Recovering Trayvon Martin

Though race gets made in the culture and not in nature, like processed food, the manufactured product has many powerful and potent uses. Though not a natural product born from the earth, Twinkies, Doritos, and Corn Pops can effect real damage on the body as well as on the earth. Over-consumption can clog the body’s arteries and lead to the damage of vital organs. The energy that goes into manufacturing these products create additional pollutants that are reeking real damage in the environment. The fact that race is not natural but created does not diminish its power; its potency.

Scientist/Artist: Charles White, An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and Vegetables (1799). This representation of The Great Chain of Being shows the “Negro” as nearer to the ape than the ideal.

The Englightenment Age investment in studying the body as the primary source for an engagement with the science of race and its grounding–though totally misguided as a rational, disciplined, responsible practice–continues to inform how we engage the subject of being raced or having race. When we want to point to race or to indicate its meaning, we often do that through an engagement with the body. So if we had moved beyond examinations of race that equated it with the natural sciences, we could, even in our casual conversations, discuss the way that language makes and constructs race, for example. We would talk about the way that language brings race into being through its system of signs. But no, we make race about how bodies look and what we think is in them. Such a view of race has been boldly present in the Trayvon Martin case.

That child has been made into a character of black malevolence in the on-going racial plot line of American history through depictions of his body and the internal networks that make it go. The most recent narrative regarding the autopsy report makes this plain. George Zimmerman’s system showed the presence of manufactured drugs in his system, Temazepam, a drug also known as Restoril, which is used to treat insomnia. The headline dominating the news, however, is not the story of the drugs in the body of the living man but the ones inside of the body of the dead child. Despite the fact that the U.S. National Library of Medicine makes the suggestion that Temazepam users should “tell your doctor right away if you experience any of the following symptoms: aggressiveness, strange or unusually outgoing behavior, hallucinations (seeing things or hearing voices that do not exist), feeling as if you are outside of your body, memory problems, difficulty concentrating, new or worsening depression, thinking about killing yourself, confusion, and any other changes in your usual thoughts, mood, or behavior,” Zimmerman’s use of this drug isn’t being discussed in the mainstream in terms of his credibility. Instead, the trace amounts of THC, the drug found in marijuana, in Martin’s body have been used to reify the very notion that he is not entitled to our sympathy because he is outside of the terms of civil, manageable, and properly sociable practices and habits.

The marijuana that Trayvon Martin smoked apparently confirms his status as a “thug.” The egregiousness of this charge becomes most apparent when you accept how racialized it is. “Thug” functions as a racialized term for talking about black boys and men that performs in the way that poet Cornelius Eady describes it in his poem “How I Got Born,”

“When called, I come.”

There are no public service announcements about how we can save our sons from the traps of being a thug; there are no Lifetime movies about black boys who are vulnerable to peer pressure and choose the posture of a thug to attract girls. Michael Eric Dyson tells just this story of Tupac Shakur in his wonderful bio-critical work, Holla if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur, about the slain rapper. Tupac was a thespian whose penchant for the arts didn’t help his ambitions to be liked and popular with girls. Tupac’s story of adolescent angst doesn’t resound on American television and in mainstream articles like the stories about troubled kids who go on school shooting rampages or who binge drink or who bully. Those things become causes for national attention. The pressures that might have been placed on a black male honors program student who baby sat, volunteered, and baked cookies has no thematic resonance with stories of white adolescents who are coming of age.

Trayvon Martin was no thug. He was a young man coming of age who found representations of being a thug attractive…and why wouldn’t he? Reflections of the glamour of thug life abound in American culture. Justin Timberlake finds thug life attractive. If he didn’t, why would he make records with Lil’ Wayne and T.I., two rappers who perpetuate this image and have both faced jail time? Will Smith rhymes, why not rap with him? Robin Thicke doesn’t mind being associated with the image of thuggin’ either. He also raps with Lil’ Wayne. And while Beyonce has been shrouded in representations of upper-class motherhood of late, the lyrics to “Soldier” by her group Destiny’s Child celebrates thug glamour:

We like them dem boys who be in them ‘lac’s leanin’//Open their mouth their grill gleamin’//Candy paint keep that wheel clean and//They keep that beat that be in the back beatin’//Eyes be so low from their chiefin//I love how he keep my body screamin’//A rude boy that’s good to me with street credibility//If his status ain’t hood//I ain’t checkin’ for him//Better be street if he lookin’ at me

The photographs of Trayvon Martin that came into circulation once there was speculation about his character reflects the image that Destiny’s Child heralds. Just like the photograph of Martin trying to look like he was a tough, hard, football player, the photographs of him with a grill as well as the one with the subdued eyes show an effort to be the “rude boy” with “street credibility” that young people find attractive.

Trayvon Martin was not a thug. He exemplifies some of what I learned from thinking about the lives of two of my cousins over the years. One cousin, who I’ll call Dame, was the product of a marriage that disintegrated and he lived in an inner-city project with his mother. His situation with her was never stable as she was drug dependent. The other cousin, who I’ll call Curtis, lived in the suburbs with his two parents who worked very solid jobs. My aunt was a very present mother who would take furlough time as much as she could so that she could be at home for her family or making home for them. Despite my aunt and uncle’s presence and their ability to provide for and nurture my cousin, he wanted very much to have the life of our cousin who lived in the Projects. I remember Dame talking about how much Curtis wanted to “get down” selling dope, stealing, fighting. Dame said that Curtis wanted him to teach him that life but that he just couldn’t do it. As Dame explained it, his life had to be as it was. He didn’t understand why Curtis wanted to do what he didn’t have to in order to make it.

Curtis’s view of Dame made sense to me. When we were younger, I remember thinking that Dame seemed capable. Before I realized how sad it was, I used to think that his ability to provide for himself, to secure clothes, food, and shelter, seemed mature. Even though Dame stopped going to school after his 8th grade year, I used to feel stupid about making my way in the world compared to what he could do. I mean, I wouldn’t have known how to catch the city bus from my house to downtown, but I imagined that Dame would always know how to navigate through the world. I got lost one time in the city. My aunt had taken me to a friend’s house with her and asked me to go to the store and purchase some things for her. When I left the store, I had no idea how to get back home. As I tried desperately to find my way, I vividly remember crying and thinking how this never would have happened to Dame. He would have known how to get back home.

The level of maturity that inner-city kids like Dame have to assume at a young age is heroic when it’s represented through the lives of white kids. Thus, Ree, the character that Jennifer Lawrence plays in Winter’s Bone impresses us because of the responsibility that she takes for her life as well as the young lives of her siblings, but as a culture, we seem to be impassive when young black kids do the same thing. It made sense to me that Curtis would want to be like Dame. Dame was forced to be a man when he was five. You have to mature for that to break your heart. It makes sense to me that young Trayvon would have wanted to wear the mantle of a thug. It is a posture of defiance, independence, control, and power. It makes sense that a young boy coming of age would have wanted to embrace the markers of the authority that he did not feel. He was a very smart young man so it just breaks your heart that he didn’t get a chance to live long enough to contemplate his vulnerability.

See Also:

For more posts on Trayvon Martin, see the A Heap See Page.

Summer Reading

During the summer I add food writing and adventure tales to my usual reading list. I don’t quite know why I incorporate these categories at this moment but it has consistently worked out that way for at least the past several years. I haven’t compiled this year’s list yet, but I suppose because of my dreaming of eating in Cleveland, I thought about my previous years’ reading where hometown food writer Michael Ruhlman consistently ruled.

As I think about Ruhlman’s book, The Making of a Chef, I guess I do get a sense of why I read food writing during the summer. In The Making of a Chef Ruhlman writes about the experiences of students, himself included, at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), the Harvard of cooking schools. Not only are the stories of how people found themselves at the school interesting, but the impact of the education on the book’s author helped to crystalize the value of learning and showed proof of what it can do. The presentation of food can reflect heightened understanding. In one memorable scene from the book, Ruhlman describes his desire for a morning cup of coffee and finds that his coffeemaker isn’t working; he’s without the use of his stove because of some home remodeling taking place; and if I can recall it properly, he can’t go out to buy coffee because there’s been heavy snowfall. So how can he have his coffee? After having only been at the CIA for a few months, the impact of the program shows in his decision to use his charcoal grill to prepare his coffee. His education had awakened him to novel possibilities.

Ruhlman’s grilled coffee offers an edifying example because it suggests that we can indeed be fulfilled–satisfied because oftentimes, we do have precisely what we need. If you are living in the United States, then you are residing in a culture that ceaselessly tries to convince us of the inadequacies of what we possess. It’s an unexpected and odd equation whereby ownership equates to shabbiness. Ruhlman’s turning to his grill was a meaningful act because it suggests the value of our everyday things and their purposefulness despite their diminished gleam. Such an act of reclamation identifies what I mean by a good education. A good education is one that helps you to discipline your thinking so that you enter into the habit of contemplating your life beyond apparent constraints. Ruhlman’s coffee suggests that such an approach brings savoriness into your life.

I have only recently realized that my interest in cookbooks has a great deal to do with wanting to immerse myself in just such a notion of savoriness. As I flipped through Dori Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours the other day, I noticed that my thinking wasn’t really concentrated on making the wonderfully delectable treats pictured and plotted but on how they would fit into my life for eating them. So for example, I was thinking that I would enjoy the Orange Tart. I didn’t picture myself actually making it as much as I saw myself having it finished and wondering how I would store it. Then I moved from that thought to how wonderful it would be with a cup of warm tea, but then I realized that I would most likely be the only person eating it. My husband’s not really an Orange Tart and tea kinda guy. Miles would eat it…it just wouldn’t BE the picture. The picture suggests that the Orange Tart is just good. Period. Want it. Make it. Eat it. So then I thought about how television cooking shows really do a successful job of putting recipe ideas into a life plan. They don’t just offer the recipe, show you how to cook it, and then sample it. They tell you how the food might fit into a concept of some sort; a dinner party, reception, gallery opening–that kind of thing. What I realized was that I have been disappointed sometimes with food that I have prepared, not because it didn’t taste good, but because it didn’t fit within a larger plan for how it should be consumed and how it would be enjoyed. When I am thoughtful about the food, all goes well; nothing gets wasted. And that’s really what I want my life to be focused on: Relevance. When nothing gets wasted, that means that everything had a purpose and that purpose was served. Thus, all was relevant–and for me, this reflects the weightiness, the tied to the earth goodness that makes life savory.

Perhaps another reason that I like food writing and why I read it during the summer is because the summer marks a period of restoration for me and efforts to feed the body are always about replenishment and recovery. I am interested in how people seek to replenish themselves. To that end, Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio’s Hungry Planet: What the World Eats is a sumptuous delight. The book features families from around the world photographed with one week’s worth of their groceries. A table also organizes the food so that the photograph gets chronicled through types of food and financial commitment. Thus, as one example, the book’s focus on the Melanders family of four includes a tally of one week’s worth of food in November that breaks down through categories and expenditures in this way: Grains & Other Starchy Foods: $31.98; Dairy: $64.33; Meat, Fish & Eggs: $51.31; Fruits, Vegetables & Nuts: $78.10; Condiments: $31.83; Snacks & Desserts: $14.56; Prepared Food: $66.78; Beverages: $70.17; Miscellaneous: $91.01; Food Expenditures for One Week: 379.39 euros/$500.07. The list itself is even more detailed than my representation as each category chronicles the food shown in the picture. The authors include a recipe from each family in addition to stories about how they consume and consider food.

I flip through Hungry Planet from time-to-time throughout the year. I have noticed that the Menzel aesthetic gets reflected in many of the food blogs that I read. Sometimes menu planners will show photographs of the food they purchased for the week, and other times home cooks will lay out the ingredients used in a recipe they’re sharing. Mimicry serves these bloggers well. Menzel’s aesthetic underscores the beautiful colors and textures that make up a large percentage of the time and attention we devote to feeding ourselves.

I do know that this year’s food reading list will include Michelle Obama’s book American Grown: The White House Kitchen Garden and Garden’s Across America. Though some critics held a rather cynical view of Robbin Gourley’s children’s book, First Garden: The White House Garden and How it Grew, I appreciated the work. It tells a colorful, vibrant story of family and gardening at the White House potentially informative to children and adults alike. It seems to me that this book serves as the kind of inspiration that the First Lady encourages.

Gourley’s first book, Bring Me Some Apples and I’ll Make You a Pie: A Story About Edna Lewis, would be a pleasant read as well. I flip through The Taste of Country Cooking, by Edna Lewis, pretty regularly. Lewis’s family was among three who claimed a community as freed people in Virginia. They called their

community Freetown. Reading The Taste of Country Cooking is a rich experience that elegantly demands that you consider the historical context and the meaningfulness of the labor demanded for living in light of what had to be a feeling of indescribable assurance. As strenuous as farming is and as anxiety producing as it must be to have to work in accordance with nature, performing such labor in the shadow of the horrors that existed before in slavery must have been an extraordinary feeling. When I read this particular work by Lewis, I think I do so to try to come to language over what that feeling must have been like. One of the reasons why I find the title of the “award winning” documentary about Lewis, Fried Chicken and Sweet Potato Pie (featured above), disappointing is because it renders the ineffable through lazy racial allusions. To be fair, Mrs. Lewis does have a section in The Taste of Country Cooking where she writes what she voices in the film that makes the first part of the title relevant. Mrs. Lewis doesn’t say anything about Sweet Potato Pie though, she merely gives a recipe. To the point of Gourley’s book, Mrs. Lewis’s memories about pie involves apples.

I heard Peter J. Hatch on NPR recently discussing Thomas Jefferson’s garden and this inspired me to want to read his work, “A Rich Spot of Earth: Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello.” I’ve never visited Monticello but it’s definitely on my list. So is Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate. Interestingly, the description for the book about dining and hospitality at Mount Vernon, Dining with the Washington’s, doesn’t mention slavery’s role in that practice–unless you count the line that says that the book looks at “those who served” the meals to those guests. Such a line becomes difficult to accept as a reference to slavery, however, because the description claims the volume to be “charming.” Well, there’s certainly incongruity between hospitality, charm, and slavery. Nevertheless, this book is also on my wish list.

I didn’t have a chance to get to my adventures in adventure reading in this post, but as I reflect on the food reading leading to imagined excursions, my reasons for reading these titles is also coming into focus. So I’ll write about those books another time, but for now, all I’ve got to say is: Don’t sleep on Moby-Dick! I can’t wait to read that one with my son. Great, great book.

12 Hours in Cleveland

My mother knows all of the best places to eat in Cleveland. My husband thinks that when she retires, she should give culinary tours of the city. What I’ve learned from paying attention to the places my mother eats is this: If you walk in and see lots of old people, and I’m talking very, very old people using canes and walkers, and wearing thick bi-focal glasses and you suspect that they’re not just grandparents but probably great grandparents, then you have hit upon a gem! Old people need actual food and not that processed stuff. I’m talkin’ real potatoes and fresh carrots–nothing frozen, manufactured, or held over from another time. You can expect to be able to see and taste your food. There will be chunks of onions and celery in your gravy and big flakes of freshly ground black pepper. You will be able to cut your chicken with a fork…and the bread will melt in your mouth. There will also be light! Forget that stuff about mood, atmosphere, and ambiance. There won’t be any dimmed lights in the place. You will be able to see how clean your flatware is and how much salt you shake on your food. Old people. They hold the key. If they are in the house, the food will be real and it will be good.

I was reading Clotilde’s blog, Chocolate & Zucchini, and she had written a post about imagining spending 12 hours in Paris that she patterned after her friend Adam’s post a few years ago about how he would spend 12 hours in New York. I decided to try planning my own culinary trip to Cleveland, enjoying places that my mother has generously brought into my life.

So, I am going to choose a Tuesday as the day where I will enjoy the food, but I would need to spend some time on Monday getting it all together because I want to plan for a picnic at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. So on Monday, I would go to the the Westside Market, which is only open Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.

This gorgeous photograph of the West Side Market comes from the “All Things Cleveland Ohio” blog.

The West Side Market is Cleveland’s oldest publicly owned market. I used to love going there as a child. It is a feast for all five senses. I don’t have to work hard to try to convince myself that if I’m still enough, I can travel back to the sweet taste of crisp white grapes pulled with quick hands from a vine that I desperately wanted to take home. I swear I can hear myself chewing the grape and hearing the rest, the remainders on the vine, slide into a bag before it gets handed to a young man who will weigh it as we count out cash to give to the young woman who manages such things. Thinking about how I buy fruits and vegetables now at the grocery store, the most prominent thing I remember from buying from the West Side Market is actually being able to smell, see, and touch the fruit at the stands because nothing was pre-packaged in bags or in plastic containers. Brown paper lunch bags were available at each stall and you would take a bag and fill it with what you wanted. Those were the days when you could select every cherry you wanted for your bag in order to ensure the sweetness of each one. My Uncle B.B. was also a big fan of the cheeses and the deli meats. I remember bringing home grapes and melons, cheeses and fruits. Adults were excited about buying meat from the market–especially for holidays. They would buy their ribs, chicken, and steaks there. I don’t remember even knowing that you could buy pastries at the West Side market. The fruits and cheeses were my delight. So for the picnic I’m imagining at the Zoo, I will buy three pounds of grapes–one pound each of white, red, and purple seedless ones. I will also buy cheese–one pound each of pepper jack, cheddar, and colby. I will purchase one seedless watermelon, two pounds of cherries, one pound of bananas. I will also purchase about three pounds of shaved smoked turkey. I’m debating about whether or not to have sandwiches for my picnic; maybe the meat will be for another time. Of course I won’t use all of this food for my picnic, we’ll save some for home.

Next, I would go to Joe’s, a fine deli and restaurant in Rocky River. Joe’s is one of those places where you’ll see those old people I told you about above.

This is an image that I grabbed from someone’s Four Square page. I daydream about being able to go into Joe’s and take my own pictures of some of my favorite dishes. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water! Thanks to whoever took this photograph. I envy your access.

I would purchase two “Chicken Pasta Salads” and curse the fact that I couldn’t also take along my favorite salad, the “Cranberry Chicken Salad,” for the actual picnic. Follow the link to read about the glorious items in that mix. When I’m dining in, I usually order the Cranberry Chicken Salad with the House made Balsamic Vinaigrette, which is beyond heavenly. As much as I want this salad, I think the pasta salad is a sturdier option for a picnic and it uses the same dressing but I wouldn’t have to deal with the lettuce, which wilts under the warm chicken and so would not hold up until the next day’s picnic. So the “Chicken Pasta Salad” would work because I would get the dressing and the chicken and it could be served cold. In addition to these salads, I would also get about five pieces of their Baklava (walnut or pistachio makes no difference to me because I love them both) and at least one lemon bar just to enjoy on the way home. The desert menu is embedded here in case you want to imagine what you might enjoy.

I grabbed this image from Yelp. My Mom goes to Joe’s for her potato pancakes but I really like the ones served here. The place looks like an old railroad car. I don’t know what makes my Mom try some of these spots but I’m glad she’s so adventurous.

I think that I’d have to go to the Breadsmith for my French Baguettes and then I’d pick-up a few extra rolls to go with my Tuesday morning breakfast. On Tuesday morning, I’d stop by John’s Diner and get a few orders of potato pancakes with sour cream and carry them home so that I could eat while I assembled our picnic fare.

Off to the Zoo

The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is the bomb! When my husband and I were dating, I brought him home with me once just so that we could visit the Zoo. He was so impressed with Cleveland’s Zoo that it became the measure for all of the other Zoo trips we would take during the course of our travels. I think it’s such a good Zoo because it offers a full experience of the natural world. You feel like you’re in a big park and there are lots of things to do and see in an incredibly vast space. Too, it’s very reasonably priced. Adults pay $12.25 and children over 2 pay $8.25 during the summer months. During the fall and winter months it’s $8.25 and $5.25 respectively. I’ve always thought that Cleveland did a good job imagining family experiences. City planners appear to think about how families might be able to enjoy themselves on a range of budgets. Too many outdoor arenas these days make it difficult for people to picnic, which traps you into buying overpriced things at the venues and standing in those long lines.

I used to enter the Zoo and head straight to the Rainforest. I’m incredibly afraid of snakes but I think I would tough it out for my son’s benefit so that he could get the full Cleveland Zoo experience. I’d be ready for some picnic fare around 11:30. I didn’t pack drinks because I love the fruit juice that they used to sell at the Zoo that comes in fruit shaped plastic containers. I used to struggle between the strawberry and the grapes (or maybe the choice involved the orange), but I think I liked grape the best. So we’d get our drinks and eat our grapes, melon, cheese, pasta salad, and smoked turkey sandwiches while we watched the waterfowl. We would take in more exhibits until about 3 p.m.

Heading Home

On the way home, we’d stop at United Dairy Farmers (UDF) and get strawberry milkshakes and I would get four scoops of strawberry sherbet to store for later. UDF is a taste explosion! You have not had good sherbet until you’ve had it. When I worked at the Cain Park ticket office for a summer job, there was a UDF across from the park that seduced us all into tendering over our summer pay. I will never forget the night when one of my co-worker’s parents came by to visit us while we worked our late evening shift and brought us each scoops of my favorite sherbet! If you are ever in Ohio and you happen to see a UDF, do yourself a favor and treat yourself to a milkshake or a scoop of sherbet. You won’t regret it.

At around 6 p.m. I’d call in an order at Nunzio’s for pizza and a few salads. This pizza is a taste sensation! (The salads are really good too! The mozzarella cheese is good and the house dressing is pretty amazing.) The photos on their site do their food little justice. My mother lives directly across the street from a Nunzio’s so I would order the food and just run over and pick it up. We’d enjoy pizza before eating the Baklava that I got from Joe’s and the sherbet from UDF.

O.K., so all of you Cleveland readers, I’m sure , will notice that my entire eating experience involved the West Side. So how would you suggest incorporating the East Side into my plan for a Zoo picnic?