Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [NAFEX] amusing the audience

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] amusing the audience
  • Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:42:05 -0500

Richard,
I have always thought that you can get a point across easier with humor, that you can do a political cartoon that expresses very complex situations and moods in a picture or 4 that would take reams of paper to express using words. My husband and I are currently reading a laugh out loud book, Stumbling on Happiness, by a college prof who has obviously honed his speaking style to keep his students listening and thinking. Thoughts of that book combined with thoughts of pear exploration may lead to an article for Pomona, and I doubt you will begrudge the time it takes to read these musings. The foundation for this article would be Daniel Gilbert's description of us thinking ahead, planning and working to make our future selves happy. But will that person, the person we actually become, actually be happy with the results of all the planning and work we do for them? Will they rue, "with aching back" as Chris says, "the day I decided to plant old fashioned pears"? Will all this effort actually give me the intense joy and pleasure I experienced in the late 1970's biting into a wonderful Conference pear? Will having unlimited quantities of such pears make me happier than I was when I had to carefully consider my budget to buy one Conference pear?
Actually I started out trying to make myself happy and wealthy (in terms of food quality and abundance) by planting apple trees. I grew up in Florida in a small town where decent apples (besides Golden Delicious) were not to be had. Variety in flavor, crispness, or uses were not even to be imagined as I had no idea such things existed. So I was unbelievably happy finding an abandoned orchard in England and dragging home large amounts of Bramley and discovering what you can do with tart cooking apples. Then there were sweet juicy apples and amazing varieties at the greengrocers, and all these wonderful foods grew on trees. Yes, just like oranges and grapefruit! In peoples backyards they grew, they produced, the fruit fell on the ground and you could eat it! I wanted to go right now to Tennessee where we'd spent our vacations every year, buy some land and plant some apple trees. There were detours of course, had to get rid of the first husband and find one with ideas along the lines of mine, but that only took a few years, but then there was the poverty I'd fallen into after leaving home, but we did get some land, took 15 years from the first bite of a Cox's Orange Pippin to signing the papers. In all that time I had continued to experience the happiness of foraging for free fruit, with no responsibility for planting or maintaining the trees.
I believe that foraging is the natural way of making a living, for women at least. We all adore getting something for nothing, which explains the forbidden thrill of shoplifting for those who are addicted to it. It's probably similar to the thrill I get when I discover a patch of chantarelle mushrooms or a plum tree loaded with fruit, with the difference that I don't have to worry about getting caught because the things I'm getting are not really owned by someone else, or they have given me permission to take them. (Ever notice how similar permission and persimmon are to each other) So I get a lot of brain chemicals that have to do with immediate gratification and planning what to do with my bonanza, though I miss the big adrenalin rush the shoplifter gets. Young boys who climb walls to steal pears or sneak into cornfields to steal corn DO get the rush, and food DOES taste better than way from what I've read. There was the guy who talked his friends into stealing corn as an adult, and the corn really did taste as good as he remembered. He felt so guilty afterwards that he went to the farmer and confessed and paid for the corn. The farmer said you are welcome to steal corn if you'll pay me for it afterward like this. So every year he'd get his friends to experience the thrill of the forbidden and the joy of eating it.
Then there are bargains. Women like those too. Examples: time spent at a PYO blueberry farm to get fruit half price rather than buy it already picked for me. Bargains are also often unexpected, which makes them more thrilling. The guy with the pickup at the corner selling off the extra peaches at a bargain after some confusion in ordering. He kept lowering the price as I went from two to three, so I wound up with 4 boxes of peaches for $20 and was up till 2 am canning. Was I as happy at 1 am as I was carting those peaches home? Definitely not, and my back was aching and my hands were scalded. Was I as happy eating those canned peaches 2 years later as I thought I would be when I bought them? Yes I was, and yes I was wildly happy eating delicious fresh peaches for a week or more afterward (They were Blakes, in case you are interested.)
If eating a stolen pear is even better than eating a very good pear bought for full price, and if the same pears are better bought on sale, will I be happy with the results of years of tending fruit trees??? Will I pile the Warren pears into my basket this summer saying grumpily, "Well it's about time, 15 years this stupid tree took to make it's first crop!" Or will the 15 years plus the excitement of seeing the first blossoms, this summer of watching them grow, the wondering about whether they will be as good as their reputation, the puzzle of deciding the perfect time to pick, will these enhance the taste? There were the Moonglow pears last year, anticipated for so long, eclipsed by a huge free haul of Ayers from a tree in town that were really much better. Will I appreciate them more or less for the work, or rather the lack of work, it has taken to get these pears?
And then there were the apples, (an indignant sniff) huh, the apples. How much have I tortured the future self I became, how much I disappointed her. How much the current self thrills over the current crop of maybe a dozen apples hanging on the stunted trees. I can't understand her even now, this self of mine. Is it only because she expected apples all this time, 30 years it's been now, and I have diverted her into pears. It was the kindest thing I could have done, saved her even more misery. But what will my future self say when there are pears dripping in unusable quantities? I already know what my husband will be saying about having to dodge giant hornets. Can I be so cruel to him, and to me, to keep planting more pears? It's my curiosity, my greed, that keeps me doing these things. Will that book offer the answer to help me decide when to quit? And there are other drives, more complex, drives to become that unknown person in the past, decades earlier, who planted those trees that feed others.
To be continued.....
And input from others is always appreciated. Donna




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page