Making Blackberry Wine: Part 2, Featuring Science!

I have (successfully, I hope) completed step two in making blackberry wine (challenge no. 9). This is the fun step, when the fermenting begins.

When we last left off, I had combined my crushed berries, simple syrup and yeast in a bucket and let it sit for seven days.

Last night I strained that mixture through some cheesecloth into my carboy (a gallon glass jug) using a funnel. Then I added some more simple syrup (I dissolved 1 3/4 cups of sugar in 2 cups of boiling water and then LET IT COOL before adding it to the jug). Lastly, I attached the airlock to the top of the jug. It looked something like this:

    

 And THEN this started happening:

It is the carbon dioxide being sucked out that is creating the bubbling effect. 

Things will stay just like this for ten days. I'm crossing my fingers that everything goes smoothly and that I have some delicious blackberry wine by next Thursday night. 

Government Procedural Reforms: Part 1

Oooh, sexy title. I can sense your excitement. Get ready for some titillating political discussion.

Right here and right now I will outline the first two (out of an eventual ten) procedural reforms for challenge no. 4, which is to "research and identify 10 procedural reforms that would help move congress and the executive office back to being a government of the people and for the people."

So here they are:

1. ALL POLITICAL DONATIONS ARE TO BE 100% ANONYMOUS TO BOTH THE REPRESENTATIVE AND THE PUBLIC.

There is widespread financial corruption in our government. This is no secret. Currently, our representatives know exactly who is giving them money, and in many cases, that money buys results. It's as simple as that. Well, what if the members had no idea who gave them what? To quote Lawrence Lessig from Republic, Lost:

"If the problem with money in politics is that money will bend politics, this requires that the politicians know something about who their money comes from. Add anonymity, and that essential condition gets removed. Remove that essential condition and it could just not be true that money buys results. If we could make it impossible (or really, really difficult) for a member to know who gave his campaign what, we would make it impossible for the member to give favors in exchange for the gifts that have been given."

This, in theory, is genius. There are obvious drawbacks (it could greatly reduce the overall amount of funding that is contributed), but if we could develop a working system of anonymity (for example, where a lump donation is scattered into different amounts), then our representatives will not be able to act out of promises made.

"Sure, I could tell you that I contributed $10,000 to your campaign, but if you couldn't be sure, there wouldn't be much reason for you to respond. My incentive to give would thus be weakened substantially, at least if the motive of my gift were to buy a particular result. That decline in incentives would thus weaken the market for buying policy."


2. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION BILL QUOTA.

Congress must address a predetermined number of bills that benefit the environment in some way. This one is pretty self explanatory.

Results Are In

This past school year I became a tutor for Reading Partners, a program where I was able to partner up with an elementary student and help that struggling individual improve their reading skills. This is the path I chose in order to complete challenge no. 21 (permanently and positively enrich the life of a child without financial contribution).

My experience was insanely positive, and yesterday it was made even more so when I received the results of our volunteering:

"We are pleased to announce that 88% of students served accelerated their rate of learning."

These are pretty outstanding results, especially considering that this was Reading Partner's first year in NYC.

I performed one of my many jigs in celebration.

Eight Months In: Progress Report

Four months left. Feeling the pressure. Looks a lot like this:

Look! I made a pie chart to put my eight months of challenges into perspective:

Since nine out of my thirty challenge involve doing something daily or weekly, I won't be able to cross those off until the very last day. 

Now for a more detailed breakdown. The challenges in blue are the ones I'm actively working on. The challenges in green are the ones that are completed. The challenges in purple are the ones that I haven't started but are "in the works" or being planned out.

1. Do yoga three days a week.
2. Give a stranger $100. Film it and post it on YouTube.
3. Eat 29 cupcakes in 29 days and write a review of each. 
4. Research and identify 10 procedural reforms that would help move congress and the executive office back to being a government of the people and for the people. Print these 10 reforms on handout cards and distribute to anyone and everyone you know. Post them on your Facebook page and website. 
5. Travel overseas, ride trains only, and put together a collection of photos titled "Window Seat."
6. Sit in silence and stillness each morning for 15 minutes before you start your day.
7. Write and direct your own short film and submit it to a film festival.
8. Spend one night in a women's shelter, make a connection and offer to take family portraits.
9. Make and bottle your own wine. Save it for a future birthday.
10. Lie down on your back in a NYC street and pretend to be a dead bug. 
11. Write a sad story about a girl who gets the things she always wanted -- on your typewriter.  
    
12. Make a conceptual photo series, preferably a book. 
13. Your 27th and 28th years were characterized by massive life changes that included a move and job change; my challenge is make one more life change. I'm not going to define it, but some suggestions would be: take another step with Austin, get a friend for Dagmar, get involved with something you care about in an incredibly inconvenient capacity.
14. Take flying lessons.
15. Do 200 crunches and three 1-minute planks every other day. And assist your scared, almost-grad cousin in finding a job in Atlanta. 
16. End every day by writing down one positive thing that happened in the previous 24 hours.
17. Learn how to perform an authentic Japanese tea ceremony.
18. Get a photo (or photos) into a gallery/showing AND/OR sell one of your photos.
19. A year-long water challenge: Drink 1 liter of water per day, wade across a stream, swim across a pool, row across a lake or pond, and fly across an ocean.
20. Make and bring your lunch 2 out of 5 days a week.
21. Manifest yourself in an act of humanitarianism that permanently and positively enriches the life of a child. The act may not be accomplished with direct financial, but must involve sacrifice of your time and attention.
22. Research your Jewish heritage going back at least four generations. 
23. Pay one compliment to a different person every day.
24. Raise a basil plant and name it Kyle.
25. Take an art class and create an original painting.
26. Keep a Smash Book (scrapbook) for the year.
27. Write words (the grouping of letters that hints of story and promise), even if it's only one line or thought or idea, in a momentary embrace of lapse of reason, everyday, and incorporate these words into a future novel.
28. Learn to sew, design an outfit, make it, do a self-portrait in it.
29. Attend 10 religious services. Record your impression of each.  
30. Write the first chapter of your first novel and the outline. Submit to a publisher.

Kyle's Organic Upgrade

Kyle (challenge no. 24) is getting taller and greener every day after a few weeks of being rather ill. It was user error on my part as I placed him on the window sill behind the bedroom curtain and then forgot he was there. He was not happy with me after that and gave me the silent treatment for days. Then it was brought to my attention that plants need to be fertilized. So I (organically) fertilized the s**t out of him to make up for my previous neglect. He perked right up after that. I love my little coked out basil plant:

Making Blackberry Wine: Part 1

I have berry juice under my fingernails as I type this. Last night I began my blackberry wine-making journey (challenge no. 9). Here's how it went down:

1. I gathered my blackberries (4 1/2 pounds). Picked fresh from the Whole Foods tree. Or bush. Whatever.

2. I crushed the berries by hand in a polyurethane pale from my local home brewing store (which I sanitized prior to using) and then poured on one quart of boiled water that had cooled to room temperature. I mixed it well.

3. I crushed one Campden tablet (kills any unwanted yeast), dissolved it in a bit of warm water and added it to the fruit mixture.

4. Leaving the mixture alone for two hours, I took 1 + 2/3 cups of sugar and boiled it for one minute in three pints of water (48 ounces). I allowed this to cool to room temperature.

5. Once it cooled, I emptied a packet of yeast into 4 ounces of warm water and let it sit for 10 minutes.

6. Finally I added the syrup (sugar water) into the pulp, followed by the dissolved yeast. I covered the bucket with some paper towels (it called for cheesecloth but I didn't have any).

The next step is to let it sit for 7 days in a "warm place." Hopefully the temperature inside my apartment will suffice. I'll post an update in a week with the progress and next steps.

If you want to see the instructions I'm using throughout this whole process, click here.

Baha'i There

Preface: This post contains what are commonly referred to as "opinions." No offense is intended.

For religious service number eight out of ten (challenge no. 29), I attended the 11:00 service at the Baha'i ("bah-high") center near Union Square in Manhattan.

I never thought that common sense and religion could or should belong in the same sentence, but Baha'i got the closest to accomplishing that connection for me. The Baha'i faith revolves around the principle of unity and that God has sent nine messengers throughout history, including Abraham, Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Jesus Christ and Mohammed. While the rest of the world separates these prophets into different religions, Baha'is believe that they were each sent by the same God to reach different peoples of the earth. I have always wondered...would I be Muslim if I happened to be born in Iraq? A diehard Catholic if I were from Italy? Why does the location of your birth so often dictate what God you believe in? If I was born in a place where Christianity did not exist and I was never exposed to it, does that mean I am damned to hell in the eyes of Christians?

The space at the Baha'i Center of NYC was a small-ish room with a circle of chairs around a table of prayer books in every language you could imagine. We began with introductions. The people in attendance were from China, Russia, Bolivia, Bulgaria, England, Jamaica, Ethiopia, and the United States. The atmosphere was completely relaxed. There was about a half hour of prayer, at which time any member could recite something from a book or from memory or sing, if they felt so inclined. Then we launched into an hour-long discussion of the day's topic: The importance of religion. It was a classroom-esque forum where one person called on others to speak.

Within minutes, my mind was racing with these things called "thoughts." I have them from time to time, but hardly ever does a religious service bring so many to the surface.

One such thought was that so often religious peoples act out of fear. They fear going to hell, so they try to live what they consider to be "good." They fear what others in their community will think of them, so they show up to church every Sunday. They fear other religions, so they close their eyes and their ears to what others have to say.

From what I could gather in my short experience on 11th Street, Baha'is don't act out of fear. They act out of the desire to better humanity and to spread peace and understand throughout the world. They believe the purpose of religion is to establish order in the world and the peaceful contentment of all that dwell therein. Baha'u'llah (the founder of the Baha'i faith) wrote, "Should the lamp of religion be obscured, chaos and confusion with ensue, and the lights of fairness, of justice, of tranquility and peace cease to shine."

To learn more about the Baha'i faith, visit www.bahai.org.