How Do You Do, I'm The New Upper Class, And Other Adventures

I ate a lot of cake yesterday.

I ate way too much cake yesterday.

I ate way too much of this cake yesterday.

You have to admit it.  That's a pretty damn cool cake.

Everything there is edible, except for the scraps of newspaper spilling out of the garbage can.

100% vegan, 100% awesome Oscar the Grouch.

I got it from an awesome vegan baker at Sugar Mamas for my son's fifth birthday party.  Can't say enough about how awesome it was.

Of course, while I was in the dining room cutting it (sort of broke my heart to do that), all the moms in the kitchen giggled.  "Jeremy, would you like head, or do you prefer a nice piece of can?"  Mmmm-hmmm.

I ate way too much of both.

******

A coworker was bitten by a rabid fox while she was in her yard doing some gardening.

I suppose that sucks.  I know it must have hurt like hell, and she showed me the wound, which was pretty nasty-- he didn't just nip and run, he dove in for a meal.

Still, there's a part of me that's jealous.

She now has the ultimate party topper story.

"Oh.  You had a skunk in your yard?  It almost sprayed your dog?  I got attacked by a rabid fox, fucker!"

Blam!  Done.

*******

But the victim in this story tops even her.  This is the best headline I've ever, ever read.

"Miami police officer fatally shoots naked man who was eating victim's face."

Hope you have your Zombie Survival Guide close to hand.  It's going to be a long, hot summer.

*******

Last Sunday, I saw Primus at the Landmark Theater here in Syracuse.

I've long been a Primus fan.  I've long liked Primus very, very, very much.  Hell, for roughly half my life now-- 19 years, maybe longer-- I've been a Primus fan.

But until last Sunday, I'd never gone to see Primus.  I had a chance to catch them with Fishbone back when I was in college.  I had a chance to catch them a couple of times when they were touring through Central New York many years ago.  But for some reason I never made it to the show.  Too many other things going on, I suppose.  Can't really remember the reasons.

I've long been a Primus fan, but never got to actually see Primus, and finally corrected that last Sunday.

It was a good show.

It wasn't the best I've ever been to.  It wasn't even exactly what I'd always hoped a Primus show would be.  Primus is still an exceptionally talented band, and they recently put out another good album.  But the guys in Primus are old guys now (kind of like I'm an old guy now).  The show was a seated show in a nice theater, and the set was fairly mellow.  Less of the tweaky-speed-funk-thrash of the good ol' days, more of the abstract improvisational jam flow music that appeals to Phish-heads and the like.

Still, it was good.  They did a fantastic version of "Tommy the Cat."  They made me finally like "Southbound Pachyderm."  It was good stuff.

Here's some Primus for you, in case you aren't entirely familiar.







Two days before that, I had the chance to see Rancid in a club outside of Albany.

I've long been a Rancid fan, too.  Maybe not to the extent that I've loved Primus, but close.

The Rancid show was fantastic.  The Rancid show was exactly what I'd hoped it might be, more than I'd expected it to be.

Twenty years after forming, those guys still give it their all.  I was blown away.

Part of that was just the nature of it.  I prefer club shows to seated shows.  And I prefer punk and hardcore shows to just about anything.  Being in a small club, with the music right in your face, people pounding into you, sweat and aggression filling the room, the pit going crazy.  Man, I just love that.  I feel instantly at home, at ease, when I get to a show like that.  This time, it was just perfect.  A handful of decent openers (including the very, very good Murderer's Row), a packed to the limits crowd, and then just a ton of charisma and energy on the stage, an excellent performance, a great selection of songs off of twenty years of recordings.

If you don't know Rancid, here you go.  This one's pretty catchy.  Some of their stuff is incredibly melodic.  Some isn't even remotely melodic.  All of it is good.



*******

Speaking of music.

I was lying in bed this afternoon, not feeling so well (too much cake?), when I heard my five year old singing from behind the closed bathroom door.  It was sweet, melodic.

There was a penis we all know
And penis was his name-o
Hello penis
Hello penis
Hello penis
And penis was his name-o

********


I've been reading a lot lately.  Always, I suppose.  Lately, lots of Greek tragedies, but a mix of other things too.

For the past few nights, I've been reading Charles Murray's Coming Apart:  The State of White America, 1960 -2010.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

First of all, of course, yes, it's a "conservative" book.  Murray is a conservative libertarian.  He notes friendships with Bad People like Bill Bennett.  He obsessively quotes David Brooks, another conservative writer.

I'm not a very conservative-minded guy.  But I like to think of myself as pretty open-minded.  I'm a big David Brooks fan, for instance.  And the bits I heard Murray saying about his book on NPR a while back had me intrigued.

The book is... well, good, I suppose, but that only to an extent.

The book has some very interesting stuff.  It is fairly thought provoking.  It's well written.  It's interesting.  

But it's also full of Murray's own hang-ups, baggage, condescensions.

Essentiallly, the book is an examination of what has gone wrong in America over the past fifty years or so when it comes to "class."  Murray contends that the upper and lower classes in America are dissimilar in unprecedented ways, that we have drifted apart more than every before, essentially occupy two different worlds.  He keeps his discussion limited to "white America" so that he has effectively put in controls-- the discussion won't wander into side alleys of race, ethnicity, cultural heritage.  The differences here constitute a drifting apart in two groups that were previously very similar culturally.

Murray does a great job of describing the differences.

And it was interesting to discover, in the opening chapters, that I seem to be a member of what he calls the "new upper class."

Almost, anyone.  I don't think I earn quite enough money to completely qualify.  But on most points, I'm a perfect fit.

Married late in life?  Check.

Had children late in life?  Check.

Living in insulated suburbs?  Check.

Managerial job?  Check.

Subscription to The New Yorker?  Check.

A diet low in meat and high in veggies and grains?  Double-check for the vegan warrior!

Yoga classes?  Check.

Little or no television viewing?  Check.

Hands-on child rearing?  Check.

NPR?  Check.

Managerial position?  Check.

A job that doesn't worry too much about how I dress or exactly what time I show up?  Check.

College degree?  Check.

A preference for micro-brews and wine?  Check (at least, back when I still drank).

Avoidance of chain restaurants?  Check.

Liberal political views?  Check.

And so on and on and on and on and on and on.

Really, on maybe 95% of the points, it was a perfect fit.

Except the money.

But I work for a non-profit, and we don't make a lot of money.

So my family is part of the New Upper Class.

Hooray for that.

Except, well, two things.

One, I don't know that I buy that.

I mean, sure, we are probably part of some sort of an upper class.

But I don't know that his list of cultural qualifiers means a damn thing.

I didn't finally start making decent money, move the suburbs, and then, ta-da!, suddenly acquire a taste for NPR and wine and whole grains and the like.

Right now, I'm pretty comfortable.  Not filthy rich, but certainly comfortable.

I haven't always been.  I grew up poor.  The kind of poor where you went to grandma's house for dinner because there was no food in your own house, where you wore your new coat inside on Christmas morning because there wasn't any heat, where unemployment was a pretty regular thing.

I grew up poor, and I stayed poor in my early adult years.  I lived in a house with a bunch of other young guys, or in a little shack, or in a one room apartment where I could pretty much stir food on the stove while lying in bed.  I barely had the money to pay for heat, often was without a vehicle.  I delivered pizzas, worked in a store room, unloaded trucks, mopped floors, got by on low-paying dead end jobs and mostly hung out with other people working low-paying dead end jobs.

And back then, I loved NPR.  I loved The New Yorker.  I loved Woody Allen movies and indie films and preferred unique restaurants to Denny's or Friendly's.  I was a vegetarian, ate healthy food, learned a little yoga. My friends and I liked micro brews, and I tried to eat local food when I could.  I deliberately avoided having kids that I wasn't ready to take care of.  I worried about the environment and I voted as far left as I could vote on the political spectrum.

I couldn't always afford to live the values that I wanted to live, and the community I lived in didn't always have the opportunities to participate in those things (there were no organic markets, co-ops, yoga teachers, CSAs, reading groups, collective houses, etc in the small town I grew up in).  But those values didn't come from nowhere.  I cared about them always.  When I found myself financially able to live that way, and when I found myself in a city where those things were available, they became bigger parts of my daily life.  But even when poor in living in a fairly rural setting, they were always there.  And they weren't unique to me.  Lots of my college-dropout or college-never-attended friends were like minds, if not always to the same extreme.

So I don't by this whole "the New Upper Class has values totally out of touch with the rest of society" thing that Murray is arguing.

And two, well... I don't think Murray much likes the people he describes in the New Upper Class.

I think that that's actually what a lot of this book is about.

He packages it well.  He makes it about a problem that's facing the country, where wealthy liberal-minded people are growing out of touch with mainstream America.

But he seems to be really just sort of bitching about people he doesn't like.  Poor people with no values at all.  And overeducated elitist snobs.

I mean, he actually uses the phrase "overeducated elitist snobs" early in the book.

He seems to resent thin, healthy people, and so claims (with no supporting evidence) that overeducated elitist snobs job and do yoga not because they want to be healthy, but because they feel superior, because they are disgusted by fat people and consider them to be less worthy as human beings.

He doesn't seem to buy into all the environmental activism that liberal types practice, and so he claims (with no supporting evidence) that overeducted elitist snobs recycle not because they feel that this is the responsible thing to do, but because they like feeling superior to people who don't.

Murray gets all tied up in his own baggage throughout the book, and so it's hard to take him entirely seriously.  He tries hard throughout to sound like the objective, fact-slinging, scientific sociologist, all armed with charts and graphs and studies.  But he gets into his own baggage and resentments so often that the whole of the work suffers, makes him sound petty and ridiculous too often for the book to actually be a "good" book.

Still, it's a decent read, and there are enough bright spots, enough interesting tidbits, to make it worth sticking with it.  I'm halfway through now.  Assuming he doesn't turn the BS on too high in the next few chapters, I hope to be able to finish this before it's due back to the library.

Fresh Never Tasted So Good

So, the Target a couple of miles down the road from me recently expanded their grocery section.

They're really promoting it, and today in the mail I got one of those fold-out flyers of coupons. 12 coupons in all. At the top, the big words "Fresh never tasted so good."

The coupons: Coca-Cola, Frosted Flakes, Pop Tarts, frozen cheese sticks, frozen pizza, pink iced sugar cookies, Lean Cuisine frozen dinners, Lunchables (complete with Oreo desserts), hot dogs, a couple of frozen meats, one frozen veggie.

Not sure if they're using the word "fresh" here in sort of an ironic way, or if they mean "fresh never tasted so good" as in "fresh stuff doesn't taste as good as this stuff," or if they just assume they're marketing to stupid people who like junk food and those people won't notice.

This is the problem. This is everything I've been ranting about.


In unrelated news... isn't it awesome that Monsanto (aka, The Most Evil Corporation In The World) is reintroducing Agent Orange to use on crops?

88 (Jeremiad)

88.

88!!!

1 in 88.

That's the new number.

1 in 88 kids born today will be on the autism "spectrum."

1 in 88.

That's the new number, and it's a big number and that big number has me...

What's the word exactly?

Stressed? Frustrated? Scared? Angry?

Those aren't the words, but they come up close to the edge of it, to the sense of what I'm feeling, to the gut level reaction to "1 in 88."

1 in 88 is a big, bad number and it bothers me-- as a parent, as a person working in the "field," and, well, just as a damn human being.

It's a big bad number and it bothers me but what bothers me maybe more is the fact that last I knew, the number was 150. As in 1 in 150. As in 1 in 150 kids born today will be on the autism spectrum. As in, bad got worse times almost two in a very short period of time. As in, what will it be a year from now, 1 in 50?

As in, this is the wrong direction. The very, very, very wrong direction.

And nobody can say exactly what the deal is, where this is coming from, but it seems we're doing something wrong. Something.

Is it old dads? Heavy moms? Vaccines? Gluten? Maybe it's refined sugars or artificial sweeteners?

Haven't narrowed it down yet. Most theories end up looking silly, but we're doing something wrong.

Here's another number.

3.

1 in 3.

That's how many people in this country are obese today.

Not "overweight."

Obese.

1 in 3.

Here's some of the groovy stuff that comes with that: unprecedented levels of children with diabetes, children (little children, not snarling teens) with high blood pressure. Unprecedented numbers of kids having... for fuck's sake... strokes. Unprecedented numbers of kids going in for knee replacements. And, according to bits and pieces out there in the news right now, maybe more kids with autism (the chances go up if mom's more than 35 pounds overweight).

And again, it makes me... what?

Furious? Yes, absolutely. Heartbroken? Okay, also that. Terrified? Disgusted? Anxious? Stressed? Sick? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and throw in some more, take your pick, yes.

And again, we're doing something wrong; that something in this case being easier to directly identify, but seemingly no easier to rectify.

Apparently watching 8 year olds have strokes and go under the knife for knee replacements isn't yet quite enough to create in us the collective will to do something different.

Contempt. Maybe that's the word. And disappointment.

A contemptuous disappointment or a disappointed contempt.

That's the feeling.

We're shitting our own bed, if you will. Culturally speaking. Shitting our bed, burning down our own house, and not interested in doing a damn thing about it. We'll all wring our hands from time to time and get that perplexed, concerned, what about the children? look on our faces, but do something different? We cling to this almost heroic refusal to even think about setting a different course. We hear a whole lot of talk from at least half the political spectrum about the horrible immorality of passing debt and taxes on to our children, and hey, that's right, that's good, we shouldn't pass lots and lots of debt to our children and grandchildren. But we don't hear much about the other debts and burdens that we're passing on, the crushing ones, the big things, the bad stuff. It's as if we want to believe that the whole of life is economical, that the whole of everything is the market, the dollars. We can't pass down that kind of burden. But we can watch those 8 year olds inject themselves with insulin, we can watch their knees buckle under the weight of those obese bodies, and cut the knees out of any proposal, any effort to change course (mandating healthier school lunches? hells no!!!).

And so on and so forth. Et cetera.

In every area of our lives.

Shitting the bed.

Passing down the debt.

I like David Brooks. I don't always agree with David Brooks, but I like the guy's stuff. I like hearing him on NPR and I like his column. I groaned recently when I read his bit on the crisis of The Population Implosion. Brooks tells us that the not-growing-fast-enough U.S. population is a bad thing, because it's not good for the Markets. For the Economy. And again, the whole of life is the market place, the dollars. What's bad for the economy is a Bad Thing, never mind that in any and every way that matters, in any and every way that is real, less people is a good thing, because less people means less war, less poverty, less pollution, less disease, less depletion of resources, less nameless-faceless-ocean-of-people disconnect.

And hey, 2011 was the 11th warmest year on record since there have been records. 2001 was the warmest. The most warm, the biggest, baddest, hottest of all. In between 2001 and 2011 we had the 5th, 4th, 9th, 1st (a tie), 6th, 13th, 7th (another tie), and 1st (that one was a three-way) warmest years on record. Ever. Ten years. 2011 also set the record for "extreme weather events" (there were 14). The previous was way, way back in... 2008 (there were 9). And 2011 had record or near record droughts and flooding (not in the same places), about three times what might be considered "normal."

But, you know, "green" was 2008. It's not the trend anymore. Who really even talks about climate change? I mean, it's passe, lame.

Or another number. One I've mentioned so many times before.

1 in 4.

1 in 4 people claiming they have "no one" to talk to about important things. (Another 1 in 4 claimed to have only one other person).

Or 1 in 10. That's the number of adults on anti-depressants or similar medication.

Food commodity trading (ie, raising the price of food through market contrivances, so that some people make a bundle off of doing nothing at all, and others just... well, starve).

Burning rivers of cow shit. Really.

Newborns with pesticides in their system.

Burning rivers of cow shit. I know I said that one already, but, really? Really.

Kids hitting puberty earlier and earlier, not because we're "evolving" that way, but because we load up our cows with a fierce shitload of hormones and those hormones stay in the milk our kids our drink.

Banks and Wall Street firms posting record profits after the financial meltdowns that left most people just plain fucked.

Coca Cola and others buying up water rights in countries where the people who live there already don't have enough clean water to survive.

Tobacco companies... just being tobacco companies (hear the one where the tobacco exec basically threatened to increase underage smoking in Australia if his company didn't get his way?).

Christmas lights being made... and this is grand, you'll love it... by prisoners in work camps in China. Their crime? Attending unsanctioned Christian churches.

Glenn Beck.

Record unemployment and complete economic mayhem but a 300% growth in the assets of the top 1%.

BP. Food recalled for contamination over and over and over again. 264 school curricula formulated by corporations whose main goal is to sell a profit, ads played on loops in school homerooms to a captive audience, child psychologists paid top dollar to help corporations market unhealthy shit to the kids they were supposedly trained to help.

And so on.

Et cetera.

I want to go on and on and I want to say more, to get into every little bit, every piece, but I'll stop.

Because it all comes down to a simple thing.

We're doing something very, very wrong.

We need to do that something different.

We need to change.

We need to let go and change.

In Our Time

Home with a sick sniffly five year old again, had time to finish up Hemingway's In Our Time.

Lots of memories there.

I read In Our Time-- pieces of it, at least, maybe three or four of the fourteen short stories, maybe more than that-- a long, long time ago, when I was 19 years old, taking a Creative Writing class at O.C.C., living in my own apartment for the first time in my life, drinking for the first time in my life, doing an awful lot of things for the first time.

I loved the bits and pieces I read then, and when I read "Cat In the Rain" and "The End of Something" and "A Very Short Story" again this time around, I couldn't help but feel, on some level, in some distant way, like I was that beginning-to-experience-a-bigger-world 19 year old kid again. Not just the memories of the stories, but the context, the times, kind of trickled back to me through the pages... the old girlfriends, the drunken stumbling, the sitting around the apartment in a snowstorm with a bunch of hippies all banging on acoustic guitars and passing around a bottle of cheap wine. The confusion-- existential and substance-induced, both somehow sweet memories now.

And then, there at the back of the book, a receipt. A receipt for frozen yogurt, a couple of years later. July 5 1995. A few years after O.C.C., after I'd returned to Houghton College and then just dropped out entirely. A receipt for frozen yogurt from the hospital kitchen where I worked sometimes as a cafeteria guy, sometimes as the stores clerk, always kind of playing the role of the pensive existential philosopher poet guy. Good memories. Apparently I picked up the book again that day, read a little more, though I don't exactly remember that. Apparently I'd decided to pay for my frozen yogurt that day instead of stealing it. Don't remember doing that too often either.

Crazy Sexy Diet

I'm about half way through Kris Carr's book Crazy Sexy Diet, and I really, really like it.

I really, really like it, knowing full well that I am not the intended audience.

It's a book for women. Not just (roll the eyes) "women stuff," but really mostly I think written for ladies. Unless she keeps calling me "sister" and telling me to put on my high heels and kick back on purpose (as if; I haven't owned high heeled anything since Whitesnake was charting hits...).

It's mainly for women, but I don't care.

It's a good book.

It's all about food. And cancer. And the connection between the two.

Kris Carr was living the standard American unhealthy lifestyle of cheeseburgers and microwave meals and beer binges and candy bars and the like, and then found herself diagnosed at 31 with a rare and "incurable" cancer. She studied up, changed some habits, and her cancer (while still there) hasn't progressed. She's healthier and happier than she was before the cancer, mostly due to dietary changes.

The changes? No big surprises. It's what everybody who knows anything about food and the diseases of affluence says over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Quit the meat. Quit the cheese. Quit the processed crap. Quit the white flour and caffeine and sugar and corn syrup.

Eat vegetables. Lots of them. And whole grains. And beans.

Move around a little.

The end.

That's it.

That's how to be healthy.

Foodstuff

I've still got a lot to do today.

There's food to be made.

A big kettle of Rustic Tomato Lentil Soup. And some BBQ Tofu. I'll be winging it on the tofu, but I'm guessing I'll be going with some local (Ithaca Soy) tofu, some locally grown kale, locally bottled BBQ sauce (Dinosaur BBQ, good, good stuff), and some scallions, peppers, and garlic. Maybe a little chipotle sauce to spice it up a bit.

I've already baked the apple crumble. I was sort of winging that one too, using a pear-ginger crumble recipe as a starting point. This one's got some locally grown apples, some cinnamon, some vegan margarine, quinoa, rolled oats, and raw sugar. I think it's going to be good.

And that lentil soup will be a no-brainer. I can make that in my sleep. I make it all the time. I've had lots and lots of celery and carrots on hand lately, so it's been a go-to for the past few weeks. Hate for those veggies to get wasted.

It's potluck night tonight.

I love potlucks.

I love potlucks so much that I took the day off for this one. I mean, yeah, I also needed a rest, a day to just chill out at home alone. But mostly it was the potluck.

The potluck is the wrap-up to an NWEI study course I've been participating in.

For the past couple of months, I've been meeting with a dozen or so others every Monday night at the local Quaker meeting house, to discuss topics from Hungry for Change: Food, Ethics, and Sustainability.

I've participated in a number of NWEI study groups in the past-- I really like the format, the topics, the whole feel of them-- and I have to say that this has been one of the better ones. That's partly due to the mix of people-- there have been people in this one that I didn't know before, who I've enjoyed, and with a dozen people there, there's plenty of discussion (I've been in groups with as few as four participants; still nice, but just not the same).

But it's also the topic.

If you've been here much before, you know how I feel about food.

Food is a big deal for me.

Food is much, much more than something you put in your mouth and chew.

Food is... lord, food is pretty much everything.

Food is our health, our bodies, our beings, our minds. But it's also the health of our planet. Our communities. It's justice. It's morality. It's all caught up in everything we do. In everything that's right, in absolutely everything that's wrong.

Food's a big deal.

This course gets that, is all about that. It's all about the big deal that food is, the many ways food matters, the many ways we have been getting it wrong, and the many ways that we can work to get it right.

Wanna get why I spend what some people think is way too much on local, organic tomatoes, instead of buying what's in the grocery store? Read Barry Estabrook's "The Indignity of Industrial Tomatoes."

Want to get the overlap between food and world stability, world politics? Lester R. Brown's "The New Geopolitics of Food" is a good place to start.

Like fish? Check out "Aquacalypse Now: The End of Fish," by Daniel Pauly.

Like your candy bars? Kisses? Peanut butter cups? How do you feel about child slavery? Because chocolate and slavery pretty much go hand in hand. Go here, you can read more about it in a fantastic and disturbing article by John Robbins.

Lest we think that slavery is something that "other" people do, we should all check out Barry Estabrook's "The Price of Tomatoes." It may make you want to grow (and can) your own.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The book is crammed full of good stuff. Stuff that people need to talk about. There's the whole animal welfare issue (which as a vegan I care deeply about, but this is certainly not a "vegan" course, not by a long shot). Global warming stuff. Food miles. Community building. And more, and more, and more.

It's been exciting to be a part of the group, and I'm a little disappointed that it's coming to an end (though admittedly excited to find out what everyone else is bringing to the potluck; I do so, so love potlucks). I've offered to facilitate this course at work after hours, because I think there are some staff who would be very into, but it seems that the HR person who takes care of that stuff is ignoring my emails (not that I blame her; I am at times a little confrontational in my dealings with HR).

*******

And since we're talking about food.

I got my second Health Box last Thursday.

"Healthy Box" is one of the options provided by Grindstone Farm.

Grindstone is a terrific place. For several years, I had a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share through Grindstone. If you're not familiar, basically I paid a chunk of money up front, and for 20-something weeks I got produce delivered to a "pod" in the area of my home. I'd go each week and pick up my share. In order to keep my share price down (and to get more familiar with the process, with the soil, with the farmers, with the whole experience of it all), I signed up to work a certain number of hours. Real work. Not "let's make the suburban hippies feel all natural" work, but ass-busting, back-aching work work. It was pretty awesome.

For the last couple of years, I skipped out on doing the CSA. The first year because I was moving mid-season, and then last year because I was sure I'd get all I needed from my garden and from farm stands (including Grindstone's).

A few weeks back, I signed up for "Healthy Box." It's not a CSA share, but it's similar. I pay a weekly fee ($35, which includes delivery), and they bring a big ol' box of organic produce to a pod in the area, where I pick it up. As much as possible is grown by Grindstone. This is the off-season, so right now a lot is imported from organic farmers outside the state. But there's a good chunk of local in there. And I can add to the order any time I want, ask for (and pay for) a little extra.

For the past several weeks I've been getting vast amounts of awesome produce, some of which I have to really think to figure out what to do with. I've been canning applesauce, making daikon radish pickles, pear crumbles, apple crumble, lots and lots of soup. I'll be making a vegan key lime pie this week, and I've got to figure out something to do with Jerusalem artichokes (aka, sun chokes; they were kind enough to send a recipe along with them, so I may try that).

It's great having this. It's getting me in the habit of eating according to what's available again, rather than just eating according to my whim of the moment. That's good spiritually, I think. And it'll be good for me when I get into the full on farming season in Central New York. It's also got me working on my canning skills again. And excited about expanding my garden.

*****

And then there's "service."

One of the things on my mind lately, one of the things this group has helped to rekindle, is my desire to something in the way of "service" as it relates to food.

And by that, I don't mean writing a check to the local Food Bank or similar groups (though I think that's good, essential, and will continue to do it).

I mean hands on sort of stuff.

Service.

Food "service" seems to me to be just about the most basic "moral" work a person can do.

I mean, Jesus fed the hungry, right? Talked a lot about that stuff, too.

It's basic.

I have a lot. Others don't. I should share.

Exactly how to share (beyond that check writing skill I've honed) is sort of hard to figure out.

I wanted to join Food Not Bombs.

Food Not Bombs "reclaims" wasted food, then serves health vegan meals in the streets to the homeless, the poor, the hungry, and whoever else feels like stopping by.

But the local Food Not Bombs group isn't going anymore, and I'm not a leader. I'm a follower. That's what I want to be, how I want to do it, and what I'm able to do right now. I flirted with the idea of saying "screw it" and starting my own Food Not Bombs chapter, but I don't know that I could do that. I don't know that I could commit myself every week without fail, could take on the work of getting things organized, could be the point person. I'm busy. That's a cop-out, but there's truth in it. I'm busy, often with "good" things, and I don't know that I could do it alone.

But I could join. I could help.

And so I've written here and there. To the Food Bank, looking for volunteer jobs (they didn't respond). To the local Rescue Mission, where I've volunteered before (they did). And to others.

And most notably, to the Matthew 25 Farm. That might be the way to go. Not exactly feeding people in the streets, but at least there's an element of involvement, of getting hands dirty, of working, of participating, of growing the food that could help feed others.

Maybe that'll hold me till someone with more commitment and leadership gets a new Food Not Bombs rolling again.

Our Black Year

So, the other night I stayed up late and finished reading Maggie Anderson's Our Black Year. I'd caught a bit of an interview with Anderson on NPR, and that had really gotten my attention. Ordered the book through the local library and dove in when it arrived.

It was not a disappointment.

Our Black Year is about the Anderson family's attempt to "buy Black" for a full calendar year. The Andersons, a fairly well-to-do upper-middle class Black couple with two young daughters, were living in Chicago and wondering what they could do to help the Black community when they identified one of the major problems keeping Blacks in poverty. It was all about economics. There was a lack of Black-owned business, a lack of intergenerational wealth, of successful neighborhood role models, of local businesses employing people from the neighborhood, etc.

The Andersons got some support, raised some publicity, and bought Black for a year, tracking everything, commissioning a report, speaking at events, encouraging others to do likewise.

The book is all about that year.

Not exactly "inspiring," in a sense. It turns out that buying Black was not easy. The "experiment" highlighted the problems more than it showed an easy solution. But in another sense, it was entirely "inspiring," as it showed a group of people willing to work to make changes, to address the problems head-on, to forego asking for handouts or for someone else to come along and fix things. Made me feel that I should be doing a whole lot more for the things I believe in.

And then, disappointing. Disappointing to read encounter after encounter, email after email, from Whites who accused the Andersons of racism, who said that they planned to even the scales by "buying White" for a year (not getting the point-- that's what they were already most likely doing, by default) and so on. Anderson addressed that again and again throughout the book, and the project was anything but racist, and clearly so for anyone who would take the time to listen. Sadly, most accusers weren't looking for a conversation, but for a place to vent their anger, so it's unlikely those rebuttals changed many minds.

A good book. Worth reading.

I decided when I was done that I would make an effort to buy Black in my own town. Not exclusively, not even primarily. But some, and consciously.

Don't know that that's going to happen. I put in my city, my zip code on all the "Black pages" websites I could find. "No listing found," over and over again.

Aeschylus

Been catching up on my Greek tragedies the past couple of days while waiting for a book to come in from the library (I don't want to be caught in the middle of something long when it arrives).

This morning, having taken the day off, before my run in this record March 19 heat (so gorgeous outside, unbelievable), I laid on the couch and read Aeschylus' "The Persians."

A pretty interesting play, especially when you know the context. Per the translator's preface, this was first performed eight years after the Athenians repelled the attacks of Xerxes and the Persian army. Aeschylus himself (and certainly the majority of the men in his audience) fought at that battle. The battle was one of those rare, clear cases of good vs. evil in warfare-- a conqueror king attacking without provocation, wanting to enslave the free, democratic Athenians. The Greeks won a very big victory, there second in a fairly short time frame against the Persians (they'd beaten his dad not long before at Marathon).

The neat thing about the play is that it was not only about this battle and the immediate aftermath, but it was about the battle and the aftermath from the perspective of the Persians. It was sympathetic to them. It expressed their pain, their loss, their fear and disappointment. There was this absolutely beautiful line--

And parents and wives
Counting the days
Tremble at lengthening time.

For me, that captures it wonderfully, the fear when the ships haven't returned, when no word has come, when the loved ones are away and in danger, when you don't know what could be next. I've never exactly experienced that, but those lines kind of make me feel it.

It's a beautiful play, because it shows that Aeschylus and his Athenian audience were able to beat the Persians, were able to defeat in battle an army that was clearly in the wrong, were able to fight to the death for their own freedom and come out victorious, and were able to do that without dehumanizing their enemies, without imagining them to be bloodthirsty, soulless caricatures. Xerxes' mother feels pain, and though Xerxes would have enslaved Aeschylus, Aeschylus sympathizes with that mother's pain. The wives of fallen soldiers are wailing, and though Aeschylus and his audience were among the ones that struck them down, they feel the pain of those wives, they hurt along with them.

Beautiful stuff.

Makes me think that at his best, Aeschylus was better than us. Better than me.

Get Up

I signed up to be part of one of those nationwide cancer studies where they monitor behavior for years and years to see who gets cancer, who doesn't.

I got the newsletter today.

In a short piece called "Time Spent Sitting Increases Death Rates," I underlined these words:

According to a recent American Cancer Society study... no matter what your level of physical activity, the more time you spend sitting, the higher your risk of dying prematurely, especially from cardiovascular disease... Women who reported sitting for more than six hours per day during their leisure time had a 40% higher death rate compared to those who sat for less than three hours per day...

Researchers found that no matter how much physical activity was performed, time spent sitting was still associated with a higher risk of dying from all causes. In fact, women who were the least active and spent the most time sitting... were 94% more likely to die early...

I considered typing that while standing, but I'm just so lazy and tired and it's Sunday and... yeah.

Why I Hate The Wheel Of Time

I don't get around to posting much these days-- blame a busy schedule, a wandering mind, and maybe a dash of apathy-- so when I do, I try to make sure that it's for something important. Something meaningful.

Like "Why I Hate The Wheel of Time."

For those who aren't familiar, The Wheel of Time is a fantasy series by Robert Jordan. It's about a a shepherd named Rand and few friends from his village, who are pulled into big adventures by enchantresses (called Aes Sedai), discover that Rand is actually the prophesied Dragon Reborn, face off against the Dark Lord and all his really bad baddies, and so on, so forth.

My brother talked me into reading these books a while back. I am currently at the very end of Book 4.

I hate them. I'll continue reading them, but I resent them deeply.

Here's why.

1. Everyone is special. Rand is The Dragon Reborn. Okay. I get that. That's the story line. Of course he's special... the book is about this 18 year old kid who suddenly finds out he was special, people want to kill him, he has a role to play in history. Standard stuff. But this gets annoying. Nobody in these books isn't somehow special, in more than that "we're all special and unique" way. Rand is The Dragon Reborn. His girlfriend tags along when he leaves town, and she discovers... that she's one of the most powerful enchantresses ever, but never noticed till now! And his buddy Perrin? When he leaves town, his eyes turn yellow, and he learns that he can speak with wolves and enter a dreamworld. His buddy Mat? He's the reincarnation of some great warrior. Another friend from their tiny village catches up with them down the road and, yup, she's a great enchantress too! Rand meets a girl in a big city, and it turns out she's the princess AND she's one of the greatest enchantresses ever (but didn't know it). Mat meets a wandering musician seemingly at random, but he's that princess's mom's former lover, and a great player of The Great Game (spy stuff, intrigue). Another girl from a warrior clan gets a crush on Rand... and she's also destined to be a great enchantress! A farmer picks up the boys to give them a lift down the road... and later his daughter is at enchantress school! A warrior girl falls in love with Perrin, and later Perrin finds out that she is secretly the cousin of a Queen! And so on, so forth. Everyone is special. Everyone is awesome. If you meet a character for even a moment, you can be assured that they will reappear later with special powers, special skills, that there is something outstanding about them. The characters here never interact with anyone who is less than exceptional.
2. No one isn't special. Sort of the same complaint, but here's the thing: no one isn't special. With everyone being so fantastic, there's no one here is regular, normal, a real human being. Everyone has super powers. And so there's a lack of what you need to make a story real, to make a story feel right. It's why I could never get into Superman-- when you're bullet proof, fly, and can shoot lasers with your eyes, there's nothing "brave" about chasing after the bad guy. The human experience is gone. In these books, there's a lack of the cleverness, courage, and whatnot that might make you identify with a character, fear for them.
3. The good guys are untouchable. For the first four books, at least, don't worry: if you like someone, nothing really bad is going to happen to them. However bizarre or awkward it might seem, Robert Jordan will write a way out for them. A couple of our heroes (not yet in full possession of their powers) are in the jail visiting the creepy prisoner when the castle is attacked by bloodthirsty baddies who set him free? Don't worry. The guards are beheaded, violated, have their guts spread around the room and the walls washed in their blood. Soldiers throughout the castle are torn to shreds. But our two heroes are... knocked on the head. Knocked out. Unconscious. Next to the beheaded, gutted guards! This will happen again and again and again. It's even more obnoxious than the Storm Troopers who always yell "freeze! don't move!" when they've got the drop on Han and the others. They will never, ever pull the trigger, and the baddies will never, ever use the sharp end of the sword when a hero's life is at stake.
4. The characters are unlikeable. Not all of them. I like Perrin. Robert Jordan did a good job with Perrin. He did a decent job with Rand and Mat (you know, aside from the groaner that they ALL have super powers). He did a good job with Thom the wandering musician. Though all of these characters together become too much, they are each on their own fairly well-written. But the female characters (and some of the other males) are horrid. I mean, just terribly written. Insultingly superficial and weak. You get the impression that the author has never met a real, live woman; at least, has never thought to ask one what she thinks, how she feels, how she sees the world. The enchantresses in this book spend lots and lots of time worrying about how they look, trying to figure out how best to control a man, scolding men for bad manners, and fighting with each other over petty nonsense. It is an absolute guarantee that if Nynaeve and Egwene are on the same page, there will be a squabble. No matter what else is going on, no matter how ridiculous it would be for two people to be squabbling in such a situation, there will be squabble. Nynaeve will think that Egwene was rude and will say so, or Egwene will think that Nynaeve is haughty and say so, or someone will roll eyes or pull on her braids in frustration. It's just on and on and on with this crap. Awful.
5. The books are too damn long. Clocking in around a thousand pages each, these books are too long. And I don't mind long books. But these are thousand page books that could have very, very easily been five hundred page books. Really, truly, I would say that close to 400 pages in Book 4 have been wasted on Egwene and Nynaeve rolling their eyes at each other, sniping at each other, Faile telling Perrin not to slouch, Mat pouting in the corner, Elayne wondering if Rand really likes her likes her. Cut all that crap out and not only would you have more likable characters, you'd have a book that flowed better, made more sense, and took half the time to read.
6. Prophecy is annoying. This books is all about Prophecy. And Prophecy can be okay in a book when it's vague, when it plays a secondary role. But these books feel like what I understand the "Left Behind" series to be, with it's "end times checklist" and characters going through the motions, playing the scripted roles they've received. Rand will proclaim. Rand will pull the sword out of the stone. Rand will fight the battle at Toman Head. Rand will gather the Aiel. Et cetera, et cetera. Not a big fan of the pre-ordained plot. This was a bigger problem in the first three books, not as bad in the current book, so maybe it will not continue to be a problem through the series.

And there you go. That's why these books are horrible. Why I can't stand them.

And yet...

I'll continue reading. At least to the end of Book 5 (I went ahead and bought the first five at a used book store, pretty much committed myself). I'll continue reading because, as much as these are not good books, as much as I find myself groaning page after page after page... there's something a little bit compelling about them as well. You find yourself sort of wanting to know what happens next, wanting to get to the conclusion.

Obama's War On Religion

I don't have the patience or the energy to put it nicely: Cal Thomas is off his fucking nut again.

Per Mr. Thomas' new piece this week, once employers are required to cover birth control in health insurance policies, it's just a hop, skip and a jump to forced euthanasia.

It's a slippery slope, you see. A slippery slope.

A slippery slope, or another disjointed right wing fantasy.

You've heard those fantasies before.

"If the gays are allowed to marry, the next thing you know your Aunt Edith will be forced to sodomize billy goats with a Snickers bar."

"Death panels."

And so on.

Slippery slopes that are neither slippery nor slopey nor in any way connected with reality, with the thoughts that normal, grounded, healthy people think.

This stuff-- paranoid fantasies, hate-mongering-- is standard fair for Cal Thomas. Cal Thomas is a despicable person who makes his living bearing false witness. This piece, as insipid as it is, pales in comparison to his meatier stuff, is almost "thoughtful" when put up against his overall record. And so, of course, it should neither surprise me nor get to me.

But this does get to me.

It gets to me not because I'm disappointed in Cal Thomas-- there'd be no reason to expect decency from this guy-- but because Cal Thomas isn't the only one saying it.

I'm disappointed because this theme, this "War On Religion" nonsense, is coming from people who know better, who are better, who are generally genuinely decent.

Michael Gerson, for instance.

Michael Gerson, with whom I often degree, but who has always been decent, thoughtful, articulate, avoiding the shrill hysterics of so many pundits on the right.

In a recent piece, Gerson called Obama's efforts to require employers to cover birth control a "war on religion," "anti-clerical," "an edict delivered with a sneer," motivated by both "radicalism" and "maliciousness."

That's just silliness. Silliness that is beneath Gerson, and beneath so many of the others who have been parroting this crap, crying out that the socialist-elitist-secularist-Islamist-Democrats are making war on Christianity, violating the First Amendment.

Leave this crap to Thomas. Please. To Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin.

Here's the deal, and from where I sit, it seems pretty easy. We'll go through one by one, a little bit at a time.

First of all, cut the shrill tone.

It's bullshit.

It's make believe.

When something like 98% of Catholic women already use birth control, a rule like this is maybe not a reason to go into hysterics. Agree or disagree, but it's not so much an attack on Catholicism.

More than that though, more than the acts of fallen-unclean-unrepetant women making choices their Church has forbidden (and surely they'll be punished for their feminine frailties), the institution-- The Institution-- of the Church has been on board.

Really, cut the hysterics. LeMoyne College-- the Catholic school right down the road here in Syracuse-- LeMoyne College... you know what? They provide insurance which covers birth control. Same with DePaul. Scranton. Christian Brothers. And on and on.

So, Obama's war on religion seems to be in part that he has asked religious institutions to do what they have already been doing.

Agree, disagree. But no hysterics. Seriously. The hysterics are bullshit. They are phony. If the current situation calls for such a backlash, then why nothing-- nothing-- weeks ago, months ago, a year ago, when these institutions could have stopped covering these services at any time?

But I know.

Leave the hysterics aside, and you can still have a disagreement here. A concern.

It doesn't matter what Catholic women do. It doesn't matter what institutions do.

There's a difference between making a decision that goes against your stated beliefs and being required to violate those beliefs.

I get that.

But here's the second part of the deal:

You can't have it both ways.

Do Catholic hospitals accept Medicaid? Public funding?

Does Catholic Charities bill out services to the state like every other non-profit, like the one I work for?

If the answers are "yes"-- and the answers are "yes"-- then the conversation is (or should be) over.

You want the state out of your religious institution? Then keep the state the hell out of your religious institution. It can't go both ways. The Church here is reaching out with one hand and asking for cash, for help, for comingling. And then crying out with shock and dismay and phony righteous indignation when the state expects a little bit of something in return.

If Catholic Charities would like to not follow the rules that the rest of the non-profit world follows, then they should consider becoming, well, a Catholic charity. As is, Catholic Charities is spending my money. My money. My taxes. And I'd like to know that they are behaving responsibly, treating women fairly, acting decently.

It goes farther, though.

The local soft-spoken but still full of sweet bile Sean Hannity wannabe on the local conservative radio station here in Syracuse (I detest this guy, in part because he replaced a truly decent Libertarian who was canned after 25 years because he wasn't willing to lick Limbaugh's nipples on air every day) made a nice point the other day.

He didn't mean to. He was saying something else. But it works.

The First Amendment, he pointed out, isn't about religious institutions.

The First Amendment.

It goes like this:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

No institutions even mentioned in there, local-Hannity said.

His point: providing exemptions to faith-based employers isn't enough. Because the Constitution doesn't say that the free exercise of religion is guaranteed to employers. It says that the free exercise of religion is guaranteed to people.

If the Catholic Church is not required to cover birth control, he argues, then what about the Catholic believer? The Catholic believer who owns a grocery store, or a book store, or a garage? Why should that employer be prohibited from the free exercise of his faith?

It's a line of thinking that has already been out there in conservative circles. There should be an allowance, people say, for people to do their jobs and live their lives without conflicting with their values.

The argument is almost always around standard conservative social issues-- it's almost always about birth control, abortion, gay marriage. Believers shouldn't have to accept these realities, dirty their hands in the sin. The clerk a couple towns over shouldn't be required to give a marriage license to the lesbians who want to get married, even though gay marriage is legal in New York State and marriage licenses are the clerk's job. The evangelical pharmacist shouldn't have to fill a prescription for birth control pills, even though this might look like "discrimination" or bigotry.

So, here's the thing.

Let's keep going.

Let's not make this about conservatives or Catholics or evangelicals.

Let's put local-Hannity's ideas to work, let's share them, spread it equitably.

Nobody should have to do anything they don't like. Anything they don't believe in. Laws should apply to only those who agree with them.

Religious exemptions.

Certain Mormons-- those who still go for polygamy on religious conviction-- should be allowed to marry as often as they like. All these laws about "one man, one woman" or even "two people, whatever they be" are just anti-Mormon bigotry. We shouldn't prohibit the free exercise of religion, and Mormons can choose to marry as they like.

And what's the deal with all this furor over Warren Jeffs? I mean, sex with underage girls, legal age of consent? This was all clearly taking place in a religious community with a different view of things. Let's not impose our beliefs.

Keep going.

Rastafarians should never, ever be arrested for smoking pot. Marijuana has a deep spiritual significance to many Rastas.

Quakers should not pay a dime in taxes as long as any of that tax money goes to military spending. It's pretty clearly established that Quakers are pacifists (Nixon notwithstanding). I mean, that's half of what Quakers are all about. To expect them to fund things that they do not believe in... well, it's kind of exactly like asking Catholics to pay into a system that provides birth control.

Me? I guess I'm calling myself a Zen Buddhist these days, and though it's kind of hard to pin down a stance on social issues to solidly one way or the other in the Zen community, vegetarianism and veganism are pretty common themes in Buddhism generally and Zen specifically, and my own veganism is very tied in with the precepts and interbeing and such at this point in my life. You could say it's a religious conviction. So I don't feel good about paying taxes that go to subsidize the beef, dairy, pork, poultry, and fishing industries. I want an exemption. And more than that. It violates my convictions to provide my staff with a half-hour lunch break when I know damn well that they are running out to McDonald's and Taco Bell and doing all sorts of sin-y things that I don't like. I want to be able to establish an "eat vegan or don't eat on my clock" rule at the office.

You see how this works?

Feasting, Fasting, Fox

I got on the laptop because I wanted to link to a nice piece by Sister Miriam McGillis called "Feasting and Fasting at the Table of Abraham."

I read it in the most recent NEA Bulletin. But I couldn't find it.

So instead I'll link to something altogether different, another post from the always-good Slacktivist.

It's called "Fox News: trust, distrust, and control."