If I were a novelist writing about the end of the
carbon-fueled era, I would open with someone going to buy a bottle of
vanilla extract.
"You'll have to break the bank," the clerk says.
This happened to me last week.
You've maybe seen vanilla prices have skyrocketed?
Four ounces for $25 (at Penzey's, which isn't the cheapest, but still, that's double the usual price). I only bought it because I had a Christmas gift card.
I looked it up, and the "culprits" are consumers demanding natural flavorings, and...
surprise, surprise,
climate change, or "extreme climate events" --cyclones hitting Madagascar.
{How did vanilla ever get the reputation as boring, when it's the bean of a tropical orchid?
How exotic can you get?
I haven't looked this up.
Maybe it's because it doesn't impart color to ice cream, unlike chocolate or strawberry?}
It's hard to stand outside our times, don't you think? and get perspective on historical turning points as they happen.
There are a million little things that ripple outward from huge events (the HIV/AIDS virus, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina), and a million mini-manifestations of massive but slow changes--manifestations such as the price of vanilla. Which ones are key? Hard to say until after the fact, eh?
Meanwhile, unless we're hit full on, we absorb the aftershocks, which is a good thing for our sanity!
Do worlds end, boom! just like that?
Probably mostly they fall like Rome: it wasn't built in a day, and it didn't fall in a day either.
I was thinking about this, reading Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure, the memoir of Langdon Gilkey of his time (1943–1945) as a young American man imprisoned by the Japanese in a civilian prison camp in northern China.
It's not a horror story of brutal treatment, like Unbroken--mostly the Japanese left the prisoners alone to govern themselves.
"Our problems were created more by our own behavior," Gilkey wrote, "than by our Japanese captors."
So it's really a meditation on human society. Mostly people adjusted pretty quickly to the new "normal," as people do.
That's all very interesting, but I'm mentioning the book here because of something that happens at the end.
Gilkey and the others––1/3rd Americans, 2/3 British––had no news about what was happening during the war.
When the war ends, the freed prisoners can't go home right away, so they all stay in camp as the British and US armies prepare to send them on their way.
But not necessarily back "home."
Gilkey writes (p. 221):
It's also normal––and my favorite podcast, Hidden Brain, talks about this too––that we humans are programmed to ignore or adjust to shocks.
Unless, of course, they come too hard and too fast.
Vanilla prices, I can absorb.
But I'm adding to my imaginary future-world, in which I sit around a campfire with other survivors of climate disaster (or whatever) and list things we miss:
Hot running water!
Escalators.
Vanilla.
"You'll have to break the bank," the clerk says.
This happened to me last week.
You've maybe seen vanilla prices have skyrocketed? Four ounces for $25 (at Penzey's, which isn't the cheapest, but still, that's double the usual price). I only bought it because I had a Christmas gift card.
I looked it up, and the "culprits" are consumers demanding natural flavorings, and...
surprise, surprise,
climate change, or "extreme climate events" --cyclones hitting Madagascar.
{How did vanilla ever get the reputation as boring, when it's the bean of a tropical orchid?
How exotic can you get?
I haven't looked this up.
Maybe it's because it doesn't impart color to ice cream, unlike chocolate or strawberry?}
It's hard to stand outside our times, don't you think? and get perspective on historical turning points as they happen.
There are a million little things that ripple outward from huge events (the HIV/AIDS virus, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina), and a million mini-manifestations of massive but slow changes--manifestations such as the price of vanilla. Which ones are key? Hard to say until after the fact, eh?
Meanwhile, unless we're hit full on, we absorb the aftershocks, which is a good thing for our sanity!
Do worlds end, boom! just like that?
Probably mostly they fall like Rome: it wasn't built in a day, and it didn't fall in a day either.
I was thinking about this, reading Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure, the memoir of Langdon Gilkey of his time (1943–1945) as a young American man imprisoned by the Japanese in a civilian prison camp in northern China.
It's not a horror story of brutal treatment, like Unbroken--mostly the Japanese left the prisoners alone to govern themselves.
"Our problems were created more by our own behavior," Gilkey wrote, "than by our Japanese captors."
So it's really a meditation on human society. Mostly people adjusted pretty quickly to the new "normal," as people do.
That's all very interesting, but I'm mentioning the book here because of something that happens at the end.
Gilkey and the others––1/3rd Americans, 2/3 British––had no news about what was happening during the war.
When the war ends, the freed prisoners can't go home right away, so they all stay in camp as the British and US armies prepare to send them on their way.
But not necessarily back "home."
Gilkey writes (p. 221):
On a chilly gray day in mid-September, some four weeks after our rescue, a British colonel showed up to address the British subjects. His purpose was to tell them with all possible candor ... the reality they now had to face.
"In the three years since you left, [the colonel said] ... your small businesses... have been almost destroyed beyond repair. Everything that has not been shattered, has passed into Chinese hands. There is little or no hope of reparations with which to get started again.Gilkey goes on to reflect that while it doesn't usually happen--BOOM--just like that, it's normal in human history that eras and empires and ways of life end.
"Above all, I must say to you with all the force and authority at my command, that the days of 'colonial life' in Asia are over.
"Those of you whose roots lie in China alone had best resign yourselves to the loss of the old life. An era has ended, and with it has ended your own past lives.
I'm sorry, but these are the facts."
It's also normal––and my favorite podcast, Hidden Brain, talks about this too––that we humans are programmed to ignore or adjust to shocks.
Unless, of course, they come too hard and too fast.
Vanilla prices, I can absorb.
But I'm adding to my imaginary future-world, in which I sit around a campfire with other survivors of climate disaster (or whatever) and list things we miss:
Hot running water!
Escalators.
Vanilla.
Wow, your post was quite the read. In mirror form, the Japanese interned in the U.S. lost their businesses to the Chinese, ill feeling about this understandably persisted for many years after the war.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that was why vanilla prices are so high when I went to buy some this fall. Years ago on a trip to Mexico, my mother bought some vanilla in Mexico. I remember being amazed about it as the bottle was so large and smelled so good. Those days are gone!
ReplyDeleteShantung Compound sounds like an interesting read. Memoirs are actually becoming my favorite reading.
Kirsten
SPARKER: Yes, that (the plight of Japanese Americans in WWII) fits with Gilkey's point that "the end of an era" is a pretty *common* event in history.
ReplyDeleteKIRSTEN: "Vanilla"--could be the topic of one of those "Follow One Thing to See A Whole Lot of History" books---like "Salt", or "Cod", etc.
Shantung Compound is an intellectual memoir--the history of the evolution of Gilkey's thinking--he went on to become a liberal theologian and wrote this looking back, 20 years later.
I didn't agree with his main conclusion (that we need God, in order to weather the winds of change), and some of the social norms he observes are dated, but it was overall fascinating.
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ReplyDeleteI just found really good madascar vanilla ar Home Goods for $8. It was a good sized bottle. Also found a guy at farmers market last year selling the best priced I’d seen in awhile. I bought 4 for $10 and made 2 cups of vanilla extract in a cheap small bottle of vodka. It took 6 weeks to steep but that will last me a very very long time!
ReplyDeleteAlmost every time I soak in a hot bath, I think "this is what I'll miss when the world falls apart".
ReplyDeleteThis morning I was having my morning talk with the dog (because he likes to wake up slowly and take his time getting out of bed) and I was telling him that collapse of civilization wouldn't be good for him. Where would we get his allergy meds? How would we get his nails trimmed? How would we treat mange?
I haven't heard anyone say this before, but it occurred to me that--since we can't make positive changes regarding climate change for children; to save the bees or polar bears--maybe we should start pointing out how badly our pets would do as climate refugees or in a zombie apocalypse. After all, what is more motivating than a hurt or dying puppy?
SANDY: My auntie makes vanilla extract with beans & vodka too!
ReplyDeletebink: Aaargh yes, the plight of pets in disaster areas--I can't bear to think of it.