Where did all the motivation go?

You know, up until 2016 I always had goals and drive.  I can't summon up either anymore.  I suppose if I could work fewer hours, maybe I would, but all I can ever think about is quitting everything.  Nine more years.  I have to hang in there.

Remembering students

When I first started teaching, I thought I'd remember all of my students forever.  Yesterday, I was clearing out old paper work, and found a number of rosters for classes in 2006.  I could remember perhaps 6 of the many students listed there.  I feel sad about it, but the activity provided some perspective.

Knowns and Unknowns

I've been thinking a lot about how what we know changes as we age.  It's a truism that the young know everything, and only find out they're wrong when they're older, and then come to think they may not know anything, but that's not true.

Following Rumsfeld's categorization of knowledge, we have this system:

1. Known Knowns (things we know we know)
2. Known Unknowns (things we know are out there, but we aren't sure of what exactly they are)
3. Unknown Knowns (things we know but are not aware of knowning -- covert categories of knowledge)
4. Unknown Unknowns (things that we know nothing about and don't even suspect are out there)

I suppose that when we age, we recognize that  Category 4 exists, that it's larger than we thought, and that Category 1 is smaller than we thought.    Number 3 is interesting to me as an anthropologist, because it represents our cultural biases and worldview.  The concept is discussed in folk taxonomy research.

Holidays

I used to volunteer to take care of people's pets over the holidays so I would have something to do.  Now I get paid for it.  Progress?  Not really.  Next year -- volunteer at a food sharing program.

The view from Mira Mesa

Mira Mesa - commonly maligned as crowded, dense and 'too ethnic' has gorgeous views early in the morning of mountains to the east and north.  The sky was colorful - early morning hues left over from the dawn - and the sunlight reflecting off of the clouds lit up the freshly washed trees and yards.  At the house where I was, the rain had brought out the scents of the chaparral in the canyon.  A beautiful morning.

Michael Pollan on sustainable food

Part of the many influences driving me to collect articles about sustainability is Michael Pollan, esp. his book "The Botany of Desire."  His mantra -- eat food, not too much, mostly plants -- resonated with me and fit into my vegetarian life, a life I'd started after reading "Diet for a Small Planet" by Francis Moore Lappé in the late '70s.


I took Pollan's advice to heart and over 2 years I lost 60 pounds.  (I was also inspired by my cousin, and by Bill Clinton, each of whom had lost a lot of weight.)


Here's a short video by Michael Pollan:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/15/food-rules-stop-motion_n_1278989.html


Maybe you'll feel inspired also?

A More Nuanced National Discussion of Morals?

As an anthropologist, I follow in the line of those who attempt to tease out the individual from social context, understand social context through person-centered ethnography, find the moral code that helps to regulate behavior and emotional expression, and in general, learn the interconnections of culture and personality.  Two recent articles in Salon.com fall into that investigation, and I'm presenting excerpts here without much commentary.

This kind of valorization of autonomy, and the radical individualism that follows from it, misses the fact that it is precisely our enmeshments that make us who we are and give our lives meaning. We are all part of many different systems, economic, environmental, familial, etc., and it is our shifting presence in those systems that makes us visible, that allows us to be known. America may have been built on an ideology that values personal freedom over any and all connections, but that is exactly the ideology that leads us to free-market capitalism, neoliberalism, global domination, and winner-takes-all social Darwinism. In the name of “personal” liberty, corporations (which are now considered “persons”) are granted constitutional power that gives them license to perpetuate economic inequality, and has produced the dominant 1 percent. The greater good, whether it’s configured in the frame of the “commons,” the environment, the proletariat, or the biomass, is losing ground. (Many of us, obviously, think it’s time for a different reality.)

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/01/when_a_cage_means_freedom/

It was an uphill battle. For too long in America the subject of morality has been collapsed into sexual morality. For most of Western history, morality had richer content. Morality meant proper conduct regarding wealth, just as one example. In the Old Testament, people were taught to leave some of their harvest behind in the fields as charity. The Greek virtues included the virtue of “temperance,” “liberality” and “magnificence” – all counseling moderation in the relationship to money and physical pleasure. The Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant asked his followers to imagine they were living in a world in which everyone behaved as they did. The English utilitarians, horrified by the inequalities of the first Industrial Revolution, suggested that the millionaire’s millionth dollar did not mean as much to him as the same dollar meant to a poor man.

But as inequality rose, moral debates about economic justice fell until only sex was left as a subject for moral conversation. Worse, in response to the sexual revolution of the ’60s, moral sex was defined by a snapshot of the 19th century Protestant, monogamous, heterosexual, reproductive family. Same-sex sex was the definition of the immoral. Except for those uppity women wanting to abort their “babies,” it dominated the field. With the arrival of religious activists into U.S. politics in the ’70s, this religiously defined sexual morality was promoted as a proper subject for politics.

 http://www.salon.com/2011/12/30/the_year_gay_rights_arrived/singleton/

A moral society means more than sexual mores, but for Americans, it's hard to see past that.  I've been feeling energized by the Occupy movement.  For the past 3 years, I've discussed income inequality in my classes, feeling as though nothing was being learned by the students, but probably, the quiet response was due to challenging thoughts, not resistance.  Developing a collective view of society and our neighbors seems to me to be the work of the coming decades.

In Memoriam

James the cat is no more.  The failure is mine - not recognizing his deep fear and insecurity, being unable to find a solution to his biting.  In the end, I became too afraid to live with him, for even though the serious biting was due to a panic attack on his part, brought on by  . . . what?  A change to a new litter box? bladder infection? overstimulation?  it was clear the changes he'd made, and that I had made, weren't enough.

We learn through experience, which is another way of saying, we hurt the ones we love, even when all of our intentions are kind.  We hurt the ones we love when we lose our temper, lose our focus, consider only short-term gains and not long-term achievements.  My one comfort is having the support of the vet.  But the house is quiet and lonely, and his toys and beds are still here, and what will I do with the big bag of catnip?

Civil Rights

Glen Greenwald has, as usual, said it best:

"Pervasive police abuses and intimidation tactics applied to peaceful protesters — pepper-spray, assault rifles, tasers, tear gas and the rest — not only harm their victims but also the relationship of the citizenry to the government and the set of core political rights. Implanting fear of authorities in the heart of the citizenry is a far more effective means of tyranny than overtly denying rights. " [emphasis added]

From: http://www.salon.com/2011/11/20/the_roots_of_the_uc_davis_pepper_spraying/ 

Sustainable small-town energy

http://www.grist.org/energy-policy/2011-09-19-the-small-town-energy-revolution

Grist.com is a great resource for all reading related to conservation, innovation and sustainable goals.  This article focuses mostly on Germany whose Renewable Energy Act supports efforts for those communities whose goal is to be 100% energy self-reliant.  The article then moves on to the paucity of such efforts in the USA, and links the poor economy and the need for jobs.  One statistic:  Washington, D.C. spends $1.4 billion on electricity produced outside of the community, dollars that could remain in the community, paying people to work in jobs that supply themselves and their neighbors with electricity.

One USA town, described in this article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13770834/ns/us_news-environment/t/biotown-usa-tries-all-renewable-energy/#.TnyIH3N5F9t

is beginning to move in the direction of local energy autonomy.  Agricultural communities do have an advantage, since they produce the type of waste that can be converted, and have an educated population that understands the issues (speaking as a Midwesterner).  Cities are only slightly disadvantaged though.  Consider the farm-table-compost-farm cycle set up by San Francisco.  While not electricity generation, it closes one loop when waste from produce consumed in the city is composted and the compost is sold to  local produce farms to grow more produce to sell in the city.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113969321

Are happy states sustainable states? Can we make sustainability happy?

A report from Live Science

http://www.livescience.com/15673-happiest-states-2011-gallup.html

The results are preliminary for 2011, with the year's complete rankings for U.S. states by Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index expected to come out early next year. 

The well-being Index score is an average of six factors, including included life evaluation (self-evaluation about your present life situation and anticipated one in five years); emotional health; work environment (such as job satisfaction); physical health; healthy behavior; and basic access (access to health care, a doctor, a safe place to exercise and walk, as well as community satisfaction).  

"Top 10" States (3 states tied and so are included in the top 10):

• Hawaii: 71.1

• North Dakota: 70.5

• Alaska: 69.4

• Nebraska: 68.4

• Minnesota: 68.3

• Colorado: 68.3

• Utah: 68.1

• New Hampshire: 67.9

• Iowa: 67.9

• Kansas: 67.8

• Vermont: 67.8

• Maryland: 67.8

At the bottom, West Virginia fared worst on life evaluation and physical health, two areas in which the state's residents have seriously struggled since the launch of the Well-Being Index in 2008, according to Gallup officials. Kentucky took the bottom spot for emotional health, while Mississippi is again at the bottom on basic access, as it has been in three previous years. 

My observations:  historically, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, and Vermont have been characterized as politically liberal, or at least have had strong communal tendencies.  Omaha has been powered by a city-owned and operated power company (Omaha Power and Light), and other Midwest states have a traditional of community support and help due to their agrarian base.  Iowa has legalized gay marriage as part of its liberal, community-oriented philosophy.

In a previous post about Canadian communities and sustainability, access to social support services and strong communities were seen to be part of the sustainability picture.  Access to services, esp. medical care and safe areas to exercise make people happier.  

Sustainable Canadian cities

from the Toronto Globe and Mail:

"A 2007 study, Mission Possible: Successful Canadian Cities, by the Conference Board of Canada, identified four cornerstones: a strong knowledge economy to attract business investment and a talented and skilled labour force; a connective physical infrastructure (i.e., a transportation system that can effectively move goods and people); environmentally sustainable growth based on sound planning and industrial ecology principles; and social cohesion, the critical components of which are attractive and accessible housing, a low crime rate, effective immigrant settlement, comprehensive cultural and entertainment amenities (not the least of which are libraries, which act as community centres as much as places to borrow books), and a strong social safety net."

from:  http://bit.ly/nDM2AS

This list is interesting.  Note that environmental concerns, cultural activities such as art and music (not sports) and a social safety net built on social cohesion are key elements.  I would have trouble believing that a California study would reach the same result, and I will search for a study in order to compare.

To review:

1.  knowledge to attract business. Schools for business, but also biotech?

2.  connected infrastructure, including transportation.  Mass transit that's cheap and accessible?

3.  environmentally responsible growth.  But why keep emphasizing growth?

4.  social cohesion.  Get people into houses, keep crime down, given them entertainment and access to knowledge?

Sounds good to me.  

more on sustainable urban environments

Mother Earth News (yes, it's still around!) has this story:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-community/community-food-security-zm0z11zsto.aspx

The story about community efforts in Columbus, OH, end with this list:

What You Can Do in Your Community

• Ask teachers and school leaders how they think food education, cooking, gardening or farm-to-fork lunch programs could best be incorporated into local schools.

• Ask parents what school programs they’d most like to see their children participate in, and ask how the parents themselves would like to be involved.

• Check whether children in the community could visit a local farm to learn about food production firsthand.

• Locate local organizations that work with children to see whether food-system goals could be incorporated into their existing programs.

• Ask market and convenience store managers to consider adding locally grown produce to their selections. Try to foster connections between stores and farmers in the community, and set up a CSA program if one doesn’t already exist.

• Encourage chefs and restaurants to use more produce, meat and dairy products from local farmers, and support the businesses that support the local food system.

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-community/community-food-security-zm0z11zsto.aspx?page=5#ixzz1N04ndhZw

Life on the Balcony blog

This blog, Life on the Balcony, provides some interesting ideas on container gardening.

http://lifeonthebalcony.com/plants-that-every-balcony-gardener-needs/

Zombie Apocalypse

A more amusing view of death preparedness:

Hawk seen at noon

Ferruginous hawk, 
What's it hunting? not me! mice! 
Silent Mesa flight. 
(hawk seen at Mesa College today)

Death, internalization and grief

Nearly every week, but for some reason, more often lately, I think "I should tell Mom about that."  She died in 1995.   She won't be completely gone until all of her children are gone. She never met half of the grandkids, so her memory won't be preserved by them.  Neither did Pop, so I guess if I write more, there's some memory there.

Death

A new book:

No other period of life has such a feared and mysterious ending. Childhood ends with the budding of puberty and the new challenges of adolescence. Adolescence passes away in the excitement of pulsating hormones, shedding its awkward, uncertain skin in the journey into young adulthood. The subsequent stages of adulthood bring undiscovered treasures of love, children, work, and spirit. Even in the face of failure or lost opportunities, there is always hope for something new. But aging seems to bring this process to a halt. The horizon is unknown except for the single fact that a true ending will come ...   Excerpted from How We Age: A Doctor's Journey into the Heart of Growing Old, by Marc E. Agronin, M.D. Available from Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2011.                              

 From Salon.com[http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/02/05/how_we_age_excerpt/index.html]

When a student in my class died from an alcohol overdose one semester,  I spent some time looking for an appropriate passage to read to the class.  I couldn't just let him disappear from the class with no acknowledgment, especially since it had been obvious to me that he was in trouble.  I chose to read the following:

50.  Death
Men flow into life, and ebb into death.
Some are filled with life;
Some are empty with death;
Some hold fast to life, and thereby perish,
For life is an abstraction.
Those who are filled with life
Need not fear tigers and rhinos in the wilds,
Nor wear armour and shields in battle;
The rhinoceros finds no place in them for its horn,
The tiger no place for its claw,
The soldier no place for a weapon,
For death finds no place in them.
Tao Te Ching, excerpts
http://www.alamo.edu/nvc/programs/humanities/huma/pages/divine_taoTeChing.htm#50Death

Dirty Princesses?

We should rethink the cleanliness goal:  recent research from Oregon State University reported on NPR suggests that the Western rise in autoimmune diseases such as asthma and allergies, that is associated with overly clean societies and identified as such by the term 'the hygiene hypothesis', and which disproportionately affects women, might be caused by the different standards to which we hold girls versus boys.  Girls are generally discouraged from getting dirty (these photos to the contrary) and wear more restrictive clothing which inhibits the tendency to run, jump, slip or fall.

In a related report, a new book by Peggy Orenstein titled "Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture" documents the tide of messages little girls encounter, pointing them in the direction of 'princesshood.' An excerpt from the NPR interview transcript reads:

What was going on here? My fellow mothers, women who once swore they would never be dependent on a man, smiled indulgently at daughters who warbled "So This Is Love" or insisted on being addressed as Snow White. The supermarket checkout clerk invariably greeted Daisy with "Hi, Princess." The waitress at our local breakfast joint, a hipster with a pierced tongue and a skull tattooed on her neck, called Daisy's "funny-face pancakes" her "princess meal"; the nice lady at Longs Drugs offered us a free balloon, then said, "I bet I know your favorite color!" and handed Daisy a pink one rather than letting her choose for herself. Then, shortly after Daisy's third birthday, our high-priced pediatric dentist — the one whose practice was tricked out with comic books, DVDs, and arcade games — pointed to the exam chair and asked, "Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?" [http://www.npr.org/2011/02/05/133471639/saving-our-daughters-from-an-army-of-princesses]

In a quick search this morning to find an image of a little girl covered in dirt, I came across this on Amazon:

Yes, it's a Mud Pie Baby Princess utensil set.  The opposing images boggle my mind, but culturally, it all makes sense.

So the take home message, one which I emphasize in my physical anthropology class:  throw your children in the mud, get them dirty, let them play with pets, all in the name of health (but not the month old babies).  We have an immune system that will attack itself if not given appropriate targets.

And, the early training in a healthy habit such as exercise, will pay off over the course of a life.

Killing Time

Murdered minutes, screaming seconds
Bloody hours, bells tolled
the dying days sag slumping sideways-
echoing years - our fading time