Topic 209: Praying in Public

Carol:

Say a Little Prayer for Me

Texas Governor Rick Perry filled a Houston stadium with an “apolitical Christian prayer service” on August 6, a “day of prayer and fasting on behalf of our troubled nation” (qtd in NYTimes.com).  Have he and the other elected officials at the event blurred the lines between church and state which is a fundamental component of the United States Constitution? Conservative Christian evangelicals, or fundamentalists, are Governor Perry’s primary constituency. They wield inordinate power because of well-organized political strategies , giving the impression that their religious/political position is representative of the larger American point of view. But, is that true? I guess we will find out now that Mr. Perry has officially declared himself a Republican candidate for the next election.
 

 The conservative Christian movement does  not in fact represent a significant demographic either in the Nation or in the United States Congress.   A recent report by the Pew Research Center shows that  the 112th Congress isn’t all that different from the 111th Congress in terms of stated religious affiliations, nor does Congress vary significantly from the religious make-up of the public that elected their representatives. About half the group is Protestant (mostly Baptists and Methodists), one-quarter is Catholic and the rest a mix of smaller denominations such as Episcopalians, Jews, Presbyterians, Buddhists and Muslims. The only divergent statistic from the general population is the group who profess “no religious affiliation, “ with only 1% of Congress choosing that descriptor as opposed to the American public’s 16% (source: Pew Research Center)
 

That really isn’t very surprising. Having a visible religious identity is good politics, unless you’re a Muslim, of course. Consider the scrutiny President Obama has undergone—is he or isn’t he a Muslim, is he or isn’t he an American citizen, etc.? If there are no atheists in fox holes, there are no atheists or agnostics in politics. And, even the religious affiliation of Americans  seems much more “fluid” than we would expect. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 44% of American adults have switched religious affiliation at some point, whether from one Protestant denomination to another, conversion to another faith, or dropping/picking up religious connections.
 

The numbers of Christians in America have declined with barely 50% of the population identified in 2010 as being Protestant, 26% describing themselves as belonging to Evangelical churches. And the Pew Report notes that not only are Protestants on the decline, but “the Protestant population is characterized by significant internal diversity and fragmentation.”  The group that has seen the most gains in recent years? The unaffiliated group, the largest percentage of which come from people between 18-29 years old.
 

Both religion and politics in America represent more diversity and regionalism than the well-orchestrated campaign speeches and rallies would have us believe. Governor Perry may be part of a religious majority in the South, which has the heaviest concentration of Evangelicals in the country, but  he may have a harder sell for “prayer and politics” in the West, which has the largest percentage of unaffiliates, agnostics and atheist.
 

Praying in public? Can we really say that any call for public prayer organized by a political figure, whatever his or her political or religious affiliation, is apolitical. I remember the slogan from the sixties, “the personal is political,” and what is more personal than our religious beliefs.
Source:
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.  Pew Research Center.
         

Megan:

My good friends Kelly and Chuck have arrived from California and are spending the week in Sedona. So, I'm skipping this topic today to hang out with them.

Topic 172: Female Orators

Carol:

“From Many, One”

When I hear the word “orator” I think of the old-time speechifiers who used  rich language, powerful intonations, and carefully orchestrated pauses to persuade and captivate. The first one I remember as a child was Illinois Republican Senator Everett Dirksen in the 1950. I didn’t agree with his politics generally, but I loved to hear him speak.
 

Oratorical skill is more than the use of voice; it is a command of language, and that I can appreciate whether demonstrated in a bass or soprano voice. Of course, a captivating voice and a good vocabulary don’t make up for lack of substance. Firstly, a great orator must have a strong message and a commitment to that message.
 

The first time I heard Texas Democratic Congresswoman Barbara Jordan speak was in 1976 when she gave a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.  I didn’t know who she was at the time, but as she began her speech, I know I stopped my multi-tasking and drew closer to the television. I thought to myself, so this is what is meant by “a commanding voice.” I also remember thinking at the end of her speech that this was a woman whom I would support for the Presidency.  She invoked Thomas Jefferson at the beginning of the speech and ended with Abraham Lincoln, pretty powerful orators themselves, but this essay is about female orators, so I will quote her words from that speech:

a spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny; if each of us remembers, when self-interest and bitterness seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny. (source: American Rhetoric. Top 100 Speeches)
 

I guess I wasn’t the only person awe-struck by Barbara Jordan’s power as an orator. University researchers who polled leading American scholars to compile the Top 100 American Speeches of the 20th century list Jordan’s 1976 speech at #5 and her 1974 statement on the articles of impeachment for Richard Nixon as #13. That list, by the way, includes a significant number of speeches by women of varying politics and eras: Eleanor Roosevelt, Ann Richards, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Margaret Sanger, Margaret Chase Smith.

What I didn’t know when I heard Barbara Jordan speak at that 1976 convention was that she had already been diagnosed 3 years earlier with multiple sclerosis. She hid it well, but in 1979 she retired from politics and became an academic who taught ethics at the University of Texas Austin.  I saw her speak again, 4 years before her death, at the 1992 Democratic Convention where she touched on many of the themes from 1976 that had made her a significant force in the Civil Rights movement,  equal rights for all Americans and a firm belief in national community and civility:
 

Our strength in this country is rooted in our diversity. Our history bears witness to that fact. "E Pluribus Unum" -- "from many, one". It was a good idea when it was founded, and it's a good idea today. From many, one. That still identifies us still identifies us. (Source: American Rhetoric.com)

A fundamental principle of good writing is the notion of “show not tell.” What better way to end this essay than to let Barbara Jordan speak for herself. (We aren't able to embed the video. Not sure why.)


Sources:
Barbara Charline Jordan.  Democratic National Convention Keynote Addresses American Rhetoric. Online Speech bank.
    1976 Speech 
    1992 Speech
Top 100 American Speeches of the 20th Century.

Megan:

In the prison library, I once got a written request for a "bok that teeches you how too do oritory." For this prisoner, speaking clearly and well was a skill he wanted to develop as he was appealing his conviction and representing himself. I found him a book on making speeches and reminded myself that intelligence is not always dependent on literacy although I did not have high hopes for the success of his case. This same prisoner also asked me for a list of every law book ever published, because he wanted to buy them all.

Anyway, I grew up performing in Christmas pageants and participating in the Liturgy of the Word at church, so public speaking was never really a problem for me.  I did it without thinking. As part of my final thesis requirement in college, I had to read some original writing in front of a large group of my peers and I got nervous for the first time I can remember.  The writing was personal and I thought I might start crying. It always annoyed me when other people got emotional while reading out loud and I was mortified. My voice shook and no one could hear me. 

In library school I had to do several group presentations, and in the Management class I was part of a group that imploded mid-semester due to personal conflicts, bad tempers and mental illness. Standing unprepared in front of the class with no one in the group willing to look at or speak to each other was probably the most awkward and embarrassing moment I’d ever experienced. I’d known it was going to happen though and warned the professor (and also checked that failing the presentation didn’t equal failing the class).

So, I suppose those experiences were in the back of my mind when, after I’d become a professional librarian, I was asked to introduce a speaker at a national conference. I wasn’t the speaker, mind you, I was only supposed to introduce him. I went to the chair of the committee and asked if I could switch tasks with someone else. The Chair interpreted my request as an admission of a full-fledged phobia, and not as the lazy-don’t-really-feel-like-it mumble that it was. His concern was so great that for the rest of the conference he kept passing me information about public-speaking courses and practical exercises in overcoming fears. I couldn’t correct him because I knew how unprofessional it was to back out of an assignment for any reason other than extreme terror.

He left the committee after that conference and by the time the next one rolled around no one remembered my “phobia” of public speaking. By that point I was more confident professionally anyway. I gave a series of lectures around the county on prison librarianship and, as long as the subject is libraries, I’m fine speaking in groups of any size. But put me in a social setting with people I don’t know, and I’m lucky if I can remember my own name.

Topic 139: On Thinking for Oneself

Carol:

The Rugged Individualist and the Marlboro Man             

 Any list of American cultural values invariably includes Individualism, emphasizing the importance of thinking for oneself, achieving independence, and making important life choices without the “interference” of family. Independent, Individual, free—the American Ideal.  The ideal aside, we are routinely bombarded with messages that attempt to manipulate us to NOT think independently, the in-your-face, overt messages media and advertising use to influence our spending and social habits. 
 

“Product placement,” is the use of branded items in television and movies. Next time you watch one of your favorite TV shows, look at what the characters are drinking and eating, or what the logo is on their laptops. According to Broadcasting & Cable, 80% of commercial television programming includes product placement, or “branded entertainment” (source: sourcewatch.org).  Products are also advertised through corporate sponsorship at sporting events, use of branded clothing, and promotion of products by the athletes who are paid a lot of money to wear a particular brand.
 

One egregious example of “product placement” is the collusion  between entertainment industry and tobacco companies. In a 1983 speech for a marketing meeting, then Philip Morris president Hamish Maxwell emphasized the importance of putting cigarette smoking into films: “Smoking is being position as an unfashionable, as well as unhealthy, custom. We must use every creative means at our disposal to reverse this destructive trend” (source: Smoke free Movies). Despite increasing regulation against such practices and  denials  by the tobacco industry, 74% of US movies in 2002  showed smoking, and 11 of the top box office films showed special brands. Six of those films were PG-13, i.e. oriented towards a teen-age audience.  What about in 2011? Current films with PG-13 or PG ratings that show smoking without negative consequences include Sucker Punch, Limitless, Rango, and The Lincoln Lawyer.
 

I didn’t begin this essay with the intention of writing about tobacco, but I’ve kind of gotten myself riled up here. You can sneak alcohol into someone’s drink, but you can’t sneak a cigarette into someone’s mouth. Tobacco does NOT taste good when you take the first puff. Or the second, or after the first pack. Euphemistically, it is an “acquired taste,” encouraged by peer pressure and the glitzy notion that smoking is Cool, or whatever the current slang is. Despite the highly publicized health risks and decline in smoking by American adults, the number of adolescent smokers has increased in the past several years.
 

A 2009 article from scientists at Dartmouth shows the powerful link between smoking in movies and smoking in teen-agers. According to the authors, frequent viewing of movies that include smoking increases 3-fold the likelihood that an adolescent will smoke. (source: Heatherton and Sargent).  Parents may be scrupulous in monitoring their children’s exposure to violence in the media but not even consider the impact of exposure to positive images of smoking. Ironically, many of the actors shown smoking on camera are actually using clove cigarettes or other tobacco-free substitutes. In other words, they wouldn’t be caught dead smoking tobacco themselves.
 

There you have it, the ideal of Americans as independent human beings, unique and able to think for ourselves. The reality is that we crave to be accepted as attractive, happy and hip. Forget about exposing the insidious plots of subliminal messages in Walt Disney movies. Forget about analyzing the sexual messages in the magazine ads for vodka. Stand up, speak out, and use the power of your pen and pocketbook to fight  the tobacco industry’s hold on entertainment. That’s the American Way.
 

Sources:
Broadcasting & Cable qtd. In “Product Placement.” Sourcewatch.org
Smoke Free Movies.

Megan:

Confirmation Bias

I came across an article called "Citizenship Duties" on Salon.com a couple days ago, which offers an interesting perspective on this topic. The author, Glenn Greenwald, compares two quotes about trusting the judgment of a President. The first is Britney Spears speaking about President Bush in 2003: 

“Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes…”

The second is Kevin Drum, of Mother Jones, speaking on Obama: 

“I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I'd literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he's smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted.”

Greenwald’s point seems to be that this type of single-minded trust and deference is dangerous, no matter which party is in power. He compares such submission to a religious act:

“Venerating a superior being and blindly following its will is a natural human impulse, as it frees one of the heavy burden of decision-making and moral and intellectual judgment, and it also creates a feeling of safety and protection.”

But he encourages us to rise above this natural impulse (and rise above Britney Spears) and do our duty as citizens, which is to question our leaders.

In an effort to spend a little more time researching for this essay than I normally do, I went back and read the original Drum article as well as his irritated follow-up after Greenwald’s piece was published.  It is clear that Greenwald took Drum’s quote somewhat out of context, considering the entire article is about questioning President Obama and the Libya Intervention.  Drum said his original quote had been written hastily and upon reflection, “If I weren't unsure of myself, after all, I'd hardly be interested in Obama's views or anyone else's.”

 And then Greenwald responded (update added to original), basically saying that if Drum had said what he meant in the first place, there would have been no need to compare him to Britney Spears. Aside from the Britney Spears comparison, Drum and Greenwald’s arguments were fairly respectful, most likely because they are otherwise politically aligned. Both made references to respecting the other’s writing and ideologies, and the conflict only became personal because one liberal compared another liberal to a red-neck pop princess's unquestioning faith in the stupidest President we’ve ever had. 

Neither of them actually said that, but that’s gotta be from where the outrage stems. Similiarly minded people can argue smaller points of rhetoric respectfully, but (as the media constantly reminds us) Democrats are always going to think Republicans are stupid, and Conservatives are always going to think Liberals are elitist (perhaps rightfully so).  Greenwald isn’t the only commentator to call Drum out on his  apparent unquestioning devotion, but Drum disregards them because they are not Obama supporters anyway. He’s only interested in responding to criticism from someone who usually agrees with him, even though all the critics made the same point.
 

Everyone wants to believe that they think for themselves – that they are aware and informed and able to make up their own minds. But the truth is no one has enough time to fully investigate every issue they are expected to feel strongly about, so it is often easier to defer to the party line or the dogma of their faith.  Add to that, the problem of confirmation bias which suggests that people tend to favor information which confirms what they already believe even when presented with evidence to the contrary. Perhaps we must first question our beliefs before coming to any further conclusion about our capacity for independent thought.

Sources:
Greenwald's " Citizenship Duties" Salon.com

Confirmation Bias. Wikipedia.

Drum, Kevin. "Obama, Libya, and Me." Mother Jones.

and the follow up.

Topic 120: Living Caricatures

Carol:

Live from New York, It’s…..

After Marc’s graduation from law school in 1974, he got a job that took us right back to the same area of west Los Angeles where I had lived as a kid. By the fall of 1975, we had begun our careers, bought our first a home half a mile from Santa Monica beach, and settled into a comfortable routine with a constellation of college friends who had also gravitated to the LA area after college. Weekends we played softball or volleyball at one of the local parks. Evening get-togethers involved marathon, cutthroat monopoly games or Pictionary.  By 11:00 p.m. we would settle around whichever apartment’s  television set  and get ready for our favorite group ritual – watching a brand new NBC comedy show called Saturday Night Live and its cast of “Not Ready for Prime-Time Players” that included  Dan Akroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, and Chevy Chase.

What I loved most about the early SNL was its spot-on caricatures of political figures and its lampoons of current affairs on “Weekend Update.” On the national scene, it was Year 1 for Gerald Ford and Year 1 for Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford. All it took for President Ford was one stumble debarking from an airplane, and Chevy Chase turned the incident into a signature, weekly pratfall that usually opened the show.  Chevy  Chase as Gerald Ford the bumbling klutz.  The skits worked because the audience became part of the joke, anticipating that whatever political situation of the week was satirized, it would always lead up to a crazy, slapstick moment with Chevy/Ford on the floor. What a relief after the Nixon years to be able to laugh at national politics.

Over the next few years, our little SNL fan club broke up as we pursued careers,  started families and gradually moved out of LA.  Despite his popularity as the stand-out of the first-year cast, Chevy Chase didn’t last. The cast and quality of the show changed over its first ten years, and although SNL still seemed to be a star-maker (Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Phil Hartman in the early 80’s), I don’t really remember much political humor until Dana Carvey joined the cast in 1986. He may be best known for “The Church Lady,” but he also revived the political satire with caricatures of George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot.

We lost patience with SNL after a while, too hit-and-miss with the humor, too many commercials, too late at night.  The current version of “Weekend Update” seems embarrassingly lame compared to the consistent quality of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I never watch SNL on Saturday night, only the recorded version to  catch the opening monologue, fast-forwarding  through the commercials, mediocre skits, and ear-jarring musical guests, all in hopes of catching a glimmer of that satirical brilliance that poked fun at a parade of Presidents and political campaigns: Darrell Hammond as both Clinton and Gore, Will Ferrell as George W, Tina Fey as Sara Palin, and now Fred Armisen as President Obama (a somewhat controversial casting choice, I understand, but I like him). 

Caricature is about exaggeration, not imitation. It’s about capturing and stretching the essence, the humanness of public figures, whether their big ears, their verbal or physical klutziness, or their speech patterns and facial tics. And I think good caricature of a living person can’t step too far over a line towards meanness or sarcasm.  Especially at SNL where this Saturday night’s caricature may end up on next Saturday’s show.

Live from New York, it’s….Sarah Palin!

Sources:

Wikipedia: Saturday Night Live. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Live

Megan:

Family Caricatures

I can’t remember whether I mentioned this before, but my brother – who has always been my harshest critic when it comes to the things I write – told me I was being too hard on Merriam-Webster. He believes that it is unfair of me to judge them (it?) for using a variation of the word being defined in the definition if the word being defined is not the root word itself (read that slowly, out loud and it will make sense). Maybe he is right, but then they go and do this:

Definition of CARICATURE
1: exaggeration by means of often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteristics
2: a representation especially in literature or art that has the qualities of caricature
3: a distortion so gross as to seem like caricature

For the purposes of this essay, I am going to utilize the 3rd definition – and write about something that seems like a distortion, but is in fact a truthful representation. 

One of the unexpected pleasures of this  project has been the opportunity to make fun of my parents on a regular basis. In real life, my father is a serious man, he is an excellent lawyer and he cares about people. Everyone who knows him knows he is a good and interesting man, if somewhat easily distracted.

But, I am not exaggerating when I say that yesterday afternoon  he read aloud to me from Consumer Report for 45 minutes. It was the automobile edition, and according to him, the 'most important issue of the year.' I guess it was an odd coincidence that  both the top rated and lowest rated cars (Nissan Altima and a Volkswagen Passat respectively) happen to be sitting in our garage at this exact moment, but still I was not interested in hearing the rankings of all the cars in between.

I decided to distract him. He’s not great about making repairs around the house, and he will literally run away when insects are involved, but when it comes to disposing of dead animals he usually takes care of business.

 “Dad, did you get the dead mouse out of the laundry room?”

“I completely forgot.”

“How could you forget? Don’t you know that mouse has kept us hostage all day, prevented us from entering the laundry room and that I had to wear ill-fitting and unattractive clothes today – clothes that looked so weird that the friend with whom I had lunch asked me, after a bathroom break, if I had changed since we’d met  because she’d suddenly realized how weird I looked and that it was all the dead mouse’s fault and also yours for not taking the time to remove the body before going to work this morning when it was first mentioned to you?” (Where dead animals are concerned, I am prone to soliloquy).

So, he put down his magazine, went into the kitchen and returned with an empty bag – the kind that used to contain a loaf of pre-sliced whole wheat bread. He puts the bag inside out on his hand and used it to talk to me like a puppet: “This is a good bag to pick up a dead mouse,” said the bread bag puppet.   And then he walked downstairs to the laundry room.

He couldn’t find the mouse at first, so he shouted up to me and I shouted up to my mom in her office to find out where it was (this is like the 9th dead animal to be found in or around the house since I’ve moved back here, but the only one I did not discover myself). After a series of directions yelled from upstairs to me and relayed down to him, and a comment about the surprising softness of the mouse,  he came back up the stairs empty handed.

“Where is the mouse?” I asked him.

“I put it in the pail where we put the lint from the dryer.”

“So… it is still in the laundry room?”

“It is in the plastic bag.”

“That doesn’t matter. You have basically wrapped it like a present and laid it on a pillow. It will attract other creatures. Other creatures will come to the place where we clean the clothes and they will chew holes in the bread bag and use the lint to make nests inside our clothes. There will be a smell. And the clothes will remain unclean.”

“I’ll empty the pail tomorrow.”

But he won’t. He will forget.  I bet you a billion dollars.

Topic 113: American Aggressiveness

Carol:

Thank you, Dr. Nisbet

 My first thought when I saw today’s topic was that there must be an answer in deTocqueville.  But, when I started reading snippits of his book Democracy in America online, I realized that it would take me a week to figure out what is relevant to the topic of “American aggressiveness.” What I did skim from my google search was so interesting—and so prescient from a Frenchman who toured American in the early 1830’s—that I wanted to stop writing this essay and rush down to where I know we have a copy getting dusty on a bookshelf in our basement.  In fact, I had a thought—a fleeting thought—that Alexis Tocqueville should be required reading in all  American schools.
 

I haven’t read Democracy in America since 1971, when I enrolled in an upper-division sociology class.  I had made it through the introductory sociology class during the previous Fall, one of those gigantic classes held in an auditorium so that the professor could lecture to 400 people at once. I liked it well enough, but mainly because I sat next to an interesting young man named Morgan who took me to the art building at night to throw clay.  Morgan and I became “friends for life,” and I got an A in the class only because I knew how to write a good essay . The TA lobbied for me when I almost flunked the multiple choice exam. I was never aggressive about studying or grades.
 

That next Spring I ended up taking the advanced sociology class for two reasons:  (1)Marc  talked me into it; and (2) the professor, Robert Nisbet, was supposed to be famous.  That was the Spring Ronald Reagan closed  the California university campuses, of  Kent State, lots of protests, and my own  escalating romantic silliness regarding my boyfriend/future husband.  Marc and I were on completely different academic tracks, so this would be my only chance to actually take a course  together since he assured me he just didn’t have time in his schedule of economics, political science and sociology classes to fit in literature.   Marc was already thinking about law school and was really aggressive about studying and grades.
 

So, I took the course, but I didn’t do justice to the class,  to DeToqueville, or to Robert Nisbet.  Our primary textbook was his own 1953 book The Quest for Community: A Study of Ethics of Order and Freedom, which is also getting dusty on a bookshelf in our basement. We also read Marc Bloch’s Feudal Society and Democracy in America.   I kind of read the books, I kind of took notes in class, and I only stayed up all night to cram once, i.e. to keep Marc company when he stayed up to write a paper.  I think he was disappointed that I didn’t share his enthusiasm, and he got kind of mad at me when I was satisfied with a B after not trying very hard and he must have been disappointed at my lukewarm attitude. Marc was a Nisbet  groupie.
 

Turns out Robert Nisbet was famous, a brilliant sociologist who was an engaging lecturer in class. He had a particular gift for making history come alive through his descriptions and connections. He was also a Conservative of such political stature that he eventually spent eight years at the American Enterprise Institute, which despite calling itself nonpartisan is often described as one of America’s most influential neoconservative “think tanks.” 
 
Back then, I never really thought about any of my professors outside the context of their classrooms.  Professor Nisbet never talked politics per se in class and I wasn’t sophisticated enough to recognize conservative theories in his approach to the subject matter. But, the name of the course was Community, and I doubt he felt like he was part of a community that Spring of campus protest, student radicalization and aggressive intolerance across  the political spectrum.  
 

Thanks, Marc, for talking me into that class.

Megan:

Well, hello there. How have you been? Me? Not so great, although I am better today. I figured out Tuesday night that I might be allergic to the Vicodin, but kept taking it through yesterday because it made my back feel better even while kicking me repeatedly in the stomach and head. Today I am finally accepting that I should not take the painkillers, but still taking the other little pills. Did anyone see Modern Family last week when Gloria washed down a Valium with a shot of tequila and then turned all lovey-dovey? That has not been my experience, but maybe it’s because I left out the tequila. Instead, I just feel pretty relaxed. And I can move my head.

Anywho, even though I haven’t felt up to writing any essays, I have been retagging all the old entries and now we have a word cloud. I was wrong when I said Milo would be the biggest word. "Prison" beats "Milo", but "Family" and "Cartoons" beat everything else. Mom says I misspelled "Genealogy".  "Day off" is quite large as well, and that’s totally my fault because I’ve had about 5 times as many days off as Mom.  As a qualified librarian, I would like to think that my classification of the entries is accurate, but please keep in mind that I was heavily medicated and simultaneously watching Lifetime: Television for Women. So, it’s a work in progress, just like the rest of the site.

---

On any other day, I might have a lot to say about this topic. I could cite a number of examples in movies, literature and my own experience of the rude and aggressive ways Americans act while abroad. Or I could talk about guns, and how Americans keep killing each other with guns.  Or road rage. Or rudeness to people in the service industry.

But I can think of just as many examples of the English doing the same. There are movies and television shows about how the British act abroad (they have a reputation of tight-fisted-ness) – see the hilarious show Benidorm. And while gun crime is much lower in Britain, it’s still a problem (they blame us though) as is  road rage (we had the Road Rage Killer in our prison) and rudeness. I imagine these problems exist in every culture to some extent.

I also think the idea of American Aggressiveness is an external (foreign) one,  and that most of us don’t think of ourselves that way. Some of us do have a sense of individualized entitlement though, that other cultures seem to envy and resent at the same time. Concepts like "The American Dream", and "The American Way", and "This Is Still a Free Country, Isn’t It?!" … that in general, don’t really exist. Our government (no matter who is in power) seems so sure that the rest of the world is just one nuclear bomb away from invading us, that it pours our resources into defense and ignore domestic needs like education and health care. What’s to envy about that? Sometimes it seems to me that all this “aggression” is just a front we put out for the rest of the world, to hide our fears, just like a schoolyard bully is really just an insecure kid.

That being said, most people I know are just trying to get along in the world, dealing with their own family issues and economic stresses. Really, I don’t think we’re all that bad.

Topic 106: Outgrown Opinions

Carol:

Teaching Old Dogs

Last week I went to my first OLLI class, part of a series on Mythology and the Human Experience.  The Osher Life-long Learning Institute is a peer- facilitated program for “seniors” around the idea of learning groups.  Some of the classes (and facilitators) are so popular that lotteries determine who will get into the class.  Although the Institute is housed at the College, it is overseen by an independent Governing Council.  Sounds dry and dull when described this way, but OLLI is anything but.
 
When I was teaching, I would sometimes head to the Food Court on Friday mornings when a lot of OLLI students would meet for lunch. A few traditional aged students might be studying over coffee or grabbing a quick meal before soccer practice, but the room would be dominated by much larger groups of older folks involved in loud, animated conversations. They were clearly having fun.
 
The notion of “lifelong learning” recognizes that a person’s life journey is not linear or lock-step, that continuous education can meet a variety of needs whatever a person’s age. Click on “Lifelong Learning” at our College and you will find not just OLLI but community education classes for all ages, including “College for Kids”, the Center for Successful Aging, and EDventures, which offers “Journeys of the Mind and Body” through organized educational field trips (source: YC  Lifelong Learning Division).
 
The OLLI group at Yavapai College is one of a network of 117 Lifelong Learning Institutes around the United States supported by the Bernard Osher Foundation, whose mission is to support higher education and the arts, including “meeting the needs of older learners who want to learn simply for the joy of learning and personal fulfillment” (source: OLLI National Resource Center).  The various Institutes are meant to reflect the culture of their own communities, so the “flavor” of the different OLLI groups may differ significantly although the common thread is self-directed, collaborative learning communities.  We might almost think of them as learning co-ops where members pay a fee to not only participate as students but contribute to decisions what classes and special interest groups are offered, fees, newsletter, etc. I notice from the newsletter that OLLI refers to itself as a Knowledge Exchange.
 
I have taken plenty of courses at the College and appreciate the classes in religion, technology and ecology for reshaping some of my most important attitudes and habits in the past 5 years. So, I wasn’t sure I was ready to make the shift from the structure and multi-generational atmosphere of a conventional college classroom to a program geared for SENIORS. Let’s face it, America is not kind, respectful, or enthusiastic about the notion of aging. We compliment people by saying, “You don’t look your age.” We label people by the work they do and joke about “being put out to pasture” at retirement.
 
If that first OLLI session is typical, I would almost say that I have entered an educational Utopia. Fifteen minutes before the 1 p.m. start-up, the room was almost full, and it was noisy. People clearly were anxious for the two-hour session to get started, and when it was over, they lingered to converse and ask questions. The model of an “idea exchange” was reinforced by the two facilitators, both retired, seasoned teachers, neither of whom presented themselves as subject-matter experts but rather as fellow learners. The class is advertised as “no homework, no tests,” but most people had purchased the optional text, most were taking notes, and most had lots of questions and comments. I didn’t hear a single groan when we were asked to turn to a neighbor and share ideas for 5 minutes.  Imagine, a roomful of students who were there by choice, loved to learn, and had the life experiences to wrap new ideas and opinions around.
 
I wanted to end this essay with a catchy quote about aging… but most of the quotes just reinforce all the old opinions about wrinkles, memory loss, and pill consumption. I have a busy day planned, and I’m looking forward to an afternoon of fun escapism at the movies. So, I’ll let my daughter finish the essay instead…. Cartoon, please.

 

Megan:

The Only Democrat in the Village

The first presidential election I can remember was the 1988 Bush/Dukakis race. At 7 years old, I proudly declared myself the only Democrat in my class and drew cartoons of a donkey giving an elephant a black eye. My most vocal opponents were twin boys, the sons of a local political aspirant who lived near my neighborhood. These boys regularly rolled the window down to yell at passing Prescott College students to “take a shower you stupid hippie.” My cousin (the one with the chickens) eventually attended that college, as did her future husband. Despite the fact that we had such different world views, they were my classmates who lived the nearest, and I spent a lot of time with them (our political differences didn’t seem to get in the way of our friendship).

By the time I reached 8th grade, Bill Clinton was in office, but I was still the only Democrat in the class. The twins had changed schools, but my liberal leanings earned me constant bullying by my classmates. I admit I could be obnoxious, threatening sexual harassment lawsuits at boys who peeked under girls’ skirts, but didn’t think to follow through when the harassment became legitimate – when my classmates called me a lesbian, when my best friend put distance between us out of fear of the same accusation levied at her.

In high school, I was in a class of 400 instead of 11, and was comfortably invisible most of the time. Political leanings on both sides shifted into apathy, and despite the fact that I became much more involved in the Catholic Church, even going as far as picketing Planned Parenthood, I think I still (guiltily) considered myself a pro-choice liberal.

In college, in Oakland CA, I felt I’d finally found “my people.” I met actual lesbians, and discovered communists and anarchists, people so far to my left they were practically on the right. Now a part of the majority, I discovered I had no taste for political rallies or protests. I could hold a sign, but I could not shout, I could not even chant. I felt stupid and sheep-like, even though I believed in the cause and admired my politically active friends. I registered Green but voted Democrat at the last second, and along with everyone else I knew, believed Bush stole that first election. 

I spent most of Bush’s terms in England, where I was the token “good American, “ the exception noted whenever anyone wanted to trash America and its bullying foreign policy. “Not you,” they would say, “you’re okay.” When I decided to return to the States, I joked with friends that Obama was the reason I was returning to the States, “now that it was safe.” As I get older I realize more that being president is just a really hard job, that promises about change are made to win elections, but that there’s not a lot of difference between the main parties.

I’ve gotten to know my childhood friends again. Some have outgrown their parents’ political leanings, and some have not (including me). One of my very best friends is a self-avowed “gun-toting conservative” who complains regularly about the unwashed. Part of me thinks she does it to embarrass me, part of me knows she believes it. But I love her anyway. And the twins? We met again after 10 years, their Republican father still heavily involved in Arizona politics, and the boys are more liberal than I ever was as a kid. 

Re-creation of 1988 drawing

Topic 104: Old-Fashioned Remedies

Carol:

Home-Grown Remedies for What Ails the People

I got up early this morning to do some research. I had already found an interesting book on one of my favorite websites, “The Making of America,” by J. Albert Bellows of New England entitled How Not to be Sick (1869). The book turns out to be about homeopathic approaches to home health care, including 20 important remedies for the 19th century family medicine chest. The author’s philosophy is clearly stated:

"…we shall probably find that every climate in which man can live is furnished with its own remedies, sufficient to cure all the diseases and relieve all the pains to which its inhabitants are subjected" (Bellows 325).

Bellows was  influenced  by Samuel Hahnemann, a German doctor whose 1810 book The Organon of Rational Medicine described his new method of healing called homeopathy, and many of  these old-fashioned remedies are still used today: deadly nightshade, wolf’s bane,  chamomile and St. Ignatius Bean.
 

But now I want to think about Egypt, and I want to watch as the people in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria,  all along the banks of the Nile River, celebrate the resignation President Hosni Mubarak, the only leader most of them have ever known.
 

We have been watching cable news and the Internet for 14 days while the Egyptian people have expressed their opinions about the “disease” of Mubarak’s regime and the only remedy they demanded to “relieve all the pains to which [Egypt’s] inhabitants are subjected.”  I guess I’m old-fashioned enough  to think there is nothing more exhilarating than seeing “the will of the people” in action. It isn’t really a thrill at the political outcome as much as a thrill at watching  people react to the   knowledge that they have “brought down the regime,” not some outside force political or corporate, but “they the people,” “we the people.”

 On a  smaller scale, I felt that same sense of power, of “we did it,” when I was walking  near San Francisco’s  Ghiradelli Square in the early evening of August 8, 1974 and heard the news that Richard Nixon had just resigned.  I still remember the  rush of excitement, not just  that he was leaving office but  that “we the people” had prevailed.  
 

In June 1989, I watched from the living-room of a tiny Yorkshire, England B&B as young Chinese protestors gathered in Tianannmen Square as part of a 7-week failed movement that took an estimated 3000 lives. A few months later, I watched the walls of East Berlin come tumbling down on November 9, 1989, the visible evidence the East Germans had been successful in toppling the Communist regime.
 

No one knows how Mubarak’s resignation will play out for the Egyptian people, nor how this act of “self-liberation” will impact other countries in the region. I hope this home remedy will lead to better health for the people of Egypt, and I will be relieved if they can do it without the intervention of big, expensive “medical consultants” from the West.


SOURCES:
Image of Egyptian Demonstrations Jan 2011MG00064-20110125-1429. Date 25 January 2011, 14:23 IMG00064-20110125-1429Uploaded by BanyanTree
Author  Muhammad Ghafari from Giza, Egypt

 History of Homepathy: http://dr-dom.com/homeopathy_history.html
List of Homeopathic Preparations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_homeopathic_preparations

How not to be sick : a sequel to "Philosophy of eating" / Albert J. Bellows ...
Bellows, J. Albert (Albert Jones), 1804-1869.
New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1869.
 

Image of the Berlin Wall Nov 1989.  1:12, 7 November 2009 User:SanFranEditor uploaded "File:BerlinWall-BrandenburgGate-1989-Nov-09.jpg" ‎ ({{Information |Description = People atop the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate on 09 November 1989 |Source = I (Sue Ream) created this work entirely by myself. |Date = photo taken 09 November 1989 |Author = Sue Ream, p)

Megan:

More harm than good

If you Google this topic, you’ll find pages and pages of results of what "Grandma used to do." It’s things like this that reveal the dangers of access to unverified information-- many of these sites are facilitated by the modern equivalent of snake oil peddlers. I’m not saying that herbal remedies are without merit (I have a friend who swears by lavender oil as a way to reduce scarring), but I’m no expert and neither are most of the people who sell this stuff online.

That being said, the medical field is evolving just as quickly as the other sciences. What is considered best practice today, may be disavowed tomorrow as history has proven time and again. Here are two examples of common remedies for ailments, used for hundreds or thousands of years, which usually proved more deadly than helpful.
 

Blood-letting  – in medieval medicine, the four humors were considered responsible for all illness. The humors were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. Operating under the theory that illness occurred when the humors were out of balance, medieval physicians would often bleed their patients either by cutting them open, or by using leeches.
 

Mercury had a long history of medicinal (and cosmetic) use before people found out it was killing them. In China, it was thought to heal broken bones; the ancient Greeks used it in ointments and salves.
Nowadays, mercury still has a place in modern medicine (and cosmetics) although the use is declining. Since the 1930’s a mercury derivative has been used to preserve vaccines, and it is this application which has been blamed by some for causing autism in children. Although there appears to be no established link between autism and vaccinations, the use of mercury has not been removed from vaccines intended for children under six.
The use of mercury in cosmetics, specifically in mascara, was banned in Minnesota in 2008 – the first state to enact such measures.

A short Internet search indicates that there are a number of dangerous old-fashioned home remedies still in use (I’m assuming they are still in use, because why else would there be sites devoted to their danger). WebMD  under the heading of Women’s Health has the patronizing title “5 Home Remedy No-Nos” which warns of the dangers of ear-candling (shoving a candle in the ear to remove excess wax) and reminds us that Q-tips aren’t a good idea either.  Also, you should not give whiskey to a teething baby (drunk baby = bad), nor put butter on a burn (can cause infection). The final ‘no-no’s’ are Colloidal Silver (can turn your skin blue) and Home Colon Cleanses (dehydration and salt depletion).

With the exception of the ear-candling, I have never tried any of these remedies. With the candling, I got the lighter as far as my ear before I thought of my hair going up in flame and vanity won over my discomfort. Obviously I have no medical training in either traditional or alternative methods. In my opinion, it’s always better to consult a doctor than the Internet, otherwise you might spend a couple of weeks thinking a trapped nerve is Multiple Sclerosis.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood-letting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)

http://women.webmd.com/features/5-home-remedy-no-nos

Topic 102: Intellectual Alarm Clocks

Carol:

Wake Up Call 1

In September 1969, I set out for the University of California with a brand new driver’s license and a used but spiffy little Corvair  I kept my car behind the dorms in a parking lot full  of clunkers and Volkswagen Beetles, one of which belonged to my someday husband. My Corvair stood out, and I was proud of it.
 

The campus reflected the increasing political and social tensions in  the country.  The quad was filled with groups pamphleteering for various causes, and anti-war demonstrations occurred on a regular basis. The energy was chaotic, aggressive and idealistic   Whatever  the cause, whoever the speaker, the message was “ We can make a difference.”  
 

First, there was the newly formed Venceremos Brigade,  returned from Cuba where they showed their solidarity with Castro and the Cuban people by working in the sugar cane fields.  Then there was a charismatic former NYPD officer  who was hitting the university speaking circuit to advocate for police reform. His idea for combating corruption and racism within police departments was to recruit college-educated young people willing to work for social change from within. 
 

In the middle of the year, Ralph Nader came, his name linked to a growing consumer advocacy movement and a book I hadn’t read, Unsafe at Any Speed (1965).  The room was full, the applause enthusiastic as Nader strolled up to the stage. He lacked the youthful zeal of the Venceremos and the charm of the former cop, but Nader commanded our attention with his passion and intellect.  His credentials were Ivy League: magna cum laude from Princeton, law degree from Harvard. Yet, he was fighting for consumer rights and political reform. And, he was doing it with a cadre of young people dubbed by the press as “Nader’s Raiders.” We could make a difference. It wasn’t long before Nader got into Unsafe at Any Speed. And, omigod, there was a whole chapter on the Corvair.  My spiffy little Black Corvair, a loving gift from my father, was a death trap. I was stunned.  I was so naïve, so gullible, so unsafe at any speed.
 

Marc and I have heard Ralph Nader speak several times over the years. Marc reminded me this morning that he had stood in line to talk to Nader at one rally. No, no he wasn’t volunteering to become one of Nader’s Raiders. He wanted an opinion on the Volkwagen Beetle,  bought because Marc thought it was a well-made, efficient, and economical car.  Nader  cited safety standards and crash tests showing lethal damage at 25 mph. When I asked If Marc remembered Nader’s exact words, he responded, “Oh yes. He summed up his opinion with a little sneer on his mouth. ‘A car with such minimal safety standards should be banned from the highway.’" Marc’s car was a death trap too, unsafe at any speed.
 

Forty years later, the Venceremos Brigade has a website with the banner “For USA-Cuba Peace & Friendship.”  They are just one memory from a memorable year of my college life. Ralph Nader?  He has been praised as a consumer crusader, but he has also been called arrogant and a political spoiler.  He was also  the first person to sound an alarm that woke me up to my own power to make choices-- on the car lot, in the grocery store, and at the ballot box. I think about that whenever I get into my Volkswagen Passat, strap on my shoulder harness and count the  5 airbags installed for my safety.

We can make a difference.
 

Sources:
Academy of Achievement: Ralph Nader .
    http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/nad0bio-1 

Nader Image: Speaking at BYU’s Alternate Commencement.  Uploaded on April 27, 2007
Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wickenden/474602694/)
Author Don LaVange (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wickenden/)
Venceremos Brigade -- http://venceremosbrigade.wordpress.com/2011/01/

Megan:

Wake Up Call 2

The idea of a wake-up call for your mind is an interesting concept. I’m sure most people have experienced that moment where everything seems to change – a new piece of the puzzle suddenly alters the image, a different perspective or interpretation on an old idea opens a series of opportunities previously unconsidered.  I believe this is also known as a paradigm shift.

Where this has occurred for other people I know, it is not my story to tell (although this may be the only time I don’t jump at the chance to take other people’s stories for my own), but one example from my own experience came literally in the form of a wake-up call.

On September 11, 2001, my friend Kelly called my dorm room to wake me with the news. I met her in the TV room downstairs and together we watched the second plane hit to the tower. In my journal, I recorded an errant thought that eventually changed everything I thought about media from then on: “How do we know it happened the way they said it did?” This is not going to turn into an essay advocating the 9/11 Truth Movement (although I do believe there are some valid questions) ; it is truly a coincidence that I started questioning the veracity of televised information on that day.  This awareness was solidified when I saw the BBC documentary The Power of Nightmare (2005), which can be found online here.

The main way I have chosen to cope with my distrust of the media marketing machine (aside from assigning alliterative addresses) is by reducing my exposure. I’ve managed to block most of the advertising on the sidebars, I watch very little TV, and am selective about the way I inform myself on current events. Reading news articles online instead of watching them on TV ensures my mind is clearer to question and evaluate, instead of being distracted by images and music and the other entertaining qualities used to hold one’s attention.

Despite the investigative and research skills I have acquired through my education and career, I have done little to fix what I’ve determined to be a broken system. For now, instead of writing articles or trying to educate people on the ways the media manipulates the public into being afraid in order to sell them stuff, I am more interested in empowering people to come to their own conclusions. Information literacy has been a buzzword of the academic and library professions for a while now – having the ability to sift through and locate, analyze and evaluate the overwhelming amount of data and detail available has become an essential skill. On the Internet, anyone can pass herself off as an expert, and as we’ve recently seen in Egypt, anyone can be a journalist. There is no longer one explanation available (nor was there ever), no reason to assume that there is only one truth. I’m okay with never really being sure, but for those who aren’t – there’s probably an app for that too.

Topic 96: Gasoline and Onions

Carol:

State of the Onion 2011

This week we recorded President Obama’s State of the Union Address, so we were able to fast forward through the pre-speech news commentary, the countless handshakes and cheek busses, and the interruption of “spontaneous” applause.  The President was on his game, putting forth a three-pronged approach to “winning the future” that included such benchmarks as:

•    1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015
•    80% of electricity coming from clean energy sources by 2035
•     High-speed internet access to 98% of Americans by 2016
(source: State of the Union Address 2011)

Whatever your political leanings, whether or not you agree with the priorities set in the State of the Union message, here’s a proposal that would challenge each of us to apply innovation, education, and rebuilding through a single project: the 100 Mile-Diet.
 

The “100- Mile Diet” concept comes from Canadian writers Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon,  a challenge the authors gave themselves  to restrict their diet for one year to foods grown within 100 miles of their home. The project required not only changing where they bought their food but, of course, their eating habits. Innovation? They had to think outside the box-store, beyond the typical grocery list and supermarket, searching out local growers and markets and finding creative uses for a wider range of foods. They educated themselves about the sustainable food movement and preparation/storage of non-processed foods. They had to rebuild  their relationship not only to food but to the whole culture of eating—the easy and cheap “Fast Food Nation” mentality.

Smith and MacKinnon’s subsequent book  encouraged families and communities to accept the “100-Mile Diet Challenge,” if only for a week or a month.  But, is the 100-Mile Diet just a quirky fad that is too time-consuming, expensive, and complicated for 21st  century Americans who drive farther and worker harder to pay their food bills than ever before?
What are the benefits of a “buy local, eat local” lifestyle?
 

--Energy Impact: according to 100-Mile-Diet.org, a study in Iowa showed that “a regional diet consumed 17 times less oil and gas than a typical diet based on food shipped across country.”  Sustainable Table.org talks about “food miles,” the distance a food travels from farm to table, noting that food miles for the average grocery store item is 27 times higher than for goods bought from local sources. The refrigeration needed to haul produce across the country or the globe further contributes to energy waste.
 

--Economic Impact: A “locavore” approach to eating supports the survival—and revival—of family farms and local businesses. According to Sustainable Table.org, only about 7% of food dollars spent at a typical grocery store chain stays within the local economy, with the greater portion going to a global food infrastructure of processing, packaging, shipping costs, etc. That number rises to 40% with a regional buying approach, and when we by direct from local farmers, 90% of that food dollar goes back into the farm.
 

--Dietary Impact: The sustainable/local food movement is about diet for health and nutrition. Buying locally means eating fresher foods, expanding our repertoire of recipes to incorporate more flavors and textures, eliminating additives, and artificial flavor enhancers from our diets.
 
The 100-Mile-Diet challenge  is a great one for the whole family. Most communities have farmers markets, whole foods stores, and food-coops to supply your own table. Local restaurants have begun to advertise a “buy local” menu including regional wines and seasonal menus. And, all the information you need about where to find local foods is available on the internet.
 

Best of all, create/innovate with your own or community garden, Educate yourself about the various seeds and growing conditions for your climate zone. Rebuild your yard with raised vegetables beds. Imagine the whole new repertoire of taste and color you will add to the family cuisine when you grow  your own healthy, luscious, tasty….onions. 

Think of the gas you'll save

Sources:
2011 State of the Union Message
100-Mile Diet.
Sustainable Table;

Megan:

Why I hate skunks

Who made up these topics? What were they hoping to inspire?
Gasoline. And Onions. 

Things that smell bad and make you cry. 

What else smells bad enough to cry? Milo’s farts.  Skunks.

Recently some skunks (and a raccoon) murdered most of my cousin’s chickens. I say murdered because they killed the birds but did not eat them (the raccoon ate his). This makes me not like skunks very much. I’ve always hated their smell, but as a far as mammals go they look cute and cuddly and not like vicious killers.

Anyway, here are three other reasons I hate skunks:

1.    The Incident with the Dog
When I was about 11 or 12, I let our dog Trixie back in the house for the night. She came running in and immediately started rubbing her face all over the carpet, like she had something in her eyes. It took a second for the smell to catch up with her, but when it hit, we all started yelling. My mother was not home, she taught night classes sometimes. My father ran upstairs calling over his shoulder that Trixie was our dog so it was our responsibility. He went in his room and shut the door. My brother and I looked at each other. Marshall was about 9. “Tomato juice?” he suggested.

We only had V8.  Long expired gallon tins of V8 from the back of the cupboard. We wrestled the dog into the bath tub which was not easy because I had traumatized her as a puppy with an icy bath when I thought she might be too hot. Her claws scritched on the tub, and I held her collar while Marshall dumped the V8 on her face. I don’t remember what my mom said when she got home, but she can’t have been very impressed with my father.

2.    The Incident in the Garage.

This one is kind of sad. Someone trapped a skunk in our garage. It tried to get out around the mechanisms of the door, but somehow got its head stuck. It must have thrashed around because it knocked over an open can of oil, which soaked through its body and into the plasterboard wall. So, at some point the skunk sprayed and filled the garage. When the doors are shut, the garage ventilates into the basement, which is where the A/C and the furnace are. I can’t remember if it was summer or winter, but one or the other was on at the time. The spray got into the vents and was blown into every room of the house.

3.    The Incident at Mary Morse Hall.
This one could have been worse. 

My college in Oakland had a beautiful old dorm designated for the freshwomen to all live together. While I was there, it was called Mary Morse hall. It had a front desk, and a room for gentleman callers to wait for their female escorts. 

Anyway, I was siting on the front steps one day thinking about life when I heard rustling from the garbage can next to me. I turned to find a skunk, not 2 feet away from me, chewing open a plastic bag. I leapt to my feet and ran into the drive way. I called to the open windows above the steps and someone stuck her head out. I pointed to the skunk.
“Can you come down and open the door for me, and then I’ll run inside really fast?”
“You want me to open the door while it’s right there? No. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“What? Please.”
“You’ll have to wait.”

I went around back and then crawled through an open window in the laundry room. So much for the security of the front desk.