Tod (Hill) rants about Todd (Akin)

In the current storm swirling about Missouri Republican senatorial nominee Todd Akin,  pundits from all sides have been focusing on his outrageous and offensive use of the term "legitimate rape."  Even in his retractions, the man has been unable to hide his misogyny, re-phrasing, "I meant forcible rape."  As opposed to what?  Welcome rape?  Accidental rape?  Rape is rape.  It's a violent sexual crime.  I hope the controversy catapults incumbent Senator McCaskill to victory in November.  

As the controversy builds momentum, what I feel to be the most concerning part of Akin's comments seems to have slid off the radar.  Akin full statement was, "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

Let's deconstruct the temple of ignorance represented by this second phrase:

"...the female body has ways..."

You know, that grand mystery of biology called the female body.  It has secret ways that started back when Eve ate the apple.  

"...shut that whole thing down..."

For a man who believes that life begins at conception, he's a bit casual with his language isn't he?  "That whole thing" would be a fertilized ovum implanting itself in a uterus, or in Akin's world, a citizen with unalienable rights.

And just how how does this secret process of "shutting it down" work?  Does he think women secrete RU-486 (the morning-after pill) naturally at-will?  If they did, I am sure people like Akin would have figured out how to outlaw it.  

The bottom line here is that anti-choice, anti-women politicians like Akin operate from absolute ignorance.  Akin is not just ignorant about the what language to use when describing sexual assault.   He is ignorant about the basics of human biology.  

I hope the voters of Missouri make sure he is never in the position to legislate his ignorance.

Okra, the philosopher

We have a lot to learn from Okra.

That's not the way most statements about Okra begin.  I find that people are bitterly divided about it.  "Yuck, it's so slimey," is one side of the argument.  "You've never had it deep fried," is the other side.  And then there are the converts, "I thought it was just a gooey green ingredient in gumbo until I had it grilled and dipped in sour cream."  Okra's first, and perhaps most fundamental lesson is:  Just try it.  Life is filled with things that at first whiff or taste can challenge our sensibilities.  If your first exposure to Okra was as the viscosity-provider for gumbo, you might not believe that it might be the vegetable equivalent to fried calamari.  Just try it.  Yes, it's slimey when sliced and diced.  Yes, when added to a pot it can look like airplane glue.  Take a deep breath, let it simmer, and soon the airplane glue disappears and you'll have a thick tasty stew made more tasty by the tender green nuggets that moments ago horrified you.  Just try it.  You might surprise yourself.

Buying Okra can be daunting.  Years ago I would go to the Farmer's Market and have to battle with the Laotian women combing through bushels of Okra to find the smaller, tender pods; ideally should the size of thumb knuckle.  Inevitably, I would lose out and end up with index finger-sized pods.  One can occasionally find Okra at Whole Foods or equivalent foodie palaces, but usually it looks a bit bruised and wilted.  Frozen is an option, frozen Okra works best in stews.  The lesson of sourcing Okra is: Do it Yourself.

Growing Okra brings rich rewards.  The first reward is purely visual.  Okra flowers are lemon yellow with a dark brown center and a defined pistil & stamen.  They look like hibiscus.  They bloom every morning and fade and wilt before the afternoon.  The lesson of the Okra flower:  Get up early and enjoy the morning.

The real rewards of growing Okra are culinary, but to reap the rewards requires discipline.  Ignore Okra, and the pods grow into giant, tough, inedible green missiles.  Harvested daily, your options for the tender pods are endless.  Small pods can be grilled or dry-fried, then eaten as an appetizer.  They can be sauteed with onions, tomatoes, and peppers for an instant vegetable gumbo.   They can be sliced or thrown in whole into any soup or stew.  Harvesting the small pods takes a good eye.  After a first round of snipping off the obvious pods, the four foot high Okra plants can seem picked clean.  This is the lesson of the Okra plant:  Look again.  Use a different angle.  Pull the plants aside.  Look from the bottom.  Look from the top.  Okra, and life, will give you rewards if you take a deep breath and change your perspective.

The final lessons of Okra are in the pan and on the plate and echo our first lesson: Just try it.  This odd little green pod, filled with seeds and slime, can deliver delight.   Just try it.  And try it a few different ways.  Variety is a good thing.

Grilled okra
Rinse okra.  Put on a grill.  Turn when slightly brown and blistered.  Turn again.  Toss with some salt and serve dipped in sour cream. (Variation:  Dry fry them in a cast iron skillet with a little oil.)

Instant veggie gumbo
Sautee onions and red pepper.  Add okra, either sliced or if small pods, whole.  Add chopped tomatoes.   Cook until okra is fork-able.

Senegalese stew
Sautee onions and red pepper.  Add diced chicken and cook through (or use left over roasted chicken).  Add okra and cook until tender.  Add chicken stock and simmer.  Take a cup of chicken stock and mix with peanut butter.  Add to stew.  Simmer.  Serve with diced tomatoes as a garnish.

Is it cheating if you use a mix?

Sorry, Mr. Krusteaz, but you should have eased up on your ego and not named your product after yourself.  Krusteaz?  Sounds like something to be removed from one's eyelids in the morning, not the basis of a delicious breakfast.  Krusteaz?  Maybe it would have worked for pie crust, "Don't fret over your pie crust, Krusteaz and makes pie crust a snap!" Krusteaz? Sounds like a Hogan's Heroes character, the bumbling Wermacht officer, Captain Krusteaz.

Poorly named product, aside, Krusteaz Buttermilk Pancake Mix is my secret weapon.  Like orange juice, it's not just for breakfast anymore.

Most summers I am overwhelmed with zucchini.  Turn your back on these squash and your garden becomes overwhelmed with obscene, forearm-sized monstrosities.  The British, who call zucchini by their french name courgette, call these over grown green giants marrows.

You can stuff a marrow with cheese, bread crumbs, and finely diced pieces of itself.  You can chop a marrow and stew it with tomatoes and eggplant for ratatouille.  You can make zucchini bread, muffins, and even chocolate cake, but by August, you're sick of it, and your friends are sick of it, and you risk an obscenity charge whenever you leave the house with a well-formed marrow stuck under your arm.

This is where Mr. Krusteaz's mix saves the day.  Grate three or four cups of a giant courgette, add some chopped herbs, a bit of grated gruyere and enough pancake mix to dust it all and you have the batter for zucchini blinis.  Spoon the batter into sand dollar sized shapes on the griddle, flip 'em, then serve them warm with creme fraiche and chopped basil.

The savory secrets of Krusteaz mix do not end with blinis.  Scared of real chile rellenos?  You know, the kind dipped in batter and deep fried? Skinning and seeding roasted poblano peppers is treacherous enough, but stuffing them and battering them without tearing the peppers into shreads? Forget about it.  Just slice the peppers in half, stuff them with cheese, and then pour a light batter of pancake mix over them and bake them at 400 for 25 minutes.  You'll save the hassle and mess of frying and probably save a few calories (but seriously, chile rellenos are probably not recommended for serious calorie counters.)

The fun doesn't have to stop there.  Eggplant torta?  Roast some eggplant --lightly painted in olive oil-- for 10-15 minutes in a 400 degree oven.  Sautee some onions and red peppers.  Mix an egg, a spoon full of yogurt or sour cream, and a 1/2 cup of parmesan with about a 1/2 cup of pancake mix.  In a cast iron skillet or round baking dish, place a layer of eggplant, peppers & onions,  batter, then a final layer of eggplant.  Top with thinly sliced tomatoes and more parmesan.  Bake at 400 for 25-30 minutes.

Embracing Husbands

In the sitcoms of my youth, husbands were often dragging their wives to important business dinners, inevitably leading to anxiety & antics.  Darren worked himself into a tizzy of worry that Samantha would reveal her witchcraft to the big client.  Maude's husband lived in fear that she would engage in a biting argument with his boss.  Even Mike Brady had to worry that dinner with the new client might be interrupted by some whacky plot line involving Carol, Alice and the kids.  In the world of sitcoms, despite plenty of tension and hilarity, these dinners would always have a happy resolution.  The presentation would win approval. The promotion would be granted.  The deal would be signed.  Usually this success was somehow related to the wife's noble, thoughtful, efforts.

It was in the spirit of this grand tradition of spousal duty that I joined Peter at a dinner with his legal colleagues last night.  It was a diverse group of colleagues from his firm and an array of cooperating firms from his current litigation.  Peter barely knew some of them.  I only knew the hosts.  Subsequently, the beginning of the night was filled with introductions.

There are three basic types of social introductions.

The first is the re-introduction.  I usually do this one myself.  "Hi, I am Tod, we met at that Holiday party a couple of years ago."  By diving in, I save the other person the potential embarrassment of trying to remember my name and save myself the embarrassment of the blank stare if they actually have no clue who I am.

The second is when one is introduced to someone connected to the introducer, in this case Peter, whom you have heard about and are genuinely happy, if not excited, about meeting. To a colleague who knows of my existence Peter needs to say nothing more than, "This is Tod."  My relationship to Peter is clear because he talks about me constantly in glowing terms.

The blind introduction can be the most uncomfortable.  In the case of last night, it is when Peter barely knows the person (and may even be struggling to remember their name).  "Hi Bill, this is Tod," does not suffice because Bill has no clue of my existence.  In this case, it is incumbent upon Peter to make clear to Bill who I am.  And who I am is Peter's husband.

Since October of 2008, Peter and I have been legally married in the state of California. After 14 years of being "partners" (a term which has complications in a room full of attorneys), as far as the state was concerned we became "spouses."  We never adopted that term, but lately we have been trying to use husband.  Every married woman I know calls her male spouse her husband, why shouldn't I?  I have to admit it has not always rolled off my tongue.  I don't want people to think I'm using air quotes or being ironic in anyway.  I don't want to have to explain to people, "We're part of the 28,000 couples who got married in the window before Prop 8 passed..."

Putting that potential verbal and social awkwardness aside, I have started to embrace the word husband.   Partly because I want better short hand in social situations to describe who Peter is to me.  Partly because to believe in marriage equality does not mean applying second class euphemisms to your marital status.  And partly, I admit, as an act of defiance.

So last night, on no fewer than ten occasions Peter introduced me as "My husband Tod."  The response from a not uniformly progressive crowd was interesting to observe.  Some people visibly winced.  Others appeared to be struggling to avoid appearing as if they were struggling.  Others appeared to struggle to process simultaneously the information that Peter was gay and that this tall man standing next to him was the man he lived with (and probably fucked) legally.  A few seemed un-phased, but still had a quizzical look on their faces, as if looking for the air quotes around the word.

The evening had none of the poignant resolution of those sitcoms.  I did nothing to embarrass Peter, win over his client's wife with my charm, or help to nail his big promotion by talking sports with his boss.  We were just a couple at a social function organized around business function.  Two husbands giving each other the signal when one of us needed rescue from a boring conversation about the expert witnesses at last week's trial.  Two husbands, quibbling over who would be the designated driver.  Two husbands relieved to head home once we agreed we would no longer be the first to leave.

Math isn't hard. It's beautiful.

The stem of a true mint is square.  I learned this last year.  Not sure who told me.  Turns out it's true.  Peppermint, spearmint, chocolate mint, pineapple mint, all square at the stem.  Right angles.  Even sides.  Rigid geometry in fragrant form.  It freaks me out to tell you the truth.

It's like the Fibonaci scale.  The pattern of arithmetic progression that flower petals and plant leaves follow.  Mathematics in bloom. I suppose I think nature should be allowed its beauty without the burden of physics.  A yellow rose and its leaves should be more than a result of molecules aligned in sequence.  A rainbow should startle wonder that transcends the theory that light against a prism breaks out into a spectrum of its inherent colors, especially when the light is shining through a sudden spring squall.  The bees should swarm the lavender with a busy hum not because of chemical compounds and secretions that convert into sugar molecules.  The bees should swarm the lavender because the sound means Spring is almost over; because the glory of lavender is made more glorious by their presence.

I spent yesterday with an advocate for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) learning.  He recited statistics about workforce development and shared the shocking fact that California ranks 50th in digital learning.  Then, he shared a revelation.  STEM learning offers the only chance we have to bury No Child Left Behind and the drama of the over-tested child.  STEM learning will bring creativity and critical thinking back to school.

The square-stemmed mint giggles in delight.  The leaves of thyme count off, Fibonaci style, as each leaf shouts hurray.  As the bees return to their hive and construct the perfect hexagon maze of their honey comb, they buzz in agreement.  We, the dumb humans, may start to get it.  The beauty of nature is not there in spite of, or because of, the math and science.  The math and science is the beauty.  Electrons and neutrons doing a digital dance for no reason other than the beauty of it all.  Atoms combining into harmonious notes of molecules.  Molecules aligning into songs and symphonies of compounds.  Cells counting to three, then five, then eight, before becoming rose petals.  No reason to feel uncomfortable just because it's math.  It's all beautiful.  That's one thing you can count on.

In praise of delayed gratification

The plants are sitting happily in loamy topsoil, surrounded by nests of half-decaying rice straw.  A protective perimeter of organic slug killer outlines each raised bed.  They've been fed healthy meals of rotting fish juice. The irrigation drips for 12 minutes every midnight.  The tomatoes and tomatillos have been staked and caged to tame them upwards.  The peppers lean against their bamboo teepees.  The Roman beans are starting to find their way to their poles.  The marigolds stand ready to attract the good bugs and drive the bunnies away.  So now the waiting begins.

The advantage of my hybrid city:country lifestyle is that once a week I say good bye to my garden and allow the unwatched pot to boil into abundance.  The rest of the week I am like a child during Advent.  In my waking dreams I wonder if the eggplant is going to shake off the earwig infestation and establish itself, when the fist padrone peppers will appear, whether the zucchini will start to blossom.  By the time I arrive back home I am bursting with curiosity.  I park the car, release the hounds, and rush down to the garden to witness the week's progress.

Satisfaction comes. The pumpkins and squash have started to shoot out tendrils.  The tomatoes need to have their suckers pinched off (non-fruiting green growth that starts in the elbows of the primary leaves).  The Armenian cucumber plant has doubled its circumference.  The basil has doubled its height.

And, a little disappointment comes.  That one tomato in the corner by the fig tree is still stunted.  The french beans have a failure to thrive.  One of the eggplant starts has disappeared, victim to a slug who somehow managed to navigate the sluggo mine field successfully.  The Tuscan kale looks like it is about to bolt.  The artichokes are nearly done.

In the next couple of weeks, the weekly rush to the garden will reveal cherries, a spring crop of mission figs, and the first raspberries.  There will be a lull filled by squash blossoms, rainbow chard, a few purple potatoes, and the first zucchini, tender and small.  Then, the thrill ride begins.  I'll find the first tomato, a flash of red in a forest of green.  I might bring it to the kitchen to share.  Or, I'll give in to impulse and pop it into my mouth right there, a burst of gratification well worth the wait.

As we step forward, lets remember the global struggle for LGBT equality

Dear Friends

Yesterday was a historic day.  President Obama’s support for same sex marriage represents a cosmic shift in the struggle for LGBT equality. Although there are still setbacks and disappointments, including Tuesday’s vote in North Carolina to outlaw same sex marriage and civil unions, no one can doubt that the global movement for LGBT equality is gaining strength and public support. 

Here in the United States we may be bracing ourselves for another election year where LGBT equality is used as a wedge issue in swing states.  Globally, however, the struggle can be much more fundamental.  In fact, more than 75 countries still criminalize homosexuality, some with the death penalty. 

Still, the global LGBT movement is at a critical stage in its history and maturity.  Vibrant LGBT rights movements and leaders have emerged in most of the world’s nations, and mainstream human rights organizations have become more inclusive of LGBT.  Many nations have acknowledged the importance of LGBT rights and made attempts to integrate basic protections into their laws and policies. 

However, increased visibility for LGBT rights movements has led to backlash – particularly in the Global South and East.  This backlash has made the need to support emerging rights movements even more vital, because every day LGBT people face harassment, arbitrary arrest and detention, separation from partners and children, and even murder – simply for trying to live with dignity and honesty.

The urgent need for a strong, global LGBT movement is why I joined the board of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC).  With staff in the Philippines, South Africa, Argentina and the US, IGLHRC supports local movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa.  Our work begins on the ground level, listening to, partnering with and training human rights defenders.  Then we help bring their voices to national, regional and international stages, including the United Nations, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Asia Pacific Forum, and the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights.

To learn more about IGLHRC’s work, check out their website: http://www.iglhrc.org/

IGLHRC’s work is funded primarily by private foundations, and government agencies, including the U.S. State Department that supports our groundbreaking work on Iran. 

I am writing in the hope that you will join me in helping to expand our support to include more individuals.  Individuals like you and me who were moved by President Obama’s groundbreaking announcement.  Individuals like you and me who understand that the struggle for human dignity does not end at our borders. 

To support IGLHRC’s important work, you can go directly to the IGLHRC the Donate Now  button on the IGLHRC web site.   If you plan to be in the New York area in July 16, you could also consider attending our annual event, Celebration of Courage where we are honoring Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin.

If you have any questions about IGLHRC, please let me know and what I can’t answer I can refer to our talented staff.

With hope and love,

Tod