Sunrise, Sunset

Although I'm not terribly happy about this photo (I generally avoid power lines and try to frame photographs without stray house bits, like the corner of the gable on the upper right), it and its companion below represent this post rather nicely, and were taken on the same day about a week ago. The "Sunrise" shot (above) was taken from the front porch with my new iPhone 7.

The "sunset" shot, taken in the back yard, also includes power lines, so there's an additional aspect of symmetry; I usually stand atop chairs and other furniture to try and avoid them. However, I wanted to submit something to Skywatch Friday for the first time in ages [as usual, thanks to the crew--and do go see what folks from all over have posted], so here we are; what you see is what I got, and I'm making do.

As I am with all manner of things these days. I will not be viewing any of the inaugural festivities tomorrow, and since the weather should be warmer, will instead be doing some early garden prep, reading some Wendell Berry and Joseph Wood Krutch, and watching a couple of episodes of Netflix's wonderful adaptation of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I can't imagine anything more appropriate, given the state of the Union. Thus, the photos seem to hold out a little promise for a not completely bleak future, but I won't be holding my breath.

Despite my usual less-than-optimistic view of things, I've decided to find ways to muddle through the next four years. I'll be rethinking and redesigning my website (and changing the name from Owldroppings to Owl's Farm; this blog will be linked to it), clearing out the detritus in the garage and attic (in case we decide we just can't abide Texas any longer), and finding more ways to live more sustainable lives.

Inspiration for all this has come from several places, including my new subscription to Australia's Slow magazine, ecopoets like Krutch and Berry, and even the latest issue of American Craft. The editor, Monica Moses, has written a wonderful little essay on the role of craft in keeping one's sanity in uncertain times: "The Tough Make Art," in which she describes her own plan:
 

Like a lot of us, I’m looking for ways to cope with the discord, to feel hopeful again. I’m returning to the basics: eating well, exercising, trying to sleep, spending time with loved ones. But I’m also doubling down (as the pundits would say) on art. (American Craft, Feb/Mar 17, p. 10)

My own map of the next few months includes efforts to accomplish much the same sorts of things, including the art part. Her sentiments are in tune with much of what I read among the thoughtful writers whose works I frequent, now that I find myself sticking to the Arts & Life section and the funnies in the Daily Poop,  and the Books and Trilobites sections of the New York Times. Never have I felt more grateful for the library we've amassed, because it should prove most valuable over the next four years, reminding me that sanity might well prevail.

So, for what it's worth, here's what I have in mind:

Eat Real Food. I stole this designation from my Whole Foods Market newsletter, which offered its customers meal plans in several categories. But it's really what I've been trying to do for years, with the help of Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman and others. I've become rather more serious about it since my retirement awarded me with more time for contemplating and planning. We also recently invested in a smaller refrigerator, which facilitates consciousness of how much we buy and where we have to store it. It's also a terrific deterrent to food waste. The Beloved Spouse gave me Lidia Bastianich's new book, Mastering the Art of Italian Cuisine, and The Big Book of Kombucha for the holidays (plus Cooking With Loula, a lovely Greek cookbook I noticed while shopping for other people's gifts). I have always loved cookbooks that are more about history, philosophy, and culture than technique, and these are all inspirational additions to the "food" segment of our aforementioned library. Over the last two weeks I've spent more time planning meals and enjoying the process than I'd been able to do for several years.

Get Real Exercise. The realization that the new, pricey drug I'm taking is likely to prolong my life significantly (and my favorite cardiologist's reminding me that exercise won't do squat for my cholesterol but will do massive amounts of good for my brain and overall well being) has made me more conscious than ever of movement. What finally got me perambulating the neighborhood was the death of our sweet dog Woody last summer. His brother Arlo no longer had a reliable source of exercise, so I started walking him, dropping him off at the house when he got tired, and then continued on my own several times a week. TBS would join me on weekends and holidays, and we've gotten to know the topography of the neighborhood better than we had in the previous sixteen years. Over his winter break from teaching we kept up the dog walking, but neighborhood exploration slacked off due to weather and family obligations.  But a movement-tracking app on my phone has helped keep me from being completely sedentary, and as the weather warms up and I get into the garden more (as I plan to this afternoon), I should hit the "active" category much more frequently (now "lightly active" rescues me from couch potatohood). The goal is to use my body better, get stronger, and get out much more.

Make Stuff.  Some time ago I bought a lovely journal with a William Morris design on it (actually, a sketch for a wallpaper design) in which I've been writing down and sketching out ideas for art books and other little projects. I'll try to get some of these done--including the redesign of my web pages. But I've been wanting to go back to painting and "making" things,  which I haven't done since my children were small. This includes working on the house and garden--painting and plastering and staining and the like, along with general homekeeping, mending, knitting, and quilting. Using one's creative juices seems to be a particularly satisfying way to make it through trying times.

Write More. Having received my first rejection slip (for a story in a science fiction anthology), you'd think I'd have sworn off any desire to publish more than for myself  (and my one or two faithful readers). But I've decided to do what I used to urge my students to do: take the criticism to heart, and use it well. I'm not sure I agree with all of the comments, but I'll have them in mind when I revise the story and submit it somewhere else. I also need to work on More News From Nowhere, and to go back to the old-bats-in-space novel I started working on a couple of years ago. I actually posted on the Cabinet recently, and have lots of ideas for more entries. Letters to friends are on the list, too.

Read Even More. I probably read more than I do anything else, but now that I've made it through the entire run of Midsomer Murders twice on Netflix, I've got no afternoon distractions from the telly. TBS and I have stuff we watch when he gets home (because he's too brain dead after teaching to accomplish anything more impressive), but when I'm not out moving and growing things, I have a huge stack of books to begin or to finish. And then there's always Cat-watching time in the garden, which will need to be extended as the weather improves. Emma likes company when she's out, and I can't leave her entirely unsupervised. In  addition, there's nothing quite as peaceful as watching a cat and a dog snoozing away in the afternoon sun.

This is all very ambitious, I know. But since I'm too old and tired to be politically active any more, if I get even a little of it done, I'll have accomplished something. And so, Dear Reader(s), may the future be better than we have any right, at this moment, to expect.

The Education of Desire: We are what we do, we are what we eat

Perhaps I'm a bit late in jumping on this particular bandwagon, because when I started searching for more information on a couple of closely related problems (obesity and food waste) I found more than I can handle in one post.  Other folks have also been thinking about the irony of this country's enormous waistlines and the equally enormous amounts of food waste making its way to the landfill.  We also hear talk of food deserts that help account for obesity among the poor, but I only recently began to wonder if anyone had been connecting the dots. Clearly they have.

This week's news media also reported on topics that are at least tangentially related to the waste/obesity problem: Herman Pontzer's articles in the New York Times,  pointed out that (as the Daily Poop version of the story put it) "It's the Sugar, Stupid," and that all the exercise in the world isn't going to make us as healthy as our distant ancestors if we're consuming crap. And in this week's New Scientist, the cover story ("Eat Your Way to Dementia") is about the relationship between type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease. 

The last two months of house-renovation have increased my awareness of food waste because the combination of beastly weather, minimal air conditioning, and odd sleeping accommodations has put the kibosh on cooking (I've been way too hot and tired)--with the result that I spent this morning cleaning out my fridge, ridding myself of spoilt food, shriveled limes and carrots, and a couple of mystery life forms.  Mind you, the compost and the Bokashi bins can handle almost all of this, so that I don't really have to throw much away.  But that's not the point. 

This stuff was bought at a premium, represents many folks' labor and time (from farm to market), and bloody well should have been eaten.  Not only eaten, but cooked well and healthfully.  What the news articles have done is to fortify my resolve to accomplish several items in a new program of food-consciousness. 

First, it's really a good idea to plan one's meals and not rely (except on rare occasions) on serendipity.  My daughter bragged in a text message last night that she had planned a week's meals for two and spent $57 on them at Whole Foods. She's also tracking how they use leftovers--which isn't a bad idea either.  Simplifying food preparation in hot weather so that ingredients can be used more than once saves time, energy, and effort, and it helps prevent waste. So I'm going to set aside an hour or so one day a week (probably Wednesday morning) to plan the week's meals in time to shop on the way home from school on Thursday, when I have an early morning class. 

In addition, since before too long I'm going to be pinching food pennies again (i.e. when I retire, which could be as early as a year from now), I'm going to need to be considerably more mindful of how much I spend. I won't scrimp on quality, but if I end up paying $5 a pound for really good tomatoes, I certainly need to make sure that we actually eat them before they go off. 

My biggest challenge will be to address the issues that Herman Pontzer raises about what we've evolved to eat.  This is actually something I've been aware of for rather a long time, having conducted research on breastfeeding and maternal nutrition in hunter-gatherer cultures as a grad student.  I'm also really puzzled by what seems to be an increasing intolerance to the kinds of grains that our Neolithic ancestors domesticated for us.  Purely gathering cultures didn't eat these grains, which came along after people settled down and began to raise animals and crops.  Still, I do wonder if modern modifications to wheat varieties and increased refinement (the quest for gummy white bread) might be at least partly responsible.  I've already started using farro in pilaf and risotto-like concoctions; now I'm thinking of grinding some and trying it in bread. 

Another article, on the effect of modern European diets on Native Americans, makes a similar point,   as does a report on the Westernization of Asian diets. Both of these populations suffer mightily from diabetes in increasing numbers, and at least part of the culprit is radical dietary change over a relatively small amount of time in evolutionary terms.

It just seems like plain common sense to eat whole foods, high in fiber, low in--but not absent--fats, and free of transmogrified sugars and other chemicalized foodstuffs that have been developed to entice us to eat "food" that's not good for us. (See the 60 Minutes programs on "Tweaking Tastes and Creating Cravings" and the toxicity of sugar for examples of how we're being seduced into desiring what's bad for us.)

The simplest path to health seems also to be the cheapest: eat simply, grow herbs to enhance flavors and provide micronutrients, stay away from heavily processed stuff that comes in fancy packaging, and cook from scratch as much as possible.  New information about fermented foods seems to back up the practices of many simpler cultures (sauerkraut, kimchee, miso, cheese), so taking your dairy foods in the form of a good yoghurt doesn't sound all that bad.  Thanks to Mark Bittman, I've recently reduced the amount of cow's milk I drink and have since suffered far less from heartburn.  I haven't completely sworn off the stuff, because I love it (1%) in coffee, and am not fond of completely eliminating things that still offer some nutritional benefits.

While it's clear that eating more like an Archevore or following some version of a paleo-diet might well improve overall health, that's fodder (sorry) for another post. After all, if everyone suddenly abandoned wheat, corn, dairy foods, and minimized fruit consumption because of its sugar content, the American economy would collapse.  But we certainly do need to pay a lot more attention to what we eat and what we throw away, and make decisions that lead producers away from creating more and more junk.  Spending a bit of time reading Dana Gunders's position paper for the National Resources Defense Council, "Wasted: How America Is Losing up to 40 Percent of Its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill", or Jonathan Bloom's book American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of its Food (the link is to his blog, Wasted Food) can go a long way toward raising our collective awareness of the ironies and inconsistencies in American food-life; obesity, hunger, plenty, over-indulgence, and waste are all tightly woven into a culture riddled with greed, inattentiveness, consumerism, and advertising designed to make us keep doing what we're doing. But we ought not to be doing it, else we will become it.

I vote we stop. Soon.

Image credit: Vincent van Gogh's Wheat Field with Crows seemed appropriate for this post, not least because the crows can be seen as harbingers of his death.  I showed this in my Art History 2 class a couple of weeks ago, along with Akira Kurasawa's short film, Crows, via Biblioklept (from Akira Kurosawa's Dreams); the painting is 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.

Good Growth

Our local Whole Foods Market is decked out with pumpkins (some pretty big ones--that a person could sit on--for $50), and the seasonal squashes and other goodies are in, if not as plentiful as last year. The summer's heat blasted many local farms, with the result that Fall menus will likely feature veg from Mexico and Chile rather than from around here as many of us would like.

I had planned to have acorn squash at least, but that gave up the ghost long before Halloween decorations even made it into the stores. So I've got a few peppers coming in, and maybe some late eggplant, but aside from the herbs, that'll be it.

What this post is really about, though, is work. Real work: the stuff that needs to get done in order for people to survive. And the work of the season is harvesting. With the U. S. economy in the doldrums, and anti-immigrant fervor at a peak, one would think that farmers would have their pick (ahem) of potential hands to pull up the onions and pop the corn off the stalk.

Not according to this morning's New York Times, however--and this isn't the first I've heard of this problem. The upshot is that although America is a far fatter and less healthy nation than it should be, and even though the unemployment rate is embarrassingly high, farmers can't find nearly enough local workers to get the job done. I've heard more than one report of people signing on to harvest crops, and leaving after a few hours because they thought the work was just too hard.

I know I tend to romanticize farming; I even have the temerity to use the term "farm" metaphorically in the title of this blog. But farming lives somewhere at the center of our American identity (think of our pastoralist forefathers, amber waves of grain, and all that). Many of our ancestors farmed this land, or the land from whence they came. My own name even contains "farmer" in German (although we still haven't figured out how one could farm owls). But farming seems to have evolved into something different in recent decades.

The growth of agriculture has meant not an increase in the number of people who farm. Rather, it has morphed into fewer, larger farms owned by conglomerates. The idyllic-sounding "family farm" has become a memory to many, because small farms now find it so difficult to compete with Big Ag: Bigger machines, more oil (including fuel manufactured from corn, which--if I remember correctly--used to be a food crop), larger spreads of monocultures, genetically engineered species. Everything's designed to be more efficient and cheaper to produce, and then we hear complaints about how hard it is for mega-farms to make a profit. Heaven help the small farmer, unless she happens to live near a city where she can sell her fresh harvest to a restaurant or at a farmers' market.

I'm always amazed at the small-government advocates who don't seem to give a hoot about small anything else, because they'd rather buy their genetically-engineered corn at WalMart for pennies, rather than pay more for better food from more sustainable sources. Yes, I know the Large Marts all over the place are touting their local sources and organic produce--but all that's a piddle in a puddle when we look at the big picture.

The picture isn't pretty. After reading about farmers' trying to hire unemployed workers to fill in gaps from lower numbers of immigrant workers, and the unwillingness of the new hires to do the work after only a few hours on the job, I couldn't help but wonder about what we've become. Fat and lazy? Disconnected from the earth that sustains us? Softened by electronic toys and digital media that distort the very idea of farming ("Farmville," anyone)? Do any of these people really care about where our food comes from--what they put in their own bodies? It seems that most folks these days would rather work at Micky D for minimum wage than get out into the open air and get some exercise for the same amount of money per hour.

At my rapidly advancing age and stage of decripitude, I can't quite afford to give up my own job--despite the increasing stress afforded me and my colleagues as we watch beloved co-workers laid off, our own work-loads increase, and as we face the challenge of teaching students whose preparation levels seem to drop every quarter. But don't think for a minute that if the axe fell on me I wouldn't be looking for seasonal work in the field to supplement my meager retirement prospects. I'd certainly be a great deal healthier, sturdier, thinner, and freer of stress-induced belly fat than I am today.

But this is a philosophical as well as a practical concern. What have we become? Why is farm work, the foundation upon which civilization itself was built, held in esteem so low that so few people think it worth doing? When we talk about culture (that ineffable essence that describes what it means to be human) and cultivation (how we educate, nurture, and exercise our vast intellectual possibilities), we're using the language of farming. (Agriculture: ager = field, cultura = tending, tilling.) Even traditional American teaching cycles are arranged around the agricultural needs of our ancestors; kids get off in the summer because at one time they were needed in the fields. And shall I also mention all those seasonal festivals that arise at planting, tilling, and harvest times?

I'm going to be talking about the origins of agriculture in my first-level art history classes next week, because when we began to farm, we also began to create the monumental works that mark a culture and provide it with a physical identity. Turkey, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Bronze Age Greece--the makers of temples and tombs were all farmers first, and only later warriors. It was to help account for crops that writing was invented among some people. Some of the most enduring painted and sculpted images from antiquity depict farming or honor agricultural products and nurturing deities.

Lately I've also been thinking about growth. And although that's a post for another time, about the only really beneficial growth I can think of these days has to do with crops and kids. Most of the other senses of the word we're currently using are essentially unsustainable. But growing crops--and growing children both provide us with hopeful metaphors. It's not coincidental that some of the first formal schooling our offspring get is in kindergarten--a garden for children.

But schooling has little to do with gardens these days. Except in a few schools that actually cultivate garden classrooms (about which I've written elsewhere), we've taken our kids out of the fields and plopped them down into over-crowded classrooms, tempted them away from the out-of-doors with myriad electronic gizmos, and taught them to eat Happy Meals that will end up making them fat, unhealthy, and reluctant to do the real physical work it takes to harvest real food.

That Mad Farmer, Wendell Berry, has the right idea. We need to re-ground ourselves in the metaphors that arose from our nation when it was young. Before we became enamored of constant growth, upward mobility, and efficiency, we knew something about the cycles of things. I just hope we can remember them before it's too late.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

--Wendell Berry
"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"
From The Country of Marriage, 1971

Image credit: Ansel Adams, Farm Workers and Mt. Williamson, 1943. This is a rather idyllic photo taken at the Manzanar "relocation" camp outside of Lone Pine, California during the second World War. Despite their forced internment at the camp, the incarcerated Japanese occupants contributed to the U. S. economy by farming. A woman I met in Philadelphia, who had been at Manzanar as a child, told me that farming helped the internees maintain their dignity because it was honorable work. The photo is available through Wikimedia Commons, from the Library of Congress collection of Adams's photos of Manzanar.

Old Friends

As I prepare to enjoy my long weekend before classes start for the Fall quarter (my first is on Tuesday afternoon), I've spent the morning in my comfy chair reading about dirt.

Speaking more specifically, I've been reading about microscopic bugs and a class of bacteria (Mycobacteria vaccae) that turn out to be particularly beneficial to humankind. Since I'm planning to spend most of the day at home-keeping (especially vacuuming, doing dishes, dusting, and generally tidying up after an insanely busy month), it seemed to be a fitting way to use my morning reading time.

Among the now-old magazines piled on my coffee table (old because I've almost completely stopped buying magazines, opting now for digital versions, library holdings, or quarterly or bi-annual publications) I unearthed the April 2010 issue of Body + Soul, the "Whole Living" periodical from the Martha Stewart bunch. I had picked it up because one of the teasers included mention of natural ways to lower cholesterol--guaranteed to arouse my interest. As I thumbed through it, I noticed a couple of articles on the cleanliness/antibacterial mania engendered by the H1N1 scare. Since I'm an avowed bug-(and dirt-) worshipper, I snagged a copy and it's been on the stack ever since.

The article "Talking Dirty" by Rachel Dowd considered the down-side of antibacterial cleansers and the like, quoting one researcher's observation that the challenges bacteria present to our immune system actually teach our bodies "how to deal with germs."

Now, I'm sure I've mentioned over the years that despite my mostly genetically induced heart disease, I'm ridiculously healthy. I can't tell you when I caught my last cold. I haven't had flu since I came back to the States at age 15. Some of my doctors tell me that the large doses of statins I take to lower my astronomical cholesterol may have something to do with this, and they're probably right. But I also think it has a great deal to do with where I grew up and how much dirt I put up with in my house.

It's not that I'm innately slovenly. But I doubt that many in my acquaintance allow spiders to have their way to the extent I do, or that think tidying up a stack of magazines is more important to a well-kept home than a dusted tabletop. I actually felt sorry for the spiders that reside in many window-corners in my ancient house when I turned the hoover on them a couple of weeks ago in a fit of pre-autumnal cleaning. The usefulness of the little beasties is quite apparent when one sucks up not only the webs and the fuzzy little egg caches, but also the remains of the other bugs--particularly mosquitoes and ants--from which the spiders have protected me.

My childhood in Asia seems to have exposed me to enough influenza viruses that I've emerged completely unscathed over many a seasonal outbreak. Before my last surgery my DO talked me into getting a precautionary shot, and I'll likely get one this year to satisfy my insurance company, but I probably don't need them.

At any rate, the article reminds us that slathering ourselves with antibacterial preparations (like those found in the dispensers next to the elevators at school) isn't just unnecessary (and probably ineffectual) but potentially harmful. By rubbing out all bacteria, we risk losing the ability to fight off new species or varieties.

I was rather pleased to learn that getting down and dirty may be good for the psyche. According to an April 2007 article in Science Daily, Mycobacterium vaccae seems to activate the neurons that produce serotonin, and thus produce an anti-depressant effect. Chris Lowry (author of a study that tested the effect of M. vaccae on mice, and mentioned in the Body + Soul article) wonders, as a result, "if we shouldn't all be spending more time playing in the dirt." These bugs are referred to as "Old Friends" in the bacteria-study biz, because their ubiquity has generated health benefits throughout human evolution. For more on the "old friends" relationship between microorganisms and the increase in maladies like allergies and autoimmune diseases, see "Should auld acquaintance be forgot. . . " by Holger Breithaupt in the December 2004 issue of EMBO Reports (European Molecular Biology Organization).

I do wish more people would relax about a bit of dust and the occasional muddy footprint tracked into the house, and concentrate on really effective ways of preventing outbreaks of the bad guys like salmonella--things like tossing dishcloths or sponges into the washing machine frequently, cooking one's meat properly, and wiping the cutting board down with soap and water, or a bit of lemon juice. Overusing stronger concoctions may turn around and bite us in the backside if the bad bugs learn to resist antibiotics.

The all-time best guide I've found to cultivating a good-bug friendly house can be found in Ellen Sandbeck's book, Green Barbarians. I've touted this small compendium of very good advice a couple of times, and still plan to review it for B&N and Amazon, but for now I recommend the chapters on the Barbarian Body and the Barbarian Table. Some of my favorite people wouldn't be caught dead without a bottle of hand sanitizer, and some day it may kill them. But Sandbeck's fans may well survive bacterial Armageddon, because we can live with mother Earth--in more ways than one.

Time to go play outside.

Photo credit: Cryptobiotic Soil from Arches National Park, by Daniel Mayer via Wikimedia Commons. For more on this particular dirt, see Cryptobiotic Soils: Holding the Place in Place, by Jayne Belnap of the USGS. Cryptobiotic derives from the Greek for "hidden life"--and these soils are full of it. For more interesting information on bacteria, see this week's post in The Owls' Parliament.

Wellness for All

Health issues have been, for reasons I've previously noted, a topic of concern in my household of late. I do not understand, however, why they've become so political elsewhere, when they should be primarily economic (in the home-keeping sense of the word), which is why I feel pressed to devote more space than usual to my own take on the situation.

The ephemeral notions of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" on which this nation was, in part, founded have set up expectations among some of the citizenry that government should be practically invisible (it shouldn't tax, it shouldn't tell you what to do, and it sure as hell shouldn't interfere in the market). "Liberty" has become a mask for fiscal and personal irresponsibility because it seems to mean (from what I can hear over the screams) freedom from government interference in anything (except in regard to sex and its consequences) and (especially) freedom to pack any kind of firearm I want, whenever and wherever I want.

There isn't much talk in these crowds about the freedom to hold civil discourse on important issues, or liberty as being built on a marriage of rights coupled with responsibilities.

I was taught by those fierce nuns at Dominican School in Taipei that caritas was a basic Christian virtue. I was also taught that citizenship required civility. I never read anything in the New Testament (and I read huge chunks of it in the original Greek) about its being acceptable to shout down any idea you don't particularly agree with. Caring about the health and well-being of ones fellow citizens is one of those virtues you'd think would be among the first on anybody's list of responsibilities.

I'm not going to get into the emerging evidence that many of the town hall meetings designed to discuss health care reform have been infused with corporate money and recruiting by the industries involved, or by their spokespeople. I'll leave that to Rachel Maddow, who seems to be on top of the situation. But I do want to talk about the "shape" of medical care in this country, and even make a plea for reason in the debate about public options and/or single-payer plans.

The bugaboo surrounding "socialized medicine" is tied to the old-school statist Communism of Lenin and Stalin. As you may have noticed, that model of socialism has all but disappeared, and is only still maintained in marginal (although potentially dangerous) areas of the world, like North Korea, where charismatic leaders have managed to jam their citizens' neural responses with some kind of political opiate.

Lots of perfectly reasonable countries in the world (well, reasonable to me) are governed by systems that combine elements of socialism with free-market economics, like England, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, etc. All of these countries have universal health care, lower health costs, lower infant mortality rates, and comparable or lower abortion rates, but somehow because America is different (read: better), we can let our free-market system decide who gets taken care of and who doesn't. The "invisible hand" that keeps the market from being too focused on its own well-being will take care of things for us. Everything will be fair and earn a profit, and we'll have the best health care system in the world. I can hear the moldy remains of Adam Smith rolling around in his coffin as I type.

Smith, as a few folks may remember, having read his Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments in economics class, said in the latter book that "By acting according to the dictates of our moral faculties, we necessarily pursue the most effective means for promoting the happiness of mankind" (Part III, Ch. V). I'm pretty sure he didn't mean "promoting the happiness of a select group of mankind."

The truth is, we do not have the best health care system in the world. We actually do a sorry job of birthing babies and seeing our loved ones die with dignity, according to their own wishes. We pay more and get less than any other major industrial nation. [For a variety of sources to support this contention, see the WHO World Health Report 2008--the chart is on p. 82--and posts on The Science Blog and The Moderate Voice]. Yes we do a lot of research, but that doesn't make up for the the fact that so many citizens of the country lack coverage at all.

To be sure, excellent care is available to all who can afford it. I'm a prime example of this fact. I have a pricey (very) insurance plan with a $500 deductible that covers 100% of about anything except elective cosmetic surgery and sex changes. My bill for treatment at the Baylor Heart Hospital, Resort, and Spa cost about $135,000, of which I ended up paying $166 (the amount left on my deductible for this year). The insurance company actually shelled out $35,000 (after paying only the negotiated prices for each segment of the three-page bill I received)--which makes one wonder how much all of this stuff actually costs.

But what about the poor sucker who's worked his tail off at minimum wage for years, eaten crappy food because he lacks the education and the pocketbook to shop at Whole Foods (Oops! There's another can of worms!), goes home after work and watches TV with a six-pack of Bud Light next to his La-Z-Boy? I apologize in advance for the stereotype, but it's been exploited in other quarters for opposite reasons.

When this guy feels chest pains, as he inevitably will, he's going to end up in the ER, where you and I are footing the bills through the aforementioned blue-chip plans, and through various taxes that support public hospitals. And the insurance companies are still going to make a profit, even though Joe Six-Pack may well die or become disabled.

Admittedly, I've cost my health care plan a considerable amount of money, and they're in the business of making money. But I've also paid them a truckload--and so has my company. The combined stated costs of my surgeries over the last fifteen years (a four-vessel bypass and a valve replacement) is about $170,000 (not counting any of the tests that led up to the actual chest-crackings). Notice, by the way, how the costs of comparably difficult surgeries has risen in the interval. The monthly cost involved, spread over fifteen years, is under $1000 per month, even at full rates, which the insurance company does not pay. If the actual paid amounts of this last hospitalization were spread out over seven years (half the time between operations; that should take care of the tests and drugs my plan has also paid for), the monthly cost to the insurance company would average in the neighborhood of $415--less than what my company and I pay in premiums.

If you factor in Beloved Spouse (who has a much less generous BCBS benefit), the per-family cost to Blue Cross/Blue Shield goes down significantly, because his total hospital time in the twenty years of our marriage is about three days, including one out-patient surgery. I don't even want to think about what my recent week of rest and relaxation would have cost us if I were covered under his plan.

When my mother was living out her final three years of life in Dallas, she was on Medicare and Medicaid (her total income was $300 per month from my father's Social Security), which paid a large percentage of her constant medical bills--but we paid the rest, and are still paying. Her hospital bills got "zeroed out" because she was essentially indigent, but we paid for the drugs that weren't covered. These were not cheap, and we were still living on adjunct pay because neither of us had yet secured a full-time teaching job. If we hadn't paid for even that much, she would have done without and died rather sooner. Mind you, the doctors at the Baylor Senior clinic did their best to fix her up, so I've got no complaint against those guys. But the system is deeply flawed, and the President is absolutely right to make fixing it a top priority.

Trouble is, the louder members of the populace are making it really difficult to get anything meaningful done, because all somebody has to do is scream "I don't want socialized medicine! This is a free country! Don't tell me what to do with my health care!" and the politicians scramble into their little warrens, and quake in fear of not getting re-elected if they do the sensible thing--which is to get to work reforming a system that leaves about fifty million people to cram the waiting areas at local emergency rooms.

Here's my deep dark secret, and the reason why I'm not moved by all the scary talk. I was taken care of by "socialized medicine" for the first eighteen years of my life. My father was career Air Force, and I was covered as his dependent. Get this, folks: under military health care (at least as I knew it), you don't get to choose your doctors, you wait for elective surgery, and you don't get to choose the expensive name-brand drugs. Just like those systems in Europe. But you do get high-quality care, and you get it when you need it.

In a few years I'm going to be eligible to participate in another socialized medical system, into which I've been paying for my entire working life. Most of the folks I know are happy with Medicare, and want to see it go on being funded. If they don't like the level of cushiness, they can pay extra to a private company and get additional benefits. And that's exactly the way any public option would work in the bills being proposed by Congress.

The difference is that Joe Six-Pack would finally have health insurance, because there would be something he could afford. And if he could go to a doctor on a regular basis, he might learn that eating Fritos and drinking beer and watching TV all the time might not be the way to prolong his life. And he would get help in changing his habits. And if he did end up on the critical list, he'd be able to have a doctor help him decide about living wills and such so that he could go out on his own terms. And no, the doctor would not decide for him.

I know I'm over-simplifying the situation--but not nearly as much as the screamers are, and most of them seem not to know what they're talking about. Whether or not they're being paid to hold up placards and bibles and such doesn't really matter. What matters is that they're getting in the way of serious, productive conversations about what's really going on, what's really in those bills, and what will happen to our kids and grandkids if we don't repair the system now.

Before I finally shut up for the moment, I offer Owlfarmer's Health Care Toolkit: A few random suggestions for improving the situation with little damage to our own pocket books.

• Stop advertising drugs on TV. Period.
• Stop advertising booze on TV. Period.
• De-eroticize advertising; sex is not the only way to sell stuff.
• Offer sensible, straightforward information about sex in middle school.
• Insist that your children's school include physical education and health in their curriculum.
• Prepare and eat healthful meals at home, with family or friends.
• Get real exercise: run the dog, dig up the garden, mow the lawn with a push-reel.
• Have children tested at birth for high cholesterol.
• Know your family's health history, and act to mitigate congenital defects.
• Have a yearly checkup.
• Work hard, but not too hard (if you've got work, that is).
• Play. Rest. Talk. Read.
• Drink in moderation and stay sober.
• Walk or bike to places you can reach easily without driving.
• Stay out of the mall; shop at places where you have to walk around in the open air.
• Help reduce chemical particulates in the air by driving less, avoiding chemical "air fresheners" and artificial "fragrances," reducing your use of petroleum-based products, etc.
• Support local agriculture by buying seasonal produce at farmers' markets or grocers who sell local farm goods, or by joining a CSA.
• Read labels; know what you're eating and how much processing is involved.
  

I could go on and on and on, but I think these are good ways to reform health care at a very basic level, and they're all stuff I've blabbed/blogged about before. If we want to change the way health care is provided and administered in this country, we also have to take on our share of responsibility for staying well. The first five of these require community effort, but in the end, change starts at home.

Image credits: Ayers Cathartic Pills label; Van Dyke, Charity, both from 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.