Sustainability is a word often bandied about by environmentalists, economists, and politicians trying to establish a platform. I don’t remember ever using the word myself when I decided to live in rural New Mexico for the rest of my life. Whatever we were after was more along proletarian lines, or the opposite of whatever we defined as bourgeois. There were plenty of other words to describe these goals: hippie, back to the land, alternative generation, or counter culture, but they all somehow missed the fundamental motive of wanting to discard any notion of being part of consumer culture while advocating for the overthrow of the government. How we could achieve the second goal in Placitas or El Valle, New Mexico, I don’t know, but we certainly could be nonconsummers when we couldn’t afford more than a weekly trip to town or anywhere you could spend money. Did that mean we were living a sustainable life? Not really, but it was probably as close as we could come to being self-sufficient without being labeled Luddites and maintaining some semblance of normalcy for our kids.
We weren’t prepared to live like our Hispano neighbors had only fifty years ago, when they grew all the food they consumed except for coffee and sugar. They grew all their vegetables and fruit and canned it for the winter. They raised sheep, pigs, cows, and goats and dried the meat for the winter. They grew and milled their own wheat for bread. They made most of their own clothes and musical instruments and actually spent time at each other’s houses talking, singing, dancing, and being neighborly. That’s the most important thing we learned in our El Valle lives: becoming buen vecinos.
I was surprised to learn recently that writer Jack London moved to a 1,400 acre ranch in northern California in 1905 where he could “leave the land the better for my having been.” He wrote in his journal, “My work on this land, and my message to America, go hand in hand.” He said he spent two hours a day writing, which is how he supported himself, and ten hours a day farming.
I thought if I worked on the land then I could have a message for America, that there was a better (whoops, not a poststructuralist word), more equitable way to live, if not sustainably, then at least consciously and lightly. Like building your own house, cutting firewood to heat your house, growing some of your own food, fixing, or at least maintaining, your cars, learning how to take care of yourself. If we could do everything the pioneers did, we could at least get a taste of a day in the life where everything was tended to: your body out in the garden, your mind at the computer, and hopefully your soul, the melding of the two. I try to never sit at the computer for more than a two-hour stretch (except when I had a deadline to finish the index for Malcolm Ebright’s book, Witches of Abiquiu, after which I gave up doing indexes) or I won’t have a body left to sustain a mind.
Perhaps the agenda calls for watering the vegetable garden or garlic field, which is really not that difficult as almost everything is on a drip irrigation system—I turn a few valves on and off and the plants are wet in a matter of hours. Of course, because everything is so sufficiently watered, things grow in abundance, and more and more of my time is devoted to dealing with the harvest. Some days I’m on my hands and knees thinning the carrots that have to be thinned in stages, rather than one fell swoop. Other days I’m stooped over searching for string beans hiding on dense vines only a foot high. At least the sugar snap peas grow six feet tall, although that means I’m constantly adding new string to the trellis to catch the incessant growth. Every day I search for the disgusting green tomato worms that if left unsquished would soon look like the caterpillars in Dune.
Irrigating the pasture is not so easy. One of my neighbors calls the corner of the field to which he can never get the water “Arizona.” We have a Sahara, a Gobi, and a Death Valley. No matter how many feeder ditches we dig off the main acequia, no matter how fast we get the water, or how much water we get, there are bare, brown spots that will never receive the sparkling waters of the Rio de Las Trampas. Too bad for them.
On the days when I do have to go to town, I always anticipate with great relief the final turn onto the dirt road that leads two miles to this village of twenty families. I find myself playing a game, pretending that this is the first time I have come here, that I have never before seen the lush, green valley or mountain peaks that are the setting for the village homes. I try to remember what I felt years ago when we first stumbled upon this place on one of our periodic, wistful trips to northern New Mexico when we still lived in Placitas, where we no longer wanted to live. I distinctly remember saying to myself, “You’ll never be able to live here,” as we made our way along the road of tin-roofed, handmade adobe houses painted lovely greens and pinks, sitting in fields of timothy grass, grazed by cows and horses, with at least one mandatory junked car on display. I thought at the time that it was probably the most beautiful landscape in New Mexico, if not the world, and I still do: the 13,000-foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains provide the backdrop, the piñon-juniper hills rolling to sandstone cliffs the vista. Now, as I drive down the road, I never fail to marvel that I am able to live here, surrounded by all the things that are meaningful and comforting to me. I lead a privileged, if not sustainable, life.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Hero Worship
Ironically, my Westminster Dog Show piece, which ends with the phrase, “Yeah, Tiger Woods” (the dog), was posted just before the golfer Tiger Woods’ escapes were aired in public. The following piece, also written before the airing of Woods’ troubles, seems particularly appropriate to the situation.
They stripped Michael Phelps of his Wheaties gig for smoking pot. Gee whiz. He’s twenty-three or twenty-four, doing what most other twenty-year olds do at some point in their lives and he gets taken off the back of a cereal box. But the question is, why is he, or Alex Rodriguez or Mark McGuire or O.J. Simpson, on the back of a cereal box in the first place? I assume being on the cereal box means that kids are supposed to look at the picture and want to be just like you, meaning they want to be born with the physical attributes and the psychological ambition and drive that allow these guys to make it to the top in their respective sports, where they are paid millions of dollars to single mindedly pursue success in a very narrow field of interest. What is heroic about that? Is making millions of dollars heroic or simply what our society equates with success? If it’s heroic, why don’t they put the pictures of corporate CEOs on the back of cereal boxes. Or do you have to earn millions of dollars and play a sport to be a hero. Is it the single mindedness (or simple mindedness, as the case may be)? Then why aren’t members of the U.S. House of Representatives on the back of cereal boxes. One certainly has to be single minded to disrupt your life every two years to raise the money for re-election.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not shedding any tears for Michael Phelps. He knew what was expected of him when he signed up to make millions by selling Wheaties or Nike sneakers. It’s us I feel sorry for. Apparently our lives are so bereft that twenty- something swimmers (swimmers, for Christ sake!) are the people we find most interesting and want to spend time with by reading People Magazine and joining fan clubs. I could understand wanting to spend a day with, or wanting to know better, Emily Dickinson or Che Guevara or Raymond Williams, but what on earth are you going to talk about with Michael other than the finer points of the breast stroke or how to get the most out of your turn?
While this kind of hero worship reveals the bankruptcy of our intellect, raising a good Samaritan to the status of hero reveals our emotional bankruptcy. Shouldn’t we expect any and everyone to stop to help someone on the road who is broken down or been in an accident? Why then do you see the letter to the editor telling everyone about the “hero” who stopped to help his wife change her tire, calling it “beyond the call of duty. No, it is the call of duty to help your fellow man or woman. Poor “Sully” Sullivan, the pilot who set the plane down in the Hudson River last year. What a reluctant hero he was. Or rather, was his wife, who, when interviewed by every TV and radio station in the country said, “I really don’t think Sully is a hero.” With the skills and judgment he had honed over a long career, and with the luck of the day, he saved a bunch of peoples lives as well as his own skin. Do we elevate him to hero status because we’re wrapped in our cocoons of self-concern and self-doubt and worry we would fail the test?
They stripped Michael Phelps of his Wheaties gig for smoking pot. Gee whiz. He’s twenty-three or twenty-four, doing what most other twenty-year olds do at some point in their lives and he gets taken off the back of a cereal box. But the question is, why is he, or Alex Rodriguez or Mark McGuire or O.J. Simpson, on the back of a cereal box in the first place? I assume being on the cereal box means that kids are supposed to look at the picture and want to be just like you, meaning they want to be born with the physical attributes and the psychological ambition and drive that allow these guys to make it to the top in their respective sports, where they are paid millions of dollars to single mindedly pursue success in a very narrow field of interest. What is heroic about that? Is making millions of dollars heroic or simply what our society equates with success? If it’s heroic, why don’t they put the pictures of corporate CEOs on the back of cereal boxes. Or do you have to earn millions of dollars and play a sport to be a hero. Is it the single mindedness (or simple mindedness, as the case may be)? Then why aren’t members of the U.S. House of Representatives on the back of cereal boxes. One certainly has to be single minded to disrupt your life every two years to raise the money for re-election.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not shedding any tears for Michael Phelps. He knew what was expected of him when he signed up to make millions by selling Wheaties or Nike sneakers. It’s us I feel sorry for. Apparently our lives are so bereft that twenty- something swimmers (swimmers, for Christ sake!) are the people we find most interesting and want to spend time with by reading People Magazine and joining fan clubs. I could understand wanting to spend a day with, or wanting to know better, Emily Dickinson or Che Guevara or Raymond Williams, but what on earth are you going to talk about with Michael other than the finer points of the breast stroke or how to get the most out of your turn?
While this kind of hero worship reveals the bankruptcy of our intellect, raising a good Samaritan to the status of hero reveals our emotional bankruptcy. Shouldn’t we expect any and everyone to stop to help someone on the road who is broken down or been in an accident? Why then do you see the letter to the editor telling everyone about the “hero” who stopped to help his wife change her tire, calling it “beyond the call of duty. No, it is the call of duty to help your fellow man or woman. Poor “Sully” Sullivan, the pilot who set the plane down in the Hudson River last year. What a reluctant hero he was. Or rather, was his wife, who, when interviewed by every TV and radio station in the country said, “I really don’t think Sully is a hero.” With the skills and judgment he had honed over a long career, and with the luck of the day, he saved a bunch of peoples lives as well as his own skin. Do we elevate him to hero status because we’re wrapped in our cocoons of self-concern and self-doubt and worry we would fail the test?
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Westminster Dog Show
“Best in Show,” which is one of the funniest movie spoofs ever made, really doesn’t do justice to the absurdity and pathos of the Westminster Dog Show. The contrast between beautiful dogs (we’ll talk about the distastefully groomed and ugly ones later) and their handlers is almost too much to take. Do you ever notice the women handlers’ shoes? They sparkle. Remember those flats we wore to high school in the sixties, with our matching lime green and pink sweater and skirt outfits? Well, most of them wear flats like that but they actually sparkle. Usually they’re black, but in this year’s show one handler was actually wearing silver ones. Is there a dress code for women handlers that for some reason says that to run around the floor of Madison Square Garden with a dog on a leash you have to wear the ugliest shoes ever made?
Are they also required to wear these weird suits that have little flairs at the waist over tight skirts that show off their bottoms? And a lot of the bottoms are of ample proportions in the Westminster Dog Show, as well as bosoms, which when their owners run around the floor with their dogs do a lot of jiggling. To be fair, there are plenty of heavy-bottomed men handlers at the show as well, but their bulk is more discreetly hidden in your typical street suit (although one guy this year wore a tuxedo!). I didn’t see one handler who looked like that cute little Parker Posey from “Best in Show.”
But enough about the handlers. The huskies and terriers and St. Bernards and spaniels are all beautiful, of course: pampered, indulged, and treated like children rather than dogs, but still beautiful. Even the standard poodle, before grooming, is kind of cute. But what they do to the poor poodle — this year’s Westminster finalist was black, the one in Best of Show is white — is beyond the pale. First they shave all the hair off its skinny little legs except for these puffballs at the ankles. Then they attack the poor dog’s rump with the clippers until the only hair left on its body is around the ruff. Then they shave the dog’s face, where any semblance of its embarrassment could be hidden, and tease it’s topknot into a beehive. Finally, they produce a puffball at the end of its tail, and voila, you have the ugliest, most humiliatingly desecrated creature one could ever create. I don’t have the heart to do the research to find out who started this hideous practice, but they’re all complicit, as these poor poodles seem to win more Best in Shows than just about any other breed. This year, a cute old Sussex spaniel named Tiger Woods won Best in Show. I’m not quite sure how this happened, as the woman who is the judge for the final award not only wore sparkly shoes but a sparkly dress and arrived in a limousine after being sequestered in a hotel without a TV so she couldn’t see any of the previous Best in Breed winners before she picked the Best in Show. She stood imperiously on the floor in her sparkly high heels and diamonds while little old Tiger Woods ran his little old legs like spinwheels down the length of the floor, ears flapping, to the roar of the crowd. Yeah, Tiger Woods!
Are they also required to wear these weird suits that have little flairs at the waist over tight skirts that show off their bottoms? And a lot of the bottoms are of ample proportions in the Westminster Dog Show, as well as bosoms, which when their owners run around the floor with their dogs do a lot of jiggling. To be fair, there are plenty of heavy-bottomed men handlers at the show as well, but their bulk is more discreetly hidden in your typical street suit (although one guy this year wore a tuxedo!). I didn’t see one handler who looked like that cute little Parker Posey from “Best in Show.”
But enough about the handlers. The huskies and terriers and St. Bernards and spaniels are all beautiful, of course: pampered, indulged, and treated like children rather than dogs, but still beautiful. Even the standard poodle, before grooming, is kind of cute. But what they do to the poor poodle — this year’s Westminster finalist was black, the one in Best of Show is white — is beyond the pale. First they shave all the hair off its skinny little legs except for these puffballs at the ankles. Then they attack the poor dog’s rump with the clippers until the only hair left on its body is around the ruff. Then they shave the dog’s face, where any semblance of its embarrassment could be hidden, and tease it’s topknot into a beehive. Finally, they produce a puffball at the end of its tail, and voila, you have the ugliest, most humiliatingly desecrated creature one could ever create. I don’t have the heart to do the research to find out who started this hideous practice, but they’re all complicit, as these poor poodles seem to win more Best in Shows than just about any other breed. This year, a cute old Sussex spaniel named Tiger Woods won Best in Show. I’m not quite sure how this happened, as the woman who is the judge for the final award not only wore sparkly shoes but a sparkly dress and arrived in a limousine after being sequestered in a hotel without a TV so she couldn’t see any of the previous Best in Breed winners before she picked the Best in Show. She stood imperiously on the floor in her sparkly high heels and diamonds while little old Tiger Woods ran his little old legs like spinwheels down the length of the floor, ears flapping, to the roar of the crowd. Yeah, Tiger Woods!
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Consumer Culture
Somehow the idea of intellectuals deconstructing Enlightenment values that failed to enlighten and liberate while mindlessly participating in privileged consumer culture seems absurd. And the idea becomes more than absurd when it declares that the values that determine how I try to live my life are mere constructs based on style, not substance, that there is no rationality and truth, progress is a myth, and pluralism and heterogeneity are alternatives to mainstream, normative life. Of course, all of us who came of age during the sixties revolution of consciousness were creating and living these rejections and assumptions. But the hope was not that, in the inimical words of Terry Eagleton, “A radical assault on fixed hierarchies of value [would] merge[d] effortlessly with the revolutionary leveling of all values known as the marketplace.” In the rush to smash hierarchy, it seems the postmodernists forgot that it is necessary to smash capitalism as well.
The juxtaposition of two halves of page A12 in a recent New York Times couldn’t have been a more revealing testament to just how decadent, how obscene, really, our consumer culture has become. On the left side of the page was a Bloomingdale’s advertisement with an anorexic model decked out in a “dyed sheared mink double breasted coat.” On the right side of the page was an article detailing the incursions of Sudanese Arab gunmen into Chad, where they were killing and wounding hundreds of civilians.
How do these mink coated people live with themselves? I know that money buys you protection from things you don’t want to know or think about, but they do pick up the New York Times occasionally and see page A12, don’t they? Even if wealth is equated with success, isn’t there some line over which the excesses begin to bother them, just a little? Like “dyed sheared mink double breasted coats?”
Apparently not. Maybe this blog can’t really be separated from the one on Capitalism — cultural materialism is inextricably linked to an economic analysis — but there is still some part of me that believes there must be a human, gut level connection that transcends these analyses. I know, I know, this has been wrestled with by the likes of Rousseau,Voltaire, Locke and Weil and everyone one else worth his or her salt, but there’s just something about conspicuous consumption that baffles me. One clichéd answer is that once shopping and accumulating goods becomes the focus of your life, you can never have enough because then you wouldn’t have anything to do. But why does one think that shopping and accumulating goods is fun? I hate shopping: clothes shopping, household goods shopping, even food shopping. I rarely end up with any piece of clothing I truly like, buying toilet paper is boring, and I race through the grocery store as fast as possible so I can get home as fast as possible.
Maybe that’s my problem. I don’t particularly like leaving home. Home is my life’s work, essentially. It’s where I surround myself with everything, or almost everything (I can’t make my kids stay home forever) I value. Inside my passive solar adobe house I have access to an incredible music collection (Mark is an incomparable audiophile and our record collection is comprehensive); books I’ve read once, am waiting to read, and will probably read several more times before I die; a lifetime collection of art and photos on the walls, ranging from John Wenger’s spaceship landings, Mark’s contemporary santos (Emily Dickinson, Rene Magritte), and Alan Labb’s fat-bellied men to collages of each of our children from infancy to public school; our two dogs Django and Sammy, and Mavis the cat (who also belong outside, but seem to want to stay inside as they age alongside us); and various lifelines out—telephone, satellite internet, and satellite TV. Outside I have ten acres of pasture, orchard, vegetable garden, flower gardens, casita, river frontage, and small village life, which is both colorful, comforting, and fraught with annoyances, just like any other place one decides to call home.
Why do I need to go out other than to see some of my friends occasionally, go to a movie theater to see a first-run movie instead of waiting for it to appear on DVD (although I can barely stand the commercials and booming sound in the theater), hear some live music (there’s always YouTube), or god forbid, actually have to attend a meeting to cover it for La Jicarita News, the alternative journal we publish monthly. When we first started producing the paper we were caught up in the immediacy of the battles among the Forest Service, environmentalists, and community people over access to forest resources. Those battles, at least for the communities, were largely lost, and the Forest Service barely has a budget left to mark enough trees for community firewood. The environmentalists went on to other issues like wolves and salamanders, which fortunately don’t live in northern New Mexico (it was the spotted owl that started all the ruckus in the 90s when the enviros insisted it lived in our woods). While other battles still rage, over the commodification of water and the nuclear mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory, we see that our fourteen-year newspaper run may be nearing its end. We don’t even want to attend the few meetings we’ve determined must be attended to maintain our viability.
So because I don’t go anywhere, I certainly don’t need to shop for clothes. If I happen to find a good deal on a shirt or pair of shoes at the thrift store, which I do like to cruise through for additions to my cow collection or a file cabinet for 30 years of collected papers, I make it a policy to give away a shirt or pair of shoes I already own. One of my favorite entertainments is to periodically go through my closets and cabinets and throw or give things away. With tremendous delight I watch files of battles I’ve had with the Forest Service since 1985 burn up in the wood stove. I sigh with satisfaction when I’ve depleted a closet enough to be able to push hangers from end to end to see what I actually still own.
I chose time over money. If through some fortuitous circumstance I ended up in a life with both, maybe I’d like to shop, too. But if the “me” in that life was still the “me” in this life, I would hope I knew where draw the line in the sand. And a “dyed sheared mink double breasted coat” wouldn’t even be in my cultural vocabulary.
The juxtaposition of two halves of page A12 in a recent New York Times couldn’t have been a more revealing testament to just how decadent, how obscene, really, our consumer culture has become. On the left side of the page was a Bloomingdale’s advertisement with an anorexic model decked out in a “dyed sheared mink double breasted coat.” On the right side of the page was an article detailing the incursions of Sudanese Arab gunmen into Chad, where they were killing and wounding hundreds of civilians.
How do these mink coated people live with themselves? I know that money buys you protection from things you don’t want to know or think about, but they do pick up the New York Times occasionally and see page A12, don’t they? Even if wealth is equated with success, isn’t there some line over which the excesses begin to bother them, just a little? Like “dyed sheared mink double breasted coats?”
Apparently not. Maybe this blog can’t really be separated from the one on Capitalism — cultural materialism is inextricably linked to an economic analysis — but there is still some part of me that believes there must be a human, gut level connection that transcends these analyses. I know, I know, this has been wrestled with by the likes of Rousseau,Voltaire, Locke and Weil and everyone one else worth his or her salt, but there’s just something about conspicuous consumption that baffles me. One clichéd answer is that once shopping and accumulating goods becomes the focus of your life, you can never have enough because then you wouldn’t have anything to do. But why does one think that shopping and accumulating goods is fun? I hate shopping: clothes shopping, household goods shopping, even food shopping. I rarely end up with any piece of clothing I truly like, buying toilet paper is boring, and I race through the grocery store as fast as possible so I can get home as fast as possible.
Maybe that’s my problem. I don’t particularly like leaving home. Home is my life’s work, essentially. It’s where I surround myself with everything, or almost everything (I can’t make my kids stay home forever) I value. Inside my passive solar adobe house I have access to an incredible music collection (Mark is an incomparable audiophile and our record collection is comprehensive); books I’ve read once, am waiting to read, and will probably read several more times before I die; a lifetime collection of art and photos on the walls, ranging from John Wenger’s spaceship landings, Mark’s contemporary santos (Emily Dickinson, Rene Magritte), and Alan Labb’s fat-bellied men to collages of each of our children from infancy to public school; our two dogs Django and Sammy, and Mavis the cat (who also belong outside, but seem to want to stay inside as they age alongside us); and various lifelines out—telephone, satellite internet, and satellite TV. Outside I have ten acres of pasture, orchard, vegetable garden, flower gardens, casita, river frontage, and small village life, which is both colorful, comforting, and fraught with annoyances, just like any other place one decides to call home.
Why do I need to go out other than to see some of my friends occasionally, go to a movie theater to see a first-run movie instead of waiting for it to appear on DVD (although I can barely stand the commercials and booming sound in the theater), hear some live music (there’s always YouTube), or god forbid, actually have to attend a meeting to cover it for La Jicarita News, the alternative journal we publish monthly. When we first started producing the paper we were caught up in the immediacy of the battles among the Forest Service, environmentalists, and community people over access to forest resources. Those battles, at least for the communities, were largely lost, and the Forest Service barely has a budget left to mark enough trees for community firewood. The environmentalists went on to other issues like wolves and salamanders, which fortunately don’t live in northern New Mexico (it was the spotted owl that started all the ruckus in the 90s when the enviros insisted it lived in our woods). While other battles still rage, over the commodification of water and the nuclear mission at Los Alamos National Laboratory, we see that our fourteen-year newspaper run may be nearing its end. We don’t even want to attend the few meetings we’ve determined must be attended to maintain our viability.
So because I don’t go anywhere, I certainly don’t need to shop for clothes. If I happen to find a good deal on a shirt or pair of shoes at the thrift store, which I do like to cruise through for additions to my cow collection or a file cabinet for 30 years of collected papers, I make it a policy to give away a shirt or pair of shoes I already own. One of my favorite entertainments is to periodically go through my closets and cabinets and throw or give things away. With tremendous delight I watch files of battles I’ve had with the Forest Service since 1985 burn up in the wood stove. I sigh with satisfaction when I’ve depleted a closet enough to be able to push hangers from end to end to see what I actually still own.
I chose time over money. If through some fortuitous circumstance I ended up in a life with both, maybe I’d like to shop, too. But if the “me” in that life was still the “me” in this life, I would hope I knew where draw the line in the sand. And a “dyed sheared mink double breasted coat” wouldn’t even be in my cultural vocabulary.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Chatter
I’m sitting on the Chinatown bus in Philadelphia waiting to go to Washington D.C. and the man in the seat behind me is on his cell phone talking to his wife/girlfriend/ partner who just dropped him off and is herself driving home in their car. I know all this— which I don’t want to know— because I can hear every word he says through the crack in the seats. As soon as the bus leaves Chinatown and heads south along the river, he’s on the phone again, this time to someone he’s meeting in D.C. They proceed to have a 30-minute conversation about how the third person they’re meeting in D.C. screwed up by not getting in touch with them sooner so they could coordinate everyone’s arrival better: “I’m counting on the bus to not take more than two and a half hours or I’m going to be late for the meeting. So and so should have made her reservations weeks ago so we could have arranged to come in on our flights close to the same time. I know, I know, it’s too late to do anything about it now but . . . “ and on and on and on.
About half way to Baltimore (the guy is still on the phone) the bus pulls into a rest stop and we sit there for awhile until some of the passengers start wondering aloud if this is a scheduled stop or what’s going on. An Asian gentleman then approaches the rear of the bus where we’re sitting and explains that he’s having to translate for the two people who were on the bus from New York but slept through the stop in Philadelphia where they were supposed to get off. When they woke up and realized where they were they approached the bus driver and asked him to take them back to Philadelphia. The translator says, “We’re trying to decide whether to turn around and take them back to Philadelphia or continue on to Baltimore where they can catch a later bus back.”
Up jumps the cell phone guy who starts in, “There is no way this bus is going to go back to Philadelphia. I’m already late as it is. These people need to take responsibility for themselves.” That’s right, a chorus of voices ring out. We’ve paid good money (the Chinatown bus costs $15, as opposed to Amtrak’s $60 to $80) to get us on time to D.C. and we can’t go back because two passengers missed their stop! The woman in the seat in front of me wakes up and asks what’s going on. I explain the situation and she says, “I heard them come through the bus when we stopped and yell out ‘Philadelphia, Philadelphia,’ at least a couple of times.” I answered her, “I wish I could sleep that soundly.”
Several days later I’m sitting in the Philadelphia airport waiting for a flight that’s two hours late, knowing I’m probably going to miss my connection home. Sitting next to me is a young woman waiting for the same flight who decides to pass the time talking to her sister, who is also sitting in an airport waiting for a flight. They are both going home for Thanksgiving. No one wants to give up their seat in the waiting room because the room is packed and you’ll end up on the floor if you do. So I listen to her tell her sister every excruciating detail of her trip to the airport, what’s going on in the airport, what she’s got in her suitcase (five pairs of shoes for her four day stay), how her sister can possibly survive four days with only a backpack for a suitcase, etc., etc.
I actually need to talk on a phone because I have to call Mark and tell him to cancel my surgery for the next day (how crazy was I to schedule hand surgery on the day before Thanksgiving and then actually try to get home on time?) and give me the phone number of our friends in Chicago who I’m probably going to have to stay with when I miss my connecting flight home. I pile all my possessions on my chair while I go find a pay phone, for which my calling card company charges me ten times what they charge from a regular phone, and hope all my stuff is still on my chair when I return.
I do end up staying the night in Chicago with our friends, who can’t believe I don’t have a cell phone so I can call them when I get off the train at the stop near their house, The next morning I’m back again at O’Hare Airport waiting to catch my plane to Albuquerque. A young man in his late twenties or early thirties is pacing the floor with his cell phone, speaking loudly in what I think is an Australian accent, talking to his wife/girlfriend/partner about the fact that he is about to get on the plane and that the plan for New Year’s Eve at the hot springs outside of Denver is just “awesome” and that it’s going to be so powerful, the best celebration yet. Then he tells her goodbye, and as we’re walking down the ramp onto the plane (he’s right behind me) he’s on the phone with someone else explaining that the celebration at the hot springs is going to be truly “awesome” because 30 of his closest friends have already said they’re coming and can you believe how fabulous it’s going to be, better than last year, truly outstanding.
Of course, there he is when we get on the plane, sitting right in front of me and he tells two more people about the hot springs gig before they make everyone turn off their cell phones. But do I finally get a reprieve from the constant chatter than has taken over every public place and ruined it with private bullshit? Not on your life. It turns out that the guy sitting next to him is a student at a seminary and that the hot springs gig that the Australian (turns out he’s from New Zealand) has been raving about is some spiritual gathering that he and his “closest 30 friends” have been going to for the last few years. So naturally, their conversation turns to religion and they are off to the races. For the next hour they engage in a spirited dialogue regarding the church doctrine espoused by the seminary student and the freewheeling Christianity celebrated by the New Zealander. There’s a lot of scripture quoting, scripture interpretation, discussion of the merits of various popes, discussion of dogma regarding who’s going to heaven and hell, ad nauseum. While the New Zealander challenges the seminary student on a lot of his fundamentalist rap defending the church, it’s within the context of the sanctity of Christianity, and I’m hoping (I don’t pray) there’s not a Muslim or a Jew across the isle.
Finally, after a free bloody Mary from the airline attendant, who I’ve consulted about airplane etiquette, I’ve had enough. When the seminary student starts in about homosexuality being an abomination I stand up and say, “That’s it. I’ve listened to this crap for almost an hour but I’m not going to sit here and listen to offensive talk about homosexuality. You’ve offended any number of people on this plane, particularly me, and it’s got to stop.”
And it did. They listened to their iPods for the rest of the flight, and the guy sitting next to me bought me another bloody Mary.
Solution: Never leave home.
About half way to Baltimore (the guy is still on the phone) the bus pulls into a rest stop and we sit there for awhile until some of the passengers start wondering aloud if this is a scheduled stop or what’s going on. An Asian gentleman then approaches the rear of the bus where we’re sitting and explains that he’s having to translate for the two people who were on the bus from New York but slept through the stop in Philadelphia where they were supposed to get off. When they woke up and realized where they were they approached the bus driver and asked him to take them back to Philadelphia. The translator says, “We’re trying to decide whether to turn around and take them back to Philadelphia or continue on to Baltimore where they can catch a later bus back.”
Up jumps the cell phone guy who starts in, “There is no way this bus is going to go back to Philadelphia. I’m already late as it is. These people need to take responsibility for themselves.” That’s right, a chorus of voices ring out. We’ve paid good money (the Chinatown bus costs $15, as opposed to Amtrak’s $60 to $80) to get us on time to D.C. and we can’t go back because two passengers missed their stop! The woman in the seat in front of me wakes up and asks what’s going on. I explain the situation and she says, “I heard them come through the bus when we stopped and yell out ‘Philadelphia, Philadelphia,’ at least a couple of times.” I answered her, “I wish I could sleep that soundly.”
Several days later I’m sitting in the Philadelphia airport waiting for a flight that’s two hours late, knowing I’m probably going to miss my connection home. Sitting next to me is a young woman waiting for the same flight who decides to pass the time talking to her sister, who is also sitting in an airport waiting for a flight. They are both going home for Thanksgiving. No one wants to give up their seat in the waiting room because the room is packed and you’ll end up on the floor if you do. So I listen to her tell her sister every excruciating detail of her trip to the airport, what’s going on in the airport, what she’s got in her suitcase (five pairs of shoes for her four day stay), how her sister can possibly survive four days with only a backpack for a suitcase, etc., etc.
I actually need to talk on a phone because I have to call Mark and tell him to cancel my surgery for the next day (how crazy was I to schedule hand surgery on the day before Thanksgiving and then actually try to get home on time?) and give me the phone number of our friends in Chicago who I’m probably going to have to stay with when I miss my connecting flight home. I pile all my possessions on my chair while I go find a pay phone, for which my calling card company charges me ten times what they charge from a regular phone, and hope all my stuff is still on my chair when I return.
I do end up staying the night in Chicago with our friends, who can’t believe I don’t have a cell phone so I can call them when I get off the train at the stop near their house, The next morning I’m back again at O’Hare Airport waiting to catch my plane to Albuquerque. A young man in his late twenties or early thirties is pacing the floor with his cell phone, speaking loudly in what I think is an Australian accent, talking to his wife/girlfriend/partner about the fact that he is about to get on the plane and that the plan for New Year’s Eve at the hot springs outside of Denver is just “awesome” and that it’s going to be so powerful, the best celebration yet. Then he tells her goodbye, and as we’re walking down the ramp onto the plane (he’s right behind me) he’s on the phone with someone else explaining that the celebration at the hot springs is going to be truly “awesome” because 30 of his closest friends have already said they’re coming and can you believe how fabulous it’s going to be, better than last year, truly outstanding.
Of course, there he is when we get on the plane, sitting right in front of me and he tells two more people about the hot springs gig before they make everyone turn off their cell phones. But do I finally get a reprieve from the constant chatter than has taken over every public place and ruined it with private bullshit? Not on your life. It turns out that the guy sitting next to him is a student at a seminary and that the hot springs gig that the Australian (turns out he’s from New Zealand) has been raving about is some spiritual gathering that he and his “closest 30 friends” have been going to for the last few years. So naturally, their conversation turns to religion and they are off to the races. For the next hour they engage in a spirited dialogue regarding the church doctrine espoused by the seminary student and the freewheeling Christianity celebrated by the New Zealander. There’s a lot of scripture quoting, scripture interpretation, discussion of the merits of various popes, discussion of dogma regarding who’s going to heaven and hell, ad nauseum. While the New Zealander challenges the seminary student on a lot of his fundamentalist rap defending the church, it’s within the context of the sanctity of Christianity, and I’m hoping (I don’t pray) there’s not a Muslim or a Jew across the isle.
Finally, after a free bloody Mary from the airline attendant, who I’ve consulted about airplane etiquette, I’ve had enough. When the seminary student starts in about homosexuality being an abomination I stand up and say, “That’s it. I’ve listened to this crap for almost an hour but I’m not going to sit here and listen to offensive talk about homosexuality. You’ve offended any number of people on this plane, particularly me, and it’s got to stop.”
And it did. They listened to their iPods for the rest of the flight, and the guy sitting next to me bought me another bloody Mary.
Solution: Never leave home.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Electoral Politics
Only two days after the presidential election of 2008 Barack Obama hired as his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, whose father, an Israeli physician, was quoted as saying now that his son is in the White House Israel will certainly have the ear of Obama. Why shouldn’t it? After all, his son is no Arab, scrubbing the floor.
It just descended from there. Obama picked an economic team comprised of the current masterminds of unfettered capitalism who are responsible for our economic meltdown (if Milton Friedman were still alive Obama probably would have assigned him some job). He picked a secretary of agriculture who favors the development of genetically modified organisms, a secretary of defense who’s going to take more troops into Afghanistan, and Hilary Clinton as secretary of state, who is in favor of anything that keeps the Clinton dynasty alive.
Why do progressives fall for these figures like Obama who promise “change” and redemption. I guess because there’s not much of anything else to believe in. The sixties revolution of consciousness, that promised, and to a certain degree delivered, changes in how we view and relate to issues of gender, race, and postcolonial freedoms, had no lasting political effect, really. The same political elites are the ones getting elected to state and national office, with an occasional moderate swing from right to left. They’re still threatening to overturn Roe versus Wade. They’re still sending young men and women (mostly minorities) all over the world to kill and be killed. They’re still complicit in the capitalist system that continues to increase the disparity between rich and poor. And they’re still the only vote in the United Nations defending Israel’s incursions into the West Bank or the blockade of Gaza.
Our children see how our efforts failed to effect any kind of real political change, so what are they supposed to do? There are still young activists out there, like my nephew, who belong to radical anti-war or anti-capitalist organizations that protest and demonstrate and scream bloody murder. I don’t know how much community organizing they’re doing, but after the failure of my feeble efforts in that capacity, I’m not surprised they don’t bother. We marched by the millions against the war in Vietnam. How much did that actually undermine the U.S. role and bring about our withdrawal? I don’t really know. People all over the world marched by the millions against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and look where that got us.
So what motivated them to get out and vote in the 2008 election? Bush’s abysmal record on everything, of course, but what made them think that electing Barack Obama was going to really change anything. By the time you’re in a senate race, yet alone a presidential race, you’re already bought and sold. There’s no way around it. To be one of the elite you have to be able to raise the capital to compete in enormously expensive campaigns that get your face on the TV screen and your voice on the airwaves. You have to make promises to interest groups and you have to pay them back so they don’t abandon you in the next race. Here’s how J. M. Coetzee puts it in Diary of a Bad Year: “We do not choose our rulers by the toss of a coin — tossing coins is associated with the low-status activity of gambling — but who would dare to claim that the world would be in a worse state than it is if rulers had from the beginning of time been chosen by the method of a coin?”
In a recent issue of The New Yorker there was an article on Arthur Fisher Bentley, who wrote a book called The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures back in 1908 that claims all politics and governments are the result of the activities of interest groups (pluralism) that are engaged in a constant struggle for advantage. His argument gained traction after World War II because of people’s fears about the “big ideas of government,” i.e., Hitler and Stalin. Bentley himself was a progressive who advocated using government to curb the power of big business, but maybe he was right: reforming government, as it’s actually constituted, will never be possible.
I sometimes fantasize about what would happen if someone who got elected actually decided they would never run for office again and see what they could actually accomplish without fulfilling promises to anyone except their own conscience. This may be the collective fantasy that got Obama elected. So if Nobel Laureate in economics Paul Krugman can write an open letter to Obama detailing what he thinks he should do about the failing economic situation, here’s my open letter about what he should do about everything else. (Unless Obama is in favor of the violent overthrow of the government, which I doubt, he’s not going to change our economic system from capitalism to socialism, but some of the points I make in my letter may make us a bit more like Sweden or even Germany, economically speaking.)
Dear President Obama,
The first thing you have to do is bring all American troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Emergency negotiating sessions, involving every country with any kind of involvement with either county must begin immediately so as to deter reprisals by the warring religious factions in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The second thing you have to do is shut down Guantanamo and provide civilian trials for all those remaining who a case can actually be made against (the Center for Constitutional Rights has to be consulted, along with every other NGO or human rights lawyer who is working on individual cases). Then you have to replace Robert Gates with a Defense Secretary who will look into shutting down other military bases around the world based on the reduction of our military industrial complex, and who will pursue nuclear disarmament. You will get rid of the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program and begin to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons at all our nuclear facilities in order to comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. You will order a mission change at these labs to develop a renewable energy policy that will develop cars that run on alternative fuels, that develop local renewable energy grids that rely on solar, geothermal, or biomass, and you will redirect highway funds to subsidize mass transportation, in whatever forms are best suited for city, town, or rural area. You will rewrite an economic stimulus package that includes universal health care, whether it’s based on expanding what we currently have, such as using Medicare to cover all the uninsured and letting those with private health insurance keep theirs (which is probably the only way you’ll get it passed) or scrapping the entire system and doing away with private insurers altogether. There’s a ton of other stuff I could tell you to do, but I think I’ll finish by saying you can get rid of the Forest Service and manage our vast western public lands with what Daniel Kemmis describes in his book, This Sovereign Land, watershed-based local coalitions of citizen democracies.
So best of luck, and when you’re done, in 2012, if you last even that long, you can go back to Chicago and Michelle can go back to being a college administrator and you can write some more memoirs. Sounds like the good life to me.
It just descended from there. Obama picked an economic team comprised of the current masterminds of unfettered capitalism who are responsible for our economic meltdown (if Milton Friedman were still alive Obama probably would have assigned him some job). He picked a secretary of agriculture who favors the development of genetically modified organisms, a secretary of defense who’s going to take more troops into Afghanistan, and Hilary Clinton as secretary of state, who is in favor of anything that keeps the Clinton dynasty alive.
Why do progressives fall for these figures like Obama who promise “change” and redemption. I guess because there’s not much of anything else to believe in. The sixties revolution of consciousness, that promised, and to a certain degree delivered, changes in how we view and relate to issues of gender, race, and postcolonial freedoms, had no lasting political effect, really. The same political elites are the ones getting elected to state and national office, with an occasional moderate swing from right to left. They’re still threatening to overturn Roe versus Wade. They’re still sending young men and women (mostly minorities) all over the world to kill and be killed. They’re still complicit in the capitalist system that continues to increase the disparity between rich and poor. And they’re still the only vote in the United Nations defending Israel’s incursions into the West Bank or the blockade of Gaza.
Our children see how our efforts failed to effect any kind of real political change, so what are they supposed to do? There are still young activists out there, like my nephew, who belong to radical anti-war or anti-capitalist organizations that protest and demonstrate and scream bloody murder. I don’t know how much community organizing they’re doing, but after the failure of my feeble efforts in that capacity, I’m not surprised they don’t bother. We marched by the millions against the war in Vietnam. How much did that actually undermine the U.S. role and bring about our withdrawal? I don’t really know. People all over the world marched by the millions against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and look where that got us.
So what motivated them to get out and vote in the 2008 election? Bush’s abysmal record on everything, of course, but what made them think that electing Barack Obama was going to really change anything. By the time you’re in a senate race, yet alone a presidential race, you’re already bought and sold. There’s no way around it. To be one of the elite you have to be able to raise the capital to compete in enormously expensive campaigns that get your face on the TV screen and your voice on the airwaves. You have to make promises to interest groups and you have to pay them back so they don’t abandon you in the next race. Here’s how J. M. Coetzee puts it in Diary of a Bad Year: “We do not choose our rulers by the toss of a coin — tossing coins is associated with the low-status activity of gambling — but who would dare to claim that the world would be in a worse state than it is if rulers had from the beginning of time been chosen by the method of a coin?”
In a recent issue of The New Yorker there was an article on Arthur Fisher Bentley, who wrote a book called The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures back in 1908 that claims all politics and governments are the result of the activities of interest groups (pluralism) that are engaged in a constant struggle for advantage. His argument gained traction after World War II because of people’s fears about the “big ideas of government,” i.e., Hitler and Stalin. Bentley himself was a progressive who advocated using government to curb the power of big business, but maybe he was right: reforming government, as it’s actually constituted, will never be possible.
I sometimes fantasize about what would happen if someone who got elected actually decided they would never run for office again and see what they could actually accomplish without fulfilling promises to anyone except their own conscience. This may be the collective fantasy that got Obama elected. So if Nobel Laureate in economics Paul Krugman can write an open letter to Obama detailing what he thinks he should do about the failing economic situation, here’s my open letter about what he should do about everything else. (Unless Obama is in favor of the violent overthrow of the government, which I doubt, he’s not going to change our economic system from capitalism to socialism, but some of the points I make in my letter may make us a bit more like Sweden or even Germany, economically speaking.)
Dear President Obama,
The first thing you have to do is bring all American troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Emergency negotiating sessions, involving every country with any kind of involvement with either county must begin immediately so as to deter reprisals by the warring religious factions in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The second thing you have to do is shut down Guantanamo and provide civilian trials for all those remaining who a case can actually be made against (the Center for Constitutional Rights has to be consulted, along with every other NGO or human rights lawyer who is working on individual cases). Then you have to replace Robert Gates with a Defense Secretary who will look into shutting down other military bases around the world based on the reduction of our military industrial complex, and who will pursue nuclear disarmament. You will get rid of the Reliable Replacement Warhead Program and begin to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons at all our nuclear facilities in order to comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. You will order a mission change at these labs to develop a renewable energy policy that will develop cars that run on alternative fuels, that develop local renewable energy grids that rely on solar, geothermal, or biomass, and you will redirect highway funds to subsidize mass transportation, in whatever forms are best suited for city, town, or rural area. You will rewrite an economic stimulus package that includes universal health care, whether it’s based on expanding what we currently have, such as using Medicare to cover all the uninsured and letting those with private health insurance keep theirs (which is probably the only way you’ll get it passed) or scrapping the entire system and doing away with private insurers altogether. There’s a ton of other stuff I could tell you to do, but I think I’ll finish by saying you can get rid of the Forest Service and manage our vast western public lands with what Daniel Kemmis describes in his book, This Sovereign Land, watershed-based local coalitions of citizen democracies.
So best of luck, and when you’re done, in 2012, if you last even that long, you can go back to Chicago and Michelle can go back to being a college administrator and you can write some more memoirs. Sounds like the good life to me.
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