*knock, knock*
“Yes? Hello?
“Ms Homeowner?”
“Yes, that’s me. How can I help you gentlemen?”
“Ms Homeowner, I’m Jack Boots, from your neighborhood association, and this E. N. Forcer, from municipal government.”
(apprehensively) “Yes? What’s wrong?”
“Ms Homeowner, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you aren’t allowed to hang your clothes out to dry. Clean clothes flapping in the breeze is an eyesore, on a par with rusting automobiles left on blocks in the front yard. You’ll have to take them down.”
“But I do that to save energy, and also to reduce my carbon footprint. Hanging clothes out to dry saves fuel and protects the environment, while it also saves me money.”
“That’s what they claim, Ms Homeowner. I wouldn’t know about that. All I know is that we can’t have people thinking the folks living in this development can’t afford to use the dryer. You’ll have to take them down.”
“But…”
“Now Mr. Forcer has something to say to you.”
“Ms Homeowner, I understand you watered your vegetable garden last evening.”
“Well, yes, I did. We haven’t had much rain, as you know, and I depend on those vegetables to provide fresh, healthy food for myself and my family. We even can the excess to help us through the winter.”
“I’m sorry, Ms Homeowner, but I’m afraid that’s not allowed. Water restrictions, you know. You’re going to have to rely on canned and frozen foods produced a thousand miles away and shipped here, just like the rest of us.”
“But wait a minute, sir, if there are water restrictions, why are they continuing to build new houses? There are several big developments going in, I pass them on my way to work every day. And even one of those houses would use many times more water than I do to water my little garden!”
“I wouldn’t know about that, Ms Homeowner, not my department. I just know that watering your garden is a no-no. Thanks for your time, ma’am. Have a nice day.”
“Oh, and one more thing.”
“Yes, Mr. Boots?”
“Your American flag in the front yard -- is that a 12 foot pole?”
“Why, yes, it is. Why?”
“Four feet too high for our neighborhood covenants. You’ll have to cut it down to size, or take it down entirely. Have a nice day, ma’am.”
“Ummm… well, thank you. Goodbye.”
Exaggerated? Well, yes… but not by much. Though the names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent, conversations much like these have been held with many people across our county, state, and nation since the advent of homeowners associations, neighborhood covenants, and the like.
I grew up surrounded by one of the first major planned communities, the so-called “New City” of Columbia, Maryland. Columbia was notorious for its restrictive covenants. You had to get association approval to change the color of your front door, and even then, only limited colors were allowed. Still, I’d be the first to admit some covenants are appropriate. Few of us want to live next door to the rusting hulk of a ’57 Chevy on blocks, surrounded by pink plastic flamingos.
But some restrictions, such as the ban in many neighborhood association agreements on drying clothes by hanging them outside, are not only silly, but in this age of rising energy costs, shrinking supplies, and global climate change, are downright wrong-headed. Anything we can do, within reason, to save energy and help the environment should be not only allowed, but applauded by the relevant authorities.
Similarly, distinctions need to be made between keeping one’s lawn as green as a golf-course, or nurturing a bevy of blooming ornamentals, and growing food for one’s table. The first two are pretty, but not essential. The latter is a fundamental human right, and a decision in favor of good health, good food, and good stewardship of the land, and against the social, political, and energy costs of centralized production and long-distance transport.
The bit about the American flag was included partly because that, too, has come up in covenant disputes, and partly because finding the balance between individual liberty and community responsibility, and between deep, essential values and trivial, superficial desires, has been part of what America is all about.
Unfortunately, blanket restrictions, applied without consideration of why some people may choose a particular course of action and without weighing the specific situation on its merits, are counter to both individual liberty and true community. We can and should do better.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Fresh, local produce sure sign of Summer
The recent warmth and humidity we've been experiencing make it clear that spring is edging into summer. But for many of us, there are other indicators, too. One is the changing hue of the green leaves, from the lacey light-green of spring to the darker, more solid-appearing greens of summer.
As we move toward the Summer Solstice on June 21st, the quality of light is changing, too: the sun riding ever higher in the sky, the days lasting just a bit longer, and the nights a bit shorter. The birds are in full song, even the laggards having made their yearly pilgrimage along the migration routes. The scent of wild roses and honeysuckle perfumes the air with a magical fragrance.
But perhaps most wondrous of all, fresh local produce is beginning to appear. As many know, I work on a farm called Spoutwood in Glen Rock, PA, which offers weekly bags of produce to shareholders. But even though our distribution season will not begin for another week or so, the gardens are already starting to produce greens, radishes, asparagus, and more.
Spoutwood is a community supported agriculture project (CSA), in which shareholders pay a set fee up front in exchange for 22 weeks of produce. But there are many others, including a number here in Carroll County. Lists of local CSA farms can be found at http://www.sare.org/csa/index.htm and http://www.localharvest.org/csa/, among other sites.
Not everyone will sign up for a CSA, however, and even those of us who do often find that we want one or two veggies that didn't come in the box or bag this week. Or, we may want more of something than our CSA share provided. For those folks, or anyone else looking for a taste of summer, fresh and local, farmers markets cannot be beat.
Not all farmers markets are created equal, however. Some, like the Farmers Market at the Ag Center in Westminster, combine a heavy complement of crafts with their produce-selling farmers. In some ways, this has filled in -- at least seasonally -- the void left by the departure of the Pennsylvania Dutch Market. Some markets allow their vendors to "buy in" produce from off the farm, or even out of state: just because it's at a stall in a farmers market does not necessarily mean the farmer grew it.
Others, however, are proud of their status as "producers only" farmers markets. As the name indicates, these markets require their farmer-vendors to sell only what they grow on their own farms, or if they are providing a value-added product (such as bread or preserves) to have made it themselves, often with at least some proportion of local ingredients.
The Downtown Westminster Farmers Market is one such producer-only farmers market. In addition to offering fruits, vegetables, breads, and even meats, this market offers the assurance that everything available for sale was grown, raised, or made on the farm or in the kitchen of the vendor.
Says Jackie Miller, market manager,
"There are many different things that people are concerned about when it comes to their food. Some are vegetarians, some want organic, some want to preserve the environment and conserve fossil fuels by eating locally, and some simply want the freshest, best quality produce available. Customers looking for chemical-free products can walk up to the farmer and talk with him or her about their growing methods. Furthermore, you are supporting your local economy by shopping at producer-only markets. We feel that this label is of utmost importance in keeping the integrity of our market."
This is not to say that other models for farmers markets are bad or incorrect. But for the assurance that what you buy is both impeccably local and impeccably fresh, it's hard to beat the knowledge that it's been picked in the farmer's own garden that very morning.
This is just a sampling of the many sources for fresh produce available this summer, including of course roadside farmstands, and even your neighbor's garden -- or if you're feeling ambitious, your own. Despite suburban encroachment, Carroll County retains a strong agricultural component, and there's no time like summer to take advantage of it.
Buying food locally -- becoming a "localvore" -- is good for the environment, good for farmers, good for local communities, and good for the eater of that delicious, fresh, local food. Be it garden or farmstand, CSA or famer's market, find your favorite source and enjoy summer's bounty. Bon appetit!
As we move toward the Summer Solstice on June 21st, the quality of light is changing, too: the sun riding ever higher in the sky, the days lasting just a bit longer, and the nights a bit shorter. The birds are in full song, even the laggards having made their yearly pilgrimage along the migration routes. The scent of wild roses and honeysuckle perfumes the air with a magical fragrance.
But perhaps most wondrous of all, fresh local produce is beginning to appear. As many know, I work on a farm called Spoutwood in Glen Rock, PA, which offers weekly bags of produce to shareholders. But even though our distribution season will not begin for another week or so, the gardens are already starting to produce greens, radishes, asparagus, and more.
Spoutwood is a community supported agriculture project (CSA), in which shareholders pay a set fee up front in exchange for 22 weeks of produce. But there are many others, including a number here in Carroll County. Lists of local CSA farms can be found at http://www.sare.org/csa/index.htm and http://www.localharvest.org/csa/, among other sites.
Not everyone will sign up for a CSA, however, and even those of us who do often find that we want one or two veggies that didn't come in the box or bag this week. Or, we may want more of something than our CSA share provided. For those folks, or anyone else looking for a taste of summer, fresh and local, farmers markets cannot be beat.
Not all farmers markets are created equal, however. Some, like the Farmers Market at the Ag Center in Westminster, combine a heavy complement of crafts with their produce-selling farmers. In some ways, this has filled in -- at least seasonally -- the void left by the departure of the Pennsylvania Dutch Market. Some markets allow their vendors to "buy in" produce from off the farm, or even out of state: just because it's at a stall in a farmers market does not necessarily mean the farmer grew it.
Others, however, are proud of their status as "producers only" farmers markets. As the name indicates, these markets require their farmer-vendors to sell only what they grow on their own farms, or if they are providing a value-added product (such as bread or preserves) to have made it themselves, often with at least some proportion of local ingredients.
The Downtown Westminster Farmers Market is one such producer-only farmers market. In addition to offering fruits, vegetables, breads, and even meats, this market offers the assurance that everything available for sale was grown, raised, or made on the farm or in the kitchen of the vendor.
Says Jackie Miller, market manager,
"There are many different things that people are concerned about when it comes to their food. Some are vegetarians, some want organic, some want to preserve the environment and conserve fossil fuels by eating locally, and some simply want the freshest, best quality produce available. Customers looking for chemical-free products can walk up to the farmer and talk with him or her about their growing methods. Furthermore, you are supporting your local economy by shopping at producer-only markets. We feel that this label is of utmost importance in keeping the integrity of our market."
This is not to say that other models for farmers markets are bad or incorrect. But for the assurance that what you buy is both impeccably local and impeccably fresh, it's hard to beat the knowledge that it's been picked in the farmer's own garden that very morning.
This is just a sampling of the many sources for fresh produce available this summer, including of course roadside farmstands, and even your neighbor's garden -- or if you're feeling ambitious, your own. Despite suburban encroachment, Carroll County retains a strong agricultural component, and there's no time like summer to take advantage of it.
Buying food locally -- becoming a "localvore" -- is good for the environment, good for farmers, good for local communities, and good for the eater of that delicious, fresh, local food. Be it garden or farmstand, CSA or famer's market, find your favorite source and enjoy summer's bounty. Bon appetit!
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Remembering fallen heroes on Memorial Day
Yesterday we observed the national Memorial Day holiday. Observed by custom, over recent decades, on the last Monday of May, it yields a long weekend for the traditional (if unoffical) first weekend of summer. As such, it forms the backdrop for picnics, backyard barbecues, and trips to the beach, the lake, or the mountains.
All of this is well and good. The older I get, the shorter summer seems to become, and I am all for squeezing every ounce of gusto out of it that we can manage. I'm always up for a trip to the mountains, a session of grilling and partaking of potluck picnic fare, or exploring some waterfront location.
But it's important, I think, that we don't let these enjoyable observations of the beginning of summer obscure for us the deeper significance of Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was originally called. Though the precise date and location of its origin are unknown, it clearly dates back to the Civil War. As the website www.usmemorialday.org notes, it is "likely that… every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860's tapped into the general human need to honor our dead."
Memorial Day was officially first proclaimed by Union General John Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, and first observed on May 30, 1868. It is very much in keeping with the tenor of the day that, even at that early date, flowers were laid on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers alike.
The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York, in 1873. By 1890, again according to the website, it was recognized by all northern states, although perhaps understandably, the states of the former Confederacy resisted the trend, honoring their dead on separate days. World War One, however, brought the country together in many ways. One of those was making Memorial Day no longer about honoring the dead of the Civil War, but honoring all American servicemen (and later women) who had died fighting for their country.
The wearing of red poppies originated in the famous World War One poem, "In Flanders Fields." In 1915, Moina Mitchell was inspired by this to compose her own brief poem: "We cherish too, the Poppy red / That grows on fields where valor led, / It seems to signal to the skies / That blood of heroes never dies." She thus conceived the idea of wearing red poppies to honor those Americans fallen in battle.
At a time when more than 3,400 Americans have died in the fighting in Iraq, and hundreds more in Afghanistan, it is appropriate to pause amidst our understandable celebrations of the coming of summer to recall, for a moment, just why we commemorate this day. Westminster and some of the other municipalities of Carroll County are better at this than much of the country, it seems, honoring both the day and our fallen heroes with a parade and, often, further observances at the local cemetery.
Nonetheless I tend to agree with the views expressed on www.memorialday.com, that "Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day... What is needed is a full return to the original day of observance. Set aside one day out of the year for the nation to get together to remember, reflect and honor those who have given their all in service to their country."
How best to do this? Move the observation of Memorial Day back to its original date, May 30th, on whatever day that might fall. Making it an excuse for a 3-day vacation, some justly hold, undercuts the very meaning of the day, which is all about sacrifice and gratitude for that sacrifice. Without the valor and selflessness, even unto death, of those honored on this day, the U.S. would not be a nation, and neither we nor much of the rest of the world would enjoy the freedoms we so often take for granted.
In the words of General Logan, in his order proclaiming the day in 1868, "Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic." May we not forget. May we never forget. Tomorrow marks the traditional Memorial Day, May 30th. Let us truly, and gratefully, remember.
All of this is well and good. The older I get, the shorter summer seems to become, and I am all for squeezing every ounce of gusto out of it that we can manage. I'm always up for a trip to the mountains, a session of grilling and partaking of potluck picnic fare, or exploring some waterfront location.
But it's important, I think, that we don't let these enjoyable observations of the beginning of summer obscure for us the deeper significance of Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was originally called. Though the precise date and location of its origin are unknown, it clearly dates back to the Civil War. As the website www.usmemorialday.org notes, it is "likely that… every planned or spontaneous gathering of people to honor the war dead in the 1860's tapped into the general human need to honor our dead."
Memorial Day was officially first proclaimed by Union General John Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, and first observed on May 30, 1868. It is very much in keeping with the tenor of the day that, even at that early date, flowers were laid on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers alike.
The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York, in 1873. By 1890, again according to the website, it was recognized by all northern states, although perhaps understandably, the states of the former Confederacy resisted the trend, honoring their dead on separate days. World War One, however, brought the country together in many ways. One of those was making Memorial Day no longer about honoring the dead of the Civil War, but honoring all American servicemen (and later women) who had died fighting for their country.
The wearing of red poppies originated in the famous World War One poem, "In Flanders Fields." In 1915, Moina Mitchell was inspired by this to compose her own brief poem: "We cherish too, the Poppy red / That grows on fields where valor led, / It seems to signal to the skies / That blood of heroes never dies." She thus conceived the idea of wearing red poppies to honor those Americans fallen in battle.
At a time when more than 3,400 Americans have died in the fighting in Iraq, and hundreds more in Afghanistan, it is appropriate to pause amidst our understandable celebrations of the coming of summer to recall, for a moment, just why we commemorate this day. Westminster and some of the other municipalities of Carroll County are better at this than much of the country, it seems, honoring both the day and our fallen heroes with a parade and, often, further observances at the local cemetery.
Nonetheless I tend to agree with the views expressed on www.memorialday.com, that "Traditional observance of Memorial day has diminished over the years. Many Americans nowadays have forgotten the meaning and traditions of Memorial Day... What is needed is a full return to the original day of observance. Set aside one day out of the year for the nation to get together to remember, reflect and honor those who have given their all in service to their country."
How best to do this? Move the observation of Memorial Day back to its original date, May 30th, on whatever day that might fall. Making it an excuse for a 3-day vacation, some justly hold, undercuts the very meaning of the day, which is all about sacrifice and gratitude for that sacrifice. Without the valor and selflessness, even unto death, of those honored on this day, the U.S. would not be a nation, and neither we nor much of the rest of the world would enjoy the freedoms we so often take for granted.
In the words of General Logan, in his order proclaiming the day in 1868, "Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic." May we not forget. May we never forget. Tomorrow marks the traditional Memorial Day, May 30th. Let us truly, and gratefully, remember.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
A whole new significance for "sweet sixteen"
For some reason, various radical ideas have been kicking their way around my head lately, and this is one of them: I propose that we make age 16 the legal age of majority, across the board. Radical though it may seem, there are a number of reasons to commend this notion.
One of these is simple reality. By age 16, most if not all young people already are adults, in every way that matters. Physiologically, certainly. Psycho-emotionally is perhaps more debatable. But historically, and by that I mean in every era of human history from our earliest days until at least the early decades of the 20th century, 16 year olds, both male and female, were expected to be productive members of society: adults. The women were by and large married by then; some had children already. The men held adult jobs and adult responsibilities.
If some 16 year olds today are not psycho-emotionally prepared for adulthood, I submit that it is due to the artificially prolonged childhood they “enjoy” (if that's the right word for it) in today's society. It is a cultural artifact, and as such, can be altered.
Besides, there is plenty of precedent in law for 16 year olds to be charged as adults in the case of certain violent crimes. That being so, we are either doing them a disservice by treating them as adults when they are, in fact, children, or else we are doing the rest of our youth a disservice by treating them as children when they are, in fact, adults. I suspect the latter is the case.
It would also reduce the ridiculous and almost schizoid confusion that reigns when it comes to who may do what and which age. At age 16, young people may take their own and others' lives into their hands behind the wheel of an automobile, and in most states condemn themselves to painful death by tobacco use, but they may not make free and independent decisions about sexual intimacy and marriage. At age 18, they may join the military, kill and die for their country, and vote for national, state, and local leaders, but they may not legally consume alcohol for three more years. This is, frankly, silly.
Finally, and here I return to the maturity question, most people, most of the time, have a tendency to live up -- or down -- to what is expected of them. If late adolescents and even folks of 20 or 21 are expected to be immature, childish, irresponsible, and so on, why are we surprised to find that they are? If they were expected to live as mature, responsible adults from age 16 on, I suspect that the vast majority would rise to the challenge.
Again, there is historical precedent. Compare college yearbooks, for that matter compare high school yearbooks, from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries with ones from the turn of the 20th and 21st, and you will see immediately what I mean.
I will go further, however, and recommend that mandatory public education also be ended at age 16. However, for those entering what would otherwise be their junior or senior years of high school, there would be voluntary, optional -- and free -- opportunities for students to return and continue with academic studies for those intending to go on to college, or guided, structured internships and apprenticeship programs for those planning to enter the working world.
These two-year tracks would be open to returning students up to age 21, as I suspect that many, after spending a year or two flipping burgers, might decide that more education would be worthwhile after all. But it would be by choice, not by following the foolish and erroneous notion that college or university study is the best choice for all students, all the time.
Many students are patently not suited for higher education, but might make excellent tradesmen, technicians, mechanics, salesmen, laborers or foremen, restaurateurs, and small business owners: the very sort of people we need to rebuild our infrastructure and stop shipping jobs oversees, or pawning them off on immigrant labor.
Are these radical notions? You bet they are. Are they counter to the prevailing wisdom of conventional society? Absolutely. Could they turn our society around if implemented? Very possibly. Certainly the prevailing wisdom is not doing much to assure domestic productivity and social cohesion. Maybe trying something a little different, a little bit radical, might be just what the doctor ordered.
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Interestingly, a corresponded responded to me, privately by e-mail:
One of these is simple reality. By age 16, most if not all young people already are adults, in every way that matters. Physiologically, certainly. Psycho-emotionally is perhaps more debatable. But historically, and by that I mean in every era of human history from our earliest days until at least the early decades of the 20th century, 16 year olds, both male and female, were expected to be productive members of society: adults. The women were by and large married by then; some had children already. The men held adult jobs and adult responsibilities.
If some 16 year olds today are not psycho-emotionally prepared for adulthood, I submit that it is due to the artificially prolonged childhood they “enjoy” (if that's the right word for it) in today's society. It is a cultural artifact, and as such, can be altered.
Besides, there is plenty of precedent in law for 16 year olds to be charged as adults in the case of certain violent crimes. That being so, we are either doing them a disservice by treating them as adults when they are, in fact, children, or else we are doing the rest of our youth a disservice by treating them as children when they are, in fact, adults. I suspect the latter is the case.
It would also reduce the ridiculous and almost schizoid confusion that reigns when it comes to who may do what and which age. At age 16, young people may take their own and others' lives into their hands behind the wheel of an automobile, and in most states condemn themselves to painful death by tobacco use, but they may not make free and independent decisions about sexual intimacy and marriage. At age 18, they may join the military, kill and die for their country, and vote for national, state, and local leaders, but they may not legally consume alcohol for three more years. This is, frankly, silly.
Finally, and here I return to the maturity question, most people, most of the time, have a tendency to live up -- or down -- to what is expected of them. If late adolescents and even folks of 20 or 21 are expected to be immature, childish, irresponsible, and so on, why are we surprised to find that they are? If they were expected to live as mature, responsible adults from age 16 on, I suspect that the vast majority would rise to the challenge.
Again, there is historical precedent. Compare college yearbooks, for that matter compare high school yearbooks, from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries with ones from the turn of the 20th and 21st, and you will see immediately what I mean.
I will go further, however, and recommend that mandatory public education also be ended at age 16. However, for those entering what would otherwise be their junior or senior years of high school, there would be voluntary, optional -- and free -- opportunities for students to return and continue with academic studies for those intending to go on to college, or guided, structured internships and apprenticeship programs for those planning to enter the working world.
These two-year tracks would be open to returning students up to age 21, as I suspect that many, after spending a year or two flipping burgers, might decide that more education would be worthwhile after all. But it would be by choice, not by following the foolish and erroneous notion that college or university study is the best choice for all students, all the time.
Many students are patently not suited for higher education, but might make excellent tradesmen, technicians, mechanics, salesmen, laborers or foremen, restaurateurs, and small business owners: the very sort of people we need to rebuild our infrastructure and stop shipping jobs oversees, or pawning them off on immigrant labor.
Are these radical notions? You bet they are. Are they counter to the prevailing wisdom of conventional society? Absolutely. Could they turn our society around if implemented? Very possibly. Certainly the prevailing wisdom is not doing much to assure domestic productivity and social cohesion. Maybe trying something a little different, a little bit radical, might be just what the doctor ordered.
----------
Interestingly, a corresponded responded to me, privately by e-mail:
Your proposal is not new or untried. You describe the system in place in the UK at this time. Most of Europe also embraces this philosophy. In England, where I lived for several years, students take O level exams at age 16 and choose to work, go to a trade or technical school, or move on to a college prep setting. If they choose the pre-college route, they study for 2 years and take A level exams that determine which university they may attend. University used to be free, now it is still cheap and heavily government subsidized, making it very affordable. They base admission to university on academic ability, and there are no athletic scholarships. Imagine that- university is about scholarly pursuits, not sports! As a high school English teacher and parent of teens, I see the value in your suggestion. The Europeans also have at least 4 weeks off a year in holidays from work. And they live longer than we do, enjoying a pleasant atandard of living and a less stre ssed life than Americans. Something to ponder, indeed.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
2007 Fairie Festival at Spoutwood Farm
Please note: there are many spellings of fairie/fairy/faery, but "fairie" is how Spoutwood has chosen to spell it, so that is the form I have used throughout.
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On the first weekend of May, I attended a most remarkable event. Nestled into a peaceful corner of York County, PA, near the borough of Glen Rock, is Spoutwood Farm. Most of the year it quietly produces fresh, organic-quality vegetables from its community supported agriculture gardens, honey from its hives, and grapes for a local vintner. It also hosts educational programs related to sustainable agriculture, simple living, and the environment.
Once a year, however, this sleepy farm is transformed. Like Brigadoon coming out of the mists, it becomes the site of the annual May Day Fairie Festival. The Fairie Festival was the brainchild of Rob and Lucy Wood, owners of Spoutwood, and began 16 years ago as a party for 100 friends. Last year, 2006, some 12,000 people came through the gates over the three days the Festival ran, and this year, the number was closer to 15,000. Patrons came from as far away as Japan, and performers from as far as Scotland.
Why do they come? To "celebrate the beginning of spring and the return of the nature spirits to the warm world," according to the professionally-produced program. It is a participatory celebration of the spirit of nature and of the springtime, and judging by the expressions of joy and wonder on the faces of patrons both young and old, the enchantment runs deep.
To be sure, the Fairie Festival is not for everyone. I think the reality is that what one sees in the Fairie Festival is, to a large degree, based on what one brings to it. If you bring a desire for order, structure, and normalcy, as society understands these, you may be disappointed. If you're looking for creativity, freedom of spirit, and openness to difference, change, and transformation, you'll find it, in vast and indeed bewildering variety. For some, it can be an experience of sensory overload -- even, perhaps, intimidation.
Yet the spirit of the Fairie Festival is a spirit of whimsy, play, and celebration of the mythic imagination. Fairies, sprites, and pixies, dryads and Green Men, brownies, gnomes, and elves, and maybe even a sleepy dragon are among the mythical creatures found represented there, by performers, presenters, and patrons alike. Fairie wings and pixie dust abound, along with Maypole dances, the throbbing rhythms of drums, the skirl of bagpipes, the haunting melodies of Celtic music, and the driving beat of world fusion.
Music and dancing is in many ways the heart of this embodiment of the Fairie Realms here on earth: a celebration of the growing light and warmth of spring, the re-emergence of the life of trees and flowers, plants and animals -- and the re-awakening of human beings, too, as we throw off our winter torpor and embrace the springtime pulses that flow in our veins. In the drums and penny-whistles, bagpipes, fiddles, and guitars, the human spirit soars and leaps with the spirit of the season.
Food and drink (of the non-alcoholic variety) abound as well, as do rows of booths where merchants sell their fairie-themed, and usually hand-made, wares. Whether your taste is for ceramics or leather goods, jewelry or wood-carving, decorative ironwork, textiles or other visual arts, you can find it among the stalls on Frodo's Hill, Glimmer Place, Rainbow Court, or elsewhere throughout this temporary fairie village.
The Fairie Festival is about more than merriment and mythical imagination, however, important though those are. It is also about reawakening a sense of wonder and appreciation towards nature. Fairies, after all, are generally conceived as spirits of nature, of the elements -- earth, air, fire and water -- and of the Earth herself. While evoking the "Otherworld" of the Fairie Realms, the Festival also seeks to evoke love, respect, and care for this world, in all its imperilled beauty and wonder.
A particular theme of the last few years has been zero-waste, and while that ideal has yet to be fully realized in practice, the Festival generates far less waste than any event of comparable size I've ever intended. In part this is because of a policy that requires food vendors to offer serving containers and flatware, even cups, made of recyclable paper or compostable corn, soy, and potato-derived materials. Nearly everything that could be waste is compostable, recyclable, or both.
"The fairie and May Day themes," the festival brochure continues, "go back to ancient times in almost all cultures, especially to the Celts of the British Isles who had a festival on the first day of May called Beltane. It was a time of great rejoicing at the return of the earth's abundance in spring and the impending bounty of summer. The Celts celebrated the spirits of nature by honoring not only the plants that they could see and smell but also the unseen beings of the fairie realms."
So, on the first weekend of May each year, do the thousands of people who pass the portals of Spoutwood Farm for this mythical, mystical rite of spring.
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On the first weekend of May, I attended a most remarkable event. Nestled into a peaceful corner of York County, PA, near the borough of Glen Rock, is Spoutwood Farm. Most of the year it quietly produces fresh, organic-quality vegetables from its community supported agriculture gardens, honey from its hives, and grapes for a local vintner. It also hosts educational programs related to sustainable agriculture, simple living, and the environment.
Once a year, however, this sleepy farm is transformed. Like Brigadoon coming out of the mists, it becomes the site of the annual May Day Fairie Festival. The Fairie Festival was the brainchild of Rob and Lucy Wood, owners of Spoutwood, and began 16 years ago as a party for 100 friends. Last year, 2006, some 12,000 people came through the gates over the three days the Festival ran, and this year, the number was closer to 15,000. Patrons came from as far away as Japan, and performers from as far as Scotland.
Why do they come? To "celebrate the beginning of spring and the return of the nature spirits to the warm world," according to the professionally-produced program. It is a participatory celebration of the spirit of nature and of the springtime, and judging by the expressions of joy and wonder on the faces of patrons both young and old, the enchantment runs deep.
To be sure, the Fairie Festival is not for everyone. I think the reality is that what one sees in the Fairie Festival is, to a large degree, based on what one brings to it. If you bring a desire for order, structure, and normalcy, as society understands these, you may be disappointed. If you're looking for creativity, freedom of spirit, and openness to difference, change, and transformation, you'll find it, in vast and indeed bewildering variety. For some, it can be an experience of sensory overload -- even, perhaps, intimidation.
Yet the spirit of the Fairie Festival is a spirit of whimsy, play, and celebration of the mythic imagination. Fairies, sprites, and pixies, dryads and Green Men, brownies, gnomes, and elves, and maybe even a sleepy dragon are among the mythical creatures found represented there, by performers, presenters, and patrons alike. Fairie wings and pixie dust abound, along with Maypole dances, the throbbing rhythms of drums, the skirl of bagpipes, the haunting melodies of Celtic music, and the driving beat of world fusion.
Music and dancing is in many ways the heart of this embodiment of the Fairie Realms here on earth: a celebration of the growing light and warmth of spring, the re-emergence of the life of trees and flowers, plants and animals -- and the re-awakening of human beings, too, as we throw off our winter torpor and embrace the springtime pulses that flow in our veins. In the drums and penny-whistles, bagpipes, fiddles, and guitars, the human spirit soars and leaps with the spirit of the season.
Food and drink (of the non-alcoholic variety) abound as well, as do rows of booths where merchants sell their fairie-themed, and usually hand-made, wares. Whether your taste is for ceramics or leather goods, jewelry or wood-carving, decorative ironwork, textiles or other visual arts, you can find it among the stalls on Frodo's Hill, Glimmer Place, Rainbow Court, or elsewhere throughout this temporary fairie village.
The Fairie Festival is about more than merriment and mythical imagination, however, important though those are. It is also about reawakening a sense of wonder and appreciation towards nature. Fairies, after all, are generally conceived as spirits of nature, of the elements -- earth, air, fire and water -- and of the Earth herself. While evoking the "Otherworld" of the Fairie Realms, the Festival also seeks to evoke love, respect, and care for this world, in all its imperilled beauty and wonder.
A particular theme of the last few years has been zero-waste, and while that ideal has yet to be fully realized in practice, the Festival generates far less waste than any event of comparable size I've ever intended. In part this is because of a policy that requires food vendors to offer serving containers and flatware, even cups, made of recyclable paper or compostable corn, soy, and potato-derived materials. Nearly everything that could be waste is compostable, recyclable, or both.
"The fairie and May Day themes," the festival brochure continues, "go back to ancient times in almost all cultures, especially to the Celts of the British Isles who had a festival on the first day of May called Beltane. It was a time of great rejoicing at the return of the earth's abundance in spring and the impending bounty of summer. The Celts celebrated the spirits of nature by honoring not only the plants that they could see and smell but also the unseen beings of the fairie realms."
So, on the first weekend of May each year, do the thousands of people who pass the portals of Spoutwood Farm for this mythical, mystical rite of spring.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Mothers Day reflections
By the time you read this, it will be over: my first Mothers Day without my mother. As regular readers of this column will recall, my mom, Jean E. Harbold, died at the end of February this year, after a long and valiant fight against a range of increasingly debilitating ailments. To slightly paraphrase St. Paul, she fought the good fight, and she finished the race.
Since my father died in 1999, I am now, along with my brothers, an adult orphan. And since I do not have a wife or family of my own, and lived with my mother as her companion and caregiver in the final years of her life, the loss is particularly acute.
The combination of choosing to focus on good memories, and throwing myself wholesale into my work, has helped to blunt the pain to some degree, but it recurs at odd times. And of course, seeing the ads and cards and all the panoply of commercial and sentimental marketing of Mothers Day just makes me remember how much I wish I had my mother back to buy a card for, take out to dinner, hug, and tell her I love her.
I think it's wonderful to have a Mothers Day to remember our mothers once a year. But I am sometimes concerned that all too often, we take our mothers for granted the rest of the year. Remembering them becomes something to be fit in around the essentials of life, rather than being one of those essentials. And that's a shame. Mothers deserve better.
Although there are unfortunate exceptions, mothers, as a whole, are wonderful people who are often deeply under-appreciated for all the things they give their children. These gifts start with the gift of life itself, of course. Our mothers bore us for nine months before we ever came into the world, and -- again, in most cases -- were largely responsible for providing us with the sustenance, care, and nurturance we need to survive and thrive thereafter.
I was fortunate, I believe, that my own mother was a full-time, stay-at-home mom. But I am also in awe of the mothers who manage to raise balanced, well-rounded, productive children to adulthood while working, and sometimes without the aid of a husband and father.
Parents in general, but mothers in particular, typically make a huge number of sacrifices for the good of their children: sacrifices of time, energy, and money that often go unnoticed by their beneficiaries, especially during childhood. Later, perhaps, looking back, adult children may realize the scope of the gifts they have been given.
If we are fortunate, we may have the opportunity to pay some of that care back in the care we give to our aging mothers, "pay it forward" by following their examples in the care of our own children, if we have any, or more likely a combination of both. That, at least, is the way the world should work.
So if you are fortunate enough to have a mother, take some time to show her your gratitude for all she has done for you: not just on Mother's Day, but all year. Take the time to truly talk to her, listen to her memories, and tell her how much you care, how much you appreciate her sacrifices and generosity over the years. And if for some reason you don't have a good relationship with your mother, perhaps this is a good time to mend fences.
Above all, be grateful that you have a mother, however imperfect she may be, because the time will come when you do not. How sad if she were to die with things left unsaid, love unexpressed, between you!
And if, like me, you no longer have a mother living, take comfort in the knowledge that you are not alone. Sadly, burying one's parents is inevitable, unless one dies first. Recall the good times. Set aside any that may have been less good. Be grateful for all the gifts your mother gave you, over the years: not just or even primarily material things, but sayings, teachings, stories, hugs, shared memories. If, again like me, you believe that death is not the end, remember that there will be a meeting again.
And to all you moms out there, thank you for all you've done and continue to do for your children. May blessings of health, long life, and joy be yours.
Since my father died in 1999, I am now, along with my brothers, an adult orphan. And since I do not have a wife or family of my own, and lived with my mother as her companion and caregiver in the final years of her life, the loss is particularly acute.
The combination of choosing to focus on good memories, and throwing myself wholesale into my work, has helped to blunt the pain to some degree, but it recurs at odd times. And of course, seeing the ads and cards and all the panoply of commercial and sentimental marketing of Mothers Day just makes me remember how much I wish I had my mother back to buy a card for, take out to dinner, hug, and tell her I love her.
I think it's wonderful to have a Mothers Day to remember our mothers once a year. But I am sometimes concerned that all too often, we take our mothers for granted the rest of the year. Remembering them becomes something to be fit in around the essentials of life, rather than being one of those essentials. And that's a shame. Mothers deserve better.
Although there are unfortunate exceptions, mothers, as a whole, are wonderful people who are often deeply under-appreciated for all the things they give their children. These gifts start with the gift of life itself, of course. Our mothers bore us for nine months before we ever came into the world, and -- again, in most cases -- were largely responsible for providing us with the sustenance, care, and nurturance we need to survive and thrive thereafter.
I was fortunate, I believe, that my own mother was a full-time, stay-at-home mom. But I am also in awe of the mothers who manage to raise balanced, well-rounded, productive children to adulthood while working, and sometimes without the aid of a husband and father.
Parents in general, but mothers in particular, typically make a huge number of sacrifices for the good of their children: sacrifices of time, energy, and money that often go unnoticed by their beneficiaries, especially during childhood. Later, perhaps, looking back, adult children may realize the scope of the gifts they have been given.
If we are fortunate, we may have the opportunity to pay some of that care back in the care we give to our aging mothers, "pay it forward" by following their examples in the care of our own children, if we have any, or more likely a combination of both. That, at least, is the way the world should work.
So if you are fortunate enough to have a mother, take some time to show her your gratitude for all she has done for you: not just on Mother's Day, but all year. Take the time to truly talk to her, listen to her memories, and tell her how much you care, how much you appreciate her sacrifices and generosity over the years. And if for some reason you don't have a good relationship with your mother, perhaps this is a good time to mend fences.
Above all, be grateful that you have a mother, however imperfect she may be, because the time will come when you do not. How sad if she were to die with things left unsaid, love unexpressed, between you!
And if, like me, you no longer have a mother living, take comfort in the knowledge that you are not alone. Sadly, burying one's parents is inevitable, unless one dies first. Recall the good times. Set aside any that may have been less good. Be grateful for all the gifts your mother gave you, over the years: not just or even primarily material things, but sayings, teachings, stories, hugs, shared memories. If, again like me, you believe that death is not the end, remember that there will be a meeting again.
And to all you moms out there, thank you for all you've done and continue to do for your children. May blessings of health, long life, and joy be yours.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Remembering Ma on Mothers Day
I actually wrote this the day before she passed on, when it was clear that the end was coming. Normally I prefer poems in rhymed verse, but this is what came out. Posting it here, now, seems an appropriate tribute on this first Mother's Day Sunday without her.
Tom
It seems that all creationI miss you, Ma. And I love you.
Must surely weep
For the passing of such a gentle soul
Loving
Kind
Gentle hands yet strong
Committed to each needful task
Cooking the family meals
Cleaning house
Laundry, folded neatly twice a week
Hands pressing out the wrinkles
Sewing up each rent, each tear, each worn place
In the life of her family
Her actions, each and all, making a home
But not alone through labor
Did she serve
But quiet faith
Burning like a candle
In the dark night of our souls
A blanket of prayers
To bring her wandering children safely home
Enfolding us in love
Divine and yes her own
Not perfect, no
Only One ever was perfect, within this mortal veil
But she served Him
As she served us
And taught us to do the same
Twinkling eyes of hazel green
That could snap like fire
In case of need
A ready smile
A way with words, uniquely hers
A touch of mischief
Irrepressible
Indominable
A solid anchor
In life’s storms
Gentle, soothing hands
To stroke away all pain
All pain but the loss of her
Tom
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
No Child Left Inside
Okay, you know about “No Child Left Behind,” but do you know about “No Child Left Inside”? In case you've been sleepwalking through the last five or six years, No Child Left Behind is the propaganda… errr… umm… excuse me, public relations name given to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (EASA), and was signed into law in 2002. It is controversial, and justly so, for subjecting students and teachers alike to a regimen of standardized tests in the name of “accountability.”
The No Child Left Inside Initiative is in some ways almost the polar opposite of ESEA. Signed into law on April 21st -- John Muir's birthday - by Washington state governor Christine Gregoire, the initiative will provide $1.5 million a year to outdoor education programs working with underserved youth in the state, according to a press release by the Children and Nature Network.
Nor is Washington the only such forward-looking state. New Mexico's legislature passed, in March, the Outdoor Classrooms Initiative, an effort to increase outdoor education in the state through the use of state parks, federal public lands, ranches, nature centers and other locations, again according to the C&NN (not to be confused with CNN, the cable news provider).
Martin LeBlanc, vice president of C&NN and national youth education director for the Sierra Club, was quoted as stating that “In pursuing a national Leave No Child Inside movement, our goal is to secure this level of support for all children in every state.” That is indeed a worthy goal. But it's sadly ironic that government support is needed to get children outside to play.
I clearly remember my own youth, in which “go outside and play” was a commonly-heard refrain, often coupled with “it's too nice a day to be indoors.” And go outside and play I did, often and for extended periods.
Either alone or with friends from the neighborhood, I built forts in the woods, climbed trees, explored (and splashed, and occasionally fell) in the streams, and created whole worlds of fantasy and imagination -- just the sort of self-directed, unstructured free play experts now hail as essential for psychological and emotional development in children, not to mention the development of an ecological consciousness.
Free play in the outdoors is the absolute antithesis of standardization and cramming for tests. Perhaps that's one of the reasons it may seem threatening to some educators, government officials, and even parents.
From “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” I am struck -- and not positively -- by the way in which 21st century Americans have become willing to let the government make their decisions for them, in effect almost live their lives for them, dictating everything from how subjects are taught in schools to what kinds of food we can and cannot eat.
The much-quoted ideal that “that government is best which governs least” seems to have been left lying wounded somewhere along the road to a plasticized, idealized, technotopian future.
One of the ways in which governments can provide a positive impetus, however, is in funding opportunities for children to get out into the wider world of nature and play. If the so-called “learning” and “educational” opportunities are not themselves too structured -- remember the wise dictum that “the work of children is play” -- these kinds of programs can provide a healthy (in every sense of the word) counterbalance to our increasingly inward-looking, indoor, virtual, and regimented future.
But come on, folks: we don't need to wait for the government to fund our children's play. In fact if we do, we're just buying into the system again. All we really need are parents willing to encourage, if not require, that their children get out from behind the PlayStation or X-Box, up from in front of the TV or DVD player or internet-enabled computer, and go outside to play.
Yes, it may require a bit more parental supervision. But then, any of the aforementioned indoor, technological activities really requires more supervision than it often receives. And anything worth doing requires making choices, and setting priorities.
What is your priority for your children? To be cogs in a well-oiled machine? Or to know and appreciate the beauty, grandeur, and awe-inspiring possibilities of the natural world within which we live? The choices we make, for ourselves and our children, have never been more important, for our future and theirs. Let's choose to leave no child inside.
The No Child Left Inside Initiative is in some ways almost the polar opposite of ESEA. Signed into law on April 21st -- John Muir's birthday - by Washington state governor Christine Gregoire, the initiative will provide $1.5 million a year to outdoor education programs working with underserved youth in the state, according to a press release by the Children and Nature Network.
Nor is Washington the only such forward-looking state. New Mexico's legislature passed, in March, the Outdoor Classrooms Initiative, an effort to increase outdoor education in the state through the use of state parks, federal public lands, ranches, nature centers and other locations, again according to the C&NN (not to be confused with CNN, the cable news provider).
Martin LeBlanc, vice president of C&NN and national youth education director for the Sierra Club, was quoted as stating that “In pursuing a national Leave No Child Inside movement, our goal is to secure this level of support for all children in every state.” That is indeed a worthy goal. But it's sadly ironic that government support is needed to get children outside to play.
I clearly remember my own youth, in which “go outside and play” was a commonly-heard refrain, often coupled with “it's too nice a day to be indoors.” And go outside and play I did, often and for extended periods.
Either alone or with friends from the neighborhood, I built forts in the woods, climbed trees, explored (and splashed, and occasionally fell) in the streams, and created whole worlds of fantasy and imagination -- just the sort of self-directed, unstructured free play experts now hail as essential for psychological and emotional development in children, not to mention the development of an ecological consciousness.
Free play in the outdoors is the absolute antithesis of standardization and cramming for tests. Perhaps that's one of the reasons it may seem threatening to some educators, government officials, and even parents.
From “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” I am struck -- and not positively -- by the way in which 21st century Americans have become willing to let the government make their decisions for them, in effect almost live their lives for them, dictating everything from how subjects are taught in schools to what kinds of food we can and cannot eat.
The much-quoted ideal that “that government is best which governs least” seems to have been left lying wounded somewhere along the road to a plasticized, idealized, technotopian future.
One of the ways in which governments can provide a positive impetus, however, is in funding opportunities for children to get out into the wider world of nature and play. If the so-called “learning” and “educational” opportunities are not themselves too structured -- remember the wise dictum that “the work of children is play” -- these kinds of programs can provide a healthy (in every sense of the word) counterbalance to our increasingly inward-looking, indoor, virtual, and regimented future.
But come on, folks: we don't need to wait for the government to fund our children's play. In fact if we do, we're just buying into the system again. All we really need are parents willing to encourage, if not require, that their children get out from behind the PlayStation or X-Box, up from in front of the TV or DVD player or internet-enabled computer, and go outside to play.
Yes, it may require a bit more parental supervision. But then, any of the aforementioned indoor, technological activities really requires more supervision than it often receives. And anything worth doing requires making choices, and setting priorities.
What is your priority for your children? To be cogs in a well-oiled machine? Or to know and appreciate the beauty, grandeur, and awe-inspiring possibilities of the natural world within which we live? The choices we make, for ourselves and our children, have never been more important, for our future and theirs. Let's choose to leave no child inside.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Reflections on Virginia Tech tragedy
No one with an ounce of human decency could fail to be heartbroken at the tragic massacre on campus at Virginia Tech last week. A deeply disturbed, indeed deranged, student, a South Korean resident alien named Cho Seung-Hui, killed 32 students and professors before turning his gun on himself, making this the largest mass shooting in American history.
Students and professors alike demonstrated true courage and even heroism, blocking the murderer with closed doors, piled-up desks, and sometimes even their own bodies. The first victim was a freshman girl, the second her RA (Resident Assistant), who tried to come to her aid. A 76-year-old engineering professor and Holocaust survivor, Liviu Librescu, was killed holding his classroom door closed so that his students could escape.
In the midst of this tragedy and heroism, it is all the more saddening, although predictable, that elements of the gun-ban lobby, in the media and elsewhere, would try to use this horrific event to bolster their agenda. But then, many of the same people attempted to do the same thing after 9/11, in which no firearms were even used. Ideology bows to neither human tragedy nor reason, apparently.
Far from being a showpiece for what is euphemistically called gun "control," this incident clearly demonstrates the futility of expecting laws to stop criminals, who by their very nature transgress laws. Guns are banned on college and university campuses -- but that did not keep Cho from bringing his onto the campus at Virginia Tech. Granted, a person with his psychological profile ought to have been barred from purchasing a firearm. Somebody dropped the ball, somewhere.
Still, I recall thinking sadly, as I received news of this incident, "oh no, guns are prohibited on campus: those students were defenseless, no way to fight back." At least some VT students felt the same: one member of the campus shooting club, interviewed by ABC's Good Morning America, expressed frustration that if concealed carry of a handgun were allowed on campus, he or someone else might have been able to stop the shooter before he'd killed so many.
I am reminded of the woman, some years ago, who watched her mother gunned down in a fast-food restaurant, unable to intervene because she had left her handgun legally locked in her car in the parking lot. Or again, of the high school vice principal who retrieved his handgun from his car parked legally off-campus and was, in fact, able to subdue a shooter who was rampaging through his school.
In fact, as Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt accurately points out, according to UPI, "all the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last 10 years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen -- a potential victim -- had a gun." Yet the gun-ban crowd would like to further restrict legal access to firearms. This makes no sense at all.
I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: criminals may be crazed, they may be deranged, but they are not stupid. They are far more likely to pick "soft" targets, places where they know no one is going to be shooting back at them, for their rampages. Would not knowing whether a given victim or bystander would be able to return fire absolutely dissuade all violent crime, all the time? No, of course not. Would it help the situation? I believe it would, and there are statistics to back up this view: see John Lott, "More Guns, Less Crime."
More productive is trying to figure out why so many signals were missed in the case of Cho: an individual who had twice been accused of stalking, who had been examined and found to be mentally unstable, who had frightened classmates and professors alike with his graphically violent and twisted poetry and plays, who was so distant and sullen his tutor said that attempting to communicate with him "was almost like talking to a hole,” according to an AP report. Yet neither the university administration nor law enforcement authorities proved willing or able to step in and prevent the tragedy.
As a hunting safety instructor, and a certified range officer, I will proudly admit my bias: that ordinary, law-abiding citizens clearly have the Constitutional right, and ought to have the means, to protect themselves from deranged, murderous psychopaths like Cho. If this incident at Virginia Tech makes one thing clear, it is that citizens who count only on the authorities to protect them are in for a grievous, and perhaps lethal, disappointment.
Students and professors alike demonstrated true courage and even heroism, blocking the murderer with closed doors, piled-up desks, and sometimes even their own bodies. The first victim was a freshman girl, the second her RA (Resident Assistant), who tried to come to her aid. A 76-year-old engineering professor and Holocaust survivor, Liviu Librescu, was killed holding his classroom door closed so that his students could escape.
In the midst of this tragedy and heroism, it is all the more saddening, although predictable, that elements of the gun-ban lobby, in the media and elsewhere, would try to use this horrific event to bolster their agenda. But then, many of the same people attempted to do the same thing after 9/11, in which no firearms were even used. Ideology bows to neither human tragedy nor reason, apparently.
Far from being a showpiece for what is euphemistically called gun "control," this incident clearly demonstrates the futility of expecting laws to stop criminals, who by their very nature transgress laws. Guns are banned on college and university campuses -- but that did not keep Cho from bringing his onto the campus at Virginia Tech. Granted, a person with his psychological profile ought to have been barred from purchasing a firearm. Somebody dropped the ball, somewhere.
Still, I recall thinking sadly, as I received news of this incident, "oh no, guns are prohibited on campus: those students were defenseless, no way to fight back." At least some VT students felt the same: one member of the campus shooting club, interviewed by ABC's Good Morning America, expressed frustration that if concealed carry of a handgun were allowed on campus, he or someone else might have been able to stop the shooter before he'd killed so many.
I am reminded of the woman, some years ago, who watched her mother gunned down in a fast-food restaurant, unable to intervene because she had left her handgun legally locked in her car in the parking lot. Or again, of the high school vice principal who retrieved his handgun from his car parked legally off-campus and was, in fact, able to subdue a shooter who was rampaging through his school.
In fact, as Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt accurately points out, according to UPI, "all the school shootings that have ended abruptly in the last 10 years were stopped because a law-abiding citizen -- a potential victim -- had a gun." Yet the gun-ban crowd would like to further restrict legal access to firearms. This makes no sense at all.
I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: criminals may be crazed, they may be deranged, but they are not stupid. They are far more likely to pick "soft" targets, places where they know no one is going to be shooting back at them, for their rampages. Would not knowing whether a given victim or bystander would be able to return fire absolutely dissuade all violent crime, all the time? No, of course not. Would it help the situation? I believe it would, and there are statistics to back up this view: see John Lott, "More Guns, Less Crime."
More productive is trying to figure out why so many signals were missed in the case of Cho: an individual who had twice been accused of stalking, who had been examined and found to be mentally unstable, who had frightened classmates and professors alike with his graphically violent and twisted poetry and plays, who was so distant and sullen his tutor said that attempting to communicate with him "was almost like talking to a hole,” according to an AP report. Yet neither the university administration nor law enforcement authorities proved willing or able to step in and prevent the tragedy.
As a hunting safety instructor, and a certified range officer, I will proudly admit my bias: that ordinary, law-abiding citizens clearly have the Constitutional right, and ought to have the means, to protect themselves from deranged, murderous psychopaths like Cho. If this incident at Virginia Tech makes one thing clear, it is that citizens who count only on the authorities to protect them are in for a grievous, and perhaps lethal, disappointment.
Friday, April 20, 2007
More pithy commentary from Jim Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler, author of several books including The Long Emergency (reviewed below) generally has things to say and is not too afraid to say them. But smart people might do well to listen when he does, because behind the colorful language and ascerbic attitude lurks a guy who would genuinely like us to stop being stupid and engage the problems we're facing with open eyes.
Case in point: "Blowing Green Smoke," his response to well-known columnist Tom Friedman's upbeat and (perhaps excessively) optimistic April 16th article in the New York Times. I think both authors make some good points, and as usual I suspect that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes. I want to see the world the way Friedman does... but I fear that over the medium-to-long term, Kunstler's is the more realistic view. That's decidedly unnerving.
If you want more of Kunstler's take on matters, read his speech to the Second Vermont Republic assembly, in October 2005. Here's an excerpt:
Case in point: "Blowing Green Smoke," his response to well-known columnist Tom Friedman's upbeat and (perhaps excessively) optimistic April 16th article in the New York Times. I think both authors make some good points, and as usual I suspect that the truth lies somewhere between the extremes. I want to see the world the way Friedman does... but I fear that over the medium-to-long term, Kunstler's is the more realistic view. That's decidedly unnerving.
If you want more of Kunstler's take on matters, read his speech to the Second Vermont Republic assembly, in October 2005. Here's an excerpt:
For much of our history, including the first half of the 20th century, we were a resourceful, adaptive, generous, brave, forward-looking people who believed in earnest effort, who occupied a beautiful landscape full of places worth caring about and worth defending.
Since then, lost in raptures of easy motoring, fried food, incessant infotainment, and desperate moneygrubbing, we became a nation of overfed clowns who believed that it was possible to get something for nothing, who ravaged the landscape in an orgy of wanton carelessness, who believed they were entitled to lives of everlasting comfort and convenience, no matter what, and expected the rest of the world to pay for it. We even elected a vice-president who declared that this American way of life was non-negotiable.
We now face the most serious challenge to our collective identity, economy, culture, and security since the Civil War. The end of the cheap fossil fuel era will change everything about how we live in this country. It will challenge all of our assumptions. It will compel us to do things differently - whether we like it or not.
Guess that about covers it...
Top 5 most influential books I've read recently
Here, for whatever interest may be contained, are five books which have strongly influenced -- and in some cases dramatically changed -- the way I view "life, the universe, and everything":
1) The Omnivore's Dilemma: A natural history of four meals, by Michael Pollan.
I list this first in part because I'm reading it currently, and partly because it goes into so much detail about what's wrong with our current industrial food system -- with digressions into resource depletion, greenhouse gases, globalism, biofuels, and other related topics. The health of plants, animals, people, the land, and communities are all covered, and in an engaging and at times even gripping style. Pollan's book clearly illlustrates the ecological principle that "everything is connected to everything else." More than you ever wanted to know about what most Americans are eating these days, and even many of us who consider ourselves fairly aware are probably eating more often than we should... I certainly am. But I know a lot of things I'm not going to be eating, after reading this!
2) Real Food: What to eat and why, by Nina Planck.
Just a heckuva neat book by someone who sounds like a heckuva neat lady, and who is also a successful entrepreneur, in the area of farmers markets and local foods. As the subtitle puts it, this is about what you should eat and why you should eat it. Here's a sample, just to give a "flavor" of the book:
"Sobering" doesn't begin to describe this book. It's flat-out scary. Forget Stephen King, if you want to stay up all night in sheer terror, read Kunstler. But it's not a thriller, it's his insightful discussion of how the approach (if not current fact) of peak oil -- the point at which we are extracting as much oil as we will ever extract, world-wide -- and the subsequent decline in supply and increase in price, will change the way we live, forever. Everything about contemporary American society, from suburbia to surgical supplies, not to mention our food chain, is abjectly dependent upon cheap, plentiful fossil fuels. And that era is over, as what is left will become ever more difficult and expensive to extract, particularly since "much of it is located in countries whose people hate us," as Kunstler ruefully notes. The upshot? Expect significant contraction in all areas of American society, as local communities become not a choice, but a necessity. Want to know more? Read the book!
Note 1: If you absolutely don't have time to read the whole book (you don't have to read it all at once, ferpitysakes), at least read the article-length adaption published by Rolling Stone.
Note 2: I saw Kunstler and heard him speak at the 2007 PASA Conference in February; he is just as inspirational and motivational (in a kick-your-butt sort of way) in person as he is in print, but less curmudgeonly: he comes across as a genuinely decent guy who is genuinely concerned about the way our society seems determined to go. Sssh! Just don't tell him I said so. I think he likes his bad-boy image...
4) Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, Ph.D.
Sally Fallon is the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF, for short) and Mary Enig is a brilliant but iconoclastic lipids researcher from the University of Maryland. Together, they do a bang-up good job of explaining why most of what you thought you knew about diet and nutrition is completely incorrect... okay, that's too gentle: flat-out wrong. Following in the footsteps of dentist and peripatetic entho-nutritionist Weston A. Price, DDS, Fallon and Enig encourage us to adopt the dietary wisdom of traditional societies, cultures and communities where people regularly lived long, healthy, and productive lives eating whole, natural, and unprocessed foods -- including organ meats, full-fat (and raw) dairy, and other "healthy fats." Vegetables aren't left out of the equation, both in fresh and fermented forms, but Nourishing Traditions points out that there were no traditional vegan societies, and mostly-vegetarian ones invariably supplemented their diets with animal protein and fat in some form. This book is indeed food for thought and body alike.
5) The Untold Story of Milk, by Dr. Ron Schmidt, ND.
Ron Schmidt is a naturopathic doctor who cured himself of digestive and other ailments by adopting a diet rich in raw milk and other un-processed, un-pasteurized dairy products. That led him to an exploration of the history and culture of milk consumption, and especially the industrialization and mandatory pasteurization of our contemporary milk supply. Combining muck-raking journalism with a paean to holistic nutrition and small-scale, natural farming, Schmidt illustrates clearly why pasteurization is so essential in the mass-market commercial milk industry... and why raw milk and other dairy products are not only a viable alternative, when obtained from herds of healthy, grass-fed cows, but strongly supportive of -- perhaps even essential to -- good health.
I could go on and on about other books that have influenced my life, or at least my outlook on life -- and I may post another "top five" somewhere down the road. But these are not only interesting and well-written, but (I believe) timely and incredibly important. I strongly recommend you hie yourself to the local library or bookstore and obtain copies. And when you've read them, I look forward to any feedback or discussion thus generated!
Bonus Book:
If you've stuck with me this far, I may as well add a "bonus" that could just as easily be in the Top 5 in terms of influential -- the only reason I didn't put it there to start with was that it reaffirmed things I already believed rather than challenged or changed my outlook. But who knows? It might just change yours:
The Last Child in the Woods: Overcoming Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv.
This book makes a strong, well-researched, well-reasoned case for something that a lot of us have known intuitively and out of personal experience for a long time: that children need to be outside, playing and having what sociologists and educational researchers call "authentic personal experiences" in the natural world. As Louv puts it, "Healing the broken bond between our young and nature is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demand it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depend upon it." Certainly the mental, physical, and spiritual health of children depends to a large measure, as this book makes abundantly clear, upon direct personal contact with nature during childhood. And that kind of positive child-nature contact may also be vital for nature, as the children of today will be the decision-makers of tomorrow. As G.M. Trevelyan wrote many years ago, "We are all children of the earth. Unelss our spirits can be refreshed by at least intermittent contact with nature, we grow awry." Likely much of the "growing awry" we see in many of today's children and youth can be traced by precisely to what Louv calls "nature-deficit disorder." Want to make a positive difference? Visit the Children & Nature Network to see what you can do.
1) The Omnivore's Dilemma: A natural history of four meals, by Michael Pollan.
I list this first in part because I'm reading it currently, and partly because it goes into so much detail about what's wrong with our current industrial food system -- with digressions into resource depletion, greenhouse gases, globalism, biofuels, and other related topics. The health of plants, animals, people, the land, and communities are all covered, and in an engaging and at times even gripping style. Pollan's book clearly illlustrates the ecological principle that "everything is connected to everything else." More than you ever wanted to know about what most Americans are eating these days, and even many of us who consider ourselves fairly aware are probably eating more often than we should... I certainly am. But I know a lot of things I'm not going to be eating, after reading this!
2) Real Food: What to eat and why, by Nina Planck.
Just a heckuva neat book by someone who sounds like a heckuva neat lady, and who is also a successful entrepreneur, in the area of farmers markets and local foods. As the subtitle puts it, this is about what you should eat and why you should eat it. Here's a sample, just to give a "flavor" of the book:
"Does that mean you should enjoy real bacon and butter not because they're tasty but because they're actually healthy? In a word, yes. Some might mock this as a characteristically American case for real food -- call it the Virtue Defense. [...] Someone else -- a French chef perhaps -- might take a different approach in defense of real food. Less interested in health, he might champion pleasure for its own sake. Great -- I'm all for pleasure. If the sheer sensual pleasure of eating shirred eggs or homemade ice cream is enough for you to shed your guilt, throw away phony industrial foods, and return to eating real foods, all the better. I'll leave the nature of taste and satisfaction, guilt and pleasure to the cultural critics and moral philosophers. This book is about why real food is good for you."3) The Long Emergency: Surviving the converging catastrophes of the 21st century, by James Howard Kunstler.
"Sobering" doesn't begin to describe this book. It's flat-out scary. Forget Stephen King, if you want to stay up all night in sheer terror, read Kunstler. But it's not a thriller, it's his insightful discussion of how the approach (if not current fact) of peak oil -- the point at which we are extracting as much oil as we will ever extract, world-wide -- and the subsequent decline in supply and increase in price, will change the way we live, forever. Everything about contemporary American society, from suburbia to surgical supplies, not to mention our food chain, is abjectly dependent upon cheap, plentiful fossil fuels. And that era is over, as what is left will become ever more difficult and expensive to extract, particularly since "much of it is located in countries whose people hate us," as Kunstler ruefully notes. The upshot? Expect significant contraction in all areas of American society, as local communities become not a choice, but a necessity. Want to know more? Read the book!
Note 1: If you absolutely don't have time to read the whole book (you don't have to read it all at once, ferpitysakes), at least read the article-length adaption published by Rolling Stone.
Note 2: I saw Kunstler and heard him speak at the 2007 PASA Conference in February; he is just as inspirational and motivational (in a kick-your-butt sort of way) in person as he is in print, but less curmudgeonly: he comes across as a genuinely decent guy who is genuinely concerned about the way our society seems determined to go. Sssh! Just don't tell him I said so. I think he likes his bad-boy image...
4) Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig, Ph.D.
Sally Fallon is the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF, for short) and Mary Enig is a brilliant but iconoclastic lipids researcher from the University of Maryland. Together, they do a bang-up good job of explaining why most of what you thought you knew about diet and nutrition is completely incorrect... okay, that's too gentle: flat-out wrong. Following in the footsteps of dentist and peripatetic entho-nutritionist Weston A. Price, DDS, Fallon and Enig encourage us to adopt the dietary wisdom of traditional societies, cultures and communities where people regularly lived long, healthy, and productive lives eating whole, natural, and unprocessed foods -- including organ meats, full-fat (and raw) dairy, and other "healthy fats." Vegetables aren't left out of the equation, both in fresh and fermented forms, but Nourishing Traditions points out that there were no traditional vegan societies, and mostly-vegetarian ones invariably supplemented their diets with animal protein and fat in some form. This book is indeed food for thought and body alike.
5) The Untold Story of Milk, by Dr. Ron Schmidt, ND.
Ron Schmidt is a naturopathic doctor who cured himself of digestive and other ailments by adopting a diet rich in raw milk and other un-processed, un-pasteurized dairy products. That led him to an exploration of the history and culture of milk consumption, and especially the industrialization and mandatory pasteurization of our contemporary milk supply. Combining muck-raking journalism with a paean to holistic nutrition and small-scale, natural farming, Schmidt illustrates clearly why pasteurization is so essential in the mass-market commercial milk industry... and why raw milk and other dairy products are not only a viable alternative, when obtained from herds of healthy, grass-fed cows, but strongly supportive of -- perhaps even essential to -- good health.
I could go on and on about other books that have influenced my life, or at least my outlook on life -- and I may post another "top five" somewhere down the road. But these are not only interesting and well-written, but (I believe) timely and incredibly important. I strongly recommend you hie yourself to the local library or bookstore and obtain copies. And when you've read them, I look forward to any feedback or discussion thus generated!
Bonus Book:
If you've stuck with me this far, I may as well add a "bonus" that could just as easily be in the Top 5 in terms of influential -- the only reason I didn't put it there to start with was that it reaffirmed things I already believed rather than challenged or changed my outlook. But who knows? It might just change yours:
The Last Child in the Woods: Overcoming Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv.
This book makes a strong, well-researched, well-reasoned case for something that a lot of us have known intuitively and out of personal experience for a long time: that children need to be outside, playing and having what sociologists and educational researchers call "authentic personal experiences" in the natural world. As Louv puts it, "Healing the broken bond between our young and nature is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demand it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depend upon it." Certainly the mental, physical, and spiritual health of children depends to a large measure, as this book makes abundantly clear, upon direct personal contact with nature during childhood. And that kind of positive child-nature contact may also be vital for nature, as the children of today will be the decision-makers of tomorrow. As G.M. Trevelyan wrote many years ago, "We are all children of the earth. Unelss our spirits can be refreshed by at least intermittent contact with nature, we grow awry." Likely much of the "growing awry" we see in many of today's children and youth can be traced by precisely to what Louv calls "nature-deficit disorder." Want to make a positive difference? Visit the Children & Nature Network to see what you can do.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Westminster City Council's "green" resolution falls short
A journey of a thousand miles, so goes the old saying, begins with a single step. However, I would add, someone who stops after that first step won't get far on the journey. The decision by the Westminster City Council to adopt a "Resolution on Climate Disrupting Pollution" may be viewed as an important first step in joining the battle against global climate change, but I hope it won't be the city of Westminister's last.
As a Times article on Monday, April 9th, pointed out, the Catoctin Chapter of the Sierra Club had asked the City Council to approve and sign the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement. The agreement, already signed by some 400 municipalities nationwide, is a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012: the goal set in the much-maligned Kyoto Protocol. This is admittedly a challenge, but hardly an un-reachable one, as the number of cities signed on attests. Seven Maryland cities, including Sykesville and Baltimore, have already signed.
Instead, the Mayor and Council of Westminster decided to adopt what councilman Gregory Pecoraro described as "sort of a homegrown version of how we want to approach this."
As a general rule, I am all for homegrown, local approaches. However, there are times when local authorities need to band together to deal with problems and issues which are beyond what any of them can solve on their own, when the need for unified action transcends the importance of local autonomy. The crisis we as humans face due to global warming is one of those. Furthermore, the U.S. Mayors Agreement is not something being forced on us from above; it is a voluntary union of equals to accomplish something in our common interest.
Encouragingly, the same edition of the Times reported the formation in Mount Airy of a new “green” organization dedicated to "raising awareness about global warming, rising energy costs and other environmental issues.” Sometimes citizens catch on quicker than their elected leaders.
And there's little excuse for ignorance or apathy. The scope and urgency of the problem has been clearly articulated and reinforced by a whole series of recent articles in the Times. On April 6th, an AP article headlined “Experts say natural wonders at risk from global warming” elucidated threats to “natural treasures” from Australia's Great Barrier Reef to the Amazon rainforests due to climate change. Some of the damage may already be irreversible.
An article on Easter Sunday focused on mountaineers and ice climbers worldwide who are firsthand witnesses to "vanishing glaciers, melting ice routes, crumbling rock formations, and flood-prone lakes" as a result of rising temperatures. A report from Bangkok, Thailand, on Wednesday the 11th stated that continued warming could result in food shortages for 130 million people across Asia by 2050 and cause potentially catastrophic problems in Africa. And we think we have immigration problems now.
Yet still some people refuse to either admit that there's a problem, or take ownership of humanity's part in it. It's easier to say, "oh, it's just natural fluctuations" -- despite indications that without human input, the earth would now be in a slight cool-down -- or complain that the costs would be prohibitive. Ironically, doing nothing will likely prove even more costly, in the long run.
The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments is another group that gets it. According to a Capital News Service report, the Council passed a regional climate change initiative that will unite efforts to reduce greenhouse gasses in the National Capital Region. Maryland faces the largest impact from climate change in the region, according to the Council's Stuart Freudberg, due to the amount of Maryland's land adjoining the Chesapeake Bay.
So again, it is a good and important first step that Westminster's Mayor and City Council have passed a resolution to "work diligently to identify and implement such environmentally responsible practices as may be practical… with the goal of conserving energy and reducing the amount of global warming pollutants generated by City operations." But the Devil is in the details, and this provides few of them. In fact, "practical” provides copious wiggle room.
I hope -- and would strongly urge -- that the Council adopt the higher levels of focus, commitment, and accountability represented by the U.S. Mayors Protection Agreement. Doing so would not only provide specific goals and assistance in achieving them, but would send a signal that Westminster is proactive, forward-looking, and committed in facing one of the greatest challenges of the new century.
As a Times article on Monday, April 9th, pointed out, the Catoctin Chapter of the Sierra Club had asked the City Council to approve and sign the U.S. Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement. The agreement, already signed by some 400 municipalities nationwide, is a pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012: the goal set in the much-maligned Kyoto Protocol. This is admittedly a challenge, but hardly an un-reachable one, as the number of cities signed on attests. Seven Maryland cities, including Sykesville and Baltimore, have already signed.
Instead, the Mayor and Council of Westminster decided to adopt what councilman Gregory Pecoraro described as "sort of a homegrown version of how we want to approach this."
As a general rule, I am all for homegrown, local approaches. However, there are times when local authorities need to band together to deal with problems and issues which are beyond what any of them can solve on their own, when the need for unified action transcends the importance of local autonomy. The crisis we as humans face due to global warming is one of those. Furthermore, the U.S. Mayors Agreement is not something being forced on us from above; it is a voluntary union of equals to accomplish something in our common interest.
Encouragingly, the same edition of the Times reported the formation in Mount Airy of a new “green” organization dedicated to "raising awareness about global warming, rising energy costs and other environmental issues.” Sometimes citizens catch on quicker than their elected leaders.
And there's little excuse for ignorance or apathy. The scope and urgency of the problem has been clearly articulated and reinforced by a whole series of recent articles in the Times. On April 6th, an AP article headlined “Experts say natural wonders at risk from global warming” elucidated threats to “natural treasures” from Australia's Great Barrier Reef to the Amazon rainforests due to climate change. Some of the damage may already be irreversible.
An article on Easter Sunday focused on mountaineers and ice climbers worldwide who are firsthand witnesses to "vanishing glaciers, melting ice routes, crumbling rock formations, and flood-prone lakes" as a result of rising temperatures. A report from Bangkok, Thailand, on Wednesday the 11th stated that continued warming could result in food shortages for 130 million people across Asia by 2050 and cause potentially catastrophic problems in Africa. And we think we have immigration problems now.
Yet still some people refuse to either admit that there's a problem, or take ownership of humanity's part in it. It's easier to say, "oh, it's just natural fluctuations" -- despite indications that without human input, the earth would now be in a slight cool-down -- or complain that the costs would be prohibitive. Ironically, doing nothing will likely prove even more costly, in the long run.
The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments is another group that gets it. According to a Capital News Service report, the Council passed a regional climate change initiative that will unite efforts to reduce greenhouse gasses in the National Capital Region. Maryland faces the largest impact from climate change in the region, according to the Council's Stuart Freudberg, due to the amount of Maryland's land adjoining the Chesapeake Bay.
So again, it is a good and important first step that Westminster's Mayor and City Council have passed a resolution to "work diligently to identify and implement such environmentally responsible practices as may be practical… with the goal of conserving energy and reducing the amount of global warming pollutants generated by City operations." But the Devil is in the details, and this provides few of them. In fact, "practical” provides copious wiggle room.
I hope -- and would strongly urge -- that the Council adopt the higher levels of focus, commitment, and accountability represented by the U.S. Mayors Protection Agreement. Doing so would not only provide specific goals and assistance in achieving them, but would send a signal that Westminster is proactive, forward-looking, and committed in facing one of the greatest challenges of the new century.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
The greening of Maryland
Spring is the season of green growing things. And this year, in Maryland, spring seems also to be the season for growing "green" initiatives.
Even as the earth greens up with the coming of spring, so the State House in Annapolis is "greening up" with the combination of an ecologically-friendly Governor with an ecologically-friendly General Assembly. As a recent front-page article in the Washington Post put it, in Maryland this year "it's suddenly very, very easy being green." For those of us who love the earth and care about its welfare, that is good news indeed.
The article delineates a string of eco-friendly initiatives either passed by the Assembly or proposed by the current Governor, former Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley. Former Governor Bob Ehrlich was more of a conservationist than he often got credit for, but certainly the election of a new governor is a contributor to this greening of the Maryland legislative process. So is the election of Attorney General Doug Gansler, who campaigned heavily on green issues. But, the article points out, there are other factors involved which transcend partisan politics.
One is concern over global warming, popularized by former Vice-President Al Gore's award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Inconvenient or not, the idea that not only is the earth warming, but that human activity contributes dramatically to that warming, has captured the imagination and awakened the concern of many in state government and the electorate alike.
The article notes that the Global Warming Solutions bill, which would reduce Maryland's emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020, has been criticized by the Chamber of Commerce, "which says Maryland businesses shouldn't bear the burden for a global problem." The problem with that idea is that if everyone says they shouldn't have to bear the burden, no one ends up bearing the burden. Global warming is a common problem, it was created collectively, and it needs everyone working together toward a solution.
Closer to home, the deadline for cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay has been set for 2010, a goal which now appears impossible to meet. But the looming nature of that deadline has increased both awareness and urgency to do something about the Bay, and to do it sooner rather than later.
One important feature of this move is a new alliance between environmentalists, such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and those traditionally seen as opponents of environmental clean-up, such as farmers and watermen. It is not quite correct that, as the article states, "environmentalists decided that cow manure, as bad as it is, is better than the oil, metals, fertilzer, and sewage that flow downstream after a farm becomes a suburb." While true, this statement doesn't tell the whole story.
I wrote an article on this subject for a magazine called Edible Chesapeake, and the reality is that most farmers are genuinely concerned about the land, and will do all they can to enact conservation measures -- as long as they can pay for them without cutting even further into their already tenuous bottom line. The external pressures on farmers -- low commodity prices, foreign competition, pressure from developers -- make it hard enough to keep on farming, and conservation measures only add to the cost. Since the public is largely responsible for these challenges, it makes sense for the public to help farmers meet them.
The new alliance between farmers, watermen, and environmentalists to clean up the Bay points to the biggest reality of the expanding green movement: common problems require common solutions. We all drink the water, we all breathe the air, we all rely on food from the earth. It will take all of us, working together, to make a dent in the host of significant environmental challenges we face in the 21st century.
If we can rise to these challenges with the same level of ingenuity, innovation, and determination we brought to facing the political and military challenges of the 20th century, we could be in the beginning years of a century filled with promise and accomplishment. If we fail, we'll have a rough row to hoe, moving into the third millennium. The choice is ours - but Maryland, it seems, is off to a good start. Let's keep up the momentum.
Even as the earth greens up with the coming of spring, so the State House in Annapolis is "greening up" with the combination of an ecologically-friendly Governor with an ecologically-friendly General Assembly. As a recent front-page article in the Washington Post put it, in Maryland this year "it's suddenly very, very easy being green." For those of us who love the earth and care about its welfare, that is good news indeed.
The article delineates a string of eco-friendly initiatives either passed by the Assembly or proposed by the current Governor, former Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley. Former Governor Bob Ehrlich was more of a conservationist than he often got credit for, but certainly the election of a new governor is a contributor to this greening of the Maryland legislative process. So is the election of Attorney General Doug Gansler, who campaigned heavily on green issues. But, the article points out, there are other factors involved which transcend partisan politics.
One is concern over global warming, popularized by former Vice-President Al Gore's award-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Inconvenient or not, the idea that not only is the earth warming, but that human activity contributes dramatically to that warming, has captured the imagination and awakened the concern of many in state government and the electorate alike.
The article notes that the Global Warming Solutions bill, which would reduce Maryland's emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020, has been criticized by the Chamber of Commerce, "which says Maryland businesses shouldn't bear the burden for a global problem." The problem with that idea is that if everyone says they shouldn't have to bear the burden, no one ends up bearing the burden. Global warming is a common problem, it was created collectively, and it needs everyone working together toward a solution.
Closer to home, the deadline for cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay has been set for 2010, a goal which now appears impossible to meet. But the looming nature of that deadline has increased both awareness and urgency to do something about the Bay, and to do it sooner rather than later.
One important feature of this move is a new alliance between environmentalists, such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and those traditionally seen as opponents of environmental clean-up, such as farmers and watermen. It is not quite correct that, as the article states, "environmentalists decided that cow manure, as bad as it is, is better than the oil, metals, fertilzer, and sewage that flow downstream after a farm becomes a suburb." While true, this statement doesn't tell the whole story.
I wrote an article on this subject for a magazine called Edible Chesapeake, and the reality is that most farmers are genuinely concerned about the land, and will do all they can to enact conservation measures -- as long as they can pay for them without cutting even further into their already tenuous bottom line. The external pressures on farmers -- low commodity prices, foreign competition, pressure from developers -- make it hard enough to keep on farming, and conservation measures only add to the cost. Since the public is largely responsible for these challenges, it makes sense for the public to help farmers meet them.
The new alliance between farmers, watermen, and environmentalists to clean up the Bay points to the biggest reality of the expanding green movement: common problems require common solutions. We all drink the water, we all breathe the air, we all rely on food from the earth. It will take all of us, working together, to make a dent in the host of significant environmental challenges we face in the 21st century.
If we can rise to these challenges with the same level of ingenuity, innovation, and determination we brought to facing the political and military challenges of the 20th century, we could be in the beginning years of a century filled with promise and accomplishment. If we fail, we'll have a rough row to hoe, moving into the third millennium. The choice is ours - but Maryland, it seems, is off to a good start. Let's keep up the momentum.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
"War to end all wars" still resonates
"Over there! Over there! Send the word, send the word, over there! That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, the drums rum-tumming everywhere -- over there!"
Corny, perhaps, to our jaded modern ears, but those were stirring words to the people of both America and Europe in 1917, when the American Expeditionary Force under General "Black Jack" Pershing landed in France. Brought willy-nilly into World War One by the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat, the United States for the first time intervened in a European conflict.
The isolationism which had sidelined us during the first three years of the war had been overwhelmed by the deaths of American at the hands -- or torpedoes -- of the villainous "Huns." In the wash of patriotism that followed, our intervention was seen as a direct repayment for French assistance in winning our own independence from Britain, less than a century and a half earlier. As General Pershing stepped ashore and saluted the French Field Marshall who greeted him, his words were, "Lafayette, we have returned!"
My paternal grandfather was among those Yanks, the famous "Doughboys" with their khaki uniforms and flat helmets, who fought Kaiser Wilhelm's troops to a standstill and then slowly but steadily pushed back their line until the Armistice on November 11, 1918. Like many, he did not escape unscathed: a mortar shell, exploding near him, broke his leg in fourteen places and flung it up over his shoulder.
Amazingly for the time period, he did not lose the leg, although it healed an inch-and-a-half shorter than the other one. My father tells that, as he grew older and taller, he'd tease his father that he was getting taller than he was. In response, "Pop" Harbold would rock up onto his longer leg, fix his son with a mock glare, and growl, "Not yet, you're not."
What has put me in mind of "the Great War," as it was called -- the "war to end all wars," that signally failed in that ambition? The fact that this Friday, April 6, marks the 90th anniversary of our entry into that war. An article in USA Today, entitled "One of the last: WWI vet recalls the Great War," profiles Frank Buckles, now the ripe old age of 106. He is one of only four surviving members of the 4,734,991 Americans that served in World War One: less than one in a million now surviving.
The articles points out that that although the days of trench warfare and biplane dogfights are long gone, "the first industrialized war set the stage for all that came after. It marked the emergence of the United States as a superpower." Furthermore, the article states, the war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ethnic cleansing, weapons of mass destruction -- the terrible chemical weapons that killed or maimed so many during WWI -- as well as globalization, U.S. foreign policy, and even women's rights and controversy over the treatment of surviving veterans, all have roots in World War I.
"If you want to understand the world of today," the article quotes Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, "you need to go all the way back to 1914." Yet World War One is largely a forgotten war, today. Veterans of World War Two, including my father, have justly received accolades as member of "the Greatest Generation," that stood against first Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, then fought the long Cold War against the Soviets. Even the veterans of Korea have received recognition.
Ironically, however, echoes of the now little-known WWI continue to resonate in today's world. While the conclusion of World War Two eventually knit the continent of Europe together, and made Japan a staunch ally, the victorious Allies in the First World War not only humiliated Germany into spawning the Nazis, but carved up the former Ottoman Empire into arbitrary nation-states which Yale historian Jay Winter is quoted as saying were "usually made in an afternoon after tea without much thought to ethnic balance or viability of these countries."
These capricious borders, as the article points out, remain to this day, and control the lives of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq, and rival ethnic groups in Lebanon. The establishment of Israel can also be linked to the post-WWI Balfour Declaration. "Most of our headaches in the Middle East today are a hangover from the great military binge of 1914-18," notes Ferguson.
An ironic legacy indeed, for the war to end all wars.
Note: A reader wrote to me, after this was published, stating that
Corny, perhaps, to our jaded modern ears, but those were stirring words to the people of both America and Europe in 1917, when the American Expeditionary Force under General "Black Jack" Pershing landed in France. Brought willy-nilly into World War One by the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat, the United States for the first time intervened in a European conflict.
The isolationism which had sidelined us during the first three years of the war had been overwhelmed by the deaths of American at the hands -- or torpedoes -- of the villainous "Huns." In the wash of patriotism that followed, our intervention was seen as a direct repayment for French assistance in winning our own independence from Britain, less than a century and a half earlier. As General Pershing stepped ashore and saluted the French Field Marshall who greeted him, his words were, "Lafayette, we have returned!"
My paternal grandfather was among those Yanks, the famous "Doughboys" with their khaki uniforms and flat helmets, who fought Kaiser Wilhelm's troops to a standstill and then slowly but steadily pushed back their line until the Armistice on November 11, 1918. Like many, he did not escape unscathed: a mortar shell, exploding near him, broke his leg in fourteen places and flung it up over his shoulder.
Amazingly for the time period, he did not lose the leg, although it healed an inch-and-a-half shorter than the other one. My father tells that, as he grew older and taller, he'd tease his father that he was getting taller than he was. In response, "Pop" Harbold would rock up onto his longer leg, fix his son with a mock glare, and growl, "Not yet, you're not."
What has put me in mind of "the Great War," as it was called -- the "war to end all wars," that signally failed in that ambition? The fact that this Friday, April 6, marks the 90th anniversary of our entry into that war. An article in USA Today, entitled "One of the last: WWI vet recalls the Great War," profiles Frank Buckles, now the ripe old age of 106. He is one of only four surviving members of the 4,734,991 Americans that served in World War One: less than one in a million now surviving.
The articles points out that that although the days of trench warfare and biplane dogfights are long gone, "the first industrialized war set the stage for all that came after. It marked the emergence of the United States as a superpower." Furthermore, the article states, the war in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ethnic cleansing, weapons of mass destruction -- the terrible chemical weapons that killed or maimed so many during WWI -- as well as globalization, U.S. foreign policy, and even women's rights and controversy over the treatment of surviving veterans, all have roots in World War I.
"If you want to understand the world of today," the article quotes Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, "you need to go all the way back to 1914." Yet World War One is largely a forgotten war, today. Veterans of World War Two, including my father, have justly received accolades as member of "the Greatest Generation," that stood against first Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, then fought the long Cold War against the Soviets. Even the veterans of Korea have received recognition.
Ironically, however, echoes of the now little-known WWI continue to resonate in today's world. While the conclusion of World War Two eventually knit the continent of Europe together, and made Japan a staunch ally, the victorious Allies in the First World War not only humiliated Germany into spawning the Nazis, but carved up the former Ottoman Empire into arbitrary nation-states which Yale historian Jay Winter is quoted as saying were "usually made in an afternoon after tea without much thought to ethnic balance or viability of these countries."
These capricious borders, as the article points out, remain to this day, and control the lives of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds in Iraq, and rival ethnic groups in Lebanon. The establishment of Israel can also be linked to the post-WWI Balfour Declaration. "Most of our headaches in the Middle East today are a hangover from the great military binge of 1914-18," notes Ferguson.
An ironic legacy indeed, for the war to end all wars.
Note: A reader wrote to me, after this was published, stating that
"I can find no reference to Gen. Pershing saying, "Lafayette, we have returned." I can find reference to, "Lafayette, we are here," being said at the grave of Marquis Lafayette."He did not indicate who said it. I accept the correction as given, since I was operating from memory in that instance (not personal memory, of course, memory of something I'd read). The point remains the same, in either case.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Pause to welcome the coming of Spring
Winter was late in arriving this year, but it made up for its tardiness by lingering longer than is often the case. Most conspicuously, it made a liar out of famed groundhog prognosticator Punxatawney Phil, who allegedly failed to see his shadow on February 2nd, thus ensuring an early spring. As the saying goes... "Not!"
But now at last it seems that spring is finally in the air. That air seems softer, moister, and is graced with the song of birds: both the winter birds that have weathered the cold and storms with us, such as the cardinals, chickadees, and downy woodpeckers, and the newer arrivals, such as American robins, who have returned from wherever they take shelter from winter's cold.
It used to be said that robins migrated south, to return again in the spring; more recently, studies have revealed that our local robins, at least, often seek shelter in wetland thickets, where decaying marsh vegetation moderates the ambient temperature, and clumps of brush break the wind. Another good reason these wetlands should be preserved.
Other migrants are on the move, too: although many of the geese we see in this area are residents, meandering from pond to lake to farm field, also visible -- or audible -- are high-flying V's of migratory geese. The great conservationist Aldo Leopold considered these the surest sign of spring, writing, in A Sand County Almanac:
"One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring. A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence… But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges."
"A March morning," he asserts, "is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese. I once knew an educated lady, banded by Phi Beta Kappa, who told me that she had never heard or seen the geese that twice a year proclaim the revolving seasons to her well-insulated roof. Is education," asked the man known to his loyal graduate students as "The Professor," "possibly a process of trading awareness for something of lesser worth?"
That question resounds through the decades since it was penned, and may well prove fodder for another column. But for now, it is enough to fling open the windows, step out through the door, and open our awareness to the changing season: winter into spring, the wheel of the year turning from the season of darkness, rest, inwardness, and even, yes, death and decay, toward the season of unfolding, opening, blossoming, growth -- rebirth and burgeoning life.
For all our scientific knowledge, the process by which a bulb sends out a shoot that pushes through the earth to become a crocus, daffodil, or tulip, a tree-bud contains the complete essence of the coming season's growth of branch, leaf, and flower, or a seed unfolds to become an herbaceous plant, shrub, or tree, is still something which smacks of mystery and wonder.
Just as mysterious and wonderful are the guidance systems that steer flocks of neo-tropical migrants, our beloved summer songbirds, from their winter haunts in Central and South America to grace our woods and fields, our backyards and even city parks. They are already beginning their journey, and the next month or two will see a veritable explosion of color and birdsong.
The end of winter and the coming of spring may not have quite the impact on us climate-controlled and industrially-fed urbanites and suburbanites that it did on earlier agriculturalists, nomadic herders, or hunter-gatherers. But the tides of spring still flow in all of our blood, if we could but shut off the flood of external stimuli -- traffic, radio, TV, CDs and DVDs, and the internet, among other sources -- that constantly bombard us, quiet the racing of our minds, and open our windows and our senses to the turn of the seasons.
No matter the stresses and pressures of our workaday lives, let's each take a moment, sometime this week, to go outside, stand quietly on the good earth, close our eyes, open our ears and nostrils, and breathe deeply of the essence of spring. I don't doubt that we'll be the better for it.
But now at last it seems that spring is finally in the air. That air seems softer, moister, and is graced with the song of birds: both the winter birds that have weathered the cold and storms with us, such as the cardinals, chickadees, and downy woodpeckers, and the newer arrivals, such as American robins, who have returned from wherever they take shelter from winter's cold.
It used to be said that robins migrated south, to return again in the spring; more recently, studies have revealed that our local robins, at least, often seek shelter in wetland thickets, where decaying marsh vegetation moderates the ambient temperature, and clumps of brush break the wind. Another good reason these wetlands should be preserved.
Other migrants are on the move, too: although many of the geese we see in this area are residents, meandering from pond to lake to farm field, also visible -- or audible -- are high-flying V's of migratory geese. The great conservationist Aldo Leopold considered these the surest sign of spring, writing, in A Sand County Almanac:
"One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring. A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence… But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges."
"A March morning," he asserts, "is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese. I once knew an educated lady, banded by Phi Beta Kappa, who told me that she had never heard or seen the geese that twice a year proclaim the revolving seasons to her well-insulated roof. Is education," asked the man known to his loyal graduate students as "The Professor," "possibly a process of trading awareness for something of lesser worth?"
That question resounds through the decades since it was penned, and may well prove fodder for another column. But for now, it is enough to fling open the windows, step out through the door, and open our awareness to the changing season: winter into spring, the wheel of the year turning from the season of darkness, rest, inwardness, and even, yes, death and decay, toward the season of unfolding, opening, blossoming, growth -- rebirth and burgeoning life.
For all our scientific knowledge, the process by which a bulb sends out a shoot that pushes through the earth to become a crocus, daffodil, or tulip, a tree-bud contains the complete essence of the coming season's growth of branch, leaf, and flower, or a seed unfolds to become an herbaceous plant, shrub, or tree, is still something which smacks of mystery and wonder.
Just as mysterious and wonderful are the guidance systems that steer flocks of neo-tropical migrants, our beloved summer songbirds, from their winter haunts in Central and South America to grace our woods and fields, our backyards and even city parks. They are already beginning their journey, and the next month or two will see a veritable explosion of color and birdsong.
The end of winter and the coming of spring may not have quite the impact on us climate-controlled and industrially-fed urbanites and suburbanites that it did on earlier agriculturalists, nomadic herders, or hunter-gatherers. But the tides of spring still flow in all of our blood, if we could but shut off the flood of external stimuli -- traffic, radio, TV, CDs and DVDs, and the internet, among other sources -- that constantly bombard us, quiet the racing of our minds, and open our windows and our senses to the turn of the seasons.
No matter the stresses and pressures of our workaday lives, let's each take a moment, sometime this week, to go outside, stand quietly on the good earth, close our eyes, open our ears and nostrils, and breathe deeply of the essence of spring. I don't doubt that we'll be the better for it.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The raw facts on raw milk
This essay was originally written as a column in response to a piece appearing in the Carrroll County Times, for which I write. But it was overtaken by other events, and never appeared. Here 'tis:
In a recent Marketplace essay entitled "Risk comes with consuming raw milk, products,” agricultural extension educator Mike Bell asserted that "raw milk can harbor dangerous microorganism that can pose serious health risks to you and your family."
Well, yes. That's true. It can. But -- and this is a big "but" -- there is a long way between "can" and "does." Mr. Bell states that according to the CDC, more than 800 people have gotten sick from consuming raw milk or raw milk cheese since 1998. I'm no math expert, but that calculates out to, on average, less than a hundred cases a year, nationwide.
Liz Reitzig, President of the Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, reports that "according to the CDC, there are 73 million cases a year of food borne illness, virtually all of which are from regulated, industrial, licensed food products." Of the relative handful in which raw milk is implicated, "most are from raw milk intended for pasteurization, not from a small farmer carefully preparing raw milk for direct consumption." Furthermore, she notes, "Pasteurized milk accounts for several hundred cases of food borne illness each year," again according to CDC figures.
Other assertions are similarly misleading. The question of the role of enzymes in digestion and health is far too complex to fit into a column, but suffice it to say that qualified experts have also challenged and, to my satisfaction, refuted Mr. Bell's assertion that our bodies don't use enzymes contained in food to assist our own metabolic process. It seems quite clear that our digestive system does indeed utilize food enzymes, when present, to spare our own and make digestion easier.
While it is true that pasteurization kills most (though not all) harmful bacteria that may be present, beneficial microorganisms, commonly known as probiotics, are also killed in the process. These would otherwise aid digestion and strengthen the immune system. And while some enzymes, and some beneficial microorganisms, may survive conventional pasteurization, none survive the increasingly common "ultra-pasteurization."
Also misleading were some of the statements in the box entitled "Myths, facts about pasteurization." For example: "Pasteurizing milk does not cause lactose intolerance and allergic reactions. Both raw milk and pasteurized milk can cause allergic reactions in people sensitive to milk proteins."
Of course pasteurizing milk doesn't cause lactose intolerance or allergic reactions. Rather, raw milk, which contains the lactase enzyme, is easier to digest for many, though not all, people who are otherwise lactose intolerant. Sensitivity to milk proteins -- casein -- is an entirely different issue than lactose intolerance, and should not be confused with it.
The assertion that "pasteurization does not reduce milk's nutritional value" is just that: an assertion, and a questionable one at that. Many nutritional experts far more knowledgeable than I have contested this assertion, among them Sally Fallon, President of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Ron Schmidt, ND, William Cambell Douglas Jr., MD, Thomas Cowan, MD, natural foods expert and writer Nina Planck, and nutritionist and author Joann S. Grohman. Do your own research, and draw your own conclusions.
Finally, regarding harmful bacteria. Milk simply cannot carry any pathogens that were not present in the cow, or else contaminated the milk after milking. That is why no pro-raw milk activist would ever suggest that pasteurization be abandoned, especially for large, commercial dairies and industrial milk-processing plants. All they are asking is that exceptions be made for small-scale farming operations to sell directly to a small clientele of local customers: face to face, neighbor to neighbor, where accountability is high.
So, can raw milk make you sick? Sure. It's possible. So can sushi. So can raw oysters. So can rare beef, or sunny-side-up eggs. So, for that matter, can raw spinach, or salad-bar lettuce. Pasteurized milk can, too. So what's the big deal about raw milk? If you really want to cover your assets, require a statement, such as appears on many restaurant menus regarding meat and seafood, to the effect of "Consuming raw milk or dairy products may increase your risk of food-borne illness," and then let people make their own choices. Sounds a lot like freedom, doesn't it?
Granting small farmers the opportunity to sell clean, fresh, unprocessed milk to local customers benefits the health of people, local/rural communities, and if the cows are grass-fed, as they should be for healthiest milk, the land itself, including the Chesapeake Bay, and will also help more farmers to stay on the land. It's an idea whose time has returned.
For More Information
Here are a couple of sites I'd recommend:
Campaign for Real Milk
Raw Milk Facts
"The Milk Papers" at Nina Planck's Website
Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association
There are plenty of sites and lots of so-called "experts" telling how "bad" raw milk is for consumers. These are a selection of sites providing the alternative view.
In a recent Marketplace essay entitled "Risk comes with consuming raw milk, products,” agricultural extension educator Mike Bell asserted that "raw milk can harbor dangerous microorganism that can pose serious health risks to you and your family."
Well, yes. That's true. It can. But -- and this is a big "but" -- there is a long way between "can" and "does." Mr. Bell states that according to the CDC, more than 800 people have gotten sick from consuming raw milk or raw milk cheese since 1998. I'm no math expert, but that calculates out to, on average, less than a hundred cases a year, nationwide.
Liz Reitzig, President of the Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, reports that "according to the CDC, there are 73 million cases a year of food borne illness, virtually all of which are from regulated, industrial, licensed food products." Of the relative handful in which raw milk is implicated, "most are from raw milk intended for pasteurization, not from a small farmer carefully preparing raw milk for direct consumption." Furthermore, she notes, "Pasteurized milk accounts for several hundred cases of food borne illness each year," again according to CDC figures.
Other assertions are similarly misleading. The question of the role of enzymes in digestion and health is far too complex to fit into a column, but suffice it to say that qualified experts have also challenged and, to my satisfaction, refuted Mr. Bell's assertion that our bodies don't use enzymes contained in food to assist our own metabolic process. It seems quite clear that our digestive system does indeed utilize food enzymes, when present, to spare our own and make digestion easier.
While it is true that pasteurization kills most (though not all) harmful bacteria that may be present, beneficial microorganisms, commonly known as probiotics, are also killed in the process. These would otherwise aid digestion and strengthen the immune system. And while some enzymes, and some beneficial microorganisms, may survive conventional pasteurization, none survive the increasingly common "ultra-pasteurization."
Also misleading were some of the statements in the box entitled "Myths, facts about pasteurization." For example: "Pasteurizing milk does not cause lactose intolerance and allergic reactions. Both raw milk and pasteurized milk can cause allergic reactions in people sensitive to milk proteins."
Of course pasteurizing milk doesn't cause lactose intolerance or allergic reactions. Rather, raw milk, which contains the lactase enzyme, is easier to digest for many, though not all, people who are otherwise lactose intolerant. Sensitivity to milk proteins -- casein -- is an entirely different issue than lactose intolerance, and should not be confused with it.
The assertion that "pasteurization does not reduce milk's nutritional value" is just that: an assertion, and a questionable one at that. Many nutritional experts far more knowledgeable than I have contested this assertion, among them Sally Fallon, President of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Ron Schmidt, ND, William Cambell Douglas Jr., MD, Thomas Cowan, MD, natural foods expert and writer Nina Planck, and nutritionist and author Joann S. Grohman. Do your own research, and draw your own conclusions.
Finally, regarding harmful bacteria. Milk simply cannot carry any pathogens that were not present in the cow, or else contaminated the milk after milking. That is why no pro-raw milk activist would ever suggest that pasteurization be abandoned, especially for large, commercial dairies and industrial milk-processing plants. All they are asking is that exceptions be made for small-scale farming operations to sell directly to a small clientele of local customers: face to face, neighbor to neighbor, where accountability is high.
So, can raw milk make you sick? Sure. It's possible. So can sushi. So can raw oysters. So can rare beef, or sunny-side-up eggs. So, for that matter, can raw spinach, or salad-bar lettuce. Pasteurized milk can, too. So what's the big deal about raw milk? If you really want to cover your assets, require a statement, such as appears on many restaurant menus regarding meat and seafood, to the effect of "Consuming raw milk or dairy products may increase your risk of food-borne illness," and then let people make their own choices. Sounds a lot like freedom, doesn't it?
Granting small farmers the opportunity to sell clean, fresh, unprocessed milk to local customers benefits the health of people, local/rural communities, and if the cows are grass-fed, as they should be for healthiest milk, the land itself, including the Chesapeake Bay, and will also help more farmers to stay on the land. It's an idea whose time has returned.
For More Information
Here are a couple of sites I'd recommend:
Campaign for Real Milk
Raw Milk Facts
"The Milk Papers" at Nina Planck's Website
Maryland Independent Consumers and Farmers Association
There are plenty of sites and lots of so-called "experts" telling how "bad" raw milk is for consumers. These are a selection of sites providing the alternative view.
Friday, March 23, 2007
A frog in troubling waters
It has been said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I agree with that assessment. A historical education allows one to detect patterns that are difficult or impossible to discern without that perspective. One of those is the effect of outside dangers and threats, real or imagined, on the development of government, and the transmutation of free societies into authoritarian ones.
This pattern can be detected as far back as ancient Sumeria, where the peaceful, pastoral rule of the archetypal shepherd-king, Dumuzi, gave way to the iron-fisted, brutal rule of the archetypal conqueror and law-giver, Gilgamesh. Similarly, outside threats led to the rise of the first kings in ancient Greece. Invasions or threats of invasions from the Celts, among others, brought ancient Rome from a Republic, to a Dictatorship, to an Empire, as a fearful people willingly agreed to their own subjugation by demagogues who claimed to be able to protect them.
In more recent years, trumped-up threats of attack by Communists and others led to the overthrow of the democratic Weimar Republic in Germany by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi henchmen. The pattern is clear: fear, whether justified or not, leads to autocracy and loss of freedom, freedom which is regained -- if at all -- only with great cost and difficulty.
In the United States, however, we have the example of Benjamin Franklin, widely credited with asserting that those who are willing to give up their freedom for a little security deserve neither freedom nor security. Other Founders expressed similar views. Is the United States in danger of becoming another Weimar Republic, rather than the free Republic of our Founders' vision? The signs are troubling.
A recent Justice Department audit recently revealed that the FBI systematically abused its powers to secretly obtain information on American citizens, ostensibly in the name of the war on terrorism. Eight federal prosecutors have been fired, apparently for resisting political pressure on their investigations. A new Homeland Security program called ADVISE will mine already collected data to gather still more information on U.S. citizens.
That's in addition to the sweeping provisions of the inaptly named USA Patriot Act, and various surveillance programs against American citizens, including electronic eavesdropping by the NSA. Some of these have supposedly been shut down or limited under Congressional oversight. But how limited? We don't really know. That information is secret. We're expected to trust the government, and accept their word on it.
Then there's the “Real ID” program, aimed at creating a de facto national identity card, beloved of all authoritarian states. "Papers, please!" used to be a cliche in old war movies. Now it may become a fact of our national life. Although not part of the current plan, modern technology would make it feasible to include a microchip allowing individual persons to be tracked by satellite.
Satellite tracking and GPS location are already part of the National Animal Identification System, which in the name of food security would effectively abolish private ownership of food animals, making all livestock part of a closely-monitored “national herd.” Recent E. coli scares have raised the spectre of similar federal control over vegetable production, too. And whoever controls the food, controls the populace.
More locally, there is the ever-growing number of red-light cameras, now reportedly to be joined by speed-enforcement cameras. Whatever happened to the old dictum that “only in a police state is the job of the police easy”?
For that matter, how often are books like Animal Farm, 1984, and Brave New World taught in schools, these days? I hope they are, but you don't hear too much about them. Most of what you hear is emphasis on math and science over history and the humanities, and standardized tests that emphasize recalling pieces of data over detailed analysis and thoughtful reflection. Hmmm, you don't suppose that's part of the pattern, too?
It is said that a frog who jumps into boiling water will immediately jump back out again, but a frog swimming in water which is gradually increasing in temperature will stay there until it is too late to avoid being cooked. I worry for our country, and the people of our country, lest we are becoming too much like that frog.
A recent Times editorial suggested that “a majority of Americans are opening their eyes and seeing how they have been duped.” I sincerely hope that's the case, and that we will, as that editorial suggested, “return to the day when America was truly the home of the free.” The alternative is deeply troubling.
This pattern can be detected as far back as ancient Sumeria, where the peaceful, pastoral rule of the archetypal shepherd-king, Dumuzi, gave way to the iron-fisted, brutal rule of the archetypal conqueror and law-giver, Gilgamesh. Similarly, outside threats led to the rise of the first kings in ancient Greece. Invasions or threats of invasions from the Celts, among others, brought ancient Rome from a Republic, to a Dictatorship, to an Empire, as a fearful people willingly agreed to their own subjugation by demagogues who claimed to be able to protect them.
In more recent years, trumped-up threats of attack by Communists and others led to the overthrow of the democratic Weimar Republic in Germany by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi henchmen. The pattern is clear: fear, whether justified or not, leads to autocracy and loss of freedom, freedom which is regained -- if at all -- only with great cost and difficulty.
In the United States, however, we have the example of Benjamin Franklin, widely credited with asserting that those who are willing to give up their freedom for a little security deserve neither freedom nor security. Other Founders expressed similar views. Is the United States in danger of becoming another Weimar Republic, rather than the free Republic of our Founders' vision? The signs are troubling.
A recent Justice Department audit recently revealed that the FBI systematically abused its powers to secretly obtain information on American citizens, ostensibly in the name of the war on terrorism. Eight federal prosecutors have been fired, apparently for resisting political pressure on their investigations. A new Homeland Security program called ADVISE will mine already collected data to gather still more information on U.S. citizens.
That's in addition to the sweeping provisions of the inaptly named USA Patriot Act, and various surveillance programs against American citizens, including electronic eavesdropping by the NSA. Some of these have supposedly been shut down or limited under Congressional oversight. But how limited? We don't really know. That information is secret. We're expected to trust the government, and accept their word on it.
Then there's the “Real ID” program, aimed at creating a de facto national identity card, beloved of all authoritarian states. "Papers, please!" used to be a cliche in old war movies. Now it may become a fact of our national life. Although not part of the current plan, modern technology would make it feasible to include a microchip allowing individual persons to be tracked by satellite.
Satellite tracking and GPS location are already part of the National Animal Identification System, which in the name of food security would effectively abolish private ownership of food animals, making all livestock part of a closely-monitored “national herd.” Recent E. coli scares have raised the spectre of similar federal control over vegetable production, too. And whoever controls the food, controls the populace.
More locally, there is the ever-growing number of red-light cameras, now reportedly to be joined by speed-enforcement cameras. Whatever happened to the old dictum that “only in a police state is the job of the police easy”?
For that matter, how often are books like Animal Farm, 1984, and Brave New World taught in schools, these days? I hope they are, but you don't hear too much about them. Most of what you hear is emphasis on math and science over history and the humanities, and standardized tests that emphasize recalling pieces of data over detailed analysis and thoughtful reflection. Hmmm, you don't suppose that's part of the pattern, too?
It is said that a frog who jumps into boiling water will immediately jump back out again, but a frog swimming in water which is gradually increasing in temperature will stay there until it is too late to avoid being cooked. I worry for our country, and the people of our country, lest we are becoming too much like that frog.
A recent Times editorial suggested that “a majority of Americans are opening their eyes and seeing how they have been duped.” I sincerely hope that's the case, and that we will, as that editorial suggested, “return to the day when America was truly the home of the free.” The alternative is deeply troubling.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Re: The Fall of Man and the Neolithic Revolution
My good friend "Roland," over at the Two Natures blog, posted a fascinating essay entitled, you guessed it, "The Fall of Man and the Neolithic Revolution." It is a very good piece, and I encourage you to read it before you read my own thoughts on the subject.
I was particularly interested to read this post, as I have been thinking along similar lines myself, for many years. Since at least my college days, in fact.
I actually had posited the (pre-)historical Fall to have occured earlier, when hominids first came down from the trees and began to walk upright, use tools, etc. -- when they first began to exhibit reflective thinking, in other words, rather than relying on instinct. But some non-human primates (chimps, for instance) and even some birds (crows, parrots) seem able to do some of those things. Does that mean that they, too, have the prospect of being "fallen"? That seems unlikely. And Roland makes a good case that it was when we stepped out of our proper "place" in nature, our natural role in the overall scheme of things, that we ran into trouble.
In any case, I have come to believe that creatures living in a state of nature -- that is, living in accordance with their natures, which is inherently also living in accordance with God's intention/will/plan -- are also living in a state of grace. And that included hominids/humans until, as Roland writes, we "left the garden," e.g., gave up living in "our place" in the natural scheme of things and began seriously manipulating Creation (and each other) for our own ends. That was clearly a "fall from grace," and "expulsion from the garden," as we began using/manipulating/destroying the garden (the earth/nature, or as some would have it, Gaia) to suit ourselves.
I think that is a major reason that earth/nature-based religions have never lost their appeal, although they have periodically been driven underground, and why (want to talk controversial!) I believe that Christianity, important as it is, does not and perhaps cannot serve as a complete answer to the spiritual longings of many (most?) humans. Although it contains within itself (mostly from the Old Testament, but there are also hints in certain of Paul's writings) the seeds of a viable theology of Creation, care for Creation, and dynamic, even ecstatic, union with the rest of (non-human) Creation, those seeds have never germinated in any meaningful way.
Christianity's importance, as I see it, is in addressing a) the problem of mortality, an issue in much (though not all) of the ancient world, and b) the problem of sin, also an issue for a number of the ancients, but especially for the Jewish people. And it accomplishes both through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Well and good, so far. But one of the reasons I think Christianity is losing ground in the contemporary world (aside from televangelists and others who present it as a caricature or parody of itself) is that neither of those issues -- for better or for worse -- is a major concern for most contemporary Americans, or Westerners in general, for that matter.
Many, if not most, of those in our generation, and those immediately preceding and following us, tend to accept some sort of continuation of life following the death of the physical body as a given. That may be "cultural capital" from Christianity, or it may be an intuited sense of "the way things are, or must be." In either case, immortality is not a major concern for most folks these days, and people who have been exposed to a plethora of cultures and religions since childhood also tend to look askance at the limited/limiting criteria for entering into that afterlife, according to Christianity.
Things which classical Christianity has viewed as sins -- especially sexual and other personal sins, such as individual greed ("whoever dies with the most toys, wins") -- are very clearly not viewed as sins by most people today (again, for better or for worse), and my own opinion is that Christians can talk about them till we're blue in the face, and we're not gonna convince anybody who's not already predisposed to be convinced.
[That doesn't mean they're irrelevant, by a long shot. Christianity is at its best when it is addressing the many ways we fall short, as individuals, of being the kind of person most of us, in our heart-of hearts, know we could and should be. As author Thomas Cahill cogently pointed out, in his book How the Irish Saved Civiliation, "Saint Paul trumps Plato." In other words, whereas Plato idealistically insisted that those who truly know the Good will seek to act accordingly, Paul more realistically lamented that "the good which I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do" (Romans 7:19, KJV).]
On the other hand, people are looking at things like global warming, pollution of the air and water on a massive scale, widespread species extinction, wars and the oppression of various peoples, corporate greed, and governmental corruption, and seeing that Christianity has little to say -- or little that it's been willing or able to say -- on those kinds of pressing issues, and are becoming understandably disillusioned. Christianity seems to be standing by and acquiescing -- and in some quarters (particularly evangelical protestant/fundamentalist quarters, although I know there are exceptions here), contributing moral support -- to the degradation and destruction of Creation.
I will never forget how appalled I was, and still am, at seeing a poster in my former church picturing the classic view of the Earth from space, with the legend, "Without Christ, it's just a vicious circle." That is, quite frankly, horse hockey -- it's simply not true, on several levels -- but it does an excellent job of encapsulating what is wrong with Christianity, in the minds of many Americans and other Westerners. I think there is an acute and growing sense that, in the words of the old song (was it by Crosby, Stills, and Nash?), "we've got to get ourselves back to the Garden." Otherwise, the human experiment itself might be doomed, and we're almost certain to take a lot of innocent species with us.
So, yes, I agree with Roland that the neolithic revolution -- for all its fascination, benefits, and promise -- undoubtedly was "'the event' that, more than any other, set mankind on a new trajectory that has led to alienation from God, our fellow creatures, and our own nature." The trick is figuring out how to overcome that alienation without a complete cultural, technological and societal collapse that returns a surviving remnant of humans, willy-nilly, to a hunter-gatherer mode of living! Christianity may be able to help in this process, but so far I have not seen a great deal of evidence that it is either willing or able to do so.
Insofar as the "job" of a religion or spiritual path is to give meaning, purpose, and direction to life, and to both express a proper relationship between God, humans, and their physical environment and to encourage/enable people to live into that relationship -- a not-unreasonable set of criteria, I would think -- Christianity has not failed to accomplish this end for contemporary humanity, but it is by-and-large failing, and will fail ever more catastrophically as environmental problems worsen, unless or until it is able to overcome its historical (and rather Gnostic) tendency to define humans as being both over and against the rest of Creation.
We may not want or be able to return to a hunter-gatherer mode of being (although that undoubtedly is the ideal, for humans -- the way of life which is most in keeping with our true natures), but unless we find some way to get "back to the Garden," in the sense of finding ways to live sustainably on this Earth, in communion with Nature and not in competition with her, and unless our spiritual paths assist and promote this transformation, we are probably more-or-less doomed.
As they say on the internet, "imho -- ymmv." *
* "in my humble opinion," "your mileage may vary."
----------
And as I added to another friend of mine, to whom I forwarded both pieces, Roland's and my own:
As far as attaining/maintaining our fullest humanness, I tend to believe that our "original," hunter-gatherer way of life was (and, where still possible, remains) the ideal. Agriculture is next in line, at least agriculture which is human-scaled and sustainable. Cities are pretty much on the other end of the spectrum. It's possible to be human in a city, it may even be possible to be fully human in a city (although I'm not totally convinced of that), but it requires an immense amount of effort, more often than not. Is it possible to reconstruct cities in more human/humane modes? Probably... but again, it's difficult, because you're fighting the very nature of the urban entity itself (see Dunbar's Number, a.k.a., the "Monkeysphere").As the ol' rocker once said, "what a long, strange trip it's been..."
Monday, March 19, 2007
Some thoughts on Christianity and Culture
I originally wrote the following post for an online forum I frequent; the thread was entitled "Faith, Fellowship, and this Forum." I launched that thread in response to comments from some of its members that the forum was becoming known as a conservative Christian forum, when that was not its intended purpose. The general tenor of the conversation that followed will be apparent from my post. I decided not to post this one on that thread, as I feared it would be too controversial, and throw gasoline on a fire which was beginning to die down... but because some of the points I raised are ones I think are important to raise, I wanted it to be posted somewhere. Well, gee! I have a blog. So here 'tis.
(Warning: this is a long post.)
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First off, I think that E___ and others have the right idea: we don't, or shouldn't, need to be walking on eggshells. I think we should all relax, practice -- as M___ said -- a bit of self-censorship (there were real advantages to the old "no talk about religion or politics in public" policy that used to be common in our society, but there are advantages to being more open about both, too), and most importantly, operate in a spirit of good-will, and assume that others are doing the same. We're all friends, here; there isn't any reason that I know to figure that anyone is acting out of anything but the best motives. Y'know?
That said, I have a couple of observations which I would like to share, also in the spirit of good will and friendliness. I hope that what I'm about to say won't offend anyone, but in case it does, please forget it, and forgive me.
First, I think that Christians in general, and conservative Christians in particular, do get the short end of the stick a lot of the time, in the public square, in the media, and in the news. The whole "Christmas - Holiday" thing is a particular sore point for me. I celebrate Christmas, and I get frustrated, not only at chirpy "Happy Holiday" greetings from cashiers (have you noticed that that's become the standard greeting, even for secular holidays like the Fourth of July? ... it's ridiculous, imho), but from trying to find a Christmas card that actually wishes somebody "Merry Christmas." Even ones featuring churches or other religious themes still often say "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays" inside.
If someone wants to wish me a happy Diwali, or Eid, I'll gladly smile and say "thank you," if not "the same to you!" Since I have a fair number of Pagan friends, I do get wished "Blessed Solstice," or whatever the case may be, on a fairly regular basis. I appreciate and return the sentiments. I just don't find it that big a deal. So why is it so much of a problem to wish someone "Merry Christmas," without giving offense, or be wished it, without taking offense? Well, there may be some reasons (see below), but in general I think it's a great deal of ado about really very little.
And Christmas trees are Christmas trees, thank you very much. If you don't celebrate Christmas, and want to call it a "Hannukah Bush" or whatever, that's fine, but the custom of having an evergreen tree in your house toward the end of December was a German custom imported into England and from thence to the U.S. during the Victorian era to celebrate... wait for it... Christmas. It may have Pagan connotations, extending back into the Mists of History, and that's fine, too. But it's a Christmas tree, darn it, not a generic "holiday" one. Again, in my (ever so) humble opinion!
The Ten Commandments are a more complex issue. I can see both sides in that argument, and I'm not going to pass judgement here.
To return to the subject of Christmas, though, I wrote a column last Christmas (not this just past one, but 2005) on the subject of "be careful what you ask for, you may get it." When I was growing up in the 1960s, 70s, and even early 80s, Christmas was largely secularized (as famously lampooned and lamented in Charles Schultz's wonderful classic, "A Charlie Brown Christmas"), but it was celebrated as Christmas.
Over the last twenty years or so, Christians -- largely conservative, evangelical Christians -- have run a massive campaign to "put Christ back in Christmas." I suspect that it is precisely to their success in doing so -- re-linking Christmas with Christ, in the popular imagination -- that we owe the "Happy Holiday-ization" of what was formerly the Christmas season. "Okay, they want Christ back in Christmas? Fair enough, we'll just replace Christmas with something more generic and secular."
That's an over-simplification, of course; there were and are undoubtedly other forces at work. But it does point to the fact that popular opinion, particularly but not exclusively the so-called "intellectual elite" that are represented in/by the governing and "talking classes," are mistrustful of a too-open or too-enthusiastic display of public religiosity.
I can empathize with this, frankly. For one thing, while we are indeed guaranteed "freedom of religion, not freedom from religion," as the saying goes, even within Christianity there is so much variation in doctrine and practice that it's hard to say what a "Christian nation" would look like, even if it were attainable. As an Anglican Christian, I have to say that I would be decidedly uncomfortable with, say, a Baptist theocracy (no offense to any Baptists on-board), simply because some elements of their doctrine and practice are quite different from some of mine.
Thus the wisdom of our American Founders in refusing to establish a religion, still less a denomination, for this country. I do not happen to believe there needs to be a "wall of separation between Church and State" (a private opinion of one of the Founders which does not appear in any public document of the Founding), but I do think there needs to be at least a semi-permeable membrane, to control and limit what passes from one to the other.
The intentions of our Founders aside, there are plenty of reasons why someone might mistrust or even dislike Christianity. One that I have wrestled with, at various times in my life, is the sometimes excessive zeal with which some Christians attempt to fulfill the Great Commission. Pushy anyone -- salesman or evangelist -- turns me off, personally. And if you link that to the frequent implication (if not flat-out statement) that if you are not "saved," by the would-be evangelist's definition (often including membership in his or her particular denomination or sect), you are thereby damned, you have a recipe for breeding a dislike not only of that proselytizer and his/her church, but Christianity as a whole. Guilt by association, as it were.
Then there is the question of what I like to call an honest agnosticism, which many of us have to a greater or lesser degree. I am no atheist, by any stretch of the imagination, but I do tend to agree with the words of one atheistic author, who recently wrote something to the effect that "religion is the only sphere of human discourse in which it's considered noble to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about." Insistence on belief -- particularly intellectual assent in a literalist way, rather than a more metaphorical or metaphysical understanding -- in things about which no human being could possibly be certain is a good way to turn off many folks with an intellectual frame of mind.
There is also another issue which has probably become more of an issue since 9/11, and that is the stated desire by some Christian conservatives to "restore" or "return" America to its identify as a Christian nation. That's the sort of thing that sounds good when you're saying it within your own faith community, or even when you look at it in historical terms... but whether it's a good idea, in practice, now, is an entirely different kettle of fish.
We are a vastly more heterogenous -- diverse -- people, religiously, culturally, and ethnically, now in 2007 than we were in 1907, and moreso then than in 1807. And the question I raised above returns: to what sort of Christianity are we to "return"? Anglican? Presbyterian? Methodist? Baptist? And which branch of those denominations, at that? Or maybe non-denominational? That would be an a-historical novelty, not a return.
So even if all were agreed that it was a good idea (as, in fact, all are not), there are a plethora of practical and theological difficulties in attaining that goal. I am not, personally, a blind supporter of multi-culturalism as an automatic and absolute good, but I am also cognizant of the fact that, even if we wanted to, a return to a (mostly) WASP culture and religion in the US is out of the question, practically speaking.
And even the idea of America as a "Christian nation" has resonances that seem sinister, for many people, in the age of radical Islamofascism. We are fighting the likes of the Taliban and al-Qaeda; we do not, by and large, want to become them, or a Christian mirror-image of them. But talk of returning to being a Christian nation, with traditional Christian morality, Christian values and ethics, and so on -- particularly when couched in terms like "God-fearing" or "godly living" -- sets many folks' teeth on edge. Translated into Arabic, those kinds of terms and expressions sound a lot like what comes out of Islamist websites.
I am not saying that conservative Christians are Taliban-like, or that a "Christian America" would look like Afghanistan, only without the burkhas. But the danger is there, and more importantly, the perception is there. I think if more conservative Christians could step back and look at how things like praying for mass conversions, or talking about restoring America to Christianity, look to people outside their own faith community, they would see that it can appear quite threatening, even if that is not their intention.
I guess in wrapping up I mean to say that while I believe it is an unfortunate truth, and not just a perception, that Christians (especially of the conservative variety) are often unfairly put upon, censored, etc., this situation does not arise in a vacuum, or simply out of a desire to be mean. I hate to say it, but sometimes conservative Christians' actions and attitudes, words and deeds, can provide ammunition to their foes... or even not necessarily foes, just people who have a broader view when it comes to issues of spirituality, morality, etc., than do those conservative Christians themselves.
And in saying all this, I am certainly not intending to be mean, or judgemental, or anything of the sort, myself! Just trying to provide some context for a situation which often seems to leave folks wondering "why?"
I love all my friends on this board, whatever their spiritual path, and I (along with my mother, while she was alive) have been the grateful recipient of prayers and positive thoughts from folks of a wide variety of faith traditions. I am deeply grateful for the prayers of my Christian friends who have been praying for Ma and me, but I am not less grateful for the prayers, thoughts, energy, etc., of my friends of other faiths. Many threads go into making a strong-but-beautiful tapestry.
And I suppose that, finally, is my message and my hope in writing this: that we will all come to understand each other better, and appreciate each other more. I think we on this board are further along that path than many folks, and I hope we can continue the journey together, all of us. If I have a hope and a dream and a wish for us here, it would be that we could not only talk and share together and with each other openly but non-judgementally, but that we could also pray with and for each other in ways that maintain the integrity of our own faith traditions, but also respect those of others.
In that way we could be even more what we are already: a microcosm and an example of the way the world could, and ought, to be.
(Warning: this is a long post.)
----------
First off, I think that E___ and others have the right idea: we don't, or shouldn't, need to be walking on eggshells. I think we should all relax, practice -- as M___ said -- a bit of self-censorship (there were real advantages to the old "no talk about religion or politics in public" policy that used to be common in our society, but there are advantages to being more open about both, too), and most importantly, operate in a spirit of good-will, and assume that others are doing the same. We're all friends, here; there isn't any reason that I know to figure that anyone is acting out of anything but the best motives. Y'know?
That said, I have a couple of observations which I would like to share, also in the spirit of good will and friendliness. I hope that what I'm about to say won't offend anyone, but in case it does, please forget it, and forgive me.
First, I think that Christians in general, and conservative Christians in particular, do get the short end of the stick a lot of the time, in the public square, in the media, and in the news. The whole "Christmas - Holiday" thing is a particular sore point for me. I celebrate Christmas, and I get frustrated, not only at chirpy "Happy Holiday" greetings from cashiers (have you noticed that that's become the standard greeting, even for secular holidays like the Fourth of July? ... it's ridiculous, imho), but from trying to find a Christmas card that actually wishes somebody "Merry Christmas." Even ones featuring churches or other religious themes still often say "Season's Greetings" or "Happy Holidays" inside.
If someone wants to wish me a happy Diwali, or Eid, I'll gladly smile and say "thank you," if not "the same to you!" Since I have a fair number of Pagan friends, I do get wished "Blessed Solstice," or whatever the case may be, on a fairly regular basis. I appreciate and return the sentiments. I just don't find it that big a deal. So why is it so much of a problem to wish someone "Merry Christmas," without giving offense, or be wished it, without taking offense? Well, there may be some reasons (see below), but in general I think it's a great deal of ado about really very little.
And Christmas trees are Christmas trees, thank you very much. If you don't celebrate Christmas, and want to call it a "Hannukah Bush" or whatever, that's fine, but the custom of having an evergreen tree in your house toward the end of December was a German custom imported into England and from thence to the U.S. during the Victorian era to celebrate... wait for it... Christmas. It may have Pagan connotations, extending back into the Mists of History, and that's fine, too. But it's a Christmas tree, darn it, not a generic "holiday" one. Again, in my (ever so) humble opinion!
The Ten Commandments are a more complex issue. I can see both sides in that argument, and I'm not going to pass judgement here.
To return to the subject of Christmas, though, I wrote a column last Christmas (not this just past one, but 2005) on the subject of "be careful what you ask for, you may get it." When I was growing up in the 1960s, 70s, and even early 80s, Christmas was largely secularized (as famously lampooned and lamented in Charles Schultz's wonderful classic, "A Charlie Brown Christmas"), but it was celebrated as Christmas.
Over the last twenty years or so, Christians -- largely conservative, evangelical Christians -- have run a massive campaign to "put Christ back in Christmas." I suspect that it is precisely to their success in doing so -- re-linking Christmas with Christ, in the popular imagination -- that we owe the "Happy Holiday-ization" of what was formerly the Christmas season. "Okay, they want Christ back in Christmas? Fair enough, we'll just replace Christmas with something more generic and secular."
That's an over-simplification, of course; there were and are undoubtedly other forces at work. But it does point to the fact that popular opinion, particularly but not exclusively the so-called "intellectual elite" that are represented in/by the governing and "talking classes," are mistrustful of a too-open or too-enthusiastic display of public religiosity.
I can empathize with this, frankly. For one thing, while we are indeed guaranteed "freedom of religion, not freedom from religion," as the saying goes, even within Christianity there is so much variation in doctrine and practice that it's hard to say what a "Christian nation" would look like, even if it were attainable. As an Anglican Christian, I have to say that I would be decidedly uncomfortable with, say, a Baptist theocracy (no offense to any Baptists on-board), simply because some elements of their doctrine and practice are quite different from some of mine.
Thus the wisdom of our American Founders in refusing to establish a religion, still less a denomination, for this country. I do not happen to believe there needs to be a "wall of separation between Church and State" (a private opinion of one of the Founders which does not appear in any public document of the Founding), but I do think there needs to be at least a semi-permeable membrane, to control and limit what passes from one to the other.
The intentions of our Founders aside, there are plenty of reasons why someone might mistrust or even dislike Christianity. One that I have wrestled with, at various times in my life, is the sometimes excessive zeal with which some Christians attempt to fulfill the Great Commission. Pushy anyone -- salesman or evangelist -- turns me off, personally. And if you link that to the frequent implication (if not flat-out statement) that if you are not "saved," by the would-be evangelist's definition (often including membership in his or her particular denomination or sect), you are thereby damned, you have a recipe for breeding a dislike not only of that proselytizer and his/her church, but Christianity as a whole. Guilt by association, as it were.
Then there is the question of what I like to call an honest agnosticism, which many of us have to a greater or lesser degree. I am no atheist, by any stretch of the imagination, but I do tend to agree with the words of one atheistic author, who recently wrote something to the effect that "religion is the only sphere of human discourse in which it's considered noble to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about." Insistence on belief -- particularly intellectual assent in a literalist way, rather than a more metaphorical or metaphysical understanding -- in things about which no human being could possibly be certain is a good way to turn off many folks with an intellectual frame of mind.
There is also another issue which has probably become more of an issue since 9/11, and that is the stated desire by some Christian conservatives to "restore" or "return" America to its identify as a Christian nation. That's the sort of thing that sounds good when you're saying it within your own faith community, or even when you look at it in historical terms... but whether it's a good idea, in practice, now, is an entirely different kettle of fish.
We are a vastly more heterogenous -- diverse -- people, religiously, culturally, and ethnically, now in 2007 than we were in 1907, and moreso then than in 1807. And the question I raised above returns: to what sort of Christianity are we to "return"? Anglican? Presbyterian? Methodist? Baptist? And which branch of those denominations, at that? Or maybe non-denominational? That would be an a-historical novelty, not a return.
So even if all were agreed that it was a good idea (as, in fact, all are not), there are a plethora of practical and theological difficulties in attaining that goal. I am not, personally, a blind supporter of multi-culturalism as an automatic and absolute good, but I am also cognizant of the fact that, even if we wanted to, a return to a (mostly) WASP culture and religion in the US is out of the question, practically speaking.
And even the idea of America as a "Christian nation" has resonances that seem sinister, for many people, in the age of radical Islamofascism. We are fighting the likes of the Taliban and al-Qaeda; we do not, by and large, want to become them, or a Christian mirror-image of them. But talk of returning to being a Christian nation, with traditional Christian morality, Christian values and ethics, and so on -- particularly when couched in terms like "God-fearing" or "godly living" -- sets many folks' teeth on edge. Translated into Arabic, those kinds of terms and expressions sound a lot like what comes out of Islamist websites.
I am not saying that conservative Christians are Taliban-like, or that a "Christian America" would look like Afghanistan, only without the burkhas. But the danger is there, and more importantly, the perception is there. I think if more conservative Christians could step back and look at how things like praying for mass conversions, or talking about restoring America to Christianity, look to people outside their own faith community, they would see that it can appear quite threatening, even if that is not their intention.
I guess in wrapping up I mean to say that while I believe it is an unfortunate truth, and not just a perception, that Christians (especially of the conservative variety) are often unfairly put upon, censored, etc., this situation does not arise in a vacuum, or simply out of a desire to be mean. I hate to say it, but sometimes conservative Christians' actions and attitudes, words and deeds, can provide ammunition to their foes... or even not necessarily foes, just people who have a broader view when it comes to issues of spirituality, morality, etc., than do those conservative Christians themselves.
And in saying all this, I am certainly not intending to be mean, or judgemental, or anything of the sort, myself! Just trying to provide some context for a situation which often seems to leave folks wondering "why?"
I love all my friends on this board, whatever their spiritual path, and I (along with my mother, while she was alive) have been the grateful recipient of prayers and positive thoughts from folks of a wide variety of faith traditions. I am deeply grateful for the prayers of my Christian friends who have been praying for Ma and me, but I am not less grateful for the prayers, thoughts, energy, etc., of my friends of other faiths. Many threads go into making a strong-but-beautiful tapestry.
And I suppose that, finally, is my message and my hope in writing this: that we will all come to understand each other better, and appreciate each other more. I think we on this board are further along that path than many folks, and I hope we can continue the journey together, all of us. If I have a hope and a dream and a wish for us here, it would be that we could not only talk and share together and with each other openly but non-judgementally, but that we could also pray with and for each other in ways that maintain the integrity of our own faith traditions, but also respect those of others.
In that way we could be even more what we are already: a microcosm and an example of the way the world could, and ought, to be.
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