Opinion

Instead of the title under my name on this column, it should say, “written by someone who has ruined more cookies than you’ve eaten”. There’s something soothing about baking. It’s because it’s complicated, because it requires focus and proper measurements and methods, it pulls your focus onto the task at hand, while allowing you to set aside other worries. At least that’s what I tell myself every time I set my oven to 350 degrees in preparation of destroying yet another batch of cookies.

I’m a very lucky guy. My family’s healthy. They pay me to do things I love. And my six-year-old daughter consistently ranks me as strongest man in the house. Also, once a year, I take a bit of time off and we spend time on this island. The island is tropical and lush and volcanic. People refer to the island in all sorts of ways but perhaps the phrase I hear most often is: almost paradise.

The gardening saga continues as I wait patiently for the seeds planted indoors to start. For a few days, the only things that had sprouted were the mustard greens, and watching all the rest of the trays remain solidly dirt, I started to feel a little discouraged. Perhaps I had not done enough research. Alas, a few more sprouted, and then I went away for the weekend.

The change of seasons always inspires me to do what my kids always refer to as “the purge”. Because I’m aware that I need to move the winter clothes out of the main closet and the warmer weather clothes back in, that means that it’s also time to go through everything not worn enough to justify keeping and finally get rid of those purchases that I wore perhaps one or two times.

I went to the Met recently to see Beethoven’s “Fidelio” and hang out with 3,800 very well-dressed patrons to see a passionate story about political tyranny but mainly to see the soprano Lise Davidsen who is worth the price of admission and more, especially when surrounded by the Met chorus, mostly men, imprisoned for political crimes but nonetheless in gorgeous voice. As for Lise, architects have designed enormous opera houses and finally they’ve designed a singer whose voice fills it so you feel it even in the cheaper seats.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about values. Not just as a word, but as an invisible force that shapes our lives. Values are the foundation of civilization, the unspoken contract that binds us together. They define who we are, not just as a society, but as a family. We stand for something. We believe in something. Without values, we are lost—adrift in a sea of moral relativism.

I’ve had an easy life, like canoeing down a river, one mile leads to the next, Tuesday follows Monday, obey the rules, portage around dams, don’t approach alligators unless their eyes are closed, and don’t argue with men with large eyebrows carrying shotguns.

I’ve fully committed to yet another year of trying to grow vegetables and herbs. Thus, over the weekend, I carefully went through all of the seed packets, and looked up all the information on starting each individual kind of seed, figuring out which ones need to be started indoors, and which need to be put directly into the ground.