Consumption and Environmental Destruction

From the always interesting environmental site Worldchanging, allow me to reprint the caption from this photograph.

Congo, Conkouati National Park, 2007
In the Cotovindou logging concession a Congolese worker for the Chinese timber company Sicofor saws down a 22-meter moabi tree that will be loaded the same day on a truck bound for Pointe Noire. From there it will be embarked for China. It will probably end up as luxury furniture in Europe or the States. Moabi (baillonella toxisperma) takes about hundred years to reach maturity. Its fruits are edible, its bark has medical applications and the oil its seeds produce is very sought after on the African markets. The droppings of elephants, that love the Moabi fruits, are the main mechanisms for spreading the seeds and therefore of its reproduction. Due to poaching, elephants are getting rare, due to logging Moabi is getting rare. In the Congo forest elephants and Moabi could disappear at the same time. Moabi has been included in the red list of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) in 2004.

The most important point made here is not the decline of elephants or even the tree species. It's the fact that this tree is almost certainly going to make luxury furniture for the United States or Europe. For all the complaining the first world does about environmental destruction in the developing world, a large percentage of that is done for our consumption. I can't tell you how many environmentalists I've known who seem to miss this connection. They talk about how much they love the environment and how much they hate its destruction. Then they buy homes on the edge of the wilderness that they commute to. And they purchase expensive wood furniture from exotic trees. Sure it looks good. Adds a lot to the atmosphere of the house. It also destroys national parks, forces wildlife into extinction, threatens indigenous cultures and native knowledge, and contributes to climate change.

Purchasing products made from rainforest wood is simply unacceptable and must be stopped. The model is CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. CITES has gone a long way to stop the smuggling of sea turtles, rare birds, elephant ivory, and other endangered species. But it does nothing to protect their habitats. We need a new convention to protect those habitats and make it illegal to purchase products made from goods that destroy habitats. We also need to attack those who are hypocritical in their purchases of these products, making it socially unacceptable to buy them, much as we have done with exotic animals.

Tolerance

I've never claimed to be tolerant. In fact, I'd say that I am rather intolerant. Is this a bad thing? I'm not sure. We talk about intolerance as a bad thing and in the context this is usually discussed, it certainly is. Racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. is something that it's impossible to accept.

But there's a lot of gray area here. For instance, this couple who is having their 18th child. They are part of some sort of freakish evangelical movement that urges their members to have as many children as possible. In a world of scarcity, I just can't accept this. 18 kids? Really? On one level, I feel bad for the woman. But she seems happy enough I guess. As a society, should this kind of thing be acceptable? I don't actually expect us to ever intervene in these situations, but it's really awful in so many ways.

On a broader level, discussions of tolerance have always bothered me. I think that liberals have given political ground by accepting broad-based notions of tolerance when the other side have dismissed the whole idea. We want to hear both sides of an argument, blah blah blah. You know what: Fuck that. Some things are simply unacceptable and they should be fought vigorously. For me, having 18 children is one of those things. Driving Hummers is another. Making fun of Appalachia. Conducting class warfare from the top down. Not to mention racism, sexism, and homophobia. It should be intolerable to support policies that leave people without health insurance.

It should also be intolerable to drink frozen margaritas, but I guess that's on a different level. But still, people, you are screwing yourself by paying for ice. I could go on forever on things that I find intolerable and worth fighting, but I guess I've said my point.

Historical Image of the Day

Senators Bill Bradley and Al D'Amato, as well as Jackie Mason, marching at the Salute to Israel Parade, New York City. My sense is that this is the mid 1980s, but I am not sure.

Another Potential and Frustrating Step Backwards in Protecting the Amazon

Marina Silva has stepped down. Silva (not related to Lula) had some great ideas on how to integrate environmentalism into the national policy without sacrificing development needs, but according to this article, resigned in part because "She tried to work with other agencies for an integrated approach to protecting the environment — but lost almost every time she was opposed by another department" (such as Lula's reduction of IBAMA, the governmental environmental organization, last year).

Make no mistake - this is really a huge step backwards, and I'm really disappointed (though I'm not quite as angry with Lula as Randy is.) To be sure, Lula's plans for hydroelectric power (and failure to even consider wind power) is frustrating (to put it mildly), and his efforts to undo the institutions (like IBAMA) that resist hydroelectric power and work to save the environment is infuriating. But I also don't think you can totally ignore some of the small, but important, changes Lula has made. While the recent decision in the Dorothy Stang case is also frustrating, there have been small but significant steps taken against those who commit murder against environmentalists. Likewise, Lula's efforts to have the government patrol the Amazonian basin with military troops in an effort to reduce deforestation (particularly ranchers' deforestation) is another important step, albeit one that is far from failsafe and perfect; still, this is a bigger step in actively trying to reduce deforestation than his predecessors ever took.

Still, I really only differ with Randy in degree of disappointment. I know nothing about Carlos Minc, the replacement for Silva. Still, it's just really really disappointing. Marina Silva definitely could have been a major force for change and environmental protection in Brazil; that she was stymied in pretty much every effort she made is really almost too much. It's too soon to tell, but I have little doubt that, years from now, when scholars look back and evaluate Lula's eight years of administration, his environmental policies will be one of the low-points.

Album of the Week: Elysian Fields' Dreams that Breathe Your Name

The husband and wife duo of Oren Bloedow and Jennifer Charles created Elysian Fields (not the Greek black-metal band) in 1995 with the release of a self-titled EP on Radioactive/Universal. Along with Bleed Your Cedar, they and their backing band featuring the likes of Ed Pastorini, Marc Ribot, and John Lurie, they put together some fantastic Chanteuse-inspired rock. Because the general media consensus regarding female rock singers is that they must be utterly unique or they are called utterly derivative, Charles’ smoky contralto got dismissive comparisons to the more successful Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star (instead of deriding David Coverdale for looking and sounding exactly like Robert Plant, we turned the horror of Whitesnake into multi-platinum superstars). As shallow as the comparison between the two women is, it continues thirteen years later, but this isn’t really the point. While their debut LP wasn’t a huge success, they were contracted by Universal for a second, to be produced by Steve Albini. The album was completed but, when the label decided that they needed more traditional, marketable songs and the band wouldn’t comply, they shelved it, where it collects dust to this day. Since then, Elysian Fields has been in label hell, to the extent that their latest album, Bum Raps and Love Taps was never released in the US (it was, briefly, available on Itunes, but no longer, unfortunately. It’s damn good, but it’s now only available at Amazon.fr). Their trouble with releases is a huge shame but, because John Zorn picked them up to perform tracks for his Great Jewish Music compilations for Serge Gainsbourg (Les Amours Perdues), Marc Bolan (Life’s a Gas), and Sasha Argov (Ksheor Dolek) plus an excellent album of Sephardic music called La Mar Enfortuna (there is a second album of it out now, too, though I haven’t heard it), they were able to be heard at least by his audience.

My favorite of their albums is 2004’s Dreams That Breathe Your Name, which features many of the same band members from previous albums, but also adds the great percussionist Cyro Baptista into the mix. Over time, Elysian Fields has moved away from rock somewhat, focusing less on saleable records and more on the Bloedow’s dense compositions and Charles’ intelligent, sexually-driven lyrics and torch song delivery to great effect and Dreams captures this as well as any of their albums. With few exceptions, their songs are about love, sex, and the pursuit of both. As the title suggests, the songs often sound like they’re sung from bed. Whether whispered lullabies or impassioned demands, the songs directed at someone particularly instead of blindly into the ether. Bloedow’s arrangements are thick, sometimes simple and gorgeous, sometimes dissonant as hell, but a sweetness underlies their moody sound to give a warm feeling of completeness that brings out the elusive romantic inside me. At turns, the music fills me with joy and makes my heart hurt, often at the same time. These are the lyrics to Passing on the Stairs, in which Bloedow and Charles sing to each other. This song has become one of my favorite songs over the past couple of years:

(Bloedow)In the hall lights flicker hum
With her buckles still undone
She hides beneath blue trench coat
Gaze so soft yet so remote
In that dusty uniform
The outline of her lovely form
And more than once I’ve pressed her hand
Passing on the stairs

(Charles)In the hall lights flicker hum
His dark lashes always hung
With a look so weary and so wise
When he passes he gently sighs
In his work-worn boots he leans
And I wonder what it means
Passing on the stairs

(Chorus)Up the stairs every night
Up the stairs seven flights
And down she goes into the night
Down my stairs and out of sight

(Bloedow)Who is she with that misty look
Every night a different book
With the scent of violets in her hair
Who’s this angel on my stairs

(Charles)A distant time comes back to me
The wild reeds, the salty sea
My father calling ‘don’t go far’
I gathered sea glass in a jar
And built a castle with a moat
As the wind blew sand into my hair
In the rustling of your overcoat
Passing on the stairs

(Chorus)

(Bloedow)And I wonder if she thinks of me
Is it just a boyish fantasy
Speak dear lady won’t you speak
Can’t you tell you make me meek
So in silence once more we pass
Another night I walk on glass
And I dream that she thinks of me
Passing on the stairs

(Charles)And I wonder if he thinks of me
If this could be our destiny
Oh haven’t you a word for me
If only you’d misplace your key
So in silence once more we pass
Another night I walk on glass
And how I dream he thinks of me
And our passing on the stairs

(Repeat chorus)

I really do love that song. They are one of the most underrated bands I know but, regardless of the attention they receive, they create some of the most emotive, sensual pop music available today. Above is a performance of Lions in the Storm, the opening track from Bum Raps and Love Taps and exemplary of their sound.

Graduation v. Roky Erickson

On Saturday, I am going through the graduation ceremony at the University of New Mexico. That's fine and all and I'm glad to see my friends.

But I'm not sure it's worth missing the legendary Roky Erickson in Austin on Friday. Why oh why did he have to play this weekend? Argh.

For those of you who don't know Erickson, he was the singer of the legendary Austin psychedelic band Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Like Syd Barrett though, Roky liked experimenting with the acid a touch too much. He has spent much of the last 35 years in mental institutions. In 1981, he released the amazing and totally bizarre album The Evil One, which shows the mind of a brilliant musician and clearly disturbed individual. With such songs as "Creature with the Atom Brain," "Don't Shake Me Lucifer" "Click Your Fingers Applauding the Play" and "I Walked with a Zombie," Erickson produced a weird, trippy, rockin', sci-fi album. I have never heard anything like it.

I understand that he is now living on his own and doing pretty well. On very rare occasions, he plays a show. One of those shows will take place on Friday in Austin. It's really not worth graduating if I have to miss this. What can be done though?

Historical Image of the Day

"Abandoned House, Haskell County, Kansas"

Photo by Irving Rusinow, 1941

Keep Your Tim Hortons away from Our Dunkin'

Sometimes, I really appreciate people like Tom Tancredo. Apparently, fencing off Mexico and destroying both relations and the environment isn't enough. Now, it's time to get one on the Northern side, too. It makes me happy when wingnuts undermine their own points, points that have support amidst his crazy brethren, by going overboard in manic paranoia. It's pretty clear that all the people refused refugee status and sent away from Canada have come here to blow us up and steal our jobs, not to mention those crazy Manitobans coming down and making our North-Central states more Lutheran than they already are. Tim Hortons is an institution bound to infiltrate and destroy our Winchell's and Dunkin' Donut franchises and Canadian Club is clearly on the cusp of buying out Jim Beam and Jack Daniels' distilleries simultaneously. I, for one, welcome our new Canadian kings. If only we'd listened to Tancredo, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess.

For what it's worth, this is Tancredo's press release from his jackass website.

On Monsters

Once upon a time--well, back in 2002--I took a course on Literary Monsters.

We read lots of lovely stuff that I don't have lying around to reference right now (but if you want a deeper post on the subject, you can buy me this book, thanks). But the main gist of our study of texts like Beowulf, Interview With the Vampire, and Shakespeare's The Tempest was seven monster theses that my professor outlined for us at the beginning of class.

I've watched this primary campaign go from a spirited competition into a mess where each candidate's supporters firmly believe the other candidate is a monster. We've looked at the actual reasons for that, and I believe that especially with Hillary Clinton, but with Obama as well, the press portrayal of the candidates can be looked at through these theses. And yes, there's probably a much longer paper in this, but what the hell.

1. The monstrous body is a cultural body.

Both candidates reflect our culture. The older woman, past being seen as sexual...the old queen and the wicked witch, simultaneously, as I said in an earlier post. And the outsider, the younger black man. Both of them arise from categories we know well, but are breaking those rules just by running.

2. The monster always escapes.

Over and over again we've thought this horrendous campaign was over, only for one candidate to stage a comeback. We've thought Clinton was done after Iowa, then Obama after New Hampshire and Nevada, then Clinton again after Obama's post-Super Tuesday wins, then Obama again after Clinton won Ohio and the Texas primary and then Pennsylvania, and now...

3. The monster is the harbinger of category crisis.

Of course, they're bringing on category crisis just by being a white woman and a black man running for President, and certainly by having defeated more typical white male candidates. Hillary Clinton has always been disconcerting--at first she was too masculine a woman, then she was too feminine, standing by her man. Now she's both uber-masculine--"obliterate," "if she gave Obama one of her balls..."--and feminine, when her angry supporters accuse Obama and his camp of sexism.

Obama, of course, is both American and not-American, black and white, masculine and feminine (at least according to Carville), rich and poor, elitist and community activist, and if you'd believe the crazies, Christian and Muslim.

4. The monster dwells at the gates of difference.

You see the fear of difference much more with Obama, especially with the reports of overt racism and the repeated cries that he's Muslim despite Rev. Wright's best attempts to remain part of the media cycle. Hillary Clinton's problem is more that she is not different enough. Obama supporters hate her as part of the culture that they despise and reject--not alien, but all too familiar. But Hillary Clinton is still a woman, and still different.

5. The monster polices the borders of the possible.

Is it really possible for America to elect a (white) woman? A black man? And does some of the intense anger at the other side stem from the fact that it feels like not just a rejection of Hillary Clinton or of Barack Obama, but of all (older) women or all black Americans? How much change can America handle? And what ugly truths about ourselves do we have to confront in the process?

6. Fear of the monster is really a kind of desire.

Obama is too well-spoken, too charismatic, too seductive. We can't have that. It must be bad because we can't quite quantify it. And Clinton is too determined, she wants it too badly, how dare she?! But secretly, the need to over and over again reiterate what's wrong with the Other candidate (yes, I capitalized that for a reason) is to remind ourselves that we don't want it, we don't want it, we don't want it...

7. The monster stands at the threshold of becoming...

President?

Joking aside, one of the first ways that people learn to commit atrocities is by Othering the opponent, making them not just the enemy but something monstrous and not-human. Soldiers in Abu Ghraib, or in Nazi concentration camps, rapists, police who shoot an unarmed man or drag people from their cars and beat them, the people who killed Matthew Shepard or Brandon Teena or Sanesha Stewart. It always seems easier to do that when the hated person is already different in some visible way--female, black, Arab, gay, transgender.

So we have a presidential primary campaign, supposedly in the party of tolerance, the party that supports people who are women, black, Arab, gay, transgender, Latino, Jewish--at least more than that other party does. And we get this polarized mess, and I can't help but wonder if this would be quite so angry if it were between, say, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards (it would be for me, because I'd be in the position of trying to care which one of them won when they both rub me the wrong way), or even Barack Obama and John Edwards, to say nothing of Joe Biden and Chris Dodd or some other grey-haired white men. To what degree does all that category crisis, those border issues, that Difference affect our view of the candidate we don't support?

(Cross-posted to Season of the Bitch)

More on Transgender

Holly at Feministe, whose perspective on this issue is much closer than mine is, has a fabulous and heartbreaking post up about the NPR series I wrote about earlier.

Please go read it.

Historical Image of the Day

Main Street. Baker, Montana. 1909

Kazuo Ishiguro and Writers I Used to Like

Amy wonders, "Who, in the coming decades, will read The Remains of the Day?"

I hope lots of people. Amy's larger point is about how films can make the books they are based upon sadly irrelevant.

I certainly feel that Remains holds its value well, in no small part because it is so different from the film. The film was a love story. The book was about what it meant to be a certain kind of Englishman in the middle of the 20th century. The movie is great too, although I have to wonder what relevance it has today. I almost never hear it discussed by anyone unless they fell in love with it when it came out. Emma Thompson has basically stopped working in Hollywood, while Hopkins moved there and became a mainstream film star.

But this got me thinking a bit about the author of Remains, Kazuo Ishiguro. Ishiguro was born in Japan and then moved to England with his family when he was 6. He started out as an English chronicler of Japan, with his first works A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World. I got into Ishiguro in college and thought these books were great, as I did with his first non-Japanese based work The Remains of the Day. But after that, I began to feel increasingly indifferent toward Ishiguro. The Unconsoled is certainly an interesting and challenging novel, but it's hard to figure out what it really did for me in the end. Set in an unnamed central European country, it felt like Ishiguro was trying too hard to be a classic European novelist. Then in 2000, When We Were Orphans came out. Ishiguro turned to a version of crime fiction in this story set in 1930s China, but it never engaged me. I've left Ishiguro behind since then.

This makes me wonder about a lot of authors I used to like that I have stopped reading. Sometimes I wonder what I saw in them in the first place. I know people who adore Richard Ford for instance, and I read Independence Day when it came out. I liked it then and read a few other things, but it's been a decade or so since I've read anything by Ford. I hear that a sequel to Independence Day recently came out. I've thought about reading it but I'm not sure that I'm willing to put the time into it. It's kind of sad though because I'm just too busy to read very much fiction. I plan on reading as much as I possibly can when I am in Bolivia this summer, but I'm sure that when I get back to teaching in August that it will go away again. I used to do a good job of fitting fiction into my days, at least sometimes. But that sure fell off the cliff this year.

Quote of Whatever Year This Was Said

Julia Child after reaching into a pot full of boiling cannellini beans:

"Wow! These damn things are as a hot as a stiff cock."

From David Kamp, The United States of Arugula, which is a really freaking entertaining book, p. 52.

Invading Burma?

Romesh Ratensar asks in Time a question that others are throwing around: should we invade Burma because their government is so indifferent to the suffering of their people in the wake of the recent cyclone?

Um, no?

Actually, I have mixed feelings over military actions based on humanitarian purposes. This kind of action appeals to the human rights instincts within me. If you have a large military, there has to be a time and place to use it. On the surface, this seems like the correct opportunity.

On the other hand, the problems with such an invasion would be myriad.

1. Haven't we already invaded 2 other countries in the last 6 years? And how has that gone? Oh yeah, not so well. Where would the troops come from for such an action? Where would the money come from? What would the American public do? These are some serious questions.

2. What kind of invasion would it be. Ratensar suggests a sort of humanitarian invasion that would essentially bypass the regime and provide aid directly to the people. What evidence is there that this would work in Burma? Ratensar suggests similar situations in the Ivory Coast, Bosnia, and Sudan have worked. But Burma is probably stronger than any of those nations. Their leadership is certainly as brutal. Would their military fire on UN or US troops? It is quite likely. And what would the response be from the invading force? I believe we would have to be prepared for a full fledged invasion with regime change if we were to start such an action. Are we prepared for that? Absolutely not.

3. China. Related to the previous question, what would China's response be? While the Chinese have interests in the Sudan and Russia certainly is a major supporter of Bosnia, the Chinese and Burmese governments are very close. China would likely veto any security council measures regarding Burma. China is going to see such an action as a western attempt to increase their presence in one of their major suppliers of natural resources. Certainly I doubt the Chinese would send in their military in response to a humanitarian or even a full-fledged invasion, but they do have massive economic power. They could completely undermine the dollar if they chose to. I don't know that they would take such a large step. But the Chinese would have to either play a central role in an invading force or at least be reckoned with very carefully. I don't see the UN or US willing to take that on.

4. It seems like regime change in Burma would be fairly popular with the people. There was a major rebellion just last year and clearly the junta is far from liked by most. But like Iraq, I suspect the U.S. foreign policy community knows next to nothing about Burma. Are we willing to deal with the Karen rebellion in the north? What role would Thailand and India play in such a situation? And of course, there is China, Singapore, and other less than democratic powers in the region to reckon with.

I would just like to point out that I just provided more deep thinking about a potential invasion of Burma and its aftermath than did the Bush administration before they entered Iraq. This puts me in a bad position. That I am thinking about this at all makes me clearly overqualified for a leading foreign policy position in a Republican administration. Obviously I have no expertise and the Democrats are likely to appoint competent people so I'm screwed there too. I guess if I had just shut up and created rosy fictions about the consequences of a Burma invasion, I'd be helping my future career as a Republican foreign policy expert tremendously. Me and my stupid big mouth.

Literature

So the discussion of southern literature that got started below really made me smile and became a really excellent comment thread.

I'm racking my brain trying to think of a way to work in a weekly book thread. So I'm just going to throw out a question:

what's a good way to do a weekly literary thread that people can participate in?

Historical Image of the Day

Gays protesting their exclusion from the military, San Francisco, CA, May 21, 1966

Transgendered kids, part 2

So I finally got around to listening to part 2 of NPR's series on transgendered kids today. And this one definitely made me cry.

See, Violet was born Armand.

Armand found a Minnie Mouse costume one day and fell in love with it. It had belonged to his older sister, Melina, but Armand wouldn't take it off.

Armand's parents didn't want to accept it. They tried to make him live as a boy. Their house was full of explosive, uncontrolled fights. Psychiatrists threw out alphabet-soup diagnoses. Then Armand threatened suicide, pointed a knife at himself, scared the hell out of his older sister.

It wasn't ADD or OCD or anything else that shrinks have easy drugs to fix. Depression meds didn't cure it. (And I don't want anyone to think I'm deriding them for taking those drugs, but I am damn sure that shrinks who met a transgendered kid and started throwing psych meds at her should be slapped.)

When Armand's parents finally found a psychiatrist who diagnosed their child with Gender Identity Disorder (a term I dislike, but one that helped them deal with it, at least), they described it as a feeling of relief, that someone finally understood. They immediately stopped trying to force Armand to live as a boy.

Her mother said, "We could see the desperation in her face...it was like she was screaming out 'Listen to me, this is who I am!'"

"When we found out she was transgender, it was like 'What do you need?'" As soon as they let her, age 10, be who she felt she was, she was the happiest kid in the world. It was like a different child. "She looked freer," her parents said.

Then the family found out about a treatment that postpones puberty. Hormone blockers are given once a month, and they stop the development of sex hormones. This prevents physical differences between genders from developing--no facial hair, no Adam's apple, no voice deepening. It makes later-life transgenderism easier, since the distinguishing characteristics are not there. The child can take hormones of the sex they feel that they are and be virtually indistinguishable from others.

The downside to this therapy is that if a child later takes hormones, they can become sterile. And of course there are those who say, as we discussed in the last post, that a child that young can't know whether he or she is actually transgender. But Armand's wonderful, loving, accepting father says he tells people, "What people fail to realize is that they made that decision long before [age 10]." He asks them how old they were when they knew they were a boy, or a girl.

And the therapy is designed to delay puberty, not to prevent it. It is designed to prevent the horrifying experience that Melina, Armand's sister, voiced so well:

Melina, who is 14, says she sometimes thinks about what it would be like if she woke up every day to a body that was slowing turning male. If she were growing in ways that felt alien and frightening.

"To go through the process of the gender that you're really not ... that must be the most scariest most disgusting thing ... I can't even imagine what that's like," she says.

Imagine, indeed.

NPR also spoke to Polly Carmichael, a British psychologist who works at the Portman Clinic in London and practices techniques apparently similar to Zucker's in that they require children to live as the gender they were born as. They claim that 80% of the children they work with grow up and remain their biological gender.

However, the Amsterdam clinic where the hormone blocker therapy was instituted says that 100% of their patients grow up and live as transgender.

I understand being leery of hormone therapies. I could tell you all about how Depo-Provera screwed my life right up for a couple of years. I don't know how I'd feel about my child undergoing hormone therapy. But I do know that I can vividly picture the feeling of my body turning into something alien, different, and that it would feel monstrous. (Oh, the monsters-post I'm going to write soon...)

The fears of all those people who say that a child's gender identity is fluid (which should be more proof that gender is not biologically predetermined, shouldn't it?) and thus the child might want to "change back" would have more weight if these parents were actually putting their kids through sex reassignment surgery, which is not the same thing as being transgender or taking hormones. But otherwise, why not? Who cares if Armand only wants to be Violet for a few years and then decides that Armand was a better fit, after all?

Robert, Violet's father, said that telling his family was the hardest part. After all, Violet was ten. He told the story of a family gathering where all of his aunts were sitting together, and one of them, the matriarch of the family, asked him "Robert, didn't you have a boy?"

And he steeled himself, and he explained that Armand was now Violet, that she was transgender, and he brought her over to say hello to her great-aunts.

And when she happily skipped away, he waited for the aunts' response.

"I'm proud of you," his aunt said. "It must have been hard."

(Rewriting this again made me well up with tears again.)

(Cross-posted at Season of the Bitch)

Wait a minute, where's MY name?

While we are on the topic of home towns, I called my mother (who lives in Indiana) today and she told me a great election story. Apparently, a Republican in Tippecanoe County wanted to vote in the Democratic primary. No harm, no foul-- Indiana has an open primary, so one can declare on the spot and choose which primary in which to participate. But you can't vote in both.

This particular Republican, in a delightful twist, was running for county reporter. By choosing the Democratic ballot, she was unable to vote for herself.

"...she realized she had only Democrats listed on her ballot once she put her voter card into the machine, but by the time she told election officials it was too late to change it."

Hilarious.

A Little Hometown Play

Denton's an awesome little town and now even New York knows it. This is NYT's usual flyby of a town in their travel section, but it is very cool to read about the local music scene from outsiders, and they even name a couple of places I've never heard of. I was at one of those places last night, "noshing on tacos" as only a New York journalist would say. Regardless of word choice, Fuzzy's makes a damn good taco.

Historical Image of the Day

Mary Todd Lincoln and her rather sizable dress.

A Doomsday Scenario in Puerto Rico

Pledged delegates for the democratic primary are allocated based on population, and several U.S. territories, like American Samoa, Guam, and Puerto Rico participate in the nomination process. This is a nominal way for the citizens of these places to participate in the selection process of the government that is intricately involved in their lives. The population allocation math used grants Puerto Rico 55 pledged delegates, which is more than states like Oregon and Oklahoma (Oregon actually edges out Puerto Rico by two delegates if you include the unpledged superdelegates).

This is of little consequence now, but imagine what would happen if the race were tighter. Puerto Rico, with its 55 pledged delegates, could have been the deciding factor as the last big delegate cache (the Puerto Rico primary is just days before Montana and South Dakota, which combined, only have 31 delegates). Can you imagine the uproar if Clinton (who, according to the only recent poll in Puerto Rico, leads Obama by a wide margin) were closer in the overall delegate count and then pulled the 15% victory in the territory, edging out Obama for the nomination at the last minute? Superdelegates would certainly have a case to support Obama (arguing that the superdelegate votes would ensure that the votes of full U.S. citizens be honored), but the Clinton camp in this case would be furious. This technically could have happened, and it would have been ugly.

I’m not making the argument that U.S. territories should be shut out of the system, but it seems that allocating pledged delegates according to the same metric used for the fifty states is courting disaster. Ideally, the democratic party should revisit this insane nominating process altogether. And by revisit, I mean (to paraphrase Hillary Clinton) obliterate.

Sounds Pretty Accurate To Me

At the end of another semester, I decided to kill some time by searching for myself at ratemyprofessor.com.

I didn't see anything from Southwestern, but I did find this tidbit from my time at New Mexico:

Eric Loomis is an easy-going teacher. His lectures are interesting, and he is really enthusiastic about his subject matter. Also, he's totally hot.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Myanmar: Even More Incompetent Than Bush

It's sad to know that there is actually one government less competent than the Bush administration: Myanmar. The junta's unwillingness to allow foreign aid workers, leading to the temporary suspension of UN aid, is utterly immoral. Not that the government cares about their people at all. Truly disgusting.

Of course, people have known this about the Burmese government for a long time. Remember, this government faced a major rebellion less than a year ago. With a huge hurricane on top of it, the military are holding on with their fingernails here. But being more than happy to shoot all of their citizens and knowing that the UN is ultimately going to cave strengthens their case.

Historical Image of the Day

"Shopkeeper and Tailor, Paramaibo, Suriname, 1839"

This contributes to the blog's new commitment to coverage of all things Suriname.

RIP--Eddy Arnold

Well, he's gotten his wish...sort of. The world has gone away for Eddy Arnold, who died today at 89. I won't defend the old country crooners, but he had a good voice and this song is classic stuff.

Farm Bill 2008 (or, how I learned to hate mung beans and buy cheese in barrels)

The 2008 Farm Bill is not compelling reading. It is dense, heavily coded, and exists in at least five versions as a cross-referential nightmare. The bill is, however, extremely important and very contentious this time around. Bush has threatened to veto the bill, arguing (in all Nixonian triangulating splendor) that it over-subsidizes wealthy farmers. To his credit, most analysts that I’ve read seem to agree, but these subsidies are a red herring. The majority of the funds allocated by the bill are earmarked for the Nutrition Assistance Program (the program formerly known as food stamps—the name officially changes with the passing of the ’08 Farm Bill). Changes to the NAP include cost saving measures like switching to an electronic debit card, a base increase of $10 billion over ten years, and more programs to make public school food healthier with food produced locally. My hunch is that Bush isn’t balking at the subsidies, but rather the increase in spending for this vital social program.

The subsidies may need to be revisited at some point, but with food prices soaring and worries about climate change, I’d rather see them just pass the damn bill—it seems the Senate may have the 3/5 majority needed to override Bush anyway.

There is a great overview of the basic issues in the Farm Bill at the NPR website.

Aside from the big issues, I just wanted to point out a few progressive items I feel good about:

Sec. 4210 sets aside $5 million to help Farmer’s Markets purchase the technology to accept the new Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards so that families and individuals in the NAP can purchase foods from Farmer’s Markets. One of the better features of this Farm Bill is the continuing and increasing support for Farmer’s Markets, especially the earmarked monies for areas that don’t currently have them. Farmer’s Markets make a lot of sense from an agricultural standpoint, as well as an environmental and health standpoint.

Sec. 4301 prohibits the state from trying to collect restitution for overpayment in the in the NAP as a result of the State’s error. I’m not sure how big a problem it is, but it gives the states incentive to monitor the program more closely and not call a collection agency on people who, by no fault of their own, received more benefits than they should have.

Sec. 310F describes a program that it intended to help “beginning farmers” purchase land (with a low interest rate and only 5% down). This could be a way for a lot of locally owned, smaller, organic / sustainable farms to get off the ground. I hope people take advantage of it.

And lastly, the Farm Bill is not without a laugh or two. I thought these were funny (which tells you something about the Farm Bill text, and probably too much about me).

(b) Purchase Price- To carry out subsection (a), the Secretary shall purchase cheddar cheese, butter, and nonfat dry milk at prices that are equivalent to--
(1) in the case of cheddar cheese--
(A) in blocks, not less than $1.13 per pound;
(B) in barrels, not less than $1.10 per pound;

Apparently, for all of you pennywise shoppers, cheddar cheese is cheaper by the barrel.

(3) COVERED AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES- Paragraphs (1) and (2) apply to the following agricultural commodities:
(A) Fruits.
(B) Vegetables (other than mung beans)
(C) Wild rice.

There’s a lot of hating on mung beans in this bill. I suspect the National Board of Mung Bean Producers will be all over this (file under: smallest protest ever).

For all of this, the 2008 incarnation of the Farm Bill seems good—and if Bush is opposed to it, I’m more inclined to believe that it is fairly decent. The increase in the more progressively minded initiatives is also likely one of the under reported benefits of a democratic majority; since January 2007, the Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture has had a democratic majority and a formidable chairman in Iowa’s Tom Harkin. It at least serves as a reminder that, despite all of the attention on the presidential election, the congressional elections are just as vital to a progressive future.

Book Review, Pamela E. Pennock, Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing, 1950-1990

"I think I'll take up smoking
Though I've never smoked before"

Tom Russell
"What Do You Want"

I've always been extremely uncomfortable with the moralistic overtones of anti-smoking fanatics. I am a non-smoker. But the condescension that non-smokers have toward smokers often makes me angry. To what extent should the government regulate the personal behavior of citizens, particularly when they are not hurting others? Yes, second-hand smoke can be bad, especially for children. But unless you are going to regulate the behavior of adults inside their homes, there is little to be done. Outside of that, second-hand smoke isn't really going to hurt you, unless you are in a band or work in a bar. It's not good for you, but neither are a lot of other things that people don't complain about either. They whine about smelling a cigarette and then drive 50 miles in their SUV through massive air pollution, stopping at McDonald's on the way home where they get everything super sized, and then sit and eat it on the couch while watching "American Idol"

On the other hand, there's little question concerning the lack of morality among tobacco officials. Their product does cause cancer, they knew it, and they didn't care. Should cigarette companies be able to advertise on TV? No, I don't think so. Should they target children through Joe Camel and other cartoon figures? Probably not. So clearly, there is a role for government regulation of legal drugs.

It is much the same with alcohol. While I don't smoke, I certainly do drink. It's hard to look back at the temperance movement without laughing. Yet, while prohibition was a failure, it did reduce Americans' drinking consumption. As Pamela Pennock shows in Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing, 1950-1990, the Prohibitionist movement was far from dead after World War II. It pushed for a total ban on alcohol, but knowing that was pretty well impossible, had to settle for reductions on advertising pushed on children.

The problem though with limiting advertising aimed at children is that the assumption remains that alcohol is a bad thing. The problem to me is not with alcohol per se, but with the underlying moralistic assumptions of American culture. The constant moralizing is combined with a consumer culture that undermines those morals and personal desires that shows the hypocrisy of so many Americans. They speak of "family values" and then drink, smoke, take drugs, go to prostitutes, cheat on their spouses, etc.

What if we focused on reforming Americans' attitudes toward pleasure rather than think of it as a bad thing that needs regulation? But I guess that would be swimming upstream against 400 years of American Puritanical moralizing. There's no doubt that anti-alcohol groups have done some good things. In the 1970s, drunk driving was not only extremely common but basically unpunished, even when someone was killed. Only with the creation of MADD and intensive lobbying did Americans begin taking drunk driving as a serious offense. I'm glad that has happened. We should continue to make driving drunk socially unacceptable and punishable by law. But I have to wonder if another way to fight these problems isn't making drinking an acceptable everyday occurrence that would make binge drinking less appealing to younger people, as well as a national investment in public transportation that would mean you could drink all you want and still have a reasonable way to get home without driving.

Pennock's book is an interesting overview of the policy debates taking place in the postwar years over restricting the advertising of tobacco and alcohol. I don't want to get into the details of the book in too great of detail. If you have a scholarly or personal interest in issues of alcohol history like I do, then it is an important book. But it is policy and therefore a bit on the dry side. I do want to focus on a couple of interesting issues she touches upon.

First, these debates mirrored postwar debates over free speech. Different makeups of the Supreme Court led to slightly different interpretations of the protections granted to advertisers and broadcasters over advertising sin. One argument the industries consistently fell back upon was the idea of the slippery slope. Once you start banning ads for alcohol and tobacco, what is next? Why not coffee? Sugary drinks? Anything that could be seen as bad for you might be next? Where do you draw the line? These are important questions for anyone thinking about free speech issues, regardless of their interest in these particular products. It is almost impossible to demarcate what is OK and what is not. Almost inevitably, reformers draw the line wherever they are comfortable, which makes it almost impossible to create lasting legal codes with any sense of logic. My sense is that we should ban very little. Perhaps restricting certain sorts of ads to late night hours works, but in reality it just gives those products an aura of naughtiness about them, which just reinforces the problem of overwrought morality in America to begin with.

Second, Pennock offers useful insights on the increased role of science in these debates. While the temperance movement after World War II was still dominated by aging prohibitionists, few took their arguments seriously. But once scientists began studying the effects of smoking, fetal alcohol syndrome, and other affects of these substances on bodies, the terms of the debate began changing. The moral component largely (but certainly not entirely) fell by the wayside and scientific evidence began to take over the now regulatory rather than prohibitionist movements. I think Pennock makes good points here, though she does overstate Americans' love affair with science in the postwar period (92). Rather, Americans were enamored with technology and the good life. Science brought us those things but we've never had a national love affair with science. Large numbers of Americans opposed to teaching Darwinism, discomfort with the effects of the atomic bomb in the early years of the Cold War, and today's baseless skepticism over climate change are just a few examples of the ambivalent relationship Americans have had with science. Technology we love, science we love only when it serves our desires.

My other big criticism of the book is the lack of focus on illegal drugs, especially marijuana. She tries to cut off this criticism early on by saying that she is interested in legal marketing practices (9). OK, but that is a narrow interest. Why not expand the study to ideas about regulation of drugs more generally and use marketing as a tool to understand these questions? I think bringing a discussion of marijuana to these broader questions would make the book all the more interesting and useful for current political debates. Certainly the kind of prohibitionist rhetoric that dominated the temperance movement continues to play a huge role in debates over marijuana. Plus such a discussion would help expose the absurdity of marijuana restriction, at least in comparison to the far more destructive and legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol.

Greatest Press Conference Ever

Tom Waits, 2008

Historical Image of the Day

Ruins of Stone Bridge, Bull Run, VA, March 1862

Justice Undone in the Dorothy Stang Case

This just infuriates me:

On Tuesday, after a two-day trial, a jury in Belém, in Pará State, acquitted the man, Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, of conspiracy in the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang in February 2005.
The trial was the second in which a jury had considered Mr. Moura’s role in the killing. He was convicted and sentenced in May last year to 30 years in prison on charges of ordering the killing of Sister Dorothy, 73, who was a staunch advocate of protecting the rain forest.
Under Brazilian law, a retrial is required for first offenders who are sentenced to more than 20 years. This time, the jury voted 5 to 2 to accept the defense contentions that Mr. Moura had no motive to be involved in Sister Dorothy’s killing and that it had been carried out solely by Rayfran das Neves Sales, who confessed to shooting her and is serving a 28-year sentence.

I'm sorry, but no. Para, where Stang was killed, is notorious for corruption and the landed elite doing pretty much anything they want to, be it illegal logging, graft with politicians (who are also from the landed elite), and even intimidating and killing people who try to save the environment and fight for the rights of the poor. And there is just no way, who is already serving time for her murder, and who was a poor worker in the area, decided to just shoot Stang without any goading or payoff from anybody, particularly given that, this time, he just magically changed his entire story and said it wasn't Moura's gun and that nobody paid him off. No way. Not in this case, and not in just about any land-struggle case in Para. Tom Stang, Dorothy's brother, is dead on:“That guy [Sales]was offered up as a sacrificial lamb. But the darker forces that created him have been allowed to go free.” This is just terrible news in a case that should have seen fuller justice for an important voice in the land-rights and conservation struggles in Brazil.

A Great Day to Be a Democrat

What a great day to be a Democrat. No, this isn't a shot at Hillary Clinton. But with the race all but over, we can all sit back, think about all the great things that have happened to Democrats in 2008, and plan for the fall.

I must disagree with Trend a bit here. He writes, "As I suspect many people do, I wish this were over - I'm just tired of it." I too was tiring of it all, but with little to be decided, I very much now hope Hillary sticks it out. Why? Because this campaign has been the greatest thing for Democrats in my lifetime. Sure, it's been brutal at times. But Democrats across the nation have been inspired. We've signed up new members in droves. A lot of these people are going to stick around for the general election. People in nearly every state have had a voice. Hopefully, the absurd primary system has been blown up in the process. Clinton is almost assured of winning West Virginia by a large amount. Fine. Then it goes onto Kentucky and Oregon. If it ends officially in Oregon, as many are predicting it will, every state but Montana and South Dakota, as well as Puerto Rico, will have had a chance to vote on their candidate. That's just fantastic.

To top it off, we are looking at a potential landslide in the Congressional elections this fall. You may remember that Dennis Hastert's seat went to the Democrats earlier this spring. Now, the seat for Louisiana's Sixth District, which represents Baton Rouge, went Democratic for the first time since 1974 and we are about to pick up a seat in a special election in Mississippi. If we are winning special elections in Louisiana and Mississippi, where can't we win? Awesome.

The Republicans are completely lost. I died laughing when I heard about the House Republican pep rally scheduled tomorrow to get everyone excited about Bush's policies. Would you all please do this every day? Please remind us all of your president and his amazingly successful policies!

So be happy today, regardless of who your candidate is. We had 2 awesome candidates (well, really probably 4 or 5). Only 1 could win. That is Barack Obama. With lots of hard work, he is going to lead us to a huge victory in the fall, not only for the presidency, but downticket races as well. I can barely contain my excitement.

Transgendered...six-year-olds?

NPR, amazingly, did a story--actually part one of a two-part series--on young children with gender identity issues. Two six-year-olds, born boys, who at a very young age identified as female.

Of course, I have a wee bit of a problem with the discussion at this point, when it starts to sound like these kids are just playing with dolls and their parents are freaking out, but it turns out that's not the case. Both sets of parents, from the beginning, bought their kids whatever toys they wanted, "girl" toys notwithstanding.

One set of parents, though, decided it was a problem when their 'son' didn't just want to play with dolls, she wanted to be referred to as a girl, and she wanted dresses. So they bought her dresses, but they decided to see a professional, just in case. Thankfully, this family lived in California and found an awesome therapist, Diane Ehrensaft, who encouraged them to let their child live as she wanted to, to refer to her as a her, and to refer to her as transgender, not as "gender identity disordered."

The other family let it go until their child came home one day with a gash on his head from being assaulted on the playground for playing with Barbie. They ended up going to this guy. (Coincidentally, Belledame had this post up just today.) He, of course, convinced them that they should 'train' their son to be a 'boy.' And of course being a boy means not wearing pink, not playing with dolls, playing only with other boys. And it makes the poor kid miserable.

It nearly moved me to tears when the mother described asking her child, who doesn't want to play with the "boy toys" they bought, to draw a boy instead of the girls and rainbows that he draws. He says, "I don't know how to draw a boy," and I nearly started to cry at the dog park.

Gender patterning has infuriated me for a while. I ran my family's bicycle business for three years before heading back to school, and most of our business came from rentals. You can't get a gender-neutral little kids' bike--they're either pink or blue, either girly as hell or super-boyish. But our adult bikes (and even our larger kids' bikes) were all black, yet grown men would still freak out about them being "girls' bikes" because they had the sloping top tube rather than the straight bar. And just imagine what happens when the only kids' bike we had left was the wrong color...oh, no, we can't have that!

So it should go without saying that I was annoyed first by the definition of "girl" and "boy" being limited to pink and blue, and then by this shrink who thinks he can train this child out of thinks he enjoys doing and turn him into a "proper boy" who plays with trucks--and probably becomes exactly the kind of boy who cracks other boys on the head for playing with dolls.

This guy's excuse is that you can't be transgender at that age, that kids' gender identities are fluid, and that therefore the kid can't possibly know his own mind.

Yeah, but what the hell is wrong with the kid being happy? They're not signing him up for sex reassignment surgery just yet, they're just letting him play with the toys he wants and wear the clothes he wants.

The child whose parents let her live as she wants to is happy, well-adjusted, and the most popular kid in school.

The child whose parents force him to be a boy (and have now convinced him that he wants to be a boy, hence my use of the male pronoun) is not happy. He has "a few male friends" but his mother admits that she thinks he's living a split identity.

How the hell is that good for your kid?

Sure, kids can be cruel and they like things defined rigidly and tend to mistreat kids that don't fit their assigned roles. I could tell you tons of stories of things I dealt with when the rumor went around my elementary school that my friend and I were lesbians.

But if your child is happy, as Ehrensaft said, why put her in therapy? When she's depressed and confused, then maybe the time for therapy has come, but if she knows what she wants and is happy with it, why is it so damn important that your kid be forced to play with gendered toys and dress in gendered clothes?

Maybe this kid will grow out of this. Maybe she will live the rest of her life as a girl and never have surgery. Maybe she'll surgically transition. But of all the horrible things that could happen to a child out there, this is hardly one of them.

I was impressed with NPR's coverage, though, except for the reporter's tendency to refer to the child living as female, whose parents use "her" and "she," as "him." On the whole, I thought it was an evenhanded, thoughtful story and they were quite forthright with saying that the child living as female was clearly happier.

Tomorrow is going to be the second part of this series. I'll have to download it.

(Cross-posted at Season of the Bitch)

I Love a May Wedding

Would anyone care to be my date for Jenna Bush's wedding on Saturday in Crawford? It's only an hour from my house. Should be a great time.

And we can get wonderful souvenirs like these commemorative plates!

Historical Image of the Day

Thomas Nast, "A Civil War Christmas," December, 1863.

The image is much larger if you click on it. The detail is worthwhile.

Wasn't There a Non-Clinton Candidate Who Won a Non-Indiana State Last Night?

Scott believes that, in the wake of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries last night, not even the media can avoid that Clinton's chances are virtually nil, and while that certainly appears to be possible (it's a good sign when even the thick Tim Russert is acknowledging as much), I'm not so sure it's a certain thing that the media is going to be giving this "Clinton cannot statistically win" narrative. I woke up this morning to see MSN (the homepage when I open the internet), cnn.com, and the NY Times all with enormous pictures of Clinton on the front, discussing the Indiana primaries. At best, Obama's numerically way more significant win in North Carolina was secondhand news, deserving of no photos and smaller font; at worst, they didn't even mention North Carolina. And all morning (and into the afternoon), CNN's [the network] broadcasts have had three major stories: Clinton in Indiana (and later, the fact that she's loaned herself money); John McCain; and Myanmar. Um, guys? Um....how to put this delicatetly.........wasn't there another Democratic candidate? With a lead in the delegates? And a greater total vote count (excluding the non-election of Michigan)? And more states won? Across a broader swath of society? Who won a state last night? That was bigger than Indiana? And finally - shouldn't you maybe at least pretend not to be a farce and a mockery of journalism by talking about him a little, too?

I have no doubt that some media outlets and television "personalities" may finally be getting it through their heads that, statistically speaking, Clinton is done in terms of primaries. And it's one thing to focus on Clinton first and Obama second (biased? Probably. Defensible? In a way). But to do your stories on Clinton, and then McCain, and then Myanmar, with no mention whatsoever of Obama or North Carolina???? That's....I don't know. Racist? Stupid? Ridiculous? Ignorant? (Insert adjective)?

As I suspect many people do, I wish this were over - I'm just tired of it. But to even pretend to offer "real news" and "objective reporting" and all of that tripe that professional journalists on major news outlets claim to love, and then to pull this kind of garbage, is just ridiculous. You'd think Clinton had a stake in CNN or something. Sheesh....

One "Mis-Named" Set of Islands, 30,000 Destroyed Books

I've made clear before how stupid I think the Falklands/Malvinas War was, and it's clear through monuments and such that the war and the islands themselves continue to play an important part to at least some sectors of the identities of Argentines.

That said, I find the trashing of over 30,000 school textbooks simply because they said "Falklands" rather than "las Islas Malvinas" ridiculous. Whether Argentina likes it or not, the British state administers the islands, not Argentina, and "claims" on the islands don't undo that fact (though the spokesman for the Islands still comes off as arrogant, too). Wasting paper, funds, and resources to destroy and replace 30,000 books over one name that you don't really like is definitely one of the more ridiculous things to do. Chalk another one up to misplaced nationalism.

Album of the Week: Enemy of the Sun

In an effort to write more about music, and more in general, I'm going to start writing about particular album every week(ish). It was fun for a while with the random 10, but it isn't easy to write about a random song. Sometimes, I learn a lot but, mostly, it's too much damn work. Instead, I'm going to stop leaving it up to the fates and write on some of my favorite albums, or just whatever the hell I want to when I write the thing. First up was on my ten favorite rock album list from a while back (one year ago yesterday, as it goes), from my favorite metal band and the best rock show I've ever seen, Neurosis' Enemy of the Sun.

Though they would go way farther with their ideas, Enemy of the Sun is the encapsulation of what Neurosis was and what they would become. After their debut, a very standard-issue West Coast punk album called Pain of Mind, they veered closer to metal until their third album (second in 1992) and first for Alternative Tentacles (though that label reissued the first two and made money off them until Neurosis started their own), Souls at Zero. With it, the band threw all the punk aesthetic out the window for slowed down, long-form metal. Not only was their change in sound like I've never heard elsewhere, I'd never really heard a band sound like that before. A year later, they would expand the sound into what became a mind-blowing experience for me.

Enemy of the Sun opens the way its predecessor does: with a vocal sample. Instead of the confusion at the beginning of the former, however, this sets a very particular mood. "Are you lost?" "Yes" and, with that, the drum and bass kick in a slow, natural rhythm while the questioner goes on about the amazing brevity of life. Steve Von Till's vocals come in slowly while the sample fades out, but the lyrics aren't the typical gloom and doom from much of the metal world. Make no mistake, the words are violent and are belted out in screams, but it is the kind of violence that displays the Earth's power over humanity and how easily we are snuffed by the elements. Fire and water are all over the place, but so is the necessity of the harvest and the ever-repeating ritual of life. There is an empowerment and a spirituality in the lyrics that trumps the darkness.

The words aside, these same ideas make the music even better, which is more important to me in almost any realm. The album is a pure wall of sound, heavy as hell, and oppressive as anything I've ever heard. Through this, unlike most bands that came before them, the music lives and breathes. The rhythms change organically as they move through the waves of guitar and the vocals, one singer in frustrated screams and the other in beastial growls, move in line with the changes in the music. To compound it, their extensive use of traditional acoustic instruments, repeated samples and field recordings that, when added into the huge, sludgy, Sabbath-style riffs, add a dimension to the music that I'd never heard in metal before. Beyond the traditional two guitar, bass, and drums setup, of which they make a tight hardcore band, the addition of strings, bagpipes and didgeridoo at various times give the songs a fully orchestrated feel. The samples add contextual weight that obscure lyrics that are difficult to understand never can. The third track, called "Burning Flesh in Year of Pig," is a recording of a report on the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk during the Vietnam War that is accented by noisy tape loops and isn't pretty. Behind everything, in all the silences and through all the noise, is a constant stream of ambient sounds that is trance-inducing. This culminates into the final song, "Cleanse," a thirty minute epic of primal drums, vocals and noise that has many times driven me to a near hypnotic state, never having realized that eighteen minutes have passed it flows together so naturally.

None of this is done as gimmickry, however. While the eight songs average over nine minutes a piece, none of that excessive amount of time is used for noodling. There are no discernible guitar solos anywhere on the album and, while Neurosis is by far not free from pretension, the time is used to build and release tension, not to impress listeners with their prowess. Enemy of the Sun, and Neurosis in general, is a case where the sum is greater than its parts. The album has a feeling of wholeness, like it emerged naturally from the Earth. While this may all sound like some kind of hippie-metal, let me assure you that the album rocks your ass off, even if it takes a little time to get there.

Enemy of the Sun was a revelation for me. With its roots squarely in metal, it found common ground with folk, electronic, and classical to make something really unique. Over the years, they've expanded their sound, taking it farther away from metal and more toward the folk and ambient sides and into strange new places. At this point, I think that their later albums Times of Grace and Through Silver in Blood are far better albums, but Enemy of the Sun will always have the top place in my heart for how wide it opened my eyes to the possibilities of metal.

And for my first trick...

While we're waiting with bated breath for the returns in Indiana to come in, I thought I'd write a little about sexism in the campaign.

Not the usual bit about sexism in the campaign, of course. That's been done. Yes, Hillary Clinton has faced sexism. (And Racialicious has a great post about sexism and racism in the campaign that you should read.)

Now her supporters are using it against her opponent.

And that, along with the "obliterate Iran" comment, has made me lose any last bit of positive feeling that I had about her possibly being the first woman president.

I blogged before about why my feminism leads me to be critical of Clinton's tactics and to support Obama.

Words have power. And the way they are used tells you something about the person using them. Hillary Clinton is not stupid. When she says "obliterate," she knows the message that she's sending and the person that she's appealing to at least as well as Obama knows what he implies by saying "the claws come out."

And Carville straight-up saying that Clinton has balls is just doing overtly what her campaign has been doing more subtly for months now. While he's at it, of course, he's attempting to emasculate Obama.

Aside from being troubling in its similarity to tactics used by the current administration, this crap bothers me because I feel that it confirms what I've felt all along: Hillary Clinton isn't interested in pulling women up behind her, unless it's when she can say it and get a few votes. She's not out there trying to prove that women can be president. She's out there trying to prove that she's an honorary man and thus gets a pass.

Ariel Levy wrote about this phenomenon in Female Chauvinist Pigs, a book I both liked and found problematic. Levy wanted to site the problems with this phenomenon in "raunch culture," but her strongest arguments were not against raunch itself but against the commodification of sex and against this very "honorary man" phenomenon--hence the title.

Like Margaret Thatcher and many other women leaders, Hillary Clinton spends lots of time trying to prove she's got, as my father says, the "balls for the game." And in an article in The Nation about the Pennsylvania primary, one man at least showed that she'd proved her point.

A construction contractor who gave the name Mike Giordano said he did not watch Obama's speech on race after the Wright controversy broke because "I don't listen to those people. They don't make sense when they talk." And he summed up the presidential contest this way: "They put a senior citizen for President, a woman and a black man. What do you got? Nothing. But that woman's got balls."

The greatest irony of this is that Hillary Clinton, back when her husband was running, was seen as way too powerful and emasculating, so much so that his (and her) approval ratings actually went up among men when rumors of his infidelity and sexual harassment charges came out. Stephen Ducat wrote about this extensively in The Wimp Factor So how is it that now she can get away with being that emasculating woman? Is it different now that she's running for office herself, rather than as first lady, or is it going to play right into GOP hands for the fall?

Perhaps Clinton's rhetoric works against Obama, who got my vote precisely because his language and that of his advisers appeals to my feminist sensibilities, but it won't work against an actual war hero and certified White Guy, John McCain. It's just one more example of her handing arguments to the Right while making arguments that do nothing for her against McCain.

I suppose the best thing I can say about this is that it allows Obama an easier time attacking the both of them. He can knock militarism and it hits both opponents. (And don't get me started on the gas tax.)

And if the superdelegates are dumb enough to overturn the majority of the voters to hand the nomination to the person who's headed right at every opportunity, they may well watch those voters defect to McCain--as well as watching those on the left, particularly the black voters who've been disenfranchised one too many times, vote third party again. (Cynthia McKinney, are you listening?) You can't draw votes away from the Republicans by being just like them.

(cross-posted to Season of the Bitch.)

Bush and Burma

Quite an offer W made to help Myanmar after their cyclone. He did such a fantastic job reconstructing New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Why wouldn't the Burmese take advantage of this generous offer!

The thing is, I fully believe that the U.S. will do a better job in Burma than they did in New Orleans. Why? Because helping Myanmar recover serves their policy goals in a way that New Orleans never did. New Orleans was full of black people in a mostly Republican state. Driving them out just made Louisiana a Republican redoubt. Bush has never shown any interest in assisting African-Americans and he sure didn't after Katrina. What survived in New Orleans? Exactly what white people like. Bourbon Street, the French Quarter, the spaces of partying. Turn New Orleans into Disneyland for adults, who cares.

On the other hand, a bigger U.S. presence in Burma would serve the nation's policy interests but undermining the military dictatorship and key ally of China while rebuilding the nation's reputation around the world.

Sorry to be so cynical, but it's not as if the Republicans haven't said all of this themselves.

Historical Image of the Day

Eugene O'Neill at a rehearsal of "The Iceman Cometh," 1946

Close Reading the Culinary Culture War

To begin, I’ll own up to a nasty vice I have: cooking magazines. I subscribe to a ton—some good (Cook’s Illustrated, Saveur), some just shiny ad rags hawking outlandishly expensive designer kitchen baubles and “authentic” $3,500 per person international cooking trips that contain just enough decent recipes to keep my attention. A “Letter to the Editor” in the January issue of Gourmet caught my attention, and I was pleased to find another reader’s pithy retort in this month’s issue. From January:

For those of us who are not enamored of the culture and cuisine of the southern part of the United States, the January 2008 issue was one for the recycle bin. I went from page to page and not once did I crimp a corner to remind me to go back and savor a recipe or an article. Marianne W., Rolling Hills, CA

I particularly like the reply, from Cate M., San Antonio:

I read with interest Californian Marianne W.’s letter concerning the January 2008 issue of Gourmet. In it, she expressed that she is “not enamored” of either the culture or the cuisine of the South. I am tempted to say that I am not enamored of the consumerism, superficiality, and pollution found in Southern California, but instead I will just say, bless her heart.

I love the response—well-deserved and very apt (and so Texan). But I’d like to look a little more at M-Dub from the 310. First, for some background about Rolling Hills, CA: the city’s website states that “Rolling Hills is a private, gated community located atop the scenic hills of the Palos Verdes Peninsula”. Got it. For those of you unfamiliar with Palos Verdes, here are some quick facts: median family income of $133,563, 78% White, 12% Asian, 3% Hispanic, less than 1% African-American, currently nine homes for sale in the city; the cheapest will set you back $1.98 million. So that’s where she’s coming from. Here’s what she could have written:

I’m not a fan of Southern cuisine, so I was a little disappointed that the whole January issue was devoted to it. I hope that in the future you decide to have at least some variety of recipes and articles in your themed issues.

But she didn’t. The opening of her letter is rather striking (for those of us), as it serves to create a sense of invisible majority behind her coming statements. No me’s, I’s, or one’s here; it is a strongly implied plural for which she speaks. Further, the author is “not enamored of” Southern cooking, and specifically adds Southern culture to the cuisine. Slightly anachronistic usage aside, the tone seems intended to imbue her prose with an air of heightened discourse (not unlike the present writing, granted), clearly with an eye to capitalize on the phrase’s ability to privilege her in the discursive hierarchy. That she calls out the culture as well as the food is particularly telling. My favorite part of her little epistle is “the southern part of the United States”. Not the South, the Southeast, Southern cooking (or, perish the thought, Southern cuisine)—the southern “part”. By being only a “part”, it is reduced to lacking a sense of regional cultural autonomy, diminished in stature. I would posit that she wouldn’t elect to use “the northwestern area of the country” rather than the “Pacific Northwest”. Rounding out the subtly haughty California missive, she does not pass up the opportunity to brandish her moral superiority and contempt once more: she doesn’t just throw the magazine out, she recycles it.

This is all slightly tongue-in-cheek, but does speak to real issues regarding the class divide. My hunch is that Marianne self-identifies as a liberal and as such, considers those red states in the “southern part of the United States” to be backwards and unsophisticated in comparison to the southern part of California. Of course, this is a wealthy R+6 congressional district, so I may be off on that, and I may be giving her too much credit by not bringing up the obvious racial implications of all of this. In any event, I thought it was an interesting exchange from a strange source.

Misdirected Blame for Violence in Favela Tourism

Both Erik and I have made my opinions on favela-tourism clear before, and like Randy, I fully believe that this is still exploitive. But two comments on this story. First, the fact that tourists' lives are suddenly in danger because they are meeting armed narcotraficantes face-to-face is absurd. Quite honestly, if there is any danger (and there probably is - tourists don't know when rival gangs or the police are going to invade a favela, resulting in a gun-battle), tourists have been exposed to it for years. When I first went to Brazil in 2005, some British tourists were telling me how they did this favela tour, and saw three kids walking by with M-16s, and their tour-guide said that they were all under 20, and that one of them was one of the top men in the drug gang, had already killed over 20 people, and was still a teenager. So any notion that there is a new element of danger simply because now tourists can meet these people face to face is ridiculous. The danger's always been there.

Secondly, while I again think the whole practice of favela tourism is disgusting and exploitative, the company owner is right on this:

The tour company has been accused of glamorising criminal activity.
But the unrepentant owner of the agency involved says the presence of armed men in the favelas is the fault of the authorities, and they should clean up their own act before starting to criticise him.

He's unfortunately right - he's neither responsible for the presence of armed men, nor is he guilty of glorifying the drug trade in the favelas. Until the police actually do something productive to combat the drug industry in the favelas (and there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of ways the police could improve here), and until the state actually makes a strong effort to help the poor who live in the favelas (with Sao Paulo offering a good model on how to do this), problems like poverty, gang warfare, and police and drug lords killing innocent people will not go away, and any attempt to force a tourism company to stop these tours in the hopes it reduces violence is blind and only further denies the true social problems at hand.

Farewell, Old Friend

Between the tragic Kentucky Derby, the baseball season, and the Boston Celtics being stretched to 7 games this weekend, a major news item flew under the radar.

Julio Franco, playing in the Mexican league, has retired from professional baseball at 49 years of age.

I'm actually fairly sad about this. Franco played for my beloved Cleveland Indians in the 80s, and the first teams I remember had him on their roster. I have bunches of his baseball cards. Unlike just about anybody else, I could look at him and say, "a guy that played for my team when I first remember baseball is still around." And he was the only player who was still playing whose baseball card I had. I also just loved that he was still around, playing on his own terms. I was really hoping he'd make it to 50 - I just thought it would be wonderful to have a major-leaguer who was 50, even if he was a bench-warmer. Alas, for whatever reasons, Julio Franco has retired, and with him goes one of the final good bits of my childhood that was still present. But a little nostalgia is nothing next to a good career. And maybe he'll become a coach, now....

Historical Image of the Day

Comanches, 1873