Hero Trusler

2009-09-15T13:03:00.001-07:00

Class as a Metaphor for Race

I have just begun reading Jared Diamond’s Guns Germs and Steel. I didn’t know what it was about particularly only that several people have recommended it to me including my favorite graduate school professor. I thought it was a book about the players of western imperialism. It isn’t.

Diamond’s main argument is in contrast to the conclusion some have drawn that progress, by that I think he means technology and “civilization,” and in conjunction with that, wealth, has been duly distributed in the course of human history because some races (whites for the most part) are more capable or intelligent. Diamond believes that instead progress or lack of progress is determined not by the intellectual or physical makeup of race but by geographical differences in space, continental logistics (i.e. the landmass being north/south as opposed to east/west), and the availability of crops and livestock.

I am very, very late to the punch here as this book was published some time ago but so far, after reading the introduction and a chapter on Africa, I think it is articulate, astute and plausible. Yet, even haven read so little, I am bothered by a few gaps in the line of reasoning of this argument.

Don’t get me wrong, I fundamentally believe there is equal possibility of intelligence and capability in all human races and this is a rational assumption. I am sure there is a lot of truth to Diamond’s conjecture. However, I am not sure that we can assume that differences in the ways civilization is developed or not developed can be solely rooted in geography.

I should also mention that the difficulty in postulating theories within social science is that it’s hard to prove them with the evidence available, the evidence being generally archeological – bones, DNA studies, artifacts- but also perhaps including sociological/psychological research based in trial studies and interviews and written and oral history. A theory of social science really has to be strung together with all these elements and that is what Diamond has done. But it’s not like proving theories in physical science where you can have concrete mathematical equations and chemical reactions.

One particular metaphor came to mind when I was trying to figure out in my own mind reasons why I am not completely copasetic with Diamond’s argument. Within my own race, that is the WASP, but also including other groups of Europeans deemed white, we have further divisions within the class structure. I am white, but I am positioned within a certain class, middle class, defined mainly by my family of origin but also by my level of education and my function in society, namely that I am a white-collar worker.

Class has become a bit muddled of late, the last three or four decades I’d say. For instance, the benefits belonging to middle class in particular, the outcome of post-WWII wealth and abundance in the West and creation of public institutions among other things, are now widely available to members of all classes deemed “beneath” middle-class. Post-secondary education is possible to a person of any class as long as they have the grades and motivation. I suppose you could argue that class level in this case does limit the number of those enrolling in college; elementary and secondary education may have been unexceptional, leading to poor grades and test scores. But admittedly, this is America, and even with a GED, a person can enroll in community college. Furthermore, many people are able to climb up the class ladder without a four year college education and become white-collar and/or middle-class and upper-class. I have a friend with an AA degree in court reporting, whose roots are blue-collar, who makes more money than any woman I know with college degrees and is now solidly middle class. How many major league sportsmen, models, rock stars, actor can you think of that lack education yet make an infinitisimal amount of money?

Material goods see no class barriers and neither do the consumer loans that support some of the more expensive items like cars and homes. Often times, blue collar workers, the “working” class, have higher annual salaries than do white-collar workers. It is no longer outlandish to say that a unioned fork-lift operator can make as much a psychologist, training for that particular job costing exponentially less.

In defining differences between class in this country, we can’t so much look to education or wealth, but we can look to class culture and the values belonging to each class, or at least the stereotypes widely associated with each class. For example, I live in a neighborhood mixed in race and class. I would define my husband and I as middle class, in the fashion of the WASP: we have a neat and orderly lawn, i.e. no abandoned cars, tires or junk, that surrounds a home we have a mortgage on. We are quiet and keep to ourselves, no blasting music or boisterous family gatherings. We are reserved in the way we dress, no multiple gold chains and tattoos. (as an aside, there does exist an artist/bohemian subclass). We are college educated and our speech leans towards the grammatically correct, no “ain’t”, no substitution of the word anything with the word “nothin.’” We both work or have worked in white-collar fields. Our lesbian neighbors across the way are like us and I can determine that they also are WASPs and middle class by observing the way they dress, their cars, their lifestyle, their visitors.

So if I apply this example as a metaphor to race and how race is connected to wealth and progress, i.e., then I have to conclude that a race that is considered to be less sophisticated (white trash), less articulate, less aware and dependent on social decorum and rules, is not excluded from abundance. Therefore, if they are prohibited from acquiring the means by which to accrue wealth, it is not because they are not able. It is due to means out of their control, like climate and location. This is pretty much in line with Jared Diamond’s theory about race and wealth differentials.

However, this does not speak to what we define in human beings as intelligence and intellectual capacity and we are certainly not considering definitions of success and the influence of how we perceive the development of civilization. This is another can of worms entirely. For while my friend the court reporter is wealthier than me, I am more intellectual, and arguably, smarter. I require more in terms of intellectual stimulation in a job and in terms of what I do in my free time. I grasp concepts and ideas more readily than she does. So if we further apply my class metaphor, we could say that one race have the capacity to be wealthier than another race, but they may not be smarter. Their capacity for technology may not be as great.

2009-09-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

Crazy is the new normal

I just don't know how poetic I can be about this, but it's just seems that as of late - i.e. the past few years - crazy, or for that matter underage and pregnant, among celebrities is tenderly overlooked, smoothed out onto the palate of reality like peanut butter on toast.

Michael Jackon. I am very sorry to see anyone die prematurely, make no mistake. But honestly, the guy was freak-kay. Who looks like that, the monstrous white flesh, the carved away face. Yet, millions of fans mourn and I guess they've found his so-called killer (Does the fact that he was a full blown drug addict mean anything to anyone? I guess from now on, we can blame the dealer, very conveinent, maybe I should start smoking crack). He may never have molested children but it seems more than coincidential that he was tried twice for this crime.

The truth was that Jackson had ceased to be a functioning rational adult a long time ago, or may actually never have acheived that. For one reason or the other, he was mentally messed up, addicted, crazy. But instead of pulling for tough love and being honest about his behavior, the world at large, the masses, the media, refuse to see him in that light, refuse to hold him accountable.

There are others: Britney Spears, Whitney Houston - all but forgiven for crazy, Liz Taylor, and the most henious of course is OJ Simpson. He's in jail now, so that's good, I guess.

I think we can blame to some extent the whole celebrity culture; we put them on pedastals, draining them of talent and privacy, pumping them with adoration and cash which their acutely narcissitic personalities subsist on. On some basic level they themselves are banal, and they know it, but the clothes, shoes, glitter, bling, clout disguise this.

It's tragic really. Our country was created out of a desperate need to throw of the cloak of monarchy and its oppression and disregard for individual rights, the ideas of enlightment a triumph over medieval monotony. Yet, over two hundred years after the Declaration of Independence is written, we find that the body of banality rejected so long ago is recreated in the form of celebrity. Maybe human beings need that vehicle of metaphor, that is celebrity.

2009-01-29T11:46:00.000-08:00

The Reitterative Flesh

My husband, the scientist, does not believe in reincarnation, you know, the believe that our souls inhabit other bodies before and after (or either/or) our existances in our present mortal forms. I can't say I believe in it per say, can't say I don't either, but I have always thought the idea intriging and have imagined what my own past lives might have been like even if it is all total fancy which it probably is.

I need to pause and say this: My husband, the non-believer, does vehemently defend the existance of Bigfoot or Saskwatch, Chupacabra and the Lockness Monster. But mostly Bigfoot. I do not dare interupt him when he's watching a show on the History channel or Discovery about the lastest cryptozoological findings on the man-ape.

The belief in and study of reincarnation is ages old. The Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, and other variations thereof - including Scientologists and Theosophists - all support the notion of reincarnation. So do a whole heck of a lot of New Age thinking type of folk. While the belief in reincarnation spreads wide, other world religions reject the idea. You might, if you look hard enough, interpret small portions of Islamic or Christain scripture of making mere refrences to such a concept. But for the most part, they are absent of such thought. However, extra-Talmudic Kabbalists and some orthodox Jews support the notion of reincarnation, calling it the gilgul. Some Islamic Sufi groups claim to find reference for reincarnation in the Quran.

From the movie, Kundun

I have friends that support a belief in reincarnation. They are not alone. Movies have been made (Dead Again with Kenneth Branagh, Birth with Nicole Kidman), songs written, books published, centered around the concept of reincarnation. Some people believe whole heartedly, while others flirt with the idea, fun but nothing to take seriously. Herman Hesse, 20th century German writer, said that reincarnation was "a mode of expression for stability in the midst of flux." I guess I rather side with him on this, besides being he is one of my favorite writers, it makes sense. Maybe it puts people at ease to consider reicarnation. After all, who doesn't want a second chance at life. Who doesn't want to have answers to the questions they have about themselves, their situation in life and of birth, their relationships and relations. And ultimately, we all retain questions about our own existence and experience that cannot be concretely explained. Why? Why? Why?

I read the book Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss. Weiss is a disguished psychiatrist who is now a popular writer and speaker on the subject of reicarnation. In his books, he details pyschotherapy sessions, mostly involving hypnosis, in which patients describe past lives. In Many Lives, Many Masters, he discusses the initial experience he has with a female patient that spurred his deep conviction that past lives are real. This patient named Catherine had reoccuring nightmares and anxiety attacks. Through hypnosis, after describing all her childhood experiences that she could remember to age three, she began recounting memories that occured before her birth; in other words, her other lives. The book, and its stories, are compelling.

Weiss isn't the only so-called social scientist to research and elucidate on reincarnation. Professor Ian Stephenson, author of Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, spent decades researching subjects, documenting children's memories that corresponded with the actual details of the lives of persons already deceased.

What do I believe? Like I said I don't not believe in reincarnation, but I don't exactly believe in it. For now, I think it's fun. Given I have an active and colorful imagination, it's hard for me to give my ideas of what my past lives might have been much credence. I have imagined myself - these ideas derived mostly from dreams I've had - to have been a nomad boy in the Sinai Peninsula, a wife and mother in India with a sari and bangles, a banker in Colonial New York City, a captain in the British Navy. It's all good fun.

I did have a thought though. What if reincarnation wasn't reincarnation at all? Here's a theory: Our DNA carries memories, is imprinted with memories of our forefathers. Some of the life experience of others, others from possibly very long ago, are still caught somewhere in our genetic material. My decendents for the past few centuries were all Western and Central Europeans. But it's likely my decendents are decendents from elsewhere - the Middle East, the Asian Steppe, who knows - given transcontinental migration over the ages. Maybe some of the memories of human beings that came before me are immemorial, destined to wind themselves into my flesh by way of those tiny strands that make up my genetic substance.

2009-01-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

Dispossession

I can't think of a clever title for this topic. Yet, I can say, my writing on this topic is prompted by the fact that I just finished the book "Eat, Pray, Love," by Elizabeth Gilbert, a wildly popular book which I imagine is read heavily by women. Women my age probably (that's 26, if you have forgotten or thought it was older). Well, Gilbert spends a year traveling to Italy, India and then Bali after a painful, bitter divorce. In Italy she takes language classes and eats a lot, in India she goes to an Ashram, and in Bali she spends time with a medicine man and has an affair with a Brazilian expatriate.

The book's somewhat interesting but Gilbert comes off, in my eyes, as a flake. In fact, she pisses me off a bit because what she and the majority of us first-world liberal types usually do - albeit I've tried to be a little more conscientious - is blah blah blah about meditation and enlightenment and yoga, our connection to god and how we need to follow the example of those wonderfully devout Hindus and Zen Buddhists and all that. Meanwhile, all the meanwhile, forgotting that this line of thinking is a privilege of our origin of wealth, that it is a product of wealth, and that in India, China, Nepal, Burma, the "enlightened" Buddha/Upanishads led crowd subscribe to cruel caste systems, and often their people are deluged by poverty and violence, a direct result of our 20th century colonization and 21st century globalization that inform this system.

I am a believer, by all means, but the dispossession and displacement of self, of individual, group and national selves, simply relinquishes ownership in what is simultaneously beautiful and flawed: our skin, our culture, our past, our values, our religious and spiritual traditions. This is not to say we can not swim in other waters, so to speak, or even adopt them. But, be true.

2008-05-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

How much does the past matter?

Being a perfectionist, I want everything as squared away as possible - bed made, bills paid, teeth brushed - even my past. Well, I wish I could square it away. The blunt truth is, as it is for everyone else on the planet, as interesting as I would like to think my past is - you know, travel, friends, adventures - it is marked by misteps, ackward pauses, and a few tumbles. I've also had plenty of good times, good memories and successes too, thankfully.

The past manifests in different forms and on different levels of course. First, there is our ancestoral past - our hopefully proud heritage. I am descended mostly from German and Irish immigrants with a tiny dash of Dutch, French, English, and Scottish. Pretty much sterotypical anglo-saxon. Literally: my grandfather is a quarter Saxon, being his great-grandfather was from the Harz Mountains in what is known as the state of Saxon-Anhalt in Germany.

My great-grandmother in wedding gown

Inside the context of graduate studies, the ancestoral/historical past is part of what is sometimes called "memory" studies. People are obviously attached to their own social history because it forms part of their personal idenity, it provides safety in its abilty to define oneself. It is useful.

But the past that presents more of a problem for me is that of my personal history. I tend to cling to memories especially the negative ones. It's like a mini Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome except that many of the events or experiences I remember, the one coupled with negative emotions like anger, sadness, embarrassment aren't really that traumatic in their true context. This leads me to believe that clinging to these memories represent more of a need of mine to "clean up" because I love to do so reather than the intrinstic pertinence, big picture speaking, of the memory.

It doesn't help that western culture, and really most cultures, documents its past so throroughly and revisits it so often and with such vigor. Mostly, in the context of the arts (i.e. movies, visual art, literature, theatre, etc...), the past is more than naught an apparatus for framing a more contemporary issue. A good example is the book "Atonement" by Ian McKewen. The book/movie takes place in the 1930s both before and during WW II with the last chapter taken place in the 90s or thereabouts. But the book isn't about WW II. It's about finding redemption, but also poses grand questions about the substance of children, the role of social dictates. In other contexts, the fixation on history present in Western Culture in its social sciences, in journalism, and in the arts, really is a reguritation of events that were pivotal, profoundly meanful, that need to be revisited in order for our collective psyches to deal with what had happened once ago, to prevent it from happening again.

Atonement, wartime scene

But the societal past, or the ancestoral past, perhaps has a different signigicance to individuals than does an individual's own past. I think our personal memories manifest in as many occassions or in as many ways as are fit with our individual characters, i.e, a happy-go-lucky person touches on sad memories very rarely whereas a melancholy person touches on them quite a bit; this is because a melancholy person needs melancholy substance on which to subsist. Sometimes, I recall a bittersweet memory because something I have seen has triggered the memory, and being sensitive, I may remember the emotional context of the memory more acutely. Other times, I think that more negative events in my past have just forged a deeper groove than then more postive ones, but I also recognize that I have a compulsion to tidy every thing up, even my past, and that I am often too hard on myself, even in terms of the past. It's only now, that I've gotten older, do I more clearly recognize that no one is immune from an imperfect past. No one.

2008-05-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

Its Me or The Dog: Anarchism versus civilization

The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.- Mikail Bakunin, anarchist

I like to compare things. So I have decided that every week, at least once, I shall contemplate and compare two things: two concepts, issues, places, persons, whatever.This exercise I will call “Its me or the dog.”

Lets start with something serious, a perplexing comparison based on notions that I bounced around my mind from time to time, in part, thanks to Powell M Trusler, hubby extraordinaire. That is, anarchism versus civilization, or nation state society.

Look around you. The world, apparently, is going to hell in a hand basket. The World Wildlife Fund announced recently that wildlife has decreased 27% since 1970. Whatever that means. The icebergs are melting. Gas costs close to $4.00 a gallon. Earthquakes in china, you get the picture. If government is so great, if the collective of nation-states if something desired, if necessary, then how is it that the condition of our planet and everything in it seems to be decaying? Is it the natural consequence of human existence? Are we like the dinosaurs, a mortal experiment destined to fail, and leave in our wake a liberated planet naturally replenished via our demise?

It is possible, that in creating an economic system and collective of nation-states, we have built a macro-structure of society that in all its intended good, simply diverts us from natural design (assuming there is one using evolutionist or creationist theory). In fact, we tend to divorce ourselves from a design that limits population growth and depend on development and existence of artificial substances or use of natural substances in an unnatural way, a design that protects the delicate balance of beings on the planet. It is possible that our society has done as much damage as it has done good.

I am assuming that the flaws inherent in society have a direct correlation to the consequences of human society, its civilizations. I am also assuming that an absence of human society would occlude certain present problems mentioned above. But I say this theoretically. Theoretically, anarchism would most likely mean the development of communes, or communal society, small bands of like people who live together and create micro-societies, the assumption being that a greater government would not exist. It would also mean, that like students in a classroom, some communes would progress more quickly and function more effectively than other. Some communes would have certain collective and inherent talents that others would lack. Inevitably, acute disparities would arise between communes in terms of quality of life, medical care, education, and subsistence (one could argue this already exists in such places as South Africa or Brazil). Those in need would either depend solely on the structure of their own group or on the charity of another (again, not so much different than it is now). But, it is possible that through the omission of macro-societies and the creation of communes or mini-societies, we as human beings might parallel a natural design, a far superior administrator of the planet and all its elements. See Mikhail Bakunin

However, this is all theory. I am a privileged person. I live in a first world country, a civilization/society, in which I am able to sustain myself well, and so far, I am able to take care of all my needs, despite any bumps in the road. I would hesitate to so quickly dismiss my circumstances that were had through such a country and its government. My ancestors fled corrupt systems, imprisoning systems, that prevented them from pursuing life, liberty and happiness. This a good thing despite everyone’s incessant complaining, America, a country of whiners. I rather enjoy paved roads and stop lights and laws regarding personal property and protection from crime. I take for granted the freedom I have had so far in expressing myself, in pursuing my goals, in getting an education. In fact, despite the existence of western civilization all of these centuries, it wasn’t until recently that women were able to have lives outside of marriage and family. They weren’t allowed to own property, to inherit money, go to school, etc… I’m not one to complain. However…well, let me use a reference from those great America icons from Star Trek:

Spock: The needs of the many... outweigh -
Kirk: The needs of the few.
Spock: Or the one.
The Wrath of Khan

The thing is, despite all these privileges that I myself have enjoyed via civilization, isn’t it better that the planet survive despite human beings? Again, assuming civilization has, depite its intented good and its good products, introduced the aforesaid modern problems and crises. Are these socities such a good thing, on the whole? Well, its food for thought. Anarchy or civilization.

2008-05-15T10:20:00.000-07:00

Long time no talky

Hi everyone, well more like no one since I am pretty sure no one reads this blog but who cares! Anyway, just today, I am blogging because I want to keep in my heart and mind some peeps and some issues that seem to hang on me today:

I really pray for all the people in Sichuan China who have lost people in the Earthquake or who are still in danger. I can't imagine all the pain and suffering some of those people are going through. I also pray for the people in Myanmar who are struggling to survive.

Primary school students hold a candlelight vigil for the earthquake victims in southwest China.

This might be kinda of random, but I always think about Americans abroad who are in trouble. Like the soldiers in Iraq but also Americans in trouble, like Amanda Knox, who is an Italian jail for murder that she most likely didn't commit. I can't imagine being in that situation. Or Americans in foreign prisons anywhere. Or Lori Berenson who is in prison in Peru. I can't imagine that sort of life.

Anyway, as for myself, I pray I just learn to chill out and take life one day at a time, to count my blessings and be grateful for what I have, my wonderful family, and my friends, my health, and the fact that I've never gone hungry, not a day in my life, and that I have always had good medical care. :)H

Here a link for info about Lori Berenson. She may well be a terrorist for the Shining Path but the point is, no due process:

Free Lori

2006-11-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

In The Village

I was shocked to read in the news recently that Adrienne Shelly, the actress known mostly for work in independent films like The Unbelievable Truth, was murdered in her Greenwich Village apartment last week. I thought she was adorable. She was killed senselessly, the outcome of an arguement between she and a teenage day laborer (she complained about the noise; the young man, afraid of being deported, punched her and knocked her out, and thinking she was dead, staged her suicide as a cover-up).

Her apartment was in the West Village. For those who don't know it, the West Village is of course the westerly part of Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan, as opposed to the funkier, artier East Village. The West Village, really the heart of what was once considered to be a boucolic New York City suburb, has had several metamorphoses over the years. Adrienne Shelley, as well as her attacker, both epitomize two divergent yet characteristic types to inhabit the Village today, either through work or through residence: the wealthy, some in creative fields, and the very poor. In many respects, this is no great change from the makeup of Village neighborhoods that existed during the late 1800s and early 1900s, when it was filled not only with well-to-do New Yorkers fleeing crowded lower Manhattan (increasingly plagued by crime and infectious diseases as immigrants poured in) but also with marginalized groups - African-Americans, the Irish, Germans - seeking to claim a niche in the city.

I lived in the West Village off and on for almost a year, from 1997 to 1998. It was the first New York City neighborhood I lived in. A few years later, after I had moved to the Upper East Side, I entered graduate studies at the New School for Social Research, located just south of Union Square at 14th street and 5th Avenue, in northern most Greenwich Village. I spend many hours at the graduate studies building there and also at NYU's Bobst Library at Washington Square. Suffice to say, I think I have spent enough time there to know it a little, having the perspective of neither a tourist or a resident but of one somewhere in between.

I, like many people, knew of Greenwich Village first by reputation and its cultural history. It was once the capital of Beatneat culture, gestating with the rise of Beatnick writers like Alan Ginsburg, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac and culminating with the advent of free love and folk rock, a rendezvous of 60s musicians like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan that played in small clubs on Bleeker Street.But even before that, the Village was the epicenter for dissedent American cultural. In the early 1900s and up through the 1920s, artists, writers and radicals flocked to the bohemia of Greenwich Village, taking up residence in spacious flats converted from tenements and frequenting the many coffee houses, theaters, and dinner clubs along tree lined streets near Washington Square: Macdougal, West 12th, Washington Mews.

The latter part of the 20th century brought to Greenwich village both boon and bust, as it did the city itself. During the 1970s, the city suffered a serious economic decline. The Village lost some of its luster in those decades, as did most of NYC. But this all changed during the economic revival of the city during the 1990s, when people flowed into the city for jobs and other economic opportunities, catalyzing a vital housing marking. Since then, the neighborhood has transformed into something much more glamourous, an oasis for movie stars and investment bankers, chock full of fashionable restaurants and bars like Pastis and Butter, and peppered with expensive boutiques and designer showrooms.

When I arrived in NYC in 1997, I went to stay with a friend of my mother's who owned a condominium on West 11th Street, just off of the West Side Highway. The condo had cost her less than $200,000 in the early 1990s. Nowadays, a comparable unit would cost probably close to $800,000. I hope for her sake she managed to hold onto the place; she was a hair's breath away from foreclosure back then. The West Village eight or nine years ago wasn't so different than it is now. The snootiness was palpable and it wasn't unusual for me to pass Rupert Graves or Blythe Danner on the street on my way to the Christopher Street subway station.

My mother's friend, we'll call her Leona, was gay. I say that because her identity, or orientation, informed her experience of the West Village, which to some degree caters to the gay community, and more specifically to gay women. (Gay men and women have being making a haven of Greenwich Village since the beginning of the 19th century). Her favorite bar was Rubyfruit, a lesbian bar, and she loved to eat at Cowgirls, a western themed eatery on Hudson street, that more time than not, was occupied with a bevy of lesbian couples. I have never since felt my sexuality as a straight woman so obtrusive, for better or for worse.

My view of Greenwich Village, spefically the West Village, expanded only after I moved out. I stayed with my mother's friend for four months. From there, I moved to a women's residence where I rented a room, but returned to the Village later that year after having gotten a sublet from a friend of mine at work. My new apartment was a world away from Leona's highrise: it was on the ground floor, a street facing studio in 100 plus year old walk up (for those who don't know it, a walk up is New York speak for a multi-story residential building with stairs not an elevator). The building was on Horatio Street between Hudson and Greenwich streets across from a basketball court. Figuratively, my situation oozed charm, yet the reality of it was less so.

Aside from the usual New York problems I encounterd and struggled to adapt to (it's expensive, people are often taciturn or rude, always rush rush rush, crowds everywhere) I now had to deal with problems married to the apartment. First, I met with the rodents and water bugs (no roaches thank goodness), then I came to know the bums and transvestite hookers passing by on the street until wee hours of the morning, sometimes stopping to take a nap on our stoop. I kept books during the day for two sour tempered gay guys who ran a design firm, but at night, I would return to my studio with take-out and watch TV on its 12" screen, listening to the passersby. The weekend of Wigstock, the annual transvestite/drag queen festival, was especially fun for me, if you can imagine.

Without the insulatory quality of height (highrises add layers between the dangers of the street and its inhabitants) or a convivial West Indian doorman watching me coming and going, I felt acutely vunerable and unsafe. Yes, being on the first floor was weird - my walls merely thin skins - but compounded was the fact that the West Village, far from its bucoulic or bohemian posteriety, was beleagured by episodes of both petty and violent crime stemming to some degree from the drug and prostitution trades flourishing at its perimeters (this was before the meatpacking district was in vogue), an influx of non-residents that were both targets and perpetrators, the usual tourists, but also the bands of young people from the boroughs flocking to Christopher Street to express themselves, their sexuality, in ways they couldn't in their own neighborhoods.

Needless to say, I didn't last long. I gave the sublet up not three months into my lease to move in with a friend in Brooklyn, and after that, a rental on the Upper East Side that coincidentally, was located in Police Pricinct 19, the safest one in all of Manhattan. When I had lived with Leona, I was able to enjoy the West Village in a way that more affluent people enjoy it, in their expensive co-ops, condos, and townhomes off the river. I went to many of the quiant restaurants and bars along Hudson and Bleeker Streets. I ate cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery. I shopped for groceries at D'Agostino on Washington Street or at the Chelsea Market off 14th. I still did these things when I had the sublet on Horatio but my uncomfortableness with my living arrangements overshadowed any pleasure I might have previously gotten from such activities. I was glad to leave.

I was shocked to hear about the murder of Adrienne Shelley. But in a way, not suprised. I lived for a very brief time in the two different, polarized worlds of Greenwich Village, that of those with money and those without. I don't think a whole lot exists in between. I feel terribly sorry for Adrienne Shelley and disgust and anger towards the young Equadorian man that killed her. Yet, because such a disparity exists between people living or working there who have money and those living or working there that don't, calamities are bound to happen, economic tension predicts it. But as sure as there is a West Village, there is change, and hopefully the texture of the neighborhood, will through time, be less polarized and embrace economic heterogeny.

2006-10-27T15:37:00.000-07:00

Weather Patterns

It happens so quickly, the change in the weather. I guess I should say it happens gradually but suddenly. I like autumn before it gets really cold, before all the leaves fall.

I live in the East now, and although it has four seasons, and is north enough to have snow, the way its seasons manifest seems slightly different than does the weather out West, or more specifically in Colorado.

It seems to me, that seasons begin later in Colorado than they do here. I can count on the change being pretty close to the designated date, i.e., September 21st does seem pretty close to the time when the average temperature drops and the leaves begin to color just slightly. In Colorado, it seemed to me, we had Indian summer more often than not. Then again, those ugly damp snowstorms brew and wreak havoc, like the one that just passed through Colorado, that began with rain and ended with a miserable whiteout, dangerous because the snow, instead of sinking onto the ground, clung to the leaves, the accumulative weight of which broke the branches and no telling where they might fall. A storm like that occurred in 1997, just before I moved to New York.

The weather isn't bad out here. The summers are humid - air conditioners solve that problem - and it frequently rains. New Jersey rivers are prone to flooding . Phenomena unique to this area are "Noreasters" and ice storms, although ice storms are more common a little further north, in New York and New England. Noreasters can be brutal, apparently a result of the collision of temperatures from the Gulf Stream and cold air from the Arctic. It means a lot of rain, wind and snow. Ick.

Ice storms can also be nasty. Until I moved here, I thought they were a thing of myth. Not so. I've experienced them by now, rain that freezes on or near the ground, on electrical telephone wire, rooftops, and roads. The ones I have experienced have been mild and short lived, thank goodness.

I get my seasons out here, so that's fine. What I miss is the sunshine, the plentiful sunshine of Colorado, and the thunderstorms that roll in off the plains, that you can see from miles away, with those gorgeous cumulus clouds that billow upward, tall as skyscrapers. Beautiful.

2006-10-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

To cult or not to cult

A lot of speculation eddies around the question as to whether or not certain “spiritual-philosophic” organizations are cults. People are deathly afraid of cults, and rightly so, in my opinion, for a cult requires a complete conscription unto a way of thinking and a lifestyle of which posthumous escape is difficult.

The word itself does not inherently imply, in its most basic definition, something negative. A cult merely refers to a group of people that all subscribe to a specific set of beliefs and subsequent practices, unique enough to be set apart from a more widely accepted culture or religion. Obviously, most people don’t consider cults to be so innocuous. We think of Jim Jones, the Hare Krishnas, and the Moonies.

These days, it is becoming fashionable to be a member of a cult, especially if you live in Hollywood. Join a cult = possibly become movie star and earn millions. Tom Cruise has made it so. You could even go so far as to convert to a sect like Madonna did in embracing Kabbalism. Just whatever you do, don’t admit to being Christian. How fanatical. (See the irony here anywhere?)

I have to confess, I once belonged to a cult. Granted, I took a lot of cream with that coffee, and all things considered, it wasn’t too hard core, but it still had me spouting dogma, and I’m sure for the few months I was involved, my friends found me particularly irritating. Luckily, this organization, called Landmark Education, didn’t require me to wear odd toga-like garments or surrender all worldly possession. (Although I did spend several hundred dollars in tuition to take their classes). Glad that phase passed.

My mom has been practicing a variation of Buddhism for over twenty years that falls under a similar umbrella as does Landmark Education, kind of a soft-core cult that certainly doesn’t require her to forfeit life in the status quo, but it does shape her thinking about things. The organization she participates in is called Soka Gakkai, or SGI, and its followers include Tina Turner and Marianne Pearl (wife of Daniel Pearl).

In truth, I think it has been good for her to be involved in this; it seems to keep her focused and positive, and she made many friends through its various activities and functions. She chants at a Buddhist alter every day, and often attends chanting sessions with other members. I can find little fault in Soka Gakkai as it applies to my mother. Or Tina Turner for that matter.

From time to time, my mother will encourage me to give SGI a shot. She has sent me brochures, magazines, and booklets of the chants. I must admit, the chanting is meditative. However, I felt chained to the mandatory twice-daily chanting rituals, and felt my time was better spent with a short prayer to the god I am familiar with and some exercise. I mean if I’m going to force myself to do something that errs on the side of being tedious, I might as well try to work off some of that cellulite.

As an isolated activity, the chanting itself is benign, not derivative of what I consider to be cult-like practices (i.e. shaving one’s head, being one of eight wives, collecting chicken heads). So what really cemented my aversion to the organization and its practices were the experiences I had at group meetings and rallies and the people I met while there. I had seen it before, at Landmark, the perceived ubiquitousness of their philosophies, a pompous, dismissive regard of alternative viewpoints and practices, based on the assumption that anyone not subscribed to those believes are indelibly lost in this world and the next. I noticed that many of the people I met there were either semi-mentally imbalanced, or super uptight and hostile (another version of semi-mentally imbalanced) as if their anger was staving off some sort of nervous breakdown or gun rampage. I concede I only met a handful of its members. I should mention that the Japanese people (of which there are many since SGI originated in Japan) I met there seemed normal.

Anyway, Marianne Pearl wrote a book called A Mighty Heart about her husband’s murder, and she mentions her Buddhist practices and her chanting often throughout the book. Kidnappers that later described Daniel’s behavior during his kidnapping say he frequently chanted SGI’s mantra, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, during his captivity. The book is now being made into a movie of the same title, with filming in India, starring Angelina Jolie as Marianne Pearl. I wouldn’t be surprised if some scenes depict Marianne’s practice of SGI Buddhism. Incidentally, I’ve seen snippets of interviews with Marianne Pearl and she seems a bit uptight and hostile. But I guess I would be too if my husband were murdered.

Anyway, what my point in all this? I guess to highlight the hypocracy in a gradual but growing acceptance in this country of soft-core cults, but simultaneously, a widening disdain for Protestantism and Catholicism. I mean, Christianity can be definatively dogmatic, and has its own soft-core cult sensibilities, especially in more evangelical offshoots. However, commonplace denominations of Christianity, like the Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians and even loosey-goosey affiliations like the Science of Mind and the Unitarians, don’t seem to require from its practitioners a unilateral steel clad adaptation and promotion of its ideals, to the point of alienating those who adhere to other sets of beliefs. Mind you, I’m not saying certain Christian organization don’t do that, I am just saying I think Protestantism has had copious practice in being politically correct, for better or for worse, simply by virtue of being around several hundred years.

Well, food for thought, at any rate.

2006-10-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

Swiss Miss

In keeping with the theme of yesterday's blog, I decided to share a recipe for a Swiss dish, probably my favorite from over there.

Not much to Swiss food, sort of an amalgamation of French, German and Italian cuisines. They like meats, like charcuterie (sliced cooked meats and sausages), veal, lamb, beef, and they also eat horse. Yes, horse. I ate it accidentally cause I thought it was pastrami or something, but it tasted odd the way lamb tastes sort of odd, gamey, and its color was a alien purplish-red. So I asked what it was, and the woman who I worked for said it was horse. She couldn't understand why we didn't eat it in America.

The Swiss eat a lot of fresh water fish like trout, and a provencial specialty is "blue trout," in which the trout is killed just before it is cooked. A chemical in the fish is released when it dies that turns its skin blue, a color retained if it's cooked right away. I never tasted it, not sure I want to.

Of course, they also eat fondue, and another gooey cheese dish called Raclette. They eat a lot of pasta, borrowed from Italy, and polenta, Italian style cornmeal mush.

My digestion took a hit when I lived there in the 90s for a few months. My body just isn't accustomed to so much dairy and fat-laden dishes. Surprisingly, the Swiss are a pretty svelte, fit folk, so I was surprised at their rich diet. Alas, I gained ten pounds when I was there.

Ok, here's the recipe. It comes from Luzern, Switzerland, and they think it was created in the 1700s. Its really yummy, easy to make, yet appears to be a very fancy, time and effort intensive meal. A great meal for guests.

Chicken Pastetli

One-two packages of puff pastry shells
(in the freezer aisle, Pepperidge Farms makes them)
2 Tbls butter
1 minced shallot
1 garlic clove, minced or pressed
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 Tbls Worcestershire
2 cups sliced mushrooms
2 cups diced cooked chicken breast
(about 3-4 smallish chicken breasts)
1/2 cup white wine (cooking wine ok)
3/4 cup sour cream
1 tsp curry powder (optional)
1/2 tsp paprika
a pinch of nutmeg and/or cayenne pepper
salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven according to puff pastry package (probably to 350 degrees). Make sure to also check if you need to defrost your shells beforehand. Bake the shells according to package, 15-20 minutes, while you prepare the chicken stuffing.

Saute chicken in butter or oil until fully cooked, dice and set aside. Saute shallots and garlic in butter until they are translucent. Add wine and mushrooms, stir then cover and simmer for five minutes. Increase heat to medium simmer and cook until liquid is reduced by half. Add chicken bits, sour cream, and the heavy cream, Worcestershire and the spices. Fill puff pastry shells with the mixture.

This dish can also be made with beef. It goes well with rice or potatoes, and vegetables.

Bon appetit!

2006-10-23T11:29:00.000-07:00

Eating around the world

I love all sorts of different foods, and when I am feeling brave, I try to recreate recipes from near and far reaches of the world. Some are easy, like Mexican food - tacos aren't a real stretch - and some not so much; I made Indian Chapati by hand, an endeavor that led to back pain and a slight headache, and my experiment with Tapas, a whole day's effort, left me so exhausted I wasn't able to eat the meal.

I was lucky enough to be able to enjoy a myriad of international cuisines when I was in New York, the best of those being Indian food in the East Village (Jackson Heights in Queens apparently surpasses it), pastries from a Portuguese bakery, and the Dim Sum in Chinatown.

Last year, I happened upon a book series published by Lonely Planet - the travel guide people - devoted entirely to foods from around the world. Each little book of a couple hundred pages concerns a single country, and discusses in detail food and drink staples, regional specialties, restaurants, markets, and menus among other things. I purchased the books on France, Greece,India, Italy, and Mexico, but was able to borrow from the library several others in the series. I'm just hoping they write more of them. Here's a few factoids I found interesting:

1) France: Croissants

I found it interesting that the shape of a croissant actually means something! If a croissant is shaped like a half moon, it is made with butter. If it is straight, it is made with margarine.

2) Italy: Cappachino

The quintessential Italian coffee drink, but in Italy, they only drink it in the mornings, as opposed to us Americans who drink it anytime (thus a sure way for Italians to spot a tourist). The drink, a shot of expresso topped with foamed milk called schiuma, is named after the Capuchin monks, who wore robes the same color as the coffee.

3) Greece: outside influences

I was surprised to learn that much of Greek cuisine actually has its origins abroad. Greek food is especially influenced by Turkish and Italian traditions, and this makes sense given the proximity of Turkey to its east and Italy to the west.

The Turks and other Arab cultures serve "Mazza," little dishes familiar to the west and also recognizable in Greek restaurants, called "Mezedhes." Melidzanosalata is virtually the same as Babaganoush, the Middle Eastern dish, basically a pureed eggplant mush.

Venetian control of some parts of Greece led to the adaptation of Italian dishes into Greek cuisine, the most familiar probably being pasta and in particular, the Greek lasagne called pastitio.

4) Mexico: Mole

Mole is that rich, reddish brown sauce often served on top of chicken or turkey. Mole is a unique sauce often made with pumpkin or chocolate, that is in fact difficult to make because of the number ingredients it requires (some moles call for up to 100 ingredients). Mole is definitively Mexican, and while its point of origin can't be proven, most agree that the city of Puebla, southeast of Mexico City, is the Mole capital of Mexico.

5)India: The Punjabs

The type of Indian food most Americans eat and are familiar with come from the Punjabi state of India, on the border of Pakistan. Classic Punjabi dishes include Tandoori, naan, and chicken tikka. After the division of India and Pakistan in 1947, waves of Punjabis fled to other parts of India and abroad, some to America, where they opened restaurants that we have come to know ubiquitously as Indian. In truth, it's Punjabi.

Bon appetit!

2006-10-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

Scare me why don't you?

Halloween is almost upon us. I could care less. I am going to Chiller Theater next weekend in Seacaucus, NJ. That should be interesting. To be honest, I am not real clear about what it is exactly except to say that apparently a plethora of D-list stars will there, signing autographs and the like. (Like Pee-Wee Herman, "Q" from Star Trek Next Generation, Christopher Atkins from The Blue Lagoon). My husband Powell assures me it will be a good time and that the event will sponsor plenty of horror themed displays and booths for our perusal. Powell is the horror affectianado, not me. For the most part, I can't stomach it.

I haven't dressed up for Halloween for a while. I went to a party five years ago in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with a friend, a strange guy named Theo. His real name is Franz and he's from Austria, but he adapted an English sounding name for the stage; he's a musician. I'm pretty sure Theo thought it was a date. In fact, earlier that week he had asked me if I'd marry him so he could get his green card. I actually considered it believe it or not, until he got stoned, made a pass at me that I immediately rebuffed,lost his temper and in his pot-induced paranoia, predicted I'd take him for all he was worth should he miracuosly find fame and fortune. Don't get me wrong, Theo is enormously talented. I have a couple of his self-produced CDs. His songwriting and his voice are both incredible. But I didn't exactly see Theo as my meal ticket. He was and I think still is a busker, strumming his guitar for coins in New York City subway stations. I told him I wouldn't marry him.

Theo had asked me last minute to attend the party and we schlepped from his apartment in Astoria, Queens, on the G train to a brownstone in Greenpoint owned by Kyra Sedgewick's brother who was hosting the shindig. I have no idea how Theo knew him, but then again, Theo came into contact with a lot of different sorts of folks because of the time his spent in the subway. I hadn't had much time to pull together a costume, so I did what I could with clothes and supplies I had at home, and presented myself as the personification of a rose in a pink skirt and stockings, a green shirt and a lei of plastic roses that I wrapped around my neck. Pretty lame. Theo didn't have a costume.

The party was tedious, at least for me. Theo was mad at me and so universally avoided me and sadly, Kevin Bacon didn't show. I drank a couple of beers in the corner of the room, danced solo to a couple of songs, then got on my coat and left. It was the last time I hung out with Theo.

I dressed up again in 2003, the second year of my graduate studies. Despite having lived in NYC for five years, I had never seen the Village Halloween Parade, NYC's festive, raudy procession of costumed revelers, many of them drag queens. I spent twenty dollars at Ricky's boutique on devil horns, a plastic pitchfork and a spiky red tail that I pinned to my backside. I wore an inexpensive red turtle neck I bought for the occasion, a pair of black pants and black cowboy boots.

I met an ecclectic assortment of grad school friends downtown, only one of them American, the rest from Turkey, Thailand, Germany, and the Netherlands. We pushed our way through the thick crowd to try an get a spot at the guard rail that lined the road. We found room to stand about four of five rows in. Needless to say, I couldn't see a thing. So while I did attend the parade, I didn't actually witness it.

It didn't matter. I wasn't having a good time anyway. Dororthy, the girl from Thailand was going a bit mental on us, and Ingrid, the German, was argueing ad naseum about how I should pronoune her friend Sven's name. I cut the night short and rushed away in the bitter cold towards the subway station to take it uptown to my apartment.

Anyway, that's the last time I dressed up for Halloween.

2006-10-18T14:56:00.000-07:00

Cha-Ching (Part II)

Marx is not a popular figure in the modern capitalist West. In my opinion, some of the prejudice is unwarranted, and in general, most people inimately associate him with Soviet and Chinese communism, brutal regimes based in central economies and dictatorial oppression.

Thing is, Marx was dead long before the Russian Revolution in 1917, the tenure of Mao Tse Dung, or the Cold War. He was born in the early 1800s and an indigenous product of the times, the 19th century, which among other things witnessed the ascendancy of Queen Victoria and a rise of Victorianism in England (the country in which Marx inevitably settled), and more pivotally, social revolutions in Germany and France. Socialism, the vision of Marx and Frederick Engles, could be interpreted as a reaction to brutal inequity of life for the underclasses under an adolescent capitalist system that facilitated the shift from cottage industry to industrialization. Truly, Marx could only so much as consider conditions in which he lived through, and could not have anticipated factors that would lead Russians and other peoples into embracing a socialist model based in Marx's ideas.

Debates centered in the meaning of Marxism, and the pursuit of Marxist study, thrived among intellectuals throughout the 20th century. During the 1920s and 30s, devotees of Marx's ideas and the socialist tenant formed vital organizations promoting the communist model. After World War II, and during the first years of the Cold War that gestated with conflicts in Eastern Europe and Korea, Americans that favored communist ideas were shunned and sometimes persecuted. Senate judicial committees of the McCarthy Era prompted the collapse of the careers of dozens of actors, writers, and artists. However, formidable accord was given intellectual freedom by the 1970s, perhaps as one but many outcomes of the progressive 1960s. The few years before the fall of communism in Europe and Russia ushered in a period of vigorous academic interest in Marx and in applying Marxist interpretation to a variety of studies.

So, what happened after the demise of the Soviet Union? Not surprisingly, interest in Marx and in socialism waned if not practically disappeared. What was the point of discussing Marx in light of the triumph of capitalism? Academics and journalists at least transferred their focus to other events and phenomena like the war in the Balkans, the formation of the EU and middle-eastern politics. Marxism, or rather communism, was an anachronism. Well, maybe not for Fidel Castro.

Based on the failed application of socialism onto the economic and political landscape of Cold War communist states, it is probably safe to say that no one's going to bet on that horse anytime soon. European countries like Germany, Spain, Norway, etc... seem to do pretty well with the light version, the socialist democracy, that sustains itself on a mix of capitalism and social welfare.
It would seem that because socialism or communism is no longer relevant, neither is Marx or anything else he wrote.

But in terms of economic study, a dissemination of capitalism, a blueprint of the system, he should not be so quickly forgotten. Marx wrote the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867, but was never able to fully complete subsequent volumes. Because of the work's breadth, I couldn't possibly summarize it here. Suffice to say, certain concepts he puts forth, like that of "labor theory of value," or the way that time and labor correlates to money, sort of. What one thing I remember from the few chapters of Das Kapital that I have read, is that human labor, in its basic form, is priceless and that a subtle, tragic aberration of humanity is inherent in the act of one individual with power, the capitalist, extracting profit from a persons labor by charging more for the produced goods than the total of wages and overhead.

Anyway, maybe I've wet your whistle. Das Kapital is worth a look, and if that's too intimidating, you can try abbreviated or summarized versions like Sparknotes or the like.

2006-10-17T14:02:00.000-07:00

Cha-Ching (Part I)

Honestly, I really didn't learn all that much in graduate school. Maybe my ability to write improved. Through practice, not instruction.

I went for two years and earned an MA. I made tentative plans to get a Phd until I realized I might be buying a one way ticket to habitual under-employment, which in itself isn't half bad (being a secretarial temp for several years, I acclimated to this condition)but add to it the mountain of debt that accompanies grad school, and conditions get ugly.

I attended a state school for undergrad and a private university for graduate school. I'm proud of my alma mater, the first one that is, and while the second degree comes from an institution with some clout, the quality of education itself was far below that of the first. But that's New York City. In that town, product doesn't necessary follow promise.

I am far more endeared to my undergrade professors than my graduate professors. For years I kept in touch with my history and english professors from Metropolitan State College, who were willing and eagar to correspond and write recommendations for my graduate school applications. In contrast, I haven't spoken to any of my grad school professors since I earned my MA.

However, it wasn't all for naught. I did earn the MA degree. And when I look back on my time spent at the New School for graduate studies, I can honestly say that I did learn a few things, and that at least one person, one professor, had a profound influence me. Interestingly, he wasn't a political science professor (that was the department I earned the degree in). He was a Pakistani-American Marxist economist.

All told I took three classes from him, all in something called "political economy." The first two course covered the foundations of intellectual thought in this particular area of economics, and the third class was survey of contempoary world political economy. The undercurrent of the class was based in the professor's propective and philosophical bent based in Marxist economics.

Marx's great treatise is a deconstruction of a global political system, or rather capitalism. Most people are most familiar with the book Marx wrote with Frederick Engles called The Communist Manifesto. I'm not crazy about this work and think that in comparison to Das Kapital, really Marx's life's work, it is insubstantial (not to say that it wasn't profoundly influential to some).

(to be continued...)

2006-10-16T10:20:00.000-07:00

Ha-Ha

I was planning on writing something really serious today, like about how economists won the nobel peace prize last week, or how much I liked the movie "The Queen" that just came out and the deep thoughts that overcame me as I left the theater (the meaning of monarchy, the tyranny of the elite, etc...)

I could also write about the hellscape that is my apartment right now. Electrical fire on Saturday, followed by black-out, followed by reduction of usable outlets to three, no heat, loss of hot water last night (seems to have returned), and the on-going disturbance coming from upstairs of footfall and a crying toddler. But I'm going to focus on something more positive. Humor.

I laugh now a lot more than I used to. I was dour for a least half a decade and for some reason, though my life as an adult is more difficult and filled when bigger challanges, I have lightened up and allow for a few laughs once in a while. Perhaps it's evidence of the correlation between stress and hardship and the need to cut up now and again, a respite from the bullshit.

My husband makes me laugh. Hard. He has at times a dry wit but at other times he's a guy's guy, a take-no-hostages locker room comic. This comedy keeps our marriage well-oiled. (yes, we do have our gloomy moments too, who doesn't?) Powell's taste is slightly different than mine, but somehow we meet in the middle. He gets a kick out of most Will Farrell material - like clips of Saturday Night Live (the Blue Oyster Cult cow-bell skit comes to mind) or the movies Anchorman or Talledega Nights. I admit, I think that stuff is pretty funny too. I give other things a shot - the Jackass movies are just not my cup of tea, I've never gotten into the Man Show, and I don't really like Larry the Cable Guy - but we're not always going to have the same taste of funny. I got him to watch Notting Hill with me, one of my favorite movies, and he loved Rhys Ifans as Spike. Like I said, we meet in the middle.

Anyway, I have decided to list some things that really get me going, that make me laugh many times over, time immemorial. These are in no particular order.

1)This is Spinal Tap
This movie is so frickin' funny. I love it when Nigel goes through airport security with foil wrapped cucumber in his pants.

2)Bumper Cars
I don't know what about bumper cars that crack me up, but I'm telling you, I laugh so hard I cry when I get into a bumper car and start riding around crashing into other people.

3)Karaoke
So wonderfully absurd.

4)Friends
My secret addiction for several years was watching reruns of the TV show Friends, usually on the local network the half hour before I went to bed. I hated the last couple of years of Friends, but there was a time when the show hit a sweet spot - mid-way through its run - and the writing was hilarious. There are so many episodes I loved but one of the funny ones was the episode in which Monica and Rachel try to get their apartment back from Chandler and Joey by winning a round of Trivial Pursuit that Ross facitates based on their personal information.

5)Monty Python and the Holy Grail
I never get sick of this movie. I love it when the knights are trolloping through the forest in their imaginary horses and get attacked by the rabbit.

6)Extras
This is a new show on HBO written and created by Ricky Gervais, the guy who starred in the British version of The Office. Only six episodes have aired and I'm not sure if HBO has planned to continue the show, but it is very funny. Gervais plays the character of Andy, a British actor trying to make it but continually being cast as an extra. On that note, The Office is very funny too. It's on DVD.

7)Live comedy
In general, I have a great time watching live comedy. I've only been a half dozen times in my entire life, but the shows I've seen were entertaining. I have been lucky enough not to attend a bad comedy review, although I admit some of the comedians were just slightly mediocre.

8)Kathy Griffith's My Life on the D-List
Sure that tiny redhead is obnoxious but she's an extremely talented jokester. It's so rare that a petite albeit big mouthed woman makes it in that world and she really delivers on stage and seemingly, in her real life. I couldn't stand her when she co-starred with Brooke Shields in Suddenly Susan, but now I adore her.

9)The Three Stooges
I didn't realize until recently that Three Stooges are simply riotous. I was just flipping channels and got caught on one of their films. The physical comedy - the slapping, the spitting, the kicking - is so fundamentally absurd that I can't help but double over in laughter. I can't watch it a lot or for long sittings but for a few minutes it's great.

10)Sasha Baron Cohen
What a funny guy. I love him as Ali G, doing his British Hip Hop interviews, but I think his Borat character, the Kazakhstani tourist/TV personality,is even funnier. And ballsy. Check it out.

2006-10-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

The Tired and The Poor

I was on the phone with a friend of mine and the subject of illegal immigration came up. I should mention the friend lives in Colorado while I live in New Jersey, over 1000 miles away. She was dismayed about several incidents of late, occurring in the Denver area, of criminal activity associated with illegal immigrants and the difficulty involved in assigning responsibility or negligence to people without citizenship or green cards. It invited some thought.

According to the Center of Immigration Studies, the 1990s and early part of the 21st century saw the highest numbers of immigration, legal and not, in US history. It stands without saying that the issue of immigration is a tricky thing, especially considering that most of us are the descendents of immigrants to this country how many years ago. It seems we must balance the American credo, “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…,” with other constraints and conditions, the reality of this modern age, that influences how all Americans view immigration nowadays. The vision in Emma Lazarus’ sonnet, of the world’s orphans arriving on our shores broken but strong-hearted, the salt of the earth, is not the romantic notion is might have been once.

Until the late 1800s, immigration to American was unregulated save for health exams and those sorts of things. Anyone could come to America, it was a big place, room for everybody. My ancestors, for the most part, immigrated from Germany and Ireland in the 1850s, the result of political upheaval and famine in their own countries. Industrialization and growth of American cities attracted immigrants from abroad, but also caused a worsening in social conditions in urban areas, so in turn, the US government decided that the influx of immigrants needed to be better controlled and regulated. (Incidentally, the Immigration Act of 1882 specifically prohibited lunatics and idiots from entering the country and the Immigration Act of 1891 bars the entry of those “convicted of crimes of moral turpitude.” Those sound like pretty good laws to me.)

Until the 1990s, the largest number of immigrants to pour across American borders was between 1901 and 1910, a substantial percentage of them coming from Eastern Europe, Russia and Italy. In the 1920s, the US government instituted the national-origins quota system that put a cap on the number of immigrants that could come from each county. This policy and many others regarding immigration were consolidated into the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 which to this day, outlines American immigration policy.

A person is allowed to immigrate to this country for several reasons. A person is allowed to stay in order to work (they have skills that are needed here), to join family in the U.S. already naturalized, to attend college or technical school, to escape abhorrent conditions in their own countries (asylum seekers), to serve as diplomats, to marry an American, or as a benefit of the visa lottery program. Of course, if you are lucky enough to be born here, you become an American as soon as you leave the birth canal (thanks to the fourteenth amendment to the US Constitution). A non-native must do many things before he or she can obtain permanent residency and even naturalized citizenship.

On average, around 800,000 people immigrate to the U.S. using legal means – they have permanent resident status – every year. On the other hand, estimates put the number of annually arriving illegal immigrants at around 1 million, and the estimated total illegals in the country now is somewhere between 12 and 20 million people. More than half of the population of illegal immigrants lives in California, New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and Arizona. At least that many people live in what is called the “mixed status” family, meaning they are part of a household in which some members are legal and some are illegal. This applies to immigrant families in which one or more children are born in the U.S. and thus are naturalized citizens, while the parents are not.

So what does it all mean? What is the impact of illegal immigration and how should Americans, the descendents of immigrants respond?

Obviously, I myself can only speculate as to the impact of illegal immigration on the economy and society. I do support immigration in a general sense. I consider myself lucky to live in a first world country; I haven’t been hungry, I have great medical care, I have sound shelter and opportunity. Certainly, people without much of a chance in life because of their circumstances should have a fair shot at success and happiness, or in some cases, mere sustenance. However, illegal immigration for one, calls in to question the fairness of those who gain residency legally and those who do not. I am a big proponent of making all things equal.

But I have bigger concerns. I worry about the way in which the health care infrastructure of this country is able to manage the influx of illegals. Many of these folks are coming from countries where inoculation from deadly disease, the kind that disappeared from the U.S. years ago, is simply not done. I worry about the strain additional uninsured puts on clinics and hospitals that can’t hope to be paid for services rendered. I worry about how the impact a proliferation of cheap labor is going to affect working and middle class Americans over the long haul.

This is not the first time Americans have felt contentious over the issue of immigration. The Nativists, the New York City centered anti-immigrationists of the 1850s, sank to criminal means in an attempt to rid New York ports of the Irish scourge. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 actually barred Chinese from immigrating to America. Despite this history, I still feel that we're facing something new here, with mass immigration considered to be illegal. We face not only the quandary of a crisis in health care and labor standards, but the juxtaposition of two worlds that have no cause to mingle.

2006-10-10T14:53:00.000-07:00

Things I miss about the 1970s

I used to think of the 1970s as a relatively dreary era, painted in earth tones, textured with synthetic fabrics and an absence of innovation. I was born in the 1970s, and lived out most of my childhood in the 1970s. Maybe my personal history shaped my experience of the time; the fallout of my parents divorce, yadda yadda. Yet I get the sense that most people see the 1970s as an intermission of American culture and history, a decade defined by blunders, debacles and inconveniences: the Watergate scandal, the Vietnam War, the Iran hostage crisis, an oil shortage.

So, I have to think to myself, then why would the 1970s have any appeal at all to me?

The thing is, the 1970s was the last decade to pass before the behemoth of technology took over by way of computers, the Internet, plasma TVs, fax machines and cell phones. It was the last time that anyone would live in more simple ways, practicing customs and behavior more in line with a less advanced era. It was the last time being a stay-at-home mom was still considered honorable, that teenagers didn't loose their virginities until college, and the best thing about summer was roller-skating and drive-in movies. With less to distract, life facilitated conversation and pastimes, and these in turn cemented friendships and community. These things are what pulls me to kindly remember the 1970s. Here is a short list of other things I miss:

1) I miss Saturday night television, when no one had VCRs or cable television, and everybody stayed home so as to not miss the latest episode of the Love Boat or Eight is Enough.

2) On that note, I miss Saturday morning cartoons. That was the big event of my week when I was little. I’d get up early, before my mom was awake, turn on the TV and grab a box of cereal to snack on while I watched Land of the Lost or Scoobie Doo.

3) Although I depend on answering machines and voice mail, and would never give them up, I have a nostalgic yearning for the time before these gadgets when nobody could leave messages and it was your guess or anybody else’s when you might be able to reach someone by phone. It somehow made contacting someone, being lucky enough to call when they were home more special.

4) Sometimes I miss being able to drive or ride in a car and have no understanding of the need to wear a seatbelt.

5) Yes, I hate smoking, I am glad you can’t smoke too many places anymore, but I sort of miss seeing people light up anywhere they damn well pleased: the elevator, the hospital, an office, bars and restaurants, movie theaters. Wasn’t that sorta cool?

6) I wish people stayed at their jobs longer, you know how people would have jobs for thirty years and then retire with a pension? Nobody really does that anymore.

7) In a bizarre way, I miss the Cold War. I loved how the USSR was so dangerous and forbidden, a dark entity across the ocean, that we were told was the embodiment of evil (but somehow in a more benign, predictable way than the evilness of today’s world). It made things interesting and there was always the distant goal we all hoped for, whether we agreed with politicians or not, that someday we would triumph over communism. I love that kind of structure.

8) I miss records and record players.

That’s the short list folks. Feel free to add to it. )H

2006-10-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

Robert Redford

Ok, this post is not really about Robert Redford, it's about Robert Redford cake. That's right, cake.

I did see Robert Redford on TV the other night, on The Actor's Studio. I hate that show. It's super pretentious and nowadays the celebrities on the show don't have any talent half the time, or they are just boring, flavorless people. They used to film that show at the New School, where I got my MA, in the same auditorium I had my graduation ceremony. Crazy, huh.

Anyhoo,(yes, I will be discussing cake, never fear), I guess Robert Redford really wanted to be an artist and ended up in New York broke and on a lark went to acting school. The rest is history.

So I have this recipe for a cake named after Robert Redford. The recipe's been floating around the planet for a while now, and is so popular, two versions have evolved. In fact, the second cake is called "The Next Best Thing to Robert Redford Cake."

I first had the cake in 1993 while on Thanksgiving Break in Sterling, Colorado. I was spending the weekend with the guy I was dating, on his family's farm. Needless to say, it was an interesting experience, if not dreary. We broke up a couple weeks later. What I remember most about the weekend is the cake. His mother, a roly-poly farmer's wife, made it as part as the Thanksgivings Day feast. She told me it was called Robert Redford cake. However, when I wanted to replicate it several years later, I learned from the Internet that her cake was actually the "Next Best Thing to Robert Redford" cake and that the real Robert Redford cake (equally if not more delicious) was something else. Both cakes are decadent, gooey, over-the-top, but mind-blowingly tasty. Robert Redford cake is very chocolatey.

Robert Redford Cake

1 package german chocolate cake mix
(or devil's food, etc...)
14 oz can of condensed milk
1 jar of carmel butterscotch topping
3 Heath Bars (or comparable brand)
8-12 ozs Cool Whip

Bake cake in a 9x13 pan. After baking but when cake is still warm, poke several holes in the top with the handle end of a wooden spoon (around 8-12 holes). Let the cake cool. Mix together condensed milk and caramel topping then pour the mixture over the top, letting it soak into the holes. Spread cool whip over cake and top with chopped up heath bars.

Next Best Thing to Robert Redford Cake

1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
1 cup finely chopped pecans
8 oz cream cheese
1 cup powdered sugar
3 3/4 oz package instant pistachio pudding
3 3/4 oz package instant vanilla pudding
3 cups milk

Mix together the flour, butter and pecans and press into the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees until light golden brown. Let cool. Mix together the cream cheese, sugar, and half the Cool Whip. Pour on top of the butter/pecan mix in pan. Mix together pudding mix, milk and rest of Cool Whip. Spread over cake as the top and final layer. Refrigerate for a while then eat!

2006-10-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

Debugged

The older I get, it seems, the less I want to travel. I don't know if this is because I just don't like to be uncomfortable or inconvenienced the way I am when I travel, or because it's lost its novelty. I can't help but think it also has a lot to do with the terror threat, the huge pain in the ass it is now to fly, and overall obnoxiousness of other passengers. Service isn't so great anymore either. What happened to the food? Great, I get a snack pack containing exactly six pretzels. Oh, and I can pay for extra leg room, the extra four inches that would actually allow me to sit comfortably? Don't get me started on the crying babies and wild children.

Enough whining about airplanes.

When I say travel, I mean purely recreational travel, not travel as an end to a goal, like to see relatives or to do business. I've been to Tennessee this year for a funeral, and to Colorado to visit friends and show my husband my home town, but I don't consider that to be vacation per se. The last purely hedonistic vacation I went on (aside from weekend getaways) was my honeymoon to Germany. I had a great time. I had been to Munich before as a single girl, and this return visit was exponentially more fun. It helps that I speak a little German.

Anyway, I say in passing from time to time, to my husband or anyone else that will listen, hey, I'd love to see Venice sometime, or Spain, or Tahiti. In theory, it seems like a great idea to visit all these places, but in practice, I don't know if I really want to go. Hey, ten years ago, I would jump at the chance to travel just about anywhere that had potable water and indoor plumbing. Now, I have to be bribed just to go across the state line (a mere ten miles from here). Pathetic.

To make myself feel better about this, I have put some thought into some places I intend to see before I die. This list will probably change, but here what I came up with for now:

Hero's travel wishlist
(not in any particular order)

1. The Canadian Rockies
2. Japan
3. Seattle, Washington
4. Vienna, Austria
5. Hawaii
6. Montreal, Quebec
7. Jerusalem, Israel
8. Tuscany, Italy
9. St. Lucia (or comparable Caribbean island)
10. Greece or Montana. Either or.

Just in case you are interested:

Foreign countries I've been too

1. Mexico
2. Great Britain (incl. Scotland, Wales)
3. Ireland
4. Germany
5. Italy
6. Switzerland
7. Austria
8. Czech Republic
9. France

2006-10-03T11:18:00.000-07:00

The Feds

I think any American that holds any sort of political opinion, has a political affiliation of one sort of another, be required to read at least one installment of The Federalist Papers. It is beautiful stuff.

What are the Federalist Papers you ask?

First, let me explain that the word “Federalist” refers to a political party formed in 1783, after the creation of the US,and led by Alexander Hamilton, the same guy shot and killed by Aaron Burr in a duel near Hoboken, NJ. Burr’s bones lay in the Princeton cemetery just a few dozen meters from where I live. Anyway, The Federalist Papers were a series of articles written before the ratification of the US constitution, around 1787, many of which were penned by, yes, you guessed it, Alexander Hamilton.

To gain an understanding of what politicians and other movers and shakers of the colonial era were thinking in terms creating a brand new system of government, uniquely American, one can refer to articles written and published in the Federalist Papers. The articles were a form of banter between thinkers, in disseminating, interpreting and outlining what sort of government should be set in place based on ideas and values Americans hold dear(as reflected in the Declaration of Independence, etc…freedom, equality, all that jazz…).

In short, the authors of these 85 articles also include, aside from Hamilton, James Madison (future president) and John Jay, and although published “anonymously,” the authorship of each is apparent. Federalist papers #10 and #51 are arguably the most well known (and influential). The entire document elaborates on the argument as to how much or how little government was necessary, very similar to the debate that rages today as to how much power our federal government should have and to what degree states should be independent from the whole.

Of course, other issues were also discussed, like what sort of pitfalls and dangers a federal republic (which the US is) would encounter. The Federalist Papers are oddly prophetic. Fed. #10, written by Madison, specifically discusses the problem of “faction,” or the segmentation of the political process into parties and minority and majority groups, formed for any number of reasons. You could say Democrats and Republicans, for example. He talks about his fear that certain groups, or factions, would become more powerful and influential than other groups, and this would lead to corruption. Sound familiar?

Anyway, I’m not going to spoil the fun. I recommend #10 for starters. The articles are a way of understanding the basis, the foundation, of our system and are a good reminder of what the early politicians had in mind. If only we could keep on track.

The Federalist Papers

2006-10-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

Dogs versus Cats

I have two cats, always had cats, since I was little.

Liz and Ruby

What erks me is that people feel the need to divide the world into two groups: dog people and cat people. As if owning a dog or cat, or no pet at all, signifies something (although there is some truth to it, but it's not a universiality).

Here's a shocker. I love cats, and I love dogs. Just about equally. My constant companion in grade school was Dmitri, my tan and white mutt, a tenth birthday present.

Thing is, dogs are a lot more work than cats. Perhaps it does signify something that I haven't felt certain that I could put the proper time and energy into a dog. I'm not terribly active, I don't particularly like to take long walks in all kinds of weather and scrape poop off the sidewalk.

But that doesn't mean I'm a "cat person" or that I dislike dogs. What prejudice. We are considering a dog down the road. We're thinking Corgi (the squat legged, watery eyed cute type) because it was bred as a herding dog and we theorize, would try herding the cats not attacking them (as might a daschaund, bred to hunt badgers).

Here are some cat centric websites I like:

Cute Overload
Ginormous Cats

:)Hero

2006-09-29T05:35:00.000-07:00

For the Love of Bisquick

I'm taking a break from writing a novel length post today, and going to enlighten you guys on the joys and wonders of Bisquick, if you're not enlightened already.

For those of you who don't know it, Bisquick is a baking product, and as it proclaims itself on the front package, an "original all-purpose baking mix." Basically, flour, baking soda and other good stuff mixed together. Its appeal to me is that I can fake a lot of homemade type dishes with it and they taste good and it makes it easy on me -- pancakes, empanadas, other stuff. Anyway, not to toot its horn too much, I am offering this recipe for Peach Cobbler. It's great because it taste super, super good but requires almost no effort. I got the recipe off a website, and apparently there are whole cookbooks and movements out there dedicated to Bisquick.

Bisquick Peach Cobbler

1/2 cup butter (one stick)
1 cup milk
1 cup bisquick
1 cup sugar
1 can peaches (or pineapple, mixed fruit, strawberries (fresh is great), berries)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Melt butter in baking pan (you can nuke the butter or melt it on stovetop if your pan can take it). Mix milk, Bisquick, sugar with the butter. Add peaches (or other fruit) and bake it for 35 to 45 minutes.

This stuff is so good, it won't last the night. Great with ice cream and whipped cream too.

Anyhoo, have a great weekend!!! -Hero

2006-09-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

The Year of the Tooth

I just returned from the dentist, or more specifically, the periodontist. You’re probably wondering what that is. Translation: Cosmetic dentist.

Here’s the background. A small chunk of tooth is missing from the bottom of my left front tooth. Of course I notice it, but so does everyone else.

I’ve had it bonded three times, two of those times in the past six months. I have a hazy memory of breaking the tooth over two decades ago after jumping off a ladder and hitting my jaw against my knee. I have an even hazier memory of having it repaired at the dentist’s. I think I was eight or nine.

I had forgotten about it, surprising, since I like to think I have a razor sharp memory. It just didn’t seem significant to me at the time, breaking my tooth, in fact if I remember anything, it was that I was so proud of jumping the greatest number of ladder rungs to the ground of any of my friends. All kids get their teeth broken.

I started to dislike my front teeth by the time I reached my mid-twenties, only because a microscopic sized gap between them was increasing the older I got. I suspected the gap had to do with my nail biting habit that involved a repetitive rubbing motion of my thumbnail against my left front tooth, followed by nibbling, that detached the unwanted portion of thumbnail. I must have done it thousands of times. Granted, I wasn’t a voracious nail biter. For the most part, I did it when I was under stress, and never enough that it perverted the shape of my nails. It did pervert that one tooth.

Slowly, over time, the gap widened and the left tooth rotated slightly inward. I started to notice hairline fractures in the enamel. I pressed myself to give up the nail biting, and while I was successful for weeks at a time, I returned time and again to my nasty habit (I’ll have you know I haven’t bitten them since March). I assumed my teeth would hold up for time immemorial. They didn’t.

When I lazily saddled up to the bathroom mirror last March, just shy of one of my thirtysomething birthdays, I was shocked when faced with my own reflection: a hole in my tooth! I panicked, I scurried, I sobbed. I called my husband. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They can fix that.” I was pacified by his assurance. (And after watching several episodes of Extreme Makeover, I know for certain it really can be much worse, I could look like Mr. Ed, or better yet, Nanny McPhee).

I have good teeth otherwise. Dentists have always complimented me on my at-home dental hygiene; I floss everyday, and brush like it’s a religion. I suppose in some way it makes up for the damage I’ve done to them in biting my nails all those years. Did I mention I also have TMJ, also know as temporomandibular joint disorder? What this means it that I have a misaligned jaw, that I can’t eat a whole apple or sing without my jaw popping, my cheek and jaw muscles straining and sore. Nail biting. Gotta love it. Guess it’s better than smoking. Or doing crack cocaine. Or living on a diet of fried Twinkies.

So, long story short, I went to the dentist, my quirky, big-mouthed New York City dentist, aptly called Dr. Goldental pronounced “gold-en-thal.” She examined, she pondered, but true to form, she remained chatty and optimistic. “Oh, this isn’t a problem. I can bond it.” For those of you who don’t know it, bonding material is made of composite resin; it goes on wet and dries hard so that it resembles tooth enamel. The dentist shaped and molded the material over the hole in my front tooth, and when it was finished, I couldn’t tell my good tooth from the broken one.

Sadly, while eating a chicken wrap at the Mall in May, the resin fell out and I swallowed it. Since we had moved farther away from the city in March, I choose to change dentists to one in central New Jersey, at a clinic called the Smile Center (auspicious, right?), run by a non-nonsense bordering on bitchy, although competent, Russian. She filled in the hole, fusing the bonding material over a greater swatch of the upper tooth, in hopes that would help to keep the patch in place over time. She did a great job, albeit the color of the resin was a tiny bit darker than the color of my teeth, so upon close observation, it appeared stained. A small price to pay I figure, we had good insurance. I was just glad to get it fixed. I was also glad that the dentist took the time to explain to me that it was nearly impossible to keep a bond on the lower tooth in. She recommended that ultimately, I would instead need veneers, rather porcelain overlays.

At least this time I expected it to fall out. We ate crab legs on Tuesday night, and I greedily gnawed on the arachnid’s limbs, dipping the meat in butter. In my frenzy, I must have jimmied the bond out of place. It was probably already on its way out. The tooth felt off-kilter by the time I got home Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning, I had devoured the bond bit with my bowl of cereal. So, again, I look more like Alfalfa than I do myself.

So I went to the periodontist today. Dr. C, a jovial guy. He says I can’t have veneers, that because of the damage done to my tooth in childhood, too much of the tooth is missing. I’m going to get a crown put in; I made the appointment for next month. I’ll have to make do with the broken tooth until them.

2006-09-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

On Poetry and Suffering

I recently watched the movie Sylvia starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig, who play Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. I’ve never been a big Sylvia Plath fan. Actually, I don’t even like most poetry. There are some exceptions.

Let me say that it’s a decent movie, if simplistic, and to an extent, sugar coated. I read somewhere once that Ted Hughes was a philistine, jealous of his wife’s talent, terribly unfaithful to her, a chauvinist. But Plath was no cakewalk. If she were of age today, she would be jacked up on Paxil or some anti-depressant. She was brilliant but messed up.

I watched the movie not because I like Paltrow – I find her to be a great actress but removed and patronizing – but because I like Daniel Craig, and frankly, I’m running out of stuff to rent. Is that happening to anyone else? It’s like I’ve gone through all the movies.

But anyway, the film got me thinking (to anyone who doesn’t know it, Plath did herself in). First, would she had written the poetry she had, garnered that acclaim and respect, considered a great American poet, had she not been depressed? I can hardly stand to read her dark stuff, but would she written it had she been happier? I would have preferred a different ending. I don’t care about the poetry. We could have lived without the poetry. But this brings me to a consideration: How necessary is suffering? And is the loss of suffering or the quest for an end of suffering ultimately detrimental to individuals or society? Rather, is suffering a requisite part of life?

For me, I have to answer yes. The wholeness and functioning of the human body and mind depends on the ability to feel pain. I think of those poor kids who have that disease – called congenital insensitivity or some such – and who ultimately perish not because of lack of pain or the disease itself, but because in feeling no pain, they cannot prevent perpetual and chronic injury to themselves. This fatally compromises their bodies so that they died of these composite external and internal injuries by the time they are young adults. The kind of suffering I’m talking about is more mental than physical, but we can still apply the metaphor of “congenital insensitivity.”

What can we assume about children, people, who feel no pain? I’ve met them. I’ve even dated a few. These types don’t seem to feel any normal amount of regret, guilt, anguish, sorrow or grief, in regards to their own actions towards others, albeit they can sure get angry when other people cross them. I’m talking about (in children) attachment disorders and (in adults) socio-pathological behavior. These are people who at their worst commit heinous crimes with no sense of remorse: think OJ Simpson or Scott Peterson (if they are indeed guilty, I think so). Children who have some sort of attachment disorder, if not treated, become these adults. I’ve read about cases in the news of kids adopted from orphanages in third world countries that when brought back by otherwise normal adoptive parents, become violent and asocial, due to the traumas they’ve endured.

What does this tell us? That in short, pain and suffering are necessary not only to protect us from bodily injury but also from mental injury to others as well as ourselves. The ability to experience mental anguish is a moral and social barometer needed for a person to be competent and well-adapted in their lives.

But that being said, we don’t want overkill either, we don’t need an army of Sylvia Plaths (one brilliant and martyred poet will do). In fact, I think that Plath’s depression was insidious but not completely involuntary. Sure, she had a mental illness, but her intense focus on herself that is reflected in her poetry and in the choices she made – a philandering mate, a self-indulgent, instable and many times thankless career – only acerbated her condition. It guaranteed that her suffering, otherwise necessary as that moral and social barometer, would be too great for her or anyone else to manage.

The BBC did a story last spring regarding a recent medical report published in Great Britain. Studies on pregnant women (I don’t really want to think about how this test was conducted, ok…) demonstrated that the average fetus feels no actual pain until the 29th week of its development. That means that until babies are seven months in the womb, practically born, they have no capability to suffer from physical pain. The study didn’t gauge mental pain but I’m going to assume because the brain is not yet fully formed, fetuses have a pass on that too. In short, we are not full and total human beings until we have obtained an apparatus of pain, otherwise known as the nervous system.

C.S. Lewis has written a beautiful piece, a short book, called “The Problem of Pain,” that takes a religious, spiritual perspective on this subject.