That which has no common thread...

I can't just leave well enough alone, now can I? I've been playing with the format on my blog a lot lately.  I've been bored with what it looked like.  I'm liking this better, but I still don't feel like it's that great.  Ideas welcome.  :)

OK, I have one last thing to say about Proposition 8 and then I'll stop (for now): 

What is marriage if not the acceptance of a voluntary obligation to support another person as a family member?

Why is that so difficult for people to accept?  If an individual in a homosexual union chooses to accept all the same responsibilities, in the eyes of the law, that I have chosen to accept in my heterosexual union, who am I-- indeed who are you?-- to deny them the right to do so?  Why is his or her marriage any different in the eyes of the law?  

I believe people have every right, in their personal choices and actions, to follow their beliefs, be they based on religious tradition or otherwise, and personally reject the legitimacy of gay marriage.  I believe in and respect the right of any church or religion to oppose the concept of gay marriage and/or of homosexual relationships.

But one's personal beliefs and religious practices should have no bearing of how the law respects individual rights and privacy.

(Thanks to my friend Julie for helping me really crystalize my thoughts on this and articulate it better that "For Pete's sake, what is wrong with you?")

Go See it:

So, I have a movie recommendation.  A friend lent it to us, and I have to admit, I wasn't very interested.  But after watching, it I give it a thumbs up.  So go out and rent Brick.

It is a detective story of sorts.  The characters are high school drug dealers.  When a young guy's girlfriend turns up dead, he goes to extraordinary lengths to find out what happened.  Think "The Usual Suspects" meets "Heathers" (for those of you old enough to remember Heathers, that is), meets teen angst, but edgier.   I thought it was a really well done film and story.  The actors are really good as well.  My only hurdle was that I kept thinking "Dude!  These are so not high school students!"  But hey, willful suspension of disbelief and all that.  Here is a nice review of the film (though they did get the name of the girlfriend wrong, hmmmm).

Go read it:

The 19th Wife.  Realy nice novel.  Not nice like pleasant; nice like, well written, compelling story, well balanced mix of fact & fiction playing off of one another.  Again, it's in that murder mystery/detective genre.  Sort of.  And it's historical fiction.  Sort of.

The 19th Wife weaves together the tale of Brigham Young's apostate wife Ann Eliza (#19) and the 19th wife of a modern day polygamist who is murdered in the basement of the home he shares with 25 or so wives and so many kids no one keeps count.  The excommunicated son of the modern day wife #19 unfurls a puzzle that leads straight back to Ann Eliza Young and the legacy that brought his family to where it is today.

The author aptly blends the memoirs of Ann Eliza with his own fictional liberties, never losing touch with 19th century pioneer religious fervor.  And he almost seamlessly ties the two stories together, leaving no doubt that the legacy of polygamy had wrought the awful consequences of a contemporary murder mystery.

I enjoyed the book throughout, even with a few sloppy story lines that detracted from the rich and authentic feeling of the main plot line.  And if you've ever been to, or even heard of, Colorado City (formerly Short Creek) you will thoroughly enjoy trying to envision the scenes in their place in the desert.

A longer life than poor Francis Macombre, I hope

Confidential to the dude in the safari hat and knickers: wearing that without even a hint of irony takes some big friggin' balls.  

Ahem.  Sorry; had to get that out.  

I love the crazy stuff people wear when they visit this island!  It was reminiscent of a Hemingway novel.  Except no lions or bull-fighters.  Just this guy and his binoculars, strolling down Stagecoach Road.  Golf carts passed him by, kids sniggered.  And he, delightfully unaware, strolled on.

He clearly wasn't from here.  A tourist (wait, we're supposed to call them visitors, not tourists), probably from the cruise ship.  Tuesday is cruise ship day.  Our streets are overrun with visitors on Tuesdays when the Carnival line pulls into port.

Yesterday, I couldn't help thinking, as I watched them wander in and out of shops, snacking on ice creams or proudly getting their "Wikki Whacked" at Luau Larry's, "It's Election Day!  Why aren't these people at home, voting, partaking in their civic duty?!"   

That's exactly where I was headed when I encountered Mr. Safari Hat.  

There's one polling place in town for the entire population.  Apparently, not that many of my fellow Islanders are registered to vote.  Which is sad, but not entirely surprising, especially considering how badly Los Angeles County screwed up my voter registration.  Despite registering well before the deadline, and engaging in two arduous telephone calls with (friendly though robotic) County elections workers, I still had to vote a provisional ballot.  Despite confirming my registration TWICE after actually registering, my name was still not on the voter rolls.  If I was the paranoid type, I be screaming conspiracy right now.  No wonder it's so easy to disenfranchise whole sectors of the voting public!

I'm just hoping that once my (and my husband's and our neighbor's) provisional ballots get added to the mix, along with heavens knows how many others not yet counted, it may help to tip the scales back away from Proposition 8.  I still can't believe my state voted to deny people the right to marry.

Seriously, please explain to me how two chicks getting married could possibly threaten your heterosexual marriage?  Your rights?  

You all are wrong on this one.  Prop. 8 is WRONG.

The trouble with an island is...

The trouble with an island is that people tend to forget that there is a world of important and interesting things going on outside the confines of our little paradise.

I just heard that as of about noon today, ELECTION DAY, only 22 people in my town had voted.  There are about 3,500 permanent residents of the island.  And only 22 of them could drag their asses to the polls by noon today to VOTE!  

This is one of the things that scares me about living on an island.  For all the great qualities, there is such a devastating disconnect with the real world.  I see it regularly in both adults and children.  There are, quite literally, people here who have never left the island.  I kid you not.

How can you expect to have any understanding of your world if you confine yourself to 76 square miles surrounded by ocean?!

Halloween, a little delayed

Uploading pictures with my SO INCREDIBLY SLOW SATELLITE INTERNET gives me fits, so I usually just try to avoid it.  That is why It's taken me three days to carve out enough time in my evening to sit here and wait for photos to upload.  

But Halloween this year was just so fricken  cute, I had to share with y'all.  While I know you're probably getting sick of hearing how cool island life is, I have to tell you, I have yet another thing that makes me squeal with delight.  The Avalon Halloween Parade.  So Dang Cute.  And holy moly, was it packed: families, business owners, tourist-- everyone-- was out to watch.

Nathan & EB both walked in the parade-- Nathan with the third graders, and EB wherever the heck she felt like.  She also held up a fair amount of parade traffic because she was so mesmerized by all the big kids and their wild costumes.  She was particularly enamored of this guy:

He was supposed to be the character from the horror movie Saw, but all the little kids just thought he was a really funny clown.

So here's Nathan:  the Man in Black aka the Dread Pirate Roberts aka Westley from the Princess Bride.  

EB was a magical butterfly princess fairy something or other.  She just loved wearing her wings and fuzzy boots!

I'm not a huge halloween fan, but I really enjoyed it this year.  Strolling the main street, visiting with friends, and a totally low-key (yet still lucrative) trick-or-treat made this one of my favorite halloween events to date.

Basil was Awesome!

Well, our little rooster and the party in celebration of his life and of good friends (we'll throw a party for anything!) we're both terrific.

He was a little guy, so we all shared in small tasty morsels, but he was delicious, healthy, and well cooked (if I do say so myself).  It was noted more than once that I seem to have a well developed sense of irony, as I prepared him roasted with vegetables and fresh basil and oregano from my garden.

The party was lovely too.  We had a full, warm, happy house, crowded with new friends and old.  There was laughter, cards, music, and good times.  We are extremely lucky to have found so many good people with whom to share our lives!

I'll be posting my recipes from the evening over on the Kitchen Mirror very soon, so check there to see what ol' basil looked like!

Eat Fresh, Eat Local; or dispatching my first rooster

EB, holding Basil the rooster (about two weeks ago)

When we brought home our little, tiny chicks, we knew that in all likelihood there was at least one rooster in the group, probably more.  It wasn't long before it became very clear that Basil was indeed a rooster.  He developed a prominent red comb, a large waddle, and opalescent blue cockles.  And then came the crowing.  At first it was a squeaky, adolescent crow, reminiscent of that Brady Bunch episode in which Peter starts to go through puberty and his voice is squeaky and unreliable.  But it soon matured in to a full fledged cock-a-doodle-doo!

This past week, he became so full of himself that the neighbors started taking notice.  We knew we would be dispatching him sooner or later, as we're not allowed to have roosters here.  However, we were hoping to wait for Thanksgiving to give him a chance to fatten up a bit and contribute something truly special to our holiday feast.

It wasn't be though, as the higher-ups here at the Conservancy informed us that now that he was getting quite noticeable, he had to be dispatched post haste.  Thus begins our tale of our first truly local feast.  

This afternoon, we steeled ourselves for our first ever chicken harvest, which is, really, just a nice way of saying "we killed him".  I wanted to be completely conscious of how I feeling and what I was thinking as we readied him and then, completed the butchering.  I'll first disclose that since we (meaning neither Shane or I) had ever witnessed, let alone participated in, the killing of a chicken, our friend Charlie agreed to be the actual executioner.  The last thing I wanted to do was in some way screw this up and cause the bird any unnecessary suffering.  Nor did I want to do something that would render the bird unusable.  If I'm going to eat meat, and if I'm going to raise these chickens, then I want it to be a humane and sustainable endeavor.

So, on with our tale.  Charlie came over this afternoon and he and I discussed how to go about the process.  We prepared a large wood block with two screws situated about an inch and a half apart.  These would position the bird's neck and prevent it from moving around.  Charlie would then hold the bird with one arm down against the block and with the other hand, remove his head with the cleaver.

I was fairly nervous about the whole thing as I really have no experience with anything like it.  The only thing I've ever seen is the skinning and butchering or a deer that had already been shot.  I was worried that there would be a great deal of blood (there wasn't).  I was nervous about how much the bird would flop around (not much at all) and how difficult it would be still him for the actual kill (not difficult).  And I was worried about how Nathan would react.

That's right, Nathan.  Part of our reasons for growing a garden and raising chickens is to teach our children where food comes from; to teach them that it's not all pre-packaged in cellophane at the super market.  And, to teach them that when we eat chicken for dinner, we are eating what was once a living thing.  They need to understand that to have respect for it and value it.  We did not ask Nathan to be involved in it other than being the one to retrieve the bird from the coop.  He held the bird a moment, said goodbye and told the bird that he was grateful for the chance to raise him.  And I think he (Nathan, not the chicken) understood what he was saying, at least as much as an eight year old can.  I think that moment, watching as an understanding of the fact that we were about to take an animal's life donned on him, was the most difficult moment for me. 

I needn't have worried.  

Charlie took the chicken from Nathan and positioned his neck, on its side, between the guide screws.  It took just two seconds for Charlie's confident grip to calm and still the bird.  Shane momentarily straightened the bird's head and neck, and with a quick efficient chop, the chicken was dead.  Nathan watched, though at a comfortable distance.

There was very little blood, and the head was still almost instantly.  The nerves in the body pulsed for less than two minutes, and there was very little movement.  The bird died quickly and at the hands of people who were conscious of the actions they were taking and did so with gratitude that we were able to humanely and healthily raise an animal that would nourish our family.

Nathan wasn't ready to get too hands on in the process yet, but did help with a little bit of the plucking.  We scalded the carcass quickly to make the feathers easier to remove.  Again, I was surprised at the relative ease of this process.  

We talked with Nathan throughout the process about how important it was that this animal had had the chance to live and die in a way that he did not suffer.  I'm sure there are those of you out there who would consider the bird's death by cleaver, for the purpose of feeding people, to be suffering and/or inhumane.  I respect your beliefs, but I don't see it the same.  He lived well (in a healthy environment) and died quickly.  And there are many friends who will offer their gratitude for his meat when we share the meal this evening.

After plucking the bird, we cleaned and prepared him for cooking.  To be honest, this was the hardest part for me.  I had a feeling it would be.  Again, Charlie took the lead.  As a hunter, he is experienced at this step as well.  We removed the crop and gizzards first, followed by the rest of the viscera.  

With the carcass cleaned and prepared, the rest of the duties fall to me!   Tonight's dinner, a celebration in honor of some good friends who have come to visit, will be roasted chicken that we raised and butchered ourselves with zucchini grown in our own garden.  We'll prepare salads with peppers, tomatoes, and herbs from our garden as well.  And if we're having really good luck, eggplant, poblano chiles, and potatoes from neighbors' gardens as well.

Raising and killing my own chicken isn't something I ever imagined I would do in life.  And while the killing part doesn't rank up there with things I'd like to do on a regular basis, I actually am grateful that I have had the opportunity to take a truly active role in learning about and participating in feeding myself and my family.

Now, after all this talk about how rewarding it is, if I'm being totally honest, I have to tell you that I really hope that none of our other chickens are boys.  I'm not sure I'm ready to do it again quite yet.

I'll let you know tomorrow how the meal turned out!