Poor People Food

For nearly five decades worth of Christmases now, I’ve endured Nat King Cole crooning about “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose.” But in all that time, I have never actually roasted a chestnut. In fact, I haven’t even seen anyone roasting chestnuts. That’s probably as much a function of the culture in which I was raised as it is my belief that roasting chestnuts was a trend of the past, a treat as modern as nuts in oranges in your Christmas sock.

But it turns out that roasted chestnuts are not the ancient relic that I thought perhaps they were. For instance, they are still a common “street food” in some parts of the world, including Turkey, where in Istanbul vendors hawk “Kestane kebab” from carts in both popular tourist districts and working class neighborhoods. I am told that warm chestnuts, roasted black, and served in a paper bag are also readily available from street vendors throughout London. My guess is that the same holds true for other majors cities throughout Europe and Asia Minor.

I’ve discovered that chestnuts were introduced into Europe by way of Sardis in present day Turkey. They were initially referred to as “Sardinian nuts” and for millennia, served as a staple food for the peoples who populated southern Europe, Turkey, and south-western Asia. In these regions of the world, chestnuts largely replaced cereals which could not grow well in the Mediterranean climate and soils. Until the introduction of the potato, the meat of the chestnut sustained whole communities who used it to make cake or bread.

Then, at some stage and for reasons unknown to me, the chestnut fell out of favor. It was maligned as “poor people food.” People abandoned “chestnut bread” because its flour did not rise. Chestnuts, it was said, gave a “sallow complexion.”

Despite all of this besmirching, and the embarrassment and shame that would invariably result from eating “poor people food,” we decided it was time to roast some chestnuts. Lacking an open flame, we didn’t so much “roast” them as we did “bake” them. Essentially, we cranked the oven up to about 400 degrees, scored the chestnuts, placed them on a baking sheet, and popped them in the oven until the shells split and were a deep mahogany color. Not exactly street authentic, but it was a worthy attempt and it worked well enough.

Out of the shell, roasted chestnuts were not at all what I expected. Being in the nut mindset, I was prepared for crunch. What I got was something that was nutty and slightly sweet, but with the consistency of a baked potato. Had we actually done some roasting, I suspect we would have added a little smoke flavor to the taste profile, but they were delicious nonetheless.

Beyond the taste and consistency, the thing that surprised me the most about roasted chestnuts was how filling they were. After having just a few, I felt as if I had eaten an entire meal. Maybe that ability to satisfy fully partially explains their previous popularity as “poor people food,” even though from a nutritional standpoint chestnuts have fewer calories per edible gram than many other nuts and dried fruits.

Given how filling (and, I presume, versatile) they are, I think I can understand why roasted chestnuts are popular “poor people food.” Although there is probably a good explanation, what I don’t grasp is how or why “poor people food” became and conintues to this day to be associated with Christmas holiday tradition in America. I’m sure by that statement that I’m advertising my historical and culinary ignorance, but so be it. For the moment, I’m satisfied to have simply experienced the gastonomical pleasure of the roasted Sardinian nut.

Afiyet olsun!

Economic Hitmen Under My Bed

Either I’m going to start seeing economic hitmen under my bed, or the narrative is more common, the strategy more versatile than I ever imagined. That idea is being fostered by a piece titled A Christmas Message From America’s Rich penned by Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone in which he highlights the indifference, nay the complete disdain that America’s elites have for the 99%. In the course of that article, Taibbi skewers, among others, Jaime Dimon of Chase Bank infamy for complaining that people hate him because he’s rich and successful. Taibbi rightly points out that people don’t hate Dimon because he’s wealthy and successful. They hate him because he and his banking buddies are a bunch of conniving, unrepentant, pricks. As evidence of this, Taibbi points to happenings in Jefferson County, Alabama.

“That particular locality is now in bankruptcy proceedings primarily because Dimon’s bank, Chase, used middlemen to bribe local officials – literally bribe, with cash and watches and new suits – to sign on to a series of onerous interest-rate swap deals that vastly expanded the county’s debt burden.

Essentially, Jamie Dimon handed Birmingham, Alabama a Chase credit card and then bribed its local officials to run up a gigantic balance, leaving future residents and those residents’ children with the bill. As a result, the citizens of Jefferson County will now be making payments to Chase until the end of time.

Do you think Jamie Dimon would have done that deal if he lived in Jefferson County? Put it this way: if he was trying to support two kids on $30,000 a year, and lived in a Birmingham neighborhood full of people in the same boat, would he sign off on a deal that jacked up everyone’s sewer bills 400% for the next thirty years?”

Translation: Dimon’s bank handed Jefferson County the means to commit financial suicide and then bribed its leadership to pull the trigger. And who primarily benefitted from Jefferson County’s mountain of lethal and bloody debt? Chase Bank, of course.

But wait, there’s more. Chase also pulled a similar stunt it seems with the Greeks. Again, Taibbi:

“Having seen how well interest-rate swaps worked for Jefferson County, Alabama, Chase ‘helped’ Greece mask its debt problem for years by selling a similar series of swaps to the Greek government. The bank then turned around and worked with banks like Goldman, Sachs to create a thing called the iTraxx SovX Western Europe index, which allowed investors to bet against Greek debt.

In other words, Chase knowingly larded up the nation of Greece with a crippling future debt burden, then turned around and helped the world bet against Greek debt.

Does a citizen of Greece do that deal? Forget that: does a human being do that deal?”

That, my friends, is exactly why guys like Dimon are now despised to the point that they must fend off vitriolic attacks by “imbeciles” in the debtor class. But that really is neither my point nor current fixation. No, my interest in Taibbi’s Rolling Stone rant is the evidence it contains of the economic hitmen narrative at play. The strategy employed by Chase Bank in its dealing with both Jefferson County, Alabama and Greece is the exact same strategy, writ small, that John Perkins persuasively claims was employed by the United States to financially enslave developing nations. It is the strategy I see being employed by banks and educational institutions to financially subjugate students for years on end through massive student loan debt. And it is a strategy that I now suspect could very well be at play in a variety of other contexts where the promise of a better financial tomorrow derives not from hard word, intelligence and talent, but from debt instruments hyped and sold by economic hitmen like Jamie Dimon and his bank.

Higher Education: A Railway to Peonage

One of the many things that resonated with me the first time I read Howard Zinn’s A Peoples History of the United States was the idea that our institutions of higher education in this country, particularly the Harvards, Yales, Stanfords, Carnegie Mellons, and Vanderbilts of the system, were established not so much to further the goal of an educated populace, but to spit out a class of professionals and semi-professionals who could and would at once both serve the elites and act as a buffer against the unwashed and uninformed masses. In less refined terms, Zinn’s suggestion (or at least my interpretation) was that these degreed and credentialed folks were being groomed by our nation’s top colleges and universities to function as the plutocracy’s bitches. Being a bitch myself in that regard (i.e., a degreed professional), I’d really never consciously considered that possibility, although the idea certainly was intriguing. In fact, it was more than intriguing. Now that Zinn had challenged my conventional view on the matter, I had to admit that the theory just might have substantial merit.

Perhaps because I subconsciously didn’t want to confront it, or maybe because I was just being intellectually lazy, I didn’t follow Zinn’s strand of thought any further. The idea remained, however. In fact, it still comes to the forefront of my thinking every once in awhile, but I always let it slip back into the obscure recesses of my mind where it lays dormant until something triggers another flare-up.

Well, this morning I had a flare-up (call it an epiphany) of major proportions that has given me the clarity of sight that Zinn must have had. The catalyst for my new found vision was an article by Brian McKenna published at Counter Punch titled Student Loan Fury in the Occupy Movement. In a nutshell, the article lays bare the societal and parental lie that burdening students with loan debt in order to obtain a higher education, particularly in the more academic and esoteric fields of study that have no perceived “market value” (i.e., cannot be readily exploited by business to increase profits), will markedly improve one’s position in life. To the contrary, the article demonstrates in rather bleak terms that in many cases, a Masters or Ph.D degree is nothing more than a train ride to peonage, self-doubt, and misery.

Without getting into the reasons for this (the article hints at a general hostility toward certain disciplines and the continued and steady de-funding of our public educational systems), McKenna’s article caused me to immediately think of John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman. As Wiki accurately describes it, Hitman is a mea culpa in which Perkins confesses to having been an “economic hit man” for a global engineering services firm that paid him handsomely to:

“convince the political and financial leadership of underdeveloped countries to accept enormous development loans from institutions like the World Bank and USAID. Saddled with debts they could not hope to pay, those countries were forced to acquiesce to political pressure from the United States on a variety of issues. Perkins argues in his book that developing nations were effectively neutralized politically, had their wealth gaps driven wider and economies crippled in the long run.”

And then it hit me and the scales fell from my eyes. The story of higher education in 21st century America is nothing more than the Hitman narrative playing out in a different context. The uneducated students who are misspending their youth by foregoing a misspent youth for a lottery’s chance at attending an Ivy are Perkins’ underdeveloped countries. The universities and the banks which are reaping huge financial returns from the desperate students who can never hope to repay their student loan debt are Perkins’ World Bank and USAID. The political, social and financial elites are the United States in Perkins’ tale who can and will exert leverage on the wage slave graduates in order to effectively neutralize them both politically and economically. And we parents, who have bought into the hype and the promise of success that is supposed to flow magically to our kids from a blue chip educational pedigree, we are Perkins. We are economic hitmen.

I should have seen it before now, but I just didn’t. Up until this moment, I dutifully played the role expected of me by cheerleading for my kids to go the best college they could get into, even if that meant “investing in their future” by loading up on obscene amounts student loan debt. With the assistance of Zinn, McKenna and Perkins, however, I have come to realize the folly and danger of this way of thinking. As a result, I will no longer be complicit. I will no longer propagate the lie that a college degree is worth any investment regardless of amount. I will no longer be an economic hit man for the student loan industry.

Innocence and Anger

So, did you happen to catch the recent headlines about the case involving James Bain? Mr. Bain is 54 years old. Mr. Bain is black. In 1974 Mr. Bain was convicted of kidnapping and raping a 9-year old boy and sent to prison to serve a life sentence for that crime. Mr. Bain served 35 years of his sentence. Then, on December 17, 2009 Mr. Bain walked out of prison a free man after DNA evidence conclusively proved that he was innocent. The DNA evidence did not prove that Mr. Bain was “not guilty” mind you. It proved that he was innocent.

Since the advent of DNA testing technology, Mr. Bain has been lobbying justice officials to conduct genetic testing on samples taken from the crime scene. At least four times Mr. Bain petitioned to have the genetic evidence tested. At each and every turn, these efforts were rebuffed by justice officials aided by the courts. Rebuffed by those very same people whose supposed mission in life is a “search for the truth.” Rebuffed until the Innocence Project took up his cause.

Mr. Bain was a 19 year old kid when he was sent away to be forgotten. Now he’s going home to see his mama as a graying pre-senior. He’s going home to resume his interrupted studies in reading and writing. He’s going home to try to re-learn how to live his life. He’s going home to pick up whatever pieces of that life remain. But he’s not going home angry.

Mr. Bain has lost 3½ decades of his life. Thirty-five fucking years! How does he make up for that? How do we make it up to him? What can we possible say to Mr. Bain to make amends for our crimes against him? “I’m sorry Mr. Bain?” “You’re a free man Mr. Bain?” “Good Luck Mr. Bain?” That’s what we say to make ourselves feel better so that we can pretend we’re contrite and then hurry and forget about the whole sordid affair. That may be salve for our guilty souls, but it just doesn’t seem anywhere near adequate the dress the irreparable wound we have inflicted.

I’ve heard it said that these types of cases prove that the system works. To the contrary, it proves that there is something seriously wrong with the system. A system that deprives an innocent person of their liberty for 3½ decades isn’t working. A system that refuses to dispassionately and objectively conduct post-conviction DNA analyses to guard against the possibility of a wrongful conviction because of a failure to adhere to procedural niceties isn’t working. A system that allows police and prosecutors to ignore and/or withhold exonerating evidence for no purpose other than to pad conviction ratios isn’t working. A system that relies upon subtle racism in order to convict a disproportionate number of black and brown men isn’t working. A system that is completely unresponsive to those with lesser or no financial means isn’t working. And a system that allows us to close our eyes to this travesty and go on living smug in the belief that our ways are irreproachable isn’t working.

I can’t wrap my mind around Mr. Bain’s lack of anger. Perhaps after thirty-five years of pain, suffering, and isolation his anger has simply been drained from him. Or perhaps he’s just a bigger man than I. Whichever it is, he need not worry. I’ll volunteer to be angry enough for the both of us.

Visit the Innocence Project on-line at http://www.innocenceproject.org

Siriusly Affirming the Stereotype

Sirius Satellite and XM Radio are two of the great inventions of the modern era and a much needed antidote to the constant inanity, blather and hucksterism that is A.M. and F.M. radio. After all, where else can you get the Grateful Dead twenty-four hours a day without interruption?

Despite the bewildering array of options that Sirius and XM offer, I guess I’m a bit of a creature of habit because I rarely venture beyond the 46-57 range on XM. But the other day, I broke out of that mold and went on a quest for new experiences. Listening to the same genre of music day after day was getting stale and I wanted to see if I could broaden my horizons.

So I’m cruising through the channels- Hip Hop/R & B, Jazz and Blues, Classical, Dance and Electronica, Latin- when I stumbled upon OutQ Radio (Sirius 109/ XM 98). OutQ is satellite radio’s Gay and Lesbian channel. It promotes itself as “News, Information and Entertainment for the Gay and Lesbian Community,” Gay radio, who knew?

I don’t fall into OutQ’s demographic, but I was intrigued enough by the concept of Gay radio to listen in (as long as I could stand to as it turned out) on my drive home. I must have hit upon the “Entertainment” portion of OutQ’s programming as what I heard certainly didn’t qualify under any objective standard as “News” or “Information.”

The program that was being broadcast was a show called “Derek and Romaine.” Derek is a gay man; Romaine is his female counterpart. The riveting subject of their show was a lesbian sorority at the University of Pennsylvania and their guest was the President of that sorority. Without getting into the whole “gay issue,” it was dreadfully dull radio made worse by Romaine’s litany of inane comments and constant, insecure snickering.

So before I go into my tirade, here’s the obligatory disclaimer. Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass if a man wants to be with another man or a woman wants to be with another woman. It’s no skin off of my wiener either way. In fact, I find the whole raging debate about gay rights to be pretty silly. Gays should have the same rights that everyone else in this country enjoys. Period.

But here’s the thing that is really annoying. Gays and lesbians are constantly preaching to the heterosexual world about the evils of stereotyping them while they continually play to the stereotype. OutQ in general, and Derek and Romaine in particular, are perfect examples. Specifically, Derek spoke with a pronounced and affected lisp. Who really speaks like that? Damn few people that I have encountered unless they were gay men trying mighty hard to advertise to the world their gayness. Romaine, on the other hand, seemed fixated on the hook-up prospects that a lesbian sorority would afford and constantly pushed the discussion in that direction. She would ask with baited breath (and apparent envy) about who was banging whom and the intimate details about the gay sexual escapades of the sisters.

Can these guys get any less clear on the concept? We're told all gay men don’t prance around speaking with an effeminate lisp. But then “Gay radio” broadcasts a show hosted by a gay guy who, true to the stereotype, speaks with a lisp. We’re also told that the gay culture is not necessarily centered upon gay sex. But here again is OutQ, the satellite radio voice of the gay community, broadcasting a show the focus of which was, true to stereotype once again, lesbian sex.

So here’s some unsolicited advice to the gay and lesbian community: if you want people to get beyond the stereotypes commonly associated with gays and lesbians, stop perpetuating those stereotypes. Do some self-policing of your community. Stop acting in a manner consistent with the gay archetype. Otherwise, you will never get beyond the stereotypes. Siriusly.

Anonymous Sniping- The New Blood Sport

So when did it become fashionable to revel in others’ misery? With the current economic downturn, there have been quite a few stories in the media lately about folks who have fallen on hard times. Perhaps unlike the past, a good number of these people are credentialed and hardworking individuals who are either victims of corporate “down-sizing” or simply got caught long when the real estate market turned. Just like the past, some of these folks also chose their lot in life or got there by making objectively bad decisions. Either way, the end result is the same.

Just the other day, I read a piece in the local rag about a couple from California’s Central Valley who are flirting with homelessness. According to the story, this couple had previously owned a restaurant together with three homes, one of which was their primary residence and two of which were investment properties. Their restaurant was recently shuttered when the building which they leased was found to have numerous code violations that the owner either couldn’t, or refused to cure. That event, coupled with the radical devaluation of their real estate, has left this couple competing with the bums for bottles, cans, plastic bottles and handouts.

Anyway, the website that was carrying this story has a Comments function where readers can log in, mostly anonymously, and post their thoughts. Back in the old days, when we got our news from actual papers, I always brushed by the headlines, the local news, the business section, even the sports page and went straight to the Letters to the Editor on the Op-Ed page. That was where the real action was. That was where society bore its soul. And that was where you could get the unsanitized truth along with a hearty dose of laughter, incredulity, anger and more.

Letters to the Editor are still an integral part of newspapers and periodicals, but the Comments function on websites is quickly usurping the old-fashion letter. The difference is this: anonymity. Unlike the letters of old, the Comments function on most websites is the Wild West. You can post virtually anything you want behind the safety of a silly screen name without consequence. This is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in that people tend to speak their mind more freely; it’s a curse in that people tend to speak their mind more freely. That why the Comments section is the first place I go when I visit a website.

So I’m reading the comments that people have left about the couple from the Central Valley who lost their restaurant and are now employed as full time recyclers. And the comments are shockingly nasty. Predictably, a large number of the commenters immediately jumped to the conclusion that this couple was simply lazy and yearned to be on the public dole. Another sizeable segment of the comments was devoted to the belief that these people were getting exactly what they deserved because owning three homes was obviously well beyond their means. Someone even suggested that since this couple failed to cure the building code deficiencies that were the building owner’s responsibility they were actually at fault for the closure of their restaurant. Compassion and understanding for this couple’s misfortune was in short supply. Arrogance, smugness and condemnation were not.

Beyond that, I noticed a huge disconnect between what many of these commenters advocated for this couple, and the bases of their criticism of them. As those in a more secure position are apt to do, many commenters suggested that if this particular couple only had enough entrepreneurial gumption, spirit and drive (presumably just like the person making the comment), then they would either not be in the position in which they found themselves, or they could easily navigate their way back to success. At the same time, these very same commenters griped about the previous financial risks this couple took by owning a restaurant and multiple properties. In other words, they first criticized this couple for being too entrepreneurial. They then turned right around and criticized them for not being entrepreneurial enough.

At the end of the day, the whole “discussion” was ridiculous and obviously wasn’t about whether this couple was hyper- or hypo-entrepreneurial. It was about taking shots. It was about kicking someone while they are down in order to make oneself feel superior. It was criticism for the sheer sake of criticism. And commenters were literally reveling in the nastiness and absurdity of the whole sordid affair.

So come one and all and join the fun. It’s our new blood sport. And the really great thing about it is that you can bludgeon someone senseless without getting all that messy blood on your hands. And it’s available for your entertainment and viewing pleasure 24/7/365 on any of a number of locations on the World Wide Web. Enjoy!

Common Sense Goes to the Dogs

Last weekend, a much anticipated “dog park” opened in my fair city to considerable fanfare by municipal leaders and gushing enthusiasm by dog lovers. A “dog park” as you well know, is one of those rare places in society where a person can allow his dog to roam free, unleashed from the stern and condemning eye of a paranoid public. Dog parks were unheard of 20 years ago, but have become de rigueur given our incessant quest for a society completely devoid of anything unsafe, unsanitary or unsavory. They have become a necessary evil because there is absolutely no place else an unleashed dog can go in society without risk of his master receiving a citation.

The extent to which we have taken our idiocy can be seen on any given weekend in the hills and foothills of Southern California. If you take a hike or go out for a bike ride, you will come across several folks enjoying the unstructured wide open spaces with their canine companions. Invariably, however, those companions will be tethered to their masters by a leash. Worse, their masters will be carrying a little plastic baggie full of dog poo like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Aside from the more humiliating aspects of packing around a little baggie full of dog feces, and ignoring for the moment the embarrassing daintiness with which most owners carry their pet’s poo, the whole notion of picking up poo where the deer and coyote roam is absurd. Poo is poo after all, yet I don’t see any concerted effort underway by the poo patrol to hit the trails with little blue baggies to clean up after the undomesticated critters that foul the very same trails trod upon by dogs.

My God, where did we go wrong? I think it must have started with sweaters for dogs and then taken off from there. And the sad thing is nobody seems to think anything of it. We seem to have adopted a collective mind-set that reaching down and picking up a steaming pile of shit, or harnessing a dog in the wild, is normal, adult behavior. Worse, actually, those who think otherwise are viewed as deviants. So call me a deviant if you must, but we’re sliding down a slippery slope here. If we don’t stop and regain our senses now, the next thing you know men will begin to abandon Retrievers, Labs and other manly breeds and start prancing around like Paris with their cute and clothed Chihuahuas. Oh, whoops, too late…