I have been teaching science to young adults in my hometown for over 15 years, rambling along the way. Thanks for stopping by.
Science teacher
Lammas, again
The English had a sensible name for this time of year before William the Conqueror blew through–weed month (weodmonað). We teeter towards the dark months. Things fall apart.
The sunlight diminishes perceptibly now. The plants know.
The past week we’ve eaten deep purple eggplants and bright pink brandywine tomatoes, yellow summer squash and green-and-red striped beans. Today we will pick basil for pesto, some for tonight, some for February. A bowl full of ripe blueberries waits for us, sunlight incarnate.
But the sunlight is dying, and the plants know.
We do not speak of religion in class, at least not formally. Students occasionally ask religious questions, and I deflect them. I explain that some things cannot be known through science, and that what I believe beyond the limits of science falls outside the province of class.
In class we talk of light and hormones, photoperiods and abscisic acids, to explain how plants know. We talk under the hum of fluorescent lights, time marked by defined blocks of time. In class, September light is exactly the same as February light, and class is always 48 minutes long, no matter where the sun sits.
This week marks the start of Lammas, or Loaf Mass Day–joy for the harvests that are coming and regret for waning sunlight. Lammas used to be celebrated–the first wheat berries of the year were ground into flour and baked into bread offered in thanks, some used for Communion, some for the feast that followed.
We thank God (or Tailtiu or Lugh or some other forgotten gods)–harvest time reflects death and grace, whatever the culture. Death and grace feel foreign in the classroom, indeed foreign in our culture. We pretend, at our peril, that life is linear.
Lammas falls halfway between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. The days are shortening, winter is coming. Until you feel the seasons in your bones, until you follow a grain of wheat from the ground to plant to bread to you then back to the ground again, the modern myths may be enough.
Science can explain why plants produce fruit when they do, and I can teach the steps. We can test whether a student learns what I present, and the students that do this best have access to all our culture offers.
You can become very powerful, very rich, without knowing grace.
You can go far in life if blessed with intelligence and beauty, degrees and citations, without ever knowing what a wheat berry looks like, without ever kneading a lump of flour and water and yeast into glistening dough.
In the end, we don’t know much, and may never know much. We can, however, recognize grace. We might not grasp it rationally, but we we can grasp it–a good reason to celebrate Lammas.
The Skeleton of Death dances every hour in Prague–photo of the Prague Astronomical Clock by Sandy Smith found on VirtualTourist.
On transubstantiation
(That we are here at all is the miracle.)
Transubstantiation is a Catholic concept, and a somewhat late one, not appearing until the 1200s or so. Catholic doctrine holds that the Holy Communion bread becomes the body of Christ during Mass, though the bread keeps its bread-like qualities..
I teach high school biology in a public school, so transubstantiation does not come up much in class. We do talk about photosynthesis, however, and if you follow the particles involved, a form of transubstantiation does happen, just not in the mystical sense.
One year in class I decided that we should all plant wheat, then take the few wheat berries we managed to grow on the classroom windowsills, grind them up, and mix them with enough store-bought flour to make a loaf of bread.
So far, so good.
Before breaking the bread in class, I asked the students to tell me where the stuff of the bread came from. They (mostly) knew it came from carbon dioxide in the air.
I then asked them where the carbon dioxide came from.
It came from them.
And where was it before it left their bodies? I meant literally, immediately before it left whatever cell they wanted to imagine deep in the dark depths of their flesh.
And that’s where science banged a little too close to mortality; most of that bread got left uneaten that day.
We are, literally, what we eat. Eating is a transubstantive process. The atoms we eat do not change, they just get rearranged. Every part of you that is you (and meant to be you) came from your mother or your food.
Oh, we got some stray lead and a few zillion pieces of microplastics embedded in us, true, but those are accidental.
I don’t want to hear that plants make food out of sunlight. Because they don’t
Plants make food out of us. They need sunlight to do all the fancy work of sewing together carbon dioxide and bits of water, but most of the stuff that makes a plant a plant came from carbon dioxide.
Not dirt. Not sunlight.
The stuff of us.
Kale and clam soup again
It’s New Year’s Eve, the day beckoned with near freezing temps and a bit of a breeze, but low tide was conveniently at 11:50 AM and below normal to boot.
I was pleasantly surprised with less wind and even less water than predicted, and got my clams. Had to return to the beach twice because of extra clams tucked in my wander pockets, but not the first time I’ve done that.
Accidentally bought cilantro instead of parsley, so maybe that was the secret. Also helped that the kale used was extraordinarily sweet, so likely harvested after a frost. At any rate, here’s the recipe:
- a dozen clams
- about 3 or 4 cups of kale
- about 5 ounces of white wine
- a large onion, chopped
- a handful of cilantro
- several small red skin potatoes, cut into small chunks
- several sprigs of rosenmary
- about 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1/3 stick of butter
- 3 smallish stalks of celery, chopped
Heat up the olive oil, toss in the sprigs of rosemary, cook until ready then remove the rosemary.
Toss the butter on the olive oil, let melt
Throw in the onions and saute until just right, then throw in the wine. Add celery and kale and let simmer, adding clam stock as needed.
Prepare clams as usual, then toss back into the broth, adding water as needed. Chunk in the potatoes and let cook. Toss in the cilantro somewhere along the way,
Once potatoes are done, toss the veggies from the pan into the broth, and you’re good to go.
Serve with red pepper flakes/Tabasco.