363: Za’atar

At the closing of 2008 I hit the end of the alphabet for my food offerings. This post and the next were things I saved as indicative of my personality and tastes. I want to place them within this 2008 record of my life even though my mood isn’t the same as when I culled these images, ingredients and copy from the toobz. (A portion of this one was copied just to pass to my son, from Blue House Diaries blog a couple of years ago - prior to my interest in my own blog.) Today I feel real personal happiness while being wrapped in the wet blanket of shame for my country. Oh and you may have noticed the seething rage I feel for the murderous thugs who control the power in this Gov-xtian-corp run country. Some introduction for a post on spices, right?

Just to clarify, for anyone who hasn't ever had za’atar. It is a spice blend, like baharat (see below), but it's a whole different idea.

Like baharat, there is no fixed recipe. Each household adapts it to suit their own tastes. And, of course, you can buy ready-made packets at the store.

Unlike baharat, za’atar is eaten without being part of the cooking process; i.e., you dip a piece of bread into olive oil before scooping up the za'atar onto it. Za'atar can also be used as a topping for savory pastries (Manakesh bil Za'atar), and in that case is baked (or, fast way, mixed with olive oil, spread on flat bread, and broiled).

• 4 TB sesame seeds
• 4 TB thyme
• 1 TB sumac
• 2 TB marjoram
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 TB cinnamon
• 1 TB cumin
• 2 TB coriander
• 1 TB ground pistachios
• 1 TB ground almonds

Again, the recipe can be adapted to suit personal taste.

BAHARAT

• 4 parts black pepper
• 4 parts paprika
• 1 part nutmeg
• 1 part ginger
• 1 part cardamom
• 1 part coriander
• 1 part cassia (cinnamon)
• 1 part cumin
• 1 part cloves

So you could use 4tsp of black pepper, to 1tsp of cloves, or, 4 cups of black pepper to 1 cup of cloves.

I have not tried either. This is something I place on record so that I might try it some day. And, I feel a responsibility to share what I can about Lebanon with my son, since his father doesn't do too much of this (especially related to cooking). My mother-in-law made talamee (like this picture) every time she baked. To me, as an 18 year old Iowa girl with European ancestors and a white bread diet, it looked like she was throwing dirt on the bread. And, I remember my father-in-law, an old man when my husband was born, used to tease my ex about his beard. He told him his faced looked dirty and he nicknamed him za'atar talamee. My son likes these stories. He needs to hear the stories of family and the familiar especially because we live in a country that has painted the Arab, anyone from the Middle East as 'other' and 'them' of US v them.

Additional za'atar facts . . .

In Lebanon, there is a belief that this particular spice mixture makes the mind alert and the body strong. For this reason, children are encouraged to eat a za'atar sandwich for breakfast before an exam. The mixture is also popular in Turkey, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, Israel and North Africa. It is also popular within the Armenian diaspora where Middle Eastern Armenians live. It is used to spice meats and vegetables, and it is also mixed with olive oil to make a spread (za'atar-ul-zayt or zayt-tu-zaa'tar) which is used as a dip for sesame rings (ka'k). Palestinians consider za'atar as one of their staple foods. In Israel, za'atar is frequently sprinkled on hummus or served with olive oil as a spread. Za'atar can also be spread on a dough base for the Middle-Eastern equivalent of a miniature pizza, also known as the manakish. It can be sprinkled on labneh (yogurt that has been drained until it becomes a tangy, creamy cheese). It can also be preserved in oil, by mixing with salt and rolling into balls, or by drying in the sun.

Please forgive me for simply posting a recipe while Gaza is being wiped out by Israel as the US and the world stands by watching. I just can’t formulate my words, my rage. The US has backed every right wing dictator in the world since World War II, while overthrowing countless democracies. The Myths America I have discovered this last year have broken my heart. I cling to visions of people in the Middle East, in Palestine, free to enjoy their foods, their families and friends without warfare and genocide using US manufactured bombs and weaponry and the Gov-Xtianist-Corp’s tacit blessing.

From Michael Moore’s website:

'Regime Change'
"The goal of the operation is to topple Hamas."
– Haim Ramon, Israeli Vice Prime Minister

Israel Rejects Calls for Truce
"... there is no room for a ceasefire ... The
Israeli army must not stop the operation before
breaking the will of the Palestinians ..."
– Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit

Update: The world is not standing by - it is US Gov-xtian-corp that is.

Z361: Zealots Will Not Fade Away

This fall I read a perspective by Steve Weissman at t r u t h o u t that spoke to my own belief that right wing idealogues will tenaciously hang on – even if hidden from view - no matter what changes might appear to be coming in a new administration. Just as they have since the New Deal, these far right forces in commerce and religion merely go into the shadows or get buried under conventional seeming covers. Every single level of government from local townships to the think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and international organizations like the World Bank are, and will remain, saturated.

In 1964, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona ran for president as a rock-ribbed conservative who yearned to roll back both the Soviet Empire and FDR's New Deal. He carried only six states with 52 electoral votes, and Lyndon Johnson remained the commander-in-chief that an entire generation loved to hate. Yet, even after suffering a stunning defeat, the rabidly anti-New Deal Republicans, ultra-right-wing millionaires, evangelical Christian preachers, John Birchers and other extreme anti-communists who backed Barry Goldwater went on to build the modern conservative movement that propelled Ronald Reagan into the White House.

McCain was one of Goldwater’s protégés with the same kind of backers though the agenda was “updated to account for the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of Islamist jihadists, and unbelievable persistence of the neocons, who are now trying to sell us a new war on Iran.” He utterly failed the agenda and lost the election.

But, as in the 1960's, today's anti-New Deal Republicans, ultra-right wing billionaires, right-wing evangelical preachers, and neocon ideologues will not run off with their tails between their legs. They have no shame, not even after the endless embarrassment of the Bush presidency, Wall Street's worst crisis since the Great Depression, and colonial wars we can never win in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan.

The right-wing zealots will, in fact, ratchet up the clichéd mantras that led us into most of the current ca-ca. We all know the routine:

• Leave the free market free of government oversight and regulation.
• Privatize Social Security and government services.
• Pursue free trade with no protection for workers or the environment.
• Expand American control of the world's oil and natural gas, both to benefit Big Oil and as a political weapon to control the behavior of other nations, friend and foe.
• Talk of spreading democracy while propping up dictators.
• Give the Pentagon a budget every year the size of the hopefully one-time Wall Street bailout.
• Leave the military as the heart and soul of our response to militant Islam.
• Continually break down our constitutionally-mandated separation between government and militant Christianity.

This last point is the most recent point of real concern for me. It is easy to see how this played out in the campaign with John McCain and Sarah Palin ratcheting up the xtianist hate. But, when Barack Obama selected bigoted Rick Warren for his inaugural invocation, something died within millions of us. The haters would make that selection, not our guy. Obama had handed us carloads of hope during the campaign.

Steve Weismann . . .

How, then, do the rest of us have any chance to make real the hope that Obama has inspired? I wish I had an easy answer, but reality is far too nuanced.

In terms of policy, the old certainties make no sense. The free market never would have created the Internet. Government did that, ironically enough, through the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency. But government never would have turned the Internet into the liberating force it has become. Independent capitalists and free-lance bloggers did that, though many on the business side are now trying to restrict the promise of "the freedom monster" they helped to create.

Government regulation is a similarly mixed bag. Wise regulations could have prevented the crap-shoot capitalism that is now bringing down the world's financial system. Stupid regulations, by contrast, long preserved monopolistic control of global telecommunications. In much the same way, balanced budgets sometimes make sense, and other times - like now - deeper deficits seem a far better way to go.

From passing future appropriations to creating a new regulatory framework, the devil we face will be in the details, which right-wing zealots and the vested interests they serve have learned to manipulate with earmarks and loopholes. Progressive public interest groups have also learned to play the game, but we badly need tighter regulation of lobbyists and the threat of criminal penalties to enforce absolute transparency.

And here is where my own thought for 2009 coincides with this perspective. My theme for the new year is 2009: Let the Sun Shine. Sunshine in the political sense is transparency. Our only hope is to shine very bright lights on these uncivil, greedy, racist or otherwise corrupt schemes and plans. Exposure to bright light makes the cockroaches scurry. Rats hide from the light of day. Sunshine heals infection and disease.

I found the following website. The Sunlight Foundation

Our work is committed to helping citizens, bloggers and journalists be their own best congressional watchdogs, by improving access to existing information and digitizing new information, and by creating new tools and Web sites to enable all of us to collaborate in fostering greater transparency. Since our founding in the spring of 2006, we have assembled and funded an array of web-based databases and tools including OpenCongress.org, Congresspedia.org, FedSpending.org, OpenSecrets.org, EarmarkWatch.org and LOUISdb.org. These sites make millions of bits of information available online about the members of Congress, their staff, legislation, federal spending and lobbyists.

I plan on visiting these each and every week.
This opens an incredible world of information on what our elected officials are up to in Washington. Explore and find the areas most important to you.

I also hope to meet with a local politico soon to find out how I might better utilize the resources available to me to watchdog my own city hall. I asked the question during the last election about how to look up voting records and I got no answers. This will require follow-up on my part.

And I am going to continue to write about what I learn. Besides writing in this blog, I have my little mobile home park newsletter and I want to start a blog or website of some kind for all of the other mobile home parks in my community. Low income populations are the most vulnerable and most patronized. The council members point at us and make democratic noises, but it is empty nonsense most often. In a wealthy, white community we are tokens for funding. I’d like to learn more about being an advocate for this population.

Again, let the sun shine. In this case it is a kind of message to myself to get out of my home and into the sunshine to meet and greet other people in other parks. And, I may again apply for a recently opened seat on the city council’s environmental committee. So, local and national is where I’d like to see transparency, see the sun shine.

Those who practice politics in the footsteps of Lenin, Goebbels or Karl Rove will, no doubt, find all this naive, undisciplined and even wacky. But what can I tell you? The approach I suggest is more in the spirit of what my generation of activists called participatory democracy. Now turbo-charged by the Internet, it is the best way I know to build the kind of free-wheeling progressive movement that will have the punch to keep today's hope alive.

Freedom is contagious. Try it, you'll like it.

A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.

X353: Xpose, Xterminate, Xpunge

Tristero at Hullabaloo or Digby’s . . .

The damage Bush, et al, has done to what I remember America was like is more than incalculable: it simply defies one's imagination in its breathtaking, and utterly catastrophic, comprehensiveness. Think of all the awful judges he's appointed, and all the incompetent ideologues and religious fanatics now in the permanent government. Think of our standing in the world, which will continue to have enormous impact on our economy. Think of...well, you get the picture. [ . . .]

The future for this country is not a yellow brick road strewn with roses, the failure of the Bush revolution behind us. Rather we are in a quagmire, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but politically, legally, and culturally. It will take a tremendous effort to get out of the ditch Bush (and Bush I, and Reagan, and Nixon) dug for us. It can be done, I think.

A comment I found compelling and something I have said. Bu$h isn’t incompetent. He is successful by his own standards.

It seems to me that Bush's true goals :

• establish a secure moneyed aristocracy in the US
• establish the principle that the President and his designates are above the law
• establish a military beachhead in the Middle East
• kill Sadaam Hussein
• massively enrich the owners of the energy industries
• destroy effective regulation of corporations in the US

have all been achieved, and that from Mr. Bush's perspective, this might look like success.

Sadly, the above list didn’t even touch the singlemindedness with which this admistration’s Gov-Corp has worked to destroy the environment and planetary climate stability. As Steve M. remarked on No More Mr. Nice Blog:

"... these have been great years for George W. Bush,
because he feels he's doing vitally important things,
he feels all kinds of people hate the way he's doing those things --
and he just loves both those feelings.

... Bush's bliss doesn't manifest itself in glee but, rather,
in smugness and defiance -- in looking down at his enemies
and thinking, "I won. You lost." His victory, of course,
is permanent war -- he's a Really Important Person now
and nobody can take that away from him."

joel hanes

What I long for the systematic removal of all this evil brought by this murderous reign. I look to the Grassroots, Netroots though mostly in vain. My fervent wish is that the X-generation finds its progressive will. I will be long dead, but maybe as underlings this generation will unlearn and expose the myths and place a foot in the right direction. It is time to begin . . .

e-xpunge = remove, take out, edit, cut out, excise Think of all of the signing statements, the rules, the regressive legislation

e-xterminate = eliminate, decimate, annihilate, destroy, eradicate, take out, wipe out

• Courts, and Justice system, then Gov’t staff positions at all levels
• Ideologues, Federalists, and religious fanatics in Local, State and National Government (Think ‘Faith-Based’)
• Right Wing Think Tanks
• Gov-Corp Lobbyists
• Neocon Educators
• Crony Network of CEO’s, Boards
• Religionists in Military (Air Force Academy, Air Force in particular)
• Aryan Brotherhood in Military (Air Force Academy, Air Force in particular)

Tangentially, I want to address the fact that with this week’s letter ‘X’ titles I took liberties by eliminating the 'E'. But, according to Wikipedia ‘E’ is overused. Well, that is sort of what is said.

The letter 'E' is the most common (or highest frequency) letter in the English language

The symbol for e in sign language is a closed hand, the fingers curled into the thumb.

Coincindently, this fingers gripping thumb is a ‘tell’ for katecontinued. Yes, I am gripping those ‘E’ signs every day. It is a tip off that I am stressed. This long agony of the Bu$h administration and the clear signs that the Obama administration, the Congress and my local government is essentially more of the same . . .

I am not proud of the fact that my fist is a kind of crumbling in on myself. This is the flight or fight with me flying. What I am working towards envisioning instead is a fist raised in the air. If I can't be standing there, let me at least support those who are.

In eight years I can only remember teeny, tiny examples of standing up to Chimpy McStagger, the puppet figurehead of neocon and corporate power. Only this first one out of these three was an American. Harry Taylor in North Carolina:

“‘I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration,’ Taylor said, standing in a balcony seat and looking down at Bush on stage. ‘And I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and grace to be ashamed of yourself.’”

Or Carole Coleman, the candid Irish journalist who pressed Chimpy and he got pissy and the White House laid bare to her the propoganda role in this administration. She said later:

Clearly the White House had thought they would be dealing with an Irish "cailin" bowled over by the opportunity to interview the Bushes
...
Had I been fair? Should I just have been more deferential to George Bush? I felt that I had simply done my job and shuddered at the thought of the backlash I would surely have faced in Ireland had I not challenged the president on matters that had changed the way America was viewed around the world.

And finally, the shoes thrown at the dog Bu$h.

Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush and shouted, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”

Three tiny examples in eight years! The corporate media, congressional leadership and the white house all worked to diminish these tiny instances of outrage and exposure into trivial baubles. Yammer, yammer, yammer, giggle and it spins away. Nothing stands in the way of Gov-Corp, commerce and power.

One device used is to say over and over for years now, it isn't the time to speak out to act. We are waiting for the Inauguration. The nation is in a holding pattern . . . But, doesn’t it seem we are always being lulled in to waiting for the Next Big Scheduled Event TM?

I am coming to realize it isn’t going to happen in my lifetime. Justice will not be served and these criminals will not pay. It is taking a toll on my belief in hope and change and sustainability. I look to the rest of the world – especially the south - to lead where the empire of the states has failed and fouled.

It is fitting that just before the longest night of the year that I voice my darkest thoughts.

S316: Swords to Ploughshares

Swords to ploughshares is a concept in which military weapons or technologies are converted for peaceful civilian applications.

This year I simply can’t romanticize Veteran’s Day. That millions upon millions of people die because civilization doesn’t get a hold of itself and work things out? Or worse yet, what we are experiencing now. War as a profit center. The largest group of victims is not the soldier group, though there is no denying that tragic count. No, the larger toll is the women and children group. Where is their day of honor?

I am thinking almost constantly now about the people of war. Wars that comprise the manufactured Myths America ware series, War on TerrorTM and War on CrimeTM and War on DrugsTM are three of the current epic FAIL in terms of even grappling with terror, crime or drugs – yet alone eliminating. In fact all have increased exponentially with the billions of dollars wasted in ‘fighting.’ All represent enslaving our underclass in the US.

Consumer choice (the real term for Democracy) means a McJob versus selling drugs to make a living. Or it means McJob versus joining the military to make a living. This is what the disenfranchised get for options. And women directly get even fewer options, but women as victims of war – all war - is at the heart of my essay. Women and children suffer most from this desperate situation caused by the political Wars that have been manufactured by those in power. The writing here is directed about men, especially young men of color and financially challenged of any race.

Update 11/25 by Shaker Ginmar speaks directly to stories of women as victims of violence with harrowing facts. She has first hand experience that is invaluable for uncovering this violence.

In reading Van Jones I keep thinking of the prisons the young population is sucked into with the lack public good or common cause this country has suffered under the neo-conservative administrations of the last thirty years. Their efforts to destroy public services have been successful in shunting the poor, the people of color into prisons and the military.

The incarceration industry is the new Jim Crow; you don’t have to call him the “N word” if you just call him a felon. There are the same amount of drug problems in the ‘burbs that there are in the inner city, but in the ‘burbs the white kids get counseling, they don’t go to prison.

One of those white boys just held the office pResident and I suspect with his father and mother, even the counseling was skipped.

The current economic strategy is to take poor black kids, put them in jail in rural areas, and give poor white kids jobs as guards in that prison. That is the economic strategy. Rural towns can’t compete with industry, farms are all going away, so prison is an economic boon for rural communities.

Vets and non-violent felons are a potentially dangerous, raging category of people. Prison guards are one of the only things they are trained to do. They have been wronged in our public sphere, often abused in their parent’s homes and taught the wrong things in prison and the military. Violence is the credo and prisons are a profit center for the few at the top. Especially with the utter disregard our current system shows for anyone’s well being. Plus, military standards for recruitment are now allowing candidates with records, with mental and emotional problems into the military. Lack of veteran services and the employment nightmares faced by vets and felons are raising levels of frustration at each passing week.

And, women will be the primary target for this untreated rage and cruelty. These men were taught to be killers. Lets not candy coat the reality in Myths America homilies to patriotism and reformation. Essentially, the worlds these men inhabit have glorified all that is the antithesis to life, respect, sustainability and health.

Now just what do we think might come from training and attitudes like this? Oh yes, throw in the not so bright authoritarian Theocrat and pump up the threat to civilized coexistence. Hate is at the forefront of every single action they take on in their sorry hysterics. Jesus has been branded by these haters and it is more myth making to consider them followers of those teachings of love and giving.

I started thinking of an alternative to all of this myth making when I read about a northern California Dairy using recovering alcoholics as farm labor.

I grew up in Iowa and even 45 years ago I worked in corporate corn fields. Khrushchev visited the fields I would one day work in detassling corn.

The parade of foreign policy usually skipped rural Iowa, but on September 23, 1959, the eyes of the nation focused on Coon Rapids. Invited guests, curious onlookers, anxious reporters and photographers surrounded Roswell and Elizabeth Garst's white, wooden farmhouse. More than 700 National Guardsmen lined the highway between Des Moines and Garst's farm awaiting the official motorcade. Soviet Premier Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was touring the heart of the Midwest cornbelt to see for himself why "agriculture, America's biggest success, [was] communism's biggest failure."

Khrushchev explored capitalist agricultural practices hoping to adapt them to Russian kolkhozes. His encounters with Iowa farmer Roswell Garst opened dialog between the world's superpowers. Khrushchev believed that "an exchange of opinions would help the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. come to understand each other better and show greater pliancy in settling controversial matters." Roswell Garst agreed. "You know," Garst told Khrushchev, "we two farmers could settle the problems of the world faster than diplomats."

I am liking what Garst stated now. I was steeped in the myths of US success in agriculture. But, come to think of it, I am not sure the farmers were growing much real food. Agriculture meant corn and soybeans, neither grown for our tables. Gardens were not that common either. In fact I remember it was really low on the school social hierarchy to be a farm kid and I don’t remember my father, an optometrist, treating farmers as equal to the professional class. Disappointing to think of now, knowing his father was a coal miner in Kentucky. I am not the only one raised within a culture of hypocrisy, racism and entitlement. Gah.

We now have a chance to elevate all working class labor in the fields as well as the green jobs described by Van Jones. His plans are a closely related thought . . . raising the value and prestige of farm labor is akin to raising the prestige of green jobs like electrical workers, solar and wind technicians and the legions of other sustainable workers. All should be honored for the vital work that it is. Far more than a living wage is owed these people doing the real work of transforming our communities into a more resilient and sustainable places to live.
Soldiers, Marines – protecting and defending the security of our food sources. Instead of the bulldozing orchards of innocent families.

US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.
The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.

Call it reparation for the soul. Rather than killing to guarantee drilling for oil, how about keeping the soil free of invasive GM seeds, pesticides and other man-made threats? It is the most vital battle we should be waging, keeping the corporate predators out of our food and water supplies. And the solution to climate change and global warming can be found in part by farming organically, using such methods as "no-till" and the planting of winter cover crops, absorbs and holds up to 30% more carbon than conventional agriculture. Besides providing food in areas all across this country, it is converting all US farmland to organic would reduce CO2 emissions by 10%.

And the drug offenders, soldiers suffering PTSD, single mothers struggling to support children and others in distress need healing, nurture and support. There are millions of opportunities in growing food, raising animals, green collar jobs – farmers and workers earning a living wage with dignity. Working need not be an unhealthy thing. To work in the earth, to grow things, to tend to animals, to gather food, to provide energy is a healthy thing. People long for dignity, purpose and meaning. In the midst of economic crisis it is honorable to be a provider. In the midst of ecological disasters it is profoundly gratifying to be steward of precious resources.

What’s not to like? There are millions of damaged citizens needing the best care and support we can muster as a people. Besides guaranteeing universal health care for free, plus food, water and shelter; we owe people a chance to pursue happiness. I believe that is what is meant here.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

After discussing a preference for a hybrid version of centralized and decentralized – capitalist and socialist governance, Sharon of Casubon's Book makes this point in her conclusion of the Post Equity, Equity, Equity.

The really good news is that dealing with equity isn’t a one directional loss - it isn’t that if Americans start living a more equitable life they simply lower their standard of living. They raise our access to power, to self-sufficiency and the confidence in engenders. Greater equity gives us institutions on a scale we can comprehend and a richness in connection to the world around us. It is truly a little bit about using less - but even more about being richer..

Four Acres and Some Fuel? BTW, the ‘forty acres and a mule’ that was supposedly promised by the government for freed slaves is another myth. Read the whole story. TRANSPARENT: MYTH #2: `Forty Acres And A Mule'

It may not be forty acres and a mule, but it will be about some soil and healing teh cruel.

Besides Van Jones . . .
Homegrown is a movie being released now in selected theaters telling of the Path to Freedom urban homesteading.
A Nation of Farmers is a Sharon Astyk book coming out next spring.
Eat the Lawn is a video and challenge to the White House, where the Kitchen Gardener is selling the white House Lawn on eBay
Transition Towns are well under way in Britain and they are a model of a different way of living practiced by those well ahead of US communities.

This just in . . . Barack Obama incorporated Michael Pollen’s Sun Agriculture into his final days of campaigning.

There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy. I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.

Hopefully he can also connect the dots and refute what he has been claiming about clean coal and other misinformation. We can help him see the error. All of these things inspire within me the concept of making us whole again.

Obama picture
Young farmers picture
Green Collar Jobs banner
I would like to credit the startling lead photo if anyone can help.

Update: A Century of US Military Interventions here and here. I would say that it is also mythmaking to identify ourselves as a peaceful nation spreading freedom.

R310: Rugged Individualism

An article in the Utne Reader from the early 90’s has stayed with me and may well be one of the first Myths America I started seeing as utterly false. That is, the myth of the rugged individual in America is manufactured propaganda. I am more than thrilled that the maver-icky team lost utterly in the election and that the party of fuck you, I’ve got mine is on the skids. It isn’t surprising that the swaggering bravado of Neocon boys has engendered a whole spate of this genre like the lone survivor television programs, with one guy whining throughout about how hard it all is and the other one continually drinking his pee and other gag-worthy strategies.

Having said all that, I need to point out to myself the ethnocentric pattern of mine to continually use America when I refer to the United States while ignoring all the other countries in the Americas. I noticed this after first realizing the post below is filled with this very same indulgence.

We stand at the brink of a great possibility for surviving the social and planetary degradation and community is at the heart and soul of it all. I thought it time to resurrect this essay to be reminded of the fictional United States, fictional leaders, fictional character traits.

We Americans are proud of our "rugged individualism." The right of the individual to "do his own thing," free from state control and the interference of busybodies, is often cited as the chief difference between us and other nations. Rugged individualism is our sacred, mythic frontier heritage, handed down from the good old days when a man was a man, standin' alone against the wilderness, tamin' a savage land with just his iron will and a trusty six-shooter.

Hogwash. Anyone who has so much as flown over what American wilderness remains knows that any damn fool wandering out there with just his iron will and a pistol would soon be turned into a buzzard burger. This is one reason Americans went West in wagon trains. If a fellow traveler's wagon got washed down the Big Muddy, you were expected to help out--and he did the same for you. And, when—and if --you got where you were going, neighbors came from miles around to help you raise the barn, round up the strays, and chase away or butcher the original, darker-skinned owners of the property. Only if you were truly unlucky did you encounter any real Wild West loners, typically sociopathic killers like Billy the Kid, soon to become a hero to millions of Americans.

"Community," not the lone gunslinger, is what really "tamed" the Wild West--and a sense of national community is what we currently need to revitalize our country, to tame the "Wild West" of the future: that thicket of nuclear weapons, those tangles of foreign economic competition, that desert of environmental collapse, the savage wasteland of our growing Underclass.

But all the fables about the heroic loner provide an ideal and irresistible rationalization for greed. "Pioneering loner" today translates into rapacious corporations and institutions hungry to devour anything, from each other to you and me to the whole planet. Our "loner" now has not only an iron will, but iron bulldozers, chainsaws and oil-drilling platforms. Our "loner," now invariably in the company of a troop of lawyers and lobbyists, can boggle up whole city neighborhoods, acquire great enterprises in "hostile takeovers," raid the banking and health care system, pollute the countryside, belly up to a prime feeding spot at the Pentagon trough, and generally sacrifice the national interest--all under the banner of "rugged individualism."

Of course, when rugged individualism gets "too rugged" for those who oppose abortion, unorthodox sexual preferences, the right to privacy, the smoking of certain weeds or the viewing of certain portions of the human anatomy, the myth conveniently explodes, the front door comes busting open and in comes the ham-fisted power of the state. Clearly, and as ever, the limits of "rugged individualism" depend on which individual you happen to be.

When it gets down to the manly art of settling an argument "loner" style, the Western archetype gets even less respect from those who tend to blow hardest in favor of rugged individualism. Modern day gang bangers trying to settle the Wild West of America's drug frontier are just as iron-willed as Billy the Kid. In terms of fire-power alone, their Uzis and Kalashnikovs make Billy look like the creation of some dime novelist (which, of course, he was). But do these guys get any respect, let alone the hero treatment? No. It's police harassment for these rugged individualists. They may even be sent to jail and forced to watch the 43rd remake of "Billy the Kid" on TV.

Our interdependent American heritage, the community-minded legacy which truly enabled us to settle the West, survive the Depression, beat fascism and extend civil rights to the oppressed is exactly what's required to survive and prosper in the increasingly interdependent national and global community. But I guess "community" sounds too much like "communism" to some folks.

In many essential respects, individualism is Americanism. Still, in an era of accelerated change, living cheek-by-jowl with one another and a host of challenges that increasingly call upon us to function as a family, let's quit selectively elevating "rugged individual" to the status of automatic hero on the basis of foolish fancy and fiscal convenience. Let's face it: some of us are just plain selfish -

- or sick: it's instructive to note that, even as we continue to thrill to this "loner" crap doled out from Hollywood to Washington, the first characterization invariably made of every Lee Harvey Oswald, James Earl Ray or John Hinckley is

"Yup, I guess you could say he was a loner."

Enough is enough. Sociopathic Cowboy Clusterfuck Bu$h is out in 70 some days. Rugged individual is just a romanticized term for selfish and it is not something to be proud of being. Let us begin to spell this out to ourselves, our families and our friends. Bring this up in conversation. Barack Obama has proven that being a Community Organizer is a powerful thing.

I have already signed up to November5.org where Ralph Nader has turned his grassroots organization over to all progressive groups to use to take the issues to the 535 men and women of Congress. It will be based on congressional districts. This is a good thing to help us have a stronger voice than big money. We have votes, they don’t. This is a non-partisan movement that starts right now. (I am sorry Nader didn’t do this four years ago, but oh well.)

Last night my first Nov. 5 action was to attend a special City Council special group session on low income mobile home rental assistance program planning. This was my first step in understanding the 4 funding sources the City has for asssistance and the half dozen different avenues of support intended for this group. I am becoming an advocate and this is my tentative beginning. This next year of blogging about sustainability will morph somewhat into this particular direction.

Original article by Travis Charbeneau appeared as "Ragged Individualism," In These Times, 11/13-19/91:
Utne Reader: May/June 1992
selected for the Utne Reader Almanac, October, 1996.

O283: Outrageous Holiday

Today is a federal holiday and Columbus discovering America is a myth. This is yet another one of Myths America that needs to be opened wide to the light of day . . . Columbus was no hero and no little jingle will make him one.

But let's set the historical record straight.

Hundreds of thousands of indigenous Taino Indians were raped, murdered, and forced into brutal slavery as a result of Columbus' conquest. Much of the Taino population fell to new diseases such as smallpox. Extinction is all that remains of the Taino today.

Those who like to honor Columbus would have us believe that bringing up the darker side of the explorer is an attempt to blow the man's memory off course.

But these facts of genocide and land theft are not part of a revisionist, false history. In his own words spelled, out in his personal diary, Columbus acknowledged his scheme to subjugate the Taino Indians: "I could conquer the whole of them with 50 men, and govern them as I pleased."

Columbus' men rounded up 1,500 people and selected 500 as slaves to be shipped off to Spain. Two hundred died en route. This did not deter Columbus, who, according to historian Howard Zinn, later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

[Emphasis mine, please note xtianity.]

Say it out loud to anyone who tries to say otherwise.

Image

N280: Nationalistic White Privilege

More Myths America Busted . . .



I thought this was timely given the rethuglikkkan candidates' campaign of inciting racists and bigots.

L262: Lenders Be Damned

This week I will be talking about love, community and light. But there is an urgency this morning to say a simple thing. Contact Congress.

This is well and truly the Shock Doctrine as Naomi Klein described it in her book by the same name. The federal bail out of the banks is how the financial sector will be given vastly more unregulated power than it already has. I guess there is no limit to greed.

Call your Congress Critters today to nix the blank check to the Treasury.

• Contact your Senator here.
• Contact your Representative here.

At least we can go through the pretense of a democracy or at least jam up the phone lines and the toobz. The banks reaped profits, they need to take the risks.

Update: Here is another way to fight. Sign this petition to Harry Reid.

I am not going to write about it because it will raise my blood pressure and it has been covered well in almost every blog I visit. I am so fed up I will make too simplistic an argument out of pure frustration. Here are just a few if you have been away from the news (a good place to be).

Shakesville

Casaubon's Book

Common Dreams

Little Blog in the Big Woods

Another update: Anger is vital as an emotion. It is as vital as any other. What we need to be careful about is how and where we weild it. Don't be ugly to the people who answer the phone, but you can let them know how angry you are at what is happening.

D210: Defaults need to be calibrated

Last week I cited a bunch of sources and wrote about coping and alienation. This week I am taking on despair and don't forget decadence last Wednesday. Seriously though, I am formulating my own notion of how Americans will need to make some incredible adjustments to what has been promoted as quality of life and standard of living. You know, what is our due, our target? I think the first response will bring despair.

This despair topic was something I touched upon at the start with my first of the year post on Anguish and Anger.

Bruce Levine, in his book Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic writes:
Depression is highly associated with the experience of hopelessness and helplessness, and politics is all about power. In genuine democracy, people don’t merely get to vote but instead they have a real sense that they actually have an impact on their society. When you are voting, year after year, for the lesser-of-two-evils, neither of whom you support and both of whom are in the pocket of corporations and wealthy individuals, you don’t experience any real political power. Politics is all about power, and depression is largely about powerlessness.

I believe this is the first recalibration required, our expectation that we have a voice in politics. The more wonkish amongst us have watched this train wreck of an administration and hapless congress for eight years. It is now clear to most of us, even slow learners like myself, the people are not in charge. We are owned and so are the politicians. This particular Myth America is depressing.

Now I want to lay out a different Myth America, the one about entitlement. This indictment of our cultural behavior is said with a kind of snarl by Jason Miller at Thomas Paine Corner.

Collectively, we act without conscience or concern for the consequences of our actions. The American Way of Life is “all about me and to hell with everyone else.” We revere narcissism, hyper-individualism, greed, wealth, and status as virtues. Becoming a rich, acquisitive careerist by clawing one’s way to the top of the hierarchy through deceit, betrayal, sycophancy, and whoring oneself out in any way imaginable is enshrined as the penultimate achievement in our sewer of a society.

Last month I gleaned some insight from Beth at Fake Plastic Fish.

Not my most articulate moment, but sincere. My feeling at the time was that if I allowed myself to become overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem, I'd just curl up under the covers and do nothing but drink and eat bon bons. Shortly afterwards I received an email from No Impact Man reader, Brian Morton, who begged to differ with me. He actually sent me a very long essay explaining why despair is valuable and why we should all allow ourselves to feel our despair fully and completely. Here's the last paragraph of his essay. I'd love to know what you think.
A time of black despair is coming, and if you feel like you are drowning in despair be comforted. Despair is a GOOD thing, when it functions properly. Swim in your despair, master it, use it for what it is good for. Use your despair to let go, and set new humbler goals. You are less rich, and less powerful than you think you are, than you are used to being. But you are not without any wealth; you are not without any power. Each breath is riches; each moment is wealth; each choice is power. All work is using our power. Do what work you can, plan, set new goals, and do what good you can. Despair, but do not drown in it, despair to clear a place for humbler goals. Your despair is in reality a valuable friend, helping you to re-prioritize your life, even when doing so is painful and difficult. Despair hurts, but it is a virtue in disguise. The pain of despair is the pain of healing, and adapting to humbler circumstances. All Americans will soon become acquainted with despair. Be assured, despair is a gloomy ally, but it is not in the end your enemy.

Right off the bat I have two strong statements. First, I am leery of this approach because it smacks of the xtian versions of sit down and STFU. Secondly, there are people who need to be monitored by a physician and take medication for depression or a bipolar condition, to name two. I have no quarrel with someone securing this kind of assistance. Everyone must know themselves as first order of business.

Yet, I will not argue at all with the premise that a shitstorm in coming in my lifetime. It is better to know it and use it – to master it. It is more like living with realities rather than pixie dust and angels.

My point is that in the cultural sense we citizens of the world need not fear feeling despair or depression or anger. Feelings are what they are. And we are foolish to believe that life is not fraught with pain and anguish and loss as much as it is filled with heart pounding joy and exaltation. It is the boundaries of these, the cultural defaults or our expectations of and for these emotions that require readjustment. Speaking for myself, I welcome the idea of recognizing realities even if it means lowering the damn bar.

That being said, the whole notion of putting our energies towards the things that matter over perpetual outrage or fear seems less crippling, less depressing. I am talking to myself here. I don’t think I am saying run away from the imploding political system altogether, as I feel there should be accountability, repercussions and someone to lock the treasury door. Some of what we do in building a sustainable life needs to grapple with the fetid mess and atrocities created by empire. Right?

Maybe it is best to consider this post as one to be continued . . .

Images - Natasha Mayers describes on her Flickr website

target with military ribbons (the 300th image by me that has appeared on Common Dreams!) acrylic painting from "signs of the times" series.

For me the military aspect of the target image reinforces the America as Empire default needing recalibration. The second image is titled, “we are all in the same hole."

A186: America Asleep

"The perfect illustration of a man elected purely on name recognition, dirty money, and no discernible talent."

This is the title of Bill's piece at Shakeville with the video I well remember. My son and I accidentally saw this on television 4 years ago. We hooted and hollared for joy that this Irish journalist, Carol Coleman, was asking real questions. Mondo Fucko was a complete shit in his swaggering, rude style - spewing Myths America. Such swill . . .

The article Bill cites by Ben Cohen says,

The interview took place almost four years ago, but is the perfect illustration of a man elected purely on name recognition, dirty money, and no discernible talent. Four years ago, there were still enough Americans who believed Bush's infantile bluster was charming and direct. Now, even Republicans do not waste their time with him, quietly wishing he would disappear and stop embarrassing their party.

The interview with Coleman should go down on record as definitive proof of Bush's utter incompetence, a priceless picture of a madman who had no business occupying the highest office of the land.

American Corporate media needs to be shut down, disassembled and go away. Better to have no news than the propaganda we Americans endure. I know that every day millions of Americans have been systematically brainwashed and made dumber and dumber thanks to Fox, and all the others. It is amazing to me that in 8 years, this is the only interview I can recall that ever put this murderous sociopath on the spot.

Y169: You thought poop from cruise ships was bad . . .

Ship to Nowehere
From Collateral News
This week's story fits perfectly with what we've learned about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay: According to UK-based human rights organization 'Reprieve' the U.S. has used navy ships acting as prisons throughout the world. Some accounts indicate that the abuse suffered on these ships was worse than that suffered in Guantanamo.


Crunchy Chicken had a post about Fun Cruises that focused on poop in the water. We can have a lot of pearl clutching about nasty environmental practices for luxury liners, while simultaneously be pushing back against Myths America. The American Empire is torturing and killing around the world – and on the high seas. There is a place for our outrage, blogging and activism across all levels of our efforts to lead conscious lives. Poop to politics isn't really a leap.

U137: Uncomfortable

During this past 5 months of my own challenge to live a more sustainable life, I let go of some addictions, habits and attitudes. I stopped buying any paper products, magazines or most all food with packaging. I have reduced gasoline, electrical and water use. Some of these changes were, like the paper use, easy to give up. Other things are not easy.

When I quit smoking 5 years ago I made this realization. My biggest trigger was being uncomfortable. Be it feelings of stress or anxiety or getting too hungry or being too cold or hot, tired etc. My cigarette addiction had lasted almost 40 years and I’d worked up to almost 3 packs a day. Smoking was my form of self-medication when I was uncomfortable. Now as addictions work, I used tobacco when I was feeling great too. Anything can become a justification. But, the thought of quitting a habit brings a dread, if not fear, of being uncomfortable.

This has been true throughout my life when I gave up beer, coffee, sex, marijuana, diet pills, cheetos, television and meat. Even though some of these things I allow back in and then some out of my life again, I am reassured by this realization that after an initial period of being uncomfortable – it passes. The greater truth is that there is a real freedom in being flexible. Whenever I conquer my fear of discomfort, I am free.

Right now my challenge feels like a dress rehearsal. Don’t get me wrong, I take it seriously. I am earnest and work towards consistency and conscientiousness. I have made allowances, like eating meat when I go to my son’s restaurant. Meanwhile, I know that there is a growing urgency to act now on all fronts with all people and not wait for the forced reductions to come. But, we who have had this dress rehearsal will be better able to anticipate post-oil living over those who know it only as an intellectual exercise.

Myths America includes the terrible horrors of withdrawal from some of the above addictions. There are chemical issues, mental issues and socialization problems we are told and we dare not take these on without professional help or supportive products or groups. All of these things seem to work in concert. In my own humble opinion, that approach has manipulated us, to make us all fear giving up things (economic threat). In hushed tones of concern we are told to take it easy and not try to do too much, too quickly, too soon or all at the same time. Most all of that in my life has been bullshit. It is a way to keep one using, buying and fearing. This is a great state of being for market interests, insurance companies and the status quo. It is also less threatening to those not ready to make a change yet.

Today I am calling bullshit on fears of being uncomfortable for another reason. There are millions upon millions of people around the world who would adore our discomforts as a giant step up from the real pain and comfortless life. In light of those realities, we are chastened to ignore / excuse / rationalize; I can’t defend my own reluctance to take on my next challenges.

Chains image

Q116: Quantum Mechanics

Zero Point Energy

My neighbor recommended this video last night and I have watched almost all of the two hour video. I say almost because I fell asleep twice. The concepts are fascinating but the video was excruciating for me. First, I process science and math slowly because I almost need to translate from engineering-speak to language that includes something beyond declarative sentences. I then need to strip words down to laboratory factoids; e.g., excite, inertia and beautiful are words not used as Virginia Woolf would use them. Next, I have a disdain for this all male club presentation.

And I admit it, it simply looks like Boys and their Toys. Jeebus these guys love their loud, powered, whirly bits. And I just have to say something about the fashion. I watched 2 hours thinking it was filmed three or four decades ago. I thought right away of my childhood in the 50’s and the science films in school, the wretched graphics for the scientific data and the Popular Mechanics look and feel. ‘Dork’ is the kindest description I can give for the fashion impression. But, alas it was filmed in 1997.

I can’t help but think of a wonderful post I read by Rana at Frogs and Ravens called Thoreau’s Laundry where she discusses the gender divisions within the environmental movement. I love this essay and want to devote more time to it. But, for the sake of this film review I must include a couple of her observations. She describes how it seems that within the green movement women are expected to change the way they shop, prepare food, garden, line-dry clothes and many more examples of very labor intensive aspects of raising children and keeping a home. She goes on to describe the major change in a man’s life is to drive a hybrid vehicle or ride a bike.

Riding a bike to work gives you public street cred in a way that line-drying at home does not. Similarly, technology-based solutions tend impose little personal cost on individuals beyond the financial (which, yes, can be considerable) - once you have installed your solar panels, you do not have to think about them on a daily basis unless you are a gadget geek. Indeed, many of the technology solutions are in reality extensions of a fascination with "toys" - a sort of gee-whiz, who’s got the latest cool thing mentality that, again, favors men over women.

(It is worth noting that many of these "toys" are no more "green" than green fashion, because, again, they tweak the problem of over-consumption rather than challenging it. But while the idiocies of green fashion are frequently challenged or easy to see, technological "solutions" are more generally received positively.)

In other words, to go green in practice tends to entail additional work for women, while going green for men largely involves getting to play with cool toys.

This is the crux of my resistance. I am not qualified to critique the science. I am more than able to critique the notion that we continue to consume without consciousness. It isn’t a balanced or healthy way to live and as a way to look at sustainability it misses major points. And the something for nothing sensibility is a dangerous one. This very point was raised in the film by reminding viewers of the nuclear energy marketing post-WWII, that promised virtually free energy.

What really counts is that we get to see the miraculously inventive nature of the human being through history. Energy generation for free in each home or building! Damn! The reality of the entire scientific, corporate and government framework is built on paradigms that are ready to buckle. In the past this reality would surface through scientists' discoveries. But these scientists like Tessla were silenced, robbed, imprisoned and murdered rather than threaten the power structure. Moreover, their work was impugned by the scientific community itself. This is all part of Myths America. More to catalog in the centuries of lies. And that is what interests me most.

All that has been lacking to give us free energy and a cleaner, safer world is political will. I don’t think even that can ultimately stop the movement towards a better world.

O103: Oaxacan activists visit local migrant workers

From my local paper, Edward Sifuentes wrote about these Oaxacan activists. I found it refreshing to see news of activists coming to hear the stories of American abusive treatment. In Myths America, my experience says that this new perspective doesn’t exist. But, again Myths America is busted.

I may be stretching fair use a bit, as there is not a thing I want to exclude from Mr. Sifuentes’ article. Reading it I felt very uninformed, except on a factual level. As with my home, the mobile home park community, there are three Spanish speaking households with whom I can’t communicate. I hope to take Spanish classes this next year as others in my park have done. Why Americans are not taught both throughout school years has baffled me for years. The Americas contain more Spanish speakers than English speakers. Oh yeah, white privilege again.

You will see from this article that the population estimate of 25,000 is high for the Oaxacan immigrants alone, not just all Mexican immigrants. Oaxacan activists Socorro Zurita Vazquez, left, and Centelia Maldonado spoke with fellow Oaxacans on Wednesday about the difficulties many face after coming north to find work.

Centelia Maldonado saw firsthand the toll that migrant work takes on a person.

Her father was a migrant farm worker most of his life and suffered many health problems later in life that she said stemmed from the often backbreaking work he performed.

Now, the 40-year-old activist from the impoverished Mexican state of Oaxaca said she wants to prevent her countrymen from having to migrate to the U.S. by helping create jobs at home.

Maldonado was one of a small group of activists from the impoverished state of Oaxaca that visited day labor sites and migrant camps in the Rancho Penasquitos area Wednesday.

She said the group wanted to see the migrants' living and working conditions to take back their experiences and help dispel some myths about migration.

When migrants return to their communities with American clothes, cars and money, people see the benefit of coming to the U.S., but they don't realize the dangers and hardships that migrants face, she said.

"We want to let people know the suffering people go through and to look for alternatives" to migration, Maldonado said.

At a day-labor site the group visited Wednesday afternoon, a group of about 30 men milled around under the hot sun waiting for a job. Ramiro Santiago, a 60-year-old Oaxacan man, said he had been waiting since about 6 a.m. without any luck.

"There's very little work," Santiago said.

The old man, who was leaning against a utility box wearing a dark baseball cap to protect his face against the sun's rays, said he's been in the country for three months. He said he gets work mowing lawns and pulling weeds for homeowners about two days a week.

Socorro Zurita Vazquez, one of the activists, said there is a better way for Oaxacans to make a living.

"Their sons are left behind and they come here to suffer," she said.

Vazquez said she hopes her visit will spark interest in a plan to create jobs at home by starting small companies that produce Oaxacan crafts, textiles and traditional food for export to the U.S.

"We may be poor in economic terms, but we are rich in culture and natural resources," Vazquez said.

Maldonado said her father began working as a migrant farmworker in northern Mexico and California when she was 2 years old. She said economic trade agreements and policies in Mexico that favor industrial farmers have forced people to search for work in the U.S.

"All these kids will be sent back to us when they are no longer able to work," Maldonado said looking at the group of predominantly young day laborers.

Oaxaca is one of the more economically depressed states in Mexico. It is inhabited predominantly by indigenous people, many of whom speak native Mexican languages and little Spanish.

Political turmoil, environmental devastation and economic problems have conspired to keep indigenous people largely undereducated and unable to continue their traditional farming way of life, said Jose Gonzalez, a spokesman for the Frente Indigena Binacional Oaxaqueno, the Oaxacan Indian rights group that organized the visit.

Oaxacan activists Jose Gonzalez, left, Bernardo Ramirez and Centelia Maldonado talk to a fellow Oaxacan at a day-laborer site in Rancho Bernardo on Wednesday. The Oaxacan activists toured migrant camps to gather information about the hardships many migrants face after crossing the U.S. border.

As many as 25,000 Oaxacan immigrants are estimated to live in North County, Gonzalez said.

In recent months, Oaxaca continues to simmer with protests and calls for the ouster of the state's governor, Ulises Ruiz, whom activists blame for political unrest and human rights abuses.

Oaxaca City was the site of sometimes-violent demonstrations in 2006, when protesters seized the city's center for months and accused the governor of electoral fraud. The federal government eventually sent in police to clear the city of protesters, and Ruiz remains in office.

The conflict began as a teachers' strike in May, 2006, but quickly mushroomed into a broad protest against centuries of social and economic injustices.

Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at esifuentes@nctimes.com.

WALDO NILO Staff Photographer

N95: Neighborhood Nostalgia

My childhood neighborhood had almost 30 kids on the block. That’s me dead center, tallest kid at 13. Truth be told, there were 3 older teenagers not present that day for the photo. We kids had abundant freedom and we had parades, parties, softball, adventures and big fights. Our neighborhood was at the edge of our small Iowa town of 7,000. We walked about 17 blocks to elementary school, half that to middle school and a mere 2 blocks to the high school. The grocery store backed up to our back yards off the main drag and I visited it every day one summer for a free lemon from the produce man.

There was a Maid-Rite that sold pork tenderloins twice the size of the bun in the heart of this pork producing country. The beginnings of the fast food monster world to come was a tiny A&W where a car hop brought the heavy glass mugs to our car on a metal tray that fastened to our partially rolled up window. On my very first date, Pat Kelly took me to Sam and Chuck’s for spaghetti with an iceberg lettuce salad on the side. The dressing was a deliciously oily, garlic blend so popular they bottled it to sell.

In the neighborhood photo you can see the town’s Drive-In Theatre directly behind the kid’s head beside me. A new movie was shown every two weeks, like the downtown movie theatre. When I was 9, another boy and I once hiked (1-2 miles?) one Saturday across the newly plowed field to the Drive In and played on the swings. On the way back it started raining and my shoes came off in the mud. We were so tired, cold and frightened that we thought we were in quicksand. That night it snowed and my shoes froze in the mud.

Our imaginations were vivid. It is sad that technology and television have affected children so profoundly today. Back then we moaned and groaned about being bored, but we sought our fun outside. There was no way I wanted to be inside with my Grandma or my parents. There was no ‘interaction’ or ‘play’ with the parental units – ever. Inside was boring. Now, the reverse seems to be true. Plus parents have so much anxiety about child safety that I suspect inside play becomes a default for monitoring reasons.

Within a couple summers of this neighborhood kid photo, I got my first job in the fields. I picked corn out of beans, weeds out of corn depending on the day and the field. I then spent several summers detassling corn. That work was incredibly grueling and I learned about pushing myself from the pre-dawn ride in the cattle truck to the afternoon stinging burn of sweating into razor-like cuts from the leaves. That was a tough way to make 90¢ an hour. Remember though, 90¢ went pretty far:

• A burger was 15¢
• Average Cost of new house $12,650.00
• Average Income per year $5,807.00
• Gas per Gallon 29¢
• Average Cost of a new car $3,233.00
• Loaf of bread 22¢

Late 50’s, early 60’s can seem bucolic compared to now. As kids we had incredible freedom to walk all over town. We went outside in the morning and barely checked back except to use the bathroom or eat lunch. But, the memory isn’t totally accurate. The fields behind our homes were planted with field corn rotated with soy beans. These were the birthing years of Agribusiness, an infant version of the behemoth it has become.

A familiar sight for kids playing was the plane swooping down over the crops and spraying pesticides. There was never any notice, no warnings or precautions that I can recall. I also remember picnics and Bar-B-Q outings when we slathered ourselves with smelly bug repellent and then dug into the food.

I want to be really candid besides being nostalgic. By the time I was old enough to articulate it, I realized it was an all-white, christian neighborhood of middle class privilege and narrow mindedness found all over this country. It is the kind of neighborhood politicians seem to hold aloft as the ubiquitous American dream. I hated the small town I grew up in and was very happy when we moved my senior year. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a landscape of physical trauma and denial. It gave me many happy memories and childhood adventure. But, even as a kid I saw the part we weren’t supposed to talk about even in our own homes. I remember overhearing my father at one of their cocktail parties saying, “We taught our girls to look out for the underdog, but I never thought they’d really do it.” I then heard the big roar of laughter for Doc who was so funny.

For me small town middle America isn’t what it is marketed to be. There was bigotry, small mindedness with deep psychological and emotional poverty and blight, but that should be another post. I am re-thinking all of my assumptions and experiences in light of what I am learning about my nation, myself and sustainability as a way of life.