Category → Family
Maple syrup thoughts
Yes, I enjoy metaphors, and no, this is no metaphor.
Each spring I and my willing victim family members undertake a ritual that might just be the most labor-intensive goal you will ever take here in modern America.
We make maple syrup.
We tap the maple trees in mid January, using traditional buckets, and now also using the plastic spiles and tubing. Then we gather the sap into a big tank in the back of a pickup truck. When we reach about 15-20 gallons of sap, we boil it. It takes a long time, a lot of energy, a lot of propane.
Here are some season-end thoughts, as the last batch evaporates outside in a shed right now:
- Sap production can be erratic, and there is no explanation. Mostly driven by nighttime temperatures, some trees can be just pumping out sap like gangbusters for two to four weeks, and then kind of go dead, or nearly dead. Our late-season taps are the biggest producers right now, while the early taps have mostly dried up. I don’t know why this is, but it is frustrating. We did not get a lot of sap this year, and though I felt uncertain about beginning to tap so early, I am glad we did, because we would not have gathered enough had we not started back in mid January this year. Rumors are Pennsylvania’s maple producers are having a bad sap season, too.
- Cans and plastic tubing each have advantages and disadvantages. Cans get bugs galore, and the lids can get beat up by high winds. The plastic tubing drips down into a container, which can attract curious deer, raccoons, etc, and they can mess with the stuff. Next year we will continue to do both types. One thing, though, we do need bigger containers for the tubing and plastic spiles; they can easily produce a gallon of sap overnight. I hate to see sap spill out on the ground. Almost a Biblical thing…
- From what I read, a lot of syrup producers will not use cloudy sap. Well, we use everything we get, cloudy, clear, bugs swimming about, and we eventually filter out the bugs, wood bits, etc. Regardless of how cloudy it is, when it evaporates down to syrup, it tastes amazing.
- Finally, less is more. Used to be we’d wait until we got 30-35 gallons of sap in the tank to start boiling it, enough to make over half a gallon of syrup. Problem with that is it’s a lot of sap to boil, the way we boil it. We use two large outdoor propane burners under the stainless steel evaporator pan. If we used firewood, it might get hotter or evaporate faster. But then I’d have to cut more firewood, and because we already burn between two and four cords of wood a season in our wood stove, I don’t want to cut and split any more than we really need. So, now when we hit 15 to 20 gallons of sap, we start boiling. It takes about ten to twelve hours, so start as early as possible. This is a manageable amount of time for us.
OK, those are the thoughts for now. Surely as we go forward more will come and go. Here are some photos from the other day, above and below. The sap is boiled and evaporated in a big stainless steel pan, then the condensed syrup is moved inside to the stove top, where we carefully finish it off and pour it into old whisky bottles.
I love the smell of brown sludge in the morning
When I get a snoot full of that brown sludge in the morning, it brings back warm memories. Doesn’t happen all the time. Not as often as I would like. The period for brown sludge is often almost over as soon as it begins, though when I was a kid at Stone Valley Lake, the period lasted for a good eight weeks.
Memories of cold mornings, even cold nights, sometimes lugging a sloshing bucket by headlamp, stumbling through the brush, tripping over vines and branches, picking bugs out of the buckets. Sometimes the bugs concentrate in the buckets, drawn by the smell, and the taste. Trying not to spill it, good God don’t spill it! And then the long nights. Yes, you might start in the daylight, but at six the next morning you were up all night, running for the bucket every ten minutes, tired out, cramping, sleepy.
You see, modern maple syrup is nothing like it was. It is now a victim of technology. Where maybe just five years ago maple syrup producers used fire to boil maple sap down, now they have reverse osmosis machines, and spectrometers and spectrographs that tell the syrup maker how concentrated the sap sugars are, and thus when to start and when to wait longer. When to keep adding to the huge coolers, and freezers, and when to begin condensing.
In the big maple syrup production outfits today, the sap collection is mechanized, run through a spider web of tubing across the sugar bush. The sap is pumped, and gathered in big tanks, then stilled, separated, distilled, purified, filtered over and over, sterilized and then jugged. This is maple syrup today. How it is created looks nothing like how it was made for the past 15,000 years until very recently.
And frankly, as a result of this industrial processing, it no longer tastes like maple syrup. It tastes bland.
Sure, you can try to buy the old Grade B dark brown maple syrup. You remember, surely, the maple syrup that puts the phrase “maple flavor” in maple syrup? You can try to buy it, and some sellers will try to sell it to you. And it will indeed look amber-ish, with a hint of brown. Now they will disclaim it, or add some caveats, or sheepishly try to explain that it is dark for maple syrup “these days,” but it is not quite like what you remember from just a half dozen years ago, let alone your childhood.
And you will taste it, this modern creation, and you will not taste maple syrup. Instead you will taste Maple Product.
Maple Product is the result of the industrialization of even hand-crafted specialties like maple syrup. It is mechanized, industrialized, and heavily filtered, and it has very little real taste. No rich taste, for sure, not the unique and authentic maple taste you came for in the first place.
That is why we have been making our own maple syrup. It started out really small, like when I was a kid using plastic milk jugs hung on string from hand- cut wood spiles. Maybe a couple cups of syrup, and it lasted one day. A treat from Mother Nature, the whole family enjoying it, gathered round like families have over nature’s bounty since time immemorial. A natural and innately healthy moment.
Then I ordered a bunch of old maple buckets with metal spiles, and boiled lots of sap on the stove top. That was a bad idea because the whole house steamed up and smelled vaguely of damp earth. The small amounts of sugar in the steam hardened to a clear armor on everything in the kitchen, and cleaning with water just made it sticky. Getting closer!
Then I ordered a stainless steel evaporator pan from a young guy in the Midwest. Couple hundred bucks and worth every penny. With a threaded spigot and a valve on the end, it can release as much boiled down sap as I want to take to the next stage of boiling. The only filtering we do is from the big sap collection tank in the back of the pickup, through an old cotton tee shirt, and some skimming in the evaporator. Bits of bark, the occasional rogue ant, “stuff” from inside the maple trees is all skimmed off. But what we do not do is filter out the taste.
We gently and carefully finish off the concentrated brown sap inside on the stove top, and then pour the finished syrup into old whisky bottles with cork stoppers. This is real maple syrup, and it is so rich tasting it knocks your socks off. This is what maple syrup used to taste like, and it is what maple syrup is supposed to taste like.
So when I hit the bottom of one of those old whisky bottles because the syrup was mostly poured out over pancakes or hot cereal, then all that remains is the thick brown sludge. This is the stuff you could make maple candy from. My son and I pour cold milk into the bottle, swill it around until the brown sludge has turned the milk brown and slightly viscous, and we heartily quaff it down.
You just can’t beat it.
p.s. sorry we make just enough for our own family use, and we do not sell it. But you can make your own, and because you worked so hard to make it, you will truly enjoy every drop, every molecule, every rich taste you take.
How is sexualizing children “open minded”?
For about a decade proponents of “alternative” sexual identities have been increasingly promoting the ideas that sexual identity begins at age four, that government must use its coercive force to promote this, and anyone questioning it is a bigot subject to the greatest displays of public shaming since the Catholic Church’s Inquisition.
After our 2012 primary campaign for state senate, in which the PA GOP gerrymandered me out of the senate district at the last second, and the state supreme court put me back in at the last second, and we went on to do extremely well and change the outcome of the race, a lot of us spent time on FakeBook lamenting the outcome but enjoying the policy debate shift in our direction.
One of the policy subjects was sexual identity, which in that debate quickly was posed as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition by one side. Anyone who similarly stuck to their guns on the other side, usually due to religious beliefs, was mob attacked and accused as a “bigot.”
In that debate, one unanswered question kept coming up, and that was why so many activists believe it is necessary to discuss sex with little kids, tiny children, not their kids but the children of other people, who traditionally have been shielded from sexual subjects for obvious reasons.
This question is up front again, in light of a recent National Geographic magazine cover that invaded our home a few months ago, and in light of recent comments by reporter Chris Cuomo.
National Geographic magazine recently posed a small child on its cover, with the title that sexual identity is fluid and begins at a very young age. How this pertains to geography is a question unanswered by NatGeo.
Last week Chris Cuomo stated matter of factly on public television that if a twelve year old girl does not want to see a penis in the locker room, then “she is not open minded enough.”
Added into the mix here is the recently debated idea that men, women, children should all share the same bathrooms simultaneously, taking hold in some places and being soundly rejected in others.
I cannot help but ask: Why do children now have to be sexualized?
How is this being construed as being open minded?
Why is there no safe space for little kids to retain their innocence?
What does someone truly need in all this, or is it just an adult fantasy playing out as a legitimate policy issue?
Sexuality is powerful, it is potent, it is dangerous, and it can be toxic when misused. Why are some adults getting away with sexualizing our children in the name of being “open minded”?
And how are protective parents like me ‘bigots’ if we reject this notion as anything but poorly masked pedophilia?
I am a protective parent because I love my children. Like all children, mine deserve to be kids, to have kid thoughts, to be left alone from the adult world of politics, especially identity politics. Yes, I understand that many gay people felt different at pretty young ages, usually around twelve or thirteen, and I have two gay friends who did not know they were different until they were eighteen years old. But what does this have to do with someone else’s kids?
Do you really believe that your interest in my kid’s welfare is greater than my interest? And do you really believe that this entitles you to talk to my children about sex, graphic sex?
I have to admit that this whole idea makes me angry, because I feel like I am watching mass pedophilia unfold in front of my eyes, and the force of political correctness is so strong that normal, healthy, good people, good parents, are being damaged and mowed down by bullies in control of government force, while simply trying to protect their children’s (my children’s) innocence.
If a tolerant guy like me is starting to feel this way, then I can only imagine that a lot of other Americans are feeling a lot more upset. This does not bode well for true and honest tolerance for adult behavior among consenting adults, which has unfortunately become part and parcel of an open war against childhood innocence and on children. Either you stand with the kids, or you stand against them.
National Geographic and Chris Cuomo are against all kids, against my kids. Duly noted.
The Pope is Your Man
If you live in Europe, North America, or South America, you are greatly influenced by the Pope in Rome.
Whether you know it or not, the Pope is usually going to bat for you every day. You don’t have to be Jewish to like rye bread, and you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate and value the Pope, who fills a unique role for all humans.
While it is true that Roman Catholics have a special role for the Pope/Papacy in their theology, a role that non-Catholics find tough to accept, the fact is the Pope is the West’s leading voice on morality, charity, gentleness, kindness, and the other positive little acts that knit together our civilization. At his best he is a public advocate for all the important little things between people that are right and true, necessary for happiness on our planet. In that way, the Pope is your man.
Over the past 1,500 years popes have played varying roles in politics and the advancement of civilization as we have come to know and treasure it today. Some were better or worse than others. A few were truly bad, and quite a few were truly great leaders. The Church built much of Europe’s civilization (some of it built with money stolen through the Inquisition, the Church’s darkest time), and we all have gratitude for that stable society we now enjoy.
The pope we have today is pretty controversial, and I will admit I am not his biggest fan right now. Oh sure he says a lot of things that are important for all humans to hear, and I value that. But he also says things publicly and quietly does a lot within the Church that are contrary to how our civilization works.
Gentle critics ascribe this to his South American slum “liberation theology” and his Jesuit training. Harsh critics, including some of my most religiously observant Catholic friends, are much more blunt about their dis-satisfaction. I won’t repeat any of it here, but I will admit to missing very much the somewhat recently departed Pope John Paul, a really inspirational leader and powerful voice for goodness and right action across the planet.
Dear Pope, I hope you find your voice, because it is a voice for all of us. I am not Catholic, but I am a human who benefits from you when you are at your finest. Hurry up, please.
Confession: I’m going to miss Obama
Still in warm glow from President Trump’s incredible inauguration speech, I realized I’m going to really miss Barack Hussein Obama.
After all, he was the best gun salesman in America for 8 years, better even than Bill “mad rapist” Clinton, persuading even little old grandmas they needed to get cracking on obtaining an effective defensive weapon. Tens of millions of first time lawful gun owners and Second Amendment supporters got their start with and from Obama.
And his political acumen was unbelievable. The guy is a political wrecking ball. I still can’t get over how much he hated his own political party. So much so that he destroyed it. I mean he blasted the Democrat Party to pieces. Obama is so polarizing, such a great liar (“you can keep your doctor”), that since 2010 the nation rewarded him with near universal scorn and rejection, and ejected democrats from safe seats across America.
Across America democrats are in tiny minorities. Republicans control most of the state houses, governorships, and local governments. Everywhere except California and New York. And I’m sure those two states are going to change dramatically.
Thank you, Mr Obama. You’re going to be missed! In a way.
Some thoughts on MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech
Our family just sat down to watch Martin Luther King Jr. deliver one of America’s most powerful speeches, his 1963 I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Thank you to YouTube for publishing this historically important footage.
We had a discussion about it, and here are some thoughts that resulted:
MLK’s face is clearly moved, the righteousness of his words providing a passion that cannot be ignored then, or now. How refreshing is that.
The causes of justice, freedom, voting rights, and integration were true tests of just how honest America was going to be, how accurately it was going to live up to its promises. Genuine race and fairness issues are almost gone today, due to that passion.
How refreshing it is to hear true righteousness, and dignity, and careful measure. Few leaders since MLK have been able or willing to lead listeners down different paths simultaneously.
In the context of Georgia Congressman John Lewis’s crazy comments about November’s election results, MLK stands out as a real outlier. Race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are phonies, and Congressman John Lewis has been riding on his one real achievement from fifty years ago. Are there any honest brokers remaining on race issues? What I would give to have MLK back with us today. America could use his gentleness, his insights, his vision. His truthfulness.
After all, a great deal of the goals MLK put forth in his speech have been achieved. What has not been achieved could easily be ascribed to the destructive methods of Sharpton, Jackson, and now Congressman Lewis, whose personal attack on the president elect brought a swift and accurate rebuttal. American blacks are more the victims of their regressive “leaders” than they are of any racism.
One of my favorite bits of knowledge is that MLK was an ardent gun owner. He was not politically correct. Oh, I don’t believe he was a violent man, bitterly clinging to his Bible and guns in preparation for some racial Armageddon. Rather, he was a hunter, a target shooter, and a practical self-defense-oriented American who believed it was better to defend one’s home from violent intruders than it was to die unarmed.
Unfortunately, this great man left America far too soon, but like all righteous martyrs, MLK’s murder inspired great change in the greatest nation ever on Planet Earth.
Thank you for your many gifts to us, Martin Luther King, Jr. We thank you for the biggest one, your ultimate sacrifice that America might live up to its best hopes and dreams.
Is America like Samson?
Ancient Jewish hero Samson was so strong he could use the lower jaw of a donkey to fight against men who were using edged weapons. It was almost a dismissiveness to use such a low-tech tool under circumstances where failure was not an option. Because it meant death.
From where did Samson get his incredible strength? Obviously he was physically capable, meaning strong and cat-like quick. But he also had a deeper power, a power every human possesses. A spiritual power. It enabled him to rise far above his physical limitations and perform remarkable, superhuman feats of mortal combat.
Samson was a Nazirite, a person who denies himself physical pleasures like wine, meat, fancy clothes, and sex. By abstaining, Nazirites are able to disconnect from worldly distractions and focus on spiritual development. Samson’s strength was not just physical.
The town in northern Israel called Nazareth was evidently a city where many men took on the stringencies which guided them on their spiritual paths through an innately physical and material world. Like Samson before him, Jesus was also a Nazirite. The long hair and beard are famous symbols of the Nazirite oath.
The story of Samson is tragic, because he forgot who he was, forgot his vows of abstinence, and allowed himself to be led astray and into bed by Delilah, who was understandably attracted to his manly qualities.
Once Delilah had conquered Samson sexually, she took the symbolic step of cutting his long hair. Removing the symbol of his abstinence signified his end of being a Nazirite and the beginning of their physical relationship.
Samson lost his strength and was eventually captured by the Philistines not because his hair was cut. It was because his reason for existence had ended. His cut hair was as much a symbol as it had been when it was long. It said he had lost his way, lost his focus, and lost his purpose. He had broken his vow, and the pain of his spiritual failure drained him of physical strength.
The Bible has always been the bedrock of American and Western civilization. After all, religion gives humans basic essential values. It informs how we make choices, how we relate to one another, how our societies function.
But biblical beliefs are lagging these days, with resulting cultural chaos. Americans seem to have forgotten who they are (independent citizens with individual liberty, not serfs), and their purpose (run their own government). This complacency has invited vile intruders to take advantage and control of our many freedoms. Like Samson before us, we have been led astray, forgotten our vows to our fellow citizens, and as a result we are greatly at risk.
Let’s hope America has a spiritual renewal that strengthens our resolve to live by the divine laws spelled out in our Constitution, and not by the whims and laws of mere men.
Did Liberals become Lawless by Nature? Or Habit?
Part of the 1960s counter-culture and protest fuel was a strong sense that ossified American culture and morality were “just, because.” To counter-culture activists, the war in Vietnam was perhaps the best example of this inconsiderate mindlessness. It became a galvanizing centerpiece in the display of Everything That Is Wrong With America.
So both bras and draft cards alike were burned as acts of moral or legal defiance became part and parcel of the movement.
Fast forward fifty years, and the liberal culture is deeply rooted in brazen acts of defiance and protest. Sit-ins, occupations of offices, “die-ins,” stormy public protests are all regular scenes as liberals make their point public.
Somewhere underlying the actions is that old sense that ‘because these things I oppose are immoral, I can engage in immoral and illegal acts of protest’.
Or said another way, ‘I vote the right way, so my actions are infallible’.
Half a step away from this thinking is the idea that whatever politically correct issue du jour is up next, illegal and violent acts are a necessity or at least justified. Heck, people even argue they are the cause. Could be the candidacy and then election of Donald Trump “causing” demonstrators to destroy private and public property, assault fellow Americans, bully co-workers, and accuse anyone who disagrees with them of being violent, hateful, etc.
And here is where a lot of Americans are lost and confused, including me.
Protesting is understandable. Violent protests are not (think of the many recent cry-bully protests against displeasing electoral outcomes).
Strongly disagreeing with someone’s politics is understandable. Assaulting someone over it is not (especially when the assailant claims to be “for love” and “against hate”) (think of the mass violence by liberals committed against Trump supporters for the past year).
Writing a letter to the editor, like Bob Quarteroni did a few weeks ago here in the Patriot News is all-American. Go for it. But trespassing, vandalizing and stealing private property, and threatening landowners with physical harm to make a vague political point, as Mr. Quarteroni gleefully admitted to in his letter, is not OK.
Asking a young lady yesterday to please stop at the stop sign in our neighborhood, and not barrel through it as she did, because two small kids play at that intersection, netted my son and I this response: “I did stop at the stop sign”
“No, you did not, we watched you drive right through.”
“I’ll bet you voted for Trump,” said the dashing young lady, who then gave us the finger and marched on in to the Wells Fargo bank to get her money. Apparently Trump made her drive recklessly.
And then there is the sanctuary city thing, a naked play for votes by one political party that seems to always need a permanently angry underclass. Illegal aliens will do for them, never mind that the rest of America wants them to follow the law.
If a bunch of gun owners decided to ignore gun laws in one of these sanctuary cities, because they believe the gun laws are unconstitutional, punitive, unfair, backwards, and causing crime rather than limiting it, you just know what the city fathers would do: Lock ’em up!
It is interesting, isn’t it, that neither Barack Hussein Obama nor Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders asked their rampaging supporters to stop…. The liberal political leaders actually encouraged the illegal and violent behavior. And in fact, in state houses and the US Congress there is one political party whose elected members continue to hold illegal “sit-ins” and other forms of partisan protest in public, taxpayer-owned places.
So what happened here?
When did liberals go from staking out some intellectual or moral high ground, to destructive, illegal, and criminal acts as a matter of daily behavior?
Somewhere, that old sense of just cause got blurred. All of the burned draft cards and other little illegal acts of defiance morphed into a culture of perpetual violence, destruction, and openly flouting the law (when it suits them).
I know a lot of liberals. How could I not, having graduated from America’s flagship Quaker school? Our high school class grew up together and we are like a big family, so we stay in touch. And of course I continue to maintain relationships with as many liberals as will have me as their friend (apparently not easy for PC people, a subject for another essay).
I look at these otherwise great people about whom I care a great deal, and I wonder, did they willingly and consciously allow their nature to become corrupted and lawless? Did they get here by habit?
Are their goals so pure that any means are justified, no matter the unfair high cost, the immorality, the injustice, the personal loss by innocents? That was a Lenin and Stalin thing. Not that American liberals would ever follow in those paths….nahhh.
I cannot answer this question, and I wish liberals would.
A question and a wish
First the question. Is there a reasonable explanation for Brooklyn lawyer Dan Goldstein’s aggressive harassment of Donald Trump’s daughter yesterday?
After all, the young mother was sitting in a plane with her three kids, minding her own business. Bystanders credited her with being cool under fire, while Goldstein and his partner were escorted off the plane for their disruptive behavior
Goldstein’s partner, Matt Lasner, joked about it on Twitter, then deleted his Twitter account altogether.
What is it about two gay Jewish guys from New York that they have missed out on the meaning of life, the meaning of the holidays, and the joy that comes with treating people nicely?
These two guys are a minority of a minority of a minority. You’d think they would be the most sensitive to not bullying other people. They’re highly educated (which actually probably explains some of this event, given the low quality of most PC academia). They’re financially secure. Where did they leave their manners?
I have a theory: So many urban elites are so completely cut off from the rest of the populace that they really cannot relate, and their disdain simply pours out when they do make contact. After decades of indoctrination by academia and liberal activist media, these folks are so filled with acid hatred for others that they cannot control themselves. In short, they are bigots.
If you want evidence that liberalism is failing, this is a good example. If your beliefs cause you to behave in inhumane ways toward innocent people, then you have bad beliefs.
Dan Goldstein and Matt Lasner are most likely atheists, so it’s tough to say what their core beliefs are or could be. But they make their aggressive liberalism clear to everyone, and that includes being vile and disrespectful to moms with kids minding their own business.
Gentlemen, Daniel and Matthew, if I may be bold enough to call you gentlemen, maybe you can take a hint here for how to treat everyone you meet over the next week, if not your lifetime: Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and have a wonderful New Year!