arbofo

Walking home one night, I thought to myself what a shame it was not to be able to see the stars here in Boston the way I used to see them in Maine. It says a lot about apathy, I think, that I then went on to ignore all of TreeHugger’s posts about Earth Hour. After all, the worldwide event essentially seeks to (symbolically) bring the stars back. It’s funny what makes us choose to do things. For me, I finally decided to try it only after reading on Noi’s blog that her family had sort of participated. My attitude suddenly shifted to “Well, why not?”

Anyway, it’ll be a good way to have a quiet night since I’m gonna be up with the chickens tomorrow morning to help with S’s move to Philly. (Btw, S, I’ll probably be too busy bawling to actually move any boxes for you, even if you ARE returning for one month before classes start. I’m going to miss you!)

So from 8-9pm, I’m shutting down my laptop, unplugging my tv and power strips, and I’ll read by candlelight for an hour. Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy hasn’t been getting nearly the kind of attention it deserves. If only Earth Hour happened during the summer- then I could sit on the porch!

A friend of mine has spent the last few months on a massive campaign to lose weight. She’s doing marvelously, and seems to feel so good about what she’s doing that it’s inspiring. It makes me want to pick up running again.

In high school, I was on the cross country and track team. I had a fantastic freshman year, with great teammates and a 5:36 mile for a PR. My enthusiasm for running sort of fell apart when my coach left. Her replacement was a woman who negatively impacted the team’s dynamics (but that’s a story for another time). Long story short, I stopped running.

For the years that I did run, I had analog hearing aids- and never encountered any problems with sweat interference/damage. However, last winter, I exercised a little too hard on the treadmill and damaged one of them. Fortunately, it was easily replaced under warranty (phew!).

Here’s the thing: If I start running again, I won’t be wearing my hearing aids. And since I’ve never officially “run while deaf,” I’m completely terrified by the prospect (as dumb as it may sound to some of you). I googled a few variations of deaf + running, but there doesn’t seem to be much discussion of deaf runners. It looks like one runner posted on a Runner’s World message board to see if there were other deaf/hoh runners on the site, but no one wrote back to her! This doesn’t exactly inspire a lot of confidence, does it?

So I have an appeal to make of you guys. If any of you out there are deaf/hoh and regularly go running solo without hearing aids/CI, please share your stories- I want to hear them! Then maybe I won’t be so nervous about hitting the streets.

Apparently, I.King Jordan likes his runs. That’s a start…

UPDATE: Just came across another post related to deaf runners (be sure to read the comments, which provide some context to Jill’s statement).

• 100 best first lines from novels.
• Did you have to memorize the Gettysburg address as a school kid? If you had as hard a time with it as I did: revenge alà PowerPoint!
• But you probably shouldn’t use PowerPoint to analyze your relationship.
• Dooce uses Twitter.
• It could be interesting if Prince Philip did too! [via BoingBoing]
• 100 best last lines from novels.

One of the reasons I chose to move to a city like Boston is that I almost never have to drive.  I grew up in Maine, where public transportation is virtually non-existent.  The T isn’t always the most attractive way of getting somewhere, but that’s why I joined Zipcar (and I’m lucky to have friends who occasionally give me a ride)!

So these days, I’m generally oblivious to the cost of fueling up our cars.  (I just wish I didn’t find Boston drivers so scary, so that I could feel comfortable riding my bike more.)  But for some reason, I can’t get enough of the charts that compare American gas prices with everywhere else.  See Wired’s atlas of gas prices, and TreeHugger’s information on global petrol taxes and the cost of gas compared to other household purchases.

Some people are responding to the burden on their budgets by trading in their cars.  But who knew that the Model T had a better mpg than most cars in 2004?  But Model T’s probably aren’t a viable option for most people, considering that production ended in 1927, no?  There are always those other ways you can save on gas.  Or maybe you’d prefer to rail against those lousy environmentalists who don’t like your SUV.

As a kid, I loved maps. World maps, imaginary maps, treasure maps, you name it. I had a globe that doubled as a lamp, and envied my brother’s inflatable constellation ball.

Today, the obsession is still there, even if I no longer adorn my room with a National Geographic map. The Mary Baker Eddy Mapparium (as wells as the adjacent Hall of Ideas) is among my favorite places in Boston.

BoingBoing linked to a heat map yesterday of news coverage around the world. They also showed a stop-time video of Walmart’s expansion in the US from 1962. All this map craziness reminded me of when they wrote about England’s oldest accurate road map, which is kind of an insane artifact in itself.

Also in recent map-dom… Shakespeare’s Sister had a touching post about Tibet, which linked to a map on Wikipedia about the conflicting land claims at play.

And if maps, aren’t really your thing, maybe you should check out the Ten Most Beautiful Bridges via TreeHugger.

UPDATE: Here’s a link I forgot to include - see how many countries you can name in 5 minutes without looking at a map.  My roommate and I both got about 63ish, and my coworker just scored 77!

This is an interesting post that merges two knotty topics. Here’s the first paragraph, from Samhita:

A Republican California assemblyman proposed a bill that would deem pregnant women “temporarily disabled” in the third trimester of their pregnancy and allow them access to handicapped parking. The bill failed, but I think this is really interesting.

She then goes on to express concern that classifying pregnant women as disabled would attach the same kind of stigma we see attached to people who have physical disabilities that aren’t temporary. Namely, the stigma of being helpless, and needing the law to help us out.

There’s one practical reason why this bill failed. Not all women encounter mobility issues in their final months of pregnancy. Those that do can be given handicap parking stickers by their doctors. My roommate observed that where she’s from, they further solved the problem simply by providing maternity parking spaces. There are ways to address access to better parking for pregnant women without creating a redundant law.

Given that the law’s redundancy is really the issue here, it’s disorienting that there was so much discussion of disabilities and abilities over at Feministing. NicoleGW said it best:

A lot of the comments (and the original post itself) rub me the wrong way. As others have already mentioned, there seems to be a big problem here with people attaching stigma to the terms “disabled,” “handicapped,” etc., and being wary of attaching that same stigma to pregnant women.

Frankly, the issue with this approach isn’t whether or not pregnant women are disabled. The issue is that there is a sh-t ton of prejudice against people with disabilities.

Samhita concluded her post with a brief dicussion of the “disability” label itself and her resistance to using it. Personally, I’d appreciate her good-intentions more if she’d just call it for what it is. Whatever word we use to describe a group of people who exist outside societal norms is inevitably going to have a stigma attached to it. Why bother with a confusing and condescending substitute like “differently-abled?”

I love this quote, attributed to a commenter’s wheelchair-using friend:

I don’t care if you call me f-cking disabled, just put a f-cking ramp in front of your store so I can get in!”

I wish I had that kind of chutzpah!

Digression:

The news story reminded me of Brigitte Jordan’s Birth in Four Cultures. This was my favorite piece of required reading for an anthropology class in college (and this was another). In it, we see very plainly how birth in the US is treated as a medical (vs. natural) event. In other words: a mother is a “patient” whose pregnancy is a medical condition.

*Apologies if you found the title kind of misleading.

For dinner tonight, since a friend is coming over, I am making this: Pork Chops with Granny Smith Apples. YUM galore! I’ve made it a couple times- my mom says I should make this for a guy if I want to woo him (though the last guy I went out with was vegetarian, so I don’t think this would have done the trick).

Here’s my slightly dumbed down version of the recipe:

Pork Chops with Granny Smith Apples

• 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 4 6-ounce boneless pork loin chops
• 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• 2 small granny smith apples, halved
• 1/4 cup parsley, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 2 Tablespoons sparking wine/champagne (drink the rest with dinner)
• 2 Tablespoons coarse-grain mustard

1. Mix together flour, cumin, salt and pepper on a large plate. Lightly coat each piece of pork with the flour mixture - set aside.
2. In a small bowl, whisk the chicken broth and sparkling wine - set aside.
3. Heat the vegetable oil and butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle the apple halves with a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook the apples flat-side down for about 5 minutes or until golden brown. Remove, cover, set aside.
4. Place the pork in the skillet, sprinkle with the parsely, and cook until the meat is golden brown and crispy (4-5 minutes per side). Remove, cover, set aside.
5. Pour the broth mixture into the skillet, stirring and scraping up any brown bits. Cook until slightly thickened (about 1-2 minutes). Use this sauce to pour on pork and apples while serving.
6. Garnish with mustard, bon appétit!

P.S. Try mashed parsnips (cooked like mashed potatoes) on the side.

I’m thinking of baking banana bread today.  A friend is coming over for Easter dinner, and since she asked me for this recipe over a month ago, it’s the least I can do for making her wait, right?

By the way, this happens to be low fat and cholesterol-free. But lest you believe healthy = tastes like cardboard, no worries: this banana bread is as scrumptious as the rest of them.

Banana Bread

• 1 1/2 all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 2 slightly beaten egg whites (or: 1 egg)
• 1 cup mashed banana
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cooking oil
• walnuts (optional)

1. In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt… stir it up.
2. In a larger owl, stir together egg whites, banana, sugar, and oil. Stir flour mixture into banana mixture until moistened. Add walnuts if desired.
3. Spray an 8×4x2″ loaf pan with nonstick spray. Dump the batter in, and then bake in a 350F oven for 45-50 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick/knife comes out clean.
4. Cool for 10 minutes. Makes approximately 16 servings.

Ha. Oh geez.

(click to enlarge)