: Waste Not, Want Not
If there’s any one thing that makes me crazy (apart from the fact that the world is falling apart) it’s wasting food. We hates it! Seriously.
When I’m hungry and look in the fridge for something? I will instinctively choose the oldest leftover. When we go out to a nice restaurant? My favorite thing is when I have leftovers. Oh boy, I get to have a gourmet meal for lunch tomorrow. Yippee yay!
I will even eat food that I don’t care for to avoid wasting it but – I do have my limits. We had a package of veggie hotdogs left over from our 2019 4th of July party lying around in the back of our freezer. 2 years later I reluctantly threw them out – but even then I felt a bit guilty.
I know exactly how this behavior started. My mother grew up in the depression, her family was desperately poor. Food was precious and was never ever thrown out or wasted. It’s likely that this behavior would have been passed on even if there were no depression – seeing as my mom’s parents were from the old country and likely suffered even more before they immigrated. Regardless, that’s how I was raised. Apart from the standard “finish your dinner, children are starving in India” stuff, I don’t have any specific memories of being lectured about or punished for wasting food – it was just the air we breathed. Thou shalt not waste food.
I like to think that I’ve done a decent job of passing this on to my kids.
This attitude has spilled over into much of my daily life. I will walk or take mass transit if possible. Our cars are hybrid (wasn’t adventurous enough to get battery powered) – and we drive them until they fall apart. I wear clothes until they’re threadbare. I do not go out and buy the very latest technology (except for my composing needs). Indeed. I did not switch over from my ancient Motorola Flip Phone to my iPhone until I was literally forced to do so by my company. That constantly embarrassed my kids. “Dad! Why are you still using that old phone?”
We haven’t gone solar in our house. It doesn’t break even – due to limited roof space because of a large attic dormer facing south. Damn those turn of the century architects, why couldn’t they plan ahead? And speaking of houses, this is one area in which I am guilty of not following my principles. Now that Lisa & I are empty nesters, it makes no sense for us to be rattling around in our 110 year old 5 bedroom 3 story house. But the very thought of moving gives us mild panic attacks. So we do our best – we keep the thermostat at 68 in winter (brrr) and 74 in summer. But it’s still a wasteful extravagance. I assuage my guilt feelings by buying carbon offsets.
Have you done any serious assuaging recently?
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Short Story for Mixed Ensemble
I still have no upcoming concerts or appearances, but I have obtained a really good video of a concert performance of a new composition of mine. This concert (last November) was produced by the New York Composer’s Collective and featured the Exponential Ensemble (a woodwind trio) augmented with cello & piano. I was a bit nervous whether the piece would work. In rehearsal I had to drop a whole section because it was too difficult for the players (and these players were top notch professionals). Bad composer, Eric! Also, the room had a very noticeable echo to it.
But, the players did a super job. What’s more (and this is something that makes a composer happy) they “got it”. Watch the body language of the clarinet player in the opening segment – it’s subtle but you can see he’s feeling it. Here’s the video: Short Story for Mixed Ensemble