Thanksgiving feast!

First and foremost, there's a lot of stuff that has been going on lately. From lots of really crazy ideological clashes in the political sphere, to students and other youth rightfully frustrated with today's status quo, I want to take the time to say what I'm thankful for. More than anything, I can't begin to express my whole-hearted gratitude to my friends and family who have supported me all this time (despite a slightly unconventional lifestyle), and for being so loving to Ian as well. Living in the heart of the gay neighborhood in one of the most gay-friendly cities in the world, it's easy to forget how life is for a lot of other LGBT youth out there. My Australian friend recently shared a video with me created by an Australian organization pushing for full marriage equality (they already have civil partnerships in some states or de-facto same-sex relationship recognition across the other states/territories with no 'bans'). One of the most beautiful videos I've seen in a while, and it made me cry:

There's a lot that could be said for the US with regards to gay rights and equality ... but I won't start. Instead, I'll take the time to remember that for a lot of other LGBT people out there in the world, it would mean the world to them to have a quarter of the rights that I do. I'm not saying it's okay to simply rest on our heels now - I think the US could be, and should be, much better than how we are now ... just that I'm thankful for all of the blood, sweat, and tears (literally) that have given me what I have today.

So before I dive into the Thanksgiving dinner and festivities, the other day Ian found one of the feijoa fruits that had dropped off of the bush !

Smooth skin (like a kiwiberry), with guava-like inside. Squeeze it out to have a taste of the crunchy, tangy, and floral sweet fruit. This one was a little young and may have dropped a little early, but we have other much larger (ping-pong ball sized) fruit coming all over the bush, so I'm excited!

Also, Ian surprised me with tickets to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 at the historic Castro Theater. It was absolutely beautiful inside .... ornate paintings from the SF World Expo when the Palace of the Fine Arts was built after the great earthquake and fire, carved wood detailing, gold accents - this was a theater built for when going to the movies was a special occasion and not an everyday experience. How wonderful it was to sit in there!

Recognize that building in the wall painting? It's the Palace of the Fine Arts here in San Francisco (in the Marina District)

Chandelier above 

The best part of all, though? THERE IS A GUY WHO PLAYS THE ORGAN BEFORE THE MOVIE STARTS! How cool is that? He rose up out of the ground on a platform to play some musical selections from Harry Potter, as well as some holiday music! What fun he must have!

Now for Thanksgiving! It's my favorite holiday of the year, and we decided to have it at Ian's dad's new house as a housewarming. We prepped some of the stuff at our apartment and finished off the cooking at the house ... all in all, I think it turned out really well :)

Ian preparing the stuffing-stuffed butternut squash at our place

We started off with a cheese plate of three cheeses ... an Irish aged cheddar (forget which one?), an aged gouda (deliciously nutty and crunchy), and our favorite farm-style fresh cheese: the "Ladysmith" from Samish Bay Cheese up in Skagit River Valley in Washington state. When we were on our berry hunt for jam making while living in Seattle, we went to the tiny little cheese room that was Samish Bay Cheese ...  I was so excited to see their cheese at our local market here in SF. It turns out, the daughter of the two owners of Samish Bay Cheese actually lives just down the street from us!

Roasted brussels sprouts and carrots with bacon and prosciutto (for that nice smokey flavor), and homemade rosemary-thyme gravy with the roasted turkey breast drippings

Roasted green and yellow beans with pearl onions and a lemon herb sauce

Roasted turkey breast, nice and moist, from a local northern California farm

Wild mushroom stuffing stuffed butternut squash ... this was my favorite!

We also had a crockpot roasted ham and an excellent apple pie and pumpkin pie from Bi-Rite Bakery (just down the street from our apartment). Along with some local California red wines and dessert Port by Heitz Cellars in Napa, we had some indispensable sparkling apple cider for me.

All ingredients more or less from local farms to celebrate the agricultural bounty that is California!

And then the best part came ... Thanksgiving leftovers the next morning. Don't mind if I do! ;-)

飲茶思源: My guiding philosophy

I came across these four characters today ... 飲茶思源

Translated literally, it doesn't really make sense: "drink tea, think source". A more accurate interpretation is that of "when one drinks tea, one thinks of its source"

Obviously the message extends beyond just the beverage ... that is, no matter your success in life, don't forget where you came from. It seems deceptively simple - make a great living for yourself, stay humble, right? But to me, there's even more to that. It extends itself to be applicable to something much more fundamental to what's lacking in American society ... the ability to think beyond the self to truly consider how we got to where we are.

We are undoubtedly a culture that prides itself on its individualist ethic and "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" philosophy. That's wonderful. But somewhere along the way, we've become too smug with ourselves. We start to think that we all somehow magically worked hard on our own to deserve all of the luxuries that we enjoy now, and lose sight of everything and everyone that helped us along the way. More importantly, it bothers me that we start to think that we deserve and others don't, and that we shouldn't have to contribute to give others the same social support structures that helped us out (i.e. like paying taxes to fund the millions of public services that we, both rich and poor, use but take for granted and don't even think about). To claim that we do everything on our own is, I think, at the very least quite naïve.

Let me put this to a concrete example: Yesterday was the voting day for municipal elections here in San Francisco (various ballot measures/propositions, mayoral election, etc). In all honesty, I was considering not casting my ballot because, what difference does it make, right? But I had a nagging inkling in my brain that was telling me that people all over the world fight and die for the right to participate in something as seemingly trivial as a municipal election. What does this have to do with my 飲茶思源 philosophy, though?

Well, one of the ballot measures was a proposition to make it so that school enrollment priority would be given to those who live closest to the school. It seems like a pretty logical proposal - that is, if the academic playing field were already even. The reality is that with propositions like these, only kids whose parents can afford to live in certain neighborhoods can go to certain schools. With public schools largely funded by property taxes, this means that expensive neighborhoods which generate a lot of property tax then create schools with lots of funding. The opposite is equally true: neighborhoods that have low property values subsequently have low-funded educational programs. I am a perfect example of this case ... I grew up in an upper middle class, gated, golf-course and mountain preserve backed suburb. I went to excellent public schools only because I happened to live in that neighborhood (our schools were closed-border districts). How is this fair? I did nothing to "deserve" a better chance at a full-ride scholarship to college, the free time to pursue impressive neurological institute internships and resume-building extracurriculars than somebody who lived on the other side of the mountain from me.

This always bothers me. It's so easy to think that I deserved my scholarship because I studied hard, did well in school, and planned ahead. Likewise, it's so easy to think that the other kid slacked off or was lazy and unambitious which is why he/she is unable to pull him/herself out of their less fortunate circumstances. But what about the idea that perhaps that kid couldn't get stellar grades because instead of studying in a quiet bedroom with a large desk around, he had to worry and make sure that his mother was taking her medication and his brother would get home safely and not get caught up in the gang war just outside their door in the neighborhood. Or that the same kid couldn't pursue impressive internships and extracurriculars because he was too busy simply working nights at the 24-hour diner to pay for food and the bills that his family could hardly afford, let alone textbooks and school supplies.

The average American's solution to all of this is to simply point a finger at the exceptionally rare instances of a scant handful of people who satisfy this "rags to riches" narrative we like to perpetuate. We're a culture that values sensationalism, and we indoctrinate kids at such a young age with this ... the Cinderella story for one. We say, "those people did it with their hard work ... so anybody can". But we make those rare instances seem so commonplace with all of our hype, and then give ourselves the "okay" to not have to think about what we truly did to deserve what we have or where we're at in life, and then end up actually convincing ourselves that we did everything on our own. I had posted a video of a talk Elizabeth Warrens gave where she put it pretty plain and simple: you build a big factory and make lots of money from it because your business does well, by all means, good for you. Great job. But you transported your goods to market on the roads that we [taxpayers] built, had your business thrive because of the police forces and military forces funded by all of us that kept your factory safe, received an education that was subsidized by the government (yes, even private universities), and were given opportunities in your life because of the risk you could afford to take because of the social safety net that we all put in place. Is it too much to ask that you pay it forward for the next person?

When I drink tea, I do think of its source ... I'm humbled by how incredible it is that this thousands-year-old practice is still done pretty much the same way, and how a leaf on a plant can be crafted to taste so different depending on its origins. But the philosophy is much more than that. It's about understanding that we don't all start off the same, and where we get to is already largely determined by the circumstances that we are born into. By all means, our choices do affect where we go in life and how we get to where we do ... but they operate within a framework which has very real boundaries (both figuratively and literally, in the case of the school boundary proposition on the municipal election ballot). We alone do not determine our outcomes, despite what we Americans would like to believe.

I think we'd do wise to understand that.

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