A Birth Story in Five Acts

My first child was born January 2018. It took me almost a year to tell that birth story in a public sphere.

It's a big story.

It’s so big that I knew I would go through another round of processing before Baby #2 arrived (guess date: October 31). So big that I put off looking at my colleague’s edits and comments on a rough draft for nearly a year. So big that these almost three thousand words still aren’t enough to capture the full dramatic structure.

Well, enough preamble. Onto pre-labor.

Collect for those struggling with their gender

 This collect is intended for people struggling with their biological sex in some way: gender confusion, gender dysphoria, or just not feeling comfortable with their identify as male or female. 

Where to Go for Coffee or Beer with a Toddler in the Twin Cities

Want to meet up with a friend for coffee or a beer, but don't want your squirrely toddler finding "bonus toys" at the cafe or brewery? Check out the businesses on these Google Maps lists!

The play area in Milkweed on Lake Street
kept this toddler busy for nearly two hours.

Another Spring Night

What happens to the soul as sorrows stack?

Rod Sot on Unsplash

Birth and Burning Man

BM Baby by Marco Sanchez.

In 2016, I attended Burning Man, the indescribable annual festival in the Nevada desert. A year and some change later, I birthed a baby. Sitting soft and damp on a couch with a nursling, texting with a burner friend, I realized the two experiences had more in common than I ever would’ve guessed.

Pledges and the Playa

What you sign up for is not what you get from Burning Man.

The man with the plan, Seth Statmiller, on the playa with his vehicle of choice in 2013. Photo credit: Elizabeth Richardson.

I returned a red jumpsuit yesterday.

It was too big, too coarse, too heavy with pledges I know I won’t fulfill.

A panel of my peers drew me to the jumpsuit. Every August, two established friends trek to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to gift wheeled mobility to the bikers of Burning Man. Every year, they assemble a crew of employees, comrades, and recommended comrades to pedal the machinery of Hammer and Cyclery.

Hammer and Cyclery camp, 2013. Photo credit: Travus Cartwright.

And every September, they return to the Default World with dust in the creases of their jumpsuits and stars in their eyes and incomprehensible tales in their mouths.

For, unfortunately, no one can be told what Burning Man is. You have to see it for yourself.

Cajoling and curiosity got the upper hand one September. I pledged to don the red jumpsuit the following August, to see how deep the Playa goes.

I fulfill my pledges.

I attended orientation and received my jumpsuit. I bought tickets for entrance, for airfare, for the Burner Express Bus. I took off. I landed. I got on the bus, I got off the bus.

I fell flat on my face.

No, really — the rituals for first time Burners call for immediate facedowntime with the dried out lake bed, the playa, the playground. You won’t escape that salty-slick dust for the next eight days. Get acquainted.

Get acquainted — with the dust, the camp, the comrades, the old friends showing new facets, the rhythm of sunned days and lit nights.

Just another light show in 2016. Photo credit: Alex Düsterfeld.

I was pledged revelry, revelation, reframes, and Burning Man fulfilled these pledges; of course, not as I willed it but as the playa provided.

Take the reiki session for which I waited two hours, before which I traded heartbeats with unmet friends, and after which I could barely pronounce my name.

Take the trip down memory lane, squeezed between a live performance of a nine-piece band and a midnight Skrillex set, lead by a guardian disguised as a established acquaintance.

Take the shoulder-squeezing climb up ladders bound together by wishful welding and good faith; at the top I faceplanted into the figurative and literal open arms of a comrade acquired in a heartbeat; looking for that one last nail to pound into that second freshest coffin.

The Temple, 2016. Photo credit: Mark Kasiewicz.

This wasn’t what had beckoned me. I’d counted on familiar time with established friends, not snatched time with acquired comrades. I thought I’d grow new powers, not accept existing ones. I was promised new brain space, with which I would look forward, not back.

You get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit.

No, I got what the playa had for me. Dusty revelry. Tear-soaked revelation. Prismatic reframes.

Photo credit: Alex Düsterfeld. Sunglasses credit: Camp Gravity. Clown nose credit: Some dude.

I got on the bus, got off the bus. I took off. I landed.

I had stars in my eyes.

I pored over my experience and others’, no longer incomprehensible, now tantalizingly explainable. But the experience jostles and rubs, flashes and glares, rings and sighs. Months of memories unsettled, like a snow globe shaken and flash-frozen.

So I rubbed my head, sighed, picked up the red jumpsuit. “You’re going home again,” I told it. “Have a good burn.”

Sent and Tried

At last week's Minnesota Young Food Professionals' happy hour, we made food resolutions for 2015.

How self-referential.

For this first post of 2015, I'll review two of the goals I made for 2014. The first goal was to send 52 pieces of mail. Pieces of mail actually sent? Twenty-four. But some of them were pretty sweet, like this package I put together for +Garnet Bruell.

A box full of letters, motorized sushi, and "A little sugar from your MN sugar mama."

The second goal was to try 52 new things. I counted forty-one new activities tried. Here's a selection:

• Attend and judge Pundamonium.
• Get a piercing.
• Paddle board.

Am I doing it right? (Photo credit: +Kate Elahi) 

• Get advice from an attorney.
• Call 911.
• Visit an impound lot.

I saw a couple cars like this. (Photo credit: Neil Turner)

• Buy and use a state parks permit.
• Take a solo road trip.
• Take a parkour class.

Check out that dive roll.

• Interview candidates for a serious job.
• Precept dietetic interns.
• Help plan a conference.

Pin the Dots. #hnmn14 #UMNExt

A photo posted by @jastrd on Aug 19, 2014 at 6:01am PDT

• Raft through rapids.
• Attend a Baptist church.
• Spectate B.A.S.E jumping.

Busy #BridgeDay BASE jumping and rafting. #WhatUpWV #GoToWV

A photo posted by @jastrd on Oct 18, 2014 at 9:32am PDT

• Attend a BareBones production.
• Sing Sacred Harp.
• Write, share, and perform original poetry.

Many thanks to everyone who assisted me, wittingly or not, in a working toward this goal. And a special shout-out to +Susan DeBlieck, who spontaneously checked in with me about both goals. You'll get a piece of mail this year, I promise!

What I'm Excited About #6

The Cold: Good-bye cloudy skies, hello crisp air! This is the Minnesota weather I signed up for.

Dad and grandkids.

The Collaborations: I'm lining up a couple peeps to write guest posts for this blog. I also asked a friend to collaborate on a poem with me – I have no idea how that's going to go, and I'm super interested to find out!

The Condiment Clean-Up: I am on a mission to extinguish all the condiments in my refrigerator by January 20th. The other week, I made a dressing with the remaining chipotle peppers, curry powder, and fennel seeds. That went real nice with the endless sweet potatoes and beets I roasted for holiday potlucks.

Lot of chipotle, but the curry and fennel came through.

The Coming Year: I know already what some of transitions will be (moving once or twice, my parents leaving the country), and I know that unexpected challenges will arise. But all in all, the unknown opportunities of 2015 are so beguiling.

What are you looking forward to?

Hold your breath for the release, take two

Almost five years ago, I wrote about adaptive cycles.

The cycle has four phases:

1. Rapid growth
2. Conservation
3. Release
4. Reorganization

2010 was my year of rapid growth. I wrote thirty-four blog posts. I exploited "new opportunities and available resources," like HECUA and Mhonpaj's Garden.

Photo by Emily Lund.

From Summer 2011 to Spring 2012, I conserved, accumulating supervised hours during my dietetic internship.

Then, my marriage ended.

Next is the release phase – the system comes undone. Bound up resources are released, structure breaks down.

Summer 2013 to Spring 2014 – phew. I relinquished my position with the Hunger and Environmental Nutrition RDs, I watched the clock on my tenure with the Hampden Park Co-op board, I shed and shed and shed.

Photo by Garnet Bruell.

The cycle continues: reorganization. "From the chaos of release," I wrote, "options open up,"

Writing opened up; opened me up. Just a fissure in the shell last January, prized wider and wider by steady encouragement and example.

CRACK and I'm reading a poem in front of a handful of strangers in West Virginia.

CRACK and I'm reading five poems for young food professionals, dear friends, my parents, rapt.

Photo by Eric Sannerud.

This chick has a wing free.

What I'm Excited About #3

It's snowing again, and that's not one of the things I'm excited about this week. Rather, I am excited about...

• A second appearance on a class panel for the Healthy Foods, Healthy Lives: A Food Systems Approach to Cooking class. I persuaded my friend and fellow food blogger Charles to take the class this spring, and he's been blogging up a storm. The HFHL institute is also offering a one credit class this fall: Cooking on a Student's Budget.
• The Life-Changing Loaf of Bread. I've made this "bread" four times now, never the same way twice, and never way the recipe suggests (though I do weigh the ingredients). HT to my colleague Jesse Haas for sharing this! I've been eating it for breakfast almost every day for weeks.



Photo by Kim Unertl.

• A moss garden?! Our housemates invited a landscaping friend over to give us ideas about how to make the yard more interesting and less grassy. Staring at a soggy patch of decaying wood chips, I had a brainwave - a moss garden! "You could grow ferns, too," Mr. Landscape added. I have no idea how to make this happen.
• A shift in priorities. I attended a conference of the National Cooperative Grocers Association the other week, and something clicked around Hour 5. I'd been struggling with the feeling that the Hampden Park Co-op board was not the right place for me, that co-ops just weren't my "thing," that I was taking time away from food systems consulting by pouring time into my duties as board chair. But that day, I realized what a boon to my career being on the board actually is. I could will get so much out of my experience by putting my entrepreneurial schemes on hold for a year or two and unabashedly embracing co-op work.

What are you excited about this week?

SPOR

I had the pleasure of baking rolls for my family this Easter. Usually I defer to Trotter's Cafe and Bakery and buy their Sweet Potato-Oat-Currant (SPOC) bread for the holidays. This year, however, I was on my own.

Two-thirds of the way through kneading.

The head baker graciously allowed me to snag the SPOC recipe. Not able to leave well enough alone, I used raisins soaked in red wine instead of currants.

Housemate's digital scale made me feel like a professional.

I cut nubbins off, rolled them into balls, and tucked them three at a time into muffin tins.

Naked SPOR rolls.

Sprinkle with oats, pop in the oven...

Not nearly enough to satisfy aunts, uncles, AND cousins.

...and I was ready to delight my family.

Meal for Mom

Calendar trumps weather. Once I folded the month of April on itself to reveal May, I traded soups and stews for summer fare. Disregarding the chill and rain of Mother's Day, I prepared one of my favorite warm-weather meals for Caren and Mark: Japanese soba noodles with as many trimmings as I can muster.

Soba noodles surrounded by bok choy and topped with nori strips. Homemade dipping sauce to the right. Zigzagging from right center, tofu with pickled ginger, more nori, pea shoots, green onion, and sardines.

This was my first attempt at plating food for each guest. I drew inspiration from Peter and Joan Martin's Japanese Cooking.

Green onions float in tsukejiru dipping sauce.

What meal says warm weather to you?

What I'm Excited About #1

Includes the following:

• Tour of the St. Paul Public School's central kitchen this Thursday


• Lesson plans I'm designing, aimed to increase cruciferous vegetable consumption


• Heirloom beans I purchased yesterday from Paula Foreman (Jacob's Cattle Gold and Orca)


• Order I got last week from Whole Farm Coop (pretty soon I won't have to shop at all!)


• Focus group I'm attending next week that's NOT organized by me


• An Eat4Equity I can finally attend!

And last, but not least, Mike Mason's Halloween party.
Photo of orca beans by Ataradrac.

Where have I been?

Allow me to give you a glimpse into my life this semester, 6 of 6 at the U of M. Fourteen credits divided among five classes and nineteen to twenty-seven hours divided between two jobs take up the bulk of the week. Two ongoing volunteer gigs fill in the cracks, and relevant conferences and presentations sometimes displace class or homework time.

Thankfully, the credits are either interesting or not taxing. My week starts with the one-credit Capstone class, which walks us future RDs through the Dietetic Internship application process. Nutrition and Metabolism follows on Capstone, a writing- (and quiz-) intensive, in-depth look at carbohydrate, lipid, and protein metabolism in humans. Here's where my work in Biochemistry pays off.

I get a break for lunch before Medical Nutrition Therapy I. As I've stated repeatedly this fall, it is NOT a good a idea to take MNT II first, as I did. I'm bored, despite Christine's engaging lectures.

Photo from Cornercopia's Web site.

Another break ensues, and it's usually a struggle to get out the door to go to the my 4 o'clock class, but I'm always glad I did. Albert "Bud" Markhart teaches HORT2031: "Organic Food - How to Grow It, Where to Buy It, and Can It Feed the World." His lectures on organic matter, composting, and season extension are even more engaging than Christine's on acid-base disorders, the nutrition care process, and metabolic stress, if you can believe that. Plus, he brings in (edible) props, like a whole kale plant, an enormous crookneck butternut squash, and pea shoots. Yum.

Can't forget Nutrition Education and Counseling! The now-familiar Dr. Teri Burgess-Champoux returns for another semester of well-put together 115-minute class sessions, while Dr. Cynthia Meyer teaches and facilitates practice of skills such as primary empathy and self-disclosure. I especially enjoy the counseling portion.

So that's what my last semester of school looks like.

Revised 7/22/12.

Why am I here?

I am here to read, to think, to write about the connections between healthy land, healthy food, and healthy life. It’s a broad theme. It has to be.

That’s the justification in a nutshell. For the whole meal deal, keep on reading.

The seminal reason for starting this blog is selfish and has to do with my high school social studies teacher, Mr. Scarlett. He had us write one-page reflections on almost every reading he assigned. Standard practice for students, but he claimed he did the same in his own life. Always attracted to record-keeping, I continued the practice outside the classroom and diligently wrote down something about almost every book I read. I wrote on lined paper, scrap paper, colored paper, and white paper, sometimes for several pages, sometimes just one line.

These pages are three-hole punched and sit quietly in a big black binder next to a big blue binder of financial records. Keeping a record of what I've read for its own sake seems increasingly pointless to me. I need to not simply absorb and document, but also read and reflect. This blog will help me to reflect.

Also pointless is relegating the thoughts and reactions I had to a static binder when I what I read nowadays feels so urgent. People don’t need to know what I thought about The Hours and Mrs. Dalloway, but I would like to tell them about Coming Home to Eat and the Heathy Food, Healthy Lives Institute. I want to share with others the complex and fascinating fields I'm picking my way through.

I am no longer focused on the corner of Nutrition. In fact, my love affair with the topic imploded earlier this semester. Our relationship was tested when I began making reluctant friends with the Food System. Things came to a head during a Human Nutrition assignment to frame a nutrition-related question and review the relevant literature. I found that studying the effects of a single nutrient in a randomized clinical trial involves asking very specific questions with a limited vocabulary. I found that the data analysis from epidemiological studies is beyond my comprehension. In short, I found that all the nice tidy details I found in my intro textbooks are not tidy at all.

Nutrition is certainly not the unique in this aspect. Push any area of study far enough and you will find its limits. One could view these limits as opportunities, take up research, and find more answers. My reaction, however, has been to step back - way back. I asked Nutrition if we could just be friends. I need some space right now. I need to see what else is out there.

Since my classes are not designed to address the Food System, I happily seek access points elsewhere, both on and off campus. I read books, I attend seminars, I watch the occasional movie. These are what I want to digest and disseminate. So stay tuned! I hope to post updates once a week. Send me things to read, events to attend, movies to watch, and ask questions. I look forward to engaging with you.

Updated January 2015.