A Bean Grows in Roy Lab

Bohnchen = little bean (german)
Originally uploaded by littlee.

I am not normally prone to indulge in conspiracy theories, but I cannot keep myself from whipping up a nice one to explain the eerie power of The Grandma Bean. Like some force of nature whose schemes play out on a time scale too great for our feeble minds to grasp, I imagine The Bean patiently waiting as endless centuries pass, biding its time until it assumes its rightful place as the all powerful, all knowing legume king…

…eons creep by and each spring The Bean dutifully sprouts in the warming soil, climbs up trees, crawls over bushes, and eventually, when some lowly human discovers its pods are good eatin’, it obligingly spirals up an A-frame of bean poles…

…all the while, The Bean is satisfied with this low-profile existence, happy just to be taking up a small patch of ground in some scenic corner of the Mediterranean coast. Its contentment drawn from an unwavering certainty that some day, it will grow on every continent of the globe, planted in elegantly painted pots and nourished by the richest soil. Pilgrims will bring spring water from their distant lands and surrounding plant life will be kept in constant check so that The Bean is never shaded from sun’s rays.

Or not.

Maybe The Bean actually is just your average green bean, best when picked early, steamed lightly and served with lemon, garlic and olive oil. But really, it does seem a little spooky the way The Bean has spread over the course of only a couple of Bianchi-Campodonico generations. Hear me out on this one.

As its name implies, The Grandma Bean’s most recent genealogy traces back to my mom’s grandmother, who grew them in her well-tended garden in Roseville, California. To add to the romance and intrigue of The Bean, I like to think that Roseville Grandma carried a pocket full of bean seeds all the way across the Atlantic when she emigrated from Italy early last century. I have no proof that this is the case - she probably just dried out some beans she bought at the market in Roseville and planted them the next spring. But hey, conspiracy theories are all about drama, and what’s more dramatic than being a stowaway on a trans-Atlantic voyage?

( Conspiracy theory update, 22 June 2005. Recent intelligence gathering efforts have confirmed that The Bean did actually travel across the pond from Roseville Grandma's home town of San Ginese di Compito in Tuscany. A crafty bean indeed. Thanks for the info, Ma.)

In the decades following The Bean's happy years in the hot Roseville sun, it has spread quietly to Walnut Creek, momentarily back East to West Virginia when Mom and Dad did their ‘60’s thing, then back to Berkeley when three kids in a barn didn’t seem like that much fun afterall. In Piedmont, The Bean thrived and sensing that its moment of world domination was almost at hand, The Bean engineered its transport to many gardens throughout the Bay Area, including that of Mom’s manicurist Lu.

And finally, last summer, The Bean traveled east again where it took up residence in the posh, climate controlled, irrigated beds of the Yale Forestry School green house. Having re-crossed the continent, it appeared that The Bean's long-destined spread had now begun.

But alas! With the graduation of Michael, a.k.a. the guy with keys to the green house, The Bean had nowhere to grow this year. The sandy patch of lawn in front of my apartment is hardly fit for the grass that struggles to grow there and the handful of seeds I collected last year sat gathering dust in a weighing dish on my desk.

Here’s where The Bean’s crafty ways become more apparent. Earlier this spring, unaware of my role in The Grand Scheme, I wandered about my lab handing out bean seeds to people, explaining that in my family, these bean seeds were used in a game known simply as "Beaning." The single object of this game is to place these beans in the pockets, wallets, suitcases, etc... of the unsuspecting and wait for them to be discovered. In addition, vigilance to prevent oneself from being beaned is also key. That's it.

“Go forth and bean,” said I.

Days later, one such beaned individual name Bithi removed the bean from her pocket and placed it on the windowsill in her bathroom. Soon after that, some workmen doing repairs in her bathroom placed the bean on the soil of a potted plant nearby to clear their work area. Nature took its course and within a matter of days, Bithi came running to me in lab, anxiously clutching a yogurt cup full of dirt that now held the germinated bean seed.

“What do I DO?! I can’t grow anything! The plant in the pot where this thing sprouted died as soon as I brought it home! HELP!”

Bithi wanted me to take the bean away from her. She couldn’t bare killing it, she said, not after it had sprouted to life so miraculously laying atop the soil with no water or care. (Who gets this emotional about a volunteer plant? I’m telling you, it’s the POWER of THE BEAN.) I agreed to adopt the bean, but I also told her about the grand plant that this little bean would become.

“It’ll make Grandma Beans, er, green beans, I mean. They’re really good picked early, steamed lightly and eaten with lemon, garlic and olive oil. It just needs a bigger pot and some string to climb.”

A few days later, Bithi came to take the bean back. She also said that if I wouldn’t mind, her mom down in Philadelphia would also like some beans seeds to plant and did I think they would be good for Indian cooking?

Pretty soon everyone in lab wanted to plant the beans I’d handed out. Sunny wanted them to plant in her back yard in Hamden, Sunghita wondered if they’d do okay in planter boxes on her fire escape, and Laurent wanted to plant them throughout his apartment to green up the place. Bean fever had set in.

Kristy took to the task with true scientific discipline. After interviewing me thoroughly on all aspects of bean germination and rearing, she headed to the nursery for supplies. As suggested, she carefully installed a trellis of string and eye hooks up the wall by her desk in lab. Each day, she reported to me with the latest developments,

“The soil’s kind of lumping up a bit. I think the bean is starting to grow. I only planted two days ago.”

“Is it normal for the bean to grow six inches in 24 hours?”

“Um, the bean has reached to top of the string and it won’t stop growing. Can I make it stop? It’s starting to grow in the levolor blinds and it’s spreading over into Kim’s bay.”

I didn’t really know what to tell her. My only experience was with my dad’s beans that were grown outdoors, surrounded by lots of other plants competing for nutrients, water and sunlight. Kristy’s bean was alone in a large pot sitting in the direct sun of her third floor window, growing in fancy potting soil laced heavily with Miracle Grow. Kristy’s bay mate Anja, perhaps following habits developed tending to her constantly hungry two-year-old son Tim, watered and clucked over the bean constantly. This thing might become a monster.

Much to her public dismay and private joy, Kristy’s bean did not and has not stopped growing. The levolors are now bending to make room for the bulky vines and more eyehooks and string have been installed to allow the bean to grow across the window. As I see it, this bean is not too far from attaining its species’ long-awaited position as a sacred legume of considerable influence. While on vacation, Kristy has left us with a calendar of who's on watering duty when. Though the hot summer days have caused most of us to slow down a bit in lab, our brains too cooked to focus on too many things at once, those assigned to bean water duty can still be seen diligently trekking from sink to windowsill carrying the 250 ml beaker, specially reserved for this purpose. And while spectacular feats of molecular biology prowess may not elicit so much as a smile from the boss, one can now find 15 highly trained scientists clapping and cooing with delight each time a little white blossom falls, revealing a microscopic bean growing underneath.

Fortunately, The Bean’s power only extends so far. For example, it does not affect the long-established ordering of the food chain, leaving me free to sample my first bean yesterday. It tasted bean-like, though perhaps with a little bit of a “lab” finish. What that taste is, I’m not exactly sure. Probably just the slightly sour flavor of paranoia cause by the knowledge that every rule book ever written wisely screams “NO EATING IN LAB!!” There isn’t actually a subsection prohibiting the consumption of foodstuffs GROWN in the lab, but then again, it probably didn’t occur to those regulatory types that someone would do such an absurd thing. But under the spell of The Bean, there’s no telling what people will do…

There's no place like home...

Ah ha!
Originally uploaded by littlee.

The problem is, I can’t seem to figure out where HOME actually is. On June 12, the day before I flew west for my annual summer stint of patio lounging and fridge raiding at Hotel 519, I was pretty much certain that New Haven, Connecticut was my home. Some data in support of this hypothesis:

1. My recycling carton says “New Haven Recycles.” Or at least it did, before the brawny recycling collectors tossed/slammed it back onto the sidewalk one too many times. Now partially shattered, it appropriately reads “New Haven Rec.”

2. It is none other than New Haven’s harrowing potholes that I have memorized, knowing precisely when to swerve left on Prospect just before the hockey rink parking lot, and when to dodge right when crossing the intersection at College and Crown.

3. My running buddies and I congregate each Saturday at 9 a.m. at the corner of Cottage and Livingston in New Haven’s homey East Rock neighborhood. After running for no more than 30 minutes, we then saunter to Lulu’s Café at Cottage and Orange were we sit and gossip for no less than 2 hours. A strenuous morning, I tell you. And a morning spent doing things one does near home, no?

This is all solid data, if a tad correlative, suggesting that when my plane took off from Hartford on July 13th, my heart should have fluttered a bit with sadness as I watched the lush green hills and neat picket fences of the Hartford suburbs grew smaller and disappear.

But of course, anyone who has talked to me for more than five minutes since 1995 knows two things about me for sure. The first is that I’m from California. NORTHERN California. The second is that despite my love of many northeastern things, I view my time in New England as a period of self-inflicted exile of somewhat indefinite length. And I WILL BE MOVING BACK AS SOON AS POSSIPLE. Though I have tried to go easy on the nostalgic descriptions of Northern California’s food, weather and oak tree-dotted terrain, I have no doubt tortured many friends in Vermont, New York and Connecticut with lengthy tales of The West.

So. All this sounds an awful lot like The Golden State is still my real home, right? The place my conscious mind recalls when considering holidays at “home” and that my subconscious references in dreams when conjuring the life and circumstances of Eva, circa 2025. But how could this be? I’ve spent ten, formative adult years out here in the land of Red Sox vs. Yankees. I’ve developed a deep love of Central Park,
an appreciation for “real” seasons, and a somewhat quicker pattern of speech that only sparsely uses terms like “dude,” “like,” and “whatever.” What’s it going to take for me to feel at home on The Right Coast?

Not surprisingl, my two week stay in The Bubble did little to help me settle down and embrace my northeastern life.

On runs around Lake Merritt with Sophia, or while creeping through traffic towards the Bay Bridge toll plaza, things just made sense. There may be about a hundred times more Canada geese around the lake than I remembered, and the red construction cranes flanking the eastern span of the bridge may be a new feature, but the necklace of lights around the lake is the same and the smell of low tide hasn’t changed at all. Even if the new (to me) farmer’s market at the San Francisco Ferry Building was a bit overwhelming, the mindset of rabid foodies clustering around a stall of artisanal vinegar makes a lot more sense to me than the absolute refusal of Connecticut drivers to obey even the simplest laws of the road.

Long about June 23rd, my mind was relaxed, my three or four functioning neurons firing only when necessary to alert me to the appearance of the cat or the tasty aromas of dinner. I was in the full Northern California groove, which made getting on a plane on June 24th particularly confusing. Where was I going? Was there somewhere else I was actually supposed to be?! I couldn’t really remember what happened before the 13th. If I focused intently, scrunching my eyes shut, I could sort of remember there being a lot of science in my life. A LOT of science and a good deal of humidity, too. Rats. It was all starting to come back…

---

It has now been about two weeks since I claimed my car from the rather grandiosely named Executive VIP Airport Parking lot and cruised south down I-91 back to New Haven. Regaining my sense of residency in southern Connecticut has been slow and has encountered a few setbacks.

To start, my first thought was that no one in their right mind would make a place this hot and sticky their home. My first three days back, the mercury didn’t fall below 81 degrees in my apartment. Day time heat index adjusted highs around 90. Dewpoint was about 71. Eventually, I found my pile of shorts and tank tops and I reacquainted myself with the activity of constant perspiration.

My first week back also coincided with a period of housesitting for my vacationing advisor. As a fish-owning, apartment-renting pedestrian, my normal routine was upended by twice daily trips to West Haven to feed a very lonely cat, water what seemed to be several acres of lawn and planted garden and generally play the settled adult driving around in my advisor’s sedan with a baby car seat in the back. My home? My life? Where?!

But I think things are just about back to normal. This morning, Amy, James, John, Kirk, Peter and I all huffed and puffed our way around East Rock before setting up camp at Lulu’s with iced coffees all around. My fridge is full of non-gourmet food from Stop and Shop and I have an experiment going in lab. Turns out I have a rather interesting thesis going on back here that requires some attention.

I’m still not convinced that this is really home, regardless of what my mailing address says. I still don’t understand why people have to drive like such idiots, though I’m working on a theory. Last week, on one of my many trips to and from Craig’s house, I pulled up to a stop light a few blocks from my apartment. As Connecticut is a “No Turn on Red” state and New Haven’s traffic pattern is asinine, I had about five minutes to sit and inspect my surroundings. Eventually, my gaze settled on one of those unremarkable poles displaying all sorts of municipal notices about , bus stops, parking rules during snow emergencies and requirements for a residential zone 7 parking.

Squinting, I could see that at the very top of the pole was a signing reading “BUCKLE UP” with a cartoon of a stick figure wearing a seat belt. Hang on… IS that a stick figure? What is that? Why does that look like an ALIEN wearing a seat belt? Why is that alien pointing up? Is that E.T.?! What the hell is going on here?

When the light turned green, I pulled around the corner and parked. I grabbed my camera and took off down the street to inspect the BUCKLE UP sign more closely. What I found is posted above and is, I believe, very strong evidence in support of my new theory: the reason why New Haven drivers refuse to signal, why they run red lights with abandon and routinely drive the wrong way down one way streets isn’t that they’re inconsiderate human beings. It’s that they’re aliens, aliens who were taught to drive at an alien DMV that doesn’t care much about preventing bodily injury.

And the reason why I have not been able to adopt New Haven (or New England, for that matter) as my home despite 10 years of trying, is that this isn’t just the wrong town, it’s the wrong PLANET.