Hiatus

Every once in awhile, I come across a blog that just kinda ends – and I often wonder what happened to that blogger.  Did they go off on a solitary hike, and fall off a cliff? – were they the victim of a traumatic accident, and have lost the ability to continue their blogging activity?  Or did they suddenly just die?  That does happen, you know.

I can remember that scenario playing out with a blogging friend I had several years ago, who retired and upped and moved, all by herself to Mexico, where she literally started a new life – she had a blog about her experiences and I loved reading it – in fact, it was really my motivation to begin taking winter sojourns to Mexico.  But one day, my friend’s blog just ended.  Some time later, her son added a final post to her blog, explaining to all her readers that she had suffered a heart attack and passed away in her beloved Mexico.

Well I didn’t want to leave my readers -however few- with that same ‘sudden ending’ feeling that all blog readers inevitably encounter.  So this post is notice that I’ll be taking a blogging break, maybe just temporarily – we’ll let time decide how long.  I’m doing this because I’ve lost the sense of fun that blogging once held for me – and when that happens, there seems little reason to continue to force one’s self into production of mediocre posts.

And so I say, ’til next time’, and wish you all well – and here’s hoping that my inner muse repairs my spirit of blogging adventure and enjoyment – soon.

Momofuku’s Kim Chi

Question – What Asian dish has attained a cult popularity, but continues to scare the bejezus out of most diners?  If you guessed, Kim Chi -and I bet you did- you nailed it.  I’ve been eating Kim Chi for a long time now, but mostly a bite here, a bite there, kind of eating – it wasn’t until last year that I finally decided I liked the stuff, and frankly, it took a combo of incidents to turn the corner for me.

My serious introduction to all things fermented started a few years ago when I came home from heart surgery – the docs put me on a probiotic from the health food store, to build my immune system back up – and that started me doing some research into all those ‘good’ bacteria, and how we can keep them healthy and working on our behalf.  It came as a bit of a surprise that so many of the best probiotic fermented foods came right out of the garden – and another surprise that these were not a newly discovered medical breakthrough, but something that had been eaten for thousands of years – even more back then than today!

Last summer, I used a bunch of different veggies from my own garden to ferment and create probiotic foods – things like sauerkraut and dill pickles – and even more pickles of green tomatoes, garlic, and green beans – and yes, I also made some Kim Chi too.  Fermenting vegetables is as simple as it gets, which is the major reason why our ancestors did it – you sprinkle salt over the vegetables, put a loose lid on to keep the bugs out, and in a few days, you have fermented vegetables.  And you don’t even need the salt for fermentation to happen, the only reason for the salt is that it keeps the bad bacteria at bay until the good lactic acid bacteria can take over.

I learned a lot about fermented foods last summer – and in the process, I also learned why I wasn’t really a Kim Chi fan – sit tight, I’ll tell all.

Do you like sauerkraut?  I like it a lot.  Well, sauerkraut is Kim Chi’s brother – they are so similar, that really there is only one thing that separates them – chilies - you know, the hot ones!  Koreans -Kim Chi being Korean- eat some of the world’s hottest foods, bless their souls – believe me, I’m not a wimp – I eat my share of hot foods – but I can’t handle the Kim Chi that most Koreans eat.  And that was reason #1 why I didn’t really enjoy eating Kim Chi – it’s just usually too damn hot!

Reason #2?  Kim Chi is NOT one of those foods that improve with age.  It’s also not one of those foods that freezes well (ruins the texture), or that cans well (unless you don’t mind broken glass in your food), or that stays forever in your fridge.  The truth is that Kim Chi, just like all other fermented foods, never stops fermenting – and the process of fermentation changes the chemical structure of a food.  You can never stop Kim Chi from its long, slow process of fermentation – you can slow it down, by putting it in the fridge, but it’ll still continue to ferment.  And if you leave it in the fridge for 9 months, or a year, and then you eat it, I don’t think you’ll enjoy it – the older Kim Chi gets, the funkier it tastes.  And that’s reason #2 why I just couldn’t learn to like Kim Chi, I was always eating old Kim Chi.

In my quest for Kim Chi I could eat and would enjoy, I came on David Chang’s  version – Chang’s wildly popular Momofuku restaurant empire  of New York City’s lower East Side has seemed to have discovered a way of introducing many of the tastes and flavors of his Asian heritage, but almost always in a reinvention that links the often fickle New York taste buds with the flavors of his childhood.  But Chang bristles at the suggestion that he’s an Asian chef – ‘I’m an American chef!’, he states with conviction, ‘an American chef doing some bad fusion cooking.’  And a quick look at Momofuku’s most popular dishes, seem to bear that out – fried chicken, pork in all guises, Brussels sprouts, and desserts which reflect a southern bearing more than anything Asian.

Not that Chang forgets his roots when working on new dishes for Momofuku, there’s almost always a link or two in every dish.  And he uses Kim Chi in many ways: a Kim Chi stew (but not just like Mom used to make!); Kim Chi and bleu cheese croissant; braised pork ramen w. Kim Chi; and a beef consumme done in the classic style w. Kim Chi – and of course, Kim Chi is also available as a condiment as well.

So, for a guy who loves his Kim Chi, and has used it in many ways in innovative dishes, what could be better than to discover his own personal recipe for the stuff – David Chang’s Kim Chi  is not his mother’s version, he’s not a fan of letting it sit out at room temp until the fermentation is well under way, which is the standard way fermenting vegetables.  Instead, Chang slips it into the refrigerator as soon as it’s made, and lets it attain its fermentation in a cool environment – in this way, the resulting Kim Chi will keep its prime condition even longer, and thereby maybe scare off fewer potential Kim Chi eaters.

If you give Chang’s Kim Chi a try, what you need to know up front is that keeping it in your fridge is the best way to keep it while you are eating it (Kim Chi is classically eaten as a condiment or side dish with most meals in Korea).  If you live in a place with really cold winters, and you can find a room where the temps stay very cool but do not freeze, that environment can sub for the fridge – but for most of us, finding some space in the refrigerator is the way to go.  Chang’s recipe here will make 2-4 tightly packed pint jars of Kim Chi, or one or two quarts, depending on how much cabbage you are working with.

And once you make your Kim Chi, it really only needs a week or two in the fridge before it’s nicely flavored.  As Chang says somewhere, you can certainly begin eating your Kim Chi on day two if you wish, you just need to know that day two Kim Chi is not as full flavored as two week Kim Chi will be.  Kim Chi is one of those foods that you make more of when you run out, you don’t make up a year’s worth each summer like you would strawberry jam – keep that in mind, and your Kim Chi will always be at its best.

As usual, I managed to screw up the recipe creator’s instructions – when it came to the place where he asks you to drain the cabbage, I didn’t do that – so my Kim Chi had a thin, saucy brine rather than the thick pasty marinade it was supposed to have – it’s not a killer mistake, but you don’t need to do it.

I used regular green cabbage, because I’ve got tons of it in the garden, and as Chang says, you can use any vegetable to make Kim Chi – and I cut it into 1″ pieces.  The only departure from his instructions that I took was in a radical reduction of the chile powder – Chang calls for a half cup of kochukaru, Korean chile powder – having no kochukaru, instead I used 3 Tbs of the cayenne I did have, which I suspect is a tamer version of the kochukaru.  I retrospect, I probably could have used more of the cayenne, but San will probably eat this version more readily.

I think Chang’s Kim Chi is the best version I’ve ever done – and my favorite way of eating it -in respect of not destroying its friendly bacteria by overheating it- is to just serve it over hot rice, right out of the fridge, or to put a small amount on my plate as a condiment – I also like to sprinkle a little bit of seseme seed over it to give it a little more character – not that it doesn’t have plenty of its own!

Hope you get a chance to make some of this for yourself – I know you’ll enjoy it.

America’s Contribution to the World’s Rye Breads- Classic Jewish Rye

I find rye extremely interesting.  It is one of man’s oldest grains, found growing wild throughout Europe, especially in the colder, northern climes - it is not as old as wheat and its relatives, and it often ‘forced’ itself on the growers of wheat, as it often naturalized in the fields of wheat – it was not cultivated purposely until the fifth century – yet its commonality contributed to its general unpopularity among the elite – making rye a peasant bread throughout its history.

Adding to its unpopularity was the fact that rye flour was not easy to work with and caused problems in the bakery.  And if that wasn’t enough, about the year, 900, periodic epidemics of a serious disease, Ergot of Rye, began to occur across Europe, the cause of which -a parasitic rye grain fungus- would only be discovered as the culprit in 1670.  Rye has only, in the last few centuries, begun to shed its negative reputation, until today, its fan base has entirely shifted – rye is now a bread of the elite, leaving the more common white bread to the masses.

Still, rye breads are far from popular in the U.S. – I suspect that they enjoy a greater appreciation in Europe, where true rye bread has a deep tradition.  Rye’s history in America is also interesting, only arriving here with the great migration of the nineteenth century – especially with those from Germany, Scandinavia, Poland and Russia.  While all those cultures brought their rye bread traditions with them to America, the most famous rye bread was, without doubt, Jewish Rye, most easily identified by its liberal use of caraway seed, something not seen in other European ryes.

But something interesting happened to all the ethnic ryes as they came to America – they all seemed to change from the 100% rye of the homelands and began to incorporate large percentages of white flour.  Additionally, they often shifted from being a traditional sourdough to a yeasted loaf.  But there were good reasons for these changes, besides the oft-heard rationale of leaving the old ways behind.  First, no changes at all were occurring in the home kitchens of the new immigrants – they were more than willing to keep the old traditions alive.  The changes were occurring in the bakeries, and for perfectly good reasons – at the same time as the great migration, there was a shift within the baking industry from wood burning ovens to those using gas and coal (and later, electric).  This was occurring much faster in America than in Europe, since the majority of bakeries in America were new, while those in Europe were old, and held on to their old traditions and equipment as long as it was feasible.

This single change was significant, especially in the baking of rye breads – the old European tradition of baking 100% ryes called for a long, slow baking, with sourdough as the leavening.  This traditionally occurred late at night, in the slowly cooling wood ovens of the bakeries, which was the perfect complement to the dense, moist 100% ryes.

On the other hand, the newer coal and gas ovens of the American bakeries heated and cooled much faster than did their counterparts in Europe, which was seen as an improvement over the old wood ovens, since this increased efficiency and profit.  But the change required a shift from the 100% ryes to a mix of rye and white flours, to facilitate the use of commercial yeast to speed the process, and allow the development of more gluten in the loaf and speed the baking process.

The move away from sourdough seemed a natural companion shift with the newer, faster ovens, since those who continued to use sourdough could not bake as many loaves in the same work time.  The only problem was for the public to eventually accept the changes and instead begin to buy the yeasted, lighter ryes that the bakeries were producing.  Sadly, that is exactly what the public did, and the long, slow baked 100% ryes of Europe soon became only a memory.

This regrettable shift is the basis of a rant of bread guru, Jeffrey Hamelman, who spends a fair amount of space in his seminal book, Bread, to condemn the development of American Jewish Rye – he characterizes it simply as a profit driven move by the baking industry, and shares the blame with the American public for being so willing to accept an ‘inferior’ loaf of rye.  I’d agree with the last point, but what’s new about that?  But I don’t think Hamelman fairly states the ‘whys’ that were driving the baking industry at the time, nor do I think he is fair about the quality of the bread that has come to be known as Jewish Rye – some people like the taste of caraway, Jeffrey.  However, he does include several of what he calls ‘light ryes’ in the book, including one which he suggests comes close to an American Jewish Rye – I’ve never bothered to try it!

Having not grown up on a steady diet of dark European ryes, I must admit to an appreciation of good Jewish Rye – and although I have developed a taste for dark ryes of late, I still think a good Jewish Rye is the ultimate sandwich bread.  And if you agree, Nancy Silverton‘s book, Breads from the La Brea Bakery is a good place to start – I love that although there is not one word about it on the book’s cover, Silverton’s book is 100% sourdough!  To date, I’ve made maybe 6 or 7 breads from it, and not one has been a disappointment – don’t know that I could say that about any other bread book I own – and you baker-types know exactly what I’m saying.

Silverton’s contribution to the repertoire of Jewish Ryes is one which she calls, Izzy’s New York Rye – this is a good choice, given that New York was the epicenter of American-Jewish baking during the twentieth century, and that Izzy Cohen is a transplanted New York baker.  But Silverton admits right away that if this were her bread, she’d use more dark rye flour than the traditional white rye used in a classic Jewish rye bread – and that will be the essential adaption I make with the formula I share with you today.

America’s flour mills make rye a complex subject for home bakers – their attitude seems to be that no one should need or want anything but the lightest of rye flours, known as white rye.  However, since there are no standards by which flour mills label what they sell as rye flour, and since what a home baker most often finds in their grocery is labeled simply Rye Flour -  who knows what it is?  Supposedly, we in America have white (light, least amount of bran fiber) rye, medium (medium amount of bran fiber) rye, and dark (whole grain, maximum amount of bran fiber) rye – but I don’t see these types in my stores.  And I really don’t care, since I now grind my own, which I know is then a whole grain, dark rye.  That makes a very hearty and dark bread, but it has a full, rich flavor – and I have no complaints about any of that.  But for most others, god knows what they’re getting.

I should note that when I made this bread, it handled quite well in my KA spiral mixer – I don’t remember this happening before, when instead, the rye dough would move around the bottom of the mixer bowl, but never pick up and pull away from the sides of the mixer bowl – this may well be because whole grain rye has a reputation of absorbing more liquid than do the other types, or it may just be the nature of this recipe – it would be interesting to know if others had the same experience re the ease of handling.

But I do hope you’ll take a shot at what I think is a superb example of American Jewish Rye, and which I know will still be excellent no matter what changes you make.

Izzy’s New York Rye
(from Nancy Silverton’s ‘Breads from the La Brea Bakery’)

Ingredients:

• 16 ozs cold water (about 2 cups)
• 1.2 oz yeast (4 tsp. yeast)
• 20 oz rye starter* (about 2 cups)
• 19 oz high gluten white bread flour (about 5 cups)
• 13 oz white (light) rye flour (about 4 cups) [I used freshly ground whole grain rye - you may use whatever you find]
• 3 Tbs caraway seeds, plus some for sprinkling
• 1.5 tsp chernushka seeds**, plus some for sprinkling
• 1 Tbs salt
• 4 oz polenta or corn meal
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp corn starch

* You can easily create a rye starter by simply using rye flour to refresh your white starter for a time or two before using.
** This is a seed with a thousand names!  My supplier calls it, Nigella – it is also commonly known as black cumin – if you can’t find this, just skip it, it’s a rather acquired taste anyway!

Procedure:

• Put cold water, yeast, rye starter, flours, and caraway and chernushka seeds into the bowl of a heavy duty mixer with a dough hook – mix on low speed for 3 minutes – the dough should be wet and sticky.
• Let the dough rest in the mixer for about 10-15 minutes.
• Add salt – continue mixing on medium speed for about 8 minutes, or until the dough reaches an internal temp of 70 degrees – it may, or may not, pull away from the sides of the mixer bowl.
• Move the dough to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and allow it to ferment at room temp until double in size, about an hour and a half.
• Turn the dough out to a board that has been lightly floured – cut the dough into two and knead each piece briefly to deflate – roll each piece into a ball and cover with a towel – let rest for 15 minutes.
• Preheat your oven to 500 F, one hour prior to baking.
• On a clean board, place each dough ball in the middle of the board, and place your hands on the top, and roll them back and forth as it begins to make a football shape – do not let it get longer than 12″ – as you shape the loaf, pull the skin of the dough tight and fold it under so the loaf has a smooth skin.
• Place the polenta into a small tray – take each loaf and place the bottom of each on the polenta covered tray – press the loaf gently into the polenta and rock it in the polenta so the loaf picks up polenta on the bottom and 1″ up the sides of the loaf – if your loaves are dry and won’t pick up much polenta, try wetting the bottom surface of your loaves before trying again.
• Either place each loaf on a sheet pan, or if baking them on a stone, place each loaf on a small piece of baker’s parchment – cover with a towel and allow to proof at room temp for 45 minutes – during the last 15 minutes, check the loaves frequently to see if any tiny cracks are forming, or if any or the small bubbles on the bread’s surface have popped – if you see either of those, the bread is ready to be baked.
• Uncover the loaves and either spray lightly with water, or brush water over the tops – and sprinkle a tsp of chernushka and a tsp of brown caraway seeds on each loaf.
• Dock each loaf by pressing a wet finger 1″ into the center of the loaf (this is equal to slashing the top of a loaf – Jewish Rye is not traditionally slashed).
• Open the oven door and spritz the hot interior heavily – quickly close the oven door – wait one minute, and do the same again, but this time also load the loaves into the oven – now spritz again before shutting the door of the oven.
• Reduce the oven temperature to 450 F – spritz the inside of the oven two more times at 5 minutes and 10 minutes into the bake time – now do not open the oven door again for 20 minutes.
• After 20 minutes, open the oven and rotate the loaves – continue baking for an additional 15-20 minutes, for a total bake time of 40-45 minutes.
• In the last few minutes of baking, bring a cupful of water to the boil in a small saucepan – while heating, mix a tsp of cornstarch with a Tbs of cold water until it is dissolved -when the water boils, add the dissolved cornstarch mixture – stir quickly as it begins to boil again, and continue until it has thickened slightly – remove from heat and set aside.
• Check the breads to see if they are done (internal temps should be 200 F or more) – if they are done, move them from the oven to a cooling rack – immediately brush on a thin coating of the cornstarch mixture – this needs to be done quickly or it will soften the bread’s crust as it cools.
• Allow breads to cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

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How Short is Short Anyway?

Bet'cha Can't Make 'Em This Flat!

I really do -honestly- want to learn how to do a short post.  Mostly, I want this skill, because I know good writers are those who know how to condense their thoughts into compact chunks of narrative.  So, I must not be a good writer – maybe if I learn to do short posts, then I’ll be a good writer.

I’m tempted to stop right now, add a picture of today’s breakfast, and publish that as a post.  But, somehow I think you’d see through it.

OK, let me try another approach – let me share with you one of my superb failures, and maybe that can be condensed, from shame, if nothing else.  For some time now, I’ve been using my sourdough starter in various quick-breads – this, of course, calls for adjustments and adaptations, since the nature of quick-breads (breads which use baking powder or baking soda as their leavening) does not lend itself to sourdough.  So, I’ve been having some interesting, if not successful results.

The quick-bread I’ve mostly used for this experiment is cornbread, and my experiments continue.  I have an ongoing interest in the food culture(s) of the U.S., and if one cares to dig, there is a wealth of history surrounding these two ingredients.  Corn was well established as a flour grain when the great migration west got underway in the U.S., and was commonly included in the basic food supplies because it was cheaper than was wheat flour.  Yeast starters -in the grand tradition of sourdough- were the chosen way to leaven bread.  Commercial dry yeast had not yet been invented, but bread yeasts as by-products of beer production were well known, and commonly used for baking breads.  You may know that any yeast can be treated just like a sourdough starter, and used ad infinitum -if fed and maintained. This is how most pioneers started their starters, but as we all know too, if one keeps feeding that ‘yeast’ starter, it will soon pick up wild yeasts that will overpower the other yeasts in its mix – so the term sourdough in those pioneer days did not so much refer to a wild yeast leavening as much as to the fermented character of the resulting baked goods.

I mention all this only to suggest that leavening a quick-bread with sourdough starter may seem strange to us, but it has a solid historical basis.  And in fact, fermented cornbread has a wonderful taste, even when the baker screws up the process.

A baker uses sourdough starter for two purposes, even if he doesn’t realize it – first, sourdough starter is used as a leavening, and second to add flavor.  My use of sourdough starter in my cornbread was primarily to add flavor, which it does magnificently – and if used in conjunction with baking soda, one needn’t worry about the leavening part, since the baking soda uses the lactic acid of the sourdough starter to accomplish that.  But my magnificent failure of today suggests that a baker may well suffer from an overkill of riches, such as using three leavenings at once – I used not only sourdough starter, but baking soda and baking powder – and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that doing so is to create a chemical imbalance that leads to a loss of leavening action.

My process is simply to mix my flours, cornmeal and white flour, along with the primary liquid used, in this case, buttermilk (which has its own lactic acid) and some sourdough starter, and to refrigerate that overnight.  In the morning, it has risen nicely, but that will soon disappear as you add the rest of the needed ingredients for the cornbread.  You may recognize that in order to use the sourdough as a fermenting agent, you must break the general quick-bread rule of only mixing your dry with your wet ingredients together at the last moment before baking.  But I really don’t think that’s such a traumatic no-no, as this is what I’ve previously done with good success.  I have made mental note to, next time, put together the entire recipe and to put the batter into the muffin tin before slipping into the fridge – in that case, I’ll not include any other leavening other than the sourdough – and I’ll bet the rise is beautiful.

I actually have no idea why these muffins did not rise well, since I did nothing differently than before – but there must have been some subtle difference that slipped by my senses – god knows that’s more than possible.  But I am happy to report that regardless of their pathetic rise (they were higher before they went into the oven than when they came out!), they were delicious.

Well, I’m done with this post, and it’s only a little long – I guess it depends on your perspective.  Whatever!  It’s an improvement – and perhaps most notably, I’ve finished a post on the same day as I started it – and that’s a first!

Is Down Syndrome a Thing of the Past?

Friends

Some of you know that I once had a life before ‘bread’, and that in that life, I worked with and among persons with developmental disabilities.  Only a small portion of those folks had a developmental disability known as Down Syndrome, which interestingly is most often a mild disorder – the large majority of those with Down Syndrome are very verbal and in fact tend to blend into society well – many find employment in all sorts of less skilled jobs, and prove themselves to be valued employees – traits such as honesty, loyalty, and total adherence to rules come to mind as job characteristics of almost all of those with Down Syndrome.  If it weren’t for the fact that almost all with Down Syndrome have a classic and easily identifiable facial stigmata, a large number of those with Down Syndrome would not even be suspected of having a developmental disability.

I came on this article  recently in the New York Times, and it reminded me of an experience in my life that had profoundly changed the way I thought about disabilities, and the persons whose lives are most affected by Down Syndrome, individuals with Down Syndrome.  The article deals with the progress made by science in finding cures for, or amelioration of, Down Syndrome, something that the average person would probably agree was always a good thing.  As you read the article, you may be surprised to learn that not every parent of a child with Down Syndrome would rush to take advantage of a ‘cure’ drug that became available.  How can that be?  Isn’t that what research into birth defects is all about?  Isn’t that what everyone wants?

The experience to which I refer above answered those questions for me, and I’d like to share it with you.  In the mid nineties, I sat one day in a huge auditorium in Dallas during a national convention of the disability advocacy organization for which I worked, and along with some 2000 fellow workers, parents of persons with disabilities, and developmentally disabled persons themselves, listened with much interest as a panel of ‘experts’ discussed advances in genetics and medicine that very soon would lead to cures for many types of developmental disabilities.

At the end of this presentation, I think that most of the listeners in that auditorium felt as I did that day – we were elated to hear of events that would bring an end to the pain and suffering of families, and the difficulties of individuals with disabilities, such as those we worked with daily.  I’m sure that most of us were a little surprised when the moderator announced that a panel of ‘self advocates’ (a term given to persons with disabilities, especially those who wish to speak for themselves) wanted time to express their reaction to the last presentation.  There was a sudden hush among the huge group, as the awareness rose that something unique and significant was about to occur.

Down Syndrome's Extra Chromosome

For those of you who know someone with developmental disabilities -and you probably do, since 3% of the world’s population is identified as DD (and more who are not officially counted)- it is likely that the persons you know would not make good spokespersons for themselves – the great majority would not.  But we were about to witness several exceptions to that rule – these individuals were not only developmentally disabled, but they were also articulate and thoughtful – and they were about to lead many in this audience -including myself- to an understanding and a sensitivity that had eluded many.

What was about to happen was a unique experience for this organization – seldom had they listened to a person with disabilities speaking for themselves.  Instead, there was a long tradition of having parents speak for their disabled sons and daughters - it was assumed that the disabled could not speak for themselves.  This almost universal assumption has some validity, but is far from being ‘universal’.  And these individuals were not only willing to speak for themselves, they were able to do so with the skill of an accomplished public speaker – and their message was about to shake the very foundations of the beliefs of their mothers and fathers, and all the advocates who thought they always understood what was best for their sons and daughters.

Four individuals appeared on the stage, and one by one, came forward to express their reactions to the reports they, and we, had just heard (they of course had prior awareness of the content of the previous presentation).  In essence, their message was that they were not in favor of mental retardation being cured, if what that meant was that their identity as a person would be lost – in fact, it was fearful to them to think that the self awareness that they currently knew as their own personality, their being, and their sense of worth, would change to something new – someone new – and that change was not a positive thing to them, even if it made them more productive, more intelligent, and more independent – they would lose themselves in the process.

Another added the thought that if this scenario were to take place, it might actually make the lives of those remaining individuals with developmental disabilities more difficult, for they would have far fewer peers with which to feel comfortable among, or to make friends with – and with fewer individuals with DD in the world, it may make it that much more difficult for them to be accepted into the ‘normal’ world, and for that world to adjust to them.  And with far less individuals with DD to rub elbows with, the world may retreat to the attitude that prevailed during the last several centuries, when the mentally retarded were hidden away to shield them from the pain of the persecution and ridicule they would otherwise endure.

The final panel participant ended by suggesting that he and his friends did not look forward with hope to this future, but rather fear and uncertainty – the benefits, as he saw them, did not make up for the loss of a person’s self, or the loss of an entire class of persons, for that matter.

Several important things had happened that day in the world of developmental disabilities – for one, a new perspective on an important issue -maybe the most important issue facing this group- had just been articulated - and not as always before, by a parent of someone with developmental disabilities, but by persons with developmental disabilities themselves – and that would change this advocacy movement forever!

It is impossible -in my opinion- for a person without a disability to understand the emotion, the pain, or the daily impact of living with a disability – I know this well, and am able to admit it.  Yes, a parent of a child with a disability has an increased sensitivity to all the above, but it’s still not the same as having to live with the disability.  The New York Time’s article above is built on the attitude and opinions of those those who have intimate knowledge of disability issues, but if you noticed, there are no quotes from persons with disabilities – and the NYTs is a paper that prides itself on being as objective as a newspaper can be – and yet they reflect the still prevalent social attitude that the developmentally disabled are not able to speak for themselves.

In their defense, in the sidebar of the NYT’s article, there is a companion blog article  that not only comes much closer to voicing the same sentiment as that expressed by the self-advocates back in Dallas (again, by a parent), but digs deeper into the complexity of this critical question.  Should you wish to gain a new perspective yourself on how complex this issue is, you might want to read the comments section, and note that the great majority of comments are expressed by those who think they have the best interest of the disabled individual front and center, but few ever think to suggest we ask a disabled person for their opinion.

As I am reminded of the complexity of the of the question of the cure for Down Syndrome, I can’t help but think of a futuristic, but completely appropriate scenario, and how it applies to this question.  Consider this – one day in the future of our world, we are visited by aliens, who we soon recognize are far more advanced and intelligent than we are – we soon also recognize that they wish us no harm, and in fact, have a very paternalistic attitude toward us – they soon begin to enlighten us to the secrets of the universe, but eventually they announce that no additional progress can be made unless we are willing to allow a genetic makeover of all future mankind – in other words, in the interest of progress, we would say goodbye to our old selves, and become entirely new beings – we would be remade in the likeness of our alien visitors, who sincerely believe that this is in our best interest.

How would that make you feel?  Isn’t that a little like how Down Syndrome folks must feel upon hearing that they can be cured?
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Photo credits:
Top- from l to r: joycespage.downsyndrome.com; peoplebychoice.com; wiusd.org
Mid 1-  wellsphere.com
Mid 2-  mcssl.com2
Bottom-  firstnews.co.uk