Sushi with Local Materials

Posted on February 15, 2007 by Billy

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Sustainability. Ownership. Using local materials.

Georgia: Can I have some soft white rice?
Me: Sure. [Georgia was sick today, with a stomach bug, so rice is probably a good idea]
         Umm, wait. I don’t think we have any.

The girls were all snacking on seaweed squares (it was time for a vegetable).

Me: How about rice crispies softened with water?
         [Lightbulb appears over my head.]
         Do you want to make sushi with rice crispies?
Georgia: Sure!

I should mention that Bahiyyih had left us alone for the evening.

The first batch was too soggy, and didn’t have enough rice crispies.

Georgia: [tastes one end of a soggy roll of seaweed and rice crispies]
         Eww, I don’t like it.
Me: That’s okay.
Maya: I want to make my own.
Me: That’s a good idea; I don’t want you to get sick from Georgia’s. But I don’t think you’ll like it. First, I want you to smell this one.
Maya: [Shakes head vigorously and squinches her face.]
Me: Come on; if you don’t like it, we shouldn’t make another one.
Maya: [Smells it.] I don’t like it.
Me: [throws the soggy roll away, convinced that it was a failed experiment]
Georgia: [emerging from the hallway] Actually, I kind of liked it.

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The second batch was better. More rice crispies, less water. We actually sliced it into little sushi cylinders.

Maya: Is this for me?
Me: Yeah. Here, you take two. I’ll save these two for Teresa.
Georgia: Can I have some?
Me: [eating one] Yeah. Here, I’m going to make another batch.

The third batch was eaten up too. Teresa decided that what she really wanted was the rice crispies, so she just unrolled the little sliced pieces and cleaned them out. Mmm—damp, seaweed-flavored rice crispies.

The fourth and fifth batches included long-sliced hot dogs and received rave reviews.

Maya: I want some with squishy beans. [that's refried beans to the uninitiated]
Me: Okay. Hot dogs and beans. That’s a good combination.

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By the sixth (and final) batch, I think the spice of hunger had worn off. Maya tried them, but didn’t particularly like them. So she and Teresa picked out the hot dog pieces and ate them, and I finished off the rest.

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Bahiyyih: [After she got home and saw the pictures] That’s an abomination.

Posted in Food | 3 Comments

Cold Weather

Posted on December 9, 2006 by Billy

It’s beard-weather here.

weather.png

Thursday morning I saw a Caddy-style car bump into the back of an SUV at walking speed, maybe 3 MPH. The SUV was fine, but the front grill of the car shattered like glass (and sounded like glass breaking). It was really chrome-shiny, but broken on the ground, it was a mix of white and chrome. I think it must have been some kind of metal-glazed plastic that got really brittle in the cold.

Last night, Georgia and Maya and I were discussing how cold it is. We agreed that it was really cold. Probably around 10F or 20F. They asked whether I had ever experienced anything colder. I said that I had, when I was little, and we lived in northern Illinois. I think remember it getting down to -20F, but I think I’d better check with my Dad. He was responsible for cancelling school when the weather was too harsh, so he probably remembers.

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Our garage foundation, too, is waiting for warmer weather. Specifically, the cement can’t be poured until the ground thaws. It might be a while.

Posted in Fleeting | Leave a comment

The Assumption of Butting Heads

Posted on November 27, 2006 by Billy

Mostly I am writing this entry down because I don’t want to forget it. Feel free to read along, but don’t feel compelled.

Parenting has been a struggle for me, for sure. Sometimes the struggle is to be patient, and sometimes it is to let love dominate when I could be angry. But this weekend it was to not struggle quite so much.

I know, in principal, that growth springs from the organism itself, and that eventually our children will be on their own, responsible to their own consciences and reliant on their own will. However, for the seven years that I have had children ex-utero, I’ve had the idea that I must kneed and form them into a civilized shape — I must be the mold that they push up against.

In short, I struggle with them.

Somehow, that habit, or conviction, or practice, or whatever it is, has been gradually eroded. Until this weekend I put two and two together, under circumstances that I don’t remember, that:

  1. Children want to improve (thank you, Georgia, for stating that explicitly about yourself — I want to be the best person I can be) and be good people. It’s a deep spiritual impulse, as far as I can tell, and it comes from them, and not from you.
  2. I want them to improve and be good people, too.

Once you can really see that in your own kids, and you can see it in yourself, I think it removes a big struggle. We’re both working toward the same destination. The thing is, though, that children don’t always have the same route in mind as I do for their journey. But that’s okay; we’ve got some time, and if they can see that I am working together with them, they’ll be happy to go along.

It’s worked pretty well so far, helping to diffuse fights, for example, between Maya’s and Georgia’s warring routes toward virtue (as I like to describe them), and to help Georgia rise above Maya’s needling during a van ride. It’s important to recognize when they’re just too tired to do it on their own, though. I need to figure out how much help to give — how many shoes to help put on when I think that someone could actually do it by herself.

I also realize that many parents never even struggle with this, because it is part of their basic assumptions, because somewhere their ancestors already figured it out and incorporated it into the family culture. I think there’s still a chance that Maya and Georgia can be in that category. Or maybe they already are, thanks to Bahiyyih.

Posted in Maya | 3 Comments

Nuclear Vernacular

Posted on November 22, 2006 by Billy

I just noticed that nucular is in the vernacular, since Webster’s accepts now it as a secondary pronunciation. Does that mean that there should be a vernaclear with nuclear in it?

vernaclear [v&(r)-'na-klE-&r]: (adj) the way a word that is commonly mispronounced or misspelled should be pronounced or spelled, especially if the mistaken form has muscled its way into becoming an accepted form.

And if we use this new word enough, it will find its way into the lexicon as well. But would that be paradoxical, or self-fulfilling?

Posted in Fleeting | 3 Comments

The Producers

Posted on November 15, 2006 by Billy

Yesterday I felt moved to lay off of reading news online, which I mainly get from Slashdot, Reddit, Technocrat, and a slew of technical sites, for a month. I’m just spending too much of my time reading, and absorbing, and not enough time producing and making stuff.
I did it (stopped surfing news sites) for a day a few times, and it made for a very different day each time. In some cases I actually got a lot done. And I’ve tried limiting the time I spend on the sites to, say, an hour or less, using a little kitchen timer to mark out half-hour blocks, but once I get started, it’s hard to stop. Basically, I’m having trouble finding a point of moderation, where I read a little and work a lot.
So a whole month, to try to clean out my system and be able to start over, with the goal of moderation. So far I’m on my second day. When I have the urge to do something other than my top priorities at work (which can be pretty tedious stuff), I either find something less tedious that may not be as urgent, or say, blog a little.
I remember an American pilgrim’s account of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s daily life, in particular that He was constantly busy taking care of everyone’s needs, from ministering to the poor in Akka, to handling correspondence from Baha’is all over the world, and that He would find relief simply in variety, because he never seemed to rest or have any idle time.

Posted in Life | 1 Comment

Rustling Leaves

Posted on November 9, 2006 by Billy

[Originally posted on Bahiyyih's webble, but later moved here.]

Chain of events:

  1. Moldy basement
  2. Eliminate moisture by grading to make water run away from house
  3. Use leftover imported dirt to make flower beds
  4. Realize that dirt is very clay-ey
  5. Decide to amend it with leaves rustled from neighbor’s yard (the rental duplex across the street owned by the nice German Grandma a couple of doors down) at 10:30 pm

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Bahiyyih has a story all ready:

Well, you see, this is the spot Georgia has to stand in every morning to catch her school bus. They’d decompose and … yeah

Edit, for anyone who thought that Bahiyyih might be doing something illicit:

I don’t think our neighbors will complain that she is raking away their leaves for free. Quite the opposite; our next-door neighbor, for example, wanted to pay us $20 to clear the leaves from her yard by mowing them down, although we declined because we were planning to rake most of them anyway, to compost.

Posted in Life, The World | Leave a comment

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

Posted on November 2, 2006 by Billy

A few years ago, Bahiyyih and I were at Dan and Zivar’s house, and we were taking turns reading the Sunday comics. We laughed in particular about the comics that were impenetrable to us, like Judge Parker, M.D. (or something like that — I mean the comics that were in the paper the entire time I was growing up, but I never managed to read; I don’t think they were even trying to pass the funny test). Zivar said “Dan likes to read them to the kids.” She listed a bunch of comics. “Peanuts, Zits, even Prince Valiant.”

“Prince Valiant?” I asked her.

“Yeah, but he likes to change the words.”

So Dan demonstrated. Out of left field, he intoned, “And look, this guy just invented rope.” Sure enough, it looked just like an iron-age technology demonstration. To this day, that’s my favorite reading of a comic strip.

Anyway, my point is that making up new words to irrelevant or objectionable traditional materials is part of parenting. You might be drawn into the practice by changing the uncooperative trains’ dialog in The Little Engine that Could from things like:

“Pull the likes of you? I would never dream of stooping so low as to pull toys; I have more important things to do,” said the Big, Shiny, New Locomotive.

to:

“I can see that you need help, but simply must get this load of perishable medicines to a hospital supply depot in Mexico. If you’re still here when I get back, I’ll give you a lift for sure.”

You might move on to sanitizing fairy tales, and then re-wording nursery rhymes, all in the interest of freeing your offspring of the mental handicaps of their parents’ age.

In that spirit, I give you our latest version of Little Bunny Foo Foo, despite the risk that it will wimpify anyone who hears it, by artificially shielding them from the harsh realities of our world:

Little Rabbit Foo Foo         (Teresa prefers “Rabbit” over “Bunny”)
Hoppin’ through the woods-woods         (I was bored with the word “forest”)
Pickin’ up the chipmunks
And washing behind their ears.         (Rub behind Teresa’s ears)

Down came the fairy, and this is what she said:
Little Rabbit Foo Foo,
I’m happy to see you,
Pickin’ up the chippey-munks
And washing behind their ears.
[spoken]And you can also kiss their little toes!

Little Rabbit Foo Foo
Hoppin’ through the woods-woods,
Scoopin’ up the chipmunks
And washing behind their ears.         (Rub behind Teresa’s ears)
And kissing their little toes.         (Kiss or tickle Teresa’s toes)

Down came the fairy, and this is what she said:
Little Rabbit Foo Foo,
I’m happy to see you,
Pickin’ up the chippity-munks
And washing behind their ears.         (Rub behind Teresa’s ears)
And kissing their little toes.         (Kiss or tickle Teresa’s toes)
[spoken]And you can also tickle their widdle tummies.         (Tickle Teresa’s tummy)

Etc.

Or perhaps, as is my hope, it will help to create a new reality, one with more tickling of toes and less bopping of heads.

Posted in Tuneless | 2 Comments

New York is the Greenest Place

Posted on July 17, 2006 by Billy

This weekend, I saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. I highly recommend it. For adults, anyway. It’s probably too scary for young children.

And today I saw an essay that makes the argument that New York City is the Greenest City in the U.S.. Here are the first two paragraphs:

My wife and I got married right out of college, in 1978. We were young and na

Posted in The World | 1 Comment

More Fireworks

Posted on July 4, 2006 by Billy

Tonight, being the Fourth, we had fireworks here in Champaign-Urbana. Maya was not interested in going, but Georgia was—the cousins were going to be there. So, even though Suzanne and Husayn and Amia were visiting, we piled our gear (and Georgia) into the bicycle trailer and headed over to campus to meet Zivar (my sister), Mom, and Zivar’s three girls.

I didn’t know what to do with the cell phone (we were coordinating our rendezvous with technology this year, since somehow in the last twelve months all three of us had been hooked up), so I gave it to Georgia. As soon as we started down our little street towards the park, it rang.

ring-ring

Georgia, can you answer that? Press the green button.

(Georgia has never felt comfortable answering a phone.)

ring-ring

Hello?

(Georgia had answered the phone! She didn’t sound shy or scared or anything.)

We’re on a bike. I’ll get him. Billy, its Grandma Amy!

Umm, I can’t answer it right now. Can you talk to her? Tell her where we are.

(We were crossing Broadway into the park, which we would cross on our way to campus.)

(very calmly) He can’t answer it right now. He’s riding a bike.

Tell her you’re in a bike trailer.

I’m in a bike trailer.

Georgia reported that they were just starting out toward the planned fireworks rendezvous; I directed her to tell them we were too, which she did.

Bye!

Press the red button to hang up.

Okay, I did it.

Isn’t that the first time you really talked on a phone?

Yeah!

I tell you, going on an adventure—even a little one like a bike ride to fireworks—brings out hidden strengths. Georgia was excited and confident, and she had the phone and knew that she was the only one who could answer it. So she did, and if she was shy or scared, I saw very little of it; she overcame it very quickly.

First phone call: cell phone in a bike trailer. Sign of her times. She’s a junior cadre in the People’s Technological Republic of Urbana.

We met up with Grandma and the cousins who were camped about 15 feet from the fence marking the no-man’s-land around the fireworks launch site. We could just lie on our backs and watch them explode above us. Zivar was the first to have cardboard tumble down and land on her leg, scorched but cooled. Grandma’s kind of crazy.

Georgia huddled with Nadine and watched excitedly. Zivar reported

I asked the girls how they were doing. They said, “It’s scary. Hee hee hee.”

On the way home, Georgia described the fireworks as “scary, dramatic, and exciting.” I didn’t even know she knew the word dramatic.

Posted in Georgia | 1 Comment

Fireworks

Posted on July 3, 2006 by Billy

The scene: Maya, Teresa, and Daddy are taking a walk. The sun has just set, and it is getting dark. Daddy pushes the two girls in a double stroller, with Teresa in front and Maya in back.

The sound of firecrackers in the distance has made Maya nervous, and she has been worried that the firecrackers are at the playground that the trio is walking towards. Daddy has done his best to assure her that they are in the other direction, and their sound seems to confirm this.

Firecrackers: pop   …     pop pop poppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppop poppop       poppop     pop

Maya: Can fireworks kill people?

Daddy: These firecrackers? No, no, they—they aren’t very dangerous. They’re very small, this big (holds fingers close together). They could go off in your hand, and they wouldn’t hurt you. Well, they wouldn’t hurt very much anyway.

Maya: Oh.

(Maya thinks about it for a little while.)

Maya: Can fireworks kill food?

I’m not sure whether she wanted to know:

  • How dangerous are they? On a scale of killing people to killing chickens.
  • Can they be useful? Can I hunt with them?
Posted in Maya | 1 Comment