"Smokey"

Years ago I smoked cigarettes, which is hard for many people (including me) to fathom. Why?! Truth be told, I was a horrible smoker, which was why I began in the first place: I'm not a binge drinker like many of the kids I grew up with. "Smokey" was actually another one of the nicknames created by my "bestie", like "Uker". I'd puke if I drank too much, you know, because too much alcohol makes you sick. 

And so I compensated for not having an alcohol addiction by using cigarettes to calm my stomach from an excess of beer drinking, something college kids ruthlessly monitored me over (like my normal sleep patterns and continued persistent refusals to party overmuch), to keep their own massive consumptions obscured. I knew it, just like I knew my Dad smoked, as did a few of my grandparents, in response to life stress and their own addictive patterns. 

Like many Gen X'ers, I found myself wrecked by the consequences of other peoples' blatant disregard for my health, well-being, and safety. After years of being bored and sickened by someone else's stupid habit, I finally broke the cycle of abuse for me by quitting smoking cold turkey, because I had several bouts of DVT, related to knee surgery. 

I knew I was never an addict by the time I tried to use the lowest dose of nicotine patches available, because I had to leave my art director's job mid-day from a sick stomach; the severe nausea healthy people have in response to the harsh chemical cocktail designed to addict that's in cigarettes. For me, the cycle has forever been broken by my iron will, though the mentally ill receptionist at that former job, who compulsively gossiped as a political weapon (which I successfully used against her), merely changed the tone of her attack from noting my smoking habit to any other thing she felt she could get away with. 

Today I ask you to break the bad habits imposed upon you by others (those that were created in response to repeated personal attacks), by getting clean and healthy, like our fabulous health official Dr. Mary Bassett; herself an educated healer and fellow New Yorker, also caught in the twin traps of getting by on nothing, while fighting a corruptly biased system. Today we declare our collective good health, for all the peoples of the world still fighting oppression. I got your back, girl. 

May G-d bless you and keep you safe, 

in these final days of hope and light.

Quitting Smoking:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/about/commish-bio.shtml

https://a816-nycquits.nyc.gov/pages/homepage.aspx

The Tobacco Industry:

http://www.thestreet.com/topic/25884/top-rated-equity-tobacco.html 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3490543/ 

A series of black and white self-portraits I made for (and sent to) my old college boyfriend, who needed support during his time at McGill University while I worked three jobs at RISD, which he blamed me for. He retaliated by transferring out of Oneonta before me during my last semester there, supposedly because I "insisted" on "wasting my time" at art school. Amen to you who are my similarly afflicted.

1-866-NYC-QUITS (1-866-697-8487) 

http://www.nysmokefree.com/ 

Take it to the bank

Traditional banking is going away for good, and I mean that sincerely. Why put your money in a safe house that's compromised? You don't. Banks were supposed to be the place where your paycheck was protected from the bad guys, but a fortress is only as good as its' security. As recent as two years ago, anyone could deposit money into any type of account, under any name, with no I.D. check. Yeah, that means what you're thinking. Your nice grandma with the fly car also has a grandson who deals drugs, and every week he'd put stinking cash reeking of pot smoke into her account, without anyone doing anything about it.

But that's why criminals worked as "inside men" at banks nationwide: that's where the money is, and that's what robbers steal. The banking industry has become such a magnet for illicit use (Off-shore banking, anyone? Sweden?), that the notoriously criminal firm of Goldman Sachs* recently announced their entrance into the banking game, for rich people only, of course: http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-chair-writes-anticorruption-letter-2015-2.

I had my own run-in with the old crime syndicate a few years back, one that has its' hooks into every con in town, real estate and the city court systems included. The system temporarily bankrupted me, but not before I made each one of their key players do every financial tap dance there is, because no one messes with me and gets away with it. I am always a native New Yorker, no matter where I go.  

As the world's capital, we've always been a very wealthy area. Commerce was my dinner table conversation growing up, hence the lack of a business school on my curriculum vitae, but you didn't know that about me, did you? No, you didn't. That's because my dad was a greaser who played suckers for pool, one of my granddads' was a bookie during the Depression (in between pony rides), and they both taught me how to shuffle a deck of cards, just in case that junkie in Times Square wanted to shake me down playing "Three Card Monty" back in the day. So, we're back to the beginning, right? Not exactly.

After a corrupt system robbed me of all my pocket change, I was forced to do what I do best: improvise under the gun in the tightest of squeezes, which is exactly what I did. It's called "High Performing" in the circles where strong games are played. I ditched all my accounts, ran on cash, lived off my tax refund with a debit card from a chain tax service, then ditched that debit card the next year for a hard check. 

Of course, the well-known tax service couldn't cash it for me, because they aren't a bank. I knew that already, because I know businesses from the inside-out, and that's exactly what was told back to me: my own answer coming out of some admin's mouth (sorry, I meant "Office Manager"), which is certainly not my first ride around the block.

So, if you think financial calisthenics is the type of bloodsport you can handle, have at it. I know I can do any kind of weird gymnastics the system wants to throw my way. Sick and tired of being played? I got your back.  Read, learn, then do.

http://comptroller.nyc.gov/takeittothebank/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_steal

   http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/cake/shortskirtlongjacket.html

Homelessness

 


Homelessness is not real. It is an artificial human construct that does not in actuality exist as a problem for us. We do not have a shortage of cheap, available housing in this country. We have a shortage of heart and soul. Witness this, mes amis: I pulled these figures off the web in a second (from 2013), and the number of vacant homes in America is 14.2 MILLION. Yes, you read that right: millions of empty homes that need humans to inhabit them: http://www.realtytrac.com/content/news-and-opinion/americas-142-million-vacant-homes-a-national-crisis-7723.

After all, if we don't care for objects, they break down, fall apart, and drop away. It is our tending to a house that makes it into a home. What is the point of chronic abandonment? More losses? It doesn't make any sense, any way you look at it: from an economic standpoint, a moral point of view, or as an ethical debate. We need people to feel at home, because people deeply rooted in the idea of community do not commit offenses against their neighbors who love them, because they would be the very same who gave them shelter. Would you? And if you do have diseased neighbors so sick that they bite the hand that feeds them, we have options for those sick members of our society, too. We can take care of our own and move forward, my friends in Christ. Don't believe otherwise, because that is a lie.

To pretend otherwise is a conceit that you (and you know who you are) can't afford to ignore anymore, because we're onto you. Move forward with us, human, in love and in faith. That is all for today. You have your orders. Go for it. This is "Love Thy Neighbor", folks. You want to get in on this message for real; like, yesterday, in fact.


610,042 people were homeless in the United States. 

Nearly two-thirds of people experiencing homelessness 
(65 percent or 394,698) were living in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs. 

Click here:  https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=how+many+homeless+in+america

Keeping In Season with Cabbage and Beets

The Mix.

I've been trying to cook with the seasons when I can, given time, money, and location restraints. That means I follow and use a handy little iPhone app called "Fresh Right Now" (no longer available, so please petition the company that created it to bring it back: http://www.digitaloddities.com/apps/ios/FreshRightNow/), set to tell me what foods are fresh and available in the Northeastern region of United States. It's a more rigorous and responsible to shop, eat, and live. 

Reducing and simmering.

By choosing to stay within those guidelines, several things happen at once. Buying only locally-grown produce has deeper ramifications than you'd think: it's a brief shipping process between the fields and local stores, so it's fresher, needing less chemicals to stay fresh because of that quick turnaround (and staying "green" by using less fossil fuel and pesticides, so there's no leeching into the groundwater), it's American grown, which benefits our farms here, under the scrutiny of our USDA standards, and it pumps money back into the local economy, creating a healthy, small, manageable system that's less dependent on the financial ups and downs of the world at large.

Mellowing into a beautiful, rich, warm red.

Not an easy trick to do, admittedly. It helps that I know how to choose local foods well, and that I cook every day, so I bring a lot of experience to the table. But by picking local foods within season, I feel better physically because the food is fresher and grown with less chemicals, I support my community of farmers, and I get a more well-rounded and balanced diet that changes with every season, which pretty much guarantees that I am always eating a rotating group of fruits and vegetables. By not constantly consuming far away foods laden with hormones, antibiotics, and traces of chemical agents, I get nutrition which, after taste in food, is a big part of the health game.

Shiny, happy, cabbage and beets.

With spring and St. Patrick's Day, our hearts and minds here turn naturally to cooking with cabbage, the winter vegetable staple of so many Northern ethnicities. For sure, I am not a fan of the wilted boiled cabbage of yore, so I updated it with beautiful red beets and a balsamic vinaigrette, braised and reduced in organic coconut oil. It tasted better than any cabbage dish I've ever had, imparting a sweetness and complexity I've yet to discover in that blank canvas of a vegetable, the humble cabbage, now lifted to a side dish worthy of the moist chicken breast sitting next to it on the plate.

Chicken breast with worthy side dish.

Lick the plate clean, and you've made yourself a little piece of happy that was grown right near your home. A worthy goal for any family. What's your next taste adventure?

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Braised-Beets-and-Red-Cabbage-3191.

PS: I made some changes to this recipe, as you should, based on fridge and pantry items. I added honey, skipped the parsley, frying it in a combo of coconut oil and a butter-like product from Olivio that's derived from coconut, in lieu of butter.