1) A good NY Jewish bagel schmeared with cream cheese and lox
Good god do I even need to explain why? If you think that bagels are just round breads then you have never had a bagel, if you toast your bagel then you have never had a bagel, if your’ bagels come from the freezer or fridge or a plastic bag then you have never had a bagel, if your’ bagel isn’t circumcised then you have never had a bagel and I might even go as far as to say that those of you who did not grow up in the NY metropolitan area let me just say that you have never tasted a real bagel.
2) Israeli falafel, from Haifa, to Abu Gosh, to Tel Aviv, and Eilat.
Jumpin’ jehoosefat! I can honestly say that I have never had good falafel on US soil. My Mizarhim mishpacha know how to do that falafel justice!
3) NYC Pizza
I’m not talking about NY style pizza as it is called all around the states but simply NYC pizza, as in originating in that region. Something magical happens when you leave a certain radius of that filthy grotesque city wherein the quality of pizza drops off sharply and is only retained in very tiny remote and seemingly random locations around the country. But NYC remains the pizza king. Oh how I will miss you!
4) Dairy!
Dairy, dairy, dairy! Feta, chevre, havarti, gouda, provolone, jarlsberg, cheddar, parmesan, mozzarella, yogurt, cream, butter, milk, CHOCOLATE MILK, more chocolate milk, and milk that is chocolaty. Why!? Oh good gravy why!? I will miss you most of all chocolate milk, for you I will shed many tears.
5) NY style old school Jewish kosher deli
I’m thinking here of salami sandwiches stacked so high you can’t see over the top. Pastrami, corned beef, turkey, tuna salad, oh mein kosher moyel butcher and sandwich maker of cold cuts and assorted meats! Truly you are a king among kings! I will miss the side of cole slaw and sour pickle, I’ll miss the fresh rye bread and pumpernickel. I will even miss the busy psychotic atmosphere and old yiddishisms yelled among hanging gardens of salami.
6) Tropical fruit. Anytime. Anywhere. At all.
Mangoes, bananas, coconuts, passion fruit, guava, avocado, orange, grapefruit, lemon, lime, pineapple, plantain. (Tear) For those of us living far enough north I think also of watermelons, honeydew, and cantaloupe
7) Bicycles
Let me refer you to the Queen song, “Bicycle”.
Doctors and modern medicine
I’m the last person to knock native medicine, herbalism, shamanic healing, et cetera but the truth is that that is lost knowledge for nearly all humans and won’t return full force for a good long time. Whoa is us who will have to suffer the consequences. Until then, hurray for antiseptics and surgeons!
9) Ice cream.
I suppose that I should file this with dairy but what the hell. I scream for ice cream, my friends. I scream. Ice cream of virtually any flavor. Praise the gods!!! Praise them I say!!!
That’s all for now, I’ll have to addend this list later on but whoa that’s a lot to miss and man is it making me hungry.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
“Something magical happens when you leave a certain radius of that filthy grotesque city wherein the quality of pizza drops off sharply and is only retained”
“old yiddishisms yelled among hanging gardens of salami.”
This is gold!
And heck yes for tropical fruit!
May 15th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
“4) Dairy!
Dairy, dairy, dairy! Feta, chevre, havarti, gouda, provolone, jarlsberg, cheddar, parmesan, mozzarella, yogurt, cream, butter, milk, CHOCOLATE MILK, more chocolate milk, and milk that is chocolaty. Why!? Oh good gravy why!? I will miss you most of all chocolate milk, for you I will shed many tears. ”
SOOOO NOT TRUE MY FREIND!!! so not true… we just had some cheese made right down the street from my house just today made this week… its excellent!
dairy products as a whole with exception of chocolate is all available and easily made by your self… all you need is a cow or a goat… and your set. They need to be milked daily… so its allways fresh.
even ice cream will be available during the winter at least…
and even here in the PNW there is a species of bannana not to mention the meyers lemon that can be grown very easily. tropical fruits can be and were grown in temporate climates by the romans in post conquest britian by planting them along side the south side of cob walls. cob absorbes heat and produces a subtropical microclimate for growing these hybrid tropical fruits. every thing thats grown in california can be grown here… ive seen meyers lemons growing yellow and dellicious in the snow!
kosher food isnt a problem either…
“I’m the last person to knock native medicine, herbalism, shamanic healing, et cetera but the truth is that that is lost knowledge for nearly all humans and won’t return full force for a good long time. Whoa is us who will have to suffer the consequences. Until then, hurray for antiseptics and surgeons!”
your not spending enough time with the right medicine people then! ive seen serious medical conditions healed instantly in healing ceremonies. there is also a slow medicine movment focused on local and regional non-oil dependency.
the re-wilding movement is accepting and working with permaculture and many other practices that will alow many things we love today to continue to flourish. The point i see now is that we need to look at what we want to flourish and why.
May 16th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I have to strongly disagree Marcus. First as for dairy. The future existance and availability of dairy is, I feel, incumbant upon the violence of the collapse. I believe that the collapse will be so immensly catastrophic and the living circumstances so marginal, dangerous, limited, horrific, and so on that - assuming any humans survive what so ever and cattle for that matter - the preoccupation with scout like stealth survival will be THE condition of life. There will be no room for any thing remotely like farm life or even room for any kind of domesticity that includes even horses. If your’ projection of the collapse is significantly less grom than mine then perhaps there would be dairy though I believe that even with a less violent collapse that such practices as domesticated animals, milking, etc will be abandoned for a truly wild life off the hoof. Now as for shamanic healing and herbalism it is certainly true that there are many truly proficient powerful healers out there, of that I have no doubt whatsoever. That however is so far from being the dominant confition that with the added weight of collapse and near extinction little of that will survive and what does will still take a very long time to normalize or return in any effectice way as an interated unit contained with in a whole and funtioning cultural horizon. These points are very arguable and so is the next one… Bananas although capable of growth in the PNW are not naturalized, even species like mullien and dandelion are naturalized but all of these plants grow only in transition zones and zones of disturbance, Infact virtually any non-native plant in any bioregion can (I can’t provide a proper citation here as I am working from memory but please check Derrick Jensens “Strangely Like War) be found in disturbance zones and never penetrate the healthy local ecosystems. Gotta run - will finish later. Keep it wild, Noah
May 16th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
“I believe that the collapse will be so immensly catastrophic and the living circumstances so marginal, dangerous, limited, horrific, and so on that - assuming any humans survive what so ever and cattle for that matter ”
thats a beleif and an asumption about a potential future…a grim one at that. im not to into beleifs and assumptions personaly. What i know though is that there are many people that are working around the world to transition into a localized bioregional life way, which has the potential to prevent such a collapse or at least ease the blow of such a collapse from occuring… if it does at all.
Your speaking as if there is no doubt in your mind that the future you beleive will happen and asume will happen will indeed happen.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
-Buckminster Fuller
people are doing this and taking these words to heart. I find that deeply empowering.
there has been talk on the bioregional animism tribe lately about rewilding and about ferals working along side people who are permaculturists and ecovillagers as well as urban sustainablity visions… i think all need to go hand in hand to prevent such a collapse.
there are also groups of people developing whats being called transition culture… transitioning from this current system to another… and its working…
http://transitionculture.org/shop/the-transition-handbook/
another group is also doing the same in the USA…
http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/3993
in thier own way.
“Bananas although capable of growth in the PNW are not naturalized, even species like mullien and dandelion are naturalized but all of these plants grow only in transition zones and zones of disturbance, Infact virtually any non-native plant in any bioregion can (I can’t provide a proper citation here as I am working from memory but please check Derrick Jensens “Strangely Like War) be found in disturbance zones and never penetrate the healthy local ecosystems.”
non-native plants can quickly or slowly naturalize, even out side of disturbance zones.
there is a couple of excellent articles on this subject in the new copy of permaculture activist magazine. check it out…
May 16th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
I simply find the evidence pointing overwhelmingly to the absolute imminence of a total system collapse. I can’t envision any other kind of future, it simply doesnt seem possible. As for dairy in a lithic future I wouldn’t want to use cows for milk as milking cows would necessitate domestication besides they’re better off as wild huntable meat. My perspective is pessimistic and bleak but it is mine none the less. Our perspective basically seems to hinge on our baseline projected vision of the future/collapse. My vision is bleak, therefore, no dairy, no fruit.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
yes its true my vision is less bleak. I pray that we will see the earth be restored via ethical relationships based on co-creation. I see it happening already, so i can’t really justify such a bleak vision myself any more. I used to, i really used to, but I realized that my own bleak vision of the future came from a sort of frustration caused helpless apathy. I didn’t want the whole thing to keep on going, it had to be destroyed under its own weight… now i want to transform it bit by bit, see it recycled, transformed into something healthy and conducive to beauty and joy, not pain and destruction like we see so much today.
Like I said its already, from where I am standing. I know this sounds harsh but the way i see it its as simple as being a part of the problem or a part of the solution theres no real neutral middle ground. So in some way I see bleak visions such as yours as a self fulfilling prophecy.
I see the same thing in Christianity. There is a hope for the end times so every one can be in the kingdom of heaven. In christianity you cant commit suicide to go to heaven so instead make the quality of life so poor that we actually create the apocalypse by contributing to the worlds problems. I am not saying your doing this, its just what i see end times movements and eschtological movements doing. I see future collapse as one of those in some way. apocolyptic wish fulfillment brought on by inaction towards focusing on change… walking away sounds to me much like throwing away, theres no “away” to walk towards. your still part of the problem if your not working to aid help out with the solutions. I see rewilding as a definite part of the solution, but depending on a future collapse for rewilding to happen is a destructive self fulling prophecy/ strategy IMHO…