And Lethargy for All

Bob Herbert says this in todays New York Times:

There’s a hole in the American system where the leadership used to be. The country that led the miraculous rebuilding effort in the aftermath of World War II can’t even build an adequate system of levees on its own Gulf Coast.

The most effective answer to this leadership vacuum would be a new era of political activism by ordinary citizens. The biggest, most far-reaching changes of the past century — the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement — were not primarily the result of elective politics, but rather the hard work of committed citizen-activists fed up with the status quo.

It’s time for thoughtful citizens to turn off their TVs and step into the public arena. Protest. Attend meetings. Circulate petitions. Run for office. I suspect the public right now is way ahead of the politicians when it comes to ideas about creating a more peaceful, more equitable, more intelligent society ("Long on Rhetoric, Short on Sorrow").

This is a good perscription, but it will require that we have more guts and energy than our leaders.

An Unusual Election

I heard an interesting fact this week on the Diann Rehm Show. Not since 1952 have we had a presidential election where there was neither an incubant or a vice-president running for office.

Willie Loman?

Yesterday in the New York Times, Frank Rich wrote, "President Bush always had one asset he could fall back on: the self-confidence of a born salesman. Like Harold Hill in “The Music Man,” he knew how to roll out a new product, however deceptive or useless, with conviction and stagecraft. What the world saw on Wednesday night was a defeated Willy Loman who looked as broken as his war" (“He’s in the Bunker Now”). That's a surprising and interesting image of our president.

Land of Disparity

In today's New York Times, David Brooks writes the following:

Income inequality is on the rise. The rich are getting better at passing their advantages on to their kids….Seymour Martin Lipset, the eminent sociologist who died at 84 on New Year’s Eve. Lipset, …was relentlessly empirical, and rested his conclusions [about inequality] on data as well as history and philosophy. He found that Americans have for centuries embraced individualistic, meritocratic, antistatist values, even at times when income inequality was greater than it is today.

Large majorities of Americans have always believed that individuals are responsible for their own success, Lipset reported, while people in other countries are much more likely to point to forces beyond individual control. Sixty-five percent of Americans believe hard work is the key to success; only 12 percent think luck plays a major role. In his “American Exceptionalism” (1996), Lipset pointed out that 78 percent of Americans endorse the view that “the strength of this country today is mostly based on the success of American business.” Fewer than a third of all Americans believe the state has a responsibility to reduce income disparities, compared with 82 percent of Italians. Over 70 percent of Americans believe “individuals should take more responsibility for providing for themselves” whereas most Japanese believe “the state should take more responsibility to ensure everyone is provided for.”…Political movements that run afoul of these individualistic, achievement-oriented values rarely prosper. (“The American Way of Equality")

With a Side of Fossil Fuel

Our food, says Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma) is “drenched in fossil fuel” (183). He goes on to say, “Today it takes between seven and ten calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to an American plate…only a fifth of the total energy used to feed us is consumed on the farm; the rest is spent processing the food and moving it around” (183). Why is this topic so completely missing from energy conservation conversations?

What are your suggestions for improving this situation? Does it matter?

I am corn walking.

I’m reading the Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, a story of our food. I had heard Pollan interviewed on NPR and read reviews of the book, and the book is much more interesting than I expected. I grew up on a farm (and presently own 1/5 of that farm), and sensed a vast change in how food is grown (or should we say manufactured) now. Omnivore’s Dilemma gives substance to those suspicions. To me, former farmer, it’s a heartbreaking picture but fascinating nevertheless.

Our food supply seems to be organized around corn (with soybeans in second place). Pollan says, the Maya were so dependent on corn as a food that they sometimes referred to themselves as “the corn people.” They might say, “I am corn walking” (19). However, we in the U. S. now consume more corn than Mexicans; we just consume in indirectly in the form of corn fed meats and colas sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. Corn is turned into acids, sugars, starches, and alcohols. You are seeing corn on the ingredient list when you see “citric and lactic acid; glucose, fructose, and maltodextrin; ethanol, sorbitol, mannitol, and xanthan gum; modified and unmodified starches; as well as dextrins and cyclodextrins and MSG, to name only a few” (86). I checked the label on my Cheerios this morning. Modified corn starch is the second ingredient and corn starch is the third. Read this book and be depressed.

A Thin Democracy

In my most recent issue of UU World Frances Moore Lappé writes about American democracy: “[T]he unpleasant fact [is] that democracy and the now-dominant version of a market economy are actually based on opposing principles. Democracy depends on the wide dispersion of power so that each of us has a voice. But our peculiar version of the market is driven by a single rule, highest return to existing wealth, that does the opposite: It inexorably concentrates wealth and power, denying people a real voice…”
She then talks about the wealth gap. She says, “Such extreme concentration of wealth overwhelms elected governments and destroys open markets. Sixty-one lobbyists now walk the corridors of power in Washington, D. C., for every elected representative. I call this unworkable frame Thin Democracy.”

Lappé belives we can replace Thin Democracy with what she calls Living Democracy. I understand her analysis of the problem. I’m still studying her Living Democracy solution. You can read the article and the website of the Small Planet Institute.

Rachel Corrie

Until yesterday morning, I didn’t know much about Rachel Corrie, just that she was a peace activist who was killed when an Israeli bulldozer ran over her—intentionally it seemed. Yesterday morning at the South Bend First Unitarian, four members gave a presentation, reading emails Rachel Corrie had sent before her death along with other readings and songs. I hadn’t really wanted to know more about Rachel Corrie, maybe because, even from the sketchy information I had, it was obvious this story would be complicated. But it wasn’t a complicated story. The Israeli/Palistine conflict is complicated, but it seems very uncomplicated that young women don’t need to be killed to expedite Palestinian home demolitions in Rafah.

Rachel Corrie was young (24), idealistic, and articulate. Her emails show a thoughtful woman interested in justice. Apparently, this concern for others began in her childhood. Like Corrie, when I was a child, I assumed I would grow up and fix the messes of the world. Unlike Corrie, by the time I was her age, I had already despaired of my ability to change the world. I lack(ed) the courage to act as she did. I am also too rational. I would say to myself, what difference can a protest make? Yet, hearing Rachel Corrie’s story, I was incredibly moved, and I know she made a difference in a complicated, violent conflict. And her story calls me to, somehow, shift the way I respond to the world’s lack of humanity.

Also, Rachel Corrie’s story offers an opportunity to experience my sorrow instead of my despair. Her story reminds me that there are truer emotions than anger and despair. Like the child I so often leave behind, these stories of violence break my heart. Anger has its place, but my heart tells me that sorrow is a truer place than anger.

Teaching Writing and Writing

They don't mix. Or maybe the drive to blog has passed. We shall see.

Thought for Today

I have a dream that in the New World, we will add an eleventh commandment to the standard ten: Thou shalt not bore God.

So says Rob Brezsny

Saving Energy and Other Depressing Matters

Recently a friend and I watched the video Kilowatt Ours. I don’t want to hear any more she said. “I’m starting to feel too depressed and guilty. I feel guilty about throw-away containers at Dairy Queen.” I don’t yet feel guilty about Dairy Queen, but I’m feeling about my electrical my electrical vampires (answering machines, cordless phones, and all of those machines that constantly suck electricity). Today I bought a programmable thermostat and low-energy light bulbs.

Now, I’m studying gasoline saving strategies from Click and Clack. Guilt be gone!

Got $79.50?

My students and I have been critiquing popular culture. Here is a description from the Abercrombie Fitch website (http://www.abercrombie.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product_10051_10901_1_-1_12236) about their latest jeans:

Kilburn Destroyed Low Rise Boot [jean]
$79.50
100% cotton, sits low below your waist, inconsistently scarred with handcrafted abrasions, over worn fading, blown out holes, random paint splatters, dirt and grass stains, button fly, Destroyed Wash, Low Rise Boot Fit, Imported

Can It Be? Can We Think Like This?

Neil Postman says, "The point is that profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other."

More pithy quotations can be found at http://www.brainyquote.com/

Save, Save, Save

Sunday I viewed the video Kilowatt Ours. It offers some great tips for saving energy in your home. However, much of it is about the environmental destruction of some southern states where mountains are destroyed to mine coal. It was disturbing, and I plan to change to lower energy light bulbs right away and purchase a lower energy refrigerator soon. More information is available at http://www.kilowattours.org/index.php.

Public Views

I saw this sign this morning on my way to work: "Trickle down economics—Please, don’t pee on my head and tell me it’s rain!" It was at the Saint Joseph Valley Building Trades Building on North Side Blvd.

On a car the other day, I saw a bumper sticker that said, "Wage Peace."

Paranoid or Pronoid?

In one of his books, the Dalai Lama challenges readers to go just ten minutes without having a negative thought about another person. When I told this to my acquaintance Arthur, he said, "What a simplistic, overrated fraud that Dalai Lama dude is. It's totally easy to go ten minutes without dissing someone." Your assignment, Libra, is to submit to a marathon version of the challenge: See if you can go seven whole days without having a negative thought about anyone. His Holiness implies there's a good selfish reason for doing so: It helps you cultivate a state of mind in which peaceful contentment is a natural condition.

The above is my horoscope for today according to Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology. He site also promotes pronoia, the opposite of paranoia. “A ‘pronoiac’ is someone who believes that the world is conspiring to shower him or her with blessings.” You can see more at http://www.freewillastrology.com/home.shtml

Can We Blame It on Racism?

From "How the GOP Conquered the South" by Michael Nelson in The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 21, 2005, B14.

The greatest change in American national politics of the past 60 years has been the transformation of the South from the most solidly Democratic to the most solidly Republican region of the country. In the 1930s and 1940s, Democrats enjoyed a strong advantage in presidential elections because they could count on winning the 127 electoral votes cast by the 11 states of the old confederacy…

Consider how much has changed. In 2004 John F. Kerry ran up a 252-133 electoral-vote lead over George W. Bush outside the South but lost the election because the Sough went 153-0 for Bush. In the current Congress, although Democrats from non-Southern states outnumber Republican non-Southerners by 41-37 in the senate and 154-150 in the House, the GOP has converted its Southern majorities—82-49 in the House and 18-4 in the Senate—into control of both chambers.

Why the Silence?

In this morning's paper, Gwynne Dyer talks about Iraq milestones, one of course that the 2,000th American soldier has died. Here is one of his reasons for the silence:

...Americans who are dying in Iraq are poor people's kids, and most poor people don't know how to organize and network politically. If there is no draft to threaten the lives of middle-class kids, there won't be a big anti-war movement.

I don't know if I want a draft, but it would give us a more diverse force, and that would be good.

Reading Woes

"It was nearing midnight and the Prime minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind." This is the first sentence in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling. It’s a great description of something we have all experienced. The first chapter is engaging and funny as we watch the new English Prime Minister meet the Minister of Magic (who calls the Prime Minister the Prime Minister of Muggles). All of book six is very good.

All of Us Know-It-Alls

Very often, people think that they know everything. They believe they know all about who they are and what their purpose in life is and argue that they know more than anybody else in whatever it is that they do. The truth is these people are confused and tricked into believing what is right by their cultural myths.

I love these lines, the introduction to an essay handed in by one of my students. The assignment was in partial response to an article called “Critical Thinking, Challenging Cultural Myths.” He goes on to imply that critical thinking and challenging cultural myths can cure us of thinking we know everything. It’s no wonder we don’t want to think critically. Nothing is more annoying than others who think they know everything, but when it’s me, it’s hard to let go of what I think I know. However, this desire for quick and easy answers is a dangerous characteristic of the United States today, and it shows up when you look at political campaigns. It even shows up in the literature I receive from my favorite political party. I think they are trying to come up with some easy answers to win back government. They need that confident swagger that comes from knowing everything.