HW # 18 - Health & Ilness & Feasting

Our Thanksgiving began with shopping at the Union Square Farmer’s Market. My mother asked me to meet her there to assist with the selection and more to the point the transportation of the big bird back to Brooklyn. We interviewed the lady at the organic turkey stand quite extensively. She told us that her turkeys had been fed only “fresh grasses and wholesome grains. Absolutely no GMO corn!” When I told her what I had read in Michael Pollan’s book about so-called free-range chickens having about a single square foot of “range” with nothing growing on it and a tiny door that led to this nowhere land offering no incentive to the bird to make the effort to go out, she replied that her turkeys did not spend time in cages and “were allowed to have not only their dignity but a well-rounded life.” This comment led me to describe the life of our
bird before passing his parts at dinner as being one of resort-style luxury: his own grassy pasture shared only with non-aggressive friends who would get together for picnicking and square dancing, or touch football with the guys. To make a meaningful contrast I described the real-life “chicken factory” soccer field in Queens where my team would sometimes play located next to a filthy barbed-wire coop where we could see the blood spurting from the neck splicing blades. Our actual selection at the Union Square market was a 16 pound bird, which required a big body-centered effort on my behalf to get home.

My musician cousin, aged 30, and his girlfriend came early to help with food preparation. Unfortunately, my dad, who is useless as a cook, could not remember when he put the bird in the oven, which led my cousin to open the oven door every five minutes because, as he said, “there is nothing worse than a dried-out turkey except for landslides and volcanic eruptions in populated areas.” Opening the oven door a thousand times meant that the total cooking time was about ten hours. We ate at 9 pm. Fortunately, my mother had made apple tarts the night before. Otherwise they would have been iced with turkey drippings. There was great physicality in the chopping and slicing of various meats and vegetables and also in the sporadic dancing to different people’s Ipods with music ranging from lil’ Wayne to Billy Joel to Carlos Santana to Earth, Wind, and Fire, to Aretha Franklin to salsa music. My brother’s basketball team had all taken salsa classes after the season to stay in shape so he demonstrated the technique for any interested guests. Since my mother had cut her hand quite badly on a knife my dad had just sharpened for the occasion, all the rest of us did a lot more work that we were not actually all that qualified to do. My brother made a huge mess making sweet and un-sweet plantains based on the fact that at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia he works with a lot of Dominicans who share their delicious plantains with him. Unfortunately, he did not have their recipe or bloodline. The sweet ones were definitely superior to the un-sweet ones, but there were leftovers which was not the case with the other edible contributions.

The actual feast was a sit-down dinner of twelve around a table that can seat six in comfort. The candles hid all the spills that came from wild elbows and absolutely no spaces between foods. I remember that it was noisy and laugh-filled and extremely relaxed since there were no grandparents to impress or difficult family members or friends to make us watch our language. My dad actually began the meal with a toast to
everyone for being people he liked looking at.


After dinner many of us watched the Jets beat the Bengals. Despite great feelings of heaviosity from overeating, there was some movement in our chairs due to Brad Smith’s kickoff return for a touchdown. We also played some minipool, which requires quite a lot of maneuvering due to the smallness of the table and the normal sized cues. We then ate the apple tarts and cakes guests had brought having had some necessary timeout from eating. After dessert there was no further possibility of body movement.

HW # 17 - First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

My grandmother can’t wait to die. She is 90 years old, and she says that every morning when she wakes up, she is so annoyed that her death wish has not been granted. She says she feels extremely angry if she reads in the newspaper about someone young who dies. “That person should have been me,” she thinks. If someone talented dies, she feels particularly frustrated. Michael Jackson’s death upset her because she loved seeing her grandsons dance to “Thriller,” which they did about 10,000 times.

Granny says she has a box of prescription pills that she keeps in case of emergency. The emergency would be the time when her mind goes. The problem is that when that time comes, she will probably be too far gone to remember to take the pills. She is against suicide because “it could get out of hand and become a fad in this crazy culture.” She greatly admires doctors who practice euthanasia though. They are heroes because they help old people who are ready to die no longer be a burden on society by using up oxygen and being a big drain on the health care system.

I asked my grandmother why she isn’t afraid to die. She says that she is hoping that “death will be an awfully great adventure,” which is a line from the book of Peter Pan. She expects to wake up somewhere else that is not heaven or hell but another world. I asked her if this means that she does not believe in heaven or hell. She says that she does not and that the older she gets the more she thinks that religion is something man created to answer questions that can’t be answered and to scare people into behaving better. On the other hand, she still prays out of habit if she is worried, and she believes our spirits go somewhere. She loves the idea of meeting up with spirits of people she liked, but she is terrified of being stuck with spirits of people she did not like even for ashort time.

I told my grandmother that I am afraid of dying. I think it is related to my fear of the dark. I believe that in the dark surprises can happen and they are bound to be bad. I hatethe idea of dying and being in the dark forever. I must believe in a spirit that lives on after the body becomes a lifeless carcass but since I was not really brought up to be religious, my idea of what a spirit does is not clear. I was baptized, but my last memory of church is of finding the giant chocolate Easter egg in a big hunt with a lot of help from my older brother. I saw the new Harry Potter movie and felt terrible when Dobby the elf died. After Dobby’s body went limp in Harry’s arms, Luna, Harry’s friend, closed his eyes. I think it’s terrible that eyes don’t close by themselves at the time of death. If they did, death would be less horrible.

HW # 8 - Growing Our Own Food

I acquired broccoli seeds because I love broccoli, and I read that broccoli sprouts have large amounts of vitamins and minerals and 50 times the amount of a nutrient called sulforaphane, which is the reason broccoli is called a super food. It is also a cancer-fighting nutrient. The seeds sprouted in about a day and a half. They started to sprout so quickly that I didn't have time to build up a lot of anticipation. I came home from soccer practice the night following the day I had planted them and there were already tips of green. There is something tremendously satisfying about seeing the green of new growth and being responsible for it, and it also made me think about whether undernourished people throughout the world could be given tons of seeds for sprouting. Unfortunately, I don't find sprouts particularly delicious, but now that I know how healthy they are, I think it would be woth exploring ways to eat them with other things that cover up the taste and texture.

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