Inspiration or Abomination?

A friend of mine has challenged me to an Iron Chef inspired dinner party. As in, the party is at his house, and he and I are the competitors. We're still hammering out the details of how the challenge will be framed. Will guests brings items we have to use? Will we start with pool of items and then unveil the secret ingredient at the last minute? Will the time limit be 90 minutes or two hours? How many dishes will we make? We're going to both be cooking in his not particularly roomy kitchen, so it should be interesting.

I'd like to just say I'M TOTALLY STOKED about this, as it capitalizes on my love of food, love for food challenges, and competitive spark.

Since I am now obsessively contemplating the bizarre combinations of ingredients that could result from this experiment, I'd like to share this strange creation that I just discovered via a friend on Facebook. Tell me, is it a case of divine inspiration or an abomination?

Friends Thanksgiving

A group of us who met on the 2009 new faculty bus tour have continued to get together on a regular basis since then. In fact, we've been such a tight-knit group that some folks at the university referred to us as the "first year mafia" last year--a term that we wholeheartedly embraced. Academia is a strange world, and I think we've provided a great social support network for each other. It's nice to have friends outside of your department who are as terrified as you are.

Last year, we had a "friends" Thanksgiving potluck dinner. That was the day that I realized that I had found a little family of great folks here in the Nodak. I wasn't going to attend the dinner, because I didn't have a sitter and Hyrum was working and I was so accustomed to events and gatherings that were not kid friendly that I didn't even want to try to take Albie with me. A few hours before dinner was supposed to start, the host realized I wasn't coming and that it was because I didn't have a sitter, but she didn't have my number. She called someone who called me, and the relayed message was essentially WTF are you thinking? Get your butt over here. Of course your child is welcome. I actually teared up I was so touched that a) people realized I had a child, b) my child was welcome, and c) I would be missed if I didn't attend.

Well, we're doing it again this year. There will be 20 of us. How exciting! It's like a family holiday without all of the family drama. What more could you ask for?

I volunteered to bring the turkey. Well, I'm actually going to prep the turkey and then take it to the hosts' house around 11:30 and just shove it in the oven, and then they'll tend to it until supper time.

I'm not obligated to bring anything else on top of the turkey, but I decided to make this Cranberry-Citrus Relish with Pomegranate and TEQUILA! as well, because we made it one year and it's just fantastic.

I'm thinking that after this big dinner on Sunday, I'm not going to do the whole dinner thing for the three of us on the official day. I'm thinking I'll bring home the turkey carcass and make some kind of soup...

Ani DiFranco - The Atom (03.11.2008) Tampa

Lest you think that my last post was too flippant or too creepy, or that I don't take nuclear power seriously, here is one of my favorite songs EVER. As if nuclear weapons aren't bad enough, we use the same technology to create electricity, and politicians want to create more nuclear power plants. Seriously?



These are my favorite lines:

human beings are a cross
between monkeys and ants
you can see us from your spaceship
melting the polar ice caps
with our arrogance
summon a congress of angels
dressed in riot gear
we've got ourselves a serious situation
down here

i have this great great uncle
who worked on the atomic bomb
he got a nobel prize in physics
and a place in this song
and i bet there were no windows
and no women in the room
when they applied themselves
to the pure science of
boom

Here's a nice, clean, audio recording.


Nuclear power is stupid. I have heard, and really considered, the arguments in favor of it. It produces so little waste. It's "cleaner". It's cheap. (Or not). We can generate nuclear power without depending on other countries. I get it.  But unless you can find a solution--a real solution--to that minor toxic waste problem, how can we possibly consider MORE plants. And even if that was worked out, what about the risks associated with "minor" accidents? It's not even something that we should be discussing.

Rather than fucking around with nature in order to run all of our electric shit, why don't we USE LESS energy and focus on alternatives, rather than burning shit or splitting atoms? We can create a mushroom cloud, but green energy isn't really feasible? Pfft. 

How I (didn't really) learn to stop worrying and love the bomb (in a creepy, dark, fetish kind of way)

I was fascinated with atomic bombs as a child. Terrified and fascinated. When I was 8, I wanted to write a letter to the President to express my concerns. My mother convinced me to write a letter about some national scholars program, but I wasn't happy about it.

I watched movies about the bomb. I watched news footage from WWII about the bomb. I listened to audio documentaries about the bomb.

Did anyone else see the movie Nightbreaker? I LOVED IT. I wish it were available on DVD because I just can't bring myself to order VHS tapes that may or may not work. After I (repeatedly) watched that movie, I had a whole new fascination with nuclear testing and the conspiracies lies and abuses associated with it. I dreamed about nuclear testing--that I was hiding, running, whatever. These weren't nightmares. I wasn't scared, just fascinated. Eerily fascinated. I was kind of a strange girl anyway--I frequently had dreams of being in wars, war games, war simulations, etc.

I still can't look away from footage of bombs, even though it makes me queasy. All of that RAW POWER. We did that. Humans did that. It's amazing. Of course it's horrifying. Of course its an abomination. Of course its blasphemy against nature. But it's also unbelievable. We split nature in two. Wow.

My (step) Grandpa was a physicist back in the day and worked with nuclear stuff. I'm not sure exactly what he researched and if he was a part of all the testing that went on. I don't know if the things he knew were things he learned from being directly involved or things he learned from being a voracious reader. He once told me that pigs were used for nuclear tests because their organ structure was similar to ours and their skin, in particular, is remarkably similar. He told me about tests where they would put pigs in mailboxes and different types of shelters and set off bombs. For years, I thought maybe he was exaggerating or just plain crazy (you never could tell with him). Now, I can read about it on Wikipedia or elsewhere. I found this video online, which is fascinating, but not for the faint of heart. This quote is from a website about nuclear testing in Nevada:

"Experiments on mice, dogs, and other animals were conducted during atmospheric testing. The animals were subjected to the atomic blasts and then analyzed by biologists, veterinarians, and medical personnel. In 1957, for the Plumbbob series, pens were built near the Mercury highway to keep 1,200 swine that would be used for various experiments. They had been specially bred due to the similarities in pig and human physiology. For some experiments, pigs were outfitted in various types of clothing material, including military uniforms. For the thirty-seven-kiloton Priscilla test on June 24, 1957, more than seven hundred anesthetized pigs were placed in stations at various distances from ground zero to better understand the effects of atomic weapons on human beings."

I wish Grandpa were alive today so I could ask him more questions. At the time, I didn't know what else to ask. Today, I wouldn't know where to stop.


Because of this sordid fascination with evil, I was admittedly excited when I found out that I would be visiting a decommissioned missile alert facility as part of the new faculty bus tour this year. I mean, I was already stoked that my hubbie could come with me this year, but husband + nukes = uberexcitement.

Did you know that at the height of the Cold War, North Dakota was the 3rd largest nuclear power in the world? Or so the tour guide gold us. Russia and the United States (minus North Dakota) were #1 and #2 (though I'm not sure which was first and which was second) and then there was the state of North Dakota.

North Dakota had two missile fields with 150 missiles in each. If I remember correctly, each of the fields contained 15 missile alert facilities, so that each alert facility controlled 10 missiles. We toured the Oscar-Zero Missile Alert Facility (now named the Ronald Reagan Minutemen Missile Site). It was part of the Grand Forks Missile Field. Do you remember the movie War Games? Grand Forks was one of the first targets in the game. Um, yeah. That's where I live now. Voted one of the best places to raise your kids. Minus the nukes of course. Why so many nukes in the Nodak? I have heard a few different reasons. First of all, the big target when these silos were built was Russia, and the shortest distance to many Russian cities was over the arctic circle. Second, since it's landlocked, it could be harder for weapons to be stolen, or accessed in the first place. Third, land was cheap and the population scarce, so there were less people to object to having nukes in their backyard. The fourth reason seems to be simple math. The current population of the entire state is 646,850. This means less collateral damage. If the missile fields were attacked, fewer people would be killed than if the fields were located elsewhere.

The facility was closed as part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) of 1991, and then opened a few years later for tours. Touring the facility was simultaneously anti-climatic and overwhelming. It really looked like the props that would be used in a 70's sci-fi movie, but it was real. I actually have a picture of myself in that chair, but I got in trouble for it. Turns out, you're not supposed to sit there, and I wasn't listening when the tour guide told us that. I was too busy taking pictures and tripping out. She could have confiscated my camera, but instead made me promise not to post it online somewhere. I took a lot of pictures that I will upload another time.

The Minot AFB Minuteman Missile Field is still active. It is composed of 150 Minutemen III missiles. Each of these missile has three warheads, hence the III as part of the name. From Wikipedia, "The current Minuteman force consists of 450 Minuteman III missiles^[1] in missile silos around F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming; Malmstrom AFB, Montana; and Minot AFB, North Dakota." That means that there are 450 nuclear warheads in North Dakota, and 1350 warheads total among these three states. I don't know what else to say after that.

Feelings

The boy has been learning about feelings in school this week.

Tonight he had a stuffy nose. I asked him if he was getting sick.

Uh huh. My nose is stuffy and my brain had a hard day and my legs are tired and my tummy is, um, um, sad.

Well said, son.