Wings of Hope

On Monday my husband and I attended a talk at Columbia given by General Raymond E. Johns, U.S. Air Force. His topic was “Ethical Leadership in the 21^st Century,” and while he really focused more generally about the military’s balance between fighting and humanitarian missions, I found the speech just as interesting.

A caveat is probably required here that I come from a military background; my father served in the Marines/Coast Guard/National Reserve, my aunt as an Army nurse in Vietnam, my other aunt is currently a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Air Force, and my husband is a Navy veteran. So I came in pre-disposed to be interested, but General Johns still impressed me with his well-spoken and heartfelt talk about balancing the myriad demands faced by our armed forces.

 

The Air Force sees itself as having two main missions – “machines of war” and “wings of hope.” That is, missions that support military action, and those that are humanitarian-driven. But behind these missions are millions of smaller decisions; how to allocate budget money, where to prioritize troops, what supplies to drop where across the globe. During the Q&A portion of the evening, we had the chance to ask General Johns about some of his toughest decisions, and one audience member asked about the ethics in deciding whether to resign if a service member doesn’t believe in an order. 

My guess is the questioner meant grossly unethical orders; perhaps driven from stories of Vietnam’s My Lai or the like, where soldiers commit atrocities and later claim to be acting only under orders. General Johns’ response was an interesting one. While he sidestepped a bit the minefield of discussing truly heinous orders, he shed light on situations that are grayer, and challenged us in a similar situation to first consider whether or not we wanted to remain as an affecting agent in the situation’s outcome. His point is that once you bow out of a difficult situation, meaning in this example resigning from the military, you lose the opportunity to continue to shape the situation.

This seems to me a bit of a slippery slope – is it ethical to voluntarily remain in an unethical situation? – but I take his point that simply leaving the scenario may be taking the easy way out. If you were an employee at Enron, you could have seen the fraud and quit the firm, but would that be ethical? Do you have a duty to remain in an unethical situation and do everything you can to turn the scenario around? Or by staying in an unethical situation, are you giving tacit approval to what happens?

What do you think?  

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Not to be confused with my tax post, It's the Great Tax Punt, Charlie Brown, today's post is all about celebrating a new season. With fall upon us, I figured I would try out a few seasonal recipes (in between working full time and frenetic homework-ing for school). The below recipe for pumpkin bread (from Joy of Baking) turned out to be delicious, so the recipe is below for any baking-leaning readers:

PS: Yes there are a lot of ingredients, and it takes a bit longer than a quick mix recipe, but the results are more than worth it! It took me about 40 minutes to prep, plus an hour to bake.

Cream Cheese Filling:

8 ounce package (227 grams) cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated white sugar

2 large eggs

1 1/2 tablespoons all purpose flour

Pumpkin Bread:

1 cup (110 grams) pecans or walnuts

3 1/2 cups (450 grams) all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

4 large eggs

2 cups (400 grams) granulated white sugar

1 cup (226 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 - 15 ounce (425 grams) can pure pumpkin

1/2 cup (120 ml) water

1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Pumpkin Bread: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in the center of the oven. Butter and lightly flour two - 9 x 5 x 3 inch (23 x 13 x 8 cm) loaf pans. 

To toast nuts:  Place the nuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 - 10 minutes or until brown and fragrant. Cool completely and then chop coarsely.

Cream Cheese Filling: In your food processor, process the cream cheese just until smooth. (Really, Joy of Baking? A food processor? Clearly you are not considering your Manhattan-dwelling storage-starved readers. I just used a fork to stir). Add the sugar and process just until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, processing just until incorporated. Do not over process. Stir in the flour.

Pumpkin Bread:  In a large bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

In another large bowl, whisk the eggs until lightly beaten. Add the sugar and melted butter and whisk until blended.  Whisk or stir in the pumpkin, water, vanilla extract, and nuts.

Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture and stir just until the ingredients are combined. (A few streaks of flour is fine.) Do not over mix as it will make the bread tough (this is very important!... less is more in terms of mixing at this stage unless you want a Pumpkin Brick).

Divide the batter in half. Take one half and divide it evenly between the two prepared pans. Divide the cream cheese filling in half and place each half of filling on top the two pans of batter, smoothing the tops. Top with the remaining half of batter (use two spoons to place small dollops of batter on top of the filling) (I guess I put in more than half the batter in before the filling because I didn't have enough batter left to completely cover the filling. But the bread still came out just fine). 

Bake the breads for about 55 - 65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Place pans on a wire rack and let cool for about 10 minutes before removing breads from pans (One of my loaves ended up with more batter than the other, so one loaf cooked in 55 minutes, and the other took 65). Can serve warm, cold, or at room temperature. Store leftovers in the refrigerator or else freeze for later use.

Makes 2 loaves

The Attic

 

First, an apology to my dedicated readers for a two-month abandonment. Between MBA term finals at Columbia and two weeks of vacation, I have been off the radar. But school is now back in swing and I am back at the keyboard!

Our vacation included a week in Alaska, which was refreshing on so many levels. Partly, a respite from balancing the responsibilities of a full-time job and part-time school. But also on a deeper level, a refreshing of the spirit in being among grand natural monuments, largely untouched by human development. The picture at top is one of many I took trying to capture moments of sweeping mountains, blankets of fog, immense glaciers, and myriad wildlife. Alaska calls itself “the Last Frontier,” and in many ways this is true; there is simply so much untouched space that you feel you could truly come and live an adventure. (That said, the winters would be an ‘adventure’ in and of themselves). I kept thinking of Psalm 8:3-4:

 

“When I consider your heavens,
   the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
   which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
   human beings that you care for them?” 

The other aspect I enjoyed in Alaska was a re-focusing of priorities. One of our excursions took us kayaking in Ketchikan with a great company, Southseas Kayak. Our guide grew up in Australia, visited Alaska a couple years ago, fell in love, and decided to stay with $10 in his pocket. He now owns a small boat that he lives in, and guides kayak tourists like us around for fun and to pay the bills. Worried about what you’re having for dinner tonight? This guy keeps a small trap outside his boat and eats whatever he catches for dinner. In the inland states, a complex and myriad-choice land of supermarkets and strip malls, we have so many things to pick from. But what should we really focus on in our lives? How can we be choosy about choosing?

Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet” contains one of the more famous Sherlock Holmes quotations, showing Holmes to be quite conscientious in what he chooses to learn:

"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."

I don’t recommend following this so whole-heartedly that, as Sherlock admitted, you don’t know that the planets revolve around the sun rather than the other way around. But it is about priorities, and one of my goals this term is to be more consciensious about choosing and focusing on my priorities. There are certainly lots of things I could do – but the real question is what should I do? The answer to this will change with changes in circumstances, but I want to keep Alaska's reminder that life is only as complicated as we choose to make it.