The 1850's repeated the crises of the 1820's and 30's, but in a compressed time span and with more deadly consequences.
The post-Revolutionary generation in South Carolina faced the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that limited slavery in the west, the Denmark Vesey trial of 1822, and James Hamilton’s nullification threat of 1832.
The next generation had the Compromise of 1850 that included the Fugitive Slave Act and led to talk of nullification. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 left the question of slavery in the territories to the settlers, and led to guerilla war in Kansas.
In this atmosphere, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin and William Gilmore Simms serialized The Sword and the Distaff in the Southern Literary Gazette in 1852 . The one criticizes the inhumanity of slavery; the other anticipates the need for guerilla warfare and recalls the aftermath of the American revolution in South Carolina when, Simms said, "peace is only a name for civil war."
Simms’ intent, based on his title, had been to use a character based on Hezekiah Maham to describe the difficulties of reestablishing plantations after the war. However, as a writer, he was better at describing action than romance. The middle section that describes his hero’s courtship of a wealthy widow drags, while the opening description of highway robbery would excite the imagination of any adolescent boy. When the work was issued as a book, he renamed it Woodcraft.
Like any work of popular fiction of the time, the reader’s interest lay in events that crowded each installment. The characters were recognizable stereotypes. There was the hard-hearted widow who’d played both sides in the war; the Scots merchant villain who’d fenced stolen slaves; his agent, a double dealing squatter; an upright Christian youth who marries after the war but is willing to fight when called upon; the hero’s faithful slaves who hid in the swamp from the British and willingly returned to the fields under the orders of a man not much better than Simon Legree; and the innocent daughter of the squatter who marries the nice, but naive son of the widow.
Maham is changed into Porgy, an insouciant scion who has mortgaged his property "which had been transmitted to him through three or more careful generations" to support a life of alcoholic leisure. When the sheriff finally forecloses on the property, Porgy makes the deputy eat the paperwork. He’s saved through the intervention of Charles Coatesworth Pickney and the squatter’s deathbed confession.
While Porgy is recognizable as a type all too common in South Carolina at the time, he bears almost no resemblance to Maham. All the virtues of the latter have disappeared, and his negative traits exaggerated.
In reality, Maham was a self-made man who worked as an overseer before gaining his own land, not an indulged son like James Hamilton who was criticized in 1850 for supporting the congressional compromise because it might redeem some of his Texas debts and save him from ruin.
When Maham returned to his land he found new seed rice. Porgy’s plantation is taken over by Millhouse, a underling sergeant eager to reestablish traditional ways. He tells him "You was always a-thinking to do something better than other people, and you wouldn’t let nater [nature] alone."
At a time when tidal cultivation was being introduced by the more innovative planters, Millhouse adds "Now I’m a-thinking that the true way is to put the ground in order, and at the right time plant the seed, and then jest lie by, and look on, and see what the warm sun and rain’s guine to do for it."
He concludes his anti-innovation critique with "It ain’t reasonable to think that a man kin find new wisdom about everything"
During the war, Maham had perfected a tower for siege warfare.
The war had dwindled to the final evacuation by the British in Simms’ novel, and most of his allusions are to Francis Marion’s units in general. Maham’s bravery at Quinby Bridge is transferred to the incident of banditry that opens the novel when an outlaw shoots his horse. The incident when Maham started from sleep and believed he was under attack is turned into a joke on Millhouse who attacks a ghost.
The only specific recollections of military encounters are ones that advance Simms’ view of war as a series of harassments bordering on torture. One of Porgy’s slaves, Pomp, recalls a scrimmage with Fraser at Parker’s Ferry where the "cappin mounted a British officer," then ‘cut him clean through his skull to his chin." Porgy himself remembers "old Echars, the Dutchman, whom we dressed in tar and feathers at Moncks’ Corner, for stealing cattle."
According to Patrick O’Kelley, Marion left Maham in charge of unmounted men at Parker’s Ferry while he took other troops to attack. While the British were retreating, unmounted men surrounded Thomas Fraser’s troop of South Carolina loyalists and opened fire at 40 yards. After the battle, Marion returned with his prisoners to where he’d left Maham.
Monck’s Corner is more obscure, mentioned by only one man who wrote Maham "took upwards of eighty prisoners" in October of 1782, months after Maham had been paroled and two months before the defeated British evacuated Charles Town.
In Woodcraft, Porgy is a middle-aged bachelor who’s spent his life in the salons of Charleston, but has to no idea how to court a woman. Maham had been married twice and fathered two daughters. His wife died after he’d returned home from battle, but before he confronted the sheriff’s deputy.
Maham only appears in histories as an actor in events, not as a person important enough to have a portrait painted and passed through generations or one who appears in diaries and journals of society life. His physical appearance and habits are unknown.
Simms makes Porgy so fat he can’t dismount his horse, and worries his trousers will split in company. He’s a heavy drinker who surrounds himself with the detritis of war, the one-armed Millhouse, and the most degenerate forms of the Enlightenment’s arts and sciences, the fraudulent Doctor Oakenburg and George Dennison, "poet of the partisans."
What we know of Hezekiah Maham comes from histories by Frederick Porcher and Joseph Johnson, both born after Mahan died. Parson Weems’ account of Francis Marion’s war effort was based on notes by Maham’s rival, Peter Horry, and never mentions Maham; Marion is given credit for the tower.
It could well be the widowed survivor of war did become the man described by Simms. His great-nephew, Joshua John Ward, however, heard through the family, he had been much more.
Unfortunately, his virtues were held in contempt by the generation going into the civil war, who only praised the most atrocious actions as necessary in war and condemned anyone else as decadent as Porgy.
Notes:
Johnson, Joseph. Traditions and Reminiscences, Chiefly of the American Revolution in the South, 1851.
O’Kelley, Patrick. Nothing but Blood and Slaughter: The Revolutionary War in the Carolinas, 4 volumes, 2004-2005.
Porcher, Frederick A. Historical and Social Sketch of Craven County, no date.
Simms, William Gilmore. Woodcraft, 1852, republished 1961 with an introduction by Richmond Croom Beatty.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Attacks on the Rational
Sometimes I think the defense of slavery has been as pernicious as slavery itself, if for no other reason than it discourages logical thinking.
Charleston in the years after the revolution included plantation owners willing to experiment with new technology. By the time of the nullification crisis around 1830 innovators still existed, but they weren’t respected for their efforts. Slaves, not machines, were the only answer for economic challenges.
Scientific thinking posits the sanctity of facts, and assumes scientists will change their theories when those theories no longer can explain observed reality. Thomas Kuhn showed men don’t always live up to that ideal, that when they’re confronted with anomalies they propose more and more absurd solutions to sustain their basic beliefs. However, he also showed that over time, the value of experience does alter theory, the underlying value holds.
One cannot support scientific thinking if one is so wedded to a practice like slavery that no contrary facts can be admitted. Once facts cannot be recognized, then they must be explained away, turned into something that supports the overarching theory. Bending reality becomes acceptable.
Today, we have people who deny the observed realities of climate change because the proposed explanation threatens some part of their world view. For some, it’s the idea that nature isn’t as rigid as suggested by Genesis. For others, it’s the concept of human responsibility and the consequences for accountability for one’s actions that’s troubling. And, of course, there are those who see an economic threat.
The result is an attack on science itself.
Recently, Mary Beard reviewed a book by Donald Kagan which she saw as attacking Thucydides for praising the behavior of Pericles in the Peloponnesian war which Kagan thinks is like that of those who wouldn’t put more resources into winning the war in Viet Nam. Since Kagan believes those actions led to unnecessary defeat, so Pericles must be redefined as leading his country to disaster.
The result is an attack on the academy itself which tries to sift evidence to develop explanations. When certain conclusions are forbidden, reality must be subverted.
Since the protests against the Vietnam war, discrimination against Blacks and abortion in the late 1960's, we have seen a growing number of people who cannot accept the validity of criticism of any kind. If schools needed to change to fit social ideals, then education must be rejected. And so, a generation developed who rejected the very tools they needed to survive in the changing economy.
Now the economy is in crisis and those who’ve been left behind are the most vehement in protesting any policy that might prevent further or repeated problems, simply because the people who propose those solutions are associated with other ideas that are unacceptable. The basic thinking seems to be, if you have the wrong idea about abortion, then you can’t be trusted with the money supply.
The final result has been an attack on the constitution itself, which distributes power among groups in the population. Since those left behind cannot change, then the constitution must be reinterpreted. The tools that come to hand are those developed by men in the south who defended slavery - nullification and the primacy of minority rights.
Elections are no longer legitimate if the wrong man wins.
Notes:
Beard, Mary. "Which Thucydides Can You Trust?," The New York Review of Books, 30 September 2010, on Donald Kagan’s Thucydides: The Reinvention of History.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962.
Charleston in the years after the revolution included plantation owners willing to experiment with new technology. By the time of the nullification crisis around 1830 innovators still existed, but they weren’t respected for their efforts. Slaves, not machines, were the only answer for economic challenges.
Scientific thinking posits the sanctity of facts, and assumes scientists will change their theories when those theories no longer can explain observed reality. Thomas Kuhn showed men don’t always live up to that ideal, that when they’re confronted with anomalies they propose more and more absurd solutions to sustain their basic beliefs. However, he also showed that over time, the value of experience does alter theory, the underlying value holds.
One cannot support scientific thinking if one is so wedded to a practice like slavery that no contrary facts can be admitted. Once facts cannot be recognized, then they must be explained away, turned into something that supports the overarching theory. Bending reality becomes acceptable.
Today, we have people who deny the observed realities of climate change because the proposed explanation threatens some part of their world view. For some, it’s the idea that nature isn’t as rigid as suggested by Genesis. For others, it’s the concept of human responsibility and the consequences for accountability for one’s actions that’s troubling. And, of course, there are those who see an economic threat.
The result is an attack on science itself.
Recently, Mary Beard reviewed a book by Donald Kagan which she saw as attacking Thucydides for praising the behavior of Pericles in the Peloponnesian war which Kagan thinks is like that of those who wouldn’t put more resources into winning the war in Viet Nam. Since Kagan believes those actions led to unnecessary defeat, so Pericles must be redefined as leading his country to disaster.
The result is an attack on the academy itself which tries to sift evidence to develop explanations. When certain conclusions are forbidden, reality must be subverted.
Since the protests against the Vietnam war, discrimination against Blacks and abortion in the late 1960's, we have seen a growing number of people who cannot accept the validity of criticism of any kind. If schools needed to change to fit social ideals, then education must be rejected. And so, a generation developed who rejected the very tools they needed to survive in the changing economy.
Now the economy is in crisis and those who’ve been left behind are the most vehement in protesting any policy that might prevent further or repeated problems, simply because the people who propose those solutions are associated with other ideas that are unacceptable. The basic thinking seems to be, if you have the wrong idea about abortion, then you can’t be trusted with the money supply.
The final result has been an attack on the constitution itself, which distributes power among groups in the population. Since those left behind cannot change, then the constitution must be reinterpreted. The tools that come to hand are those developed by men in the south who defended slavery - nullification and the primacy of minority rights.
Elections are no longer legitimate if the wrong man wins.
Notes:
Beard, Mary. "Which Thucydides Can You Trust?," The New York Review of Books, 30 September 2010, on Donald Kagan’s Thucydides: The Reinvention of History.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Food Stamps - Part 4
The biggest requirements for living on $39 a month for food are resourcefulness and a willingness to think in non-traditional ways.
My boss’s former tenant’s first thought was the familiar pinto beans. Mine was lentils and rice. I’ve seen people in the local store filling their cart when eggs were on sale for $.68 a dozen and discussed the problems of keeping peanut butter from spoiling with an older woman.
To do well, one has to go beyond what one knows, without the benefit of the internet or books or even friends.
I don’t like pinto beans, but, if forced to eat them, I would probably spend time trying to find out how to make them taste better, not with fancy spices, but by figuring out the best ratio of water to beans. I would do this because I know it took me some time to learn to cook rice, and I remember both what I did and that I succeeded.
However, I would need a clock or timer, which might be a luxury.
One would have to be willing to look at items on sale or at low prices and consider them. That was what brought my attention to the citrus punch, a pile of cartons in the aisle with an advertised special low price. When I looked at the ingredients, I realized it wasn’t the best, but might work in a tight situation.
I remember how horrified people were years ago when they heard the elderly sometimes ate dog food. I went to the pet aisle to see if the seniors might have been right. The cheapest can of dog food is $.69 and lists more nutrients than the Spam substitute that costs $2.00, the potted meat that costs $.59 and the Vienna sausages that also cost $.59.
Likewise cat food isn’t a bad choice, if you mask the smell, taste and texture. Three small cans with tuna flavoring cost a dollar and list more nutrients than a can of tuna that costs $.89. After all it has to keep an animal alive, while the tuna is only considered part of a human’s diet.
Resourcefulness isn’t the monopoly of any social class. When I asked friends how they would solve this dietary puzzle, they essentially dismissed it out of hand as impossible. They wouldn’t even speculate.
I was too polite to ask them how they think they would have survived rationing in World War II or the destruction of Sarajevo, events that touched the middle classes as much as the poor. Modern life may have removed most of us from the threat of famine that existed before modern agriculture, but natural disasters and wars always threaten to return us to that fragile world where 800 calories of dried food is a luxury.
Our renter is more resourceful than they because she’s already spending her time scouring second hand sources within walking distance. They would have to overcome their cultural pride first, then learn where to shop.
Food stamps may not signify any freedom to live without constantly thinking about one’s stomach, but they may engender more freedom to think creatively about survival. I suspect many, however, would prefer the freedom to have an extra serving without thinking about the end of the month.
Freedom from want is not the same as freedom from wanting.
My boss’s former tenant’s first thought was the familiar pinto beans. Mine was lentils and rice. I’ve seen people in the local store filling their cart when eggs were on sale for $.68 a dozen and discussed the problems of keeping peanut butter from spoiling with an older woman.
To do well, one has to go beyond what one knows, without the benefit of the internet or books or even friends.
I don’t like pinto beans, but, if forced to eat them, I would probably spend time trying to find out how to make them taste better, not with fancy spices, but by figuring out the best ratio of water to beans. I would do this because I know it took me some time to learn to cook rice, and I remember both what I did and that I succeeded.
However, I would need a clock or timer, which might be a luxury.
One would have to be willing to look at items on sale or at low prices and consider them. That was what brought my attention to the citrus punch, a pile of cartons in the aisle with an advertised special low price. When I looked at the ingredients, I realized it wasn’t the best, but might work in a tight situation.
I remember how horrified people were years ago when they heard the elderly sometimes ate dog food. I went to the pet aisle to see if the seniors might have been right. The cheapest can of dog food is $.69 and lists more nutrients than the Spam substitute that costs $2.00, the potted meat that costs $.59 and the Vienna sausages that also cost $.59.
Likewise cat food isn’t a bad choice, if you mask the smell, taste and texture. Three small cans with tuna flavoring cost a dollar and list more nutrients than a can of tuna that costs $.89. After all it has to keep an animal alive, while the tuna is only considered part of a human’s diet.
Resourcefulness isn’t the monopoly of any social class. When I asked friends how they would solve this dietary puzzle, they essentially dismissed it out of hand as impossible. They wouldn’t even speculate.
I was too polite to ask them how they think they would have survived rationing in World War II or the destruction of Sarajevo, events that touched the middle classes as much as the poor. Modern life may have removed most of us from the threat of famine that existed before modern agriculture, but natural disasters and wars always threaten to return us to that fragile world where 800 calories of dried food is a luxury.
Our renter is more resourceful than they because she’s already spending her time scouring second hand sources within walking distance. They would have to overcome their cultural pride first, then learn where to shop.
Food stamps may not signify any freedom to live without constantly thinking about one’s stomach, but they may engender more freedom to think creatively about survival. I suspect many, however, would prefer the freedom to have an extra serving without thinking about the end of the month.
Freedom from want is not the same as freedom from wanting.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Food Stamps - Part 3
Living on the food stamp allotment of our renter carries many requirements, both physical and mental.
The first, and most obvious, is a stove, or at least a burner. After we asked the women to move because her rent was greater than her disability check and it became obvious she had no other income sources, she moved into one of the old motels that have been converted into efficiency apartments. The only unit available came with a microwave and bar refrigerator, but no stove.
She’s on a waiting list again and her rent will increase when a unit with a stove becomes available.
The last time I talked with her, my boss’s former tenant was searching second hand stores for a hotplate. Until then, she can’t cook her pinto beans.
For a dollar a day, she will have to eat things that require no cooking. A bag of dry cereal costs $3.00, a half jar of peanut butter is $1.00 and bread is $.88 a loaf. If she ate a third of a bag of cereal a day without milk, it would add 720 calories to the 410 she would get from peanut butter and bread.
Microwavable food isn’t an alternative. A pot pie cost $.89 in the local store, but only contains 390 calories. The cheapest frozen dinners are $1.25 and contain 260 to 280 calories. You need at least 1,000 a day to lose weight safely. 2,000 calories are recommended for most adults.
The bar refrigerator is adequate for left overs, although you can only make a couple days worth of pinto beans at a time without risking spoilage. Eggs, margarine, the citrus punch, even peanut butter, would all be fine. However, freezing food is impossible.
The choices I made for $39 a month require a larger pot for soaking and cooking beans or potatoes, and a smaller one with a lid for everything else. A frying pan is usually necessary to cook eggs. Some kind of flat metal is useful for warming bread over the burner: a toaster is a luxury. Beyond that, the woman needs a long handled serving spoon to stir the beans, a spatula for the eggs, a sharp knife to cut potatoes and avocados, a dull knife to spread peanut butter, a plate or bowl, a glass, and a fork or spoon to eat with.
One of the most critical things is a measuring cup. Although you only need to worry about proportions if you’re fussy about how your rice is cooked, you need to faithfully measure out each day’s portion of pinto beans, rice and lentils if you want them to last the time expected. That, in turn, assumes the first of the mental requirements: the ability to plan ahead and discipline oneself. Too many would eat too much too soon in the month and hope providence would provide.
The basic arithmetic requires both addition and division to divide $39 by 4 weeks. Planning for the inevitable 5-week month requires more math. Of course, one wants to end each month with nothing left on the card, and the surplus dry foods horded.
Buying the healthiest choices, and not living on pinto beans, wheat tortillas, and eggs, is trickier. Package labeling is difficult, and misleading. For instance, egg cartons carry no information. Protein isn’t mentioned on many but thiamin is, suggesting the latter is more important.
How does one sort through the deliberately obscure ingredients to know dextrose is sugar and if all forms of sodium are salt? How do you judge the benefits of what’s essentially sugar water with a dollop of juice and vitamins? How does one know riboflavin is good for you or the characteristics of potassium benzoate?
The woman is in her 50's. Even if she learned some of this in school, that was many years ago and much has changed. Xanthan gum was approved in 1968. I certainly have no idea what the food pyramid is supposed to tell me. It was invented after I graduated from high school in 1962. It was only in the late 60's that I learned protein wasn’t a simple ingredient, but required complementing sources, and that knowledge only came from a chance encounter, not much different than my meetings with our tenant.
The first, and most obvious, is a stove, or at least a burner. After we asked the women to move because her rent was greater than her disability check and it became obvious she had no other income sources, she moved into one of the old motels that have been converted into efficiency apartments. The only unit available came with a microwave and bar refrigerator, but no stove.
She’s on a waiting list again and her rent will increase when a unit with a stove becomes available.
The last time I talked with her, my boss’s former tenant was searching second hand stores for a hotplate. Until then, she can’t cook her pinto beans.
For a dollar a day, she will have to eat things that require no cooking. A bag of dry cereal costs $3.00, a half jar of peanut butter is $1.00 and bread is $.88 a loaf. If she ate a third of a bag of cereal a day without milk, it would add 720 calories to the 410 she would get from peanut butter and bread.
Microwavable food isn’t an alternative. A pot pie cost $.89 in the local store, but only contains 390 calories. The cheapest frozen dinners are $1.25 and contain 260 to 280 calories. You need at least 1,000 a day to lose weight safely. 2,000 calories are recommended for most adults.
The bar refrigerator is adequate for left overs, although you can only make a couple days worth of pinto beans at a time without risking spoilage. Eggs, margarine, the citrus punch, even peanut butter, would all be fine. However, freezing food is impossible.
The choices I made for $39 a month require a larger pot for soaking and cooking beans or potatoes, and a smaller one with a lid for everything else. A frying pan is usually necessary to cook eggs. Some kind of flat metal is useful for warming bread over the burner: a toaster is a luxury. Beyond that, the woman needs a long handled serving spoon to stir the beans, a spatula for the eggs, a sharp knife to cut potatoes and avocados, a dull knife to spread peanut butter, a plate or bowl, a glass, and a fork or spoon to eat with.
One of the most critical things is a measuring cup. Although you only need to worry about proportions if you’re fussy about how your rice is cooked, you need to faithfully measure out each day’s portion of pinto beans, rice and lentils if you want them to last the time expected. That, in turn, assumes the first of the mental requirements: the ability to plan ahead and discipline oneself. Too many would eat too much too soon in the month and hope providence would provide.
The basic arithmetic requires both addition and division to divide $39 by 4 weeks. Planning for the inevitable 5-week month requires more math. Of course, one wants to end each month with nothing left on the card, and the surplus dry foods horded.
Buying the healthiest choices, and not living on pinto beans, wheat tortillas, and eggs, is trickier. Package labeling is difficult, and misleading. For instance, egg cartons carry no information. Protein isn’t mentioned on many but thiamin is, suggesting the latter is more important.
How does one sort through the deliberately obscure ingredients to know dextrose is sugar and if all forms of sodium are salt? How do you judge the benefits of what’s essentially sugar water with a dollop of juice and vitamins? How does one know riboflavin is good for you or the characteristics of potassium benzoate?
The woman is in her 50's. Even if she learned some of this in school, that was many years ago and much has changed. Xanthan gum was approved in 1968. I certainly have no idea what the food pyramid is supposed to tell me. It was invented after I graduated from high school in 1962. It was only in the late 60's that I learned protein wasn’t a simple ingredient, but required complementing sources, and that knowledge only came from a chance encounter, not much different than my meetings with our tenant.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Food Stamps - Part 2
It’s possible to eat on a $39 a month food stamp allotment, but it’s only possible to do so for a short time and remain healthy.
It isn’t just the lack of calories and nutrients that’s a problem. The diet I devised is one that no diabetic could eat. In addition to the obvious sources of carbohydrates, there’s corn syrup in the citrus punch and white bread, while cheap peanut butter has another form of sugar, dextrose.
If one substituted eggs for the punch, one would add cholesterol: 62% of the daily need, based on 2,000 calories. The canned vegetables are as bad for their high sodium content. The avocado and margarine contain saturated fats.
This is a diet that could lead to obesity, heart problems and diabetes. The limited calcium and vitamin D could add bone density problems for thin women. Without the vitamin C in the citrus punch and the wide range of vitamins and minerals in the potatoes, one would be worse off.
In addition, what nutrients there are in the diet are expensive. The 128-ounce citrus punch is only 1% fruit juice. 57 ounces of regular orange juice has been on sales for months for $3.49 and is more juice. The one cost $1.50 more, but the price for ounce of juice is less.
Likewise, the cheapest peanut butter is cut with cotton seed or canola oil, which increases the actual price for the peanuts.
The other hidden price is psychological. One would spend half the day preparing food and would probably be thinking about it much of the time. If a television was broadcasting images meant to make one hungry, the cravings to eat would be worse. It’s no fun walking through a grocery store hungry without enough money.
Pinto beans aren’t just the diet of the ancestors here. They also require the lifestyle: they have to soak for eight hours and cook for four. One would have to put them in water before going to bed. While the cooking time can be shortened with a pressure cooker or lengthened with a crock pot to make it possible for someone to work, I assume such appliances aren’t available to someone living of such limited means.
The cooking time makes it impossible to have an 8-hour job, unless one gets up in the middle of the night to start the beans to cook and immediately refrigerates them for dinner or eats them for breakfast.
Lentils and rice take about 45 minutes to cook, while potatoes take at least 25 minutes to boil.
The woman is probably wrong to think the government thinks she can live on $39 a month. Food stamps are supposed to supplement income that also would include money for food. But, if there is no extra money, if one thinks like she does, then one is thrown farther back in economic times, from the time of pinto beans and subsistence agriculture, to the life of the hunter-gatherer.
To supplement this diet, one would need to search out local food banks and places that provide free meals, and hope one could qualify. Again, scavenging precludes the ability to hold a job, although an evangelistic Christian center near her house periodically advertises free food in the evenings, at the price, I suppose, of a sermon.
So, now I know the price of pinto beans, but I’m not sure I know the full costs for a child whose tastes are formed by an inadequate food stamp assignment. I can see what a treat it would be to go into a fast food restaurant and order a sandwich that contains an entire day’s calories on a single bun and leave feeling really full.
It isn’t just the lack of calories and nutrients that’s a problem. The diet I devised is one that no diabetic could eat. In addition to the obvious sources of carbohydrates, there’s corn syrup in the citrus punch and white bread, while cheap peanut butter has another form of sugar, dextrose.
If one substituted eggs for the punch, one would add cholesterol: 62% of the daily need, based on 2,000 calories. The canned vegetables are as bad for their high sodium content. The avocado and margarine contain saturated fats.
This is a diet that could lead to obesity, heart problems and diabetes. The limited calcium and vitamin D could add bone density problems for thin women. Without the vitamin C in the citrus punch and the wide range of vitamins and minerals in the potatoes, one would be worse off.
In addition, what nutrients there are in the diet are expensive. The 128-ounce citrus punch is only 1% fruit juice. 57 ounces of regular orange juice has been on sales for months for $3.49 and is more juice. The one cost $1.50 more, but the price for ounce of juice is less.
Likewise, the cheapest peanut butter is cut with cotton seed or canola oil, which increases the actual price for the peanuts.
The other hidden price is psychological. One would spend half the day preparing food and would probably be thinking about it much of the time. If a television was broadcasting images meant to make one hungry, the cravings to eat would be worse. It’s no fun walking through a grocery store hungry without enough money.
Pinto beans aren’t just the diet of the ancestors here. They also require the lifestyle: they have to soak for eight hours and cook for four. One would have to put them in water before going to bed. While the cooking time can be shortened with a pressure cooker or lengthened with a crock pot to make it possible for someone to work, I assume such appliances aren’t available to someone living of such limited means.
The cooking time makes it impossible to have an 8-hour job, unless one gets up in the middle of the night to start the beans to cook and immediately refrigerates them for dinner or eats them for breakfast.
Lentils and rice take about 45 minutes to cook, while potatoes take at least 25 minutes to boil.
The woman is probably wrong to think the government thinks she can live on $39 a month. Food stamps are supposed to supplement income that also would include money for food. But, if there is no extra money, if one thinks like she does, then one is thrown farther back in economic times, from the time of pinto beans and subsistence agriculture, to the life of the hunter-gatherer.
To supplement this diet, one would need to search out local food banks and places that provide free meals, and hope one could qualify. Again, scavenging precludes the ability to hold a job, although an evangelistic Christian center near her house periodically advertises free food in the evenings, at the price, I suppose, of a sermon.
So, now I know the price of pinto beans, but I’m not sure I know the full costs for a child whose tastes are formed by an inadequate food stamp assignment. I can see what a treat it would be to go into a fast food restaurant and order a sandwich that contains an entire day’s calories on a single bun and leave feeling really full.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Food Stamps - Part 1
Do you know the price of pinto beans?
Of course, I don’t. I don’t like them, and pass the open cartons without a glance when I’m in the produce aisle of the grocery that caters to local folks.
The question only came up when I was talking to a woman who was complaining that her food stamp allocation had been cut to $39 dollars and she wanted to know how you eat on that with the high price of pinto beans.
Since an individual’s food stamp account in New Mexico is updated once a month, I assume she was asking how do you live on $9.75 a week, $8.75 if you set aside some for five week months.
The next time I was in the local store, I checked the price. A pound of beans is $.69 and contains 12.5 servings, each a quarter cup before soaking. If one reverted to the staple diet of the region for centuries and bought a package of corn tortillas at 30 for $1.18, one would have nutritious, if boring, meals for a week.
However, judging from the quantities in the store, more people buy wheat tortillas, which are also larger. However, wheat lacks the essential proteins found in corn treated with lye, and is less nutritious with beans.
One could double the amount of pinto beans, and eat them twice a day. Instead, I would buy a bag of lentils and a bag of white rice for $1.72. I know brown rice is better, but it wasn’t available in the grocery which caters to local poor people. Like corn treated with lime and pinto beans, the two are complementary proteins.
I would also buy a five pound bag of potatoes and make it last two weeks for a cost $1.00 a week. The cheapest stick margarine was $.23 a stick, and should last a week to flavor the potato, if I was careful.
My total purchase would be $4.82 for the week. It provides 800 calories. The suggested daily intake is 2000, with 1000 the minimum for safely losing weight.
If I wanted to set aside a dollar for that five week month, I still have $3.93 to spend. People here would probably buy eggs, avocados and some kind of dried or fresh chili. When the price of each is spread out over two weeks, they cost about $3.00.
An alternative is peanut butter and white bread, another pair of complementing proteins, which would cost $1.88 a week. Again, I know wheat bread is better, but the cheapest costs $.20 more a loaf and doesn’t appear to have any more nutrients than the enriched white. Brown bread isn’t necessarily whole grain.
Since I have a limited tolerance for both eggs and peanut butter, I would probably buy a gallon of the cheapest citrus punch and possibly some avocados and canned tomato sauce to flavor the pinto beans. The first cost $2.00 a gallon and has 90 calories a serving; small avocados were being sold for 3 for $1.00 when I looked and have 227 calories; tins of tomato sauce containing 3.5 servings are $.33 and 20 calories each.
I considered canned vegetables which sell for 3 for $2.00, or $4.00 for six days. Each can is supposed to hold 3.5 servings, but it would difficult to store the left overs - this budget doesn’t allow for such luxuries as plastic wrap or aluminum foil. I could eat the whole can, even though it would contain 50% of my daily salt requirement, if I were actually eating 2000 calories. After all a can of peas would add 245 calories, corn 280, and green beans 70.
Any remaining money could also be used to buy black pepper ($2.50 for a large can) to spice the bland lentils and pinto beans, or permit more margarine on the potatoes.
Choosing the citrus punch with pinto beans, potatoes, lentils and rice, avocados and tomato sauce, my daily caloric intake would be just over 1,000. I would have 74% of the protein for an adult woman (adult men require more), but 163% of the necessary vitamin C and 132% of the fiber. Based on the recommended 2,000 calories, I would also have 19% of my sodium, 27% of my calcium, 69% of my iron, and average 15 to 25% of other necessary vitamins and trace minerals.
I could make it, but it would take a while for my stomach to adjust. It would be harder on the woman who posed the question; she weighs more than I.
Of course, I don’t. I don’t like them, and pass the open cartons without a glance when I’m in the produce aisle of the grocery that caters to local folks.
The question only came up when I was talking to a woman who was complaining that her food stamp allocation had been cut to $39 dollars and she wanted to know how you eat on that with the high price of pinto beans.
Since an individual’s food stamp account in New Mexico is updated once a month, I assume she was asking how do you live on $9.75 a week, $8.75 if you set aside some for five week months.
The next time I was in the local store, I checked the price. A pound of beans is $.69 and contains 12.5 servings, each a quarter cup before soaking. If one reverted to the staple diet of the region for centuries and bought a package of corn tortillas at 30 for $1.18, one would have nutritious, if boring, meals for a week.
However, judging from the quantities in the store, more people buy wheat tortillas, which are also larger. However, wheat lacks the essential proteins found in corn treated with lye, and is less nutritious with beans.
One could double the amount of pinto beans, and eat them twice a day. Instead, I would buy a bag of lentils and a bag of white rice for $1.72. I know brown rice is better, but it wasn’t available in the grocery which caters to local poor people. Like corn treated with lime and pinto beans, the two are complementary proteins.
I would also buy a five pound bag of potatoes and make it last two weeks for a cost $1.00 a week. The cheapest stick margarine was $.23 a stick, and should last a week to flavor the potato, if I was careful.
My total purchase would be $4.82 for the week. It provides 800 calories. The suggested daily intake is 2000, with 1000 the minimum for safely losing weight.
If I wanted to set aside a dollar for that five week month, I still have $3.93 to spend. People here would probably buy eggs, avocados and some kind of dried or fresh chili. When the price of each is spread out over two weeks, they cost about $3.00.
An alternative is peanut butter and white bread, another pair of complementing proteins, which would cost $1.88 a week. Again, I know wheat bread is better, but the cheapest costs $.20 more a loaf and doesn’t appear to have any more nutrients than the enriched white. Brown bread isn’t necessarily whole grain.
Since I have a limited tolerance for both eggs and peanut butter, I would probably buy a gallon of the cheapest citrus punch and possibly some avocados and canned tomato sauce to flavor the pinto beans. The first cost $2.00 a gallon and has 90 calories a serving; small avocados were being sold for 3 for $1.00 when I looked and have 227 calories; tins of tomato sauce containing 3.5 servings are $.33 and 20 calories each.
I considered canned vegetables which sell for 3 for $2.00, or $4.00 for six days. Each can is supposed to hold 3.5 servings, but it would difficult to store the left overs - this budget doesn’t allow for such luxuries as plastic wrap or aluminum foil. I could eat the whole can, even though it would contain 50% of my daily salt requirement, if I were actually eating 2000 calories. After all a can of peas would add 245 calories, corn 280, and green beans 70.
Any remaining money could also be used to buy black pepper ($2.50 for a large can) to spice the bland lentils and pinto beans, or permit more margarine on the potatoes.
Choosing the citrus punch with pinto beans, potatoes, lentils and rice, avocados and tomato sauce, my daily caloric intake would be just over 1,000. I would have 74% of the protein for an adult woman (adult men require more), but 163% of the necessary vitamin C and 132% of the fiber. Based on the recommended 2,000 calories, I would also have 19% of my sodium, 27% of my calcium, 69% of my iron, and average 15 to 25% of other necessary vitamins and trace minerals.
I could make it, but it would take a while for my stomach to adjust. It would be harder on the woman who posed the question; she weighs more than I.
Sunday, November 07, 2010
The Sheriff Won
More than a thousand people last Tuesday refused to vote for sheriff, nearly 10% of the Democratic voters.
I can tell you it wasn’t easy not to vote for him. The easiest thing to do was vote party line, which at least 6,800 might have done.
For various reasons the Republican candidate for governor drew more votes than usual. The Democratic gubernatorial candidate attracted 1,500 fewer votes than the man running for the Congressional district who got more than 8,300 votes.
If one split one’s ticket, it was easiest to vote for offices that mattered, the ones with two candidates, and skip the ones like sheriff with only a single candidate. Many skip the oddly worded judicial votes (do you favor keeping so and so in office) which are not part of the party line option.
To vote against the sheriff one had to stand at the card board podium and tediously ink in the circle for every other unopposed candidate, no matter how trivial sounding the post. That was the only way a voter could register a protest in the disparity in the final vote tallies.
Members of the sheriff’s department have found other methods. At least two have already left since the primary to work for the city police. In October, the outgoing sheriff recommended promoting a number of his allies within the department, a move approved by one of the new sheriff’s rivals just before the election. Other deputies are threatening to sue.
The elections may be over, but the legitimacy of the sheriff isn’t settled.
Unofficial results
Congressman - 11,404 votes cast - 8,369 D and 3,035 R
Governor - 11,510 votes cast - 6,822 D and 4,688 R
Sheriff - 7,267 votes cast, 1,102 less than the most popular D, 445 more than least popular D
I can tell you it wasn’t easy not to vote for him. The easiest thing to do was vote party line, which at least 6,800 might have done.
For various reasons the Republican candidate for governor drew more votes than usual. The Democratic gubernatorial candidate attracted 1,500 fewer votes than the man running for the Congressional district who got more than 8,300 votes.
If one split one’s ticket, it was easiest to vote for offices that mattered, the ones with two candidates, and skip the ones like sheriff with only a single candidate. Many skip the oddly worded judicial votes (do you favor keeping so and so in office) which are not part of the party line option.
To vote against the sheriff one had to stand at the card board podium and tediously ink in the circle for every other unopposed candidate, no matter how trivial sounding the post. That was the only way a voter could register a protest in the disparity in the final vote tallies.
Members of the sheriff’s department have found other methods. At least two have already left since the primary to work for the city police. In October, the outgoing sheriff recommended promoting a number of his allies within the department, a move approved by one of the new sheriff’s rivals just before the election. Other deputies are threatening to sue.
The elections may be over, but the legitimacy of the sheriff isn’t settled.
Unofficial results
Congressman - 11,404 votes cast - 8,369 D and 3,035 R
Governor - 11,510 votes cast - 6,822 D and 4,688 R
Sheriff - 7,267 votes cast, 1,102 less than the most popular D, 445 more than least popular D
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