Deeds & Words

Four farmers sat at my table during the Food Forum.  Eleanor and Balyn run Wild Rose Farm, and I frequently buy vegetables from them.  Across the table, a young woman whose name I never got said she farms about an acre and a half, and wants to add an additional half acre.  She grows specialty vegetables.  Deborah, who manages the Santa Rosa Junior College’s Shone Farm as well as her own, sat next to me.  Each of them spoke with passion about farming and how they love it; and each of them had so many complaints about how awful it is that I wondered why they bothered. 

I believe that they love it, though, and apparently they aren’t alone. 

We’re Number Four 

• California is the #1 agricultural producer in the country.  We produce more than two times the amount of the second and third states combined. 
• California supplies ½ of the nation’s fruits, nuts and vegetables. 
• Internationally we are known for wine, cotton, almonds and rice.

 Sonoma County is the third highest-producing agricultural county in the state.

• We are the third highest in number of farmers. 
• We are fourth highest in agricultural sales, bringing in nearly $500 million in agricultural sales each year.  Over $400,000 of that is due to wine grape sales.   There are 1,500 grape growers in the county, 40% of whom have vineyards of less than 20 acres.
• Vegetables account for $7.9 million in sales, apples $1.3 million, and liquid milk (not counting cheese) about $64,000.

 These statistics came from Paul Vosson who works for the University of California, Davis Cooperative Extension.  Paul talked about Sonoma’s agricultural history; butter and eggs, prunes, hops, berries, figs and kiwi—crops we no longer sell.  He applauded our foray into the specialty olive and cheese producing, and our tendency to “brand” our items as uniquely Sonoma County. 

The morning panel comprised three farmers and one cheese producer who talked about their experience in the “food system.” 

It’s Hard Out Here For a Farmer

 Milk is one of the products that costs more to produce, especially if the dairy farmer supplements pasture feeding, which most do.  Because of Sonoma County’s clay pan under the layer of rich topsoil, you can’t grow alfalfa successfully here. Alfalfa has to be trucked in.  Our location, far from the Interstate 5/Interstate 99 corridors, means truck companies charge a premium.  That gets passed on to the consumer.  Water is costly, and most recycled water gets directed to vineyards.  

Another high cost is labor.  

Agriculture, like manufacturing, has a spotty history when it comes to treatment of employees.  In 1965, Governor Edmund “Pat” Brown was calling for authority to import foreign (read “Mexican”) workers to pick fruit in the central valley field and South California orchards, because they could pay immigrant labor less than the Federally-mandated $1.40/hour agricultural minimum wage.  Farmers could also wait until the end of the harvest and pay in one lump sum, which led to abuses, such as hiring immigrant labor illegally, letting them work the harvest, then making an anonymous call to Immigration a day before payday and having them all deported unpaid.  This happened here in Sonoma with the prune orchards and early vineyards—I knew people whose families it happened to.  Living conditions for field labor was and still often is horrific, like the working conditions.  Each year at least one or two field laborers die in the fields in the Central Valley still, usually from heat exhaustion or dehydration.

To protect against these human rights abuses, labor laws and regulations are quite strict, but they take the cookie-cutter approach.  The same laws that apply to the AgriBiz farm that hires 100 field workers applies to my table-mate with her acre and a half, who wants to hire a part-time person or recruit an intern.  Since many people want to farm in Sonoma County, an intern program seems brilliant; but there are the legal obstacles to be overcome.

Even in the recession, Sonoma County has some of the most expensive land in California.  It is very difficult to “break into” farming. Two of the panelists were third and fourth generation farmers whose families bought the land in the 1950s, or 40s. Land, infrastructure and equipment are all expensive; start up is a big risk for a young farmer. If you can’t afford to buy your land, and you can’t learn how to farm by working for someone else for a few years; you can’t afford health insurance, tractors, or hoop houses, just how do you get started?

Taxes Breaks in Limbo 

The Williamson Act, which allowed lower assessment, and lower taxes, for the farmer and a “backfill” of state funds for the county, is in jeopardy because of California’s fiscal crisis.  Governor Schwarzenegger did not eliminate the act but reduced the state money to repay the counties to $1,000 as a “placeholder.”  The current governor is considering the complete elimination of the act.  (See Comment below for more detail on the Williamson Act).  The proposed change would increase property taxes on local farmers.  The purpose of the Williamson Act was to encourage farmers to keep land used for farming and not be “tempted” to sell it to a developer.  In Sonoma County, that temptation still runs pretty high, especially if there is a tax penalty for farming.

There is no “There” There 

Once you grow and harvest your crop when it’s ripe, you have two or three days to get it to consumers.  If you don’t farm the land you live on, you may not have a place to wash and bundle your goods.  Even if you do, you may not be able to afford a contract with a distributor, especially if your crop is small and/or specialized.  With the recession, Sonoma County’s wonderful inventive restaurants are buying less expensive produce they can get from southern California. 

Local farmers and officials are getting together to talk about a “food hub;” a central place where produce can be “lightly processed” (cleaned, culled, bundled) stored, and distributed.  There is interest from neighboring counties like Lake County with its pear orchards, and Mendocino. Food distributors like Green Leaf and Sonoma Organics would be willing to come to a food hub because they would get a payload that was worth their while. Some food hub models include an on-site farmers market and other features. 

Richard Rominger sees locally-grown food as a better economic and security option.  Food grown nearby does not use as much energy to get to the table, and it is less vulnerable to transport disruption.  “Food security is a national security issue,” he said. 

 Waitin’ For a Train 

Doug Beretta, a dairy farmer who talked about the cost of trucking in alfalfa, said that this county needs freight rail again, and he got a round of applause.  There is work to bring back rail in Sonoma County, mostly commuter rail, running north-south.  There is no reason freight trains couldn’t run on those rails, but I don’t see how the alfalfa gets here if there is no east-west rail as well.  This is an interesting conundrum. 

A Herd of Elephants in the Room 

Some things we don’t like to talk about they make people uncomfortable. When it comes to the role of government, most farmers’ attitudes can be summed up in one sentence; “Give me the money and leave me alone.”  According to the USDA, in 2009 the average Sonoma County farmer got $7,000 in subsidies.  They want the county to step in and help them with labor subsidies, food hubs and trains, but Beretta flat out said that voters had no right to tell him how to run his business.  “I don’t tell them how to do their jobs.” Compliance with regulations is too onerous, subsidies aren’t high enough, labor is expensive and tax breaks aren’t big enough.  These are the complaints of every corporation in America.  It’s no surprise that the Farm Bureau is primarily Republican. 

Beretta also talked about farmers as champions of the environment in ways other businesses aren’t.  You want riparian areas?  You want the tiger salamander protected?  You want a rare flower allowed to flourish?  Talk to the farmers, those noble stewards of the land, who work with these things all the time.  Many farmers are conscious of the environment now, and many do farm organically—Beretta is one—and many do reduce the runoff and limit pesticides. Some of that is because they are required to, or paid to, by the government; some of it is because “organic” is a marketing technique.  It’s disingenuous to pretend that the farmers have protected the land when we know the national history of farming; pesticide and herbicide overuse, poisoned local streams and waterways.  Ranchers might want to save the salamander but traditionally have not been interested in peaceful co-existence with any predator, including our national bird, the bald eagle.

It’s awkward to talk about what an environmentally filthy business growing winegrapes can be, though, when the Association of Wine Growers sponsored your forum.

That said, the challenges to food production, at least growing it, were clearly delineated.  What’s a farmer to do?  The panel had some ideas about that as well,which I will cover in the next installment.

Last week in my home county, people got together to address food, not as a luxury item or a culinary exercise, but as a nexus of economics, ecological improvements and public health.

It’s surprising that only in the past few years have policy makers and “regular” people made a connection between poor diet and poor health outcomes; an epidemic of childhood obesity, sharp increases in heart disease, diabetes and strokes, all of which can be affected by diet.  At the same time, locally, it is starting to dawn on our politicians that “agriculture,” in Sonoma County, may encompass more than wine grapes, and that supporting a diverse agriculture is better economics and better stewardship of our land and water.

300 people attended the county’s first Food Forum.  They included farmers.  It was a good thing the weather was bad, because it would have been hard to get farmers there if they had thought they could get in a good day of work in the fields.  Other groups who were represented; retailers and specialty food producers such as wine and cheese makers; educators, local government officials and at least one federal official from the USDA.  Members of the Farm Bureau attended; local community based organizations were there; grassroots agricultural groups were represented.  Flaming tree-hugging liberals sat next to Farm Bureau  Republicans. Politicians shared tables with Small Government fans.  As Heather Irwin, a blogger for the local daily paper, said, flannels and work-boots, suits and ties.

A Bridge from the Field to the Table

What are the issues?  Sonoma County is famous for its agriculture.  At the same time the county has demonstrable “food deserts,” areas where for every 1 grocery store there are 7 fast food places, areas where people cannot easily get food that isn’t heavily processed.  We are famous for our agriculture but cannot generate enough to meet the demand, while at the same time many specialty food producers sell internationally, or nationally to places like New York and New Orleans.  Most farmers cannot and do not make a living farming; there is at least one other income, often a full-time job, in the household.

It costs more to produce some foods in Sonoma County than it does in the Central Valley or other states (or South America).  This costs gets passed on to the consumer, so a single working mom with two children, for example, is making a choice based on economic necessity, not ignorance, when she buys a bag of carrots from Chile at WalMart rather than local carrots fresh out of the ground.

Land use, water use and tax policies play big roles in any discussion about food production.

The event lasted all day and was jam-packed with content.  It won’t all fit on one posting, so I plan to do several.  Later, you’ll meet the Producers, The Eaters, and the Solutions, but for right now, enjoy some pictures and some quotes.

“Food is more than fuel.  It is love, it is life, it is how we connect with one another.”  County Supervisor Shirlee Zane.

“As far as making changes in your food system, you are over the first big hurdle; you have the support of your Board of Supervisors.”  Richard Rominger, Former Secretary of Agriculture and Head of the California Department of Food And Agriculture.

*

“Rest it on your lower lip, just like an ice cream cone.” A voice from the crowd, instructing Richard Rominger on how to use the wireless microphone.

“How do we define ‘local?’ And how do we define ‘access?’ And what do we mean when we say ‘food?’” Stephanie Larson, UC Davis Coooperative Extension.

“We have a niche market.  I guess what I’m looking for now is the uber-niche,” Keith Abeles, Quetzal Farms. (Unfortunately, Keith is not one of the three farmers pictured above.)

*

“If you’re a farmer or a specialty food producer, you’re certainly not in it for the high margin of profitism.”  Sheana Davis, cheese maker. 

“That’s it.  I need cookies.”  Someone seated near me, after hearing Dr. Mary Maddux’s presentation on the link between processed foods and diabetes and heart disease.

The Private Patient/P.D. James

Vintage, 2010

Whether it’s describing a publishing house along the river, a small local museum or a religious community, PD James is adept at setting her mysteries in interesting spaces.  Invariably, the fate of the place is bound up with the solution of the mystery.  The Private Patient, the newest Adam Dalgliesh mystery, is no exception.  The Manor, a Tudor-era house converted into a private clinic by a successful private surgeon, is an important element in the story, if not exactly a character itself.

Rhoda Gradwyn is a well-known investigative journalist with a bad facial scar.  Now nearly forty, Gradwyn decides to have surgery to reduce the scar.  A deeply private person, she chooses to have the surgery done at the Manor rather than in a London hospital where her surgeon, George Chandler-Powell, also treats patients. She chooses a couple of weeks before Christmas, a quiet time at the Manor.  The day after her successful surgery she is found strangled to death in her bed in the Manor’s west wing. 

Because Gradwyn made a preliminary visit to the Manor before her procedure, we have the layout of the house through her cool, analytical eyes. The mystery is a “cosy,” where the murder happens indoors in a closed room, so we need to see how the rooms connect, where the lift is and which doors lock.  Gradwyn has researched the house and its inhabitants because that’s what she does.  She does not appreciate it.   That’s left for others. The new owner, Chandler-Powell, finds it a place of peace, a symbol of wealth.  For David and Kimberly Bostock, the cooks,  the kitchen  is both a refuge and the death of a dream.  Helene Cressett, whose family owned the manor for four hundred years, only to lose it in a stock market crash in the 1990s, does not reveal her feelings about the place at all until the end of the book.  

Chandler-Powell’s assistant Marcus Westhall and his sister Candace, who live in a cottage on the property, seem less interested in the manor than other spaces, particularly, for Marcus, the manor’s small chapel with its troubled history.  And the circle of standing stones where a woman was burned as a witch in the seventeenth century exercises a fascination for at least one resident. 

James waits until after the murder, when Dalgliesh and his Metro Squad team arrive, to show us the grandeur of the place.  She does this less with physical description than with the reactions of her characters: 

Dalgliesh wondered whether [Chandler-Powell] had intended this first sight of the hall to be so dramatic.  He experienced an extraordinary moment in which architecture, colours, shape and sounds, the soaring roof, the great tapestry on the right-hand wall, the vase of winter foliage on an oak table to the left of the door, the row of portraits in their gilt frames, some objects seem clearly  even in the first glance, other perhaps dredged from some childish memory of fantasy, seemed to fuse into a living picture which immediately impregnated his mind. ” (p119) 

Dalgliesh is a poet as well as a detective. Kate Miskin, a girl born into council housing who has clawed her way out, sees wealth and privilege, while Sergeant Benton-Smith notices the place in relation to Helene Cressett, who looks as if she stepped out of one of the Elizabethan paintings. 

As in her other books, James shows the destruction murder can wreak on survivors, and the manor’s fate is precarious.  Chandler-Lowell and Helene, who is the general administrator, feel that the murder will cast a pall over the place; no one will ever come there to have surgery again (unlike in America, where the surgeon would probably get his own reality TV show). 

To solve the mystery, Dalgliesh’s team must explore other interiors; Gradwyn’s unusual three story apartment in Absolution Alley; a church school, a stylish Edwardian villa in Maida Vale.  They explore the interiors of their suspects as well, uncovering the secrets of the manor’s inhabitants and the hidden connections to Gradwyn.  This mystery is not the strongest of James’s books, and this may be in part because some of the suspense is personal.  Dalgliesh is due to marry his beloved Emma in five weeks.  He doesn’t doubt their love, but his job has always been an obstacle, and this is a tender time. Some of the book is given to Dalgliesh’s, and Miskin’s, musings about how things will change on the Squad once Dalgliesh marries and presumably retires. 

Some of the secrets here seem to be a stretch, and one verges on the preposterous.  There is a clever subplot with a convenient death, a grasping relative and a will that plays out convincingly if predictably.  The final “twist,” after the murder is solved, is not much of a surprise, and I wondered if it were really necessary. 

James does a good job of playing with the “country house” theme made famous by Christie and Marsh.  In this case, as in all of PD James’s novels, life does not go back to normal once the mystery is solved.  Irrevocable changes have taken place, for all of the characters.  She reserves a gentle and optimistic fate for the house itself.  The Manor, repository of history, hopes and dreams, will enter a new phase, but it will survive.

Syfy movies:  Highlander; the Source; Incomprehensible and incoherent. 

There Can Be Only One—And There Should Have Been 

For those of you who don’t watch fantasy movies or TV shows, here is enough to get you started.  In the original movie, Christopher Lambert played an immortal.  There are more like him.  They all have cool swords and they meet up, over the centuries, and challenge each other to duels.  The only way to kill an immortal is to cut off his head—and it will always be his head, at least in the first movie, since they are all male.  They are also all sterile (good thing too—immortal and fertile?  Recipe for trouble).  Anyway, there is a slogan among the immortals; “There can be only one.”  All the immortals are in a tontine. When all but one of the immortals has been killed, something wonderful happens to the survivor.  I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you what. 

Then there was a basic cable TV show based around a different immortal character, Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod.  We presume that the TV show was a “reboot” since there are dozens of immortals around, and more begin popping up like mushrooms after a good rain. 

Time passes, the show goes off the air, and then sometime later they made this thing called Highlander III; the Source.  It is the TV storyline the movie chooses to follow. And Syfy can’t wait to show it; over and over. 

Somewhere in Eastern Europe. . . 

Generally speaking, a movie that relies on voice-over narration is not a good movie.  There are exceptions; for example, The Usual Suspects.  The Source is no Suspects.  

A woman, speaking over the action, tells us that the world has fallen apart, in some unspecified way, while the location card on the screen lets us know we are Somewhere in Eastern Europe.  Somewhere in Eastern Europe; that’s always a good place to set a movie. There’s a guy running down a dark street, dodging the occasional listless looter (it appears the streets have been like this for months; these must be underachiever looters).  He has a sword.  He does something—I missed what.  The scene shifts to a nicer venue and two guys are talking to each other virtually with nifty spectacles that project hologrammatic images.  One of them talks about how all the planets in the solar system are shifting out of their orbits into some kind of mystical alignment.  “This goes against celestial mechanics!”  one of them shouts.  They’re both immortals.  They know this planetary lineup means the immortals must find The Source. 

Elsewhere, a guy in monsignor’s robes and a Billy Idol bleach-job is also talking virtually to the first guy with the sword, about the location of the source.  Then the first guy gets killed by a guy wearing patches of armor and sporting a very bad attitude.  Next we see a guy in a shearling coat crouching on the top of a building, like Batman.  It’s Duncan MacLeod!  And the VO narrator tells us that she was married to him, so it’s an immortal domestic drama. 

Time passes; the surviving guys all get together somewhere.  There is Methos, an ancient Roman, who used to be on the TV show, and Giovanni, the bleach-job monsignor, a guy with a cockney accent, MacLeod and a regular human guy, known as a Watcher, named Joe. They go into the woods and try to get entrance to a rustic-spa-monastery to meet with The Elder.  They are refused but a mysterious woman (guess who!  Can you guess?) scales the wall.  The monks let her in, and then let the immortals in.  It’s MacLeod’s wife and our narrator!  She has had visions about the planets and the half-armored guy and a bunch of other stuff.  Nobody wants to talk to the immortals, but everyone wants to talk to her, including the gross Elder, who explains that the immortals must go find the Source; that she has to be the leader, that they’ll be challenged by the Guardian—that’s the bad attitude guy—and the only one of them can find the Source. If they find the Source, something will happen.  Maybe it’s good; I was never clear on this. 

Jupiter Aligns with Mars 

Meantime; bad attitude guy kills Joe.  Immortals hire a freighter and sail somewhere.  They confront a bunch of bad guys on land.  Then the movie jumps forward to show them driving into the forest, and suddenly, under Queen’s incandescent harmonies (“Here we are, born to be kings, we’re the princes of the universe. . .”) we get a flashback to the battle with the bad guys.  You know, the scene they could have just shown to us in real time.  Why the flashback?  It’s a mystery.  They find an abandoned cottage.  Methos and Giovanni squabble about religion. MacLeod, the woman and the cockney guy go on watch.  MacLeod and his ex have a heart-to-heart talk that soon involves unbuckling belts and unzipping flies; and bad attitude guy fights the cockney guy, but he doesn’t cut off his head.  The cockney guy dies anyway.  Oh, no, this is bad!  The immortals are becoming mortal.  

Then they’re captured by a motorcycle gang that lives in the woods.  Why would a motorcycle gang live in the woods, instead of near pavement?  I don’t know.  They have a two-story-high wicker man kind of thing and all the immortals and the woman tied up on a platform.  Giovanni gets his hand free and escapes.  Instead of helping the others, he shouts, “There can be only one!”  and runs into the forest. We don’t like Giovanni. Bad attitude guy appears and takes the woman, telling her that the Source wants to talk to her.  Off they go.  MacLeod and Methos escape.  The motorcycles roar into life and come after them.  Whatever may have caused the collapse of the free world, it wasn’t a dearth of fossil fuel.  Methos tells MacLeod to go on, find the woman and the Source, because MacLeod “is the best of us.”  

Oh, and by the way, these planets?  They’re not only bailing out of their orbits right and left, but they’ve grown closer to earth.  Much closer; like, earthquake and tidal wave close; like, bumping into the moon close; much too close for comfort. 

A Bundle of Joy 

Of course, McLeod has to fight with the Guardian, he of the bad attitude and partial armor.  While the woman stands on a stairway (to heaven?) they duel, moving superfast, equally matched until somehow MacLeod tricks the Guardian into cork-screwing himself into the ground.  But MacLeod won’t kill the Guardian; he shows mercy.  Screen goes black. 

Ah, you think it’s over.  Wrong!  In a two-minute montage, all the action scenes play back for us while the woman narrates again about how the message of the source isn’t death, it’s life and the “one” who remains survives because he is pure of heart. And that’s MacLeod, pure of heart.  His prize is that he gets to have a child (and grow a beard in the last scene).  Well, actually, we assume that human biology has stayed pretty much the same in spite of this miracle and that she will be the one bearing the child. This child will save the world.  The last frame of the movie is a fetus-face, smiling, very Two Thousand and One; A Space Odyssey. 

Why?  Oh, I get it; a child who is half human, half immortal.  Why, it’s almost like being the child of a god!  Kid, get those planets back in order, would’ja? 

The movie played as if half the cast had to go back to their real jobs after three days of filming, so they cut the script in half and hoped the woman talking over the action would cover that up.  Then they scrounged around and found some random action edits that had been cut out of other movies, and stitched them into the narrative and hoped no one would notice.   The movie may not be quite as bad as I think, because I was doing dishes through part of it.  It’s still a long way from coherent. 

Even Queen couldn’t save this. My suggestion; when it comes on again, go to your computer and find a YouTube video of Queen singing “Princes of the Universe.”  Play that instead, and then go for a nice walk or something.

 Cleopatra, a Life

Stacy Schiff

Little, Brown, 2010 

Stacy Schiff’s thoroughly documented biography of Egypt’s best-known queen throws open a window on a time and place that is mysterious and exotic; Egypt in the four decades BCE.  

Schiff is, if not outright partisan toward her subject, a voice for fairness and skepticism.  Early on she points out that very few of Cleopatra’s own words remain in the historical record and that from the writers of the day (loyal to Rome) to Shakespeare to George Bernard Shaw, it’s been men putting words in her mouth. Schiff looks past the smear jobs and uses records of the time to uncover a smart ruler, an able queen and a strategist capable, had things gone differently, of ruling an empire. 

My reading about Cleopatra before this had always been about Cleopatra in the context of Rome.  Schiff contextualizes her in her own country, her own home.  She shows us Cleopatra as part of the line of Ptolemy; a line of Egyptian rules who weren’t Egyptian but Greek; a family who claimed to be related to Alexander the Great (they weren’t); a family that schemed and intrigued with the best of them.  By the time she was twenty-two, when she met Caesar, Cleopatra had seen one sister attempt a royal coup and be executed for it, was married to her nine-year-brother and was on the losing end of a civil war prosecuted by that brother’s retainers. She was about to win Caesar to her side, and about to win that war and be crowned queen. 

Schiff is scrupulous about writing what is known and correctly labeling speculation, and she speculates very little.  Despite that, the book reads almost like a novel, so vivid is the depiction of palace life, of a religious pageant or a diplomatic dinner in Tarsus.  

Schiff admires but does not sugar-coat her subject, or attribute 21^st century morals or sensibilities to her.  Cleopatra, she says, murdered her younger brother by poison.  She points out that killing off rival siblings was a family tradition.  The alternative was to leave a rival who would act as a lightning rod for any disaffected military or political group. Later in the book we meet a charming young client king of Rome, an ally turned enemy of Cleopatra’s, named Herod.  Herod manages to execute or outright murder everyone in his family who offends him, and sooner or later, everyone offends him. For her time Cleopatra was less an evil, murderous schemer than a strategic and realistic ruler. 

 Similarly, Schiff acknowledges that Cleopatra’s problems in Rome came not only from its institutional misogyny but from her own mishandling of key political players, for example, Cicero, who she offended, apparently, by not delivering a book she had promised.  Schiff does not think highly of Cicero at all, but she is willing to give Cleopatra part of the blame. 

The last third of the book focuses, understandably, less on the queen and more on the rivalry between Mark Antony and Augustus Caesar (Octavian).  Spindly, sickly, smart and manipulative, Octavian managed to get the better of Antony at almost every turn.  In a way, this is a book about three larger than life people, Cleopatra, Caesar and Antony, and one fully-life-sized person who outlasted—and bested—all of them. 

The book not only puts Cleopatra in a valuable historical context, it sheds light on the social mores and politics of the time and place.  When the book opens, with Cleopatra’s daring and desperate attempt to reach Caesar rolled up in a cloth bag, the country-folk of Egypt completely support her–and the elites in the city of Alexandria do not. Alexandrians have no trouble taking to the streets and rioting when they are unhappy.  Schiff talks about the money of the time and how Cleopatra protects her treasury and combats inflation by, for the first time ever, casting coins where the mark on the coin, not its weight, determine its value. The Egyptian government was rigidly, inescapably bureaucratic, and riddled with corruption.  At this time Rome had almost no bureaucracy–and was riddled with corruption.  Make of that what you will. 

Schiff has made a solid work of scholarship interesting and readable.  The book was a guilty pleasure—I was learning something, and it was almost too much fun.

I drove to the Santa Rosa farmers’ market because my local one doesn’t open for another month.  Our newly formed group, Savor, meets this Wednesday and I have to come up with a potluck dish (featuring kale, of course!) so I did my shopping today.

I stopped at Oh, Tommy Boy for kale, and got two bunches.  They also had this strange broccoli/cauliflower-looking vegetable front and center.  The shape is clearly in the broccoli range, but the color is bright yellow-green, almost the shape  shade of acacia blossoms.  The florets do not form in rounded heads like clouds or the top of trees, but in spirals ending in a point.  Depending on your mood, it could look like a tiny grove of Christmas trees, a fractal-painting, or some steampunk variation on a mace (the weapon, not the spice).

It’s broccoli romanesco—or cauliflower romanesco, depending on where you’re from; also called coral broccoli and roman cabbage.  You can Google “Fibonacci Broccoli” and you will find it.  Seriously. The florets really do grow in a spiral pattern. Here is a website with fun things to do with the Fibonacci sequence, broccoli and other vegetables.  Don’t say you never learned anything on my blog.

I asked how to cook it and both the vendor and the lady next to me agreed that while it’s great raw, it’s also delectable roasted.  Break up the florets, coat them lightly in olive oil and spread them on a baking sheet; roast for about ten minutes at 425 degrees (or even 475, the farmer suggested).  The lady next to me murmured, “And I always add garlic and Parmesan cheese,” so that’s what I’m going to try tonight.

I broke off a floret and ate it in the car, just out of curiosity.  It’s a bit milder than broccoli; nutlike and sweet and I’m interested to see how it tastes roasted.

“You just need to program as good as I analyze.”—Aaron Barr to a programmer. 

The Anonymous versus Aaron Barr story reads like a high-tech thriller—in fact, a little too high-tech for me.  I understand none of the mechanics, but I grasp the personalities and the emotions.  My question is this:  Who is the hero and who is the villain? 

My post-modernist friends will look at me with a small, pitying sneer and remind me that there are no heroes.  Okay, then, who is the villain in this techno-opera?  Because while the world is quick to evict heroes, we all agree there are villains a-plenty.

Information and Security 

The Cliff Notes version; Aaron Barr is an analyst for HB Gary, a high-profile security firm.  He made it his personal mission to track down the “secret identities” of a group of “hackavists” who call themselves Anonymous.  Anonymous have come out strongly in support of Wikileaks and taken on a couple of big targets, including Mastercard.  HB Gary was negotiating a huge contract and Barr wanted to put the company on the map by un-masking Anonymous.  He claimed to have uncovered the “three leaders” and was going to divulge their identities both to the FBI and to a group of the public at a security convention. 

Barr’s theory for finding Anonymous involved social media; elaborate triangulation of FB posts, tweets and other communications. Or something like that.  He actually assigned three names to major players, or posters at least, in the Anonymous group.  Anonymous told him that these people were not involved with them; that they were innocent people whose lives would be disrupted or even ruined if Barr IDed them as hackers, but Barr was going to do it anyway.  So Anonymous broke into HB Gary’s systems, pulled out over 40,000 documents and e-mails and hacked the HB Gary website, among other things. 

Morals and Movies 

It kind of sounds like a plot from a movie.  In fact, it is the plot of a 1990s movie called Hackers. (See Comment)  In this exchange, are Anonymous the villains, or is Barr? 

I have to admit, Barr makes a fine, fine villain. Even his name works against him. In this incident, he demonstrates no redeeming features.  None.  Barr is arrogant, impatient, mercenary, double-dealing, and churlish to his staff and the programmers he is working with.  His own e-mails and other electronic messages prove this.  One coder tries repeatedly to show Barr that his “theory” about the social-networking thing is not well-supported mathematically—to no avail. Barr is a braggart, verbalizing his fantasy of putting himself and HB Gary on the map by exposing the hacker group, and paying no attention to reality. 

The Anonymous Legacy

By default, then, Anonymous must be the. . . well, non-villains.  Anonymous at least express concern for innocent people who are going to be hurt by Barr’s antics—if they really are innocent people and not the ringleaders of Anonymous after all.  Anonymous honor schoolyard justice. You hit me first, I hit you back harder.  You throw a rock at my friend, I throw a bigger rock at you and yours.  If I’m a hero who plays by schoolyard rules, if I see you bullying someone, I’ll make you stop.  We all approve of that, in the abstract at least. 

My sympathies were engaged by Anonymous before I read a single sentence of this story.  That’s because I am an American, and we’ve been programmed for generations to root for people with names like, well, like Anonymous.  Anonymous represents the people; the voice of truth, the “little guy” hitting back.  The protesters in Iran after dark, crying out, “I am Nadya,” were themselves unnamed.  The people of the Underground Railroad were anonymous, as were the citizens in Europe who hid Jews in their houses; Robin Hood was anonymous, as were The Scarlet Pimpernel, Batman and V (or at least they had secret identities).  The James brothers robbed trains—they were crooks, basically, but because they had a back-story that alleged they had their land taken unfairly by the railroads, they exist in legend as folk-heroes. 

Anonymous the hackers are egalitarian and ingenious, two more things we like.  We like to root for the underdog, especially if the underdog is really clever.  HB Gary only lost  face and money.  It’s hard to feel sorry for Barr, who engaged in hubris.  Hubris is something we don’t like, again, in theory; or at least, we don’t like it when other people engage in it. 

Maybe I should flip this.  Maybe the story is a tragedy and Barr the tragic hero whose fatal flaw is his overweening pride; and his failure is a failure to hold back the ravening hordes of anarchists.  Naaah.  He’s just not good enough to be that either.

 So, I should root for Anonymous; except, and I know how craven this makes me, Anonymous scare me.

Hard to Live Your Values When You’re Scared 

Anonymous have no boundaries.  I’m uncomfortable with that.  Their ethic is not, “Information wants to be free,” but more like, “If I can do it, it’s all right to do.”  A locked door to them is not a signal of privacy; it’s a challenge.  This is might-makes-right.  It’s tempting to picture Anonymous, in this battle, as a scrappy group of freedom-fighters waging war against a military machine, but in this scenario, the freedom-fighter have thermo-nukes and stealth drones.  That scares me. 

Schoolyard justice works great in the abstract, right up until the rock I chuck at my enemy hits the noncombatant second-grader playing hopscotch. 

Anonymous thoroughly embarrassed HB Gary.  What if the next person who offends them works for a health clinic network, and Anonymous decide to attack the electronic health record servers?  What if they get mad at an energy utility?  Do they believe that we, who are dependent on those utilities for heating, cooking and light, are noncombatants?  Or are we acceptable collateral damage?  I don’t know the answer. 

Anonymous are kind of like pirates; fun, romantic and Johnny-Depp-cool on our screens and in books; a different matter when they are boarding your cruise ship with automatic weapons. 

Basically, if Barr had been a different kind of analyst—let’s say, a humble one, or a quirky one—he could have emerged as the underdog, fighting a bunch of techno-elitists to protect Main Street.  Maybe.  It’s a hard sell, but it’s possible. 

Or is this a battle of models?  Is it the Board of Directors majority-rules model against the anarchic, loose collective, roundtable model? Stodgy old-school cops against vandals with daddy issues, or intelligensia against the corporate machine?

So who is the villain?

Oh, brave new world, that has such creatures (or wonders) in it!  Was I supposed to be giving up SP for Lent or something?  This tempting morsel is just too good to ignore.  Thanks to Thomas Dewar on Facebook, for sharing it first:

Steampunk Palin.

Upon reflection, it may be projects like this that made the Alaska celebrity want to trademark her name.

The other week one of my direct reports found a cache of old papers in a file cabinet in the electrical room.  Finding papers in a government building is not news.  Finding old papers is kind of cool, though.  He made up a stack and left them on the table in my office, because he knew I’d be interested, (and because he didn’t know what to do with them). 

Our building dates to the mid-1960s, and the same department (Social Services, later named Human Services) has been in it the whole time, so it’s not such a shock to find out-dated paperwork.  Usually it’s from the 1980s.  This stack had material from the 1960s, and even more interesting, from the 1930s. 

The oldest work papers dated from 1934.  That is more than 70 years ago; before World War II, during the Great Depression; before photocopiers, mainframe computers, fax machines; before the internet, cell phones and American Idol; before an interstate highway system, before parking meters, before television. These papers are carbon-copies, not photocopies. They are the real thing. 

*

 Bessie W Campbell was Director of the Social Services Department in June, 1934.  Mrs. Campbell was one of seven employees, according to the Employee Reports from that month.  At the end of the month each worker completed a report showing how many field visits they made and how many office interviews they did, by day of the month.  “Sunday” is typed in at certain dates, implying strongly that these women (all seven are female) worked on Saturdays. 

It seems like a lot of their time was spent getting funds for local people on Indian Rancherias, or who had moved off the Rancheria but might still be eligible for federal funds. We see social workers attempting to persuade the federal Office of Indian Affairs to consider the needs of “crippled Indian children,” elderly folks, or families.  On March 2, 1936, Bessie Campbell tries to persuade Mr. Roy Nash that an Indian woman named Mary S, who lived on the Geyserville Rancheria for a long period of time but had moved to the town of Windsor to look for work, should qualify to be a ward Indian and be allowed Federal Supplies.  On March 3, Mr. Nash replies, “Replying to yours of the 2^nd instant, relative to Mary S, this girl has ward status, and it would be satisfactory for you to issue order for necessary aid to be paid by this office.” We know that Mary S was born in the 1890’s and, in 1936, is really no longer a girl. 

Federal Supplies were one benefit available to Indians on Rancherias or who qualified for an allotment even though they had moved away.  A list provided shows that in calendar year 1935, Sonoma County provided $314 worth of supplies to nine families, including the family of Mary S, above. 

Some things never change, and one is the innate bureaucratic desire to squabble over jurisdiction—in other words, to make someone else responsible for something.  Among the papers of the 1930s is a carbon copy of a letter from H.H. Shuffleton, the County Auditor of Shasta County to Miley M Pope (Miss), of the Department of Social Welfare in Sacramento, California.  The letter was written in March, 1930. In this three page document, Shuffleton lays out a set of questions he posed to the Department of Indian Affairs in order to determine whether a widowed Indian woman, who is “unallotted, but has inherited interests. . .” is eligible for federal services.  Each question was answered by the Department, and the result is “No.” 

Mr. Shuffleton goes on to say, “ . .as I said at the first of this letter, I saw after the first conference with the Indian Department that we would be “stuck” with the _____ case.” He feels successful, however, because the list of questions gives the counties a ”definite method of determining responsibility for each and every Indian case.” Shuffleton notes gleefully that . . .”Shasta County is coming out considerably to the good as we have unloaded approximately $175 a month on the Indian Department before, so we can afford to take some of them back.” 

Sonoma County didn’t have anything to do with the case in question, and Mrs Bessie W Campbell is not cc’d on the letter.  Plainly, many copies of this letter were typed and shared with counties, who used it as an informal handbook to determine jurisdiction; much the way that currently, counties share answers we get from our elusive state analysts via e-mail. 

Our de facto time capsule gives us an intriguing scrap of day-to-day procedure.  I wonder what these seven women were like.  I wonder what Bessie was like. I wonder where she lived, what her husband was like (or was she widowed?).  I wonder if she drove a car, what church she went to. I wonder what she thought about the job she did, and the people she helped. 

Another thing that didn’t change in 70 years?  As near as I can tell, the department used exactly the same-shaped date stamp in 1934 as we are using now. For all I know, it’s the exact same stamp.