Don't Link, Think!

At breakfast, sipping coffee, I said to my spouse, "Did you hear that thing on NPR about cyborgs?"

"What about them?" he asked, measuring honey into green tea.

If this had been the 1980s, I would have rummaged in my short-term memory and retrieved whatever shreds of the story I had retained. Then, flexing the muscles of my frontal lobes, I would have turned those concepts into coherent speech and voiced the results, thus giving myself a tiny intellectual workout before even starting my day.

"Cyborgs," I might have said, "are created by combining organic and inorganic parts in a single being. For instance, I became a partial cyborg when I got an artificial hip ten years ago. Merging the human brain with computers, which is already beginning to happen, will create the ultimate cyborg, with potentially alarming results."

But, this being 2017, I just said, "I'll send you a link."

(Here, in case you're interested, is the link to the cyborg story: http://www.npr.org/2017/02/21/516484639/are-cyborgs-in-our-future-homo-deus-author-thinks-so)

I'm suspicious of all this linking. Of course, the advent of hypertext has expanded our access to knowledge in ways undreamed-of in the era of shoulder pads. One click and I can read about Hildegard of Bingen's migraine-induced mystical visions, or find out how to make yogurt in a crock-pot. How can we not love this?

But this ease of access risks turning us into spectators of knowledge, passive enjoyers of an endless cornucopia of facts. And it's changing the way we interact with each other, as we increasingly express ourselves by posting links to what third parties have said or written rather going through the admittedly taxing process of putting things into our own words.

Consider Facebook. If you're like me, most of the posts on your news feed consist not of your friends' own ideas and opinions, but of links to videos and articles made by unknown others. I often click on these links, and laugh and cry along with the everyone else, but, unless we increasingly are what we link, they strike me only as indirect communications, at best, from my Facebook friends.

True, even before the hypertext era, few people managed to come up with really original ideas. Most of us just rehashed stuff we'd read, or heard others say. But even at its worst, rehashing is more mentally demanding than clicking.

Of course I know that fighting links is a losing battle. We Googlers and linkers are already cyborgs, letting the machine articulate and express many of our thoughts and feelings for us. But for those who would like to cling to the old ways of being human for a few more years, the strategy is clear: think, write, paint, sculpt, and compose more...and link less.

My Dream (Pantyhose) Quilt

If the internet had corporeal substance, I would kiss its feet.

Here's why.  Back in the 1970s, when I was deep inside the jaws of my earth mother fantasy, I used to borrow The Mother Earth News from the library.  Some of the articles led me down perilous paths, such as the one that advocated feeding poison ivy to goats and then drinking the milk in order to become immune to the plant's itch-producing substance, or the one that inspired me to carve wooden spoons.

But the most fascinating to me was entitled "Use Old Pantyhose As Quilt Stuffing."  The author showed you how to make little square bags from leftover fabric, stuff them with old pantyhose--first cutting off the waistband and saving it for staking tomatoes--and sew them together into a cozy comforter.

In those days I used to order pantyhose by the gross, in black, taupe, navy and ecru.   And what with running out to milk the goats on my way to the college where I taught, and doing a spot of weeding when I got back from class without bothering to change, I was always getting runs and snags.

Although I had loads of old hose, I didn't have much time.  I never made the quilt, but the fantasy of it stayed with me, as compelling as when I had first read about it.  That quilt seemed like the perfect combination of art and frugality--you put to use an item that would otherwise sit in a landfill for eons, and ended up with an object that was both useful and full of rustic charm.

The years passed, and every once in a while I would think about the pantyhose quilt.  Did every square require an entire pantyhose?  How exactly did you assemble the squares?

Then recently in an idle moment I googled "stuffed quilts."  There were many sites with instructions, but none used discarded pantyhose, and the little bags had tucks in them to make room for extra  stuffing, so that the quilts ended up looking like bubble wrap.

I decided to try my luck on The Mother Earth News site.  I typed in "Pantyhose Quilt,"  pressed "search," and the article came winging out of my past, as fresh and exciting as when I first read it in 1979:  http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/old-pantyhose-quilt-stuffing-zmaz79mazraw.aspx?PageId=1#ArticleContent

Isn't the internet a wonder?

So, you ask, have I started on my quilt yet?  Alas, no.  For one thing, it's been over a decade since I threw away my last pair of pantyhose.  And, for another, I am not a quilter, although I would love to be one, to sit for hours peacefully cutting and stitching and stuffing, fully immersed in my task, without a pressing thought in my head.  But that last bit always gets me into trouble, and seven minutes into an ostensibly calming, mindless task I'm running through the house looking for my Kindle.

No, I'll never make my pantyhose quilt.  I will read the article once more, figuring out measurements and wondering if old towels would work in lieu of hose.  Then I will hit "Delete" and consign the pantyhose quilt to my attic of unfulfilled fantasies, where it will pop up every couple of years and tempt me with its vision of both hominess and sustainability.

Google In The Kitchen

I butchered my crop of seven pumpkins a few days ago.  "Butcher" is the proper term for something that requires a strong stomach as well as strong muscles.

Mind you, my pumpkins are the medium-sized ones intended for eating rather than carving.  But cutting them open, even with my razor-sharp Chinese chopper, is by far the most strenuous thing I do in the kitchen.  It's kind of like sawing a tree:  the minute I get the chopper blade a couple of inches into the pumpkin, it gets stuck in the crack.  The only way to resolve this is to lift the chopper with the attached pumpkin as high as I can, and then crash it down onto the counter.  Eventually I win, and the pumpkin splits raggedly in two.

Then comes the gross part.  With my bare hands, I scoop out the innards--the slimy, sticky filaments, the flat, slippery seeds.  The only way to get it all is to scrape the inner walls with my fingernails.  Ugh.

I didn't have enough space in the oven to bake the fourteen pumpkin halves at once, so I had to make two batches.  While the first batch was baking, I took the pumpkin guts out to the hens.  I know, I know, I should have scrubbed those 1200 seeds clean, seasoned, and roasted them.  But I had, as the French say, other cats to whip that day.

When the pumpkins were done, I scooped out their flesh and rushed the still-warm rinds to the chickens, who loved them at first but soon turned up their noses at them.  I don't blame them:  fourteen pumpkin rinds for eleven hens is a lot. 

When the baking was over, I had several impressive mountains of orange pumpkin meat, which I divided into portions and froze.  Then I had to figure out a way to use it.  Sure, I could make pies, and if we ate a couple of pies a week we might empty our pumpkin stores by spring...by which time we'd be too obese to walk out the door to plant the new garden.  I could make pumpkin bread, which has more redeeming nutritional value than pies, but seven pumpkins would probably yield forty-nine loaves, which we also don't need.  I could make curried cream of pumpkin soup, which tastes great and would be good for us, but might lose its charm if we ate it every day.

Pies, bread and soup exhausted the resources of my modest cookbook library.  What I needed were recipes for pumpkin main dishes--concoctions that would use a lot of pumpkin and no sugar and would even taste good.  Can I sing enough praises of Google's recipe sites?  Like a helpful grandmother, Google comes to the rescue whenever I have too much of anything from the garden.

Although 90% of the pumpkin recipes were for bread or desserts, I found quite a few for main dishes, and a lot of those seemed to be of Italian provenance.  If they named green summer squashes zucchini (little pumpkins), Italians must grow a lot of zucca, and have come up with ways to use it.  I found a recipe for pumpkin gnocchi;  one for baked pumpkin, sausage and ziti;  and one, which I decided to make right away because I had all the ingredients, for pumpkin polenta with cheese.

It met all my requirements:  it used up a lot of pumpkin, was reasonably easy to make, and tasted good.  I'll make the gnocchi next.  Sure, one of these days I'll take out my 1977 Fannie Farmer and make a pie.  But until then, thank you, Google! 

Googling The Granny Square

While I was carving my piece of stone one day last week, the thought of granny squares flitted through my brain.

You remember granny squares--if you were a child in the 1970s, your mother made you something, probably a vest, out of granny squares.  If you were a grown woman, you crocheted granny squares during consciousness-raising sessions, and while watching The Smothers Brothers on TV.

Thinking about crocheting granny squares while whaling away with a mallet and chisel felt a little crazy.  Could there be any two more contrasting activities than stone carving and crocheting--one hard, the other soft;  one where every stroke is irreparable, the other where every stitch can be undone;  one high art and the other about as low as you can get on the scale of humble crafts.

When my arms gave out and I couldn't carve anymore, I dusted myself off and went upstairs to Google "granny squares."


I'm never prepared for this kind of thing.  I Google something that I think is hopelessly recondite--like pictures of hortus conclusus or recipes for kale pesto--and come up with hundreds of listings.  Invariably I am amazed, and grateful to live in such an age, and worried about what this instant access to everything in the universe is doing to the human brain.


But I have never been as amazed as when I Googled "granny squares."  To look at the results, you'd think that three quarters of the human race was out there crocheting granny squares day and night.  There is even a site where you can see an infinite number of granny-square designs and granny-square afghans, baby blankets, purses, hats, shawls and shoes. 

If, like me, your memories are of stiff polyester granny-square afghans in shades of orange and avocado green, you are in for a surprise.  In the last four decades, the granny square has undergone a magical transformation.  

The granny square need no longer be a square--it can be a circle, or a hexagon, or a triangle.The old basic square can be filled in, or ornamented with flowers and stars and rising suns.  You can still find plenty of dreary polyester confections, but the new granny square is being made in delicious shades of wools and cottons.  And the squares--or circles, hexagons or triangles--are joined in unexpected combinations of patterns and sizes, some as beautiful and intricate as quilts.


Fortunately, this cornucopia of inspirations is complemented by a collection of YouTube videos, in which ladies with quick fingers and patient voices demonstrate how to make every possible variety of granny square to those who want to learn.


Now that I officially qualify for grannyhood (though my grandchildren, I'm glad to say, call me "Lili"), I wonder, is it time for me to revisit the granny square?  After all, here I am, forty years later, gardening and raising chickens,  sort of living off the land again.  

I have a stash of lovely wool, from real Vermont sheep, that's been on my conscience lately.