Some of you will be familiar with native Texans' love of bacon. I am no exception. But, as it turns out, Chicagoans adore it even more. A Chicago neighborhood, Logan Square, will devote an entire day and a city block to celebrating the joys of bacon. On April 10th, Baconfest will absorb the energies of hundreds of hungry folk. "Let’s face it," as the organizers announce in their slick brochure, "bacon is popular for good reasons, it’s fun to eat and a wonderful addition to almost any meal." A few other points in bacon’s favor-it’s natural, it’s delicious, and it’s a pretty utilitarian food. Bacon is now being featured on a donut at Voodoo Donut in Oregon. The Maple Bacon Bar is a donut with maple frosting and bacon pieces on top. In Chicago, Vosges Chocolate produces Mo’s Bacon Chocolate Bar.
For all of my readers who are already searching for flights, forget it. All I can say to explain what I am about to reveal is that pigs have magical powers. All 300 tickets (at $45 each) sold out in the first ten minutes. Wow! To Sandburg's famous line about Chicago, "Hog-butcher to the world," I would add, "Hog-consumer of the world."
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Redwing blackbirds pose a question about provisioning
I am on my way to Chicago’s Lincoln Park’s winter market. On my way to the lovely Notebaert Nature Center, where the stalls sprawl over two floors, I wander through the park. So here I am, at North Pond, early on a misty, rainy Saturday morning, notebook in one hand, George Orians's thrilling but unfortunately titled book, Some Adaptations of Marsh-Nesting Blackbirds (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) in the other. I’ve brought my dog-eared copy of his book along because I had learned a few days before that an alert city birder had spotted the first redwing blackbirds of the season. Orians tells me that, in the nesting season blackbird parents are under great pressure to obtain enough food for their nestlings. In this situation, as I remember from Darwin's study of finches, natural selection operates powerfully on the birds' behavior; for the number of healthy young that can be raised depends directly on the amount and quality of food that the parents can capture and bring back to the nest.
What’s all this have to do with provenance? As Lizzie’s father urges her in a famous scene in Pride and Prejudice, “Read on!”
At any rate, as most of you will know, redwing blackbirds nest in vegetation growing in shallow water. They are strongly territorial. In the spring, the males arrive first and establish territories that include an area of marsh and adjacent dry land. About two weeks later, the females arrive, and, after visiting several male territories, each female settles on one, mates with the territorial male, and builds her nest within his territory. The females do all the nest building, incubation of eggs, and almost all the feeding of the nestlings, although after the young have left the nest the males also feed them. Most of the diet consists of aquatic insects that have just emerged from the water, supplemented by insects that inhabit the dry areas.
OK, I’m getting to the topic of provenance. My readers -- if I have any! -- have surely observed that these transitional zones between water and marsh -- ecotones is the lovely ecological term for these in-between spaces -- vary greatly in the abundance of insects on which blackbirds can feed, hence the density of blackbirds is roughly correlated with insect abundance. But Orians observes that other factors also play a role. For example, blackbirds avoid nesting in areas with a continuous stand of trees that rise more than 30 degrees above the horizon, even when insect food is abundant, because hawks typically select such trees for their nests.
I promise, I know where I’m going with this. Now comes the real challenge to understanding. Male blackbirds make extremely important choices about nesting territories well before their young hatch and require an abundant source of insect food. Their choices, I think, are analogous to the ones that humans make in finding residences near sources of produce. Unlike humans, who can rely on all sorts of aids in locating provisions, from the Yellow Pages to iPhones -- for instance, I had checked on the hours of the Winter Market on the web shortly before leaving home--, male blackbirds, at the time that they make these choices, have almost no guidance. On this cold, damp, March morning at North Pond, very few aquatic insects have emerged, so the choice of territory must be guided by something other that the sheer abundance of insects. Somehow the males make choices, selecting out of extensive areas of marsh those localities that later produce the richest harvest of aquatic and terrestrial insects. I might suppose that these choices are guided by memory and tradition, the blackbirds simply remembering where they nested last year or where their parents raised them. But marshes change rapidly, year to year, as a result of ecological changes -- varying water levels, invasion by carp -- that drastically reduce the populations of aquatic insects.
Hence the absorbing question: How do redwing blackbirds gain a representation of a future situation that will produce an abundant harvest of aquatic and terrestrial insects? Or, to put the question in less high-falutin’ language: How do redwing blackbirds consider their situation and their future?
That's the topic for my next entry.
What’s all this have to do with provenance? As Lizzie’s father urges her in a famous scene in Pride and Prejudice, “Read on!”
At any rate, as most of you will know, redwing blackbirds nest in vegetation growing in shallow water. They are strongly territorial. In the spring, the males arrive first and establish territories that include an area of marsh and adjacent dry land. About two weeks later, the females arrive, and, after visiting several male territories, each female settles on one, mates with the territorial male, and builds her nest within his territory. The females do all the nest building, incubation of eggs, and almost all the feeding of the nestlings, although after the young have left the nest the males also feed them. Most of the diet consists of aquatic insects that have just emerged from the water, supplemented by insects that inhabit the dry areas.
OK, I’m getting to the topic of provenance. My readers -- if I have any! -- have surely observed that these transitional zones between water and marsh -- ecotones is the lovely ecological term for these in-between spaces -- vary greatly in the abundance of insects on which blackbirds can feed, hence the density of blackbirds is roughly correlated with insect abundance. But Orians observes that other factors also play a role. For example, blackbirds avoid nesting in areas with a continuous stand of trees that rise more than 30 degrees above the horizon, even when insect food is abundant, because hawks typically select such trees for their nests.
I promise, I know where I’m going with this. Now comes the real challenge to understanding. Male blackbirds make extremely important choices about nesting territories well before their young hatch and require an abundant source of insect food. Their choices, I think, are analogous to the ones that humans make in finding residences near sources of produce. Unlike humans, who can rely on all sorts of aids in locating provisions, from the Yellow Pages to iPhones -- for instance, I had checked on the hours of the Winter Market on the web shortly before leaving home--, male blackbirds, at the time that they make these choices, have almost no guidance. On this cold, damp, March morning at North Pond, very few aquatic insects have emerged, so the choice of territory must be guided by something other that the sheer abundance of insects. Somehow the males make choices, selecting out of extensive areas of marsh those localities that later produce the richest harvest of aquatic and terrestrial insects. I might suppose that these choices are guided by memory and tradition, the blackbirds simply remembering where they nested last year or where their parents raised them. But marshes change rapidly, year to year, as a result of ecological changes -- varying water levels, invasion by carp -- that drastically reduce the populations of aquatic insects.
Hence the absorbing question: How do redwing blackbirds gain a representation of a future situation that will produce an abundant harvest of aquatic and terrestrial insects? Or, to put the question in less high-falutin’ language: How do redwing blackbirds consider their situation and their future?
That's the topic for my next entry.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
The Russians are coming! Well, really, theyve already arrived. In Provenance, I mean. I'm going to trace the imaginaries of Russian wrtiers, from Gogol to Shalamov, as they seek to comprehend the plenty and want of human living. Take Gogol as a first guide. I've been reading his Ukrainian tales, which he collected in several volumes between 1831 and 1835. He writes of fantastic happenings and ordinary moments, all in a prose at once transparent and mystifying. Clear, because the person or event or object stands right in front of the reader; strange, because the meaning of a character or occurance or thing eludes the reader. All of these wonderfully scrambled elements make for a path into the world of Provenance.
Take his extraordinary story, "Old World Landowners." Gogol gives us abundance. The scene is a small estate in Little Russia, the characters the sorts of human beings who find themselves bound to the land, sometimes voluntarily, as in the masters, sometimes involuntarily, as in the serfs. Gogol wants the reader to experience the careless management that somehow cultivates plenty: "These worthy rulers, the steward and the headman, thought it quite unnecessary to bring all the flour into the master's own barn and that half was enough; in the end, even that half that was delivered was either moldy or damp and had been rejected at the fair. But, however much the steward and the headman stole, however much everyone in the household stuffed his face, from the housekeeper to the pigs, who consumed a terrible quantity of plums and apples, and often shoved the trees with their snouts to shake down a whole rain of fruit; however much the sparrows and crows pecked up; however much all the household people took as presents to their kin in others villages, even stealing old linen and yarn from the storerooms, all of which returned to the universal source, that is, the tavern; however much visitors, their phlegmatic coachment and lackeys stole -- the blessed earth produced everything in such abundance, and Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna needed so little, that all this terrible plundering seemed to go entirely unnoticed in their management."
An overflowing of grain and vegetables and fruit springing from an earth lightly and heedlessly tended! Gogol engages my imagination with the juxtaposition of the housekeeper and the pig, both stuffing their faces with plums. And so I am suddenly seized with a longing for this abundance and a recoiling from this waste.
That contrary feeling is what I mean by "the scrambled elements" that draw me into the world of Provenance.
Time for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and salsa verde.
Take his extraordinary story, "Old World Landowners." Gogol gives us abundance. The scene is a small estate in Little Russia, the characters the sorts of human beings who find themselves bound to the land, sometimes voluntarily, as in the masters, sometimes involuntarily, as in the serfs. Gogol wants the reader to experience the careless management that somehow cultivates plenty: "These worthy rulers, the steward and the headman, thought it quite unnecessary to bring all the flour into the master's own barn and that half was enough; in the end, even that half that was delivered was either moldy or damp and had been rejected at the fair. But, however much the steward and the headman stole, however much everyone in the household stuffed his face, from the housekeeper to the pigs, who consumed a terrible quantity of plums and apples, and often shoved the trees with their snouts to shake down a whole rain of fruit; however much the sparrows and crows pecked up; however much all the household people took as presents to their kin in others villages, even stealing old linen and yarn from the storerooms, all of which returned to the universal source, that is, the tavern; however much visitors, their phlegmatic coachment and lackeys stole -- the blessed earth produced everything in such abundance, and Afanasy Ivanovich and Pulkheria Ivanovna needed so little, that all this terrible plundering seemed to go entirely unnoticed in their management."
An overflowing of grain and vegetables and fruit springing from an earth lightly and heedlessly tended! Gogol engages my imagination with the juxtaposition of the housekeeper and the pig, both stuffing their faces with plums. And so I am suddenly seized with a longing for this abundance and a recoiling from this waste.
That contrary feeling is what I mean by "the scrambled elements" that draw me into the world of Provenance.
Time for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and salsa verde.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
With apologies to Peter Mayle, whose lovely book, A Year in Provence, starts with the simple line, "The year began with lunch" -- as I say, apologies -- my blog will begin with a prolix sentence that attempts to explain, however inadequately, that this year in provenance -- I am trying not to call too much attention to the pun -- started not with lunch, but with a walk. A walk up Broadway -- the Chicago street, not the Manhattan one -- for 42 blocks on a cold January 30th, past the Jewel grocery, Dominick's market, and Aldi Foods, to a small market called True Nature. An intimate space, the little store laid out an array of winter vegetables, each with its provenance: Paw Paw, Michigan; Algonquin, Illinois; Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Each place name sounded its deep history: Paw Paw, an ancient Pottawatomi cultivation; Algonquin, a western outpost of a New York people; Fond du Lac, a northern habitation of the Menominee. I hurriedly gathered up New World roots: Jerusalem artichokes, which an early French governor of Canada, Samuel de Champlain, called the topinabour or artichaut du Canada, because it reminded him of the taste of artichoke; the tuber became Jerusalem artichokes in English because a 17th-century Italian naturalist discovered that the plant was a member of the sunflower family, the girasole family; potatoes, in the Yukon variety, ultimately derived from a variety described in Histoire des Plantes (1601), written by a French naturalist who had travelled in Peru; rutabagas, a giant Russian and Swedish turnip that is actually a cross between turnips and cabbages, already found wild in western Russia in the 17th century and introduced into Illinois in 1817 and proud winner of the Gold Medal in Root Crops at the Mid-West Horticultural Exposition in 1919; and, of course, sweet potatoes, a root first domesticated in the Yucatan Peninsula about 5000 years ago and now grown as far north as southern Ontario.
But no celery root. So I walked north again, to Loyola Ave, where I discovered a lovely market called New Leaf. There, displayed in a simple refrigerator case, lay a true store of root crops, including celery root. a so-called legume gourmand in French cooking, but now appearing in American markets from Great Barrington to Chicago to Missoula. Carefully turning it over, I discovered a small tag on the bag: "Grown in Paw Paw, MI."
Provenance. That's the theme of this blog, places of origin both near and far -- proximate in time and place, distant in origins.
But no celery root. So I walked north again, to Loyola Ave, where I discovered a lovely market called New Leaf. There, displayed in a simple refrigerator case, lay a true store of root crops, including celery root. a so-called legume gourmand in French cooking, but now appearing in American markets from Great Barrington to Chicago to Missoula. Carefully turning it over, I discovered a small tag on the bag: "Grown in Paw Paw, MI."
Provenance. That's the theme of this blog, places of origin both near and far -- proximate in time and place, distant in origins.
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