Results tagged “mango”

Following up on Indian Mango Alert Level: Orangish-Green and A Matter of National Security, some data points:

• The national flag of India has stripes of orange and green on a white background, The orange ("deep saffron") represents renunciation, and the green represents fertility.
• The U.S. Homeland Security Advisory System defines green on its scale as the color for a low threat level, with low risk of terrorist attack. Airports and New York City, where I live, are currently at threat level orange, which designates a high risk of terrorist attack.

Interestingly, as I was going to mention and John Dowdell pointed out, part of the ostensible reason for the reluctance to import Indian mangoes in the past was the risk of fruitfly larvae tagging along for the ride. The solution? A new irradiation process that kills the mango seed weevil. Kind of a nuclear security program for fruit.

If only that irradiation were powered by the nuclear fuel that India had gotten as part of its trade agreement with the U.S., we'd have a nice little circle of nuclear-mango life.

As I was reveling in earlier, Indian mangoes are coming to the United States. As I mentioned in my last post, Indian mangoes had essentially been off-limits ever since the invention of jet airplanes would have made it feasible for them to be imported, with only a small number of grey-market mangoes getting into the country. It's not surprising that it's been mostly illegal for Indian mangoes to come to the United States; Until about forty years ago, it was mostly illegal for Indian people to come to the United States.

Though the justification for the prohibition on mangoes was never explicitly articulated, it's pretty clearly a classic case of trade protectionism, and was only remedied in the name of national security. Predictably, when I told some friends that we traded nuclear fuel for mangoes, they were a little startled; Sure, these might be some great-tasting fruits, but was this really a fair trade? My quick take's pretty obvious ("Trust me, Indian mangoes are the bomb.") but there's a deeper point about what it takes for the U.S. to embrace the opportunity of engaging with India. We've been most willing to open our eyes to India when we've felt U.S. security was at stake, as my own family's history shows. That lack of vision may have cost us some fantastic opportunities, but at least we can revel in the ones we've got today.

Madhur Jaffrey, the maven of mango, the ambassador of Alphonso, made the case eloquently in the New York Times a month ago.

Whatever anyone else might say, America's new nuclear and trade pact with India is a win-win deal. India gets nuclear fuel for its energy needs and America, doing far better in what might be called a stealth victory, finally gets mangoes.

Most people I talk to don't know that until 1965, when President Johnson signed the amendments to the Immigration and Nationality act, Indian immigrants were officially undesirable according to U.S. law. My father came to the United States in 1963, and I've seen estimates that there were fewer than 50,000 Indians living in the U.S. at that time.

My dad was able to enter the country before the Immigration law was reformed because he was entering as a student; He got his PhD just a few years after entering the country. But I suspect at least part of the reason he was given permission was his area of study: He is a civil engineer, working (as he still does today) to help build the Interstate highway system. Along the way, he's helped with foundational work for thousands of miles of highways, and his career even in its early stages was occupied with helping in the construction of projects ranging from Sea-Tac airport to Disney World.

The thing many people forget, though, is that the Eisenhower Interstate System was presented as much as a security initiative as a resource for business and recreation. So unusually talented young students who could help in the expansion of the highway system during that first decade of its construction were considered especially valuable, regardless of their countries of origin.

One of the lessons here, of course, is that we make laws to keep the foreign influences out so we'll be safe, until we realize that we need to make exceptions to those laws in order to keep ourselves safe. But after thinking about this a bit on Father's Day, the more profound lesson for me was about the fact that some people are so talented and ambitious that even barriers like law and prejudice aren't enough to contain them.

And of course, some mangoes are just so damn tasty that their availability is a matter of national security.

Indian mangoes have arrived in the U.S. for the first time, and for me, my family, and my friends, this is a big freaking deal. I've got a lot to say about the subject, but if you weren't familiar with the fact that this is the first time in history that we in the United States are able to eat mangoes that are actually from the place that mangoes were born, it's time to get acquainted.

Some good recent news coverage:

• From the Boston Globe, Indian Mangoes Arrive At Long Last:

Last March, President George W. Bush signed two landmark pacts with India: one on nuclear technology, the other lifting a 17-year restriction on the import of Indian mangoes. The world's news media paid attention to the nuclear accord. But in the Indian community here and throughout the country, the magic word was "mango."

• In the Philly Inquirer, A new kind and queen of mangoes:

But this was not just any mango. It was most definitely not the pretty but bland mainstream specimens from South America that, Indians sniff, serve more to decorate the table than to be consumed. Nor was it the more aromatic, tangier Mexican imports found at many Indian grocers and sold cheap by the dozen.

This was an Alphonso from India - the hands-down "king of mangoes," as it's known. The deep-orange flesh oozes sticky juice, the texture is smooth, with hardly a fiber, and the heady aroma fills the room. And what about the flavor? The sweetness can be so intense that more than one Indian expat has described it as "heavenly."

• The Los Angeles Times, Mango Mania:

Though hundreds of mango varieties are grown in India, only three -- Alphonso, Kesar and Banganpalli -- will be available in the U.S. this season. Alphonsos and Kesars were the first to arrive.

Alphonsos, smallish and golden-yellow, are amazingly sweet and succulent, with floral aromas and a creamy, fiber-free texture. Los Angeles-based produce wholesaler Melissa's received a shipment the first week of May, says Robert S. Schueller, director of public relations for the firm. Although Melissa's distributed them to retailers in Texas, Pennsylvania
and New York, L.A. retailers didn't bite, Schueller says, thanks to their high price -- they sell for $35 for a case of 12.

• There's also a primer on mango varieties in the LA Times as well.
• All Things Considered offers U.S. Braces for (Indian) Mango Madness

Oh, and in case you're really a beginner, check out the Wikipedia article on mangoes. Once you're done with all the required reading, we'll move on to more advanced topics.

Remember a few years ago I mentioned that I was moving to San Francisco?
Well, it's time for an update: I'm moving back to New York City!

There's a couple of reasons why, and they nicely mirror the reasons why I moved to California in the first place. At that time, I said:

So, I'm moving to San Francisco to be even more involved in Six Apart. We're doing all this work with developers and partners because there's still another 99.9% of people in the world who haven't heard what weblogs can do for them. I want to be part of spreading that message, and we're going to need help to do it. I'm also moving because I still honestly believe Six Apart makes the best weblog tools in the world, and we're going to be the the company that brings weblogs to a broad audience.

It's been less than three years since then, and literally millions of people have joined the community of bloggers. A lot of my reason for moving in 2004 had to do specifically with Movable Type: it's the product that started our company, and we'd made some first mistakes in communicating about who it was for, what our plan was, and how things were going to evolve. I wasn't sure if we'd be able to get everybody blogging, but I sure as hell wanted to try.

The first sign that things have changed radically is that the idea of people building entire careers on top of blogs went from a hopeful wish to an everyday reality. The best example? Serious Eats. My wife Alaina helped create and launch the site on Movable Type as its General Manager, and the main reason we're moving back to New York is because running this site every day is her job. That blows my mind.

More importantly, Serious Eats a fucking fantastic community, already. I'm just amazed at the breadth of knowledge that the hosts and members on the site have about almost every kind of food. And I could watch Jeffrey Steingarten's insanity every day of the week.

Serious Eats represents the success of the professional blogging community in other ways, too. Back in 2004 when I wrote my post about moving to San Francisco, companies like Apperceptive didn't even exist. Today, they've got a whole staff of smart folks creating blog-powered sites for a living. I love that other people are getting to do something they love for a living, instead of as just a hobby.

But of course, there's still a lot to do. In explaining what I do for a living, or describing all the chances I get to talk about blogging, I'm frankly amazed at the number of people who don't have the faintest idea how blogging can be a great thing. I'm almost equally surprised that after years of talking about this all day every day, it's still exciting to me.

And I've got a lot of things that I feel are my personal obligation to address. There's the basics, like how a blog can make your life better, or make your job easier. But also, people don't know how deeply all of us at Six Apart care about getting new people to blog, to help them connect with people through blogging. Sometimes I think the strangers who attend the random conferences with me have more of an idea what's going on with Six Apart and Movable Type than the "experts" who spend all day reading blogs. That's something I intend to fix -- we haven't forgotten about our original community or taken them for granted, we just needed to talk to these new audiences because nobody else could do it.

There are other challenges: these days, we've got broadcast TV networks producing shows every week that are scaring the shit out of people, thinking that blogging is just "that thing on Dateline where my daughter puts her home address on the web". I think I can help dispel that fear, too. Perhaps more than anything, being outside of San Francisco means I can work on getting a more diverse crowd of people using these tools to make their jobs or their lives better.

That's where I started with this whole thing, trying to find a way to make real connections using my blog. Some of that is habit for me; I told my Vox neighborhood about my move before I posted it here. So I should mention that there was something of an easter egg in my post on leaving New York. I had said:

That's the part I struggle to remember, that I'll be glad to see how the city's evolved in my absence, and that I've already had a wealth of experiences that would last me a lifetime even if I could never return. This is closing a chapter, certainly, but not closing a book, and in the meantime I have what I've had. I worked at the top of the Empire State Building. I got to shake Rudy Giuliani's hand and say thanks. I got to buy the last mango I bought in Manhattan, and all that it entails. I got to watch the hot dog contest and the fireworks on the Fourth of July. I got stuck on the wrong side of the Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving. I walked through a silent Times Square in the middle of a snowstorm and pushed my way past the crowds in the Square on New Year's Eve. I stayed at home a hundred Saturday nights, knowing that there were tons of people having the time of their life out on the town, and didn't regret it for a minute.

The easter egg is that mention of "the last mango I bought in Manhattan". That mango was what I bought in lieu of an engagement ring when I proposed to my wife. A year later (and now, over a year ago!), we got married. And now that commitment is part of what brings me back home. Pretty cool.