That Sweet Stuff

Sugar Bush, Spring 1958

Ah, the sweet taste of maple sugar made right there in the woods from sap taken from the tree. A taste of spring and incidentally where I learned not to eat anything bigger than my head. (Yes, that little guy with the maple lollipop is Rand, Version 1.3.)

Ask practically any kid whether they'd like a candy or a nice slice of raw onion and you know what the answer is going to be. We are slaves born to sweetness, delivered via one of four different taste receptors located in our tongue: 1) sweet, (sugar); 2) sour, (vinegar); 3) salty, (salt); and 4) bitter, (caffeine). It's all highly scientific.

What kids don't know is the real boss of the experience is the brain, which decides whether the taste is a good one, an interesting one, or one that demands immediate, prolonged spitting. And as the brain matures its preferences for taste, influenced over the years by a) experience, b) the amount of toxins that passed over and killed or maimed certain taste buds, c) psychological factors like guilt, peer pressure, allowability and rarity, and d) physical factors such as whether you have had your tongue cut out by pirates or whether your brain continues to function efficiently, all affect how much we like certain tastes. 

As we age, candy tends to lose some of its allure (except for chocolate, of course) and other things become sweet in our minds. Potentially sweet things include music, dance, art, poetry, people who we like to look at and talk to (anything that activates the pleasure center in our brain), even simple things – naps, a nice quiet sunset without mosquitoes, making someone laugh so hard milk comes out their nose, a child's wide-eyed look at hearing someone fart, a quiet moment away from obnoxious people, when the bad guy in a James Bond movie gets what's coming to him. A dog at your feet.

And if we're lucky, it's pretty sweet when you still get to put one foot in front of the other every damned day... as far as the car anyway.

Spring Seems To Be A Procreation Thing

So here we are, in the middle of the effects of the spring equinox. Whoop de do. The wind chill here has not improved significantly, the forecast still calls for snow, I'm still wearing several layers of clothing (the original prophylactic) and the damned dog refuses to stay outside and is currently barking at the back door. My cabin fever and lack of vitamin D has reached the critical level and I have yet to feel the urge to plant things in receptacles in the hopes of seeing new things grow. That said, it appears to be something that people still get their hopes up about.

Evidently, spring is all centered on this thing called fertility, epitomized in history by Eostre, the Norse Anglo Saxon goddess of new beginnings, who is symbolized by eggs and rabbits (which is also the root of the term given to the female hormone oestrogen). The whole egg thing is said to have started long ago with the story of the mythological Phoenix rising. The Phoenix earned its legendary immortality by refusing to eat from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden. Every 500 years, the bird is said to create a nest of herbs and spices, rest on it, and set itself on fire (which is something I've attempted symbolically a number of times). After the fire dies down, an egg laid by the Phoenix is found among the ashes. The egg hatches, and the Phoenix emerges, resurrected.

People all over the world celebrate the arrival of spring. Druids and pagans congregate at Stonehenge in the UK to perform fertility rites. Evidently the practice is quite messy and involves trances, chanting, mixing the blood of sacrificed bulls with mistletoe, passing it over twelve types of grain, sprinkling it over "goddesses" in several intimate places, followed by lovemaking that extends into the early morning hours. (I smell a new reality tv show here.)

In Romanian tradition it is the time for Mărţişor (an event traced back to more than 8000 years ago) in which a red and white string (talisman) with a small decoration attached is offered from men to women to indicate appreciation. Which I guess is the modern day equivalent of roses and a bottle of wine.

Interestingly, it is also the time of the year in New England that ancient sailors burned the socks they were forced to wear all winter: an act probably attributed to wives anxious to be close to their husbands again without retching. "The dreaded socks must be reduced to ash in a community bonfire." A tradition which the descendants of these people thank for their existence and are forever thankful.

So welcome to spring. May your eggs all hatch, your bull blood not stain, your string tie you to someone you love and your stinky socks be successfully reduced to ashes.

If You Are An Alien Wondering About Cherries

I've had a number of inquiries about cherries lately. Cherries are edible and begin life as a flower called a cherry blossom. They are from the fruit family, with a skin on the outside and are kind of soft and juicy under that (when they are ripe) and a hard pit at their core (which you want to avoid biting on), and are grown on a tree, which is conveniently called a cherry tree. It is the sole responsibility of the cherry tree to grow cherries. Any other tree that tries to do that is faking it. Recently cherries that came from lemon trees were revealed not to be cherries at all. (They're pretty bitter about that.)

Cherries are the only fruit I know of, aside from oranges, (okay, and tangerines, peaches, and limes...) that have a color named after them (cherry red) and come with one of two personalities: sweet or tart. This orientation comes from their genes and is not a learned behavior. Both are very good when used to make a cherry pie; a dessert baked with a cherry-based filling instead of other things, like apples. Cherry pie is nice when enjoyed at a roadside diner with Agent Cooper sitting in booths with vinyl seats and accompanied with a damned fine cup of coffee (black).

Some things, such as cherry bombs, aren't related to the cherry family at all. These spherical shaped exploding fireworks, ranging in size from three-quarters-inch to one-and-one-half-inch (1.9 cm to 3.8 cm) in diameter. You light their fuse which causes the gun powder inside to go boom. Real cherries do not explode when you light them. Like cherry bombs, cherries are bad for cleaning out blockages in college dormitory toilets and clearing blocked sinuses. If you see a cherry with a fuse instead of a stem, do not eat it.

Cherries are seen as good things by humans and their names are included in special requests (pretty please with a cherry on top), describing something as pristine (that car is in cherry condition), and having a good life (a bowl of cherries). And then there is the incredible Neneh Cherry...

National Horace Day

Meet Horace, occupation housefly (Musca domestica) and host of National Horace Day. Every year he appears after the first thaw. It's his one and only job. His appearance is met with great glee because it marks the beginning of the end of a long, cold winter. There are celebrations, music, dancing and much merriment amongst the common people who have nothing better to celebrate.

He showed up this morning (photo proof above). So I guess it's National Horace Day. Horace comes from a long line of Horaces and is of royal fly blood. His mere presence fills the room with promise and hope for the coming days.

Unlike the dubious and often unreliable predictions of National Groundhog Day, National Horace Day assures us in the northern climes that:
1) We'll soon be able to leave our butter dishes on the counter without having to microwave it to make it soft enough to spread on bread without ripping it to death
2) The days of getting up in the morning and putting on three layers of clothing (which conveniently hides all your body's imperfections) are soon to be replaced with looking for the least smelly, sweat stained t-shirt and shorts
3) You stop praying to your furnace for uninterrupted service and begin to think of opening windows to let the sweet smell of Bounce dryer sheets from the neighbor's dryer vent sift through your house
4) You remember what birds are, and how they can wake you up with the soothing sounds of their incessant, damned chirping every morning you want to sleep in
5) The backyard and balconies stop being just a second frozen food and yellow snow storage area and become somewhere to hang out half naked, burn your skin off, contract skin cancer and emit toxic charcoal barbeque smoke while burning your weenies, and
6) Shoveling of snow will soon be a thing of the past. For the next six months you'll be able to fill an afternoon out of every weekend sweating behind the handles of a lawn mower.

Happy Horace Day! Enjoy the promise of the change of seasons!