Another "Little Flower of St. Francis"

Finally back after a very busy school year. Not that I had any extraordinary work load (though according to the National Association of Schools of Music's report evaluation of our department, I did) but that I've been involved in a number of personal endeavors, which have really kept me occupied. Last Fall, I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Friendly City Food Cooperative, a great honor, indeed, but with a time commitment. I have also been dealing with the hurdles of bureaucracy as we are planning (hoping) to move out of the city to the country side. But what has kept the whole family busy, and, of course, celebrating for almost eight months now was the arrival of Samuel Francisco on October 4, 2010.

Life is a miracle but our Samuel touches down as divine in our home.  We chose his middle name the day, St. Francis of Assisi's feast day. That solved the quarrel over the baby's name as for months Maria, Amanda and I had struggled to find a name that we all agreed upon. But the miracle that had just happened didn't really reveal itself until a few days later when our friend Laura Thomas came to our home to meet the baby.   "So what middle name did you finally pick?" she asked casually. "Francisco," I responded. Laura paused and quietly asked: "why did you choose that name?" I explained that October 4th what the feast day of St. Francis, so we named the baby after his patron. At that point Laura went quiet and tears immediately filled her eyes and rolled down her face. We looked at Laura with astonishment. Her two daughters, Sophia and Cecilia, and her husband, Tim, looked at her with worried but quiet faces. "I'm so sorry," Laura said. "What is it, Mom?" one of the girls asked. Long seconds went by before Laura explained with a sobbing voice.


Samuel was born nine years after our first daughter, Amanda. We never intended to wait this long but it just had not happened. Maria had suffered several miscarriages, each one of them leaving a deeper scar in our souls. In the spring 2007, we had lost a baby at eighteen weeks into pregnancy. That was a very hard hit as we had just made it public that Maria was expecting and most sources indicated that the likelihood of miscarriages diminishes significantly during the second trimester. Well, we beat the odds and were devastated when we found out during a routine check up that the baby had no pulse. We mourned the lost of yet another baby baby, one that Maria had to carry in her womb for three more days after the news.

Those were sad days for our family and for our friends. Laura had been so supportive but she was also just about to go on a trip to Italy. She and her family left for Rome and during a visit to Assisi, as Laura recalled, she went into St. Francis Basilica and prayed. She prayed for healing for our souls and a healthy baby in our lives. A silent prayer in time of sorrow answered three years later on the very feast day of St. Francis. We didn't know Laura had prayed for us at the Assisi. We didn't know the little baby we were holding on October 4th, and who we named Francisco, was a true grace.

Living Nature and Self-Sufficiency

One of the highlights of this summer has been my taking upon preserving food for the months ahead. As I have grown more and more distrustful of the food industry, the supermarket is the last place from which I wish to buy what I eat. Instead, I have been buying most of our food from the Harrisonburg Farmers Market. Information on the benefits of buying local food is abundant. Not only it is good for the environment as less fossil-fuel energy is consumed in bringing the food to your table but also it is good for your health as produce is fresher and generally grown in diversified farms, which typically rely more on nature and less on chemical fertilizers and pesticides for edible plants as well as growing hormones, antibiotics, and grain-based feeds for animals. I find those reasons compelling enough to turn my back to the supermarket. But what I have come to really appreciate is my new relationship with food and, more importantly, with the people who produce it. How often during meals have you looked at the radishes on your plate and asked how the weather was like during those six weeks in the farm that grew them? The radishes themselves have nothing to say about the weather but the farmers that grew them do. And the stories they tell are not always the idyllic ones pictured on the supermarket packages. These people work hard and deal with a lot. I’ve heard stories about how the lack of rain can potentially make farmers go broke, or how too much rain can rot their crops. So now, when I see those radishes on my plate, I thank those farmers for their labor and for their stories. I have a greater respect for food, the type without bar codes on it.

Out of appreciation for the farmers, out of interest in healthier foods, out of environmental responsibility, and out of love for living in harmony with nature and being self-sufficient, I have taken upon preserving (canning and freezing) my own food. Nothing I haven’t done in the past, but certainly at a larger scale than before. A couple of months ago we bought ourselves a “Energy Start” 16.6 Cu. Ft. upright freezer and set it down in the basement. Through a Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA) our friends Sue and Guy Freesen from Charis Eco-Farm have been providing us with our meat products. The CSA program has been a great way for us to buy our meat because of the diversity of products (poultry, beef and pork) that we can get from buying a share in the program as opposed to the conventional half/quarter of steer offered by most farmers. Another advantage of this program is that there one can get the meat over a period of six months instead all at once, also a great way to use the extra freezer space for other goodies. Freezing meat, of course, does not qualify as a time-consuming activity. Vegetables and fruits, on the other hand, had made loved my job as a college professor more so than I already do. During the summer time I essentially dictate my work schedule, so I have been able to devote extra time to food preservation. Starting with blueberries in June, I’ve gone with the cycle of seasonal products and have bagged and frozen a fair amount of green beans, corn, peaches, blackberries, and some baked goods, including, zucchini bread. Last week was tomato week. From the West Chester, PA, farmers market, my wife brought a 30-pound box of ripe plum tomatoes half of which we turned into marinara sauce and the other half we canned old-fashion style. In the past, we’ve been very successful canning jams, jellies and apple sauce but I was a little anxious about canning tomatoes for the first time. It went well. I enjoyed the few hours of labor. The best part of it, however, is that those tomatoes will give us a great theme for conversation in the future. As for myself, looking at the freezer or the pantry will make me feel that I am living the bounties of nature. Yes, I can always rely on the world of high-fructose corn syrup world of the supermarket to keep me from starvation but the canned or frozen world of the farmers market gives me a sense of self sufficiency that comes in really nice in the middle age.

45 minutes at 185 degrees Fahrenheit

 For Winter

Yeah Doc, blame it on my mother!

I refuse to go back on cholesterol-lowering drugs! A recent health check revealed that my total cholesterol was 259, up again since I stopped taking those pills about four years ago. During my visit with the doctor, we went over my diet, which seemed to have gained his approval as he nodded with my tales of religious devotion to oatmeal breakfasts, obsessive label examinations for saturated fat content, and avoidance of egg yolks. But he was on a mission to put me back on drugs. After retelling the story of my mother having a heart attack eight years ago, he went on to declare that because I seemed to be eating the right stuff my total high cholesterol had to be linked to my genes. What a great country I live in: in a blink my doctor has figured out was wrong with me, my insurance will pay for the prescription, and I will become healthier. Or will I?

“Look daddy, your cholesterol medicine is on tv!” uttered Amanda while the commercial announcer invited me to talk to my doctor to see if the drug "was right for me.” Then, it hit me. Is it right for me or for your pocket? It seems like a lot of people are making money on me. There is something fundamentally wrong, I believe, with this picture: are stockholders on the lab that manufactures my cholesterol-lowering drug making money because my mother, who has lived her whole life in a foreign country to begin with, had a heart attack eight years ago? Apparently, not only my doctor, my insurance, the pharmaceutical company, the advertisement firm, the actor who suffers the heart attack in the commercial (and the dog that calls 911), but also regular people (regular enough to invest in the stock market, that is) are profiting from my high cholesterol. I’m not inventing the wheel here but it seems odd that from somebody’s bank account’s point of view it is actually a good thing that others have high cholesterol.

So, rather than getting my prescription filled I decided to do a little research about cholesterol. First step, the American Heart Association’s website. In one sentence: too much cholesterol in the blood can lead to heart disease, but a heart-healthy diet, combined with regular exercise and avoidance of tobacco, can help keep the levels of cholesterol in your blood acceptable, unless, you are genetically disposed to high cholesterol.

What troubles me with the “gene” clause is that too many people seem to be affected by it and I can’t help it but wonder whether the cholesterol issue is real or a myth. Of course, I’m not an expert in the medical field or nutritional science to put the blame on my family or my food. What I know, however, is that my great-great-grandmother died at age 101, my great-grandmother died at 98, and my grandmother passed away last Christmas two months short of her 96 birthday. They all lived long-healthy lives and never cared much about cholesterol (I even doubt they even knew that word). I’m bringing my ancestors if Michael Pollan is right, I can eat the stuff my ancestors used to eat and be healthier than if I eat what the American Heart Association recommends I eat. Yes, I’m talking about lots of fruits and vegetables, but I’m also talking about butter, whole milk, eggs (including the yolks) and even bacon! The one caveat, though, is that the heart-check label (or a bar code for that matter) is nowhere to be found in my food. As it turns out, eating this way appears to be a good choice for my health, the environment, and local businesses (but apparently not as good as far as big food corporations, drug companies, doctors, and even the government concern).

I’m very fortunate to live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where I have access to lots of whole foods, including grass-fed and pastured-raised meat and dairy products, eggs from chickens raised without antibiotics or hormones, and farm-fresh vegetables and fruits. So, I’m taking my grandmother’s eating habits challenge in the hopes of absolving my mother from my high level of cholesterol in my blood.

Is it possible that my doctor is wrong regarding the cause of my high cholesterol? Is it that the whole system is indeed taking advantage of my ignorance? Is it that society has rotten as it has become industrialized? Keep checking or commenting as I search for answers to these questions while trying to lower my cholesterol naturally—if it is ultimately worth it.

2010 New Year's Day Hike (Shenandoah National Park)

The gate at Swift Run Gap was closed, so I couldn't drive to Bootens gap as I've been doing every New Year's day for the past five years. Hightop was only 2.9 miles south on the Appalachian Trail, so I changed my plans thinking that the shorter/easier hike would be better than not hike at all. 8:49 AM, 34 degrees, and good weather forecast, where else would I rather be this day? Got on the trail to realize that the layer of snow on the ground was about one foot deep. It took me almost forty-five minutes to walk the 1.2-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail from Swift Run Gap to the bottom of Hightop Mountain.
I have fond memories of this place. Jim Lehman took me there the first time I went hiking on the Shenandoah National Park. The views of the valley below, the open space, the mountains across were astounding on that day. On a second occasion, during a backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail four years ago, I spent a night in a nearby shelter. I had looked forward to spending some time by the overlook the following morning but fog and rain veiled the views on that May day. So, arriving at the bottom of the mountain on New Year's day brought back some great memories. Hightop is a relatively easy wal. From the Skyline Drive the hike is approximately 1.7 miles. Yet, the snow made this climb exhausting (or else I must be terribly out of shape). I enjoyed every step of the climb, though: The peacefulness of a quiet morning, the cold smell of winter, the sound of the crunchy snow breaking with every step I took... I cannot seem to ever get tired of solitude and nature. How could I? Hiking is always a very spiritual time when I feel very close to God.

I often think that God loves hiking too, so he jumps joyfully every time I put my boots on. How do I know that? I hear his voice when I'm in the woods. Nowhere else I get such an extraordinary peace of mind and thought. I've taken many important professional and personal decisions while hiking. Besides, God always rewards me for this special time with him: Today it was the Shenandoah Valley frozen before my eyes. The fog, the clouds, the ice, the snow, the Massanutten mountain... what a great sight at 10:30 in the morning. Happy New Year!