🐷Pig Roast 11/09/25

Hi Everyone!

Following up on last week’s “another year older, possibly another year wiser” statement, I have realized that there is definitely one part of my life where I have way more wisdom, and that is getting birthday freebies from reward programs. I really wisened up and signed up to every single program I could get my hands on. I have already received so many free food items, and yet I still have so much more to go! Eat at a fast-casual spot, and you feed yourself for a meal. Sign up for a loyalty program, and get feed yourself on your birthday for a lifetime.

Now, let’s find out What’s Up With Will…

My class got cancelled, sadly not for my birthday, but I’ll still count it as a present. I am not complaining about having one less time I had to be in person this week. Other news, though, is that I am anxiously preparing for my class facilitation for the class that I am an instructor-in-training. The facilitation date is next week, and as the date gets closer and closer, I am getting more and more stressed. I have facilitated upper-level classes both in undergrad as well as grad school at this point, but I have yet to facilitate a freshman-level class filled with 30 students. I know it will all be okay, but I think I am going to have more and more anxiety as the date approaches.

This week in the leadership certificate program, we had a guest speaker talk on the concept of resilience. He described the five “core pillars” of resilience: self-awareness, a growth mindset, community, adaptability, and persistence. From there, he dove into resilience as defining your purpose, reframing setbacks as growth lessons, being willing to disappoint others if it means staying true to yourself, and, my personal favorite, giving yourself time to breathe like a bottle of fine wine.

While I did feel at times that Resilience felt more like a buzzword than something actionable, I did notice how some of the ideas connected to what I’ve been learning lately in class about reflexivity, taking time to purposely reflect.

Elsewhere, I loved Georgia Tech’s LMC program, but the one piece that I feel like I was vastly underprepared for when entering grad school was research. Research feels like finding a needle in a haystack, except you don’t even know if that needle exists or if it’s just a wild goose chase. These past few weeks, I have been poring through academic journals, the SFSU library, and Google Scholar, trying to find articles, but I feel like I am finally getting a grasp on things. I also recently learned about a citation management system called Zotero, and I think that it has the potential to be game-changing for organizing research.

The GLBT Historical Society Museum (not a typo!) had a free ticket day this week, so on the way to school, I made a stop. The current exhibit, “Queer Past Becomes Present,” traces the evolution of queer identity and community in San Francisco through personal stories and artifacts. It highlights figures like José Sarria, the first openly gay candidate for U.S. public office, Gilbert Baker, who designed the original eight-color rainbow flag, and Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California. Other sections explore the Daughters of Bilitis and their magazine The Ladder, the first national lesbian publication, as well as the rise of leather bars in the 1960s.

I had to ask one of the docents why the historical society and museum was named GLBT instead of LGBT, and he said originally, the acronym was GLBT, but changed in the 80s/90s to honor the significant role that lesbians played in supporting the gay community during the AIDS crisis. However, since the historical society was established before the 80s, they decided to keep the original name.

This weekend, we were headed off to Asheville for Brent’s family’s annual Ivy Fields Pig Roast (or IFPR for short). It’s a time where everyone comes together for the weekend to cook a pig and then eat it. I was trying to explain to my bartender in San Francisco that I was flying across the country to eat a pig, and he was very confused. Meanwhile, Rylee’s seatmate on the flight to Asheville was enthused upon hearing about it, even asking if she could attend. What a different world the East and West Coasts are.

To kick off the festivities, we all stopped at Leveller Brewing for some pre-pig roast libations. I was especially excited to swing by here as Asheville is well-known for its breweries. One unique thing about Leveller was the cask pours for some of the beers. I drank a Spooky Halloween Vanilla Stout and an Oktoberfest Marzen (both beers from holidays that have since passed). At the end of the day, though, despite its old-timey cask pour presentation and fancy Oktoberfest glassware, it’s just beer.

We started cooking the pig when we got back to the farm.

Recipe: Pig Roast

Time: One Weekend

Feeds: Family and Friends

Ingredients:

• Half A Pig

• Apple Cider

• Whiskey

• Love? Friendship? (Or something else kitschy)

Prep:

• Create a makeshift smoker using cinderblocks, and preheat the smoker to 200°F. Thankfully, Blaise and Dina (Brent’s parents) already did the heavy lifting on this one. Upon arriving at the farm, the cinderblock smoker was already pre-assembled. All that was left to do was start some fires: one in the smoker and one in an oil barrel right next to it. Using the coals from the oil barrel and the occasional gust from a leaf blower, they managed to get that flame burning quite bright all night. Rylee took charge of the thermometer like a seasoned pitmaster.

• Next, place the half pig on a grate, and wire another grate on top, leaving no wiggle room. Place the pig into the smoker and cook for 12 hours or until its internal temperature has reached at least 145 Degrees Fahrenheit. With Rylee down at the smoker, I wanted to get in on the action, so a few of us helped secure the pig to the grates. I also helped move the pig down to the smoker, and when I say helped, I mean provide encouragement to the people that did bring the pig down to the smoker. It quickly got to the point of too many cooks at the smoker. They didn’t know how long it would take for the pig to be roasted, so they started overnight, taking turns to watch the pig. The entire cooking process did, in fact, take about 12 hours.

• Combine Apple Cider and Whiskey into a spray bottle and spray the mixture on the pig throughout the smoking process. As the pig got cooked, they frequently lifted the top of the smoker and sprayed an apple cider and whiskey mixture onto the pig. The rule is that you have to spray the pig first, but then you can give yourself a squirt after all your hard work. My favorite part of the process is hanging out around the pig as it cooks. Everyone is chatting and having a great time, and the aroma of the apple cider whiskey, rendering fat, and roasting pork is mouthwatering.

• Enjoy! We took the pig out of the smoker and placed it on the food table. What rested before us was a beautifully cooked pig with crackling skin and tender meat. The only thing that was left to do was to eat! The pig was incredible, but at the end of the day, everything tastes better when surrounded by good company.

In addition to the pig roast itself, there was the Farm Olympics! We broke off into teams for a series of events meant to test our aptitudes as farmers. We competed in Egg-And-Spoon Race, Egg Toss, the Toilet Potato Game (where each player puts a potato in between their legs and has to place it in a toilet), and the classic Find the Grapes in Whipped Cream challenge. If this is what being a farmer entails, I don’t think I’d be a good one. Unfortunately, my team didn’t win, but Rylee’s did! I’m going to grab a potato from the supermarket this week and start practicing for next year.

We wrapped up the evening singing Karaoke around a campfire. We heard some “Party in the U.S.A.”, “Firework”, and old-school country. I personally thought I was pretty funny by getting up to sing “Tequila”. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we ended up singing for 4 hours.

This was such a great weekend, and we are so thankful that we got invited! It was almost like old times getting to see Brent and Lexie back to back. Additionally, we got to see a lot of old friends that we haven’t seen since moving to SF. Asheville itself was wonderful too, and really felt like a tranquil place to get away from it all (that is, when we weren’t up to our hijinks).

Over the course of the weekend, I kept hearing tales of paranormal entities in Appalachia, which people called “skin-walkers.” I was curious, so I did some more research. However, this term originates in Navajo traditions, where it refers to something very different and rooted in Navajo traditions. This video explains the concept of the skin-walker from the Navajo Nation.