Judge Not
and ye shall be a dupe

A commenter in my last post said she was "disturbed" by my assessment of a fellow shopper I described as possibly being a serial killer. I don't really know that on giving this person careful consideration I would really think he was a serial killer. This was actually just the exact flash of a thought that ran through my head as he first blazed past me in all his strange glory which I decided to share on my blog. My commenter thinks I am judgmental and doesn't see the value in saying the things I did. I have responded to the comment but I felt the topic deserved a whole post on its own.

I am judgmental. I make flash judgments all day long about people I don't know anything about. I make judgments all day long about people I know a lot about but since I am constantly receiving new information through my experiences with others and the world it is necessary to re-evaluate my original judgments all the time.

It is an enormous pet peeve of mine when people claim to be "nonjudgmental" as though judging people is bad. Simply making assessments of others doesn't harm them. Most of the time we make them silently in our head:

"Wow, that person has enormous breasts. I wonder if they're real?"

"That mom is so tense she is close to hurting her child."

"Don't make eye contact with that man, he is not right in the head."

If anyone tries to tell me that they don't have thoughts about others in their heads, that they don't have curiosity about people they don't know, that they never decide if they want to know someone based on how they look, they are lying. Not only to me, but to themselves. Or else they are dead.

If no one ever shared their thoughts, their judgments about others, we would be so much more alone than we already are inside. If we couldn't talk to others about the things we've observed then we have no way to build a compass against which to evaluate our own observations. Am I a complete jerk for not trusting men who live with their mothers as adults? Maybe. I don't know. What do you think? Is it a sign that someone might be a little bit off if they never make eye contact with other people or does it merely mean they are shy? I know what I think but I want to know what you think too.

How much can you tell about a person you're observing out in the world that you've never met? How fair is it to decide how you will interact (or not) before giving them a chance to show you who they are? It has nothing to do with fair and everything to do with navigating in a world full of people we have to interact with and being able to avoid bad situations because of a poor ability to make quick judgments. As the planet gets more and more crowded these skills will become more and more necessary for survival.

People judge me all the time, including myself. I am not averse to being put under the microscope. Not even yours. Go ahead: judge me. If you're not new here, you already have and keep coming back because you want to know more (which means you've decided to re-evaluate me) or you're judging me right now for the first time. Perhaps, like my commenter, you will find yourself disturbed by what you read and see here in my world.

When I was a green haired freak of a teenager I was judged openly all the time. People made all kinds of assumptions about me, some of which were true. Some not. Although I was frightened when rocks were thrown at me, I didn't ever get irate at others for trying to figure out what my deal was. We all do it. We have to.

The guy I was describing in my last post looked and behaved so strangely that in reality, he probably isn't a serial killer because supposedly serial killers don't ever seem like serial killers.

But here's what I know about this guy I saw at the grocery store:

He's got a well developed vanity, doesn't want to appear "his age", is excessively concerned with cleanliness, is uncomfortable around others, doesn't make eye contact, is almost certainly gay, would prefer not to have anything of his get too close to anything belonging to others, is not a nice customer (a no brainer, as I saw him making his purchase), and has a lot of self discipline.

Of course, I don't just make my judgments based on a person's looks. I rely very heavily on my extra sense (I don't know that it's the sixth one, there may be more) to support the physical details. I can feel people. I have an extremely good antennae for the human spirit. It's what makes me a good writer. I see, I hear, I touch, I taste, I smell, and I sense.

And then I write about it all.

How good am I at sensing things? I'm this good:

One Cinco de Mayo in San Francisco Philip and I decided to head down to the Mission district for some burritos and thrift shopping. It's a lively area on Cinco de Mayo since it's a largely Latino neighborhood. We got some food and after a while we noticed that it was getting more and more crowded and rowdy. I told Philip we should catch the Muni home. So we were waiting for our number but all of the buses were full. While waiting I started to feel a sharpening in the air, an edge in it that I couldn't place. I told Philip "It's not safe here. We really need to get out of here."

Still, all the buses were packed and it started looking like we weren't going to catch a Muni home. The feeling of danger where we were standing became acute and urgent. I told Philip that if we couldn't squeeze our way onto the next bus we needed to just start walking. People were everywhere, pressing in. We managed to get on one and left 24th and Mission behind us. It was an awful ride home but I knew we were lucky to have gotten on and away from where we had been.

Then next morning we saw why we needed to get away from that spot. Exactly where we had been standing, not five minutes after we left, a riot broke out and a person was stabbed to death at the corner of 24th and Mission.


I've mentioned this story here before, but I tell it again because it's the best one I have to illustrate my point which is that if you want to survive, you must trust your gut. The women who were killed by Ted Bundy didn't make good flash judgments about him. Everyone says he looked so ordinary, was so handsome, but if they had trained well to see inside people they would have seen something wrong. Even if they weren't sure what.

The point of discussing what we observe in the world, the point in sharing all our observations-even ones that don't seem fair or kind, is that the only way we learn about how to put our findings into the proper context is to compare our findings with those that others have made.

Furthermore, if no one ever told their stories, we'd have no books. We'd have no outlet for our imagination which takes our daily observations to another level. I've gotten in hot water for saying the wrong thing, for making someone else unhappy by saying what was on my mind, there is definitely a fine line between observing the truths of people as we see them and meanly pointing our fingers and saying things like "you should be ashamed to be who you are", a crime I rarely commit. I ask questions. I seek answers. I judge and then reevaluate because as we delve deeper into each individual we find the answers to their quirks, enlightenment sometimes, and we may often find that our flash judgments were fair based on the information we had on hand, but that when we have better more intimate information we find we were wrong about a person or a situation.

It is important to always be willing to find we've been wrong. What I don't do is make value judgments about people based on their race, their gender, their age, or their religion (except for the ones I consider to be cults, but that's for a different discussion altogether). I don't decide a person's worth based on any of these criteria.

Determining an opinion on the worth of a person should always be taken on with care and time.

So judge me.

If I was able to step outside myself and make observations as a stranger without any inside information I would make the following judgments:

overweight, middle aged, shops at cheap clothing stores, stares at people but tries to hide it, curious, obviously listening to everything, frumpy, hairy, polite, smiles a lot-might be retarded (who smiles so much when grocery shopping?), suspicious scars on arms-possibly not a safe person, over indulges in everything, maybe used to be more fashionable, eco-conscious, dirty nails, sloppy, probably a frazzled mom of four or five kids, not a good housekeeper.


How much of this is accurate observation? I guess you'll just have to run into me in the store to find out.

Pasta Tip:
How to preserve the extra
Plus a whole lot of pest talk

This is what the perfect pasta dough looks like. Granular until you knead it.

This is a walnut filling. I pureed lightly roasted walnuts, , olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, parmesean cheese, and a a couple tablespoons yogurt and some hot water all together to make this paste.

This post is mostly about nature. This post is not really about food. I just wanted to share the pretty pictures of my walnut raviolis. I have been making lots of pasta lately because I love pasta and it's easy to make from scratch. I will share a tip with you: fresh pasta freezes particularly well. In fact, I was not that pleased with my pasta drying experiments last year, the texture wasn't as pleasing when reconstituted, but the frozen pasta is as good as fresh when cooked. So I am now freezing extra batches of it. I love my freezer.

The person I referred to last week in my Master Gardening class report as wearing doubleknit...remember that?...I will refer to her as "DD" from now on, short for Doubleknit Disaster. This person both horrifies and fascinates me. She glares at everyone, she has absolutely zero people skills, she has no interest in getting to know anyone, she has no smile, no sense of play, and whenever anyone in class is speaking she turns her squenched up snarly stare at them. Partly the open mouthed critical stare is squinty because she obviously can't see very far, but it's the exact same look she flashes at anyone who has committed the horrible crime of making a peep while a teacher is talking.

Yesterday we all had the supreme surprise of being told (as a class) to "SHUT UP!!!" by the dear DD. It fairly stunned the entire room including the teacher.

I think of gardeners as mostly curious, creative, wonderfully geeky, people with a great sense of childlike fun. I wouldn't call myself very child-like, nor would I try to convince you that I am a super fun person...but I do have a sense of humor and I do get childishly excited about things like new buds on plants. I'm not that serious of a person. I light up when I see interesting bugs or plants in the garden. Most gardeners I've had the pleasure to know, even if they take their gardening on the serious side, have smiles and a warmth that you can feel when you're sitting in close proximity to them.

DD has no inner warmth. I have the misfortune of sitting directly behind her bullish back and I thought mean thoughts. I'm not proud of myself. We have all been in class now for one month together. People I originally thought were sour have warmed under the glow of companionship and awkwardness has dissolved as we all have a chance to come out of our shells. Most of the people in the class have something good to recommend them. Something warm about them, or interesting, something quirky, or personable. The only one who's making enemies (not just me!) is DD.

There is always someone in a class like that, isn't there?

Before I go on I have to tell you all that our offer on the farmhouse was ACCEPTED!!!!! I'm not going to report a lot of details about the whole transaction because I'm superstitious and until we have the keys in hand I don't want to mess anything up. There are some spiritual questions hanging in the balance right now as well. If everything goes through and we get to move into this farmhouse I will feel that I have been accepted back into the embrace of a kinder universe than I have been experiencing for the last couple of years. If it falls through I will be struggling with the acute feeling that I am being cruelly picked on. For now I will just say that things are falling into place with unusual grace and ease and I hope it continues because I'm feeling somewhat blessed at the moment.

I have some thoughts now to share on the whole question of "natives" versus "non-natives". Of all the invasive non-natives I can think of that are right now taking over this continent, I can think of none worse or more damaging than us. Yes, us. Oh, not you people who are pure native Americans...but how many of you are "pure" native Americans? Seriously... we had a talk yesterday about vertebrate pests and how to control them. The whole time there was question of the native versus non-native pests and I thought it was interesting that we are supposed to be worried right now about preserving our native squirrels who are getting out-bred by the sturdier non-native grey squirrel. Both are capable of doing the same damage to homes and trees but because one variety is now in a decline we are supposed to view it as a precious pest while the other one we are encouraged to shoot and eat* as many of them as we can.

The concern, among naturalists of all kinds, is that native varieties of plants and animals are going extinct because of stronger "introduced" varieties that are able to withstand the environment better and breed faster stronger strains of themselves.

Hello, has anyone ever heard of DARWIN? Survival of the fittest is a very important evolutionary concept and just because us humans are capable of offering some controls on this phenomenon, and equally as capable of helping to spread some of this Darwinian action doesn't actually mean that it is something we're meant to control. We are as much a part of that evolutionary action as every other part of nature.

Whether or not humans share plants across oceans or not, in our native habitats there are stronger varieties of native plants and animals out-breeding more delicate native varieties right under our noses. Before the rabid Europeans came and wiped out lots of native Americans with their syphallis and scarlet fever, the different native American tribes were duking things out amongst themselves with no help from non-natives. Back in Europe the same fighting was constantly taking place amongst it's natives.

So who should we be shooting and eating amongst ourselves?

I say no one. I believe that there is more strength and beauty in natural hybridizing**. I think that people are forgetting that just as some plants are making themselves into "pests" and forcing others into extinction, there are new varieties being created as well in this giant stew pot of life called planet earth.

Another thing I couldn't help thinking about was how we are calling all these animals pests because they annoy us and get in the way of our own plans. If there is a gopher in my yard eating all my plants I think of it as a pest and certainly I will do what I can to fight it off and if necessary I might even kill it. So I'm not setting myself apart here, but it did occur to me that the greatest pest on the entire planet is the species we like to refer to as OURSELVES.

So while I will fight for my own little patch of dirt and I will try to keep other wild things from settling there and destroying what I value, I also have to kind of respect the fact that one's point of view is the only difference between us all.

When it comes to nature and survival I'd say that all beings on this planet, from human beings down to one celled creatures, are striving for the same things. Who's a pest and who's dinner and who's losing the evolutionary battle, and who's winning are all just a matter of perspective. The vole wants the same things I do. Which is why I find it hard to kill other beings. I've done it, I will probably do it again at some point, but every time I do it feels a little bit like killing some part of myself. I can't say I feel guilty about yanking carrots out of the dirt and bringing them to my plate with butter salt and pepper, but I do feel the weight of life for life. I eat life in order to have life. Every being on earth does.

It's weighty, but not impossible to live with. I think when you are guided by that kind of knowledge you can make more merciful and more thoughtful decisions. I have planted a butterfly bush in my yard here and only recently found out that it's now considered an invasive plant. But what is the real harm? It feeds the beneficials, it's beautiful, it's strong, and so it thrives. Why should I hate it just because it's comfortable here? So am I.

How long before I'm considered a native? How many generations of plant or animal matter does it take to become "native"? Doesn't native refer to what is born here? Created here? I was born here, doesn't that make me native now too?

As far as I can see the whole planet is made up of layers of nativity, the old, the new, the established, the wandering seeds, the rooted, and those blown by the wind. The earth is changing because of humans, but let's not get all arrogant about it- the earth has been going through constant changes since it first fostered life. I don't see it mattering whether you think God made us all or that everything was made by a felicitous congruence of elements able to ignite life, the earth has been in a constant state of shuffling and drastic weather changes and life forms have been coming and going along with those changing conditions. If the planet survives human trash and breeding then the life that's left will continue to muscle it's way through the changing conditions, by mutating, evolving, dying out, being born.

I think we should worry less about native versus non-native and work harder to diminish our own pesty contamination of the planet by making less trash, cleaning up our own chemical trash, cease the use of pesticides that are so dangerous they have impaired the reproductive abilities of our own species*** (and probably the reproductive function in "native" species of other animals we value as well). Let's be the squirrel we want to shoot. Don't like the way it can rip through your roof and live in your attic where it will chew up your wires and catch your house on fire? How about not destroying the natural dams that beavers build?

Let's be the change we want to see in our list of "pests".




*OK, not literally.

**Remember that natural hybridizing is not at all the same thing as building pesticides right into plant or people matter. When plants or people mix genetic information in nature there are a trillion different variations on a theme, more diversity, and better strength. When humans mess with genetics in labs and cross species information that nature herself is not capable of crossing then we have a huge mess. Putting chicken genes in tomatoes is not a safe or acceptable combination. Do not be confused by the two very different methods of hybridizing. When you mix Russian and Native American genes you often get better vigor, more beautiful people, but if you mixed your own genetic material with a sheep...would you think that was safe and natural?

So always ask yourself that. Would you mix your people genes with non-human genes? Do you think anything good can come of mixing species like that? What if you could mix your own genes with the genes of a tomato?

***DDT has been shown to disable reproductive function in human beings. Proven fact. It's why it's illegal in our country now. But it's still living in our bodies and in our land, in case any of you didn't know that.