The *Other* Border Fence

Sometimes, I just can't take all the xenophobia that's popped up around here. Ten years ago, this would have been a joke:

Designer Gas Masks

As long as I'm still in NYC, I may as well make a comment on fashion. It's funny how humans adapt to things so quickly-- perhaps especially New Yorkers. The first masks we donned to deal with high ozone and ReDS-warning days were ugly, bulky, and undisguisable.

Flash forward a few months, and now there is a market for designer masks-- some so thin they seem like they'd be barely any protection at all. Now there are so many colors, so many designs-- the graffiti artists are having a ball. Steampunkers add brass trims to match their outfits. Masks have even made appearances on the runway at indoor fashion-shows. One made of glass! It's almost as if these hindrances have always been a part of normal urban life and culture. Almost.

Reminds me of the surgical masks that motorbike riders in Vietnam (pictured) wore fifteen years ago-- some were bland, but most women at least found ones that served as fashion statements. The same happened when Vietnam enforced its first (successful) helmet law back in 2007-- people complained that in addition to the discomfort, it would ruin their done-up hair on nights out. But soon enough, people turned the helmets into another opportunity for style.

Funny how we still fuss over these vanities, even after the GEAS report came out.

Why We Stayed; Why We Stay.

I know, I know. We need to take action. We need to leave. This burnt-out city holds no future for us.

When people ask why X and I stay here, I usually only talk about the original reason: my firm sent me here on a temporary basis. It was a great opportunity to cultivate a new practice area that I could bring back west. A sweet deal, at the time: they even paid for rent. For a while.

Most people accept that version and leave the questioning at that-- if they're still here, they read the economic winds wrong too.

Closer friends know the more fundamental reason: after Annie's ReDS diagnosis, we couldn't move back. On the CDC's recommendation, the Feds forbid us from boarding airplanes or crossing state lines. Among other forms of quarantine.

Technically, we are free now-- X and I. We've had a clean bill of health for months. Socially, we are still treated like lepers-- anyone who has been in contact with a ReDS patient knows the experience-- but the TSA has removed our names from their "no-go" lists. Or so we've been told-- the bureaucracy there remains as byzantine and secretive as ever.

No, what's kept us here for months on months longer than we should have tolerated is the feeling-- unspoken, to each other and to the outside world-- that to leave here would be to leave her: for real, for good, for ever. Her ashes are here, so we can't help but feel some last essence of her being is as well.

Annie, Annie. Will you forgive us? If you were a little older, maybe I could imagine you wanting us to move on. But it's hard to know what a two-year-old would wish for their parents. You didn't know what death was, yet. Except as whatever was happening to you.

I guess we didn't really know, either.

Waffles Made With Fish Oil?

As I've mentioned, current shortages have driven many people to um, creative alternatives to traditional food sources. (My second experience with the below delicacy turned out to be pretty gamy-- and after so many years as a vegetarian the texture of any meat is odd to me. X and I really need to get out of here.)

But before the shortages, society was getting creative with food in entirely different ways. I scrounged up an old article about nutraceuticals. In the '50s, everyone seemed to think the future would involve lots of pills instead of food. Yuck. In the actual "future" we figured out how to provide missing vitamins as additives in our existing foods. This came in handy when particular fresh food supply shipments became uncertain, and we had to start limiting ourselves more to local fare.

Now though, at least in a lot of places-- at least where X and I are stuck-- we've fallen a step backwards, and the enhancements aren't available any more. More than a step. What I wouldn't give for regular, mundane food, especially kinds that grow on trees rather than scurry up them. Sigh.

Squirrel Melt: It's What's For Dinner

Ten years ago, I was a vegetarian. Five years ago, I was still a vegetarian. Heck, two days ago, I was still a vegetarian.

Today, well... Let's put it this way: the uncertainty of global food shipments being what it is, it's harder to get the foods that made it easy for me to be vegetarian. South Indian food. Ethiopian. Thai. Of course there are still some delicious local vegetables from the coop and neighboring towns, but some of those dishes really aren't to my taste.

So today, in a time when supplies are thin, I had to turn to a... more efficient source of protein:



I have to admit that it doesn't involve any of the factory farming abuses that prompted me to go veggie in the first place. I try not to picture the process too vividly (and did not prepare the dish myself) but was shocked by my own subconscious as I drifted to sleep last night: suddenly the slow, fat squirrels of my college days frolicked across the inside of my eyelids; taunting me with frying pans and sticks of butter.

Sigh. Hopefully I can go back to vegetables again soon.