Re-engaging with Asian American Culture or Reasons why I Don’t Get Along with My Asian American Peers
Been reading on some Asian American blogs, and I guess I started out with the crappy ones. Here’s a wonderfully eye-gouging conversation thread that makes me think, “This is why I never got along with the great majority of my Asian American peers!”
- “5 Reasons why Asian Girls Like White Guys,” Rochelle Nguyen on Ampedasia.com
- “Empowering the Asian Man,” posted by Asian Rake
- The Asian Playboy, ‘the number 1 dating coach for asian men’
Okay the last one was unrelated, but what a great topper for a whole, I’d hope, sub-society of woefully clueless AAs. As someone wrote, tongue-in-cheek, on a Giant Robot forum -
i’m a lonely asian boy, please find me a white girl to give me confidence
Additional examples of asian dumbasses can be found at, Disgrasian ‘you are a disgrace. to the race.’ Thank you comical scapegoating! fyi: Disgrasian does present more examples of stellar, Asian idols than them embarrassments (and has other equally entertaining blurbs). Other enjoyable blogs and mags on the Asian American experience and/or social/political/cultural issues are:
- Angry Asian Man (been around since I was in college and is kind of like that buddy you run off to when the shit hits the fan)
- Slanty (some abstract heavy)
- Giant Robot (mag – check out their staff’s blogs)
- Hyphen (mag)
Sanjuro: he's hot and a fictional badass, damn why can't I grow a scraggily asian beard too?
Here’s my two cents on our favorite topic, Asian Masculinity:
- Stop emulating douche bag (and likely self-proclaimed) White ‘alpha-males’. In fact, the whole notion of pack Alpha should only be reserved for fellow human beings who can and have ripped other people’s heads off – WoW does not count. ’Alpha’ and associated ‘wingman,’ ‘lieutenant,’ etc. are kind of fun in the bar, but are seriously pathetic outside of that context – i.e. real life.
- Learn how to use a hammer and other associated do it your self crap like reading a map and building a fire. Don’t worry, there are lots of big White people that also don’t know how to use a hammer – I know because I used to live in a Frat. Back to point One, most douches are probably totally useless banker/lawyers. If you are a banker/lawyer, volunteer.
- Stereotypes don’t matter and people that feel comfortable with stereotyping also don’t matter. This might include the vast majority of main stream media, but do you think Clint Eastwood gives a flying F what liberals think about him?
- Do what you love. Be good at what you love.
- Care for others who are not like you, so goes the golden rule.
Now for the whole Asian American height, weight, size issue. I’d like to first point out the science of epigenetics, which is defined as, “hereditary traits that are not dependent on changes in the DNA sequence.” There also has been research correlating environmental and nutritional stresses pre-natal to developmental disorders, shortened life expectancies, and/or diseases post-natal. The heights of Europeans have also changed over time. In the mid ninetieth century, average military height was approx. 5′7″ in America and approx. 5′5″ in Britain (wiki). In comparison, the modern, average height of asian guys from industrialized countries are 5′8″ for Japan and 5′7″ for Singapore. For novelty, the Japan military’s average height in the mid ninetieth century was 5′1″.
Frankly I don’t care what Asians would be height-wise in future generations. I am also not trying to pin the size of us Asian guys on a history of poor nutrition, though I am sure there is a correlation. My point is that while American guys went from 5′7″ to > 5′10″ over the 150 years - it was those 5′7″ American frontiersmen who had set off (for better or worse) to break the prairie soils and build our modern country while beset by all manner of uncomfortable things like starvation, desiccation, murder, and more Cormac Mccormick like ends. There is no refuting the serious badassness of the American frontiersmen nor the impact they had on modern American culture. The genesis of it is simply in the character of them as emigrants – people who arrived from Europe or ones who said F you to dummies in Ohio and set off for Oregon instead. Immigrants were displaced and are/were naturally the underdog. This kind of insecurity must drive self-sufficency and ingenuity, which forms the firm foundation of this country.
Okay lets clarify that the immigrant experience is a shared narrative. I’m not stipulating that the ‘Asian Cowboy’ is just ‘Cowboy’. I am saying that all prior caucasian immigrant groups have made themselves equal and whole in society. AAs have every potential to do the same. While some might ridicule Asian culture and emasculate us guys, what is also true is that there is a very special place reserved in American culture for the underdog who kicks the big dog’s ass. Back to point One, above, this kick ass has nothing to do with supplanting nor with the desire for acceptance. Instead, refer to several good Western movies and particularly Yojimbo and Sanjuro. fyi: the later (mulberry field) is what this website’s name references. In real life there’s the Hartford Miner’s Riot of 1914, where “Redneck” was coined to describe the union miners kicking corporate ass and wearing red bandanas around their necks to show solidarity with their un-unionized and horribly oppressed compatriots. In other words, kick ass for the benefit of your AA bros and sisters and other marginalized group and you pave the way for a more holistic appreciation of AAs in American culture. Also you’d be a hero. Win win.
Apparently there are more of us
In the realm of personals, there’s the Gay Cowboy Central, where its actually men who dress like cowboys because they are cowboys. Oh yeah and the gay rodeo, which I really need to commit to going to this year! That’s the Best Buck in the Bay in August where you camp out for the weekend? Awesome!
Read an interview in the Small Farmer’s Journal with an Ox teamster, where the guy says horses are for the ego as oxen are for work. That said, and considering that most people get around with ATVs now, its really hard to ignore the draw of horsemanship…. one of these days. Until then, there’s plenty learning how to take care of ruminants, swine, and chickens without the extra-universe headache of horse tact, feed, and lingo.
Fortunately, my sister who was a horse nut since grade school, and who took full advantage of the practically free horse riding classes at the UC Davis equine center, might be my lead into the whole horse world when I finally get my farm together and she decides to board her animal(s) there. That is if I can persuade her to keep on doing trail rides and clinics while she’s learning to be an archeologist and doing digs in Croatia. (YEAH that’s right if you are reading this) Meanwhile, I get to continue in the very unglamorous, pedestrian work of vegetable propagation and farm animal slopping outness, darn!
Who says there’s no such thing as an asian cowboy: “I Met an Asian Cowboy in New York City“. Or an outlaw, “Chinese Bushwrangler“.
Lastly, I found this book at one of the stores in Castro, Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men From the Rural Midwest. It is just like it reads, a series of interviews with gay men who grew up in the Midwest. The amazon page on the book here.
SHAD SMITHfight record: http://www.mmalinker.com/wiki/index.php/Shad_Smith
Found this old issue of Out in my partner’s house. There was an article about the UFC, the mixed martial arts circuit that is definitely the most violent, hyper masculine (and homoerotic) thing on TV. That article made mention of an openly gay UFC fighter, Shad Smith. Okay, its already enough to be a UFC fighter with a 10-10-2 record, but the man also happens to have 46 counts of assault and battery, served multiple prison sentences, and have participated in something called, “Felony Fights”, which is a series of no-rules fights between unskilled ex-cons. Holy crap! To top it off, here’s a blurb from a New York Times interview with Shad Smith a few years ago:
I asked Smith why he spent so much of his youth looking for trouble. I expected some sort of clichéd, though possibly true, explanation — a difficult childhood or a Napoleon complex. What I didn’t expect him to say was, “You know, bro, the sexual-preference thing.”
Shad Smith eventually came out of the closet to a fellow inmate while in prison and he says that since then he’s felt no need to hide his orientation. He still flights professionally, teaches mixed martial arts, and is dating a makeup artist. Homophobes beware.
Speaking of badass gay fighters, remember that movie, “Beautiful Boxer”? Its about the transgender Thai kickboxer, Nong Thoom, who supported her family and financed her gender reassignment with fight money. He was the kick boxing champion of Thailand in 1998 and was famous for attending matches in drag and makeup. Of course he proceeded to kick the ass of his opponents and then would give them a kiss after the match. Nong Thoom was able to achieve gender reassignment in 1999 and still continues to fight.
wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parinya_Charoenphol
our attempt at the gay American Gothic, and yes not OSHA
So we had a big storm, two actually, that knocked out power for nearly two weeks on some parts of the farm. Ten old pines demolished part of the grid down the road from the farm and it took them several days to get that back up. Fortunately, I took off for Ecofarm during those days and when I got back, the power was back on. Unfortunately, three trees fell over while I was gone and one of them pulled down the power line going from the PG&E pole to our meter. That is, without causing a short or interrupting the power in anyway – weird!
an old rotted out walnut and pine
Haven’t gotten around to fixing up this mess but I put an electric fence around the whole thing and let the goats have at it. That acacia tree behind the snag, was also cut down for more feed.
A beautiful old oak tree that miraculously fell right in between two farm structures without significant damages! Anyway, it was a lot of stuff to cut up, and lots of firewood! I wish I could save the bigger sections to mill, but it just isn’t feasible.
Here’s Rod, a friend of the farm, helping us out. That giant branch he’s standing on used to be much taller and he’d climbed to the top of it to cut it apart. He got up that high by making steps into the side of the branch. Im the dude on the ground pulling on rope to make the branches hinge away from the house as they fell. Boy was I glad he showed up, I had absolutely no idea how to get that section of the tree down.
now all the fun stuff is done
Ecofarm was a great event. It’s a three day seminar on ecological, organic farming and ranching practices. I’ve never been in company of so many like minded people before. The first thing I noticed was the number of folks going around in street clothes and mud boots (it was raining). Also I enjoyed interspersing nature loving gibberjaber with hard browed, sharp penciled farm business talk – price of organic grain, cost of milling – rate of return, tax incentives, food safety, livestock predation, etc. I like the pragmatism since it deflates the whole conventional versus organic BS. Organic and sustainable meets a market demand and it works. Why bother abstracting the issue with debate? The proof of the pudding is in the eating!
eggs in SF, which I forced my partner to help me clean and package for sale at Mission Pie. unwashed eggs have a protective coating that lets them keep for months at room temperature.
Still going through talks I attended at the meeting. Most the seminars were very rudimentary given their short presentation times, but I hope to have some leads to do more indepth searches on later (when I get electricity and internet on the farm). The more relevant part of the whole event was hanging out with other farmers. It really helped me see that starting a farm could be a real possibility. Also, it put me on the right track in developing a business plan, getting money… I am also recognizing that I enjoy or need to see my work be productive. Going to graduate school for Range Management? Not so likely at this point. Farming is going to be a full time job and I can’t see myself being content with having my operation be half functioning. I want to be dialed in on every process! I want a twenty year plan on pasture and herd improvements!
five minute farm lunch includes baked beans, cheese, and kale
So I finally got around to snapping some pictures of the new farm job. We got two chicken trailers, which we should be consolidating into one flock soon so we can retrofit the older trailer and get it ready for a new flock of chicks. The flocks are a mixture of different egg laying breeds.
That’s the electric net fencing, but we stopped hooking it up to the charger since the chickens have zero interest in leaving the vicinity of the trailer. They also can easily fly over the fence to begin with. Of course they know how to fly out but not back inside…
chicken trailer
chicken mowers
Last Saturday I decided to expand one of the flock’s run into a neighboring strip of overgrown green manure. That green manure area was planted with bell beans, vetch, and oat grass but had become overrun with oxalis and rape. I think that area had spotty germination because of the shading from the hedgerow and/or the degree of drainage. Anyway, the chickens should do a good job of eating down all those succulent weeds and gobbling up whatever seed might develop in the next couple of weeks.
the lower slice of the farm and the old farm house
the old timber frame barn and the heifer "dolce"
Well, the Philippine gig finished and I am returned to California. It was one hell of a work experience endeavor – sort of like boot camp, in that you really only need (want?) to do it once. New job started in January. I am doing a farm apprenticeship for a wonderful organization named Pie Ranch. The program is fairly run of the mill – do work and get room and some board with a living stipend. Pie Ranch is unique in that it is an educational/community farm. It supplies goods to Mission Pie in SF, runs an egg CSA in SF, and sells produce at their roadside farm stand. The ranch is fairly small (I think 4-5 acres) and is not production focused, which could offer a lot educationally. Work so far has allowed me to concentrate on getting things done properly, which is refreshing considering the last year’s job of cutting corners and making ends meet under schedule and budget.
Okay so the run down of the situation is thus:
- I live in a solar powered yurt that also has a wood stove inside. (AWESOME!)
- Kubota tractor with plenty of attachments including: rollers, flail mower, plow, disk, and seed drill!
- A cottage, electric mill
- There is one two year old cow and heifer
- There are three goats, one of which is hermaphrodite, and two goat gals we’ll be milking in the spring
- Two chicken trailers with 40 or 50 chickens. They’ll be phased (into the pot) soon as the new flock of chicks start laying.
- Citrus, apples, berries, strawberries, rhubarb
- Wheat and maybe barley
- Chard, kale, carrots, cabbage, broccoli
- Onions and garlic
- Some rows in seeded ___ year dairy pasture rotation
- Green manure/Cover cropping rotation, horray! Looks like rye, vetch, winter peas, ___ bean seed mix this season.
- Also some old structures from a bygone dairy operation. I’m looking forward to them being recognized as historic and that money comes in for restoration.
Been mostly helping with infrastructure/building repair. Hadn’t had the chance to figure out the coming season’s crop plan, think we are supposed to have seeds and transplants lined up by the end of the month, eek. Wanting to start reading up on goats and milking them. Also wanting to figure out the grazer’s feeding plan. I haven’t had much time to walk the pasture but it seems like they get most all their feed through alfalfa hay and alloted pasture is sort of under rotation (not currently MIG). Again the farm is tiny and pasture is seeded so I don’t know the tolerances or carrying capacity of the pastures. Want to learn about that in the weeks to come.
Pesticide regime on eggplant, trials
Bt
Methoxyfenozide, Intrepid Dow
Carbosulfan, Bifenthrin
Azadirachtin
Michelle Obama plants a vegetable garden for the White House with school kids. I heard about it while reading about the dinner the Obamas served the prime minster of India when he visited the White House recently. They served greens and vegetable from the garden. Also, they used salsify? Apparently like dandelion but the roots. The White House garden also has a bee hive, which they took honey from to prepare the deserts.
are they harvesting sweet potato? I've never seen it grown in the USA
The White House project was spearheaded by a group called WHO, White House Organic Farm Project. I think I actually recall the petition and must have just thought at that time, “what a nice idea, but I doubt they’d push it through.” Well looks like I’m the fool.
What's going on here, there's ZERO weeds and not even a sprig of tricky grass rhizome volunteering. I guess they have 30 gardeners tweezering the place clean every day, but wait! See that kid on the left with the weeding fork? That's the secret, children!
According to WHO, there was once a flock of sheep living on the White House lawn. Jefferson was a plant breeder and Mrs. Roosevelt planted a victory garden on the WH grounds.
I am so incredibly proud of the Obamas.
bitter gourd
Looking a little parched, by the bitter gourds are sprouted and already putting out their true leaves. The soil around them is well prepared (loose and mounded). There is also plenty of compost in the mounds and lots of sod residue. The parcel had been used as pasture so I believe there is plenty of potassium (though I was not able to get the area tested).
trellises mostly done. we need to string vertical lines and drape fishing netting over the top
Ideally I’d like to mulch the area but we simply cannot afford the man hours to do that. The parcel is one hectare total, and that’s going to yield tons of fruits in a few months.
nice big leaves, unfortunately very delicious to leaf hoppers - of which we are constantly battling
The above is our more recently transplanted eggplants. They were transplanted 50 days ago and will be ready to harvest in the next week or so. This field was well prepared and the weed pressure is relatively low. I am also recognizing the importance of smaller fields in terms of management. Since everything is manually done, the scale of parcels has a great effect on crew morale.
sort of hot peppers
Right next to the more recently transplanted eggplants are our peppers. These guys were transplanted 60 days ago and have been yielding very high quality fruits for the past two weeks. The peppers are mild and fleshy. They are also mildly sour. They are one of my most favorite spice/veg here.
matured eggplants being weeded and sprayed
In a neighboring property we have eggplants transplanted 70 days ago and they have been yielding fruits for the past two weeks. There is unfortunately a growing population of leaf hoppers, which we are stepping up our defenses against. Much of the pressure was a result of the corn and rice harvest about two weeks ago. The mango trees planted throughout the parcel are also havens for the insects. We are going to start spraying everything down with a mix regime of pesticides applied at high dosages because our neighbors have, unfortunately, a habit of under applying pesticides and as a result we have very resilient pests to contend with. We are going to evaluate push pull systems using okra as the draw and lemon grass or onions as the push. Leaf hoppers do not attack peppers, which is another reason why we are expanding our hectarage in that vegetable over eggplants (whose prices are prone to huge fluctuations).
our tomatoes no longer have bottom end rot or fruit worms!
These tomatoes are over 70 days old since transplant and are cranking out fruits prodigiously. A couple of weeks ago we were having serious problems with bottom end rot and fruit worms (which arrived from neighboring corn fields). We applied about 50 grams of lime to each plant and that seemed to solve the bottom end rot problem (which is a result of low calcium). The fruit worms were dealt with using pesticides, which will have to continue because we do not have pheromone lures for tomato fruit worm (corn ear worm). Hopefully the influx of the pests will continue to decrease with the time between the last corn harvest and the tasseling of neighboring corn fields. We are otherwise lucky to not have an infestation of other tomato worms (though by the picture you can see some leaf miners). Primarily there are no leaf hoppers = my major nightmare.
here's the first batch, some weather checking but salable
Okay I am totally spoiled by heirloom tomatoes. These guys are thick skinned, small and kind of on the boring end the spectrum. They are more sweet/sour than those commercial hot house tomatoes in the USA, but the texture can’t be helped with so much skin and no flesh.
some squash
We planted less than a hectare of open pollinated squash a while back and the rains really stunted the vines. We weren’t expecting the plants to persist, but they did and they even produced fruits. Okay, so not very many fruits, but the majority of them are decently sized and sold. We are switching up to hybrid squash and are going to seriously mound and fertilize with composted manure. One hectare ought to yield a couple tons of fruits, which ought to be a sight.
lunch
He turned into very good pinapaitan (bitter gourd & offal soup), kaldereta (tomato goat stew), and some other boiled cartilage/meat thing with ginger and lime. My fondest memory of this guy was when him and his sister were lambs and they were being chased by a puppy who thought they were also puppies. Goat meat restaurants here are called Kambings.
looking good
Here are our 15 day old watermelons already vining. They are also flowering already, which drives me nuts even though I know everything likes to flower super early here and bear fruit while still growing vegetatively. We are going through and pinching off the flowers/fruits while encouraging proper vine growth for maximum coverage and to ensure two giant fruits per plant.
watermelon field
Here is 1.7 hectares of watermelons planted 15 days ago. This soil on this field has poor texture and has lots of morning glory and mimosa weeds. I know this field was once planted over to corn and subsequently abandoned (this pretty much means its very used up). We laid a significant amount of composted manure, rice husks and fertilized heavily. The plants on this field are slow to grow by comparison to the other field of watermelons, which was planted on a parcel that had been green manured with mungbeans. The green manure field, however had a long fallow period as it was all armorseko (pasture grass) and had a better tilth even before green manuring. We’ll wait and see how well the melons do on both fields.
eggplant with volunteer mung beans. surprisingly the weed pressure is very low as compared against other fields
So a few months ago we planted a field in mung beans and that field was disked under for eggplants. The eggplant transplants failed on half of the field as a result of the unusually hot dry weather. The failed areas were then replanted to watermelons and the remaining eggplants were allowed to mature. They are still fairly patchy so we are going to test some rows of bonito (crawling) bitter gourds in between them.
watermelons in the mounds and mung beans volunteers in inter-rows
empty row were eggplants were supposed to be, we'll put bonito bitter gourd there instead. mung beans grew back very nicely
This is a purely qualitative assessment, but it seems like the mung bean field has more vigorous plant growth. Primarily, I think the tilth of the soil is improved. I have no idea how much nutrients were mined by the legume covercrop, but we can assume some N.
watermelons planted into sown mung beans
sown mungbeans. the coverage is not so great but the seeds were old and were some rotten
There was a lot of volunteer mungbeans growing up between the watermelons and the eggplants. They do not seem to be competing with the plants as the mung beans are low growing though their leaf area is much larger than the prior mung bean stand. I am pretty sure this is a result of the phosphorous fertilizer we have put in the ground for the cash crop.
The velvet beans are taking off. I am excited to see what they look like in three months. At this moment they are 1 1/2 months old. I would have thought they’d be bigger, but there was a lot of rain and that must have slowed them down.
