Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Immunity

I have had a long love for the life sciences. I actually had a college counselor say, “Chef! Stop taking biology courses! You’re not a biology major and you’re just hurting yourself.” And she was right, too. But she didn’t call me Chef.

This whole bird flu thing, although not an above-the-fold headline any more, still has me thinking. And not of my own life as much as marveling at the way the human organism responds to such threats.

There was a time when immunity was a matter of how strong your immune system was. If you contracted a disease, you lived or died, end of story. Immunity was based on the individual organism’s ability to fight off disease once it got inside.

But that’s changed, at least for homo sapiens. Starting a few millennia ago and escalating in the past hundred, humans have started fighting disease at the population level as well as inside our individual bodies. We started with simple steps, like rudimentary quarantines, and have come so far that we have global systems to identify diseases, disease pathogens and vectors, and ways to control them.

This is something that most people living today take for granted, but consider the ramifications for a population of living things when such things become possible. Think about how dramatic it would be if frogs, gazelle, or goose did that.

We have representatives of our species monitoring the overall health of the rest of the planet’s population. They’re watching for illnesses, and issuing warnings when a handful of our fellow creatures in a small, crowded corner fall victim. And as a species, we respond. We shift our resources, plan for outbreaks, and take preventative measures. We even change our environment to limit disease vectors.

I’m sure there are some animal populations other than humans that do this to some limited degree. Birds that discard a sickly chick, predators that instinctively destroy a sick member of their pack.

But we're doing something entirely different. Here we are, an awkward primate species with a large brain, proactively looking for disease, developing means of prevention and even cure. We still rely on the individual organism’s immune system, but it’s almost like a last resort. We’ve developed a new, primary immune system, one that protects us as a species, and not just as individual critters crawling around spawning and eating.

In terms of evolution, I think that’s revolutionary. It’s like the appearance of the first rudimentary feathers, or even a blood-rich lining that permits an occasional gasp of air for breath. I only wonder if it can persist. But I guess none of us is permanent.

Monday, November 28, 2005

The Holiday That Merely Happened

This Thanksgiving was a piece of frozen cheesecake at Costco.

The pleasant woman cut the small wedges for eager passers-by. We thanked her and she smiled and we stepped a few feet away so that the next admirer could crowd in for their slice. What luck, to be there on that particular day, when samples of such a delicacy are available.

I’ve adored cheesecake for ages, you see. And so just the idea of cheesecake was titillating. I had scored a significant prize, and the decision to eat it or just to bask in my unexpected fortune took a couple of moments. Oh, to revel in it, so smooth and sweet with just the hint of sourness and a crunch of spiced crust.

Standing there in the aisle with large, impersonal glass freezers on each side of me, the vast grey concrete floor sprawling off in all directions under displays heaped with discount merchandise, I made a conscious choice between eating my small chunk of cake in one bite, or in two smaller ones. But my gluttonous nature won out, and I popped it into my mouth with an eager satisfaction.

And it was nice. Fine, even. I pressed it against my palate with my tongue, testing it for flavor and texture. It was a bit doughy, and the crust wasn’t really firm enough to provide contrast for the filling. It was mildly sweet, but that hint of cream cheese I anticipated was not there.

It was pleasant, but not enough. The woman who presented it was kind and the other customers there in the warehouse were polite. But taken as a whole, this year Thanksgiving was a disappointing cheesecake.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Nearly Sinless In The Garden

I had promised myself that I would sin this past Sunday. I dressed for sinning, and brushed my teeth and ate my breakfast fully intent on sinning. But I went out to the car to go sin, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Head Chef had been working on me all morning to play “hooky,” and I finally caved.

An apparently Christian woman at my office admonished me a few weeks ago for having worked the previous Sunday. “Oh, dear,” she said with grave disapproval, “that’s a sin.” I suppose she would take heart knowing that I neither worked on Sunday nor coveted my neighbor’s wife.

I’m hoping that perhaps I can avoid being stoned to death since I observed the Sabbath. Instead of committing a grievous sin, we went to the Foster Botanical Garden and observed beautiful specimens of tropical trees and plants, many of which are legally designated as “exceptional” and thus magically protected by a bronze plaque nailed to their trunks. I imagine them being infused with strange powers that selectively turn the blades of saws and indiscriminate pruning shears, but not the nails accompanying bronze plaques.

My co-worker might also be pleased to note that I did not create or worship other gods while there at the Garden. Well, OK, there was this one baobab tree that was particularly massive. Head Chef and I discussed that it seemed so logical for native cultures to see it as a link between the earthly world and some other plane. I could almost feel that link, myself, but I did not create a false god in the process.

I also did not: dishonor my parents, kill, commit adultery, steal, lie, or covet my neighbor’s property or his wife. I mean, please – like I’d covet his wife. Don’t get me wrong, she’s nice, but I’m not even into him let alone her.

OK, I may have blasphemed just little bit when I spotted that baobab tree. It’s really big, you gotta understand.

But I did not work on Sunday. Now that it’s Monday, I’m kinda wishing I had.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Hungary Was Even Worse

"You know what, sir," she asked in a vaguely ethnic southern accent.

I glanced up from my falling blocks of color, missing a key placement, and noted the stout woman angrily hunkered in the seat next to mine. Tight coils of salt-and-pepper hair bunched around her head, and she set her jaw, getting ready to tell me what. The busy terminal gate was crammed full of people, none of whom paid either of us any mind. We could have just as easily been completely alone.

"I was stranded there in Oakland," she announced. "Oakland!"

"You were stranded there?" I queried, puzzled. What an awful thing to have happen. And in Oakland, of all places.

"I ain't lyin. It really happened."

I nodded, more to confirm I’d heard her than to express understanding, and she continued.

"I think I’m going to have them call this time. The, the, you know – them ticket agents. Then I won’t have to sleep at the gate while they wait in the lobby!" She was quite upset. "Nobody told me they were gonna to be in the lobby," she offered. And then after a moment of thought, she conceded, "Although I s’pose I could have gone down to see if they were there."

I nodded thoughtfully, still not clear on what she was talking about. My game had become a disaster while trying to be polite, and my neat rows of squares were now in disarray. I closed the lid.

"And then the stewardess comes up to me and says that three men are waiting for me in the lobby, and I tell her, 'why you wait till I'm getting on the plane back to tell me that?'" I furrowed my brow in genuine concern. Genuine because I simply didn’t understand her circumstance, and because whatever it was seemed to be very stressful.

"I ain’t lying. I’m definitely gonna be tellin them in Honolulu to call so I don’t have to sleep in the, the – the terminal. And maybe they’ll be there this time."

We were no longer alone at the crowded gate. Other strangers – none so strange as my sudden conversation companion – were now covertly smiling and emitting expressions of sympathy. One man seemed to be suppressing the urge to join our talk and he fidgeted forward and back, glancing our way and grinning.

To comfort her, I assured her that they (whoever they were) certainly would have learned from their previous mistake (whatever it was) and would not repeat it. She seemed grateful.

"And you’ll never believe what happened when I was in Europe. You know about Europe?" she asked, her flat brown features scrunched into concern. I wasn’t sure if she was asking whether I knew of its existence, or about how it runs.

"Sure, Europe," I confirmed.

"Passport! Passport!" she yelled above the din of other conversations in the terminal. The newspaper held by a woman nearby seemed to be taken by surprise, and it shuddered just briefly. I looked on, puzzled more than ever.

"And I told the man, 'I don’t understand,' I’d say, and he’d come running after me yelling, 'Passport! Passport!'" With each incantation of the word, she’d wave her hand in the air like a customs official chasing her through the airport.

"And I told them, everywhere I went, 'I don’t understand, what’s this passport?' and he told me he’d arrest me if I didn’t show him a passport." She laughed, but I was unsure if I was supposed to laugh along. "Everywhere I went! It really happened. I ain’t lyin," she explained.

"And Hungary! Hungary was even worse," she warned.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her you’re supposed to meet your ride in the lobby or at baggage claim these days. Nor that you really do have to show your passport at international airports.

I just hope she didn’t really fly back to Oakland just because her ride didn’t meet her at the gate in Honolulu.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Home Work

We here in the Kitchen are home owners and home makers. To achieve our goals associated with those titles we become armchair botanists, technophiles, lay zoologists, hobbyist designers, craftsmen, and procrastinators. In short, we are distracted and lazy.

As such, our great home remodel project of 2005 has taken significantly longer than the three months that Head Chef once said it would take. Oh, and there are excuses. Some of our excuses are even reasons. But not all.

Despite our collective attention deficits and lethargy, Head Chef and I are motivated by nothing more effectively than the looming threat of visitors. We look forward to their arrival and the beach time we will take with them and the meals we will share. But we also stand on the steps to our little home in Pauoa and look around us with the eyes of a third person. And we shake our heads and think, “oh fuck.”

So this weekend, I eschewed my workplace responsibilities and we worked on the house. We floored the remainder of the hallway and the entire master bedroom. We cleaned. We investigated local options for kitchen cabinetry and planned the bathroom remodels. And then we worked in the yard.

If you know us even casually enough to have visited our home only once, you know our love for gardening. The front garden, now only 6 months old, is already reaching epic status. The gingers are getting taller, the brugmansia is blooming, and the Rangoon creeper already hides the stone wall. The ensete banana threatens to rule the world.

We dug in to our elbows, getting filthy and doing what is arguably one of my favorite things about gardening… discovery. From beneath four feet of shiny fern foliage, Head Chef produced a long-forgotten vanda sporting two spikes of shiny purple blossoms. Anthuriums that had tipped over were rooted, thriving, and blooming. And our new trees had fresh new growth popping out at the branch tips.

We planted a new torch ginger - one of my favorites - on the side of the house, and stood back to admire it. Now only 6 feet tall, it will one day reach as much as 15, with bright red flowers the size of large apples atop sturdy stalks jutting from the ground.

We do this – I do this, and I stand back and see what is done, and I feel full. I see the new floor in the bedroom from atop the living room stairs and the thriving garden and all the little improvements that are made over time, and I witness proof that things do get better, and that we have a hand in that. I see a sort of time lapse progression in my mind, from then till now, and I project outward just a bit – a skill that Head Chef teaches me each day – and I know that this is good. That this life is worth it, and that all the tediousness and doubt is made moot by these moments of doing this with him.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

A Simple Wish For Texas

Here in Hawai`i, I am almost as American as you are.

We could dress the same and stand on the street corner shoulder-to-shoulder, and the average person would think we’re both the same. Equal citizens of this great land.

But we’re not. Not here in Hawai`i, and not in Oregon. Nor Montana, Nevada, New York, and Michigan. And certainly not in Texas. I couldn't fool you, though. You already know you must protect your marriages against me.

I only wish I were out to get you, and that I had the means to do so. That I wielded the insidious power that you have attributed to me. Then, at least, I could stand next to you on the street, looking the same and dressing the same, with the same daily concerns and similar exhaustive routines and understand why I am oppressed. And I could smile wickedly and know, deep inside, that nothing you could do could stop me.

Because then I could give you a taste of your own medicine. So you could know what it means to be declared a lesser citizen by your peers, and to have a neighbor sneer at you as she hastens away. To be told that your family is undeserving but that the next one is.

If only I could just brush you ever so slightly, and make you less American, too.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Working In Mililani

Listening to the online radio as I work through lunch, I hear the DJ say, “And for our fifth caller, we have a free lunch from Maruju Market. A pound and a half of fresh poké from Maruju Market - what a nice lunch.”

Poké. Heh. Try finding that anywhere else.

Also at this client site, I overhear things such as:

“We havin one lunchtime meeting, ya?”
“Try hand me da kine?”
“Oh, he no stay here no mo. He wen stay in Ku`unani’s ol’ cube.”

Makes working here worth it, to watch a Vice President of a major bank talk story Hawai`ian style. Well, that, and the drive across the island under bright skies dotted with white puffy clouds. And getting out of the car to be bathed in the fragrance of Eucalytpis leaves recently pelted by rain... And... And... And...

EDIT: And... on the drive home, there were not one, but two rainbows arching over the freeway on the way into town.