautiful.”  I wish I could give that world to her.

I love my friend for her passion, her stubbornness, and her conviction.  Most of the time, she beautifully and compassionately balances my indolence, doubt, and tendency to cave under pressure.  Sometimes, though, I feel that I need to balance her out, and I don’t know how. 

Many of my interactions with friends and acquaintances are tinged with this pain of not knowing how to bring healing.  I find so much anger in the people I love.  Sometimes, I am filled with selfish irritation – I want them stop being so angry so I can have some peace.  I really wish I didn’t feel that way.  But it helps me to move past it when I realize that all that irritation is just a very ugly scar I bear from years of craving harmony, love, and nurturing and finding too often discord, separation, and anger instead.

Richard Martinez says he isn’t angry with Elliot Rodger, with Rodger’s parents, or with those who failed to pay adequate attention to the warning signs.  This, to me, looks like progress.  But even if he isn’t angry, there are millions who are.  If I can’t even figure out how to heal the pain of my closest friends – remote from the impact of the shooting, thankfully safe and far away – how can any of us even begin to heal the huge, spreading wound that is both the cause and the result of these acts of apparent evil?

Tentatively, I imagine the intensity of the pain that Elliot Rodger must have felt: a constant ache of loneliness, a burning separation, unbearable agony.  I draw from my own experiences, my own deepest, most tender wounds, my worst nights where I felt that I hated myself and couldn’t see how I could possibly keep on existing.  I take these feelings and imagine them spread over a lifetime, with no relief, with no network of loved ones to remind me that I was a part of something larger than myself.  Merely imagining this degree of isolation hurts so much it brings tears to my eyes, and worst of all, I realize that my imagination, limited as it is by my own privileged experience, is unequal to the task.  This phantom of pain I’ve conjured is tiny by comparison to the immensity and depth that must have been his reality.  Indeed, all that the phantom and the actual have in common is that they flow from the same source: humans living in separation from each other and from the world with which we were meant to be so intimately linked.

What I’m trying to talk about is my desire to create the world that I have always wanted to give to the people I love: a world where they are happy, healthy, and free from danger.  This incident has made me realize that everyone deserves that reality; leaving one single person behind would be a loss.  How can we create this world?

 

Russell and Zeno picking up trash from
a stream that runs through Montrose

In Transition Lab, we’re reading a book called The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein.  I want to endorse this book to any of you who are interested in what I’m trying (clumsily) to explain.  You can read it online for free HERE.  It’s had a huge impact on my understanding of myself, the world, and my relationship to other human beings, and I conscientiously believe it’s the most important book I’ve read in my life.  Plus it’s beautifully written.  That’s the highest recommendation I can give.

To paraphrase grossly, Eisenstein identifies the source of the pain we all feel as part of our day-to-day lives as a result of the brokenness of the story we tell ourselves about the world and our place in it.  He calls this dominant narrative the “Story of Separation.”  In it, humans are isolated entities, living apart from each other as self-serving individuals, and living above nature, free to exploit its resources at will.  For me, this immediately rang true – I often feel that humans are encouraged to be self-serving, to compete with each other for scarce resources, and to cultivate an unhealthy self-absorbtion.  And I believe that living this way causes the pain of loneliness and the impotence of unfulfilling life.

He claims that a new story is beginning to emerge, and, indeed, has been trying to emerge counter-culturally for many, many years: the “Story of Interbeing.”  In this world, we are all closely connected; we give freely to one another, and are free from the technologies of force and competition.  Instead, we recognize that the things nature and our fellow human beings have in abundance (nourishing food, love, fulfilling work to be done, adventure, etc.) are the very things that most completely meet our needs.  We feel pain because those needs are being met by substitutes, from unhealthy, artificial foods to social media, and substitutes are never enough to make us feel whole.

In one anecdote, he describes an experiment he conducted, where participants simply held extended eye contact for many long minutes – way longer than social norms dictate acceptable.  He found that after the discomfort had passed, people were filled with euphoric joy.  A need was being met that most people don’t even put a name to: genuine connection.

I don’t want to live in poverty of connection anymore, and I don’t want my friends, family, community, or any single person in the world to be there either.  It seems to me that the world I’ve always wanted for myself and my loved ones is possible – only a radical shift in perception away.

Transition Lab 2014: Jake, me, Zeno, Kevin, and Russell

Transition Lab Curriculum Part 2: Housing

For those who haven't read my previous post, please go back and check it out HERE.  If you're just here for the tasty recipe (Crepes w/ Brie, Swiss Chard, and Apple-Cider Caramel Sauce) you can skip to that by clicking HERE.

This week I'm doing a total of five posts, to introduce the curriculum my fellow co-creators and I are learning out here in Montrose.  Last time, I talked about food, the first icon in the Transition Lab logo.  In summary, we're trying to find ways to meet our food needs as a group by relying on a community, work-based economy, rather than the traditional dollar economy.  This allows us to eat local, organic food without spending a single dollar, but more importantly, it puts us in tune with the needs of the community at large, and how we can meet those needs in exchange for what we need: food.  We gift our time and labor to local farmers, and they reciprocate by gifting us with abundant, varied, and unbeatably fresh food.

We follow the same model with our approach to housing.  Each of the students here lives in a spare bedroom in or around downtown Montrose, and each of us pays exactly $0 rent.  Instead, we participate in what's called the Skilled Resident Program, which allows us to make up for our rent by working for our hosts, or in the community at large, for 10 hours per week.  If you think about it in terms of dollars, assuming we'd be paid $10 an hour for the work we're doing, that's $400 dollars per month - which really is about equivalent to rent.  Nobody's taking a loss here.  Our hosts receive $400 dollars worth of work in their homes, gardens, and community, and we students get to pursue interesting, community-oriented work that interests us.  The other students are doing things like designing gardens and compost systems for their hosts, and I'm doing projects with LiveWell Montrose Olathe (part of a larger initiative to improve healthful lifestyles in Colorado) and the Valley Food Partnership (a group dedicated to improving food education, infrastructure, and policy here in the Uncomphagre Valley).  It's unbelievably rewarding to see my work translating directly into meeting one of my most basic needs - shelter.  More rewarding, certainly, than living off my parents generosity - no matter how appreciated - or even than working for dollars which I then use to pay rent.

Plus, it's really fun to live with new people in a new place, especially the kind of people who are willing to open up their spare bedroom to a dirty hippy like me.  (Full disclosure: I'm trying to cut shampoo and conditioner out of my life in favor of more natural alternatives, so, for the time being, while my hair adjusts to the change, I've actually got the full greasy, unwashed hippy look going.  To clarify - it's clean...just greasy.  For now.)

I'm being hosted by a couple, Dan and Karla, who have not one but three spare bedrooms, which they have allowed many people to use over the years, particularly interns for their church leadership program.  They've been extremely generous and welcoming, treating me essentially as one of their daughters.  I've really enjoyed getting to know them and their three dogs: Riley, Rowan, and the new puppy, Luna (who is just about too cute to handle).  Dan and Karla place a high value on community, participating themselves in local events like the Adventure Film Festival which took place this April here in Montrose.  I'm eternally grateful to them for understanding the value of the work I'm doing in the community and the skills I'm learning with Transition Lab, and for their decision  to open their home to me.

I'll talk more about the projects we students are doing for our hosts as the blog progresses, but for now I just wanted to leave you all with a basic understanding of how the Skilled Resident model has allowed us to meet another of our fundamental needs in an unconventional way.  It's been amazing to observe the effects of these partnerships within the community.  Great friendships develop between hosts and residents, as well as among hosts, who come together for a monthly potluck hosted by Transition Lab.  Great projects occur in peoples' homes and yards without hosts having to pay a stranger to do the landscaping.  And great projects develop in the community, because residents are free to follow their passion and volition.

Tomorrow or the next day I'll cover the next aspect of our curriculum - entrepreneurship - and later this week, I'll post on community and knowledge of self.  Thanks for sticking with me!  As a reward, here's a recipe you'll definitely want to try.  I cooked this for Russell and his wife, and it was, to say the least, a huge success.  Don't be intimidated!  You too can make crepes.  I promise.  The pictures I'm posting were of my first ever attempt.  I think they turned out more than okay.  Bon appetit!

Crepes with Swiss Chard, Brie, and Apple-Cider Caramel Sauce

Oh.  Yeah.

Start by making the caramel sauce.  This is edited from an Emeril Legasse recipe for the most amazing salad dressing ever (Basil Caramel Vinaigrette from his Emeril's Kitchens cookbook) but it's edited pretty substantially.  You can scale it up or down however you like.  I like to make a ton because it's really versatile and you can put it on so many things.

• 2 parts sugar
• 2 parts apple cider vinegar
• 1 part heavy cream AT ROOM TEMPERATURE

In a saucepan, cook equal parts sugar and apple cider vinegar over medium to medium high heat until the sugar is completely dissolved.  Swirl the pan to stir, rather than using a spoon.  A spoon sometimes causes the sugar to crystallize rather than form into smooth caramel.  Continue to cook, swirling the pan occasionally, until the mixture darkens to a rich medium brown - not burned at all.  This can be somewhat difficult - my advice is to keep the heat just below medium your first time, because things happen quickly.  Swirling the pan will help you keep control of the temperature, and will prevent the caramel at the bottom from cooking faster.  Don't worry about the strong vinegar smell - the caramel doesn't taste anything like vinegar.  When you're happy with the color, turn the heat down to the lowest low and add the cream, swirling to incorporate.  The mixture will foam, so be ready.  It's very important to use cream at room temperature, because adding cold cream causes the caramel to harden.  At this point, you can use a spoon to stir the mixture until it's homogeneous.  If some small lumps of caramel formed, some of them may loosen up if you continue cooking over low heat.  Or else you'll just have to eat them.  Pour the mixture into another container (like a gravy boat or something that can pour) and let it cool.  You can add salt and pepper to taste if you want.

Next start the crepes.  I use Alton Brown's recipe for basic crepes, but I skip some steps. For enough crepes to feed 2-3 hungry people, you'll need:

• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup flour
• 3 Tbsp melted butter + more butter to coat the pan

I pretty much just whisked all the ingredients together.  Alton says to use a food processor, but I'll do almost anything to avoid cleaning food processors, so I said, "Screw that."  Alton also recommends refrigerating the batter for at least an hour, which "allows the bubbles to subside" or whatever.  I popped the mix in the fridge while I lightly sauteed:

• However much swiss chard you and your fellow feasters think you can cram down your gullets. Remember it cooks down, so...GO BIG.

Cook the chard with oil or butter over medium heat until it's wilted, then transfer it to a serving bowl or plate and cover to keep it warm.

Then I pulled out that crepe batter (after like 4 minutes of refrigeration...shhhh).  The way to do this is to heat up a small non-stick pan with butter in it over medium to medium high heat.   Not too much, or the crepes get soggy - you want just enough to coat the pan, with no pooling.  The exact heat isn't a science - be flexible and watchful.  The butter should be hot enough that when you add the batter, it sizzles a little, but definitely not so hot that the butter burns.  (If it does burn, start over with fresh butter in a clean pan.  Not the end of the world.)  Maintaining the correct amount of heat was the hardest part of the whole process - but you can do it.

Pour the batter into the pan, about 1/8 to 1/4 cup at a time.  This is based on preference as well as the size of your pan - I like my crepes a bit on the beefy side, plus, they're easier to flip that way.  But if you truly want the paper-thin, melt-in-your-mouth experience, try to use as little batter as you can.  Swirl the pan to spread the batter evenly.  Cook it on this side for about 30-45 seconds.  Again, this is somewhat flexible depending on how hot the pan is and how thick your batter is.  A good indicator that the crepe is ready to flip is to watch the bubbles forming in the batter.  The crepe is ready to flip when the bubbles stop filling themselves in with more batter when they pop.  The second side is even quicker - more like 10-20 seconds.

Lay the crepes out flat to cool (not stacked), and continue until all batter is gone.  Add more butter to the pan if it gets to dry or if they start to stick.  Once the crepes are cool, you can stack them.  They shouldn't stick to each other, but if you're worried, by all means layer wax paper between them.

Now to assemble the crepes!  Lay a crepe out on your plate, pile it high with swiss chard and

• Brie.  However much you can eat.  Or "should" eat.  Your call.  Again, I went big.

Then drizzle the whole thing with the apple-cider caramel sauce.  Prepare to have your world rocked.

I repeated this recipe a few weeks later with some friends.  We didn't make the caramel sauce because we were...not sober...yeah...but we scrambled some eggs instead.  Delicious.  And yeah, we totally succeeded at making crepes.  I'm serious, you can do this.

Transition Lab Curriculum Part 1: Food

I recognize I've been remiss - it's been almost a month since I last posted  a blog, and those of you supporting me from afar have been requesting another post, which I appreciate.  The good news about the long wait, though, is that now I can talk about the curriculum of Transition Lab in context of some actual depth of experience now that I've been participating for nearly two months. I'm also posting a delicious smoothie recipe - to skip to that, click HERE.

First of all, I should probably explain what it is exactly I'm doing out here in Montrose, and what this crazy Transition Lab thing is.  I talked in my last post about how what I was doing before (that is, living with my parents while applying for jobs) wasn't working, and that's a good place to start talking about what I'm hoping to move towards as I go through Transition Lab.  First of all, most basically, Transition Lab is an alternative and/or supplement to higher education as it currently functions.  It recognizes some of the key flaws of institutional, university-based higher education (prohibitive cost and/or crippling student loans, difficulty of finding a job afterward, etc) and seeks a systems-based solution.  There's a focus on keeping costs low, ensuring return on investment, and fostering skills that comprise an ability to make a living, rather than focusing on finding just "a job."

 Above is the logo for Transition Lab.  Each of the icons represents a different aspect of the curriculum we cover, and the lifestyle we seek to live after graduation.  The first icon represents food, which is the aspect I'll be talking about today. This is where the goal of 'making a living' is at its most literal - we're learning to grow our own food.  Perhaps more importantly, since not all of us want to be 'farmers,' so to speak, we're learning how to work in partnership with farmers to meet the majority of our food needs.  We each spend a minimum of eight hours per week working on organic farms, community gardens, and several edible home gardens we're working on in town.  So far this season, we've done most of our work on two organic farms located about 10 miles south of downtown Montrose, each of which we visit once a week to work a four hour shift.

Keven, Jake, and Zeno hoeing garlic at Straw Hat Farm

At Straw Hat Farm we spend the time using cultivation hoes to keep the weeds in check around the acre of garlic which grows in front of the farmhouse.  You can read more about Straw Hat by following the link, but they're a certified organic farm that runs a farm store in town, where they sell their produce, freshly-baked goods, and local foods from other farmers and producers in town.  In exchange for our work there, we can shop at the farm store.  This allows us access not only to the delicious pies, cookies, and bread baked by Straw Hat, but also allows us to buy ground beef, eggs, cheese, seedlings, and bulk goods like beans, rice, corn, and flour from other local producers.  Hoeing the garlic is hard work - this spring we've had a few bitter cold days, and a few days when the ground was almost impossible to weed because it was frozen or muddy.  Supposedly when summer finally comes to stay, we'll be wishing for the cool spring weather, but this week promises more 40 degree farming, and I say: "Summer can't come soon enough!"  My dad came to visit early last week, and he elected to have a conversation with the patriarch of Straw Hat, Chet Byler, rather than spend the fourth hour hoeing.  Apparently it's hard work or something.  ;)  Anyway, I have to agree with my dad: "Chet gets it."  I feel very lucky to be connected to that farm and that family.

Zeno walking through the greenhouse at Circle A Garden

The other organic farm we've been working on is also a family farm, Circle A Garden, named for the first initial of the Austin family, who runs the farm (mother and two daughters).  We primarily work with the two sisters who do most of the heavy lifting these days: Betsy and Della.  Both of them have a truly incredible depth and breadth of knowledge when it comes to organic growing.  I'm constantly amazed by the sheer volume of food they manage to produce, but also at the potency of flavor and lasting freshness of everything I've received from the luscious, well-tended soil of their land.  Since it's still spring, and we're obviously not quite out of danger of frost, they're still almost exclusively harvesting the greens, turnips, radishes, and carrots which are grown in the largest of several greenhouses on the farm.  However, over the course of the season, I've been told that they will grow over 100 varieties of vegetables, herbs, and fruits.  We each receive a CSA share (community-supported agriculture) in exchange for our work there, which, let me tell you, is a HUGE amount of food.  Even this early in the season, it's easy to get behind on eating everything we're receiving.  I've been making green smoothies almost every day, just because it's a quick, tasty way to eat through the biomass rapidly accumulating in my fridge.

I'll talk more about both of these farms later, but for now I just wanted to explain how my fellow Transition Lab members and I are meeting our food needs, and how our methods fit with our mission.  This has proven to be a viable way to meet our food needs outside of a conventional economy.  Our need for affordable, local, and organic food dovetails with the needs of these farmers, who always need extra hands, but who often have surplus food rather than cash to exchange for this work.  This is the kind of systems-based solution we seek to apply across our lives, in order to meet our needs in tandem with the needs of our fellow community members.

I''m hoping to post four more posts this week (I know it's a lot to read, but I want to get these fundamentals out of the way) to finish discussing the four other aspects of the curriculum: housing, entrepreneurship, community, and knowledge of self.  I'm planning to post short recipes at the end of each of these posts, but we'll see how that goes.  For now, here's a simple recipe for a green smoothie I made today.

Green Smoothie with Greens, Berries, PB and Yogurt

In a powerful blender mix together the following:

• Sizeable bunch of greens (I used kale and spinach)
• Three large strawberries
• Large dollop of plain yogurt
• Spoonful of peanut butter
• Some kind of sweetener (I used chocolate syrup, but dates or honey would work too)
• About an inch of water

Then, blend that ish up.  Add more liquid, thickener, sweetener, or whatever to taste.  The texture should end up pretty thick, with the frothy texture of a lassi, if you've ever had one of those.  You can add a banana, if you want.  I'm allergic.