The Metal Men

The local iron and metal scrap yard is like something out of Mad Max: on a typical day, a long line of flat-bed 18-wheelers and old pickup trucks wait patiently in line to be weighed before and after dumping a load of twisted metal, chatarra in Spanish. Beyond the scales and office, spindly cranes literally fling huge pieces of metal across the junk pile. Amazing!

Some of the steel becomes raw material for a steel mill about 45 miles away. It is melted down in a powerful electric arc. A student in my program, a metallurgist for that plant, said each "heat" uses more electricity than the entire one-day consumption of the city of College Station, population about 76,000.

Metal salvage is an entire underground economy of which I was ignorant.

On a smaller scale, men in beat-up pickup trucks troll through the neighborhoods in my community looking for scrap metal. A few months ago, I gave a lawnmower, old grill, and other scrap metal I'd been saving to a grandfather with his two grandsons. He said the local metal scrapyard paid $10/100 pounds. Two grandsons helped out as apprentices. I remember thinking this hard-working man was spending time with his grandsons, the most valuable commodity one can give a child, and teaching the value of a good worth ethic.

A few weekends ago, some nonworking rice cookers, box fans, and some other metal that I set out at the curb were picked up in less than one hour.

On a dog walk recently, I found a broken pantograph-style car jack and some other metal, which I carried home and set out behind a bush until I could accumulate enough to make it "worthwile" to pick up. A man on a bicycle spotted the metal, then knocked on the door to ask if he could take it. Of course! Now I actively look for metal to set out for the metal men to recycle and to help them make a few bucks. This scrapper said that since the economy tanked, a lot more people are turning to scrapping, which decreased the value of his daily collections by almost half.

The cleaner the purer the metal, the higher the price the salvers will pay, with bright copper fetching the highest price.

When recycling some aluminum cans, I saw the metal man there, disassembling what appears to be old electronic equipment. I returned with a tub of mixed metal for him. He carefully separated the pieces, including some brass hose bibbs.

It's a hard way to eke out a living: he works sun up to sundown. Sometimes he finds a job tearing apart an old mobile home: he is paid for his labor, then he can recycle the metal from the mobile home.

I respected this man for finding a way to make a living, difficult as it was.

Okra

[First published in the Brazos Valley Farmers' Market newsletter, September 15, 2012. The prose in The Lost Crops of Africa is sublime.]

A member of the mallow family, okra inspires a perhaps muted allegience from vegetable lovers, and usually general disdain from vegetable nonlovers; however, it redeems itself in its potential for an astonishing array of uses beyond soups and stews: from its seeds can be extracted an oil comparable to olive oil or be processed into a protein source, and the stems and leaves could be animal feed.

But its uses don’t stop with edible products: the mucilage offers benefits of laxatives (owing to the soluble fat, and ranking with psyllium and flaxseed); the gums and pectin can lower serum cholesterol, and can be used as a substitute for aloe vera. Like its relative, kenaf, fibers from okra can be fashioned into high-quality paper. Jokingly, it has been said, “okra: a vegetable so slimy you don’t notice how hairy it is.” Indeed, the Lost Crops of Africa: Volume II: Vegetables leads off its surprisingly entertaining chapter on okra on a 1974 survey of least-liked vegetables.

In African dialects, the word for okra sounds similar to gumbo (http://africhef.com/Okra-Recipes.html), and indeed, it is regarded with reference in New Orleans, where it forms the basis of signature dishes, such as…gumbo.

Published by the National Academies Press, Lost Crops of Africa: Volume II: Vegetables offers a transcendent literary homage to okra. The sheer delightfulness of the language in this scientific volume will bring a smile to even the most mucilage-averse persons. For instance—

“In reality okra could have a future that will make people puzzle over why earlier generations failed to seize the opportunity before their eyes. In the Botanical Kingdom it may actually be a Cinderella, though still living on the hearth of neglect amid the ashes of scorn.” (National Research Council (2006-10-27). "Okra". Lost Crops of Africa: Volume II: Vegetables. Lost Crops of Africa. 2. National Academies Press. ISBN 978-0-309-10333-6)

And later—

“In America, where it appears almost exclusively in stews and soups, okra is usually seen in cross section, cut into disks that look like little cartwheels with a seed nestled between each pair of spokes. Okra is also the key ingredient in gumbo, the famous dish of the American South.”

A study in robustness, okra grows easily in tropical, subtropical, and temperate climates, but can adapt to dry climates also.

Recipes
Okra and tomatoes
Southern Living’s 10 best okra recipes
Curried okra

Water dogs

Two or three times per week, Oliver and Canela go for a swim in a pond about a mile from my home. Adjacent to the railroad track, this pond boasts a notable history. My historian friend, Texas native Jimmy Klechka, said that pond was first impounded in the early 20th century to provide steam engines with water. Later, the pond provided once-through cooling water for a small-ish electrical power plant. More recently, this beleaguered body of water and its downstream neighbors were badly polluted with arsenic by an adjacent pesticide manufacturer. Remediation has been ongoing for more than a decade.

Oliver, a yellow Lab mix and natural swimmer, flings himself into the water with abandon. On cue, using a modern plastic atl-atl (curved throwing stick), I launch rocks into the pond while standing on the railroad tracks. At the sound of the plunk, Oliver swims so fast to the ripple that he leaves a wake.

Canela, a little red hound mix, at first kept right behind Oliver. When he turned, she turned. Now that she has gained more confidence, she swims her own swim with her tail sticking out of the water like a flag. Today she jumped in before I was able to remove her leash. While about 40 feet from shore, Oliver grabbed the leash in his mouth, and led Canela back to shore.
 
Rarely, a freight train chugs by, and I have to scramble out of the way down a talus slope to the shoreline.

One of those days

So.

In the interest of forestalling any administrative problems that might stand between my graduate students and their graduation, I organized a short lunchtime meeting. Topics to be covered: deadlines,  application for graduation, final oral defense, thesis submission, tips for thesis preparation, etc.

With the idea of making the meeting more palatable, I ordered yummy sandwiches and chips. It was a relatively small order, maybe 14 sandwiches, packed in a box, 14 bags of chips, and a gallon of iced tea. Since I bicycled across the continent with everything needed to sustain me—including my knitting—and have brought entire brunches to work on my bicycle, I planned to bicycle to the sandwich shop (driving was difficult due to much construction), bungie everything to the rack, and ride back to the office.

First mistake: the one very long, flat bungie cord was not robust enough to lash down everything. I decided to push the bicycle, as the load was unstable. Twice the entire package slumped off the bike onto the pavement as I was pushing the bike. Finally got back to the office three minutes before the talk was to start.

I asked students to start eating while I changed from bicycle clothing to office attire. Two student fetched ice in a cooler.

Then, haha, I realized I hadn't printed the handout. For the first time ever in my two years here, the behemoth copier jammed. Fortunately, the unjamming instructions were easy to follow, and we were back in business.

The students are wonderful, but it seemed, in total, an exercise in futility, which I probably won't repeat.

My brother the car

Those readers wearing bifocals may get the joke implied in the title of this post: a reference to a 60s and 70s television series starring Jerry Van Dyke, in which his mother was reincarnated as a vintage car.

But I digress.

The elder of my two brothers, Marshall, is a lifelong "car guy," who owns a successful car repair garage in Scottsdale, Arizona, rated a top shop by AAA for the past ten years.

He seems to think of his body in terms of a car. For instance, Marshall, at the office of an orthopedic surgeon, wrote he was getting a shot of—

"some kind of goop/gel to cushion some of the factory stuff that's worn out. Its a three-shot series. Once a week for three weeks. Supposed to get some benefit for like a year."

Note: the reading material in the ortho's waiting room was all motorcycle magazines. I guess he knows his clientele.

Marsh probably makes the analogy between carburetion and metabolism. The list could go on.

In another case, a friend's brother, a mechanic, went to Germany to work. The German mechanics asked why Americans chew gum. His German limited mostly to automotive terms, he replied, "It gives you good exhaust [breath]."

The textbook scam…and a radical idea from a college lecturer

Years ago, a colleague, an electrical engineer, was angered by the speciousness of his daughter’s elementary school textbooks. The textbook cited incorrect data about temperatures of various color stars. It was apparent, from a quick read, that the writers merely randomly assigned temperature ranges to the various star colors. Bad science, and he was justifiably angry.

Fast forward a few years. A fellow technical writer interviewed at a well known publisher of elementary school textbooks. She described the office as a sweatshop, saying, “Whoever was left standing at the end of the interview got the job.”

Now I work in higher education, as the coordinator and advisor in a graduate engineering program. Even at this rarefied level, the scam continues. Professors revise a textbook, making minor changes, and thereby rendering the previous edition obsolete. And thereby quashing the resale market. (Students cannot sell back their books at the end of the semester.) And thereby requiring students in the next semester to pay top dollar for the new edition.

Not insignificant. The average price of a new graduate-level engineering textbook is $230. And so it goes.

What a scam!

Sounding like a chapter that should be in Steven Leavitt’s Freakonomics, to make things work, textbook publishers escalate the ante by sending to professors—gratis— evaluation copies (also called desk copies), feeding the frenzy by enticing profs to prescribe the new drug…um, I mean specify the new textbook. (Leavitt himself is a professor of economics at University of Chicago.)
Stop the madness!

A lecturer (Ph.D., mechanical engineering) proposed a revolutionary idea: make his courses textbook-neutral.

Genius!

In other words, it would be the student’s responsibility to learn the general principles, using whatever textbook or method they chose. Let’s face it: the concepts of thermodynamics and fluid dynamics have not changed much in the past 100 years. Even modern physics (quantum mechanics and physics of solid state) dates to the 1930s at the latest.

In all fairness, some faculty eschew textbooks altogether, instead preparing class notes for purchase.
And graduate students, at least, spend at much more time teaching themselves concepts in early morning or late evening study groups or alone as they spend in class. Even undergraduates are left to their own devices. (Several undergraduate computer science students lamented privately, “I did not spend all this money to go to [enormous state research university] to teach myself computer science.)

The plan—

• Empower students to learn fundamental concepts by whatever method they choose, even an old textbook.
• Reinforce the concepts in class
• Give relevant homework
• Administer fair examinations
• Treat students fairly
• Don’t treat students as cash cows.

Such inventivness!

Just finished reading Out of Time, by Deborah Truscott, a time-travel/romance novel, one of whose protagonists is a Tory soldier transported to the modern-day Pennsylvania countryside.

Aside: great dialog, well-developed characters, fascinating historical detail, punchy ending. Download this book on your Kindle and for a pleasurable read.

To purchase some clamps for the Friends of the Farmers' Market booth, I made a foray out to Harbor Freight. I felt a little like the Revolutionary War soldier who was awestruck by the lawnmower, can opener, car.

There was a knife disguised in a key (to thwart TSA scanners?), a key chain-size utility knife, ceramic kitchen knives, a gas-fired stove that appears to be targeted to survivalists, air compressors the size of water heaters, and just about every type of fastener, glue, adhesive, clamp, clip, bolt, on the planet.

How ironic is this?

Under the heading of great irony, the Northern Arizona News reports that the Cheba Hut franchise in Flagstaff, Arizona, was disenfranchised by the Cheba Hut corporate office because their delivery driver was caught with marijuana in the vehicle. The irony is that Cheba Hut's entire branding is "stoner themed," according to the Flagstaff Cheba Hut owner. The first Cheba Hut was inspired by the founders' observation that late-night deliveries were prompted by tobacco-induced munchies. The names of their sandwich sizes, even, are identical to designators for various sizes of marijuana joints.

Kingston Trio

In 1957, two high school chums from Hawaii, Bob Shane and Dave Guard, joined with Navy brat Nick Reynolds to form the Kinston Trio while all three were enrolled in California universities in the San Francisco Bay area. From beginnings at the Mad I and Purple Onion (where a one-week booking turned into a sold-out run for the next few months) in San Francisco, the trio rode the folk music wave to become the most popular group in the world at the height of its popularity in the mid-1960s.

A popular misconception is the association of the name Kingston with Kingston, New York; Kingston, Massachusetts; or Kingston, Jamaica. Actually, the trio's agent suggested Kingston for a few calypso pieces in the trio's repertoire, but more for the universal—and somewhat preppie—appeal of the name, as the trio was playing the college circuit at the time.

The trademark striped shirts were chosen as a convenience—they were readily available off the rack in sizes to fit the trio members—and again, for their collegiate appeal.

They are best known for re-arranged public domain tunes such as Tom Dooley, M.T.A. and Greenback Dollar, ballads such as and Scotch and Soda, Early Morning Rain, and the war critique, written by Pete Seeger, Where Have All the Flowers Gone, and the raucous Wherever We May Go, which is also the title of a documentary about the trio.

In 1960, the trio won a Grammy for  the newly created Best Ethnic or Original Folk recording.

In 1963, the trio parlayed its success to a television pilot, Three Men in a Hurry, portraying three recent college graduates living in Phoenix and playing music through their connections to the Junior Chamber of Commerce.

As it was part of the musical lexicon in the 1960s, of course I knew of the Kingston Trio, but only vaguely as a kid growing up in New York. Later, a classmate in freshman English at Northern Arizona University wrote an essay on singer-songwriter John Stewart, who replaced Dave Guard as the bass voice in the trio and stayed with the group until its dissolution in 1967 with a final concert at the Hungry i.

The trio was parodied as the Kingsmen in the folk music mockumentary, A Mighty Wind.

There have been several replacements of Stewart and Reynolds over the years, with Bob Shane being the constant. The Trio holds an annual fantasy camp in Scottsdale, Arizona (my home town), home of the surviving original member, Bob Shane. Participants meet the trio, are apparently issued matching shirts, and have the opportunity to play Kingston Trio music onstage with their musical heroes.

Both Stewart and Reynolds passed away in 2008; Shane still lives in Scottsdale.

The food (Ad)venture

Remember the good old days, when fat was the food villain? Or coffee (good in small quantities, though), carbs (the South Beach food imposter diet), salt, pickled foods, aged cheese? And let's not forget tuna, pork, beef (for a multitude of problems), chicken, eggs, any nonfarm-raised fish? Anything with preservatives? And then there was the spinach scare.

And, of course, there's high fructose corn syrup, responsible for the backlash of soft drinks touting their throwback to the very special...real sugar, which was the evil white powder of the 1970s which returned for a repeat performance in the late 1990s. And the artificial sweeteners: cyclamates, saccharine, aspartame. There's the reverse chirality sugar now that wreaks havoc on some digestive systems. And on the good side is stevia.

Now it's gluten, a protein found in wheat and some other grains, that many people are allergic to. Carbs, the staple of my diet during my avid cycling days, cause weight gain. What? No more bagels and pasta?

In my opinion, the concurrent problems of obesity and malnutrition are: processed foods, soft drinks, and the computer replacing active playtime (adult and children).