I should refrain from poking at controversial ideas at this hour of the morning, in public, before I’m quite ready to be politic or polite. I should, I know. But oh, I am contrary as a cat, and do so enjoy swatting at the curtains. So, here it is: I am dumbfounded, disturbed, distraught by the pervasiveness of scientific illiteracy. I’m reminded of it weekly at the farmers market by the dietary lectures I receive from customers and passers by. No, I say calmly, wheat is not toxic. Actually, I cut in, rye and barley also have gluten. Yes, I’m serious. So do the ancient wheats like emmer, spelt, and einkorn. Well, I reply, smiling with all my teeth, mutation drives evolution, as well as plant breeding, so no, I don’t think it’s "unnatural." And no, plant breeding that induces mutation with radiation does not produce “bad” food. (And dammit, stop trying to hide your fears behind pseudoscience! I refrain from adding, because I do have some small sense of self-preservation). But while swallowing the snake oil of quacks like Dr. William Davis and Dr. David Perlmutter may cause harm to people’s pocketbooks, and, more troublingly, to their food traditions, it’s no skin off my nose. Eat whatever makes you feel healthy, or safe, or morally superior. The problem is, scientific illiteracy doesn’t stop with the eager embrace of the latest dietary prophet cloaking their food religion in scientific terms. Respectable, mainstream media outlets consistently confuse hypothesis with theory, ignoring the complexity and contradiction of real science in favor of the easy story. Environmental and political activists (including those I respect and with whom I agree) often so abuse statistics as to undermine their credibility (and the maddening thing is, the science is there! There’s no need to cherry pick data on climate change or the public health consequences of economic inequality). The reason all this matters, the reason I get worried when a customer proselytizes their Google-searched diet, or when I read yet another article twisting a single study into Scientific Truth, is that such a fundamental misunderstanding of the scientific method and inability to distinguish science from pseudoscience leaves people vulnerable to truly dangerous anti-science campaigns like climate change denial and the anti-vax movement. The re-emergence of preventable diseases like rubella and diphtheria, and the lack of political will to reduce fossil fuel consumption even as we hurtle towards the apocalypse, are the inevitable consequence of such ignorance. Approach the world with curiosity and a critical eye. Ask questions. Challenge the orthodoxy of common wisdom. But oh, do so as an informed skeptic, and not as a dupe! All right. That’s enough damage done for one morning. If I’ve offended you, I hope you’ll challenge me rather than walking away. I don’t have time to debate with you at the farmers market, but send me an email, or invite me to coffee, and I’ll gladly engage! Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Black Sesame and Fennel Palmier Garden Pesto Twist Morning Bun Hazelnut Cake with Strawberries & Cream Granola Brown Butter Shortbread Wednesday Market Rosemary Sea Salt Mountain Rye Various pastries See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker I have come, recently, upon two very different ideas of loneliness. Hannah Arendt explores "organized loneliness" as the common ground for terror. The foundation for totalitarianism is laid, she argues, when people are separated from each other by ideology, and from reality by the inability to tell fact from fiction. Such isolation makes us, by definition, impotent. But isolation exists in the public and political realms. It is when private life, too, is taken, when "the most elemental form of human creativity, which is the capacity to add something of one's own to the common world" is destroyed, that isolation becomes loneliness. The Origins of Totalitarianism is as fiercely relevant now, as nationalism sweeps the Western world, as it was in the aftermath of WWII. But as I turn these ideas of isolation and loneliness, of community and the role of civil society in democratic life, over in my mind, it is not crowds I crave, but the solitude to think. In her essay, "When I Was a Child I Read Books," Marilynne Robinson writes of loneliness as a value of the American West. She writes of the loneliness of open spaces and of the night sky, of summers at her grandparents' home in Idaho, when "the cows came home, and the wind came up, and Venus burned through what little remained of the atmosphere, and the dark and the emptiness stood over the old house like some unsought revelation." Yes, I think, reading her words again. Yes, this is true. And when I closed my eyes, I savored the dark. The loneliness of wild places, of knowing myself so small I'm hardly there at all, places me firmly in the world. It is the opposite of isolation. Can this vast, heart-filling loneliness live side by side with the small, bitter loneliness born of fear and division? Can the loneliness of poets and mystics be cousin to the loneliness of despots and ideologues? We still live in the geometric world built by the Greeks, where the linear logic of Non Contradiction argues that if one definition is true, its opposite must be false. But string theory builds layers upon parallel layers to our reality, and even the empty spaces between the stars are now full. We need not settle for either/or. We live in a world wide enough to encompass both/and. Loneliness can be brutal and dehumanizing. In loneliness we may, at last, hear "the singing of the real world." And while I've been listening to Marilynne Robinson and hanging out in the kitchen, I've also done a little baking... Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Strawberry Rose Danish Black Sesame & Fennel Palmiers Morning Buns Croissants Granola Wednesday Market Oats & Honey Mountain Rye Brown Butter Shortbread and other pastries See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker More often than not, this newsletter is born on my ride home from the kitchen on Friday night. I do my best thinking while biking in the dark, and last night my brain was LOUD. I got up extra early this morning to translate all those jostling thoughts into ordered words, but having spent an hour lining them up in reasoned rows, I find I'm not ready to let them go. Some ideas need more than a single, hurried morning. So, for this week, you just get the menu. Next week, perhaps, I'll have something to say about the intersection between loneliness, Greek logic, and quantum physics. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Nibby Chocolate Sandwich Cookies with Hazelnut or Caramel Strawberry Rhubarb Galettes with Lebni & Rose Water Black Sesame & Fennel Palmiers Morning Buns Granola Wednesday Market Wild & Seedy Mountain Rye Brown Butter Shortbread and other pastries See you soon!
Sophie Owner | Baker When I was a child, I saw the magic at work in everything. The world was full of wonder, and the space between the physical and imagined was slim. There was little difference between the magic of tide pools, methodically explored in Tevas and fleece on an overcast afternoon, laminated species key in hand, and the magic of a backyard fairy land, where I might spend equally serious hours exploring the fairy kingdom and laying out offerings of flowers and tiny feasts in bowls carved from hard, green apples. I discovered worlds in the secret colors inside clam shells, in a geode's prickly center, in the lush abstractions of Georgia O'Keefe's erotic flowers, which I carried in a pocket-sized art book someone must have picked up at a museum gift shop. I kept beach stones and horse chestnuts for pets. But, of course, I grew up. In biology and physics classrooms, we learned the most beautiful theories, but never spoke of wonder. In English class, we read fiction, but wrote only critical essays. In turn, each subject closed its door on imagination. I learned many things in school, but forgot magic. Looking yesterday at the wild topography of the rye breads, I felt a sudden upwelling of nostalgia. The boules cooling on the rack before me were as beautiful as any purple-hearted clam shell. What stories might they hold? But it was a foolish question. If there are stories in my loaves, I will never find them now, grown up and educated as I am. And so I shook away the unsettling sense of loss and returned to my work. Saturday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye, Vollkornbrot, Country Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Nibby Chocolate & Hazelnut Sandwich Cookies Cardamom Rolls and Cinnamon Rolls Polenta Cake Granola Wednesday Market Red & White, Mountain Rye Bittersweet Chocolate and Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies Rolls of some variety Possibly something with strawberries Granola See you soon!
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