What do we celebrate?

It seems like a good question to me. By determining what we celebrate as a culture, and how we celebrate as a culture, we can gain an accurate picture of what we hold dear.

For some reason I am obsessed by this video (and not just because it is vaguely pornographic.) This song reached the #1 spot on the charts this summer in the fastest time since the 1960’s. It was the summer anthem of 2010. I admit that it’s catchy. The lyrics and the images both celebrate youth, beauty and sexuality, and while I’m not opposed to celebrating any of these things, it’s the way in which they are celebrated that greatly troubles me.

We often celebrate a beauty that is not real, a youth that is not real, a sexuality that is not real. It is contrived, but not for the sake of imitating the real. On the contrary, the contrived is preferred to the real. Give us airbrushed bodies instead of ones that wrinkle and sag, we say. Give us pornographic fantasies instead of sex. Give us bodies taut with chemicals and surgery instead of real youth. Why do we prefer the unreal instead of the real? I think it is because of what we celebrate.

If we celebrate only youth, beauty, and sex, we are only celebrating those things that are fleeting. They fade and pass; they cannot remain. By celebrating what cannot last, we are always disappointed. That is why the imitation of the real is so much better, we think. Skin may lose the glow of youth, but plastic does not. Sex may not always reach the heights of passion, but the fantasies of our pornographies always do. In this way we try desperately and foolishly to celebrate the eternity of fleeting things.

Why do we not, instead, celebrate the eternal?  Why do we not celebrate the stories, and the words that, over the ages, have given countless weary souls respite? Why do we not celebrate the spirit, that eternal part of us that will someday unite with God? Why do we not celebrate eternal cycles of birth, love, and death?

Instead, we celebrate the transitory . We celebrate that which decays, and fantasize of wrapping and preserving these things in plastic and cotton candy…

We had snow for the first time yesterday; big flakes came down for about an hour, but nothing stuck. The temperatures quickly dropping (25F this morning) it was time to get the remaining veggies out of the garden.

Moose hunting season is almost over, which means the harvest season is coming to an end. We’ve got chicken, salmon, halibut, moose (and soon turkey) in the freezer; mead bubbling in the pantry; and carrots, onions, potatoes, and cabbage stored in the crawl space. I feel like I’m starting to live a legitimate “homesteading life.” Next year: bees, a chicken coop, and more garden boxes.

I love Alaska.

The growing season is quickly coming to an end. In all honesty, it has not been a good season here in southcentral Alaska. We broke records for consecutive days of rain, and the temperatures never got that impressive.

a portion of the harvest...

Here’s my recount of the growing season:

Cabbage:

All my cabbage did well, though the heads were fairly small. I’m not sure if that was a result of mulching with cardboard, or simply because of the weather. I’m hugely impressed with Johnny’s Storage #4 variety. They make incredibly dense heads, and I’m excited to see how long they will store this year.

Carrots:
As expected, the carrots did awesome this year. I grew a purple variety called Purple Haze, which turned out very well. They’re really sweet. I always grow Bolero as my storage variety, using pelleted seeds. Frankly, we’re going to have so many carrots this year, I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

Potatoes

The potatoes were a disappointment again this year. They start really well, but the leaves turned yellow halfway through the summer. I dug all the tubers this weeks, and while I probably have 30-40 lbs of potatoes, I should have had way more considering what I planted. I need to do more research on potatoe cultivation…

Lettuce/greens

Another great year for greens. I tried romaine for the first time, and they turned out great (but I had to wait until the end of July to harvest them). I also grew a baby salad mix this year. A six inch by three foot strip gave me probably a dozen cuttings, and the baby greens were never bitter. I’ll definitely rely on the salad mixes next year to keep us in fresh greens. The kale went crazy like every year.

Corn/pumpkins

As already mentioned I got ripe corn for the first time in four years. I think I’ve come up with a plan for next year to have a decent harvest. All of my transplanted corn matured, but none of the corn started from seed did, although those plants and ears are actually larger.  The pumpkin vines all have cantaloupe-sized fruit on them, and our surprise indian summer has given them an extra week or two. I’m still not sure they’ll mature, but it was fun having them in the garden.

Onions

My onions are tiny again this year. I knew that I did not start them early enough, but I thought they would do better, as I was pretty diligent about weeding their corner of the garden. More research needs to be done on the onions too….

For the winter:

I really need to get a soil test done. I’ve been adding local organic fertilizer the last couple of years, but I need to see if my soils are lacking anything.

I’m going to try propagation this year with currants and gooseberries. I’ll post updates this winter or spring on my progress.

Backlit snows on distant peaks;

The rest of the world is shadow

The wind is strangely absent

And it’s clear that it is going to rain.

Two thousand feet up and fifteen miles away

is an alpine meadow.

The fireweed is burning red,

The only sounds: the whispers of leaves

Alighting on the grass.

It smells of ripeness and rot,

of a summer coming to an end,

portending the deeper silence of December

_____

The room is stuffy as students shift in their seats.

It smells of body odor and misapplied perfume

The only windows in the classroom face the hall,

Witnesses to a silence, cold and institutional.

There is frustration and boredom on the faces of my students

Frustration and boredom in my mind as well,

Creeping like frost into unwelcome places.

I consider a landscape that is quiet –

Where I am noticeably absent

And the muted sounds of autumn are not attended by my ears.

Something inside me breaks at the incongruence

of where I am and where I want to be.

I will have to remember next time

To harvest the scene

more carefully with my mind

– the smells and sounds –

as sustenance for future days

and for future years.

Here is Alaska, growing warm-season vegetables is hard, if not impossible. I’ve been trying corn for the last 3 years, and I’ve finally harvested my first ears:

Don’t laugh at their diminutive size. They have less carbs that way.

In all seriousness, though, I think I’ll try a different variety next year, and start them earlier. This year I used Denali Seed Company’s “Yukon Chief” variety. In previous years I have used “Spring Treat” which seem to produce larger ears, nut I think I picked them too early, because they were never ripe. Considering that this summer/fall has been unusually rainy and cool, I’m hoping next’s year’s harvest will be a little more…robust.

I’m also trying pumpkins this year, and have given them the prime spot in the garden. I have several fruits that have grown on the vine, but I’m not sure they’ll mature in time. We’ll be getting our first frost within the next several weeks.