Day 36, April 21, 2020

Turkey Day

Dear friends, 

I had a wonderful post, one of those one that just roll off the keyboard and build and crest, and wash over you like an ocean wave. But it didn't save, and perhaps, like the ocean wave, it is lost back into the sea from which it came.

I don't know if I have the stamina to recreate it today.

I see now, all day (I leave my blog page open all day to collect different articles I find) it did not save. 

Feeling sad and forlorn.

Here’s an attempt to reconstruct what I lost:

Last November Debbie's employer gave every worker a frozen Turkey. I thought this Dickensonian beneficence was marvelous. I loved the idea of being given a great round bird of heft. But since we were travelling to spend Thanksgiving with relatives, the bird was tucked into our freezer drawer nestled under frozen peas, frozen bananas, and nestled with the occasional pint of ice cream.

This Easter I felt inspired and decided to make a marvelous Easter quarantine turkey dinner, but to my dismay, I learned it took many days for a turkey to defrost and it was not a thing one could embark on at the last minute. So I postponed my dinner. However, Patriot’s Day seemed like the perfect holiday for quarantine turkey dinner! 

A Korean American Thanksgiving

I have to admit, I am challenged by recipes and cookbooks. I grew up in a household of improvisational and innovative cooking, and rarely, if ever, saw a cookbook in use. As I recently learned, my mother taught herself how to cook Korean food as an adult, mostly by using her childhood memories and her ingenuity. My father is also a wonderful cook, and would return from his concert tours and recreate the tiramisu he ate in Italy using Sarah Lee pound cake, whipped cream, coffee, brandy, and chocolate he shaved with the carrot peeler. Growing up in this household, I learned to trust my instincts when cooking, for better or worse.

As my failed Easter dinner revealed, cooking a turkey is a more fraught endeavor than your typical meal, so I turned to Alton Brown for guidance and assistance. I moved the 15.6 lbs bird into the refrigerator several days ago, and then discovered the intricacies of brining. So, once again my best laid, or best imagined plans were postponed. The brining process would not be finished until the day after Patriot’s Day. So, I recalibrated with a day after Patriot’s Day quarantine turkey dinner!

I wish recipies explained all the needed tools and steps at the start. Apparently, there are multiple stages to turkey preparation, so when you Google how to cook at turkey, you only get one stage of the process. Who knew you needed a special pan and rack? So, in the midst of a pandemic I set out on a quest, my Patriot’s Day quest and drove to Stop and Shop in Hadley. 

In the parking lot of Stop and Shop I donned my mask, and as I tied the strings around my head, I watched the other shoppers making their way back to their cars. Everyone was wearing some sort of face covering. There were hand sewn ones, like what I was wearing. Other people made do with handkerchiefs or scarves, one man even had what appeared to be a small washcloth tied loosely in front of his face. There were no medical masks to be seen anywhere.

I chose a cart and wiped down the handle with a wipe from a stand at the door, then entered the claustrophobic entrance to the store. Taped lines on the floor marked a waiting cue for people done shopping and waiting for a register to open. Other lines marked aisles as one way only. I had a small list of items to procure so I made my way across the store. Predictably, there was no toilet paper, but also no butter, no large containers of Greek yogurt, and only three sacks of flour. I took two of the sacks of flour, found cranberry sauce and stuffing, but despite repeated passes, both moving with and against traffic, I could not find a turkey baking rack or pan. Defeated, I paid and left the store.

My son wanted Greek yogurt, so I drove down Route 9 to Big Y and there the atmosphere was markedly different. A man stood by the front door washing down carriage handles before handing them off to customers. Just inside the door was a hand sanitizing station. Now, I’ve never been one to trust hand sanitizers. They always just seemed… unsanitary to me. But the pandemic has changed that, and now I happily rubbed the foam between my hands until it evaporated. At Big Y, there was still no toilet paper, but I did find Greek yogurt, and to my great delight, I found the last turkey roasting pan and rack kit! I felt like I had just scored a pandemic hat trick, or like the characters from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road when they find an untapped store of canned goods. 

I wonder if this is how things will be from now on as the supply chains of globalization become strained and disconnected. I wonder if the things we are accustomed to purchasing cheaply and at a moment’s notice will slowly become unattainable. The stores we traditionally turn to for such things will remain closed and over time we will buy the last turkey pan, the last cutting board, the last cleaver until there are no more things to buy. 

Just this week, two different people I know on social media posted xenophobic calls to boycot purchasing anything made in China in reaction to the pandemic. It is this narrow minded kind of response that enables the justification of vandalizing Chinese restaurants, breaking the windows of Korean convenience stores, and beating up innocent Asian people in the streets. In general, white people do not differentiate Chinese, from Filipino, from Vietnamese, from Korean, so a slight against any of us is a slight against us all. In any case, if things continue on this track, no one will be able to buy goods from China anyways.

As I waited in line at Big Y, Richard Wilkie, my advisor from graduate school called to check in. He was a geography professor, so travel has always been his modus operandi and he told me about his travels in the Andes and that he was going to send me a travelogue essay he made with his travelling companions. I imagined him in his retirement shorts, a camera slung around his neck, and his marvelous friendly glow. Dick’s magic superpower is that glow. Everywhere he goes, Dick is able to strike up friendships. People gravitate to his genuine curiosity and his kindness. In this way he has fostered a global network of friends, and I feel very lucky to be counted among them. Every few months, Dick and I had a tradition of getting together for breakfast in Amherst or Greenfield and he would catch me up on his travels, and if I was planning a trip anywhere, I would get his recommendations for the best places to eat, where to visit that was off the beaten path, and what I needed to be sure to see. I look forward to when we can resume those breakfasts.

With turkey pan and rack in hand, I returned home to my mostly defrosted and two day dry brined bird. A turkey carcass is a surprisingly massive thing. Preparing the bird involved removing the giblets and neck, and reaching inside required a few fortifying breaths, like a pearl diver before she plumbs the depths of the ocean, and copious hand washing. I am more used to the politely prepared chicken tenders wrapped in cellophane. Reaching inside the icy cavity of a turkey, there is no mistaking that this was once a substantially large living thing. We as human beings have come to look on certain things as common and acceptable, the roasting and preparation of a turkey, for example, and other things as unacceptable, like a pangolin. We see some things as ordinary or extraordinary. We see other things as unappetizing or unconscionable. I have to admit, there is something unsettling about the preparation of a turkey. But, I also have my pleasant associations with turkey. In my imagination, a turkey is the perfect quarantine food. It not only serves as an imposing centerpiece for a fabulous meal, it can then be utilized for days afterwards in sandwiches, in soup, for late night snacks. It is the meal that keeps giving. 

But perhaps it is not so much the turkey that I am remembering fondly, but the gathering of family, the kids laughing, the crowded dinner table where elbows bump with your neighbor, the television playing football or the latest Cars movie, my mother checking the various pots and pans until we call her over, my father carving the bird. So in that sense, the bird is just a symbol, like the turkey pan, the pangolin, the cranberry sauce, for that thing we are all craving and searching for. 

Sending you all love and health,

Leo

I think this is trillium emerging from the forest floor.

From Our Friends:

From Mary McEntee and Alyssa Arnell:

The GCC History Program and Office of Student Activities would like to remind you of the upcoming Zoomposium on Race and the American Story.

(Sorry you missed this, but there are other programs coming.) On April 18th from 4:00-5:30pm, there will be a conversation regarding race and American music featuring Aram Goudsouzian, Professor of History at the University of Memphis and author of King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution.

From Jen Simms:

An online virtual Learning Exchange Introduction to Arts, Culture and Conflict Transformation Ecosystem. Several organizations have come together to co-convene this exchange because experience and evidence demonstrate that arts and culture can be crafted to contribute to the prevention, reduction, and transformation of violent conflict and to affect positive and sustainable change. The Learning Exchange will take place on April 21-22. Please let us know as soon as possible, but no later than April 19 if you are able and interested to participate by responding to Armine Avetisyan arminkav@brandeis.edu. We will then send you registration information. 

From Tony Reiber:

Look at the bees that will be coming to campus shortly once they settle into their new home!

From the Community Economies List Serve:

I can't quite figure out where to find out more information, but there is an email contact <cambalach@autoproduzioni.net> and this looks very cool:

From the Northampton Arts Council:

The Noho Arts Council released a COVID-19 Artist Relief Grant for artists and cultural producers who contribute to the cultural vibrancy of Northampton, Florence, and Leeds.

From Mass Humanities:

The first In Residence podcast has ED Brian Boyles talking with Dr. Emma Teng about the impact of the COVID-19 on the Asian American community.

From the Massachusetts History Alliance:

Conversations on the Commons with Laura Roberts about how what is happening is impacting history organizations across the commonwealth. There are two options: April 24 at 1-2:30 and May 1, 10:30-12.

Today's Online Teaching Tips:

From Sage Publishing:

A page of resources to support teaching online, research, publication, etc.