So, I was at an NEA Local Food Potluck a few weeks back (it's amazing how much awesome, locally originated food is available even after the snow has started falling) when someone mentioned Eleanor Roosevelt.
Eleanor Roosevelt sewing drapes.
I don't remember this, of course. I don't know for sure that I'd ever heard anyone even mention this before.
But, according to this woman, during the Depression, Eleanor Roosevelt was photographed sewing the White House drapes.
Eleanor Roosevelt didn't need to sew the White House drapes. Even during those hard times, I'm sure, someone else could have been found to do the sewing.
And Eleanor Roosevelt's sewing of said drapes didn't accomplish anything, I would imagine, on a purely practical level. The few dollars that was saved on drape sewing most likely wasn't pumped in to a crucial jobs creation program.
But the picture of Eleanor Roosevelt sewing drapes said something. It was a symbolic gesture, but not merely empty symbolism. It sent a message to people throughout the country. It said, maybe, "hey, these really are hard times; there really are sacrifices to be made; we're sort of all in this together, doing our part."
Wouldn't it be nice, this woman asked, if the Obamas did something along the same lines. Something easy, but important. Something symbolic, but meaningful.
Wouldn't it be nice, she said, if the Obamas participated, in some small way, in the local food movement.
And I like that idea.
I like the notion of the first family saying something like this:
"In recognition of the impact that food miles have on our environment; in recognition of the fact that so many farmers in our own country are struggling to make a living in these hard times; in recognition of the fact we're all in this together, and that we can all act to make a difference in our own lives, all meals served in the White House will be made only from ingredients grown within the United States."
A small gesture. There'd be almost no sacrifice-- it's not like Barack and Michelle do their own shopping, it's not like they'll have to investigate every purchase in the grocery store aisles. It's not like they will be doing their own cooking-- I imagine that the genius chefs in their employ will manage to make every meal amazing without relying on imported ingredients. It's not like there were never be opportunity for avocadoes and bananas-- I'm sure they won't be eating every meal in the White House, and they could still eat whatever they wanted when they were out and about. And it's not like they'd be following a strict definition of "local"-- anything you want is probably grown somewhere in this country.
A small gesture.
But wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be meaningful, in some small way? Wouldn't it be a message to farmers that they are valued; wouldn't it be a message to consumers to start valuing farmers? Wouldn't it be "patriotic?" Wouldn't it convey that message that we all bear a little bit of the responsibility to fix this world's problems, that relying on big programs and government-sponsored solutions is not going to get us out of our jam?
So... how do we get them to do it?
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Collapse/Friends
If I was to make one complaints about Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail Or Succeed, it would be this:
It's too long.
Now, a couple of things to bear in mind: 1) I am a terribly slow reader; I read a lot, I've always got a book or two and a pile of magazines going, but I am just painfully slow, slow, slow; and I often move my lips (I hate jokes about people who move their lips while reading); and 2) I got this book out of the library; I had to renew it once; I tried to renew it a second time, but someone had placed a hold on it, and I had two nights to get through the last 200 or so pages of the book-- a task made more difficult in recent years what with the toddler running around the house wanting to play, the wife whose attention I'm constantly after, lots of work (work, work, work), all of which add to the slow-reading, lip-moving thing.
So, too long. For me, under the current circumstances.
And also maybe just too long. Too long, maybe, because I figure there are two kinds of people who are going to read this book. Although the book is heavily, heavily annotated and there are lists and lists of further reading and a big long citations section, it is not exactly a "scholarly" book. It strikes me as scholarly, technical writing for the masses. For people like me, and, probably, you. It is a book that makes complicated ideas and innovative new sciences (like, oh, what's the word? those people who study pollen in sediment to track the growth and decline of forest over millions of years? them) accessible to regular, 9 to 5 folks like us.
That said, there will be two camps out there who read this: regular folks who stand on somewhat the same political/philosophical ground as Diamond, and regular folks who don't.
For the regular folks who stand with Diamond (that would include me), 600 plus pages might be enough because, well, we've quite probably heard bits and pieces of this before. Not all of it, certainly. This is a fantastic book. But, well, we maybe don't need all the convincing. We're not starting from scratch. Some chapters could have been trimmed, and we would have still said "wow, this is an unbelievably good book."
For the regular folks who stand on different ground-- I like to call them the "bad guys," but that's just me-- 600 plus pages is maybe too much because, I don't know, I'm thinking that if I didn't agree with someone, or if I wasn't exactly sure yet how I felt about it, I don't know that I'd have the patience to go through 600 pages. If this book is meant for convincing (as opposed to comforting the already-believers), then maybe a couple of hundred pages could have been trimmed off, left aside. Not the juice. Not the good stuff. But maybe some of the details. Maybe some of the denser stuff.
But that's me.
Oddly, one of the editorial reviews at Amazon said exactly the opposite. That review, while generally positive, stated that "Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much." It would have never, ever, ever occurred to me to lodge that complaint.
But anyway. Collapse.
Too long, too short, I don't know. But Collapse is a fantastic book. Collapse, in a nutshell, is a book about societies that have crumbled in part (often in large part) due to environmental disasters, often largely of their own making. It is a review of old, old societies that made some very bad choices-- Vikings in Greenland who insisted on pretending that they were living in Europe (the Inuit thrived, the Vikings all died); Easter Islanders who cut down every single tree on their island in order to outdo competitors in other tribes; Mayans; Anasazi; Pitcairns; and so on. It is a discussion of more modern problems-- the rabbits tearing Australia apart; the genocide in Rwanda (driven, in part, by the fact that it was one of the most densely populated places in the world); the ongoing struggles in Haiti. And it has a word or two for societies who, in the face of impending ecological disaster, managed to get their acts together, to turn things around-- Japan, Iceland, The Dominican Republic.
As history, this book is fascinating. It goes into detail, it tries to understand why Easter Islanders essentially destroyed themselves in such a seemingly ridiculous fashion.
As warning, it is powerful. Diamond doesn't just stay in history. He ties ancient collapses to modern problems. He points out that the path to the peak in a given society is long, slow and difficult; but that the collapse comes quickly, that too often people live so comfortably in the peak that they can not even conceive of the collapse, find the notion of collapse ridiculous in the midst of so much success.
After reading a book like this, I want to bust out dozens of quotes, I want to find all the great lines that might get the essence across. But there's too much in here for that. And, you know, I had to return my copy to the library, so I wouldn't be able to look up much of anything anyway.
But one thing stuck in my head, and I jotted down on a piece of scrap paper at work. It's not central to the book, it's not the one line that sums it all up. But still. In an effort to illustrate how rapidly our population is growing, and what that really means, Diamond says this:
"...continuation of our current population growth rate would yield 10 people per square yard of land in 774 years, a mass of people equal to the Earth's mass in slightly under 2,000 years, and a mass of people equal to the universe in 6,000 years..."
It's hard to me to think in terms of 6,000 years. But not so hard to think in terms of 774 years. I would like the human species to still be here, with a more or less intact planet, in 774 years. That would be nice. But we will have a problem long before we get to 10 people per square yard. If we continue with our current shenanigans, there is just no way we have anything like 774 years left in this place. That is disturbing. That means we have to change. All of us. We've got to do something different.
It's too long.
Now, a couple of things to bear in mind: 1) I am a terribly slow reader; I read a lot, I've always got a book or two and a pile of magazines going, but I am just painfully slow, slow, slow; and I often move my lips (I hate jokes about people who move their lips while reading); and 2) I got this book out of the library; I had to renew it once; I tried to renew it a second time, but someone had placed a hold on it, and I had two nights to get through the last 200 or so pages of the book-- a task made more difficult in recent years what with the toddler running around the house wanting to play, the wife whose attention I'm constantly after, lots of work (work, work, work), all of which add to the slow-reading, lip-moving thing.
So, too long. For me, under the current circumstances.
And also maybe just too long. Too long, maybe, because I figure there are two kinds of people who are going to read this book. Although the book is heavily, heavily annotated and there are lists and lists of further reading and a big long citations section, it is not exactly a "scholarly" book. It strikes me as scholarly, technical writing for the masses. For people like me, and, probably, you. It is a book that makes complicated ideas and innovative new sciences (like, oh, what's the word? those people who study pollen in sediment to track the growth and decline of forest over millions of years? them) accessible to regular, 9 to 5 folks like us.
That said, there will be two camps out there who read this: regular folks who stand on somewhat the same political/philosophical ground as Diamond, and regular folks who don't.
For the regular folks who stand with Diamond (that would include me), 600 plus pages might be enough because, well, we've quite probably heard bits and pieces of this before. Not all of it, certainly. This is a fantastic book. But, well, we maybe don't need all the convincing. We're not starting from scratch. Some chapters could have been trimmed, and we would have still said "wow, this is an unbelievably good book."
For the regular folks who stand on different ground-- I like to call them the "bad guys," but that's just me-- 600 plus pages is maybe too much because, I don't know, I'm thinking that if I didn't agree with someone, or if I wasn't exactly sure yet how I felt about it, I don't know that I'd have the patience to go through 600 pages. If this book is meant for convincing (as opposed to comforting the already-believers), then maybe a couple of hundred pages could have been trimmed off, left aside. Not the juice. Not the good stuff. But maybe some of the details. Maybe some of the denser stuff.
But that's me.
Oddly, one of the editorial reviews at Amazon said exactly the opposite. That review, while generally positive, stated that "Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much." It would have never, ever, ever occurred to me to lodge that complaint.
But anyway. Collapse.
Too long, too short, I don't know. But Collapse is a fantastic book. Collapse, in a nutshell, is a book about societies that have crumbled in part (often in large part) due to environmental disasters, often largely of their own making. It is a review of old, old societies that made some very bad choices-- Vikings in Greenland who insisted on pretending that they were living in Europe (the Inuit thrived, the Vikings all died); Easter Islanders who cut down every single tree on their island in order to outdo competitors in other tribes; Mayans; Anasazi; Pitcairns; and so on. It is a discussion of more modern problems-- the rabbits tearing Australia apart; the genocide in Rwanda (driven, in part, by the fact that it was one of the most densely populated places in the world); the ongoing struggles in Haiti. And it has a word or two for societies who, in the face of impending ecological disaster, managed to get their acts together, to turn things around-- Japan, Iceland, The Dominican Republic.
As history, this book is fascinating. It goes into detail, it tries to understand why Easter Islanders essentially destroyed themselves in such a seemingly ridiculous fashion.
As warning, it is powerful. Diamond doesn't just stay in history. He ties ancient collapses to modern problems. He points out that the path to the peak in a given society is long, slow and difficult; but that the collapse comes quickly, that too often people live so comfortably in the peak that they can not even conceive of the collapse, find the notion of collapse ridiculous in the midst of so much success.
After reading a book like this, I want to bust out dozens of quotes, I want to find all the great lines that might get the essence across. But there's too much in here for that. And, you know, I had to return my copy to the library, so I wouldn't be able to look up much of anything anyway.
But one thing stuck in my head, and I jotted down on a piece of scrap paper at work. It's not central to the book, it's not the one line that sums it all up. But still. In an effort to illustrate how rapidly our population is growing, and what that really means, Diamond says this:
"...continuation of our current population growth rate would yield 10 people per square yard of land in 774 years, a mass of people equal to the Earth's mass in slightly under 2,000 years, and a mass of people equal to the universe in 6,000 years..."
It's hard to me to think in terms of 6,000 years. But not so hard to think in terms of 774 years. I would like the human species to still be here, with a more or less intact planet, in 774 years. That would be nice. But we will have a problem long before we get to 10 people per square yard. If we continue with our current shenanigans, there is just no way we have anything like 774 years left in this place. That is disturbing. That means we have to change. All of us. We've got to do something different.
*********************
Here's a book that was not at all too long: Faith and Practice: The Book of Discipline of the New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.
I don't have much by way of commentary for this. I certainly don't have a "review." I read this very happily, having borrowed it from a Quaker friend. I look forward to having time to sit with the other book she loaned me. Probably not in the next few days (Christmas and all), but soon.
Maybe there will be more to say on this topic later.
I don't have much by way of commentary for this. I certainly don't have a "review." I read this very happily, having borrowed it from a Quaker friend. I look forward to having time to sit with the other book she loaned me. Probably not in the next few days (Christmas and all), but soon.
Maybe there will be more to say on this topic later.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Train Of Thought
These past few days, I haven't been able to get enough of Sick Of It All. That's one of the greatest bands ever, there. Been playing Life On The Ropes (some of the absolute best sing-along hardcore anthems) and Built To Last and Blood, Sweat, No Tears and Scratch The Surface. In my car, in my office (with the door shut so as not to bother my secretary, who is not much of a fan). Maybe it's a subconscious way of dealing with work stress, with all this busy busy-ness going on lately. Gets me tapping my feet, bobbing my head, shouting along in the car. Fills my head with all these positive lyrics.
I even put on Death To Tyrants yesterday, just for the hell of it. That's the one Sick Of It All disc-- their most recent, just a couple of years old-- that I could never really get into. Musically, a little more "metal" than their other albums-- less sing-alongs, more "wall of sound" guitar, less growls, more screams. And lyrically... well, lyrically, it's great. Lots and lots of songs expressing a "discontent" with the Bush administration. Great tracks like "Machete" and "Uprising Nation" kind of venting a little bit of frustration, if you will, with the state of things, the desire to create some change.
Angry songs. Really angry songs, from a typically very positive band.
But yesterday, driving around, those songs didn't sound angry anymore. They sounded just right. They sounded... they sounded like a sort of "celebration."
Because some things have changed. Things have changed, there's this glimmer of hope, this sense of relief, this chance. And now where I only heard frustration and hopelessness, I hear a certain sort of joy. I get this feeling that, though there's so far to go and so very much to be done, maybe at least on one level, maybe at least just a little bit, that frustration, that refusal to just go along with the flow, paid off, was worth it, brought us, finally, to where we are.
I even put on Death To Tyrants yesterday, just for the hell of it. That's the one Sick Of It All disc-- their most recent, just a couple of years old-- that I could never really get into. Musically, a little more "metal" than their other albums-- less sing-alongs, more "wall of sound" guitar, less growls, more screams. And lyrically... well, lyrically, it's great. Lots and lots of songs expressing a "discontent" with the Bush administration. Great tracks like "Machete" and "Uprising Nation" kind of venting a little bit of frustration, if you will, with the state of things, the desire to create some change.
Angry songs. Really angry songs, from a typically very positive band.
But yesterday, driving around, those songs didn't sound angry anymore. They sounded just right. They sounded... they sounded like a sort of "celebration."
Because some things have changed. Things have changed, there's this glimmer of hope, this sense of relief, this chance. And now where I only heard frustration and hopelessness, I hear a certain sort of joy. I get this feeling that, though there's so far to go and so very much to be done, maybe at least on one level, maybe at least just a little bit, that frustration, that refusal to just go along with the flow, paid off, was worth it, brought us, finally, to where we are.
***********************
A month ago, at the Landmark, Ani Difranco said more or less the same thing. I hadn't seen her in quite a while (three or four years at least) and was excited to be able to catch her touring on her new album (which, by the way, I didn't so much love at first; but it is growing on me).
This show, less than two weeks after Election Day, just felt different than all the others I'd been to. It felt... I didn't really have the word for it. And then, while playing through the intro to one of those many heart-breaking, desperate political songs I've loved for so long, she put words to what I was thinking. "These songs," she said (and I paraphrase, of course), "I used to play these songs out of frustration, they used to be pleas for change, they used to be about all that was wrong and how hard it was to fix it; but now, with this little victory, suddenly these all feel like songs of celebration. I'm playing these songs joyfully tonight."
And that was it. That was it at the Ani show, and that was it driving around and listening to some very angry Sick Of It All. In some little ways, the air has changed. Things feel... different. And that's not everything. That's not a victory, that's not the world the way I so desperately want to see it. But after a steady diet of nothing, after months and years wondering if there's anything at all to be optimistic for, that's something, that's enough. For now.
This show, less than two weeks after Election Day, just felt different than all the others I'd been to. It felt... I didn't really have the word for it. And then, while playing through the intro to one of those many heart-breaking, desperate political songs I've loved for so long, she put words to what I was thinking. "These songs," she said (and I paraphrase, of course), "I used to play these songs out of frustration, they used to be pleas for change, they used to be about all that was wrong and how hard it was to fix it; but now, with this little victory, suddenly these all feel like songs of celebration. I'm playing these songs joyfully tonight."
And that was it. That was it at the Ani show, and that was it driving around and listening to some very angry Sick Of It All. In some little ways, the air has changed. Things feel... different. And that's not everything. That's not a victory, that's not the world the way I so desperately want to see it. But after a steady diet of nothing, after months and years wondering if there's anything at all to be optimistic for, that's something, that's enough. For now.
**************
During the lead in to another song, one about her two-year-old daughter, Ani said something like this. She was talking about Election Night, about staying up to watch the results, and she said that she turned to her daughter and said "I wish you could understand how amazing this is, I wish you could feel how momentous, how unbelievable, this victory is." And then she said that she paused, and thought, "no, no I don't. No, I don't ever want my daughter to understand how good it felt, how impossible it seemed, for a black man to be elected president of this country. I don't want her to know how good it felt to replace a tyrant with something better. I don't want her to understand that. I want her world to be different."
A few days earlier, I'd written in Sam's notebook-- this sort of journal thing that my wife and I keep, where we write from time to time, something we plan to give him years from now, when he's old enough to appreciate it. I wrote a few paragraphs on the election, commented on how exciting it was to be able to say that the people of this country had gotten together and elected a black man named "Barack Obama" president. "I hope that, when you get older, that won't seem like such a big deal," I said. "I hope that the world will have grown up a little, that the country will be a little more sane."
I hope that this last election never means nearly as much to Sam as it does, right now, to me. I hope that, in the world he comes to know, there's a little less bigotry. A little less jingoism. I hope that, in the world he comes to know, leaders who can complete a sentence without making fools of themselves become the norm, candidates who appeal to reason consistently win more votes than candidates who appeal to hate and fear.
I hope that. I'm not naive, I'm not optimistic. But I am hopeful.
A few days earlier, I'd written in Sam's notebook-- this sort of journal thing that my wife and I keep, where we write from time to time, something we plan to give him years from now, when he's old enough to appreciate it. I wrote a few paragraphs on the election, commented on how exciting it was to be able to say that the people of this country had gotten together and elected a black man named "Barack Obama" president. "I hope that, when you get older, that won't seem like such a big deal," I said. "I hope that the world will have grown up a little, that the country will be a little more sane."
I hope that this last election never means nearly as much to Sam as it does, right now, to me. I hope that, in the world he comes to know, there's a little less bigotry. A little less jingoism. I hope that, in the world he comes to know, leaders who can complete a sentence without making fools of themselves become the norm, candidates who appeal to reason consistently win more votes than candidates who appeal to hate and fear.
I hope that. I'm not naive, I'm not optimistic. But I am hopeful.
*****************
And, okay, since I've still got Sick Of It All on the mind, maybe I should end with this. It's a fantastic video, off one of the few albums I actually don't have (but you know, it would probably make a great Christmas gift):
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Slow Food
So there's been a bit of a long silence here, broken only by the occasional less-than-substantive, link-to-a-video post.
Not for lack of anything to say. Not for lack of the desire to say it. I have, scratched in a notebook, titles for all sorts of things I'd like to write about. I mean, come on. We just elected a black man named "Barack Obama" president. The economy is falling to pieces. George Bush will soon be just a very bad memory. All kinds of very big things are happening. There's no lack of fuel for frantic blogging.
But, you know.
For a while I was stuck reading this really thick book, trying to get it finished before the due date (I couldn't renew it because someone put a hold on it). And, well, you know, the fourth season of "Lost" just came out on dvd. We don't have cable, but we do love us some dvds from time to time. And, well, the holidays. Plus being mostly worn out after work-- when a major part of your job is to help other people find jobs, massive lay-offs and hiring freezes can make work stressful and, okay, yeah, sort of awfully exhausting at times. Plus Saranac just put out their new version of "12 Beers of Winter" and there's this vanilla stout in it that I have found to be somewhat time consuming. You don't just absent-mindedly guzzle a beer like that, you commit yourself to it, you make yourself present. Plus the boy, the wife, the dogs. And, you know, that new Spearhead cd. And some others. Shoveling. Doodling on guitars. Plus an awful lot of my creative energy and critical thinking and wordy craftiness went into commenting on other people's blogs for a week or so there.
That mostly sounds like a long list of excuses for "lazy." Maybe. Maybe so.
But here's something cool:
A Slow Food USA chapter is in the works for the Syracuse area.
I find the idea pretty wildly exciting. I haven't been to a meeting yet. I didn't know that anyone was doing this until I read this article in The Post-Standard, and so I missed the first two get-togethers.
I look forward to the next meeting with great anticipation.
As I've said before, as I say often, "Food is holy." It's life. It's us. Who and what we are. It matters. My sense is that something that sacred shouldn't just be pumped full of chemicals, wrapped in plastic, shipped halfway around the world, and shoved down one's throat in front of a flickering screen (even if "Lost" is on).
So, cool, this is a good thing, and lots of credit goes to the people who got the ball rolling on this.
Thanks.
Not for lack of anything to say. Not for lack of the desire to say it. I have, scratched in a notebook, titles for all sorts of things I'd like to write about. I mean, come on. We just elected a black man named "Barack Obama" president. The economy is falling to pieces. George Bush will soon be just a very bad memory. All kinds of very big things are happening. There's no lack of fuel for frantic blogging.
But, you know.
For a while I was stuck reading this really thick book, trying to get it finished before the due date (I couldn't renew it because someone put a hold on it). And, well, you know, the fourth season of "Lost" just came out on dvd. We don't have cable, but we do love us some dvds from time to time. And, well, the holidays. Plus being mostly worn out after work-- when a major part of your job is to help other people find jobs, massive lay-offs and hiring freezes can make work stressful and, okay, yeah, sort of awfully exhausting at times. Plus Saranac just put out their new version of "12 Beers of Winter" and there's this vanilla stout in it that I have found to be somewhat time consuming. You don't just absent-mindedly guzzle a beer like that, you commit yourself to it, you make yourself present. Plus the boy, the wife, the dogs. And, you know, that new Spearhead cd. And some others. Shoveling. Doodling on guitars. Plus an awful lot of my creative energy and critical thinking and wordy craftiness went into commenting on other people's blogs for a week or so there.
That mostly sounds like a long list of excuses for "lazy." Maybe. Maybe so.
But here's something cool:
A Slow Food USA chapter is in the works for the Syracuse area.
I find the idea pretty wildly exciting. I haven't been to a meeting yet. I didn't know that anyone was doing this until I read this article in The Post-Standard, and so I missed the first two get-togethers.
I look forward to the next meeting with great anticipation.
As I've said before, as I say often, "Food is holy." It's life. It's us. Who and what we are. It matters. My sense is that something that sacred shouldn't just be pumped full of chemicals, wrapped in plastic, shipped halfway around the world, and shoved down one's throat in front of a flickering screen (even if "Lost" is on).
So, cool, this is a good thing, and lots of credit goes to the people who got the ball rolling on this.
Thanks.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
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