OPINION / U.S.A. February 6, 2017 THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7 TALKING STORY IN ASIAN AMERICA “Silence is an interstitial moment before action. A time to reflect on the challenge we have been given in 2017.” n Polo -- Reverend Dr. Héctor E. López Three faces of River City And the work ahead of us all riday, January 20, 2017 was the 44th peaceful transition of presidential power for our United States of America. In response to Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, protesting Portlanders filled Pioneer Courthouse Square. I saw a small Magic-Markered sign that read “Take Care of Each Other.” It bobbed just above our heads. I also saw a black-hooded skull bigger than our youngest brother’s double-doored Frigidaire. Really big. Huge. It loomed and stared over us. Its skeletal knuckles, fingers, and killer nails, longer than me, hung to its left and right. Acrid turmoil filled the air. Beginning early Saturday morning, women and girls, their men and boys, began pooling under and around Naito Parkway’s bridges. More and more, then still more and more poured in from all over Oregon. While Pacific Northwest rain poured on us. Portland’s Women’s March filled 44 downtown blocks, followed by another 44 blocks worth of marchers, then another. All of them, F concerned about our nation. Everyone, content among each other. Like familia. Wellbeing filled what little space remained between us. On January 22 — on a Sunday, on that reflective day just ahead of everybody’s next big-city workweek — rabbi and cantor Cahana filled their heavenly domed Beth Israel synagogue with Christian and Muslim, Catholic, Jewish, and Buddha sanga Portlanders. After prayer and inspiration, everyone walked wordless across rushed Burnside street; we walked silently by our Timbers’ stadium and our stately Governor Hotel; we waited patiently for Maya Taqueria’s corner crosswalk signal — infectious mariachi raised our chins and lightened our steps. We passed empty Director Park then walked slowly onto Portland’s Living Room. Pioneer Courthouse Square. We filled that place, our silence did. Our little candles did too. This silence rose from red brick underfoot into our azure evening sky, then it rose on and on through the chill of airless space. And maybe someday, some several million light years from here and now, our silenced and humbled hearts will reach what both wayward physicists and our simply faithful call the face of God. Back down here — as we ended our expression of trust in pretty cool Portland, in anxious America, in our achy little earth — the Reverend Dr. Héctor E. López was trying to explain something tough to capture by local TV news cameras. No creepy skeletons or scary bottle throwers, no lovely mothers or pink-pussycat hat babies. “Some people think silence is not appropriate,” Dr. López said, “because it looks like inaction.” “But, oh no. No-no-no,” he smiled, wagging his well-worn finger, correcting us like a Mexican abuelo, like a Moroccan jaddi or an Eire grandpa. “Silence is an interstitial moment before action. A time to reflect on the challenge we have been given in 2017.” Silence is necessary. Silence allows sacredness to seep in. The sacredness of us in this place, this confluence of our generous river matriarchs Willamette and Columbia. These shores of chocolate soil, stewarded by 140 centuries of native families living and loving here. Silence is necessary, before we rise and breakfast among those people we love. Then let’s get to work. The work of community building in all the ways, all us very different and very dear Portlanders, do this work. Our work. w Nota: For this third demonstration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Beloved Community, for this expression of how Portlanders are, terima kasih banjaak (I offer our love to you): Rev. Dr. Héctor E. López and pastor Lynne Smouse López of Ainsworth United Church of Christ; to Br. Wajdi Said, Muslim Educational Trust co-founder and president; to Janet Musgrove Elfers, executive director of Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon; to Rev. Michael Ellick of First Congregational United Church of Christ; to pastor E.D. Mondainé of Celebration Tabernacle; and of course to senior rabbi Michael Z. Cahana and senior cantor Ida Rae Cahana of Congregation Beth Israel. Fish and chirps? Crickets make leap in demand as a protein CRUNCHY CRICKETS. Stephen Swanson shows a bowl of frozen crickets at Tomorrow’s Harvest cricket farm in Williston, Vermont. Farmers are raising the alternative livestock they claim is more ecologically sound than meat but acknowledge is sure to bug some people out. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke, File) By Lisa Rathke The Associated Press ILLISTON, Vt. — At Tomorrow’s Harvest farm, you won’t find acres of land on which animals graze, or rows of corn, or bales of hay. Just stacks of boxes in a basement and the summery song of thousands of chirping crickets. It’s one of a growing number of opera- tions raising crickets for human consump- tion that these farmers say is more ecologi- cally sound than meat but acknowledge is sure to bug some people out. Once consumers get beyond the ick factor, they say, there are a lot of benefits to consuming bugs. “We don’t need everybody to eat insects,” said Robert Nathan Allen, founder and director of Little Herds, an educational nonprofit in Austin, Texas that promotes the use of insects for human food and animal feed. “The point we really like to highlight with the education is that if only a small percent of people add this to their diet, there’s a huge environmental impact.” Cricket fans say if only one percent of the U.S. population substituted even just one percent of their meat consumption with insects, millions of gallons of water for drinking and irrigation would be saved, along with thousands of metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions from machinery and animals. At least one study finds the claims overstated that crickets are a viable protein source to supplement or replace meat, but bottom line, it generally takes fewer resources to raise and harvest crickets than, say, cattle. Interest in entomophagy — the consumption of insects — was fuelled in part by a 2013 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on the viability of edible insects to help curb world hunger. Since then, the number of producers of food containing crickets, from protein bars to chips, has jumped from zero to about 20, and cricket farms for human food have W grown to about half a dozen in the United States, Allen said. The protein-packed food can be ground into powder and added to other foods or eaten whole, dried, sautéed, and spiced. Crickets have a nutty or earthy flavor that’s masked by other flavors in protein bars. Self-described adventurous eater Matthew Monroe, 53, of Portland, Oregon, said he’s fond of blueberry-vanilla Exo bars containing cricket flour and dines on them when he gets that “protein bar jonesing feeling.” They also taste better than other protein bars, he said. There’s no problem selling crickets as long as manufacturers ensure the food they produce for the U.S. market is safe and complies with all relevant laws and Food and Drug Administration regulations, including proper labelling. Raising crickets doesn’t take much space, but there are complexities. Stephen Swanson, proprietor of Tomorrow’s Harvest, said he constantly checks conditions — water, food, temperature, air flow, and humidity — in the basement where he’s raising roughly half a million crickets. Swanson, who just started selling cricket protein powder online, hopes to get into a warehouse where some of the work could be automated. “The sky’s the limit. This is the stone age right now as far as insect farming,” he said. “So we have nowhere to go but up.” Kevin Bachhuber knows that firsthand. He started the first U.S. cricket farm for human food in the Youngstown, Ohio area, according to Allen. It operated until lead in his water supply prompted him to close it, Bachhuber said. Now, Bachhuber said, he is helping new cricket farmers get started or existing farms that raise crickets for reptile feed and fish bait get up to food grade standards. “For the first couple years, you know, we always struggled with having enough supply. Now that we’re starting to be able to add some of these older farmers into our supply chain. ... It’s not quite so heavy pressure,” Bachhuber said. The first U.S. academic conference de- voted to insects for food and feed was held in Detroit in May. Now the young industry is forming a trade group with the priorities being research and public education. “Half the battle if not more is educating people why. You can’t just say eat crickets, please. You have to tell them why,” Swanson said. Tu Phan Call for: Refinances Purchases Offering: FHA/VA/Conventional Mortgages NMLS # 1071 MLO # 7916 12550 S.E. 93rd Avenue Suite 350 Clackamas, OR 97015 (503) 496-5718 <tphan@financeofamerica.com> <www.financeofamerica.com>