Slouching Toward Gilead

Because nearly every day recently has contained elements that seem to portend the beginning of the end of rational life on earth, I've been reading more than my usual quota of science fiction. So, while I was looking for something to use as a banner for this post, I came across this wonderful diagram of The History of Science Fiction by Steve Jurvetson on Wikimedia Commons*, and I think I've managed to link to a high-res version (which is the only possible way to use it without getting a headache). Although as an infographic it's a bit difficult to follow, Jurvetson's connections among different genres and media throughout history (from Gilgamesh to now) offer a really useful way of following what I've come to think of as the literary genre with the longest history of all. 

Imagining different worlds and universes seems to characterize major shifts in historical events, ways of thinking, and--eventually--life, the universe, and everything.** Among the stories I've always loved best, even though I've been pretty much a free-range reader, have been those attempts to imagine what we could become at moments where what are becoming seems to be particularly problematic. Only recently I'd plowed through all three of Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem novels (and watched both television renditions) and was left longing for something that would restore my persistent suspicion that things might just turn out okay in the end.

I often return to Ursula K. Le Guin's early stories that feature striking contrasts between fairly simple economies (like the Kesh in Always Coming Home, or Falk's rescuers in City of Illusions) and their antagonists (the Condor People and the Shing), or that follow emerging connections during contacts between indigenous peoples and explorers (such as natives and ethnologists or colonists; I think the best of these, and the most relevant to the present is The Telling). But Le Guin tempers utopian leanings with realistic assessments of the things that get in the way: greed, power-hunger, fear/hatred of the other.

Living through the current election cycle seems more and more like being ensnared in an ill-conceived saga about people who yearn for a past that never really existed, others who have a better idea of what is actually going on but are powerless to effect any kind of meaningful change, and a much larger population of those who would rather not think about it at all.

So, I keep reading. Rather recently I discovered Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore and its companion (within the Penumbraverse) Sourdough. As often happens to me, at just about the time I'd finished both, Sloan's newest entry into his 'verse came out: Moonbound. I pre-ordered it and devoured it upon arrival. None of these books is actually science fiction as usually defined or experienced by folks like me. Instead they're variations on a magical-realistic view of the present (the first two), and a fantasy adventure that riffs off most of the stories/tropes that belong to boomers, gen-exers, and their descendants: C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, Harry Potter, Dungeons and Dragons, and a lot more I'm not even tangentially familiar with. Sloan's worlds are amusing, smart, with-it (I think; since I'm not, I'm not really sure what that means--but they seem particularly attuned to my children's generation), and engaging, even for old Luddite farts like me who fell out of the gaming world when she couldn't make it through Myst. [Note: I'm leaving the sourcing up to interested readers, since everyone seems to harbor preferences as to booksellers and critical resources. Searches can lead to beneficial excursions through accidental rabbit holes, so have fun.]

Another new favorite is Becky Chambers, whose Robot and Monk books, A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy are much better, and far more healthful, than drinking too much wine in order to make it through the current epoch. They're both gentle, sanguine, philosophically sound, and way too short (not really; each one is exactly as long as it needs to be--but I want more). Her niche in contemporary SF has been called "hope punk" which seems rather appropriate.  I can't remember how I found out about them, but will search back through last year's journal to see where they first come up so I can thank whoever's responsible. When I'd finished them (twice), I read her earlier Wayfarer series (A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few, and The Galaxy, and the Ground Within), and a stand-alone novella, To Be Taught, if Fortunate.  Twice, each. In the Robot and Monk books, dystopia has been bypassed (the robots give up on humanity and left town for the wilderness). In the Wayfarer series, dystopia still beckons among some species, but the crew of Wayfarer and their friends are making their way(s) toward a more harmonious universe. If this intrigues you at all, see this essay in Wired by Jason Kehe: "Is Becky Chambers the Ultimate Hope for Science Fiction?"

So, while this country seems bent on making at least some aspects of contemporary dystopic film and fiction (like The Handmaid's Tale, Mad Max, and various warnings about the coming Singularity) come into being, I'm revisiting William Morris and Le Guin. 

But in case you haven't had enough of dystopia (or if you're bingeing the stuff I never read or watched, like The Hunger Games and such) here's a classic, which everybody needs to read: 

In 1909, E. M. Forster published his short story, "The Machine Stops" in the Oxford and Cambridge Review. It's available at the link in .pdf  (thanks to retiring U. C. Davis professor Phillip Rogaway; I'm not sure how long this text or his web page will be available after the end of the month). I used this story in my Technology And Utopia classes both at UTD and the Art Institute, and my students found its prescience striking--even before the F-book and its ilk had taken over our own world. 

But I'm not going to end on a completely sour note. My bedtime reading (after my third time through Le Guin's The Telling) is currently Andy Weir's latest novel, Project Hail Mary. . . .

[Several days later]

I started working on this post on or about the Ides of July, when things had started looking quite ominous. Since then, and since my last little bit of input, things have changed and a modicum of sanguinity has returned (that's "sanguine" in the sense of "optimistic" rather than "bloody"). We'll still have to wait to see how things turn out, but the prognosis is somewhat more promising than in recent weeks.

That said, I've now finished Project Hail Mary, and I don't remember having quite so much fun reading a book about the probable demise of Mother Earth. A mild spoiler: Earth seems to have survived, thanks to the efforts of Ryland Grace and his buddy Rocky. Weir once again has his characters "science the shit out of" every problem that erupts (actually, many, many problems) just as Mark Watney does in The Martian. I'm sure the biophysicists (?) and other sciency types who read the book (or see the film, due out next year, with Ryan Gosling as Grace) will find numerous flaws, but I'm more than willing to suspend whatever disbelief arises because the whole thing is poignant, smart, quirky, amusing, and very much fun. I can't wait to see how the film crew manages to pull this one off!

Good science fiction is really no different from good fiction of any other genre, as long as the writer can build an engaging world, create believable and compelling characters, and deal with issues important to human being-in-the-world. Once upon a time, in a world long past, I was asked "where have all the philosophers gone?" I rather flippantly answered that they'd all run off to write science fiction. As it turns out, though, the tendency of SF writers to engage questions of philosophical importance, deal with cultural conundrums, and explore the meaning(s) of sentience and consciousness by posing interesting questions and conducting thought experiments along the way makes my answer from about 1980 practically spot-on today. 

Any of the writers I've mentioned in this post are well worth reading. So, if you're looking for a beach read, or just something smart to take your mind off current events, have a go. As I mentioned above, I haven't linked everything, but using the google machine can often lead you along interesting paths, so I decided to leave the door open for serendipity.

Enjoy the rest of the summer, and try to stay cool.

*Steve Jurvetson's Flickr page is here. My finding this image also led me down a rabbit hole--this guy is really interesting.
**Thanks, of course, to Douglas Adams. 

Hope, Springing

This post was begun about three weeks ago, before I knew that I'd be undergoing yet another invasive coronary procedure (an angiogram) that turned even more invasive when the doc found the expected occlusion of one of my old bypasses (now 25 years old) and transformed the scan into an angioplasty. The catheterization team inserted a shiny new Onyx drug-eluting stent into the offending vessel, and all the while I was wide awake with only mild sedation. As uncomfortable as it was, it sure beat the hell out of having my chest cracked yet again. I had four bypasses in 1995, and my aortic valve was replaced by a mechanical one in 2009. This time I left for home only a few hours after the cath, and got to sleep in my own bed. The only really negative aspect of the whole experience is that, for the next year, I'll be a teetotaler because of the anti-platelet therapy being added to my current drug mix. 

If you add the mechanical valve to the two artificial corneas received in cataract surgery a couple of years ago, this new stent ramps up my membership in the Borg club bigtime. So far, though, nothing shows except under appropriate scanning technology, so I'm no Seven of Nine in that regard. Well, in most ways I'm no Seven of Nine.

Anyway, I'm feeling fine and it should be a spell before I have to undergo another of these little encounters, even though it seems inevitable that I will. I'm certainly not getting any younger, and my genes aren't getting any better.

All this drama began just about the same time the bad news about COVID-19 was coming down the pike. In fact, the day of the procedure was the last day before the hospital (which I came to call the Baylor Heart Hospital, Hotel, and Spa after the valve job) began to institute new protocols for both patients and staff.

We've managed to do most of our home-prepping (and no, we didn't buy toilet paper) which has consisted of stocking up on a few things, but mostly just doing our weekly shopping. This week we're also getting most of our doctor visits (including the vet) taken care of, so that we won't have to do much getting out and about over the next month. We're looking into a local farm supplier for later needs, and once the food panic has subsided it may be possible to pop into Trader Joe's or Whole Foods for what we can't easily get online, or maybe get it delivered.

The truth is that as someone who reads and writes about depletion and abundance, and about non-capitalist political economies, I've been something of a prepper for a long time. We've also been revising our various impacts on the environment and economics in general by buying little and living as lightly as we can. So doing without has become a way of life with us, and except for an odd obsession with high-resolution television, we're not as technologically plugged in as our children are, and as long as the electricity stays on and the water keeps flowing, we'll be about as comfortable as we need to be. We can muddle through, abide in place, and (mostly because we're essentially hermits anyway) be able to handle social distancing quite well.

This is where the post I was originally preparing comes in.

Every now and then I get inspired by something that sets me off in a different direction. Sometimes that something is so transformative that it makes me rethink my current trajectory, shift gears, re-focus, and move on.

Such an event occurred when I read Margaret Renkl's lovely article in the New York Times last month (Feb. 23, "One Tiny Beautiful Thing") about surviving a bleak, soggy winter in the South. One particular paragraph struck home with a force I seldom experience in editorial writing. She is, of course, talking about politics, but her essay also resonates with the current, even more problematic situation.

Paying attention to what is happening in Washington is a form of self-torment so reality altering that it should be regulated as a Schedule IV drug. I pay attention because that’s what responsible people do, but I sometimes wonder how much longer I can continue to follow the national news and not descend into a kind of despair that might as well be called madness. Already there are days when I’m one click away from becoming Lear on the heath, raging into the storm. There are days when it feels like the apocalypse is already here.

But on a walk through a park, she noticed a small green sign of spring in a knot hole in a tree that completely changed her perspective. In order to survive the political (and climatic) moment, and instead of giving up watching the news for Lent,  she's going to be looking for more tiny beautiful things.

Now, as anybody who comes by The Farm even once in a while knows, I am not by nature an optimistic person, and by no means any kind of believer. But Renkl's column stirred my philosophical juices to such an extent that she provided a kind of intellectual epiphany, and made me wonder why it is that I can let the political climate, with its egregious absence of reason, drive me into the particular kind of malaise to which I seemed, when I read her piece, to have fallen victim.

Just yesterday I read another of Renkl's essays and sent it on to my children. It's about comfort food and making it through dark times: "Cornbread. Now, More Than Ever--Comfort foods, and the old ways of making them, bring solace when you really need it." Once again her logic and philosophical clarity reached into the darkness and offered a glimmer of light.

Please know that I fully realize that many, many people in this country and around the world are in no condition to be hunkering down and making cornbread. Even retired old codgers like me and my Beloved Spouse, who are insulated by a fixed income, an owned house, and some small financial security (that isn't attached to the stock markets), are only "safe" for as long as our health holds out and the city keeps the basics running. But, at the risk of sounding much more sanguine than I actually am, this experience for many of us can be a lesson in true economy: oikonomia, in the Greek sense, and the relationship between ends and means. This notion is also tied into William Morris's description of economics as grounded in the education of desire. Since I'm in the process of rewriting my own thought experiment based on Morris's utopian vision in News From Nowhere, I'll be doing a great deal of thinking along these very lines.

And so, as I try not to despair of our national (or global) fate, and as I hope that science, if allowed to do what it does best, manages to accomplish what actually needs to be done, I'm going to use this blog to work through some possibilities.

I'll be looking in the knotholes of trees (in my case for baby squirrels), spotting the phenological evidence of Spring (which begins tomorrow), wading through my soggy garden to think about where we might be able to grow more food, and baking cornbread.

Be well, everyone, and may the Spring bring about Tikkun Olam, a healing of the world.

Image credit: This photo, Single blossom and leaves growing out of knot hole in old log originated on Pixio, the public domain image website. I obbtained it via Wikimedia Commons. I thought the image did a nice job of mingling the notion of something inserted into a cavity, with a sweet illustration of Renkl's first essay.

Phenology 101: Spring 2018 Edition

As I realized last year on this day, I haven't been particularly faithful about celebrating Spring on this blog. But lately I've been thinking about seasonal things more than usual, and have managed to stay aware of changes both small and monumental.

Phenological markers have been delayed a bit, at least compared to the last two years. The wisteria, for example, is only now beginning to bloom out, in contrast with last year's appearance at the beginning of the month. And the redbud (shown above), which last year was already past its prime, is in full flush. The holly flowers outside the dining room and next to the front porch perfume the air so boisterously that the aroma permeates the living room  in the evening, even with the doors closed. The wisteria is beginning to do the same in back, and soon the chinaberry and catalpa will replace it--although neither are even budding yet.

The garden is becoming somewhat less accidental than it was (I have a habit of letting things grow where they want to) because we've been evicted from the north side by the neighbor's noisy pool pump, and I'm giving up on being able to use the area for anything peaceful. As a result, I've cleared out planting space outside the wild gladiolus volunteers, and am adding other flowering plants around a transplanted bird bath.  Since we plan to build a greenhouse over the potager (to hide the unsightly structures added by the neighbor), the converted copper fire basin damaged by the previous neighbor's cowboy tree guy's bad aim and turned into a large, bent, funky bathing pool for bees and cedar waxwings had to be moved anyway. So now it has a new home and the bees are loving it. Having denuded all our tree-berries, the cedar waxwings have moved on to juicier fare elsewhere, and other birds don't seem to have discovered the new location.

Following William Morris's idea that gardens should be made up of outdoor rooms, we've begun to envision a series of these. The first includes the area just outside the trailer door, where I've moved my hammock (it used to be where the pool pump now registers its loudest decibel level), and where we've installed a garden bench and a couple of chairs, as well as some strategically placed tree stumps--of which we have a never-ending supply. Now there are places to put one's feet up or rest a drink, and the hammock gets fairly consistent, dappled shade. The area is bounded on one side by a large, flowering holly tree, and on the other by a small copse of privet, cedar, and some variety of flowering tree I haven't identified yet. We installed a trellis-arbor a few months ago, and completed the sequestering of the area by transporting the remains of an eighteen year-old pile of logs (from an area soon to become a tomato garden) to build a partial wall.

The newest space offers our ageing and gimpy (torn knee ligament) Arlo (he's under the hammock) a nice space to sleep in soft mulch and shade, and we can enjoy an afternoon conversation and tipple after TBS returns from coaching, which he's still doing as a volunteer. The holly tree makes the highway noise seem more distant, and things will be even quieter after the trees all leaf out. When we first moved in, the expressway nearly two miles away consisted of four lanes; now it's ten. Things were somewhat less noisy before progress caught up with us. These days we're thankful for the fact that the more trees come into leaf between us and the main route out of town, the quieter it will become--especially while people who aren't retired are at work.

And so, we're managing to deal with new challenges and to come up with solutions that address them and keep us sane. Soon the pecans will be leafing out and the light will soften. The grass will green up and need mowing. The crisp Spring air has almost made us forget about the two solid weeks of rainy sog we put up with last month (was it only last month?). And all that rain may make things cooler in Summer, although we're not counting on it.

For now we're enjoying the daily phenological changes.  The date of the equinox doesn't really determine the onset of Spring. It's really the appearance of significant signs, and for us some of these are beginning more or less on time. I doubt if folks in the northeast will be noticing snow drops or forsythia in the immediate future.  But the date does remind us that it shouldn't be all that long until the snow and ice abate up there--and the first supercell thunderstorm appears, a harbinger of tornado season down here. A good reason for us to celebrate while we can, and enjoy this probably all-too-short respite between extremes.

Looking Backward, Going Forward

As I begin to transform my old website Owldroppings into a more complete exploration of the concerns that show up in this blog (which will become a component of a newly realized Owl’s Farm: The Website), I keep running into questions about what I really want to think and write about.

After all, I’m about to turn seventy, an age I never thought I’d reach. So what does a seventy year-old former academic, wannabe political economist, sometime philosopher of technology, lapsed archaeologist, retired art and design history teacher, and compulsive writer do with what remains of her life?

Early on in my musings I realized that I want to stop being so grumpy. Even though I don’t have grandchildren, my siblings do, and so I do have a small genetic investment in the future. It might behoove me, therefore, to begin to consider better alternatives than seem to be available in the present political moment.

Owl’s Farm: The Blog has always been about utopia. It was inspired by two of the best utopian thinkers I ever ran across: William Morris and Yi-Fu Tuan. Morris was a celebrated designer and an early socialist, and Tuan is a humanistic geographer with a profound understanding of place. Both developed creative visions of the notion of home, which led to my explorations into its many meanings.

As I searched for a focus for the new iteration of the website, I realized that it still had to be about education, and should still embody the “teaching philosophy” I was required to articulate for my annual evaluations as a college instructor.  But it also needs to spend less time on the current state of education and more on locating what could improve it—especially since there are good models available.

In addition, instead of just complaining about current economic conditions, perhaps I should focus on locating bright spots on the horizon, like alternative energy solutions or promising community developments.

The website should also continue to provide resources for the curious, since former students still occasionally use it for the links. I’ll also archive my topical essays for courses I taught (not just art and design history, but philosophical perspectives on food, anthropology, culture, and the Arts and Crafts movement), and see if I can stay on top of issues relevant to them.   

All along this blog was meant to be an adjunct to my novel, More News From Nowhere. That, too, is in the process of being revised somewhat—now that I have the time to revisit its reason for being.  As a lifelong interdisciplinarian, I want to use the novel (and others in various stages of development) and the blog(s) as outlets for the results of curiosity. It’s often difficult to compartmentalize my many interests, but occasionally I can focus on a single aspect (museums, for example) and develop lines of inquiry that can be labeled. Hence: Owl’s Cabinet of Wonders. Other attempts (like The Owl of Athena, a blog on educational concerns) kept leaking into The Farm, and so were abandoned (although they, too, will be archived on the revised site). 

The ultimate aim now is fun—as much as is possible in this moment. I’m too old to keep wasting time being a complete curmudgeon. I can’t promise that I won’t ever go off on another grumpy rant again, or that sarcasm won’t sneak into my commentary on life, the universe, and everything. I am by nature a cynic, in its original sense. I’m dog-like: suspicious, reluctant to trust without reason (see my post from The Owl of Athena on the topic). But also both faithful and curious, and willing to explore new ideas and approaches.  

And yes, I can be a cranky old bitch. But I’ll try to do more Frisbee chasing and romping around in the garden, and less pissing on the flowers. I hope what I’ll have to offer is interesting, entertaining (in a very broad sense of the word), thoughtful, and educational. I also hope it will provide a sense of hope for the future, and tools for building more of a eu-topia than an ou-topia. I’d rather that we move toward a good place than continue to imagine what can only be a no-place, a place possible only in the imagination.

Wish me luck.

PS: owlfarmer.com is “live” but practically devoid of content. Design work will progress as I have time, depending on concurrent pursuits.

Image note: The photo is of Mount Whitney, taken in the Alabama Hills outside of Lone Pine, California, during our winter trip in 2015/16. Whenever I stayed with my Grandmother, I could see a more distant version of this image from her living room window.

Lush Life

 Still Life with Books and Garden Stuff

The Farm is actually doing quite well these days, and this farmer--instead of grousing about how tough life is on the Populated Prairie--has decided to acknowledge the wonders and plenitude of this particular Spring season. Perhaps the proximity of retirement has something to do with my improved attitude, along with the relatively large amount of free time I can now devote to the abject pleasures of reading and thinking. The reading has involved two books I picked up at the Half Price emporium that makes this town tolerable: Michael Boulter's Darwin's Garden: Down House and The Origin of Species, and Gerard Helferich's Humboldt's Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey That Changed the Way We See The World. (Remind me never to burden any publisher with a subtitle nearly as long as the book.)

As usual, fortunate conjunctions have occurred that make the reading all the more felicitous, and I'll get to those in a minute. But I should mention that the pleasurable moments in the garden, both reading and working, have been enhanced by lovely weather interspersed with bouts of rain (and the usual terrifying Tornado Watch events) that have turned my modest half acre into a veritable jungle.

Woody enjoys sniffing the organic fertilizer in the raised veg bed.

 The "North Meadow" with Showy Primroses and Mullein

The animals are all enjoying the garden in their various ways. Mrs. Peel has figured out that if she stays still the dogs won't chase her, so she happily joins us--usually perching herself on one of the tables. Woody is fascinated with the manure-based fertilizer in the raised bed, and I've had to put barriers up to keep him out.  Arlo just looks for the shadiest spot near a human (or as near to Emma as he can get), and adorns his tail with pecan catkins, all of which have to be removed at the back door before he can go back inside.

 Emma amidst the Lambs Ears and Catnip

 Arlo observing the pots

The Humboldt book especially has made us both (The Beloved Spouse and I--not Arlo) aware of the role the younger of the von Humboldt brothers played in our current understanding of ecological relationships. Our conversations about him (and his influence on Darwin) led us to a talk on YouTube featuring Andrea Wulf (who's written a biography of Alexander) and others--including an art historian (Eleanor Harvey) from the Smithsonian who's preparing an exhibit for 2019-20 on Humboldt's cultural impact. The talk was recorded at Washington College last year, and runs about an hour and a half, but it's enormously interesting and well worth watching--especially if you're unfamiliar with Alexander von Humboldt himself. Wulf's biography is now on the wish list, and will be ordered along with his Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent and Views of Nature--unless, of course, I can snag copies of the latter two at HPB.

At any rate, Humboldt's major work was called Kosmos, in five volumes and incomplete at his death in 1859. It was on my mind on Friday when I headed to the University of Dallas with TBS for this year's Heidegger Symposium. I even had a copy of Helferich's book in my bag, in case I had time to read between sessions. The second talk of the morning, by Richard Capobianco of Stonehill College, was about "Heidegger on Kosmos and the Independence of Being in Relation to the Human Being," and I found myself wondering if Heidegger had ever read Humboldt. Apparently I wasn't the only one, because Dennis Schmidt (of Western Sydney University, who would deliver the Richard Owsley Memorial Address on Saturday) asked the question. I am immensely glad that he did, because I tend not to comment or ask questions during this conference; I'm not a Heideggerian, but he's the main focus of many of the readings considered in DASEIN (Dallas Area Seminar on European Inquiry), a local philosophical discussion group that the Beloved Spouse helped to found, and I'm essentially a hanger-on. Anyway, as it turned out, nobody knew if Heidegger had read Humboldt or not, and it looks like a nice research project for new retirees.

But I'm also interested in Darwin, of course, and Ernst Haeckel (the link is to the Wikipedia article because it includes some of his prints from Kuntstformen der Natur), and William Morris (especially his travels to Iceland) and numerous other nineteenth-century intellectuals preoccupied in one way or another with natural history. So when people ask me what I'm going to do in my retirement, it hardly looks like I'll be retiring at all.

In the end, it's about curiosity--the very component of intelligence and creativity that I find so lacking in so many of my students. All of those I mentioned, and the writers whose travel narratives I've been reading over the last year, were profoundly curious.  It may well be that the absence of widespread social media fostered this curiosity, and made it necessary. After all, I can just call up a web page on any of them and find myriad links to more--along with books, photos, drawings and paintings, manuscripts, letters, and other ephemera which help bring them all alive.  And I'm not at all unaware of the fact that if I had lived in the nineteenth century and developed any of their interests, I'd have had no way of satisfying my own curiosity.  But what stumbling into Humboldt and the others has done is to generate enough questions to last me for quite some time.

And now for a glass of wine and a spell in the garden with the animals while we await the arrival of my husband.  No doubt the good weather and the relative absence of bugs (although we're usually plagued with mozzies this time of year, the cool weather and my "mosquito dunks" have kept the population down) have combined to create the several pleasant evenings we've enjoyed. I can't help but feel grateful that no matter how bad the critters get, though, my discomfort is small compared to what Humboldt and his companions suffered on the Orinoco in April of 1800. Anyone who thinks of these great quests for information were romantic romps for the rich boys who went on them needs to read some of the accounts.  No spoilt brats involved here:

But even more troublesome than the [vampire bats] were the voracious insects that appeared every night after sundown and, able to pierce through clothing and even hammocks, covered the explorers with painful bites. Every visitor to the rain forest--not to mention the Indians and missionaries who made it their home--cursed the mosquitoes, gnats, flies, ticks, fleas, ants, and myriad other insects, and Humboldt's experience would be no different. Biting, chewing, stinging, burrowing, preying on their fellow creatures, the most numerous class of animal made life hell for every other species that came into unfortunate contact with it.

--Gerard Helferich, Humboldt's Cosmos, 121-22 

How We Live and How We Might Live

Morris's Red House, watercolor by Walter Crane

Although it's a relatively fine day (good sun, but chilly in the shade), I'm indoors, having just moved from the fire-warmed living room where I'd been reading all morning. Part of that reading consisted of my new avocation: pornography of the architectural variety.  I'm down to teaching one day a week (a long one, with two classes back-to-back), so I tend to while away my day less frugally than I once did.

I have borrowed as subject and description for this post the title of a lecture that William Morris delivered at Kelmscott House before the Socialist Democratic Federation (Hammersmith branch) on 30 November 1864 (it appeared in Commonweal in 1887). This is not to be confused with his unpublished lecture, "How Shall We Live Then," (1889) although, as always, the sentiments overlap. But I'm absconding with the title for my own purpose, which is to describe the dilemma the Beloved Spouse and I face as we meander toward real retirement and the realities of living a life of reduced means and (thankfully noted) less tsuris. We have led short professional lives by most standards, having only begun to teach full-time in our thirties (him) and forties (me).

But as teaching has become less rewarding and more angst-enducing, the idea of leaving the profession has become inescapably appealing. I would like to point out, to any of my students who might chance upon this blog, that this is not their fault. They are the products, through no failing of their own, of a damaged education system that has reduced them to test-taking automatons and has denied them the most fulfilling aspects of learning how to learn. This is, in turn, the result of an economic system that privileges monetary success above the life of the mind and makes being an educator one of the most frustrating jobs one can hold.

And, as I have noted repeatedly in my more recent posts, living in Texas has become more of a trial than we had ever imagined it would be.

Thus, my essay into living and being is only flimsily connected to Morris's, although my reasons for writing are firmly rooted in his social philosophy: especially in his idea of work. I should also note that in our case "reduced means" doesn't truly mean that we will be poor, in the sense against which Morris raged, and in which many of our fellow retirees find themselves after they either lose their livelihoods (having been made redundant, often because they've grown "too old" for their jobs) or leave on their own despite diminished 401Ks.  Even teachers, who used to be able to count on decent pensions, have been encouraged to choose market-based accounts, gambling on the possibility that the stock market might yield higher returns than the standard, guaranteed annuities of the past. Fortunately for us, my Beloved Spouse chose the latter (unlike many of his cohort) and his pension will allow him to retire early enough to enjoy some time with me. And although I have a small retirement account, I've seen it diminish considerably during the recent market downturn, so we've never counted on it much in our future plans; instead we will make do with his annuity and my Social Security check.

Those plans are, in fact, the real subject of this post.  And the question is not simply about how we live now and how we might have to adjust things for the future; it's also about where we might live, because place is such an important aspect of our concept of the good life.

Thus, I spend inordinate amounts of time surfing the interwebs for affordable locations that might be less philosophically difficult retirement venues, or at least so beautiful that we could deal with dodgy politics a bit more affably than we can here. Using online real-estate sites, I peer voyeuristically into peoples' homes, ever critical of their taste, but always eyeing their rooms for possibilities. The basic criteria involve big sky, deserts or prairies, mountains or oceans, lack of proximity to major thoroughfares, a hospital with available cardiac care (I'm "fixed" but need occasional maintenance), a smallish town, and reachable by children who may be enticed to visit a really great place.

As I mentioned in the last post, western Montana was high on the list, but a recent article in Sunset on the best places to live in the west mentioned Bisbee, Arizona, and Lander, Wyoming--both of which (upon investigation) have much to offer.  So they join the Owens Valley as possibilities, as do some of the university towns in Oregon and Washington (as long as they have enough sunny days per year to stave off my self-diagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder).

What I didn't mention last time was what kind of house would work.  The House (which has so far avoided being named) we live in would be a hard act to follow. As problematic as it's been, especially in terms of the amount of work it takes to maintain a 93 year-old antique house, we love this place. And the problem with thinking about leaving it is that any new work or adjustments carry with them the subconscious, if not overt, question of how change would affect the sales value.

Two winters ago, before the mulberry in front was cut down.

Because we live in a relatively desirable area, and if the requests to buy the house (a couple a year) we get in the mail are any indication, we can probably sell it fairly easily. But getting a decent price--one that helps mitigate the 150K we've put into it on top of the mortgage--will depend on the market, and the passion of the prospective buyer.  We knew that this was The House almost as soon as we walked in the front door, despite the gold shag carpet and the doll collection. And the white aluminum siding that hid all the great exterior details. And the Astroturf on the front porch.  I can only imagine what visitors might ask about what we've done: Why isn't there any air conditioning? Why haven't they refinished all the floors? Why did they remove the sheetrock and leave bare shiplap? Why haven't they modernized the kitchen?  Why do they have so many books? Etc.

What I look for in a substitute: Either a log cabin with good wall space or a craftsman-style that hasn't been "modernized." (That means no new cabinets, no granite, no stainless steel, no new fixtures, etc.) Preferably no carpet, but at least wood floors under existing stuff (that hasn't been stuck down). If in town, walking distance to necessities, big enough yard for a garden. If out on land, space and view, possibility of off-grid with not too much investment. Not in a forest, but some trees on property OK. If major work needs to be done, the price has to be low enough that we could afford to do it, even if that means living in the Shasta while work gets done. Ah, and space for the Shasta in the back yard.

In a future post I'm going to sort out the "before" and "after" shots of the last major upgrade (a year ago last summer). Some of the changes were so heart-pleasing for us that they would be hard to leave. But sometimes circumstances just occur that make leaving necessary--as they did for William Morris, who had to give up Red House because it was too far from London, where the work was.  Instead, he found Kelmscott Manor, which inspired some of News From Nowhere.

Frontispiece to News From Nowhere

Kelmscott Manor, 2006

Kelmscott Manor, by May Morris (1862-1938)

The ruminating and searching and discussing will continue for at least another year, by which time we will be getting close enough to a retirement date for the Beloved Spouse to get serious. And the process will probably continue after that, because we'll have time to take the Shasta out to visit prospective venues. During that time we'll probably keep messing with the place, making it more and more of our own, and then having to decide, in the end, if we're really willing to give it up.

Image credits: all images except the one of The House are from Wikimedia Commons.

Earth Day 2012, Part 2: Living Here, Living Now

 

 As an antidote to yesterday's depressing assessment of the State of the World, I thought I'd offer a second look. I seldom stay down for long, and it didn't take much to set me on a more optimistic track this morning.

After slogging though the Sunday edition of the Daily Poop, I picked up the February/March edition of Mother Earth News (in preparation for a day in the garden), and read this from the "News from Mother" column:

These days, if you find yourself feeling negative about the future of humanity, you may find some solace in looking at the past.

Well, looking at the past is something I do for a living, so the invitation is a natural for me.  In fact, my Art History 2 lectures just last week focused on conditions in nineteenth-century England at a time when folks like William Morris, John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites,  and other admirers of the Medieval world were all themselves looking to the past for better models of how to live.

As the Mom article pointed out, however, there are many aspects of human life that have actually improved since both the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century: life expectancies are way up, violence is (amazing, but true) way down, and we're generally kinder than at any previous moment in recorded history.  We don't hold slaves, we don't sanction cock fights, and we generally don't kill people we don't agree with (even though we might talk about doing so during election years).

The article ends with an acknowledgement that we've still got a way to go, but instead of throwing up our hands in despair (which is what I probably seemed to be doing yesterday) it notes that we actually have examples of how we've improved things in the past:

. . . looking at what we've achieved, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think we can solve present and future challenges. We can live on this planet in a sustainable way. We can preserve its health and vitality for future generations. And we can make the lives of future human beings even better than the lives we lead today--we have a track record for that kind of achievement.

So, instead of whining about what we haven't accomplished since 1970, perhaps it's time to note that some significant changes have occurred, and to relish them rather than keep complaining about what we still need to do. At least for today.

For example, when I first became a vegetarian back in the late seventies, I did so because I didn't like the way animals raised for food were treated.  I figured that if I couldn't take the responsibility for killing an animal myself, I didn't have the right to eat it.  Eventually, I relented when my kids started insisting that they were being deprived, but we still ate meat sparingly, and I did the best job I could in finding humanely treated animals.  Nowadays, we still eat meat infrequently, but when we do there are numerous outlets from which we can buy "happy" cows, pigs, and chickens.  I can buy eggs that are expensive but come from chickens raised more like the ones we had when I was a kid.  I'm quite willing to pay a premium to do so, even if it means that most of my diet needs to come from grains and vegetables (all organically and/or sustainably raised, some home-grown).  In truth, however, we could largely solve our national obesity problem by doing just that: changing our diets substantially, and weaning ourselves from overly-processed foods.

When I drive to buy my food, I can now do so in a fuel-efficient car that sips gas and causes far less particulate matter to enter the atmosphere than any car I've ever driven.  The good thing about high gas prices is, after all, that manufacturers are producing more and more automobiles with higher and higher levels of fuel economy and lower emissions.  These days I'm watching the highway fill up with hybrid cars, even though in this part of the world pickups will probably rule in perpetuity.

Advances in medicine, although expensive, mean that I got an extra twenty five years with my father, and have myself lived eighteen years longer than I might have done (and another three years than I might have from the valve problem).  New drugs have kept me essentially healthy, and will probably prevent my daughter from ever having to endure bypass surgery at all, even though she shares my crappy genes. Cures for various cancers are being developed, and we've already seen declines in occurrences based on improved ways of life; as drugs and diets and living habits improve, fewer people will have to suffer from them, and those who do may well see even more cures developed in the next several years. 

As much as I might rail against technology, I'm always aware of what I owe to innovation. We have lived in an old house (celebrating its 90th birthday this year) for the past twelve summers, relying on its solidly-built bones and dual attic fans to help keep us cool.  We've gotten by with three small air conditioning units for three rooms, and have stayed relatively comfortable.  This year, thanks to tax rebates and technological availability, we're hoping to install a geothermal heating and cooling system, in part to replace the aging gas furnace installed when we bought the house.  The plan is to wean ourselves as much as possible from fossil fuel consumption.  Of course, even ten years ago, this option would have been a mere pipe dream--so our fuel consumption options are improving rather rapidly.

These changes are, in truth, rather insignificant in light of the challenges that lie ahead.  Big Oil is still in charge, Big Consumption is still the economic model, and much of the world still has no access at all to any of the improvements we enjoy.

War, pestilence, pollution, and greed are all still there, lurking.  But we may be getting better at ridding ourselves of their threats--or we could be, if we can figure out how to meet the challenges of educating our kids well enough so that they can ensure their own futures.  As much as I complain about how little my students know, I can't help but think that they'll work it all out, as long as we can help them develop the tools. 

Image notes: this shot was taken facing east one evening last month with the Nikon D80.  We've had an abundance of rain this spring and the skies have been lovely.  Yesterday's post features a view west, probably taken later that same day.

Earth Day 2012, Part 1: Hunkering Down

I can't say that this Earth Day finds me particularly sanguine about the future of this planet.  My puny efforts to shore up my half acre and shield it from encroaching doom seem almost like a bad science fiction novel about the end of the world.  Continuing efforts to learn to love the prairie (of which there is really very little left) aren't working especially well--and I frequently find myself indulging in "real estate porn," looking for affordable properties in the desert west.

In the meantime, the carbon sink is wilder than ever except for the patch I've cleared out for tomatoes. We'll have to do a bit of work tomorrow to open up a little more sunny space, but if I can remember to water them, they should do well enough.  But the abundant rain this spring, along with the lack of a true winter, have both meant that the whole place is lush and jungley. I'll have to clear out a mass of mint soon, because it's taking over the entire potager. A lettuce plant from last year has taken over the entire pot, is now nearly three feet tall, and has bolted, producing rather lovely yellow flowers.  The leaves, alas, are too tough to eat.  My Swiss chard is massive and not particularly tasty, but pretty to look at.  The few things I've planted seem to be doing well, and there will be banana peppers for salads along with the tomatoes--but I'm skeptical about my ability to get anything else in before it's too  late. But all this what's going well.

The truly depressing news has to do with oil and gas and tar sands and fracking. There seems to be no end to the American lust for fossil fuels, and the Obama administration is too interested in re-election to buck it.  I'm not sure anyone there really wants to anyway.  I do have to laugh at the far-right characterization of Obama as a Socialist, because he wouldn't know one if it bit him. Hard. On the nose. The Keystone pipeline has been delayed, for "further study," but the lower half of it has received a go-ahead. So now we can expect a large chunk of what's left of the prairie in East Texas to be plowed under in service of transporting oil to the Gulf for processing and (inevitably) to be shipped off to China.  So much for ensuring the energy future of the United States.

I truly long for some really convincing report to announce the arrival of Peak Oil and Peak Natural Gas so that the oil industry (which is, of course, a Person, with rights equivalent to mine--or better) might finally put its mighty weight behind alternative energy sources. But it most likely won't happen in my lifetime, and I'm becoming quite thankful that I won't have grandchildren who'll have to deal with the consequences.

Last year's Earth Day post was far more optimistic, and I apologize for being so gloomy this time. But the evidence for climate change mounts daily, and its increasing rapidity is daunting.  All that old crabby utopian social-anarchists like me will be able do do in the future is to sit baking in our lawn chairs under the ravaged no-longer-bearing pecan trees and say "I told you so."

When I think back to that first Earth Day nearly forty years ago, I remember some of the cranky folk I knew then: long-haired hippies crying doomsday slogans and warning of environmental devastation if we continued on our wicked, planet-destroying paths.  For much of the last thirty years we've been wrapped in a cocoon of possibility, insulated against reality, and even gigantic oil spills (the most recent Gulf spill, as Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show last night, has taught us no appreciable lessons) and devastating weather can't shake us out of our complacency.

My only recourse seems to be to build a thicker cocoon.  I've already let the birds plant a perimeter forest around this small plot, and during the summer I can hide out in the back yard between teaching assignments. In the winter I can draw insulated curtains to hold out the cold, if it ever really gets cold again. In a couple of years I can retire and take a trip out west, because Vera's 56 miles per gallon  will probably be enough to make one last visit possible.  At the rate we're pumping oil, there should be more than enough for another decade, especially if the price keeps rising and fewer people drive. 

But it's difficult to muster any optimism at all when the real price of all this pumping will be smuttier skies, less breathable air, smoggier sunsets, and universal lung problems. 

Ever hopeful,  however, I'll spend Earth Weekend in the garden, communing with the bees and butterflies that are still around, enjoying the sultry southern aromas of spring, mowing down prairie grasses, re-reading Morris, and dreaming of utopia. 

May the next year prove me wrong and provide us with a path toward change.

Useful Work: A Labor Day Meditation

As I mentioned on Thursday, my query about the origins of Labor Day last week elicited no correct answers, which doesn't really surprise me given the general lack of historical knowledge evident among the rising generation. Coincidentally, I showed a video on art between the wars (Robert Hughes's "Streamlines and Bread Lines" from his American Visions series), adding to the number of synchronistic experiences my students and I have been noting this quarter. Students were struck by the similarities between current circumstances and those that produced the WPA--but we were pretty sure that nobody would be willing to do much to put artists to work today. Nor do art and craft as "useful work" (in William Morris's view, the opposite of "useless toil") quite fit into our current political preoccupations.

Several headlines screamed at us this week, scaring the bejeezis out of common folk, but reflecting the realities presented by today's labor market. The "news" that no new jobs were created this month should actually come as no surprise, given the fact that corporations have figured out how to squeeze more hours and more work out of fewer people, and for lesser-skilled jobs have opted to seek labor from beyond our shores from those who will work for pennies.

Why should any of us be shocked by this? Those Americans who have jobs seem to be so afraid of losing them that they will work extra hours at no increased pay. Nobody likes unions any more, it seems, and "collective bargaining" has become code for "socialist policy" (although few actually know anything about what socialism is except what the far-righties tell them), so the over-worked and underpaid will likely not find their lot improving any time soon.

His Holiness, the Governor of Texas (HHGT), who is now running for President, touts his job-creating record in the state, neglecting to mention just how many of these are minimum-wage (of which he disapproves) labor involving fast food and cleaning up other peoples' messes. Yes there are high-wage, high-tech jobs in Texas. But our fair state also boasts a miserable educational record, and had I more time to check into it, I might find that many of those graduating from higher ed institutions consist of foreign students who will be taking their skills back home.

I frequently snort, impolitely, that my students know how to use all manner of techno-gizmos, but none of them know how to fix them. So if something goes wrong, they've got to call "Peggy" in Mumbai for tech support. Should something major happen--like the big EMP I keep promising--there aren't that many people around here who could figure out how to get the grid back up, let alone manufacture the toys to which we have all become addicted and upon which we have all become dependent.

But instead of properly educating our students (to think both creatively and critically) and putting them to work devising ways to fix the country and save the planet, and instead of valuing trades like plumbing and woodworking and home repair, we seem to be training people to be CPAs and tax lawyers whose main job is helping people to get out of paying their share of keeping the country running.

It's worth noting that even though no jobs were created last month, many of the potential job creators were sitting on their corporate earnings (which are in many cases at record levels), presumably "jittery" about the market. The simple equation is this: people need jobs to earn money to pay for stuff, and the stuff is being made elsewhere rather than here where it's consumed. But the companies that make the stuff don't want to have to pay a living wage because it would cut into their profits. Americans, its seems, won't work for crap wages, so I guess it's our fault that so many are unemployed. You hear it all the time: there are jobs out there for anyone who wants one. Yeah. Try supporting a family on 20 grand a year these days.

All this has been said before, and I really don't have the answers because thinking about it makes my brain hurt and raises my blood pressure. Other people, like Paul Krugman and Juliet Schor and Warren Buffett, offer solutions that nobody wants to hear, but might help turn things around. My only suggestion involves figuring out a way to get investors to stop treating the stock market like a casino and start putting money into promising, necessary industries with potential to help rather than harm--like alternative energy, local farming, regional grids, and less destructive forms of transportation. But as long as Wall Street is fueled by fear, rumor, and hedge funds, nothing will change and things can only get worse.

The President is scheduled to reveal his plan to get Americans back to work on Tuesday. I have little hope that it will address many of these issues, and I'm absolutely confident that the far-righties will shoot it down like so many clay pigeons being flung across the skeet range.

What we really need is meaningful work that serves a genuine purpose, whether it's farming sustainably, repairing necessary equipment, managing waste, educating young people, building thoughtfully, manufacturing responsibly, or simply finding ways of promoting the common good. What we don't need is more fast food, more cheap and/or disposable tschochkes, more expensive toys, and more ways to speed up environmental degradation.

Here's to a future in which workers are paid what they're actually worth, rather than what some over-paid CEO thinks they should earn; where we focus more carefully on needs rather than on desires or on what advertisers try to convince us that we absolutely must have; where people live comfortably without reducing the probability that their grandchildren will have to suffer from smog, drought, or other hazards that could be avoided if we change our ways now; where our representatives actually recognize that no state is an island unto itself, and that what we spew into the air or the waterways affects us all; and where people think carefully, evaluating innovations and choices instead of simply adopting the next big thing.

Happy Labor Day--especially for those who remember why this day was set aside in the first place.

Image credit: "Fruit Store," a Works Progress Administration poster created between 1938 and 1941, via Wikimedia Commons. I thought it fitting to use a poster that promoted something I'd love to see more of: fruit stands full of local produce.

Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

Maybe it's my advancing age, but I suspect that my current discomfort with the space-time continuum has at least as much to do with the way the modern world works as my having just become eligible for Senior Citizen discounts at the local bijou.

Time was (as they say) when folks thought that vacuum cleaners, automatic dishwashers, and such "labor saving devices" would add to the amount of available leisure time and make us all happier, healthier people. I'm not quite sure what the proponents of these adult toys thought we'd do with that time, but I suspect (in retrospect) that it had something to do with having more time to shop for more adult toys.

I do have a vacuum cleaner, although I'm not happy with the way it works, and I'm not sure it saves me all that much time. A carpet sweeper and a broom are lighter, and although they don't do the "deep" cleaning that hoovering is supposed to accomplish, I suspect that taking my area rugs out a couple of times a year and beating the bejeeziz out of them would do the same thing.

I've only had a dishwasher once in my life, and it took every bit as much time to prepare dishes for automatic washing as it did to do them by hand. In those days the machines also used more water than hand-washing did. I understand that that's no longer the case, and that one doesn't have to pre-wash everything. Still, about the only advantage to having one seems to be that it gives people somewhere to hide their dirty dishes. But both Beloved Spouse and I find dishwashing to be soothing (and, in winter, hand-warming), and there's nothing quite like a kitchen newly cleared, wiped down, and at peace. Some of my best memories involve conversations with my grandmother at the kitchen sink, washing up after a family meal. The only dishwashers she ever had were her children and grandchildren.

But this isn't really a rant about products. It's about truthfully wondering why I seem to have so much less time to do things I love, like gardening, reading, writing, hanging out in the Carbon Sink with the puppies, and home-keeping.

When I started writing Owl's Farm two and a half years ago, I managed to sit down for several hours a week to work on posts--and eventually to divide the content into three separate blogs. But something has happened between then and now, and I'm beginning to wonder if my internal clock wasn't knocked askew while I was under the knife last spring.

I also wonder if illness isn't more conducive to thinking than health is. When I couldn't run around like a fool, chasing my own tail or fighting fires for others, I frequently managed to think about what needed doing, and then to make a stab at doing it. I actually managed to fix up a couple of rooms in the house last spring, even while my aortic valve was narrowing down to a pinhole. But now that I'm bionic, its as if time itself has narrowed, and I don't seem to have nearly as much of it. As soon as my leave was up, only six weeks after surgery, I was back at it in full force. The summer slipped away so quickly that I can't remember what happened. Now that it's bitter cold, I can barely remember the heat.

The winter holiday positively thundered past, leaving me reeling in its wake, and bereft of two weeks I thought were mine in which to relax and take it easy. I wasn't even caught up in any particular rush, because our holiday events included only our daughter's annual overnight stay on Christmas eve, and a leisurely afternoon dinner. No big New Year's bash, no parties, no mad dashes to malls, very little shopping. But my two-week holiday was over last Monday, to be replaced by meetings and course preparation, some of it valuable, some of it useless.

Perhaps it's because I'm reading Morris again. I'll be teaching him this quarter, in particular his essay on Useful Work vs. Useless Toil. Re-reading it frequently makes me wonder about how much of my time is taken up in doing things that some higher education guru thinks is necessary in order for me to do my job well--but that end up producing nothing really worthwhile. It's not that I mind creating lesson plans and making sure that I'm delivering information and sharing ideas in such a way as to promote real learning. But some of it deprives me of time to read and think, which is where my expertise originates. It's times like this that I long for the way my utopians learn in More News From Nowhere: by talking and doing, rather than taking tests and being graded.

The topic of assessment and modern modes of teaching will undoubtedly be dealt with energetically over this next year in The Owl of Athena, because my college is merging with another and will be undergoing another round of scrutiny by regional accreditors. But for now I'm trying to figure out how I'll have time to prepare for any of that, if the minutes keep flowing by at light speed.

I long for languor, relishing small moments like this one, when I'm sitting by the fire on a very cold morning, laptop on lap, writing and musing. Last year at this time I was wondering if I'd make it to another new year, and now that I have, it's up to me to wrestle my time back so I can enjoy the greater number of days now available to me. So I'll quit whining, and when the fire dies down, I'll go out into the bare winter yard to take the frost-covers off the rosemary and lavender plants. The afternoon will be a good deal warmer, so I'll let them breathe and enjoy the sunshine. Then I can come in and start a stew simmering, pour a cup of good tea, and open a book.

I'm pretty sure that's when time slows down: when we stop the clock ourselves and refuse to let modern life take over. This seems like a plan, actually. Were I one to make resolutions, this would be it: not to "waste" or "spend" or "save" time as if it were a commodity, but to just take it and live it and let the other stuff go. This is, I think, why the Sabbath was invented.

Good plan. But we shall see.

Image credit: Evelyn Morgan (1850-1919), The Hourglass, via Wikimedia Commons.

Useful Work Revisited

As I near the end of my second month post-op, I've begun to exercise in earnest. I opted out of formal cardiac rehab at the Spa/Hospital where I had my surgery, because it would have meant something of a bureaucratic hassle with the disability insurance folks (I'd have had to extend my leave and work part time) and because it's just too far away--too many petrochemicals involved. I'd have had to let another portion of my yard go wild just to make up the difference.

So I'm back at work full time, though not teaching, and trying to establish some habits that will 1) make me healthier and 2) make it possible to better practice what I preach. Many times on this very blog I have waxed arrogant about how we should be living our lives, and yet I've undergone two surgeries that have, in part at least, been necessitated by bad choices about the way I live.

In an e-mail to a former student (and fellow snark) about my recovery, I happened to coin a new acronym: OffAss, short for Order of Former Fat American Slobs. Since I've already logged a full week's worth of increasingly strenuous exercise (in the last week and a half; I'm averaging about four days a week and need to work up to five or six minimum) on a stationary recumbent bike, I'm counting myself as an active member. I've kept off the ten pounds I lost after surgery, and need to drop another twenty or so more, but since I'm being fairly successful at watching my food intake, this should all happen anon.

One of the problems I've always had with exercise machines, though, is that they take the place of authentic activities we used to perform as a matter of course: plowing the fields, gathering the grapes, herding and milking the cows, cleaning the house (without "labor saving" devices like vacuum cleaners), mowing the lawn (with a push reel), chasing the kids around the yard. Even riding bikes and playing driveway basketball are perfectly authentic ways to use one's body, as are more formal sports (Beloved Spouse, after all, has his tennis). I actually love to swim, and when I was initially trying to postpone valve surgery, I started going down to the Senior center to do laps. But that only lasted three or four months before I got tired of smelling chlorine all the time (it doesn't seem to dissipate even after a shower, and it's really bad for the atmosphere).

Gardening is good work, too, but you have to get pretty energetic about it, and I only did so infrequently--usually paying for it with back pain and sore muscles as a result. I'm getting back into the garden now, but am hampered by the congregations of mozzies buzzing around thanks to all the rain, and it still takes effort to make pulling weeds a regular part of being well. I hope that during my all too brief summer break I'll be able to spend a couple of hours every morning re-establishing the habit, and get some meaningful work done out of doors. I'm certainly committed to not spending all of my garden time sitting in a chair reading about other people's gardens.

One of the advantages to keeping a tidy house (one not awash with dog fur and other artifacts of dog-ownership) is that it takes real energy to keep it ready for company. I was reminded of this last week, when I spent a couple of days cleaning areas that hadn't been touched for the last several months. I got a better workout scrubbing, hoovering, and polishing than I would have on the bike, so "house" went down on the exercise log to remind me of how much I'd put into it.

What I truly lament is the view that seems to have developed since I was a child: that necessary work for its own sake is less desirable than technologically enhanced "working out." People around here will drive to a gym to walk on a treadmill, rather than walking around the neighborhood, or lift weights rather than put some muscle into taking care of their own yards. Several of my neighbors have lawn services, even though these are perfectly healthy people living in houses that have perfectly manageable lawns. And since they don't have to go out and buy all the chemicals the services dump on the grass, they don't even have a chance to read the labels that might make them think twice about using the stuff in the first place.

I've also had more than one conversation lately about "cleaning ladies." Now, I know that folks have to make a living some way, and that housemaids have been part of Western culture forever, but I cannot ever see myself hiring someone else to take care of my house. This is the job of the people who live in it; it's part of basic home economics. It's my responsibility to care for my own space, to make it comfortable for its inhabitants, and to make it welcoming to guests. Perhaps the scorn heaped on "housewives" early in modern feminism is responsible. During my time as a stay-at-home mom, after all, I got used to the "you don't work" attitude--even though caring for my house and children was far more labor-intensive than anything I've done since.

If one truly doesn't want to be bothered with the "drudgery" of keeping one's home, then surely it should be worth decent money to turn the job over to the person who does do the work. But maids or cleaning ladies or charwomen or whatever you want to call them (and they almost always are women) get little recompense. According to PayScale, a maid with twenty years of experience can expect an average hourly wage of under $15 an hour, but I doubt seriously if many of the immigrant workers in this town make anywhere near that. It would seem that these folks, who are saving people from "wasting" their valuable time should be worth a substantial wage, but like much of the work done by "unskilled" workers in this country, it's not considered anywhere near as valuable as what "skilled" workers "earn" sitting behind a desk and messing about with a computer.

I know I'm probably overstating my case, and perhaps I'm being unfair to many degreed job-holders who actually do necessary and important work. But I'm back to William Morris's notion about "useful work vs. useless toil." As long as housework and real, natural exercise are considered beneath us, we'll continue having to manufacture ways to keep from getting fat and sick and burdening the country's health care system. And the people who do the work for us will keep earning painfully low wages with few benefits of any kind.

In the "Exercise and Fitness" section of his website, Dr. Andrew Weil (who combines the best of conventional and alternative ideas about medicine) points out that our bodies are "meant for movement. A wide variety of modern epidemics, from heart disease to diabetes to osteoporosis, are rooted in our sedentary lifestyles. Lifelong physical activity is crucial to optimum health, but running marathons is not required." Even though I owe my shiny new valve to a surgeon who does run marathons (good training, I think, for spending eight ours on one's feet saving two peoples' lives in one day), I have already found that it doesn't take a huge amount of effort to become a great deal more fit.

I wonder if the economic downturn will drive more people to do their own housework, rather than hiring it out, or get out in the yard instead of paying a gym for the privilege of using its latest fancy gadgets. I know this might mean fewer jobs for people with a restricted number of skills, but it just might begin to make us into a healthier population.

Image credit: Since I'm riffing on Morris again, I thought it appropriate to use the Pre-raphaelite painter (and chum of Morris himself) Ford Madox Brown's Work, one of my favorites. Brown painted it during the period from 1852-63, and it now hangs in the Manchester City Art Galleries. The link is to Wikimedia Commons, which seems to have pinched it from Mark Harden's Artchive.

Eating and Being

I think it's time to begin a series of essays that look at what we gain, and what we stand to lose, by adopting behaviors and practices that can help us all heal the world. Tikkun Olam involves continuous rethinking of how our being in the world affects its other occupants, and aims to address that impact with measures that heal rather than continue to harm.

Economists sometimes call this sort of examination a "cost-benefit analysis" but such a notion doesn't work here, because both the costs and the benefits are often hidden (we don't know what will happen, so we can't gather enough beans to count), and so we can't project numbers or statistics--and that's what's wrong with most of these analyses anyway. They're only interested in numbers. If something "costs" (in terms of money, mostly) more than it "benefits" (especially if these are long-term) then what's cheapest wins, regardless of whether or not it's good for us.

In harsh economic times, suggesting an expensive, though beneficially promising, alternative often lands us in the dust bin. We don't have any money to spend, so we sure as hell can't spend that much money now, even if it will clean up our air, our water, or make better food available to us in the long run.

So I thought I'd begin by looking at some of the issues popping up around us. Some come from the President's campaign promises, some come from common sense, others from my particular interests (permaculture, for example). All have been proposed by different people or organizations as means for cleaning up the mess we've made over the last half century or so. The first of these general topics I'd like to tackle is food in general, but I need to divide it up into food sources and food consumption: how we get our food, and what we do with it.

It was a bit depressing that my first trip out since coming home from the hospital had to be to the local Super Target, where I could get the best bang for my buck in terms of picking up most of what I needed to buy in one spot. I can get around pretty well, but I tire rather easily, and I was damned if I was going to scoot around on one of those electric carts (I'm probably still afraid of getting a speeding ticket). So, knowing that I could buy organic milk and eggs, and a few other basics there, as well as some arthritis-strength acetaminophen (onto which I'm trying to wean myself, away from the real narcs) Owlspouse and I sallied forth into the afternoon.

I'm not in the store ten minutes before I'm almost overwhelmed by the depressing amount of sheer crap that's available in these places. The level of food-processing alone represented in one section of Target says more about American gluttony and waste than one would ever need to learn. Every package (over-packaging is the first of many sins committed by food manufacturers in this country) hides a much smaller amount of food than appears on its cover photo, and every ingredient list contains up to hundreds of chemicals added to preserve "freshness" or "maintain purity." Except in parts of the "healthy" sections of the refrigerated zones, every label also includes sweeteners (mostly high fructose corn syrup), way too much salt, and trans- or saturated fats far above reasonable daily allowances. Some of these actually look like they might be pretty good--until you read the label and see the amount of processing that's gone into a simple idea, like lemon-pepper tilapia, or some kind of "Mediterranean" pasta.

In a way this exercise was good for me, because I didn't go home with a couple of frozen entrees like I had planned (so we could eat if I didn't feel up to cooking). I went home with basic ingredients instead: a couple of whole wheat pizza crusts (can't roll my own yet), some fresh mozzarella, and a bit of natural, minimally processed ham. I bought frozen berries to mix with plain low-fat yoghurt. I did spring for some organic ketchup and a new ligher mayo made from olive oil (it had some sugar in it, but no HFCS). At some point I'll get back to making my own of both, but for now (with no tomato garden yet) I have to get 'em off the shelf. So the fridge is now stocked with a versatile collection of dinner possibilities, and I got to leave the store before I needed another nap.

Another depressing element of the trip was noticing the vast number of clearly obese human beings who buy the most inappropriate foods. I'm hyper conscious about my weight now, since I'm progressing toward a point where I can get back to losing the tonnage I've acquired over the last three years of feeling too lousy to get any regular, meaningful exercise. I am painfully aware that my bad eating habits (rather than my diet itself) are to blame for both diabetes and some aspects of my ongoing heart disease. Diabetics need to pace their meals and eat frequently to avoid glucose spikes and shifts--but I had been going entire mornings without eating anything, and then having a quick lunch and then eating again only when I was starving. I know full well, that small, nutritionally dense meals to keep me away from drugs and insulin are what I need, and that effort has begun despite my current wonky taste buds (another reason to get off the narcs).

But many people, even (as I discovered in the hospital) nurses, fall into a similar trap: too busy to eat well. This an issue that needs attention on its own, and I'll probably attack it in future. But for now, we need to become aware--as a nation--that "fast food" almost always equates with "bad food" and because it's often cheap, we end up with poor people in bad health because that's all they think they can afford. There's probably a great deal of literature out there on "the starving fat" and we need more than one book or documentary (Fast Food Nation) to knock some sense into our heads. If the only stores around you are convenience quick-stops and Taco Bueno, it's hard to buy nutritious food; and I don't see a lot of Whole Foods stores opening up in marginal neighborhoods.

Eating habits simply have to change. But how do we do this, bombarded as we are with advertisements that make all manner of grandiose claims about goodness and freshness and giving us "more time to spend with our families," or by all the cutsy promos for animated films that come "free" with a cheeseburger Happy Meal?

Goodness and freshness can only really be achieved by starting out with minimal processing. That means no fancy boxes and cute plastic containers that "steam" your food for you in two minutes in the microwave. If you don't have a way to steam something at work, then take a sandwich and a piece of fruit. Or take a container of soup or leftovers if you want to eat something hot (most offices have access to microwave ovens these days--but we don't need to keep manufacturing ways of making them do what they weren't designed to do if it means increasing the amount of plastic heading for the landfill).

The counter argument to all this is that Americans demand these conveniences and innovations from industry. Baloney. We're taught to demand them! Every day we learn about some new "necessity" on TV that we didn't previously know we "needed." Do people really wake up every morning thinking, "Gee, I wish somebody would invent a way for me to steam food in a microwave because I really need to be able to do this"? The microwave oven itself manages to have won me over by the fact that I can actually save a good deal of energy by "nuking" home-made frozen soup, or cocoa, or last night's dinner for lunch. Even so, if the Environmental Apocalypse came and I had to give it up to save the planet, out it would go.

Human beings aren't stupid. Or we weren't until TV was invented. We've managed to cook food ever since the Paleolithic, and all we've done through all those thousands of years is to invent more complicated, more dangerous, and more expensive gadgets to cook in and on. Yes cooking on a natural gas range is better for the planet than cooking over an open fire. But I doubt if simmering your evening meal on a six-burner Viking industrial model will win you any points in save-the-planet heaven. Cooking out-of-doors seems to spring from some sort of primal recognition of our ancestral roots, but cooking in an "outdoor kitchen" seems to defeat the purpose. Nor have I figured out quite why people find charcoal-lighting fluid a tasty addition to the flavoring of their slabs of brisket.

Once again William Morris's education of desire come to mind: What do we truly need, and what do we merely want?

If all of the fancy gadgets and maximally processed foods available have brought us to the point of being a wealthy nation of very sick people, why is that a good cost/benefit ratio? Sure we have more stuff. Sure it might be easier to whip up a meal. But what do we gain? I mean, besides weight and larger body/mass indices?

So here are my suggestions on how to combat the advertising industry's assault on our brains and our waistlines--without unduly taxing our wallets or decreasing the amount of time we have to spend with family and friends.

1. Invest in a really good cooking magazine. I know this sounds silly, but magazine subscriptions are generally quite cheap, and a single magazine that comes once a month can provide endless inspiration--especially if you sit down and talk to your kids about potential menus, what sounds good, what's in season, etc. My favorite of these is Eating Well, but Cooking Light and others can also be helpful. When you're finished with the magazine, pass it on to your doctor's office or a nursing home, or to a friend. Or (what I end up doing) create notebooks with your favorite recipes and put the remains of the magazine in the recycle bin--after the kids have made collages out of the pretty pictures. Some of these magazines have high-quality websites, too, providing access to recipe archives.

2. Take stock of your larder (pantry). Know what's in it, and focus on tinned tomatoes and beans, plus whole grains in moth-proof containers, whole wheat pasta, a couple of bottles of good pasta sauce, olive oil, dried beans, and ethnic bottled sauces--as well as the food you put up yourself from your own garden, or from shopping at the farmer's market for in-season fruits and produce. Know what's in your freezer, too, especially if you have a chest freezer for keeping the results of bulk buys. Be aware of expiry dates so that you don't end up with stuff you shouldn't be eating but can't bring yourself to toss. (I've had a couple of pounds of fresh--then--tuna steaks since a friend's fishing trip about 6 years ago. I keep forgetting to put it in the trash bin, because that only goes out to the street about once a month.)

3. Most of my readers already know about our adherence to the Only One Thing rule regarding children's activities. If your kids aren't overburdened with lessons and sports outside of school, they can spend more time with you on the design and preparation of meals. At the weekend, prep veggies for weekday meals, bake bread and healthful cookies, make soup, bottle jams, jellies, and seasonal veg. Use the time to plant gardens if you have the space, and involve the whole family. There is nothing about gardening that's intrinsically difficult, and there's something everyone can do--even if they're in a wheelchair. Make sure you have an active compost heap or bin, and that all your vegetable waste, garden weeds, grass trimmings (if you dont' just mulch them), etc. go into it. Put someone in charge of compost care, and then switch off periodically.

4. Stop drinking soda pop. Of any kind, especially diet. There is no earthly reason--beyond addiction--to drink this stuff. It's expensive, it's saturated with high-fructose corn syrup, it's wasteful of raw and manufactured materials, and it doesn't do you any good. Instead of sweet fizzy drinks, buy mineral water by the case (Costco sells San Pellegrino Water for under a buck a bottle when you buy it this way). Then add a bit of lemon, fruit juice, ginger syrup, or other flavoring if you don't like it plain. It won't take you long to wean yourself from your Diet Coke habit. Depending on how badly you're addicted, stopping this one habit could save you piles of money and/or hundreds of calories every day. Or, make "sun tea" from fruit- and herb-infused tisanes--like those made by Celestial Seasonings, or Tazo, or any of a huge number of other brands. If you need these to be sweet, add a little sugar or honey--but try to do without, or wean yourself from "needing" sweeteners. These and both black and green teas taste quite nice with a bit of lemon over ice. The result: no calories (if you don't add sugar), plus some herbal and/or antioxidant benefit.

5. Stop thinking of dessert as a regular part of every meal. There is no eleventh commandment that says "thou shalt have dessert every night or be forsaken by thy god." Desserts should be two things: occasional and nutritious. Perhaps for Shabbat or Sunday dinners, a special occasion, a holiday, a birthday, etc. But not every day. A cookie or two with milk after school, a whole-grain fruit muffin for breakfast, a sweet rather than savory vegetable dish (glazed carrots and mushrooms)--all of these can add sweetness and flavor without huge numbers of calories. One alternative for dessert is a fruit course following the main meal, but there's no reason that fruit can't be part of the meal itself. If it encourages lingering for conversation, a bit of fruit and cheese with the last of the wine might be encouraged. But not the obigatory pie a la mode.

6. Watch the alcohol intake. The general rule with frugal eating and drinking is that the less you consume in quantity, the more you can afford in quality. So instead of buying two $6 bottles of marginal wine, check the sales for a bargain $12 wine (sometimes knocked down from $20 or more), and drink it slowly, savoring it rather than just getting snockered. A little alcohol seems to be good for us, but drinking a bottle a night just adds useless calories. Do you really have to have a glass of wine with your veggie chili? Good beers are generally cheaper than good wines, but again, moderation in all things. It might not be necessary to have alcohol with every dinner, but opt for a nice fizzied fruit juice or glass of mineral water instead.

7. Care about your food. You don't have to have an overly-sentimental attitude about cows to be concerned about how they're treated before they land on your plate. If an animal suffers unnecessarily, why would you even want to eat it? Complete, abstract detachment from food leads to factory farming, disgusting abattoir practices, and an instrumental disregard for the welfare of the animals with whom we share this planet.

8. Minimize meat consumption. If you can't afford free-range chickens or pastured beef, try saving up for it, and make the meat meal a special one, requiring deliberation and careful preparation. We take way too much for granted as it is, but if we make food derived from the deaths of other animals, it should certainly be something particular in our lives. Even if you're not a religious person, realize that a living creature died to make this meal, and show it some respect. If you find the idea completely distasteful, maybe it's time to give up meat altogether. But if you can cut the number of meat meals down to two or so a week, you can afford that happy chicken or happy pig, and you'll support the people who go to the trouble to raise their animals properly.

9. Think about what you eat. Learn about the chemical properties of what you consume, and how it reacts with other nutrients in your body to become you. It's astonishing how ignorant people are about the origins of herbs, spices, fruits and vegetables. So turn suppertime into an exploration of science and culture by discussing where tonight's meal came from. Prepare meals with an ethnic theme and learn about the culture that developed it. Learn to make simple cheeses, and build a meal around a ball of home-made mozzarella. Learn traditional spice combinations from other parts of the world. Preserve a few lemons and experiment with recipes that use them. Cure some olives. Encourage your children to invite their friends (and their families) over for dinner. If the friends come from somewhere else, encourage a recipe exchange.

10. Enjoy your food. There is nothing more basically human than sitting around a table sharing food. If your family has prepared the meal together, you've sacrificed nothing. Your time has been well-spent, and you're acting more responsibly toward both yourself and the planet than if you'd rushed of the Micky Dee's for a couple of Big Macs and a Happy Meal. Oh. And turn off the TV.

End of sermon for the day, but this will continue. Happy eating!

Image credits: Alanya Market, Turkey, by NobbiP. Wikimedia Commons.