Thursday, October 17, 2013
The Octopus That Almost Ate Seattle
In the months leading up to the hunt, Dylan Mayer trained twice a week in his parents’ swimming pool, asking friends to attack him, splay their arms and grab him, drag him to the surface and shove him below it, pull off his mask, snatch his regulator, time his recovery. By last Halloween, he was ready, and as the light began to fade that afternoon, the broad-shouldered 19-year-old jumped into a red Ford pickup truck with his buddy and drove some 40 minutes from Maple Valley, Wash., to West Seattle. They arrived at Alki Beach around 4 p.m., put on their wet suits and ambled into Cove 2. Then they slipped into Elliott Bay, the Space Needle punctuating the city line in the distance like an inverted exclamation point.
Under the dark water, the teenagers looked around with the help of a diving light. At 45 feet, they passed a sunken ship, the Honey Bear, and at 85 feet, beneath the buoy line, they saw further evidence of the former marina — steel beams, pilings and sunken watercrafts. Marine life thrived in this haven of junk, and for this reason, Cove 2 was a popular dive site. According to the permit he had just purchased at Walmart, Mayer was allowed to catch this sea life and cook it, which is exactly what he set out to do. He wasn’t much of a chef, but he had experience foraging for his dinner. Mayer had attended a high school known for its Future Farmers of America program; he also knew how to slaughter cows and castrate bulls. Now he was going to community college, where he was asked to draw something from nature. He figured that he might as well eat it too. And as he scanned the bay, he could already imagine searing the marine morsels on high heat and popping them, rare and unctuous, into his mouth. He soon spotted his prey. “That’s a big [expletive] octopus,” he scribbled on his underwater slate.
The giant Pacific octopus was curled inside a rock piling, both its color and texture altered by camouflage. Mayer judged it to be his size, about six feet, and wondered if he could take it on alone. He lunged at the octopus, grabbing one of its eight arms. It slipped slimily between his fingers, its suckers feeling and tasting his hand. He reached for it again, and again it retreated. Able to squeeze its body through a space as small as a lemon, the octopus was unlikely to succumb to his grip. He poked it with his finger and watched it turn brighter shades of red, until finally, it sprang forward and revealed itself to be a nine-foot wheel charging through the water.
The octopus grabbed Mayer where it could, encircling his thigh, spiraling his torso, its some 1,600 suckers — varying in size from a peppercorn to a pepper mill — latching onto his wet suit and face. It pulled Mayer’s regulator out of his mouth. His adrenaline rising, he punched the creature, and began a wrestling match that would last 25 minutes.
Eventually, he managed to pull the animal to the surface, where a number of divers couldn’t help noticing a teenager punching an 80-pound octopus. As they approached, Mayer freaked out. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, sucker marks ringing his face. “Maybe we shouldn’t have done this.” But it was too late. He dragged his kill ashore, where a few bystanders, in disbelief, took his picture and threatened to report him. Lugging the octopus to the red truck, Mayer cited his permit. But the divers kept taking pictures. That night, as Mayer butchered the octopus for dinner, they posted the photos online.
In a city finely attuned to both the ethics of food sourcing and poster-worthy animal causes (the spotted owl, the killer whale and marbled murrelet among them), Mayer’s exploits became an instant cause célèbre. On Nov. 1 and 2, Seattle’s competing news stations reported the octopus hunt. The next day, The Seattle Times ran the story on the front page. On Web forums, Seattleites tracked down the teenager’s name and address through the clues in the photos: the truck’s license plate, the high school named on Mayer’s sweatshirt and the inspection sticker affixed to his tank. “I hope this sick [expletive] gets tangled in a gill net next time he dives and thus removes a potential budding sociopath before it graduates from invertebrates to mammals,” read one typical comment, which received 52 “thumbs-ups.” Around the same time, Scott Lundy, one of the men who had confronted Mayer in Cove 2, issued a “Save the G.P.O.” petition to ban octopus harvesting from the beach and examine the practice statewide. By the next day, he had collected 1,105 signatures.
Across Elliott Bay, at the same time, a much subtler food sourcer was at work. Chef Matthew Dillon was building his highly anticipated new restaurant, Bar Sajor (pronounced “sigh-your”) in Pioneer Square. After the success of his first, Sitka & Spruce, Dillon, 39, earned an unsought reputation as the consummate locavore in a city filled with them. He cultivated rare herbs and foraged for mushrooms in the foothills of the Cascades; whereas many Brooklyn restaurants are only now coming around to wood sorrel and perilla, Dillon has been cooking with them since 1995. At Bar Sajor, there would be a rotisserie and a wood-fire oven, but no gas range; Dillon would make his own yogurt and vinegars, ferment his own vegetables and change his menu every day depending on what looked fresh and interesting — including, as it happened, giant Pacific octopus.
So as the “Save the G.P.O.” campaign raged this spring, the city raved about Dillon’s octopus salad. In The Stranger, the influential alt-weekly magazine, Bethany Jean Clement described it as having “a restrained oceangoing flavor, a bouncy but tender texture — sometimes a little chewy but never rubbery,” plated that day with “a thick walnut sauce, dill for freshness, and an oozing egg yolk for vivid creaminess and color.” The Seattle Times also heaped praise. “Bar Sajor Is Matt Dillon’s Finest Yet,” ran one Friday headline, just a week after another: “New Hunting Rules Likely for Puget Sound Octopus.” Whenever the salad appeared on the menu, it sold out. Inevitably this posed a most uncomfortable question for Seattle’s food community: should it save the giant Pacific octopus or just eat it?
by Marnie Hanel, NY Times | Read more:
Images: Mark Saiget and Kyle Johnson
Under the dark water, the teenagers looked around with the help of a diving light. At 45 feet, they passed a sunken ship, the Honey Bear, and at 85 feet, beneath the buoy line, they saw further evidence of the former marina — steel beams, pilings and sunken watercrafts. Marine life thrived in this haven of junk, and for this reason, Cove 2 was a popular dive site. According to the permit he had just purchased at Walmart, Mayer was allowed to catch this sea life and cook it, which is exactly what he set out to do. He wasn’t much of a chef, but he had experience foraging for his dinner. Mayer had attended a high school known for its Future Farmers of America program; he also knew how to slaughter cows and castrate bulls. Now he was going to community college, where he was asked to draw something from nature. He figured that he might as well eat it too. And as he scanned the bay, he could already imagine searing the marine morsels on high heat and popping them, rare and unctuous, into his mouth. He soon spotted his prey. “That’s a big [expletive] octopus,” he scribbled on his underwater slate.The giant Pacific octopus was curled inside a rock piling, both its color and texture altered by camouflage. Mayer judged it to be his size, about six feet, and wondered if he could take it on alone. He lunged at the octopus, grabbing one of its eight arms. It slipped slimily between his fingers, its suckers feeling and tasting his hand. He reached for it again, and again it retreated. Able to squeeze its body through a space as small as a lemon, the octopus was unlikely to succumb to his grip. He poked it with his finger and watched it turn brighter shades of red, until finally, it sprang forward and revealed itself to be a nine-foot wheel charging through the water.
The octopus grabbed Mayer where it could, encircling his thigh, spiraling his torso, its some 1,600 suckers — varying in size from a peppercorn to a pepper mill — latching onto his wet suit and face. It pulled Mayer’s regulator out of his mouth. His adrenaline rising, he punched the creature, and began a wrestling match that would last 25 minutes.
Eventually, he managed to pull the animal to the surface, where a number of divers couldn’t help noticing a teenager punching an 80-pound octopus. As they approached, Mayer freaked out. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, sucker marks ringing his face. “Maybe we shouldn’t have done this.” But it was too late. He dragged his kill ashore, where a few bystanders, in disbelief, took his picture and threatened to report him. Lugging the octopus to the red truck, Mayer cited his permit. But the divers kept taking pictures. That night, as Mayer butchered the octopus for dinner, they posted the photos online.
In a city finely attuned to both the ethics of food sourcing and poster-worthy animal causes (the spotted owl, the killer whale and marbled murrelet among them), Mayer’s exploits became an instant cause célèbre. On Nov. 1 and 2, Seattle’s competing news stations reported the octopus hunt. The next day, The Seattle Times ran the story on the front page. On Web forums, Seattleites tracked down the teenager’s name and address through the clues in the photos: the truck’s license plate, the high school named on Mayer’s sweatshirt and the inspection sticker affixed to his tank. “I hope this sick [expletive] gets tangled in a gill net next time he dives and thus removes a potential budding sociopath before it graduates from invertebrates to mammals,” read one typical comment, which received 52 “thumbs-ups.” Around the same time, Scott Lundy, one of the men who had confronted Mayer in Cove 2, issued a “Save the G.P.O.” petition to ban octopus harvesting from the beach and examine the practice statewide. By the next day, he had collected 1,105 signatures.
Across Elliott Bay, at the same time, a much subtler food sourcer was at work. Chef Matthew Dillon was building his highly anticipated new restaurant, Bar Sajor (pronounced “sigh-your”) in Pioneer Square. After the success of his first, Sitka & Spruce, Dillon, 39, earned an unsought reputation as the consummate locavore in a city filled with them. He cultivated rare herbs and foraged for mushrooms in the foothills of the Cascades; whereas many Brooklyn restaurants are only now coming around to wood sorrel and perilla, Dillon has been cooking with them since 1995. At Bar Sajor, there would be a rotisserie and a wood-fire oven, but no gas range; Dillon would make his own yogurt and vinegars, ferment his own vegetables and change his menu every day depending on what looked fresh and interesting — including, as it happened, giant Pacific octopus.So as the “Save the G.P.O.” campaign raged this spring, the city raved about Dillon’s octopus salad. In The Stranger, the influential alt-weekly magazine, Bethany Jean Clement described it as having “a restrained oceangoing flavor, a bouncy but tender texture — sometimes a little chewy but never rubbery,” plated that day with “a thick walnut sauce, dill for freshness, and an oozing egg yolk for vivid creaminess and color.” The Seattle Times also heaped praise. “Bar Sajor Is Matt Dillon’s Finest Yet,” ran one Friday headline, just a week after another: “New Hunting Rules Likely for Puget Sound Octopus.” Whenever the salad appeared on the menu, it sold out. Inevitably this posed a most uncomfortable question for Seattle’s food community: should it save the giant Pacific octopus or just eat it?
by Marnie Hanel, NY Times | Read more:
Images: Mark Saiget and Kyle Johnson
A Piece of the Action
Imagine having acquired a financial interest in LeBron James, Peyton Manning or Roger Federer early in their careers.
A new company wants to make this fantasy a reality for the next generation of superstars.
On Thursday, Fantex Holdings will announce the opening of a marketplace for investors to buy and sell interests in professional athletes. The start-up, backed by prominent executives from Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the sports world, plans to create stocks tied to the value and performance of an athlete’s brand.
It will have its debut with an initial public offering for a minority stake in Arian Foster, the Pro Bowl running back of the Houston Texans. Buying shares in the deal will give investors an interest in a stock linked to Mr. Foster’s future economic success, which includes the value of his playing contracts, endorsements and appearance fees.
Buck French, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said Fantex hoped to sign additional players in football and other sports, as well as expand into other talent areas like pop singers and Hollywood actors.
“Fantex is bringing sports and business together in a way never previously thought possible,” Mr. French said. “We have built a powerful platform to help build the brands of athletes and celebrities.” (...)
Nothing about Fantex is make believe. As of Thursday, investors can register with the company, finance their accounts with cash and place orders for shares in the Foster I.P.O. The offering plans to sell about $10.5 million worth of stock, representing a 20 percent interest in Mr. Foster’s future brand income. Mr. Foster will pocket $10 million; the balance will cover the costs of the deal.
Unlike many esoteric Wall Street investments that are available only to so-called high-net-worth individuals, the Fantex offering is available to United States residents 18 years and older, with a minimum investment of $50. There are some restrictions. For instance, investors with annual incomes of $50,000 to $100,000 may only invest up to $7,500 in the offering. Individual state securities laws might also place further limits and who can invest, Mr. French said.
Fantex will market the Foster I.P.O. in the coming weeks, offering 1.06 million shares at $10 a share. No one can own more than 1 percent of the offering, ensuring that it is available to a wide number of investors. If demand is less than the number of shares being offered, Fantex may cancel the deal.
by Peter Lattman and Steve Eder, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Eric Gay/Associated Press
A new company wants to make this fantasy a reality for the next generation of superstars.On Thursday, Fantex Holdings will announce the opening of a marketplace for investors to buy and sell interests in professional athletes. The start-up, backed by prominent executives from Silicon Valley, Wall Street and the sports world, plans to create stocks tied to the value and performance of an athlete’s brand.
It will have its debut with an initial public offering for a minority stake in Arian Foster, the Pro Bowl running back of the Houston Texans. Buying shares in the deal will give investors an interest in a stock linked to Mr. Foster’s future economic success, which includes the value of his playing contracts, endorsements and appearance fees.
Buck French, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said Fantex hoped to sign additional players in football and other sports, as well as expand into other talent areas like pop singers and Hollywood actors.
“Fantex is bringing sports and business together in a way never previously thought possible,” Mr. French said. “We have built a powerful platform to help build the brands of athletes and celebrities.” (...)
Nothing about Fantex is make believe. As of Thursday, investors can register with the company, finance their accounts with cash and place orders for shares in the Foster I.P.O. The offering plans to sell about $10.5 million worth of stock, representing a 20 percent interest in Mr. Foster’s future brand income. Mr. Foster will pocket $10 million; the balance will cover the costs of the deal.
Unlike many esoteric Wall Street investments that are available only to so-called high-net-worth individuals, the Fantex offering is available to United States residents 18 years and older, with a minimum investment of $50. There are some restrictions. For instance, investors with annual incomes of $50,000 to $100,000 may only invest up to $7,500 in the offering. Individual state securities laws might also place further limits and who can invest, Mr. French said.
Fantex will market the Foster I.P.O. in the coming weeks, offering 1.06 million shares at $10 a share. No one can own more than 1 percent of the offering, ensuring that it is available to a wide number of investors. If demand is less than the number of shares being offered, Fantex may cancel the deal.
by Peter Lattman and Steve Eder, NY Times | Read more:
Deer
Not asking for much kept me safe. There was nothing else to recommend the habit, just that. Books, music, the heat and smell of a fire in the wood stove—those were company and comfort. I didn’t go looking for more or expect it to come for me. I was close to 40 when Carrie held out her hand and we began our slow dance. She gave me time to feel the rhythm and follow it, to be grateful for a gift.To expect another would have been greed, but I never said so to her.
When Nathan came, I loved him in the same whole-hearted, thankful way I loved his mother, perhaps because there was no one before her and there was no other way I knew. When he was asleep on my shoulder and it felt right and natural to have him there, I put away my suspicion that Carrie and I tempted our luck. I forgot for a while that happiness is fragile, that life is made of glass. Maybe I chose to forget those things or needed a rest from knowing them. Once I was reminded, I never forgot again.
Sorrow was an old acquaintance by the day I lingered at the edge of a cemetery and watched strangers put my wife in the ground and refill the rest of an ugly hole with nothing better than the earth that came from it. When they took all the flowers from people who loved her and laid them on the dirt, what I saw from a distance was a quilt Carrie sewed by hand and filled with down and spread over a bed that we were meant to share.
Nathan was there too, far enough away during the service that everyone knew not to talk to him, not even if—for once—they wanted to be kind. He didn’t want talking any more than I did. I did the bare minimum I was supposed to and told Carrie’s sister I wouldn’t be returning to my own house to eat and drink and mill around in little groups of people, as uncomfortable to be there as I would have been. I’ve never cared to see people or honor an occasion that way and I wasn’t going to do it without Carrie or even because of her.
When the gravediggers climbed back into their truck and drove away, Nathan and I were left to stare at one another across rows of polished granite, gray or pink, until he turned and disappeared behind a tall hedge and I heard the engine of his old pickup turn over. I didn’t know where he was going. I didn’t see him again for days.
by James Pouilliard, Boston Review | Read more:
Image: Jacob Dimiter
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
The Bear Came Over the Mountain
Fiona lived in her parents’ house, in the town where she and Grant went to university. It was a big, bay-windowed house that seemed to Grant both luxurious and disorderly, with rugs crooked on the floors and cup rings bitten into the table varnish. Her mother was Icelandic—a powerful woman with a froth of white hair and indignant far-left politics. The father was an important cardiologist, revered around the hospital but happily subservient at home, where he would listen to his wife’s strange tirades with an absentminded smile. Fiona had her own little car and a pile of cashmere sweaters, but she wasn’t in a sorority, and her mother’s political activity was probably the reason. Not that she cared. Sororities were a joke to her, and so was politics—though she liked to play “The Four Insurgent Generals” on the phonograph, and sometimes also the “Internationale,” very loud, if there was a guest she thought she could make nervous. A curly-haired gloomy-looking foreigner was courting her—she said he was a Visigoth—and so were two or three quite respectable and uneasy young interns. She made fun of them all and of Grant as well. She would drolly repeat some of his small-town phrases. He thought maybe she was joking when she proposed to him, on a cold bright day on the beach at Port Stanley. Sand was stinging their faces and the waves delivered crashing loads of gravel at their feet.
“Do you think it would be fun—” Fiona shouted. “Do you think it would be fun if we got married?”
He took her up on it, he shouted yes. He wanted never to be away from her. She had the spark of life.
He took her up on it, he shouted yes. He wanted never to be away from her. She had the spark of life.
***
Just before they left their house Fiona noticed a mark on the kitchen floor. It came from the cheap black house shoes she had been wearing earlier in the day.
“I thought they’d quit doing that,” she said in a tone of ordinary annoyance and perplexity, rubbing at the gray smear that looked as if it had been made by a greasy crayon.
She remarked that she’d never have to do this again, since she wasn’t taking those shoes with her.
“I guess I’ll be dressed up all the time,” she said. “Or semi-dressed up. It’ll be sort of like in a hotel.”
She rinsed out the rag she’d been using and hung it on the rack inside the door under the sink. Then she put on her golden-brown, fur-collared ski jacket, over a white turtleneck sweater and tailored fawn slacks. She was a tall, narrow-shouldered woman, seventy years old but still upright and trim, with long legs and long feet, delicate wrists and ankles, and tiny, almost comical-looking ears. Her hair that was as light as milkweed fluff had gone from pale blond to white somehow without Grant’s noticing exactly when, and she still wore it down to her shoulders, as her mother had done. (That was the thing that had alarmed Grant’s own mother, a small-town widow who worked as a doctor’s receptionist. The long white hair on Fiona’s mother, even more than the state of the house, had told her all she needed to know about attitudes and politics.) But otherwise Fiona, with her fine bones and small sapphire eyes, was nothing like her mother. She had a slightly crooked mouth, which she emphasized now with red lipstick—usually the last thing she did before she left the house.
She looked just like herself on this day—direct and vague as in fact she was, sweet and ironic.
“I thought they’d quit doing that,” she said in a tone of ordinary annoyance and perplexity, rubbing at the gray smear that looked as if it had been made by a greasy crayon.
She remarked that she’d never have to do this again, since she wasn’t taking those shoes with her.
“I guess I’ll be dressed up all the time,” she said. “Or semi-dressed up. It’ll be sort of like in a hotel.”
She rinsed out the rag she’d been using and hung it on the rack inside the door under the sink. Then she put on her golden-brown, fur-collared ski jacket, over a white turtleneck sweater and tailored fawn slacks. She was a tall, narrow-shouldered woman, seventy years old but still upright and trim, with long legs and long feet, delicate wrists and ankles, and tiny, almost comical-looking ears. Her hair that was as light as milkweed fluff had gone from pale blond to white somehow without Grant’s noticing exactly when, and she still wore it down to her shoulders, as her mother had done. (That was the thing that had alarmed Grant’s own mother, a small-town widow who worked as a doctor’s receptionist. The long white hair on Fiona’s mother, even more than the state of the house, had told her all she needed to know about attitudes and politics.) But otherwise Fiona, with her fine bones and small sapphire eyes, was nothing like her mother. She had a slightly crooked mouth, which she emphasized now with red lipstick—usually the last thing she did before she left the house.
She looked just like herself on this day—direct and vague as in fact she was, sweet and ironic.
***
Over a year ago, Grant had started noticing so many little yellow notes stuck up all over the house. That was not entirely new. Fiona had always written things down—the title of a book she’d heard mentioned on the radio or the jobs she wanted to make sure she got done that day. Even her morning schedule was written down. He found it mystifying and touching in its precision: “7 a.m. yoga. 7:30–7:45 teeth face hair. 7:45–8:15 walk. 8:15 Grant and breakfast.”
The new notes were different. Stuck onto the kitchen drawers—Cutlery, Dish-towels, Knives. Couldn’t she just open the drawers and see what was inside?
Worse things were coming. She went to town and phoned Grant from a booth to ask him how to drive home. She went for her usual walk across the field into the woods and came home by the fence line—a very long way round. She said that she’d counted on fences always taking you somewhere.
It was hard to figure out. She’d said that about fences as if it were a joke, and she had remembered the phone number without any trouble.
“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” she said. “I expect I’m just losing my mind.”
He asked if she had been taking sleeping pills.
“If I am I don’t remember,” she said. Then she said she was sorry to sound so flippant. “I’m sure I haven’t been taking anything. Maybe I should be. Maybe vitamins.”
Vitamins didn’t help. She would stand in doorways trying to figure out where she was going. She forgot to turn on the burner under the vegetables or put water in the coffeemaker. She asked Grant when they’d moved to this house.
“Was it last year or the year before?”
“It was twelve years ago,” he said.
“That’s shocking.”
“She’s always been a bit like this,” Grant said to the doctor. He tried without success to explain how Fiona’s surprise and apologies now seemed somehow like routine courtesy, not quite concealing a private amusement. As if she’d stumbled on some unexpected adventure. Or begun playing a game that she hoped he would catch on to.
“Yes, well,” the doctor said. “It might be selective at first. We don’t know, do we? Till we see the pattern of the deterioration, we really can’t say.”
In a while it hardly mattered what label was put on it. Fiona, who no longer went shopping alone, disappeared from the supermarket while Grant had his back turned. A policeman picked her up as she was walking down the middle of the road, blocks away. He asked her name and she answered readily. Then he asked her the name of the Prime Minister.
“If you don’t know that, young man, you really shouldn’t be in such a responsible job.”
He laughed. But then she made the mistake of asking if he’d seen Boris and Natasha. These were the now dead Russian wolfhounds she had adopted many years ago, as a favor to a friend, then devoted herself to for the rest of their lives. Her taking them over might have coincided with the discovery that she was not likely to have children. Something about her tubes being blocked, or twisted—Grant could not remember now. He had always avoided thinking about all that female apparatus. Or it might have been after her mother died. The dogs’ long legs and silky hair, their narrow, gentle, intransigent faces made a fine match for her when she took them out for walks. And Grant himself, in those days, landing his first job at the university (his father-in-law’s money welcome there in spite of the political taint), might have seemed to some people to have been picked up on another of Fiona’s eccentric whims, and groomed and tended and favored—though, fortunately, he didn’t understand this until much later.
The new notes were different. Stuck onto the kitchen drawers—Cutlery, Dish-towels, Knives. Couldn’t she just open the drawers and see what was inside?
Worse things were coming. She went to town and phoned Grant from a booth to ask him how to drive home. She went for her usual walk across the field into the woods and came home by the fence line—a very long way round. She said that she’d counted on fences always taking you somewhere.
It was hard to figure out. She’d said that about fences as if it were a joke, and she had remembered the phone number without any trouble.
“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” she said. “I expect I’m just losing my mind.”
He asked if she had been taking sleeping pills.
“If I am I don’t remember,” she said. Then she said she was sorry to sound so flippant. “I’m sure I haven’t been taking anything. Maybe I should be. Maybe vitamins.”
Vitamins didn’t help. She would stand in doorways trying to figure out where she was going. She forgot to turn on the burner under the vegetables or put water in the coffeemaker. She asked Grant when they’d moved to this house.
“Was it last year or the year before?”
“It was twelve years ago,” he said.
“That’s shocking.”
“She’s always been a bit like this,” Grant said to the doctor. He tried without success to explain how Fiona’s surprise and apologies now seemed somehow like routine courtesy, not quite concealing a private amusement. As if she’d stumbled on some unexpected adventure. Or begun playing a game that she hoped he would catch on to.
“Yes, well,” the doctor said. “It might be selective at first. We don’t know, do we? Till we see the pattern of the deterioration, we really can’t say.”
In a while it hardly mattered what label was put on it. Fiona, who no longer went shopping alone, disappeared from the supermarket while Grant had his back turned. A policeman picked her up as she was walking down the middle of the road, blocks away. He asked her name and she answered readily. Then he asked her the name of the Prime Minister.
“If you don’t know that, young man, you really shouldn’t be in such a responsible job.”
He laughed. But then she made the mistake of asking if he’d seen Boris and Natasha. These were the now dead Russian wolfhounds she had adopted many years ago, as a favor to a friend, then devoted herself to for the rest of their lives. Her taking them over might have coincided with the discovery that she was not likely to have children. Something about her tubes being blocked, or twisted—Grant could not remember now. He had always avoided thinking about all that female apparatus. Or it might have been after her mother died. The dogs’ long legs and silky hair, their narrow, gentle, intransigent faces made a fine match for her when she took them out for walks. And Grant himself, in those days, landing his first job at the university (his father-in-law’s money welcome there in spite of the political taint), might have seemed to some people to have been picked up on another of Fiona’s eccentric whims, and groomed and tended and favored—though, fortunately, he didn’t understand this until much later.
by Alice Munro, The New Yorker | Read more:
Image: Bryan Adams
Should You Eat Chicken?
I tell this friend about the latest salmonella outbreak, and she asks me, “Should I stop eating chicken?”
It’s a good question. In recent weeks, salmonella on chicken has officially sickened more than 300 people (the Centers for Disease Control says there are 25 illnesses for every one reported, so maybe 7,500) and hospitalized more than 40 percent of them, in part because antibiotics aren’t working. Industry’s reaction has been predictably disappointing: the chicken from the processors in question — Foster Farms — is still being shipped into the market. Regulators’ responses have been limited: the same chicken in question is still being sold.
Until the Food Safety and Inspection Service (F.S.I.S.) of the Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) can get its act together and start assuring us that chicken is safe, I’d be wary.
This is not a shutdown issue, but a “We care more about industry than we do about consumers” issue. Think that’s an exaggeration? Read this mission statement: “The Food Safety and Inspection Service is the public health agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for ensuring that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.” What part of “safe” am I misreading?
We should all steer clear at least of Foster Farms chicken, or any of the other brands produced in that company’s California plants, although they’re not all labeled such. Costco pulled nearly 9,000 rotisserie chickens from a store south of San Francisco last week, after finding contamination -- this is after cooking, mind you -- with a strain of salmonella Heidelberg, which is virulent, nasty and resistant to some commonly used antibiotics.
In sum: 1. There’s salmonella on chicken (some of which, by the way, is labeled “organic”). 2. It’s making many people sick, and some antibiotics aren’t working. 3. Production continues in the plants linked to the outbreak. 4. Despite warnings by many federal agencies (including itself!), the U.S.D.A. has done nothing to get these chickens out of the marketplace. 5. Even Costco can’t seem to make these chickens safe to eat. (...)
To its credit, Costco pulled the rotisserie chicken from its shelves, as did a couple of other retailers. (To its debit, Costco left raw Foster Farms chicken on the shelves, once again transferring the burden of safety to the consumer, even though the store must have known that it couldn’t guarantee that cooking the chicken would render it safe.) Foster Farms has not recalled a single piece of chicken, although it’s arguable that this same contamination has been going on for months. And F.S.I.S. officially has no power to do so.
The agency could, however, remove its inspectors from the three suspect plants, which would close them, and last week it threatened to do just that. Three days later, Foster Farms “submitted and implemented immediate substantive changes to their slaughter and processing to allow for continued operations.” What’s that mean? “We cannot tell you what their interventions are, because that’s a proprietary issue,” said Englejohn, adding that the interventions comprise “additional sanitary measures that reduce contamination.” Well, we hope so.
It’s a good question. In recent weeks, salmonella on chicken has officially sickened more than 300 people (the Centers for Disease Control says there are 25 illnesses for every one reported, so maybe 7,500) and hospitalized more than 40 percent of them, in part because antibiotics aren’t working. Industry’s reaction has been predictably disappointing: the chicken from the processors in question — Foster Farms — is still being shipped into the market. Regulators’ responses have been limited: the same chicken in question is still being sold.
Until the Food Safety and Inspection Service (F.S.I.S.) of the Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) can get its act together and start assuring us that chicken is safe, I’d be wary.This is not a shutdown issue, but a “We care more about industry than we do about consumers” issue. Think that’s an exaggeration? Read this mission statement: “The Food Safety and Inspection Service is the public health agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for ensuring that the nation’s commercial supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled and packaged.” What part of “safe” am I misreading?
We should all steer clear at least of Foster Farms chicken, or any of the other brands produced in that company’s California plants, although they’re not all labeled such. Costco pulled nearly 9,000 rotisserie chickens from a store south of San Francisco last week, after finding contamination -- this is after cooking, mind you -- with a strain of salmonella Heidelberg, which is virulent, nasty and resistant to some commonly used antibiotics.
In sum: 1. There’s salmonella on chicken (some of which, by the way, is labeled “organic”). 2. It’s making many people sick, and some antibiotics aren’t working. 3. Production continues in the plants linked to the outbreak. 4. Despite warnings by many federal agencies (including itself!), the U.S.D.A. has done nothing to get these chickens out of the marketplace. 5. Even Costco can’t seem to make these chickens safe to eat. (...)
To its credit, Costco pulled the rotisserie chicken from its shelves, as did a couple of other retailers. (To its debit, Costco left raw Foster Farms chicken on the shelves, once again transferring the burden of safety to the consumer, even though the store must have known that it couldn’t guarantee that cooking the chicken would render it safe.) Foster Farms has not recalled a single piece of chicken, although it’s arguable that this same contamination has been going on for months. And F.S.I.S. officially has no power to do so.
The agency could, however, remove its inspectors from the three suspect plants, which would close them, and last week it threatened to do just that. Three days later, Foster Farms “submitted and implemented immediate substantive changes to their slaughter and processing to allow for continued operations.” What’s that mean? “We cannot tell you what their interventions are, because that’s a proprietary issue,” said Englejohn, adding that the interventions comprise “additional sanitary measures that reduce contamination.” Well, we hope so.
by Mark Bittman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Paul Sakuma
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Mavericks
It’s 6 AM, high tide, and I’m a thirty-minute, eucalyptus-dense drive south of San Francisco in Princeton-by-the-Sea, a tiny village with some of the biggest waves in the world and not much else. Shadowy figures are perched in the beds of pickup trucks; they speak in low voices and occasionally take sips of coffee. I’m sitting on the ground in the near dark, waiting for a surf contest to begin.
An unusually steep, unusually deep Pliocene-epoch sedimentary reef rises half a mile offshore. This is where Mavericks breaks, where from November to March waves can top out at 100 feet, making them roughly ten times the height of what most surfers would consider “big.” Sharks are common, as are riptides and exposed rocks. Accomplished big-wave surfers — famous ones — have died here.
Some years — when tides and swells and winds and storms combine infelicitously — the waves here fail to break at anything above twenty feet, which means for Mavericks that they are hardly waves at all. If the conditions aren’t right, the contest doesn’t happen. When it does happen, the Mavericks Invitational is announced a few days ahead of time, and even in this case the plan is provisional at best. The inconvenience is unavoidable; one elemental change can ruin the wave.
It’s Sunday, and the Mavericks Invitational was announced on Thursday, which means that twelve of the twenty-four competitors had to buy plane tickets — from Los Angeles, Hawaii, Brazil, and South Africa — fast. The other twelve live less than an hour’s drive away, and would probably be surfing here today, contest or no contest. They all know each other, and most surf together regularly. On this winter morning, it’s been three years since the last invitational.
Compared with most professional athletes, these guys are ancient. Matt Ambrose of Pacifica is 40. Shane Desmond and Ken “Skindog” Collins, both from Santa Cruz, are 42 and 43, respectively. At 31, Shawn Dollar, also from Santa Cruz, is one of the youngest competitors. He also holds the world record for the biggest wave ever paddled into (sixty-one feet, a scale at which almost every other surfer would opt for tow-in). I ask Dollar why the surfers at Mavericks are so old. “It’s scary as shit,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “It takes you years and years and years to break down fear. Put a 16-year-old kid out there? He’s probably going to drown.”
Surfers have the odd habit of saying “I drowned” when they mean “I almost drowned.” Drowning, after all, feels like almost drowning until it feels like nothing. When I ask Dollar to explain the sensation of almost drowning, his answer, and the way he holds his face as he says it, makes me feel that the question is an intrusive one. “It’s just depressing and lonely,” he says, not making eye contact. “The lights start turning off, literally. It blinks in your mind and goes black. Pretty soon, it’s just lights out and you’re done.” He pauses awkwardly. “It’s really fucking weird.” (...)
The crowd contains a lot of stupidly handsome Australians, even more obese adults in 49ers gear, and a good number of cruel-seeming young boys. Their mothers, though irresponsibly tan, appear attentive. They wear flared jeans, snug tank tops, and platform flip-flops. They have French manicures, puka-shell necklaces, and toe rings. Either their taste has not changed since spring break 1998 or they’ve just decided, dispassionately, that this is the hottest way to dress.
A lot of the people here — both men and women — possess all the features that constitute a modern, normative standard of beauty, but exaggerated to a ghoulish degree. They’re so blond and so tan and so lean that it all actually starts to look like one big mess of congenital disorders. A towheaded guy kisses his towheaded girlfriend, and it’s shocking — seconds before I had assumed they were fraternal twins.
by Alice Gregory, N+1 | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Letter from Israel: On Gas Masks and Belonging
The cockroaches in Tel Aviv are nuclear-apocalypse huge. How adorable, how terribly petite the roaches of New York seem to me now. In a million years, the spacemen who descend to this place will find only styrofoam cups and the hard-shelled family living under my sink. I am a coward. Afraid to get close, I kill them with a chemical spray. They fall from the wall or garbage bin, thud. They heave madly in tortured circles, stopped by convulsions that come at smaller and smaller increments, cramming themselves into the ground as if to disappear. Their stomachs bulge and seep out. After they die — or as they are dying — their feelers twitch, twitch, twitch.
This was the month for gas masks in Israel. Fearing that Assad might use his sarin-bearing rockets on Israel next, those who did not yet have gas masks picked one up at the post office. Every outlet reported it, and every lede was the same: “Long lines and high tensions in Israel today as civilians obtain gas masks from local distribution centers…” I don’t have a gas mask. I’m not a citizen, and therefore not eligible for a free gas mask from the post office. I can buy one for — 400 sheckels — a bit over $100 from a war profiteer. That’s a month’s worth of groceries, nearly, but not quite a prohibitive cost. Still, I don’t buy one. “Assad’s not that crazy, don’t give it another thought,” says my Hebrew teacher, rolling her eyes. Then almost as an afterthought, “But pick one up anyway.”
An American friend of mine, perhaps trying to console me regarding my lack of mask, tells me that the Israeli gas mask kits lack the antidote for the specific nerve gas — sarin — present in Syrian weapons. He also reminds me that during World War I, soldiers used alternate methods to survive gas attacks. He is right: it is a proud element of Canadian history that one of our own boys figured out you could survive a mustard gas attack if you covered your mouth with a cloth soaked in your own urine. I’m saved! He laughs. We are on a bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Thursday (Israel’s Friday) and the bus is filled with soldiers coming home for the weekend. Everyone is sleeping. Soldiers are always sleeping. And after the conversation, my friend and I sit in silence, and I wonder how small the gas masks come. Do they make them for toddlers? For newborns?
I have someone here. He is in the Israeli Army and so he is away a lot. Please get your mask, he begs me. If things get hot — this is how he talks — if things get hot you will not be able to reach me. He tells me if worse comes to worst I can go to his widowed grandfather, who now has an extra mask. What are you doing here? I want to ask him. You should be a camp counselor in rural Vermont. He is worried about his girlfriend jury-rigging a gas mask with her own pee; he is worried about the extra chemicals weapons training courses this new situation might entail. I am picturing him teaching children to canoe. I live in a country without civilians. Everyone I know has the same green khaki duffle bag. It’s usually sitting on top of her closet: out of the way but easy to reach. It is kind of natty looking, actually. Madewell would sell it for $278 as a Weekender Duffle in Hunter Green. But it’s the bag they take with them on reserve duty. I actually do not know what is inside because I am too embarrassed to ask. I would guess that it is a uniform, boots, underwear, socks, toothbrush, a few granola bars, maybe some expired pepper spray for the ladies. And under his bed, everyone has a cardboard box with a gasmask and antidotes. (...)
The State of Israel defines Jewishness as having one or more Jewish grandparent. My gentile mother is one hell of a lawyer, and has reviewed the terms of the Law of Return carefully with me. This law grants any Jew the right to live and work in Israel — immigrating or obtaining various visas. However, a substantial chunk of public life in Israel is overseen by an Orthodox rabbinate. This creates more than a little tension regarding who is Jewish and what being a Jew means. So, when I desperately need a work visa to stay in the country, I find myself in the Ministry of the Interior, biting my nails while a hard-faced Russian-Israeli named Anya or some such reviews my visa materials. She is reading my “proof of Judaism” — a letter from the rabbi heading the congregation where my father was Bar Mitzvahed. She is frowning. My shoulders begin to droop when her colleague, a traditionally-dressed Orthodox Jewish woman in a headcovering, leans in and read my letter over Anya’s shoulder. I breathe in sharp. “Give her the visa, Anya.” Exhale. Anya looks incredulous and starts to protest. Headcovering clucks in slight impatience, Anya prints out my visa on peach colored paper and sticks it into my passport.
This was the month for gas masks in Israel. Fearing that Assad might use his sarin-bearing rockets on Israel next, those who did not yet have gas masks picked one up at the post office. Every outlet reported it, and every lede was the same: “Long lines and high tensions in Israel today as civilians obtain gas masks from local distribution centers…” I don’t have a gas mask. I’m not a citizen, and therefore not eligible for a free gas mask from the post office. I can buy one for — 400 sheckels — a bit over $100 from a war profiteer. That’s a month’s worth of groceries, nearly, but not quite a prohibitive cost. Still, I don’t buy one. “Assad’s not that crazy, don’t give it another thought,” says my Hebrew teacher, rolling her eyes. Then almost as an afterthought, “But pick one up anyway.”An American friend of mine, perhaps trying to console me regarding my lack of mask, tells me that the Israeli gas mask kits lack the antidote for the specific nerve gas — sarin — present in Syrian weapons. He also reminds me that during World War I, soldiers used alternate methods to survive gas attacks. He is right: it is a proud element of Canadian history that one of our own boys figured out you could survive a mustard gas attack if you covered your mouth with a cloth soaked in your own urine. I’m saved! He laughs. We are on a bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Thursday (Israel’s Friday) and the bus is filled with soldiers coming home for the weekend. Everyone is sleeping. Soldiers are always sleeping. And after the conversation, my friend and I sit in silence, and I wonder how small the gas masks come. Do they make them for toddlers? For newborns?
I have someone here. He is in the Israeli Army and so he is away a lot. Please get your mask, he begs me. If things get hot — this is how he talks — if things get hot you will not be able to reach me. He tells me if worse comes to worst I can go to his widowed grandfather, who now has an extra mask. What are you doing here? I want to ask him. You should be a camp counselor in rural Vermont. He is worried about his girlfriend jury-rigging a gas mask with her own pee; he is worried about the extra chemicals weapons training courses this new situation might entail. I am picturing him teaching children to canoe. I live in a country without civilians. Everyone I know has the same green khaki duffle bag. It’s usually sitting on top of her closet: out of the way but easy to reach. It is kind of natty looking, actually. Madewell would sell it for $278 as a Weekender Duffle in Hunter Green. But it’s the bag they take with them on reserve duty. I actually do not know what is inside because I am too embarrassed to ask. I would guess that it is a uniform, boots, underwear, socks, toothbrush, a few granola bars, maybe some expired pepper spray for the ladies. And under his bed, everyone has a cardboard box with a gasmask and antidotes. (...)
The State of Israel defines Jewishness as having one or more Jewish grandparent. My gentile mother is one hell of a lawyer, and has reviewed the terms of the Law of Return carefully with me. This law grants any Jew the right to live and work in Israel — immigrating or obtaining various visas. However, a substantial chunk of public life in Israel is overseen by an Orthodox rabbinate. This creates more than a little tension regarding who is Jewish and what being a Jew means. So, when I desperately need a work visa to stay in the country, I find myself in the Ministry of the Interior, biting my nails while a hard-faced Russian-Israeli named Anya or some such reviews my visa materials. She is reading my “proof of Judaism” — a letter from the rabbi heading the congregation where my father was Bar Mitzvahed. She is frowning. My shoulders begin to droop when her colleague, a traditionally-dressed Orthodox Jewish woman in a headcovering, leans in and read my letter over Anya’s shoulder. I breathe in sharp. “Give her the visa, Anya.” Exhale. Anya looks incredulous and starts to protest. Headcovering clucks in slight impatience, Anya prints out my visa on peach colored paper and sticks it into my passport.
by Rebecca Sacks, The Millions | Read more:
Image: Rebecca Sacks
[ed. From the comments: Thanks for an entertaining and thoughtful piece. I urge you to continue to explore the question of the refugees, and why Israel won’t take them. Having lived in the ‘the territories’ myself for a year and a half, I believe that this question will lead you to address deeper questions, and some fundamental problems inherent in founding a state on an identity of religion and ethnicity (ironically enough, in answer to persecution and murder on the basis of religion and ethnicity.) I believe that this idea is deeply and fundamentally flawed, and as bad for Tutsis and Hutus as it is for Bosnians an Serbs as it is for Palestinians and Israelis. But like all newcomers to Israel, you’ll have to make up your own mind.]
[ed. From the comments: Thanks for an entertaining and thoughtful piece. I urge you to continue to explore the question of the refugees, and why Israel won’t take them. Having lived in the ‘the territories’ myself for a year and a half, I believe that this question will lead you to address deeper questions, and some fundamental problems inherent in founding a state on an identity of religion and ethnicity (ironically enough, in answer to persecution and murder on the basis of religion and ethnicity.) I believe that this idea is deeply and fundamentally flawed, and as bad for Tutsis and Hutus as it is for Bosnians an Serbs as it is for Palestinians and Israelis. But like all newcomers to Israel, you’ll have to make up your own mind.]
Jonas Bendiksen, Villagers collecting scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies. Altai Territory, 2000
via:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)