#FOWC Archives – Page 85 of 107

March 25, 2020June 24, 2020

Mom Always Said Wash Your Hands

Today is a perfect time to honor our healthcare professionals, celebrate international women’s month, and remind you to lather up. Consider it a threefer. All hail to midwives, nurses, and mom.

Poster from Foodsafetynews.com. October 15, 2016 was Global Handwashing Day, though we might have missed that.

Aqueducts and Aquamaniles APlenty

Contrary to some beliefs, bathing and hand-washing is not a historically recent phenomenon, but was a practice widely dispersed across many cultures for centuries. The Romans, Greeks, Mesoamericans, and Japanese all incorporated bathing into their daily routines. Even into the Dark Ages, where food was eaten mainly with the hands, it was customary to rinse off before dining. Special ewers were provided for noble feasters, but even commoners might prepare a hand-washing solution with herbs, like making tea.

Pour faire eaue a laver mains sur table mectez boulir de la sauge, puis coulez l’eaue et faictes reffroidier jusques a plus que tiedes. Ou vous mectez comme dessus camomille et marjolaine, ou vous mectez du rommarin, et cuire avec l’escorche d’orenge. Et aussi feuilles de lorier y sont bonnes.

To make water for washing hands at the table. Boil sage, strain the water and let cool to a little more than tepid. Or take camomille and marjoram in stead [of sage], or rosemary, and boil with orange peel. Bay leaves are also good.
From Coquinaria, A Recipe for Washing Hands

A medieval aquamanile, for rinsing hands before dinner. Photo at Coquanilia.

March 12, 2020March 19, 2020

Extraordinary Woman, Extraordinary Times

Here’s a great story to brighten your day and bend your attention away from That Other Thing that’s on our minds.

Suppose you were Michael Jordan or Tom Brady, the greatest player of a sport in your generation, in the middle of your statistics-blowing career, on your way to winning the Nth of your many championships–and you just decided to take a few years off to help the world? Nuts? Unheard of? No one would do that?

Maya Moore did it.

Maya Moore, as a freshman, in the Boston Globe, photo by Bob Child.

What Makes a Legend

In college, Maya Moore was such an annoying player!–for everyone who wasn’t a UConn fan. Even when she was a freshman, the Boston Globe was suggesting she could be “the best female player ever,” as she began to amass statistics and wipe out opponents. The coach was comparing her to Derek Jeter, and he wasn’t wrong. Moore was always where the ball was, on offense and defense, until opposing coaches would just throw up their hands. She helped lead Connecticut to two back-to-back national championships, a 90-game winning streak, and an overall record of 150-4 in her college career.

I was a fan of northern California teams that she beat and would cringe every time I heard her name. Which was every twenty seconds. When you watched her play, she seemed to be on another level from everybody else. Hold that thought.

March 4, 2020March 13, 2020

Trash Dance

Photo of plastic lid to collect compost — How shall I collect compost? Let me count the ways… photo by kajmeister.

The biggest excitement in my life for the past week has been hearing the Bulky Trash people pick up my pile of Things. Last Monday, at 7:02 am, after the morning compost truck had banged its way along our suburban street, I heard the sound of backing up. I was, in fact, waiting for it; had, in fact, already gone out to examine the pile we had sneaked out there after dark on Sunday night to see if it was still humbly awaiting pick-up. (It was.)

Oh beautiful Bulky Trash truck, I was never so glad to see you! I heard the discussions outside in between sounds of metal scraping on concrete; I heard dragging; I heard crunching. Then, the Doppler effect of that engine driving away, and I dared to peek. All gone! All gone! I spent the rest of the day humming to myself and doing a little ceremony and dance, Bulky Trash! Bulky Trash! Everybody do the Bulk-y TRASH! Do you think me simple for getting so excited about trash? Definitely. To paraphrase Jango Fett, I am a simple person just trying to make my way through the universe.

Our Education Regarding Trash

We have come a long way just in my lifetime dealing with the Things we acquire and then jettison. Sesame Street many moons ago had a video with a little song, What about garbage? Where’s it go?Where’s it go-o-o-o? as they showed smiling men putting the trash in the trucks, and the trucks putting it on the barges, and off the barges sailed into the sunset….. Well… not exactly, right?

We learned when we got older and put away childish things that the trash got dumped in the ocean. Or landfills which filled up, begatting new landfills and more and more, until we realized we were going to run out of land for landfills. Voila! Earth Day and the 1970s and recycling, first a few hippies dragging trash bags full of beer cans, then a whole industry, and finally a regulatory imperative. Fast cut to 2020 where we have tri-partite trash, multi-colored cans, and 79% of our county trash avoids landfills.

But it’s not so easy, is it? Even though the Bay Area has some of the highest recycling rates in the country, even San Francisco has had to extend its Zero Waste goal another ten years, stuck at 89% because of leather, rubber, flame retardants. Or, as I found out, because nobody wants a 20-year-old metal bunk bed. We already separate out all the organics, cans, bottles, foil, paper, cardboard, egg crates, hard-molded plastic, yet there’s still cellophane. There are still Cheetos bags. (Don’t judge.)