This past weekend was the opening of deer hunting (gun) season in Minnesota. As a vegetarian with 10+ years of meat-free smugness under my belt, you’d think I’d be against such an activity, but I’m not. The main reason for this is my dad, a lifelong deer hunter.

I’ve never been hunting. I was the girl who cried during Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom whenever an animal (usually something of the deer-ish variety) got attacked and eaten by a predator.

“That’s the way nature is,” my dad would say, but I wasn’t having it.

One Christmas, my dad wrapped up a rifle and put it under the tree. He played it off as a big joke when I opened it but part of him wanted me to unwrap it, hug its cold barrel to my chest and then jump up and down yelling, “When can we go shoot? Huh, Dad? When can we go out and kill things?”

What actually happened: I think I looked at him and rolled my eyes.

Still, I grew up in deer hunting culture. Every November, kids (boys) in my class were excused from school to go off deer hunting with their dads. This strikes me now as a big injustice to those of us (girls) who had to attend school but at the time it didn’t faze me. On Thanksgiving morning, my dad would be getting back from hunting with my uncles and cousins by the time my sister and I were up watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

My dad, who owned a produce store, had the space and facilities to process deer for other people. For several years, it was normal for me to walk over to our store, go in the back door and see several deer strung up by their hindquarters, tongues hanging out, dark eyes like marbles. More would be stowed in the walk-in cooler. My dad and grandfather worked at cutting the deer up, their cover-alls coated in blood. There were barrels filled with the discarded deer parts and sometimes one of our dogs would be brave enough to jump up and grab a discarded leg, running back to our yard with the furry spindle, capped by a hoof, in its mouth.

Last week, I was watching the local evening news and they had a story on about hunters getting ready for the big weekend. The first part of the story was about how much hunting costs (apparently, too damn much). This had never occurred to me because it’s not a complaint my father would ever make. You went to Fleet Farm and bought what you needed and it lasted you for 10 years (more like 25+ years).

You didn’t need fancy equipment or an ATV; you carried your deer out on your back if you had to. My dad hunted on his own land and much of the best hunting took place in a  swamp. Carrying a deer out on your back while struggling through crotch-high swamp water can give guys a heart attack if they’re not healthy and strong and I believe this is one reason both of my grandfathers were eventually persuaded they should no longer go out.

The second part of the news story talked about how, despite the cost, hunting is rewarding. The people interviewed talked about how they couldn’t wait to get out to their tree stand – and take naps. Or sit and contemplate life. Or enjoy nature. This made me sad. It seemed as if all these people really needed was time at a secluded B&B or a wilderness resort but they thought it would make them less macho or maybe just strange, so they waited until deer season for an excuse to sit out in the woods and get their heads together.

I wanted to tell them that the woods is always there and one doesn’t need an excuse to go to it.

It might be that growing up on a farm is what made me a vegetarian – I took it in the opposite direction than a lot of people would. I grew up eating my fair share of hunted meat (deer, goose, duck, pheasant, rabbit, perch, walleye and, once, I think, squirrel) and I saw death. I watched my grandfather chop the heads off chickens and let them run for a few seconds before collapsing. I found dead cats in our barn. I poked at dismembered rabbits, killed by our dogs, with sticks. Sometimes my dad would help another farmer butcher pigs and, while I was never present when the killing took place, I did find the maggot-filled cesspool where the discarded parts were buried.

My dad and I do have disagreements about when and how often animals have to meet their death at the hands of humans. For example, I don’t think the squirrels that ravage his bird feeder need to die. He does. And the last time I went home for a visit, he was luring deer to a spot in the woods with apples, then going out in the evening, climbing up a tree with his bow and waiting for them to show up for the delicious treats.

One rainy evening while sitting out in the stand he hit a deer with an arrow and it ran off into the mist. He was certain it was hurt enough to die but he couldn’t find it, not that night or the next morning.

“That’s a waste,” I said. “You killed it and now it’s going to rot in a field somewhere.”

“I can’t help it,” my dad said. “That’s just the way it is.” Sort of a “you win some/you lose some” attitude.

I found this drawing that sort of illustrates what happened except imagine that the arrow is sticking into the deer and then imagine it running away. And imagine it being dark and rainy and impossible to see all this:

But I could tell he felt a bit bad about it. If he kills something he does it mostly within the rules (as far as I know – ever since I found out in college that he used to burn old tires to get rid of them I guess I shouldn’t put anything past him) and wants to use the animal as food. I’m not such a bleeding heart that I don’t realize this has literally been going on since the beginning of humanity and will never stop until we run out of wild animals to hunt.

But then we’ll probably start in on the cows, if only we can teach them to walk through the woods and run away when they see us in order to make it feel like something of a fair(er) fight.

Categories: Essays
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Welcome back to my continuing series First Ladies Cook!, an examination of the The First Ladies Cook Book, sponsored by Fritos Corn Chips. Yes, Fritos, my friends. That crunchy corn snack that remains a distant third choice behind any brand of potato chip and Doritos.

Today, we arrive at the tenure of President James Buchanan, elected in 1857. His election represents a major first in White House history – a bachelor president.

One wonders, is there any hidden meaning in the words of the First Ladies Cook Book when it says, “With the election of James Buchanan, our only unmarried president, the capital began the gayest social season in its history?”

Here is the evidence for gayness:

• He’s described as a wealthy epicurean with a “flair” for society.

• For 15 years prior to his presidency, he lived with Alabama Senator William Rufus King in Washington, D.C. and the two were made fun of by Andrew Jackson, who called King “Miss Nancy” or “Aunt Fancy.” Aaron Brown referred to the two as “Buchanan and his wife.”

• Buchanan’s and King’s nieces each destroyed their uncle’s correspondence.

• He broke it off with his only fiance while still a young man and she died that same year, possibly from an overdose of laudanum. He used her death as his excuse for not marrying for much of the rest of his life, saying that  his “true love is buried in the ground,” and he could not love another, although he did talk, in one letter, about possibly needing to marrying an old maid who would care for him when he was sick, cook for him and “not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.”

Evidence against gayness:

• He allowed himself to become a bit jowly.

Since the evidence is clearly stacked in favor of gayness, it’s safe to say we’ve already had a gay president. The barrier was broken 154 years ago.

It’s too bad, then, that Buchanan is considered to be among the shittiest of presidents. He was yet another Northerner with Southern (slavery) sympathies (I believe they called people like this “doughfaces”) but  his efforts to play peacemaker with both sides led to each thinking he sucked not a little. Granted, it was a tough time to be Prez, and he was quickly overshadowed by the looming Civil War and by Superhero Abraham Lincoln.

[As for what happened to King, he became Vice President under President Pierce but had to be inaugurated in Cuba, where he had gone to rest on a plantation due to his ill health - King suffered from tuberculosis and the inaugeration was really more of a courtesy than anything else; they knew he was a goner. Cuban air proved to be just the wrong thing for his bacteria-filled lungs and King died two days after returning home to his own plantation in Alabama. The guy really liked to hang out on plantations.]

Regardless of the country’s unrest in the late 1850′s, the wealthy people of Washington, D.C. still needed to eat, drink and be entertained. President Buchanan assigned his niece, Harriet Lane Johnston, to the role of official First Lady.

Harriet had been adopted by Buchanan when she was orphaned at age 11 and she was quite used to his fussy ways, like when he insisted that butter be sent from Philadelphia and complained if champagne arrived at the White House in bottles that were much too small.

The public loved her and copied her hairstyles and fashions. A popular song of the time was dedicated to her. She received the Prince of Wales at the White House and threw a dinner party for him. Because of all this and also being the first First Lady to adopt social causes while in the White House (to say nothing of the fact that she was throwing parties and dinners on behalf of a gay uncle), she is considered the first  of the modern first ladies.

Her job had to be somewhat exasperating – as tensions between the North and the South increased, the seating arrangements at White House functions became increasingly time consuming as she tried to keep people who were no longer on speaking terms from having to sit next to one another while spooning up rice pudding. By the time Buchanan left the White House, seven states had seceded from the Union.

Harriet and Buchanan returned to live in Pennsylvania. At age 36, Harriet married a banker named Henry Johnston and they had two sons. Both of them died while still children. Harriet outlived her husband and went back to live in Washington, D.C. She gave a generous gift to establish a home for invalid children at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She died in 1903.

The First Ladies Cook Book offers up two recipes from Harriet’s tenure at the White House: Pennsylvania Dutch Stuffed Shoulder of Pork and Cinnamon Apples.

Here is the recipe for the Stuffed Shoulder, which I’m sure is coming to an urban food cart near you any day now.

Pennsylvania Dutch Stuffed Shoulder of Pork

5-to-6 pound shoulder of pork, boned (that pig was done using its shoulder anyway)
salt
pepper
4 cups fresh sauerkraut (no instructions on how to make kraut; any self-respecting cook has a kraut recipe firmly ingrained)
flour
1 tbsp. brown sugar
garnish of cinnamon apples, tiny boiled carrots and mashed potatoes

Sprinkle the meat inside and out with salt and pepper. Fill the shoulder with the sauerkraut, which has been drained (that’s the sauerkraut that’s been drained, not the shoulder, unless you got a rotten shoulder).

Sew or skewer up the opening. Score the top lightly in a diagonal pattern as for baked ham.

Dredge the flour and brown sugar.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees and start the roast in this hot oven for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake 30 to 35 minutes to the pound, basting occasionally. Half an hour before the roast is done, pour off most of the drippings and eat them on a piece of toast because you’re hungry and this roast is taking so long!

Place the remainder of the ‘kraut in the roaster around the meat and complete the roasting.

Garnish the platter with the apples and mashed potatoes put through a pastry bag with rose tube; add small boiled carrots.

Well, that’s one way to serve the mashed potatoes but if you want to make your guests happy, just plop those potatoes in a bowl with a big pat of butter on top and let them have at it.

Categories: Cooking, First Ladies Cook
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If you’re a pop culture aficionado (I think that’s all of us under the age of 50 at least) you are aware of the zine called Found Magazine, started by Davy Rothbart and Jason Bitner. It’s a collection of, well, found notes and photos and heart-rending love notes, etc., much of it user submitted. Praise for naming the mag exactly what it is instead of going with something more enigmatic, like Ephemera Magazine, or something twee like Flotsam & Jetsam Magazine (which is a relief because that’s totally going to be MY magazine).

[BTW, if you want to know more about Davy Rothbart, there's this article or you could watch this movie but if you don't have time for all that tedious clicking and reading I can say that he's very open about the sexual side of his life but I prefer to think of him as the Found Mag dude because I'm Midwestern like that.]

Others of you may be aware of the Found Footage Film Festival, started by Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher. It’s a fest of, well, found footage – mainly VHS tapes found at thrift stores and garage sales, etc. One of their rules is NO YouTube, meaning they’re not just out there trolling YouTube to find their stuff.

Hurry and go to the website to watch a woman who knows how to fill out a bodysuit dance to “Thriller” on a cable access show and you’ll get what I’m talking about.

And now Found and Found are engaging in hand-to-hand Found Combat on tour together and they are coming to the Twin Cities.

Our date is Monday, November 14, doors at 7-ish at the Heights Theater in Columbia Heights. You can go here to get your advance tix (which I did and strongly suggest you do rather than foolishly believing you can laze about and still get some at the door – remember you are up against A LOT of pop culture buffs here). Tickets are $13, (plus some bogus-y $1 service fee but pop culture ain’t always cheap) with one dollar from every ticket sold benefiting IFP-MN, where people learn to do cool stuff with film/video and photography.

Who am I putting my money on? Found Footage. Notes are hilarious but it will be hard to top stuff like this.

Categories: You Should Totally Go
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Project #6: Wall Art for Living Room

When Keith switched jobs recently, we were on the hook to give back the artwork that had been on loan from his former employer. It was a large painting that filled a fairly large space on our living room wall. I could only take a few days of looking at the emptiness before I had to think of something.

This is what we did:

1970s chic! Total cost – $20

I went to an occaisonal sale at the Cottage House on Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis. This was on the first day of the month the sale was open and it was nutty in there – a lot of women grabbing whatever they could get their hands on. The Cottage House is just that – a small house – so it was hard to manuever around all the stuff and the women with glazed eyes hugging shabby chic furniture. To the Cottage House’s credit, they really move the merch there.

The backyard and the garage at Cottage House are also full of stuff. I found a bunch of old shutters leaning against the house and amoung them were some lattice panels for $5 each, so I bought them. The big plus is that they are super lightweight. They needed to be repaired (with wood glue at the joints) and cleaned. We decided to leave the finish rather than painting them a different color.

I thrifted the printed fabric behind the panels awhile ago – it was a great Mad Men-esque print from the 60′s that was $5. We used some solid fabrics as accents, attaching all the fabric to the back of the frame with hot glue. I broke my glue gun in the process – or rather, the glue gun tip fell off mid-glue. This is the second time this has happened to me so I think I’m done buying the $8 glue guns.

Here’s the wall art “in a room” with my fuzzy deer/reindeer collection, squirrel pillow and, of course, Freja:

Categories: 99 Projects
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