Hiccuping Thoughts

Ohio Is Losing Its Marbles--Part II: Issue 2 & the Economy

2011-10-02T16:49:00.006-04:00

NOTE: This entry has been posted one week early, because I will be unable to make a post on October 9th.

In Ohio...
As I pointed out in Part I, except for the occasional experimental runs of the now mostly closed JABO, Inc. in Reno, Ohio, Marble King (West Virginia, not too far from Reno, Ohio) is the only fully operational toy marble company left in the United States. A year ago, Marble King President Beri Fox told Steven Colbert that she wants the government to level the playing field. Colbert asked the "Marble Queen of Marble King," the following question: "If you could wave a magic wand and tell the government to do something for small business, what would it be? Extend the tax cut to the richest 2% of Americans?"

Her answer was, "Absolutely not." Instead, she wants the Federal Government to level the playing field (no pun intended, I suspect), to endorse small businesses to export (such as how China subsidizes its toy marble factories). To this, Colbert replied, "Madam if I can use a metaphor from the world of marbles, it sounds like our government is not playing for keeps." They're talking about tarriffs. According to Marbles Galore:

When American inventor Martin F. Christensen created the world's first glass sphere-making machine in the early 1900s, he faced stiff competition from overseas. Germany had long dominated the world's toy marble market with their handmade glass, crockery and agate marbles.

Martin's toughest challenge was not found in making a better product. American children adored the new fantastically round and smooth "glassies" he had so ingeniously created. Rather, like so many American manufacturers before and after him, his challenge was labor cost.

The economic woes of the nation have often been mirrored in Ohio. For example, Goodyear (of Akron, Ohio) will be marking its 25th Anniversary of a win against a hostile corporate take-over by British billionaire Sir James Goldsmith. This fight went national, all the way to Washington, D.C. and a congressional subcommittee hearing. According to Jim Mackinnon:

Goldsmith got an earful from the congressional committee, too.

U.S. Rep. John Seiberling of Akron, grandson of a Goodyear co-founder, noted that Goldsmith in preceding weeks at one point said he didn’t know anything about the tire business, but subsequently said he knew more about tires than the people running Goodyear.

“My question is: Who the hell are you?” Seiberling said. The room exploded with applause, including Goldsmith. (Ohio.com, 10/2/2011)

This is a fine example of workers and their employers in unity, fighting together to survive. Such unity rarely exists any more in either the private sector or the public sphere. Unions, for better or for worse, are a symptom of the discord between employee and employer. More recently, however, organization has begun to spring up (not among the exploited employed, but) among the increasing and increasingly angry unemployeed--both in Ohio and across the nation.

In the Nation...

Protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge: 700 Arrested

Meanwhile, we watch as filmmaker Michael Moore and actress Susan Sarandon lend media attention to the protesters in New York, and (according to Reuters' Ray Sanchez), "similar protests [were] sprouting in other cities, including Boston, Chicago and San Francisco." It has been an angry few years, as it has become more than obvious that Wall Street is significantly more important than Main Street--but not in the way that Sara Palin bullshits, full of illogical thinking, as illustrated by the below South Park clip.

South Park: "They took our jobs!"

What is frightening, to me, is the way that freedom of speech is being controlled. the aggressive behavior of law enforcement officials is disturbing. For example, in the past two weeks, an organization known as Occupy Wall Street, has been camping out as close to Wall Street as possible (at Liberty Park). People from all over the nation have come to participate, but it is yet little more than 1000 folks in total. On Friday (9/30/2011), they attempted clarity of their complaints (something members of the Tea Party have yet to achieve) in their Declaration of the Occupation of New York City.

Occupy Wall Street Protesters Take Brooklyn Bridge
-- 700+ Arrested HD (10/1/2011)

According to Ed Pilkington of The Guardian, "Activists, as well as commentators following the protest against inequality and corporate excess, claim the response of the city's police force to the peaceful event was vastly out of proportion." However, as Mark Engler writes, "OccupyWallStreet has accomplished a great deal in the past week and a half, with virtually no resources" ("Five Ways Occupy Wall Street Has Succeeded").

Still, it is worth taking into consideration, too, the fact that JPMorgan Chase & Co. have practically bought the NYPD. Do you think Gov. Kasich wishes a bank would buy some of Ohio's public workers?

Back to Ohio...

I wonder--given the national attention this tiny protest in Manhattan is receiving, and you know that the protests against union busting in Wisconsin made national news--why is is that so few people are aware that the "We Are Ohio Campaign" had a rally on the Ohio Statehouse Lawn back in April (4/9/2011)? Over 10,000 people attended. The good people of Ohio are getting ready to vote over Issue 2, a veto referendum that was supported by thousands of petition signature (915,456 verified Ohio citizen signatures) against Ohio Senate Bill 5. The ballot will read as follows:

Issue 2

Referendum A majority yes vote is necessary for Amended Substitute Senate Bill No. 5 to be approved. Amended Substitute Senate Bill No. 5 is a new law relative to government union contracts and other government employment contracts and policies. A “YES” vote means you approve the law. A “NO” vote means you reject the law. Shall the law be approved? ___Yes (To approve the law) ___No (To reject the law)

Essentially, according to Ballotpedia, the provisions of OH SB-5 are as follows:

Bargaining: Expands the topics that management can refuse to negotiate with public employees. Those topics include: employee qualifications, word assignments and staffing levels. According to reports, public employees can still bargain for wages and hours.

Strikes: Strikes would be banned, along with a deduction of "an amount equal to twice the employee's daily rate of pay" for each day an employee is considered to be on strike.

Performance pay and sick/vacation leave: Currently, the minimum amount for a teacher to be paid is $17,300. This would be undone by the law, replacing this by implementing a pay by performance provision. Sick leave would be reduced from three weeks a year to two. Vacation leave would be capped to five weeks a year.

Union fees: Public employees would not have to pay union fees if they do not want to be become a union member. This was a condition of employment before Senate Bill 5.

Governing bodies and contract disputes: The governing body of a city, school, or township would have the final say on any contract disputes that initially become unresolved.

Charter schools: Employees of charter schools would not be allowed to collectively bargain. The only exception, according to reports, would be conversion charter schools.

The organization, Building a Better Ohio, wants Ohioans to vote "YES" on Issue 2. The argument is

"When budgets get tight, struggling schools shouldn't have to lay off great teachers simply because they haven't served long enough. Voting YES on Issue 2 will fix that by putting job performance, not just seniority, first." This is not a logical argument; it is INSANE! The threat is that great teachers will be laid off, our children will suffer, if we do not keep SB-5 enacted.

The organization, We Are Ohio, has been arguing that the inability to negotiate will cause lower quality education, nursing, firefighting, and police protection. This is a difficult argument to make because it is complex, and it is difficult to convey clearly because its complexity is rooted in well conceived logic. The only way that I can think of to make the argument simple to understand is with a question: What quality _____ (teacher, nurse, firefighter, police person, other public worker) will stay at a low-paying job that is filled with the stresses of being over-worked because of under-staffing?

A Sign Passing around on Facbook

Ohio government is trying to play for keeps

with corporations at the exploitation of its public employees and the rest of its citizens.

Anyone see any marbles rolling around?

Ohio Is Losing Its Marbles--Part I

2011-10-02T13:33:00.001-04:00

Mood Marbles

I currently reside in Ohio (however, Wisconsin is my home of origin; furthermore, the Rocky Mountains, the Smokey Mountains, and Vermont are my ideal vacation spots). Ohio is a much more interesting place than one might imagine. For example, there are the following places that might be fun to visit: the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, the Great Serpent Mound, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the annual Labor Day Weekend Flea Market (which has been going on for over 70 years). Ohio is home to the rubber industry (particularly the tire industry), the steel industry, the cereal industry, the lamps industry, Thomas Edison, eight U. S. Presidents, John Brown, Alcoholics Anonymous, the first all-deaf football team (the Goodyear Silents), four dead students, a burning river, Ohio is currently home to the University of Akron College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering and the Kent State University Liquid Crystal Institute. Did you know that Labor Day was founded in Ohio, by Ohio's first Black attorney, John Patterson Green? Did you know that Shawshank Redemption was made here in Ohio? Did you know that the birth of the modern American toy industry happened in Ohio?

The making of marbles did not originate in Ohio. Marbles have been around for thousands of years, but only in the last 100 years have they been mass produced by machinery. One might find all sorts of marbles made in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America during the 1880s. Indeed, playing with marbles is a long-held, varied tradition of global standards. "Marbles is an ancient game that can be played 100 different ways. Some say that marble games were spread by soldiers of the Roman Empire. Washington and Jefferson played marbles. So did Lincoln. Games such as billiards, bowling, golf and pinball are all derived from marbles, enthusiasts say, though such claims are probably impossible to verify." (Dan Ackman, "Now No One Plays for Keeps") In Roman times, bags of nuts and marbles were traditional Christmas presents, according to The National Marble Museum at the Museum of American Glass in West Virginia. According to another source, "The oldest marbles found thus far by archaeologists date from 3000 BC. They are a group of rounded semi-precious stones that were buried with an Egyptian child at Nagada."

M.F. Christensen & Son marble

However, Ohio is the origin of the modern American toy marble industry. Men like Sam Dyke, M. F. Christensen, James Harvey Leighton, helped found this industry in the late 1800s, early 1900s. The first factory was built in Akron, Ohio. The National Marble Tournament, held every year in Wildwood, New Jersey, was begun in 1923 by the Scripps Howard newspaper corporation, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. You can visit the American Toy Marble Museum, which is located on the grounds of the old M. F. Christensen & Son Company factory at Lock 3 (Akron, Ohio). There were toy marble factories located all over Ohio, particularly in the Akron, Ohio area. There were also several factories located in West Virginia. Sadly, no fully functioning factories remain in Ohio, and only Marble King exists in West Virginia. Actually, the vast majority of mass produced toy marbles now come from the company Vacor de Mexico.

How It's Made: Marbles

What is left in Ohio are a few places of interest. Two of them are The American Toy Marble Museum and the no longer officially operating JABO, Inc. in Reno, Ohio. Each is an elusive place. The American Toy Marble Museum, located at Lock 3 in Akron, Ohio, is run by Michael Cohill and Brian Graham. Cohill, who has established himself as a local mibologist, is difficult to contact and operates the museum irregularly. I used to know Cohill, but have not been in touch with him, sadly, for several years. Graham, who is Director of the museum, can be found running his own Canal Fulton Glassworks gallery, also a rather cool place to visit. The folks at JABO, Inc. no longer mass-produce marbles; rather they have ventured into making experimental runs that have produced (since 2008) some increasingly beautiful marbles.

JABO, Inc. "Hillybilly Magic Sistersville Run"
marble, made on September 19, 2011

OTHER LINKS:

JABO TRIBUTE RUN: a video about how they make their marbles.
International Association of Marble Collectors
For more information about identifying marbles, visit Joe Street's excellent web pages: Joemarlbes.com.
Land of Marbles
How to Play Marbles

SOME COOL MARBLES

Miniature Marbles by J. R. Hooper (North Carolina)

Moon Marble Company (Kansas)

Davis Marbles (Pennsylvania)

Winlock Marbles (Washington)

Marble King (West Virginia)

Land of Marbles (Internet/Colorado)

We Need a New Party--a Sea Party!

2011-09-25T14:35:00.000-04:00

The Tea Party was formed in response to voter disappointment with the Republican Party, and George Bush. The name, I gather, is a spin-off of the Boston Tea Party, the New England Colonialists' rebellion against the British Tea Tax: dumping a lot of tea into the sea.

Wonderful as that was, in the 21st Century, the concept of dumping tea into the sea is rather environmentally irresponsible--imagine the poor creatures of the sea choking upon the bombardment of a cloudy mass of dried leaves rich in caffeine and other toxins!

As someone who is disappointed in the Democratic Party, and especially annoyed by the President's false promises of hope and change, I propose that somebody (not me; I'm not a politician) start a Sea Party.

My Tentative Vision of a Sea Party

CAMPAIGN APPROACH:

No corporate sponsors! In fact, the less money used, the better!
All campaigning must be done by grassroots methods (such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and the news networks)!
No participation in debates, unless they are seriously conducted!
Candidates would keep a running blog of logically and clearly written statements of their positions on various issues.

GENERAL PLATFORM:

No pandering to major corporations.
Quality public education for everyone, up through a four year college education. We need to revise our education system, drastically, to address all sorts of issues with regard to lowering literacy rates and raising education requirements for the current job market as well as for (and more importantly) the character of our current civilization.
Universal healthcare that turns profit for no one but that allows for the building up of grant funds for medicinal, pharmaceutical, and similar research.
Universal accessibility: funded by the government and large corporations. No one should have to fight to have an interpreter (be it in signed or spoken languages), and wheel chairs should be able to go anywhere.
Green, green, green! Again, profit should not determine quality of life. We need to drastically revise our transportation, industrialization, and other forms basic-lifestyle to become progressively environmentally supportive (not friendly, but nurturing).
No religion: the president's job is to be a leader of the nation, not a priest. It should not matter what his/her personal belief system is since he will do all he can to uphold the support of all belief institutions, within the parameters of federal law.
Revised marriage codes: this should be done on a national level, allowing for same-sex as well as other forms of marriage. The law should be based upon legal property and (scientifically supported) health issues, not upon moral codes.
And lots of other sane, rational, caring, good things! So, I'll conclude my impossible wish list with this: a free, solar-powered computer for every household.

Baked Oatmeal

2011-09-18T10:07:00.001-04:00

Ingredients
2 eggs
1 Tbsp. margarine, butter, or oil
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup non-fat plain yogurt
3 cups uncooked rolled oats
2 tsp. baking powder
3 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
1/3 cup peanut butter (optional)
1/2 cup walnuts (optional)

Beat the eggs until they are bubbly.
Add margarine (or butter or oil) and both sugars.
Mix well.
Gradually mix in the yogurt.
Add the oats, baking powder, and cinnamon.
Mix well.
Stir in the raisins, walnuts, and/or peanut butter (optional).
Pour into greased 9 x 13 pan.
Bake: 350 F for 30 minutes.
Serve warm.

9/11/2001: No Words

2011-09-11T12:46:00.000-04:00

Remembering a Friend

2011-09-04T11:50:00.007-04:00

Nancy working a pre-show table for For Every Man, Woman and Child.

Today is Nancy M. [Johnson] Resh's birthday.

She died suddenly over the weekend of November 15, 2010. She was young, in her 50s. As soon as her family had been notified, I set-up a memorial page on Facebook. Now, I am quite confident she would never, ever have opened a Facebook account for herself (and I know this because I tried to talk her into it several times--but if she did have one, it was very private), but I did it for her students, family, and friends--Deaf and hearing alike. I was amazed by the sudden outpouring of grief expressed on that page; even today, I look at it and whisper to myself: "Wow!" Nancy affected a lot people in a lot of ways. I can only legitimately write about how she affected me.

Nancy was a good friend: she accepted me for who and what I am. While she considered herself to be a Southern Baptist, she had no qualms at my declaring myself to be a secular humanist, an atheist. I'll never forget when, on a very, very rare moment of weakness, I shared with a student that I'm an atheist: the student began to cry. Why did that student cry? Out of disappointment, fear for my supposed soul, something else? It angered me; it hurt me; I felt unaccepted for who/what I am. I turned to my good friend, Nancy, who helped me laugh it off.

We accepted each other because, and this was a strong tie between us in our friendship, acceptance of differences was important to both of us. We both got angry at a lot of the same things: violation of people's basic human rights, mistreatment of the Deaf, lazy and/or manipulative people, bad (ex- or mostly ex-) husbands, uncooperative computers, intolerance, self-centeredness, badly made coffee, and so on. We both laughed at a lot of the same things--we joked about almost everything. Our friendship mostly centered at and around our jobs, but since our jobs were the center of our lives (at least they seemed to be), our friendship grew rapidly. We did a lot of projects together and we supported each other in individually lead projects, too. While my projects were more scholarly-focused, Nancy's were more people focused--we balanced each other out that way: I kept encouraging her to work on scholastic projects; she kept pushing me to become more involved with people (instead of books and DVDs). I considered her to be one of my best friends.

The things I have learned (or re-learned) from (or with) Nancy: not to take my job so seriously, to stop and have fun once-in-awhile, to take better care of myself, and to ignore all the bullshit we (all of us) encounter day-in and day-out.

I have noticed that several people have wished Nancy "Happy Birthday!" on the memorial Facebook page. I have to say it: I don't believe that Nancy "is looking down on us" or that she exists in some form of afterlife (in heaven or elsewhere). I do believe, however, that it would have made Nancy cry to learn just how loved she was and still is. I do believe that Nancy would have been shocked by all the affection sent in her direction. I do believe that all this affection and attention is a source of comfort for both her friends and her family. I do believe that the words, "Happy Birthday Nancy!" have special meaning--rather like "Happy Hanukkah!" or "Happy Halloween!" They are words of love, and as such are powerful.

Drawing by Giles Johnson.

Sabbatical

2011-08-28T08:36:00.001-04:00

I took a hiatus for the summer, but now I'm re-fueled, ready to restart the writing engine.

So, let's begin with a small discussion about sabbatical. The central concept of a sabbatical is "rest" which might also include training and/or research, reflection. Many universities and colleges have changed the label for this so-called "time off" to such terms as "Faculty Professional Improvement Leave" or some other productive-work type directive. Indeed, my own university seems is quite clear about what is expected of faculty on sabbatical:

The university permits a tenured faculty member who has completed at least seven years of full-time service to the university and has the rank of assistant professor or higher to be freed of instructional or official responsibilities and granted a faculty professional improvement leave for the purposes of: upgrading professional skills; acquiring new skills; or intellectual and professional development that will be of benefit to the individual and to the university.

I look at my small neighborhood of ten houses (a dead-end street near the downtown of a tiny city), and reflect upon the work that the sixteen adults do. One of us is on Welfare; another is on Disability; five of us are retired (on pensions and/or Social Security). Nine of us hold full-time jobs. Of the working adults, only two of us have a college education of any kind--the two professors. The one on Welfare has a B.A. and is looking for a job.

I know how my small neighborhood sees me: working hard for nine months with three months off for summer vacations, unless I choose to teach extra classes then. Even my own mother seems to see it that way. I cannot speak for teachers, or for professors at other universities and colleges, but I can tell you that during our summers "off" the tenured and tenure-track faculty at my university (on all campuses) are expected to complete research and work toward completing publications. Regardless, no one--teachers or professors--is paid during those three months, regardless of what they do or do not do: it is a nine month salary, not twelve.

So, please excuse me if I feel a bit defensive about being on sabbatical this semester: I've published a lot in the past several years; I've taught a lot in the past several years; anyone will tell you I've done a lot of service (committee work, involvement with students outside the classroom,...). I need a rest! That's a moot point, however, because I have promised to dramatically improve my ASL fluency and to complete three chapters and an introduction to a book during my "rest"--at minimum.

Good night!

Gender Identity, Sexuality, and +5 to Sexterity

2011-05-29T13:19:00.000-04:00

Look at this picture--what do you see?

I see a kid and his mother having some fun. Dr. Keith Ablow sees something much, much more sinister."This is a dramatic example," he wrote, "of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity--homogenizing males and females when the outcome of such 'psychological sterilization' ([his] word choice) is not known." Dr. Keith Ablow argues in his Fox News Opinion Article:

Well, how about the fact that encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil—not to mention crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts? Why not make race the next frontier? What would be so wrong with people deciding to tattoo themselves dark brown and claim African-American heritage? Why not bleach the skin of others so they can playact as Caucasians?

The "fallout" of such breaches of traditional gender identity, according to Dr. Ablow, is "already being seen." Ablow points to girls showing "none of the reticence they once did to engage in early sexual relationships with boys [..., which] could be a bad thing since there is no longer the same typically 'feminine' brake on such behavior." He then points to "girls beating up other girls on YouTube" and the observation that "[y]oungmen primp and preen until their abdomens are washboards and their hair is perfect." Sorry to be blunt: this guy is so full of crap that it makes me nauseous.

Dr. Ablow's arguments are full of logical fallacies, such as slippery slopes, post hocs, and (ultimately) begs the question as to "feminine identity" and what it means to be a "boy" or a "girl." However, his arguments illustrate an important concern. How we respond to gender and sexual identity--regardless of the type--seems to have become more divisive today: an increasingly extreme split between the demand for sexual and gender identity (regardless of what it is) to the increasing disregard for any sort of sexual or gender identity.

Those who argue for the ambiguous have grown more overt in their blatant ambiguity. The recently published article, "Parents Keep Child's Gender Under Wraps" (Zachary Roth, The Lookout, 24 May 2011), is about a Toronto couple that has chosen not to reveal the gender identity of their baby, Storm, to anyone. The father, David Stocker, justifies this choice: "If you really want to get to know someone, you don't ask what's between their legs."

Those who clearly desire blatant bluntness might be best illustrated by the below cut from a Blizzcon 2009 question-and-answer session.

ALTERNATE LINK

The questioner was referring to the below video, I think, if not the entire online web-series, The Guild, which parodies a lot of societal gaffs and goofs, particularly of the online gaming community.

Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?

ALTERNATE LINK

So far, The Guild has failed to do little more than recognize the broad spectrum of gender and sexual identities. While it is true that some of the "bad guys," members of the Axis of Anarchy, clearly have LGBT characteristics, but these characters are minor, underdeveloped. In 2003, Justine Cassell wrote, "If the example of video games for girls has taught us anything, it is that there is no such thing as 'gender-free' software. Because this is the case, we can only integrate the dynamic nature of gender construction--of self-construction--into the software itself."1 Janne Bromseth and Jenny Sudén observe:

A culture of profiling is one of point-and-click menus and ready-made identity options, of a coming together of mediated identities across scales, scores, and ratings. It distinguishes itself from previous perhaps more subtle modes of self-making by spelling it all out in high-resolution graphics and sound. In this shift from text-based interfaces to those based on images, it is possible to, anew, trace a desire for the authentic and the sincere. If the inhabitants of MUDs and MOOs of the 1990s asked for a simple logic which linked specific gendered performances to sexually specific bodies ("Are you male or female?"), in certain cultures of profiling, there is a similar and possibly even more distinct demand for realism and authenticity now. (274)2

Clearly, the choices for sexual and gender identity are extremely limited in most video games, including the seemingly freeing MMORPGs. However, games such as Rift, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online offer the gamer avatar choices that range widely in body shape, color, and size, the gamer the choices are still limited to male or female, even though androgynous-looking avatars exist within those two categories. These games, ironically, also rewrite medieval myths and legends into more contemporary fantasies, offering a great deal of potential in knowingly, purposefully (if not humorously) rewriting the medieval European Christian, Judaic, and Muslim doctrines of gender identity and sexuality--a form of neomedievalism.

I wonder, therefore, what Dr. Ablow would say then, to a "male" avatar in full armor wearing pink armor? While Dr. Keith Ablow had an MD from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in psychiatry; his specialty is forensic psychiatry. However, his article suggests a clear (unscientific) agenda in that he seems to be drawing more from his Morman faith than from the doctrines of clinical medicine. So, actually, nevermind: I don't really care what he thinks. He's just a blow-hard.

1 Cassell, Justin. "Genderizing Human-Computer Interaction." Julie A. Jacko and Andrew Sears, eds. The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook; Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2003: 401-412.

2 Bromseth, Janne and Jenny Sudén. "Queering Internet Studies: Intersections of Gender and Sexuality." The Handbook of Internet Studies. Mia Consalvo, Robert Burnett, and Charles Ess, eds. Handbooks in Communication and Media Series. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd., 2010.

A Tofu Dish

2011-05-22T16:16:00.000-04:00

NOTE: I'm open to suggestions for what to call this one.

1 14oz. package of extra-firm tofu

1/2 cup of dry white wine

2 Tbsp. extra light olive oil

2 Tbsp. paprika

2 Tbsp. basil

1 Tbsp. garlic powder

1 Tbsp. extra light olive oil

1 cup finely chopped onion

2 cups thinly sliced red potatoes

1 cup water

fresh baby spinach

fresh chopped tomato

Chop the tofu into pea-sized bits.
Mix the tofu with the wine, 2 Tbsp. olive oil, paprika, basil and garlic powder.
Let this mixture marinate for at least an hour.
Put 1 Tbsp. olive oil into a large skillet and heat at medium heat.
Add the onion and potatoes and cook until tender, stirring constantly.
Add the tofu.
Cook for about 3 minutes, stirring constantly.
Add the water; bring to a boil.
Reduce to low heat and simmer for approximately 20 minutes.
Note: you should stir occasionally, and you might have to add more water to prevent burning.
Arrange the fresh spinach in bowls.
Pour the tofu mixture on top of the spinach.
Add the cut tomatoes to the top.
Add some parmesan cheese on top of that (optional).

To Be or Not to Be; To Go to College or Not to Go to College

2011-05-15T16:44:00.020-04:00

Father Guido Sarducci's "Five Minute University"

(Alternative Link)

What is the purpose of higher education? As economics professors Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson observe, "Sometimes, in some subjects, the mastery of specific subject matter is precisely what is at stake" ("Guido Sarducci and the Purpose of Higher Education." Chronicle of Higher Education. 14 Mar 2011). However, most of the time, this has not been the intention of higher education. To acquire a particular set of skills in order to master a certain trade has been more the goal of what have become known as "for profit" schools, such as DeVry or ITT, and the intention of true higher education has been, as Baum and McPherson correctly write, "to induce people to think hard about complex problems, to learn to sustain attention to challenging material, to learn how a disciplined body of thought can come to make sense, and so on." However, the costs of living (to be) and the costs of higher education pose a powerful question for many would-be students today: what good will it do to raise so much debt if the resulting career raises comparatively so little income?

Here's some data to consider: the cost of raising a single child in the United States today is roughly 22% higher than it was in the 1960s. The cost was roughly $12,500.00 in the 1960s; the cost now is over $200,000.00. (You can

"The Cost of Raising Children: 2009 vs. 1960" (The Problem Solver, Chicago Tribune)

calculate the costs of raising a family with theUSDA Calculater.) Costs of tuition for higher education (both public and private colleges and universities) is an additional burden that most families cannot afford, even though the demand for post-secondary level degrees is higher than ever.

"College May Become Unaffordable for Most in U.S." (Tamar Lewin)

But before you jump to the conclusion that the tuition increases are going directly to the so-called "fat cats" running universities and college, understand this: costs for running higher education institutions--particularly public institutions--have also risen dramatically. According to the 2008 biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, most tuition hikes for public universities have been a direct result of declining support from state funds. Public education at any level costs more because of already dramatic budget cuts made prior to those being made this year. As Stanley Fish observes of both the U.K. and the U.S.:

Higher education is no longer conceived of as a public good — as a good the effects of which permeate society — but is rather a private benefit, and as such it should be supported by those who enjoy the benefit. “It is reasonable to ask those who gain private benefits from higher education to help fund it rather than rely . . . on public funds collected through taxation from people who have not participated in higher education themselves.” No one who has not been to a university has any stake in the health or survival of the system. ("The Value of Higher Education Made Literal" New York Times, 13 Dec 2010)

This observation is further supported by a Princeton University study, funded by the Mellen Foundation which "shows that expensive college degrees are not necessarily worth the lofty price tags in the long run when you take into account one's natural ability" ("Forget Harvard and a 4-Year Degree, You Can Make More as a Plumber in the Run, Says Prof. Kotlikoff"). Boston University economics professor, Laurence Kotlikoff, argues that the cost of higher education is not necessarily a guarantee to a rise in income: doctors, for example, may have larger salaries but they also have larger debt (due to the cost of education) that can take years to eliminate, reducing the livelihood of a (fiscally responsible) doctor to that of a plumber. (Visit Kotlikoff's Economic Security Planning, Inc. website to try his software that helps with financial decisions ranging from purchasing a house to making a career change.)

Gary Larson

When I was in graduate school, back in the '80s, I had a thing for buttons--lots and lots of buttons on my jean jacket: "Pay no attention to the invisible midget" read one; another read "Lobotomies for Republicans; It's the law!" Another button I had was from the 1930s, from President Franklin D. Roosevelt's campaign to fight polio. One button was one of many parodies of the "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner":

Data, data, everywhere,
And not a thought to think.

This is is akin to the cry I often receive from my students, particularly those in my College Writing II classes, in which they must work to develop argumentative skills--claims of fact, judgement or policy that are supported by logic and research. They often seem bewildered by all the available data to sort: which is truthful; which is not; how do I know if the writer is an authority? But, most of all, they seem overwhelmed by the fact that there is so much data available to them. I sometimes pity them (shhh, don't tell them)! When I was an undergraduate, my studies were extremely limited by the physical boundaries of what was contained within the walls of my campus library. I would have been in a kind of utopia if the internet had been available for me back then. This causes me to wonder if the cart has been put too far in front of the horse: learning to use the internet before learning to appreciate what qualities of information might be provide.

The explosion of information that has occurred since the early '90s, since the World Wide Web has gone public, often makes me think of that button. So much data, so much meaning that it becomes meaningless? College is not for everyone--no question there. Indeed, not all "smart" people complete or even go to college, either. I usually tell my students that I am trying to teach them to teach themselves (and to do so well), a level of thinking for one's self that allows for a continued process, hopefully for the rest of one's life.

It's the big picture--the picture of life, not just of one's career in life--that matters.

Happy Mother's Day--Things to do with Spinach Fettuccine

2011-05-08T09:00:00.003-04:00

A Meat-lover's Meal

Put 1 pound of 95% lean beef into a 12 quart pot
Cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally
Drain off any excess fat (if possible)
Add: 2 tablespoons extra light olive oil, 2 large sweet onions (chopped) 2 medium zucchini (chopped)
Cook until tender
Add: 2 heaping tablespoons minced garlic
Cook for about 10 minutes on med-low heat
Add: 5 medium Roma tomatoes (chopped) and approximately 2 cups chopped fresh mushrooms
Add 1 6oz. can tomato paste and 1 large can of tomato sauce
Bring to low boil, stirring occasionally
Lower heat to simmer
Simmer for about 20 minutes
While this is simmering, cook the fettuccine
Serve with a smile

A Vegetarian Meal

(This is quick and easy to make!)

Cook the spinach fettuccine as directed on the package
Into a large frying pan, put 2 tablespoons extra-light olive oil and 3 tablespoons minced garlic
Cook on med-low heat for about five minutes
Add: 2 cups chopped mushrooms and 4 cups baby spinach
Cook for about 5 minutes, until all is tender and hot
Serve with a grin

A Flying Fettuccine Monster

(Cousin to the Flying Spaghetti Monster)

(NOT TO BE EATEN!)

Delicious Iconography: The Flying Spaghetti Monster

Cook a bag of spinach fettuccine
Let cool
Dip noodles, one at a time, into a mixture of 1/2 water and 1/2 white (Elmer's) glue
On wax paper, shape the dipped noodles into the shape of your monster.
Let dry completely
Make another batch of 1/2 glue 1/2 water and paint the entire monster
Let dry
Flip monster over and paint the back
Let dry
Flip monster over and paint the front again
Let dry
Flip monster over and paint the back again
Let dry
Flip monster over and paint the front for the third and final time
Let dry
Flip monster over and paint the back for the third and final time
Let dry and harden completely (as much as it will--it will be rather rubbery)
With 100% glue, add other items (such as plastic eyes, pipe cleaners,...) to add characteristics to your monster.

Mysteries, Miracles, Myths, Mania

2011-05-01T12:00:00.003-04:00

World of Warcraft Character

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances without own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
— Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)

"Those who don’t believe in God are widely considered to be immoral, wicked and angry," wrote Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman in an opinion column for The Washington Post: ("Why Do Americans Still Dislike Atheists?"). Anecdote only goes so far, but I can tell you that my own personal experiences agree with this observation. I'll never forget, about twenty years ago, someone said to me, "Gee, you're just too nice to be an atheist!" Was that intended as a compliment? I decided to take it that way, until that person further added that he felt that I must "believe in the spirit," that I simply didn't know it. I don't know what I believe? He knows better what I believe than I do? What a farce! That was twenty years ago. Write Paul and Zuckerman, "More than 2,000 years ago, whoever wrote Psalm 14 claimed that atheists were foolish and corrupt, incapable of doing any good. These put-downs have had sticking power. Negative stereotypes of atheists are alive and well. Yet like all stereotypes, they aren’t true — and perhaps they tell us more about those who harbor them than those who are maligned by them. " About a year ago, I came out of the closet as an atheist to another individual--a very nice, intelligent person who was also a church-going Christian--and, stunned, she started crying! How am I supposed to respond to something like that? I was baffled. I think she meant well, that she was crying over the loss of my soul (from her point of view, not mine), but couldn't she see that, from my point of view, her crying was like my crying because she is no longer a virgin or because she is fat or because she is anorexic or because she is black or because she is white or because she is straight or because she is gay or because of anything that is decidedly who and what she is? No, I'm not immoral, no I'm not wicked, but--hell yeah--I'm angry!

"A growing body of social science research reveals that atheists, and non-religious people in general, are far from the unsavory beings many assume them to be," report Paul and Zuckerman. I'd like to believe that I am a part of the "good guys" on this planet, especially when I know of so many "bad guys" who are deeply religious (Chrisitan, Muslim, Jewish--whatever). I have absolutely no qualm about someone being a religious person. Religion has its place--many people need it. Many people need structured lives, and certain religious institutions provide that in constructive, positive ways. Why, oh why, cannot someone accept me as not requiring religion in my life? (For the record, I also don't require many other things--such as alcohol, entertainment drugs, back surgery, breast implants,....)

This doesn't mean that I don't revel in the mysteries of life. I LOVE this video--it speaks volumes for me (and I've posted it before, so I apologize for re-posting it):

We do not have an adequate word in the English language for the acceptance of incomprehension. Mysteries, in our world, must be solved--and if they can't be solved, they are call miracles, until they are solved, and then those miracles are re-labeled as myths. Why can't we be comfortable with saying to ourselves, "I don't know. I don't have an answer, but I'll keep working at finding the answer, enjoying it as I would a fantasy video game, a game that I may never conclude." Life as a never-ending fantasy game: now there's a thought. But it is just a thought, not a conclusion. Rather than focusing upon getting to the end, we should focus upon the journey (the "getting to"). Otherwise, it's shear mania.

Wabbit Tracks & Easter Bunnies

2011-04-24T11:06:00.011-04:00

While I do remember going to church on Easter Sunday as a little girl, that family ritual had stopped by the time I was in my early teens. I remember liking church on Easter Sunday: my mother would dress my little sister and I up in pretty, frilly dresses, and I was allowed to wear my one-pearl necklace (for special occasions only). Sometimes my sister (who is 3-1/2 years younger) and I would be dressed like twins--that was not so much fun. I have one memory--it's from when my sister was around 3 years old (and I was around 6 years old), sitting in church on a sunny Easter Sunday: red, blue, purple, and yellow colors pouring onto my dress from the lighted stained glass windows.

In my adult secular memory, however, are more important rituals than church--more important because they involved happy family bonding, imaginative play, and fun.

One involved egg decorating. This tradition came down via my German grandmother. We called them "forest eggs," but my cousins called them "dinosaur eggs"--either way, they were difficult to make, but very cool. (I'm sorry that I don't have a picture of them.) In their natural state, they were various shades of green and yellow, with some orange and brown and white: shadowy images of plant outlines. But they were often further colored with dyes: purple, blue, red, more orange, more yellow, more green,.... Here is how they are made:

They looked like the non-flowery eggs (left side).

You will need:

uncooked eggs
lots of onion skins (the dryer, the better)
thread
various shapeley leaves (parsley, celery, clover,...); edible flowers (such as violets) are a nice addition of color and shape, too
vinegar
food coloring (optional)

Directions:

Place the leaves loosely around the egg (do not clump too many together).
Wrap onion skin on top of the leaves, to hold them in place.
Tightly wrap thread around, and around the eggs, to hold everything in place. Be sure that the thread is as tight as possible--I usually start off with a loose wrapping, tightening after the first 10-20 wrap-arounds. Be careful to not wrap so tightly that you crack open the eggs!
Carefully place the eggs into a pot of water.
Add a little vinegar.
Bring the water to a rapid boil.
Turn the water off and cover the pot.
Let sit for 20 minutes.
Cool and unwrap your eggs.
OR dip your wrapped eggs into the food coloring/vinegar/water mixture (as you would in coloring other eggs).

Another ritual seemed to have been started by my grandfather (who was married to the above mentioned grandmother). We would collect food for the Easter bunny (such as the above mentioned leaves, as well as flowers--if available) and leave it in a bowl for him on Easter Eve. The next morning, all or most of the food would be gone; in its place would be a few unwrapped chocolate eggs (the Easter Bunny's poop). We kids never ate those, but it was amusing--and gross when my grandfather would pop one into his own mouth. Sometimes, too, we would wake up to find a bit of food coloring on our faces, arms, or hands--and my grandfather would tell us that the Easter Bunny had been looking over us, while he had been working on his eggs for us.

As you can see, for me, Easter has nothing to do with the Christian faith. Then again, the Easter Bunny is not a part of the Christian faith. According to Lawrence Cunningham (a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame and Christianity editor for the HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion), there isn't "...any intrinsic value to the rabbit to the resurrection of Jesus Christ;" symbols such as eggs and bunnies, "to some extent return to their pre-Christian roots as symbols of spring fertility" ("Spring Bunny vs. Easter Rabbit"). According to Barbara G. Walker:

The Easter Bunny began with the pagan festival of the springtime Goddess Eostre, when it was said that the Goddess's totem, the Moon-hare, would lay eggs for good children to eat1. . . . Eostre's hare was the shape that Celts imaged on the surface of the full moon, derived from old Indo-European sources. In Sanskrit, the moon was cacin, "that which is marked with the Hare." 2 Queen Boadiccea's banners displayed the Moon-hare as a sacred sign. Both hares and cats were designated the familiars of witches in Scotland, where the word malkinmawkin was applied to both.3 (The Woman's Dictionary of Symbols & Sacred Objects, 377) or

Easter Bunny legends apparently began in Germany, in the 1500s, and by the 1880s the Germans had begun promoting the ritual of chocolate bunnies (Kevin Shortsleeve), so it is no surprise to me that my German grandmother would have encouraged her family egg-making traditions. (My grandfather's so-called "traditions," however, seem to have been only inspired by his wife's traditions; a bit of a parody of them--I believe.)

While I mostly grew up with a secular Easter--religion had nothing to do with it--it was a lovely game of magic and fun. This does not at all demean the importance of my family's rituals. Imaginary games are important. Karl Sven Rosengren and Carl N. Johnson observe, "More generally, children's capacity to pretend has been linked to a wide range of social and cognitive skills, including language development (Ervin-Tripp, 1991), social competence (Singer & Singer, 1990), memory development (Newman, 1990), exploration and mastery of emotional themes (Bretherton, 1989), and logical reasoning (Dias & Harris, 1990) (Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific, and Religious Thinking in Children, 247).

So, I say, in the important spirit of imagination:

Happy Easter everyone!

TRANSCRIPT

ELMER: Rabbit tracks! [pointing spear at tracks]

ELMER: [jabbing spear into rabbit hole, singing] Kill the wabitt; kill the wabbit!

BUGGS: Kill the rabbit?!

----------------------------
1 de Lys, Claudia. The Giant Book of Superstitions. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1979: 117.
2 Baring-Gould, Sabine. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. New York: University Books, 1967: 204.
3 Potter, Stephen, and Laurens Sargent. Pedigree. New York: Taplinger, 1974: 71.

Medievalism, Dwarwinism, and Disabilitizing

2011-04-17T11:20:00.003-04:00

Medievalism

Anatomical Man, Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry.

The mysteries of the human body have generated some very creative thinking, and there is a reason why the medical arts were originally considered to be a part of the "arts" rather than "sciences" (as these medieval illustrations emphasize). In the Middle Ages, medicine was dominated by religious and artistic thinking. The Middle Ages were not "dark" ages ("dark" suggests that there was no creative or ingenuitive thinking), nor were they a time of purely fantasy-world living. However, they were a time of unscientific, anti-philosophical, and thus often unreasonable thinking--from our contemporary day perspective. For example, most contemporary practices of medieval medicine hold very little scientific support. Medieval medical practices took on a very different philosophical, scientific, and religious approach. Observes Nancy G. Siraisi, "The criticisms of medical practitioners that were frequently voiced usually sprang less from dissatisfaction with medicine's limited effectiveness than from religious tradition, with its powerful themes linking healing with religious charity and miraculous intervention, and its assertion of the priority of the healing of the soul over the healing of the body" (Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice 43).

Perspective is everything.

13th century illustration of viens.

We think that we are enlightened, and certainly we are more enlightened than folks of medieval Europe--just as a 13-year-old is more enlightened than a 5-year-old; however, like a 13-year-old, we (as a society) often seem unable to recognize the limitations of our intellectual collective growth. Those who study medievalism, spend a great deal of energy pointing out the aspects of contemporary thought (in literature, in the arts, in politics, in popular culture, and so forth) that are yet more "medieval" than they are "contemporary" in nature. Indeed, one need only make a quick observation (much less a deeper analysis) of medievalism in video games to know that the desire to move backwards in the time-space continuum is strong. Some thinkers call this re-invention of the Middle Ages, which often has a sci-fi twist (such as the blending of space aliens and elves in World of Warcraft) to be a type of neomedievalism. It's all a lot of fun!

However, such fantasies of the medieval world are not...well, realistic. Indeed, it appears worthwhile to take a closer look at the treatment of, for example, the "disabled" in the Middle Ages. (I write "disabled" in quotes because, as I will argue in another blog post, disability is a matter of perspective, too.) For example, promising scholar observes, "The fact that deaf-mutes are mentioned in legal records (and I'm certain they're mentioned elsewhere, of course!) doesn't mean that they're irrelevant to historians. One would think that these legal references would be seen in a positive light: they certainly demonstrate that medieval understandings of deafness (and disability in general) may very well have been quite sensible and practical in taking real-life considerations into account instead of painting the deaf (or disabled) with a single brush" (Medieval Cripples, Crazies and Imbeciles...and a Service Dog? "Disabled Histories: Part I").1

Darwinism
The contemporary practice "of painting the deaf (or disabled) with a single brush" has not been sufficiently dis-mantled (disabled). Indeed, mis-guided applications of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution seem to have only strengthened this abusive practice. The concepts of "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" have been misapplied to mean more of a medievalist "might makes right" argument than the more scientific and reasonable (and actual) argument that--over a period of many years--certain characteristics might be deemed more desirable or necessary to survival than others. For example, the qualities of "natural selection" of a mate can be quite varied and are far from being "correct" or even appropriate to survival. Furthermore, the qualities of "survival of the fittest" do not justify inhumane practices, much less the broad-sweeping assumption that only a small percentage of the human population is disabled--that's a myth. The reality is that only a small percentage of the various types of both physical and mental disabilities in only a small percentage of the human population have been identified.

One unidentified, and seemingly (so far) unexplicable disability--a mental one--involves the inability to rationally perceive Evolution Theory.2 As, amazingly, a relatively recent article illustrates ("Scopes Weeps: Evolution Still Struggling in Public Schools"), reality seems to be much more difficult to accept than fantasy! Fantasy is a wonderful (and even sometimes healthy) escape--it illustrates the wonderful creative thinking of which human beings are capable. But to insist that we live in a fantasy world all the time--to call (as I once saw being done in a college level biology class) Evolution little more than an "atheist belief" that is on equal par with Creationism is, well INSANE. No wonder, then, that a passionate movement to celebrate Charles Darwin's birthday ("Tell Congress to Approve the Darwin Day Resolution!") is on the rise.

And no wonder we have...

Minchin-ism

"Storm" by Tim Minchin--as seen on Pharyngula (scienceblogs)

---------------------------------

1 For more information about medieval disability studies, consider Disability in the Middle Ages (Ed. Joshua R. Eyler) or Disability in the Middle Ages: Impairment at the Intersection of Historical Inquiry and Disability Studies (Irina Metzler).

2 Please see my previous blog entry, "Theory vs. Belief vs. Opinion" (Hiccuping Thoughts).

---------------------------------------

THEORY vs. BELIEF vs. OPINION

2011-04-10T11:10:00.002-04:00

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

I am so tired of people saying to me, about Evolution, "It's just a theory," as if being "just" a theory suggests that it is little more than an opinion or a belief. These are different words, with different meanings--or at least they once held very different meanings. I blame a general mis-use (or lack of use) of a quality dictionary (or of any dictionary whatsoever).

So, let's review some terms. Belief is an opinion or conviction about something, a confidence that something is true (regardless of evidence or lack thereof). Opinion is a belief or judgment made with limited or insufficient evidence, a personal perspective. It is possible to have a very strong opinion--one that is passionately supported. It is also possible to have a very reasonable opinon--one that is supported by logic and a limited number of facts. Theory has a much broader set of meanings, ranging from conjecture and speculation to a coherent, logical group of principals based upon facts. There lies the problem: theory means everything from a belief to an opinion to a factually supported analysis. In the science world, theory is a technical term used for verified or established explanations for phenomena, based upon facts and logic. Thus the English language seems to have evolved with the merging of meanings: theory = opinion = belief. This apparent merging only proves to me that not all evolution is either positive or constructive.

From "Evident Creation: The Evolution Myth"

What is worse: there is an irrational campaign that works upon the logical fallacy that Darwin's SCIENTIFIC Theory of Evolution is little more than some sort of belief system. This suggests to me that there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the differences between science and religion. I'm sorry, but, no: physics is not a religion. There is a real danger here. Suppose, for example, that your doctor believes that all men should have estrogen pumped into them to help reduce violent, aggressive tendencies? Where are the fact-based studies to support this "theory"? For a more realistic (historically accurate) example, suppose that your doctor believes the reason your menstruation has either stopped or become irregular is because you haven't had enough sex or are unmarried (see "Women and Medicine in the Middle Ages & Renaissance")? Amusing in opinion but certainly not in theory!

What's my point? Simply this:

There is nothing rational

about the concept of believing

in Evolutionary Theory.
(No one is asking you to believe reality.)

Tim Minchin

Brownies

2011-04-03T21:02:00.028-04:00

Crispy on the outside, moist and rich on the inside. (I like to use Olivio margarine to grease the pan, and Ghirardelli 70% cocoa chocolate for the dark chocolate.)

1/2 cup unsalted butter

4 oz. unsweetened chocolate squares (4 squares)

4 eggs

2 cups sugar

1 Tbsp. of flavoring
(such as vanilla, Irish Creme or Kahlua)

1 cup flour
1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 cup dark chocolate, chopped
(70% cocoa is great)

Melt butter and unsweetened chocolate together.
Beat eggs together until foamy.
Add salt, sugar, and flavoring; mix well.
Mix in flour; mix well; let sit for about 10 minutes (until it gets bubbly).
Stir in melted butter and chocolate; mix well.
Add chopped dark chocolate.
Pour into well greased 13 x 9" glass pan.
Bake: 350° F for 25-35 minutes.

Goya: Deafness, Madness, and More

2011-03-27T13:17:00.004-04:00

The sleep of reason produces monsters

There have been a few films and television shows made about Goya. One such film is Goya--oder Der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (1971, Dir. Konrad Wolf). Another is Goya in Bordeaux (1999, Dir. Carolos Saura). Most recently made seems to have been Goya's Ghosts (2006, Dir. Milos Forman and staring Natalie Portman, Javier Bardem, and Stellan Skarsgård).

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) is regarded as the most important Spanish artist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over the course of his long career, Goya moved from jolly and lighthearted to deeply pessimistic and searching in his paintings, drawings, etchings, and frescoes." Goya became extremely ill at one point in his adult life, and this illness caused him to become completely deaf (some say the illness and resulting deafness have to do with his licking his brushes, which were coated with lead-filled paint).

Recently, I was on the Videophone with Iosif Schneiderman, who wants to produce the third of his plays (one which was done with Willy Conley) about the deaf painter Francisco Goya. It is the deafness (and madness) that I believe attracted Schneiderman and Conley to this painter's life. I have begun to develop my own fascination--partly because of the play I saw, done by Scheiderman and Conley, a couple of years ago.

The play featured mime and gesture, very little (if any) sign language of any kind (and certainly no spoken language). There were sounds--music, thunder, even vibrations generated under the audience seats, and there were lighted special effects as well. Then there were the masks...all designed by Schneiderman. I would LOVE to produce a play of this kind with him!

* * *

Here's my experience of the 2nd play, GOYA en la Quinta del Sordo (in the House of the Deaf Man) previously done by Iosif Schneiderman and Willy Conley (with acting students of Gallaudet University). Originally published in another (dead) blog as "In the House of Some Deaf (Mad) Men" by Deaf Directions (by me); reprinted here with permission.

Long ago, in the early days of silent film, when it didn't matter if an actor was deaf and/or mute, the Russian filmmaker Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein explored creating films that could "speak" to everyone, rising above language barriers because that film, theoretically, would have a "universal language". Eisenstein was not the first to dream about a universal language, nor was he the last.

Move back a couple centuries and consider, for example, the "dream" etchings by the Spanish artist, Francisco de Goya (1746-1828). Goya was a highly successful painter who, in his mid-40s, suffered the sudden loss of his hearing (as a direct result of lead poisoning from the paints he used). Goya spent the second half of his life creating drawings of various types that critiqued Spanish society "in images and characters existing in all their life-affirming contradictions, like the characters in a Shakespeare play, or in the novels of Balzac" (Paul Stuart). In one series of etchings, the Los Caprichos, this brilliant artist tried to create a "universal language" that "would encourage men and women to reflect on the world and their roles and actions within it."

Facebook Photo

Now come forward in time again to NOW, and to the inspirations of two Deaf playwrights, one Russian and the other American, and the resulting play that is perhaps not of universal language, but--as a performance of gestures (visual, audio, even tactile)--this is certainly a play of universal communication. Co-authors Willy Conley and Iosif Schneiderman, explored an adaptation, or even a translation, of Goya's works into the play, Goya en la Quinta del Sordo (in the house of the deafman).

I saw this play, TWICE, and I can't wait to tell you more about it. So the focus of the next several blogs (over the next few days or weeks or whenever-I-find-the-time-to-write) will be a "show and tell" of these two performances, AND of the roughly one hour video interview Conley and Schneiderman allowed me to tape (with the interpretation help of Sarah Blattberg). For now, I'll just end this blog entry with this: Goya: en la Quinta del Sordo (in the house of the deaf man) is currently under consideration for the national festival of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival!

Facebook Photo

To see more information about this production, visit Gallaudet University's Theatre Arts page.

PART TWO: "The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance."

2011-03-21T01:03:00.004-04:00

Xtranormal: "One Professor's Fantasy"

"Yo, Dr. Smith! Do you have a second?"
"Of course!"

Recently, I received a letter from the Provost of Kent State University (where I work), informing me that he has approved my application for Faculty Professional Improvement Leave (Fall 2011). What does that mean? Well, it is true that the old term that used to be used for this sort of thing was sabbatical, one meaning for which is "a period of rest" (Dictionary.com) -- which rather sounds like I just got approval to party for an entire semester, doesn't it? Wroooong! Still, many of my students seem to think that it is some sort of vacation or "free time" off for "good behavior" (a kind of get-out-of-jail card).

I think I have a pretty good idea about the attitudes of my students. There are those who are "non-tradition" (older and/or working and/or parenting children) who are in college to gain better employment. There are those who are currently enrolled because they don't know what else to do and can't find a job. There are those who are in college because their parents said that they must go. There are the best of students and the worst of students. However, it is the worst of students (as well as the worst of teachers and professors) that usually stand out and are best remembered.

"Yo, Dr. Smith! Do you have a second?"
"Umm, right now?"

MOST of my students are NOT like this! However, I can honestly say that, while I've never had a single student pull all of these manipulative stunts (particularly not all at once), I have had students pull variations of each. (I also have to say that I don't talk to students in this manner; I'm a professional.) Such experiences of professor-student struggle are amusing, at best; however, the apparent increase in such incidents seems to be indicative of the nature of the current college level population, particularly those within the population (the majority) who are of the typical (18-25 years of) age.

Who is to blame for such negative attitudes among students? One "study says college isn't for everyone" -- pointing out that the increase and/or maintenance of current student populations at universities and colleges is more indicative of the need for more money (as federal and private support has drastically decreased over the last several decades) than of a true, internal drive of individuals desiring higher education. Another study argues that, today, there is "limited learning in college," and another suggests that the problem is caused by "a lack of rigor" (NPR). Still another points out that the most important "things" aren't taught in school, at any level ("The 10 Most Important Things They Didn't Teach You in School").

Regardless of the cause, I believe it is this negative attitude, a fundamental lack of respect for scholarship in general, that feeds the notion that a sabbatical is equivalent to play time.

Another definition of sabbatical is more appropriate, and it perhaps why Kent State University has changed the title altogether to include the words "professional improvement." This secondary definition involves a break from teaching, but not a break from work; it involves training, research and other forms of self-improvement relevant to the job of instructing within the realm of higher education. Indeed, in the approval letter, I am instructed to generate a "Summary Report of the activities undertaken during the leave," as well as to provide "an up-to-date copy of [my] curriculum vita," which implies that "the short and long term outcomes of the leave that [I] am about to begin" will be closely evaluated. Now, some might say that this kind of leave is already granted annually, during the summer months; however, I am not paid for working in the summer--by contract, my salary is a 9 month salary. Still, I do work in the summers: in addition to teaching extra classes (to help build up my salary), I also use the time to do research (a leave without pay) in order to generate the scholastic conference presentations and publications expected of me.

"Yo, Dr. Smith! Do you have a second?"
"That depends...."
Let me tell you all the things I'm going to be doing between May 2011 and January 2012:
WORK: NOT A PART OF THE SABBATICAL

Teach four online classes (3 College Writing II, 1 Colloquium in Women's Studies).
Edit a film, tentatively entitled Listening to You, Listening to Me, Listening to Everyone: A Community Theatre Deaf/Hearing Experience, which is about the 2009 production of Willy Conley's play For Every Man, Woman and Child--a modern morality play inspired by EVERYMAN (published in the anthology of his plays, Vignettes of the Deaf Character and Other Plays).
Finish a couple of articles I started writing last summer.

WORK: A PART OF THE SABBATICAL

Increase my American Sign Language skills. I will take the SCPI (Sign Communication Proficiency Interview) at the end of this semester's work. There are eleven levels of skills to this test: No Functional Skills, Novice, Novice Plus, Survival, Survival Plus, Intermediate, Intermediate Plus, Advanced, Advanced Plus, Superior, and Superior Plus. Informally, I have been told that my skills are currently in the Intermediate to Advanced range. My goal is to test for a score of Advanced Plus or Superior.
Work on my book, tentatively titled, Signs of Motion: The Kinetics of Meaning in Deaf/ASL Poetics, Silent Film, and Medieval Texts. I have a goal of completing three chapters and the introduction.

"Yo, Dr. Smith! Do you have a second?"
"Right now, I don't even have a millisecond!"

Now, it is true that I will be paid extra for teaching those summer courses--at a reduced rate from the regular year's pay. It is also true that the other work (the film project and the articles) will eventually, hopefully, help me acquire promotion and/or merit pay. (And, too, the film project is just downright fun.) However, I can tell you right now that I will be very, very busy finishing all of the above: I've listed a lot of work to be done 8 months! And the work for the sabbatical is expected of me, for my job, especially the book.

So, yes, I'm looking forward to resting from teaching (during 4 of those 8 months), but I'm also looking forward to working to accomplishing these projects.

Any questions?

"Yo, Dr. Smith! Do you have a second?"
"When I return, I will have all the time that you need."

"The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance."

2011-03-13T12:45:00.012-04:00

I got a little note from my fortune cookie this week. It wasn't a fortune; it was a declaration: "The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance." Those who would exploit and take away from others depend upon that fact. Those who teach: well, I believe that they fight that exploitation every day. Knowledge is power. Learning is power. Some folks do not want many to have that power.

My life is a life of teaching, but it is not the same as the life of teachers. Teachers have a different type of employment (not easier, not harder--not the same). The pay for teachers is not always less than the pay for professors; however, it usually is, and this makes sense to me: the degree requirements for becoming a teacher are less than the degree requirements for becoming a professor. Regardless, good teachers are not respected nearly enough.

As a professor, I am not really a teacher: I do not have the same discipline challenges that high school, middle school, and elementary school teachers have. I may have discipline challenges, but they are different. Teachers work with children (of various mental capacities) and their parents. Professors work with adults (of various ages and mental capacities). The difference, however, in terms of outcome is the same: intellectual growth (tied to emotional growth and other forms of growth).

So, when I read an article such as Michael Winerip's "For Detroit Schools, Hope for the Hopeless" in The New York Times, I have to wonder at what we have taught people to understand about the nature of teaching. Mr. Bobb is an example of someone who clearly needs to go back to college, if not to high school. Having converted Detroit's public school system to a charter school system, in order to save money, Mr. Bobb has found that he "has set off a vicious cycle undermining even good schools. The more schools he closes to save money, the more parents grow discouraged and pull their children out. The fewer children, the less the state aid, so Mr. Bobb closes more schools." Mr. Bobb, if you were in my class, I would fail you for poor logical thinking and planning.

However, I am actually afraid of Mr. Bobb. Mr. Bobb was hired by the governor of Michigan at an annual salary of $425,000.00 to reduce the Detroit School district's $200,000.00 deficit. Mr. Bobb's solution was to turn public schools into private charter schools, closing many schools and firing many teachers. Did his solution work? No. That deficit has now gone up to $327,000.00. What if the governor of not-quite-yet-so-poverty-stricken Ohio decides to hire Mr. Bobb, or someone like him, to run both school districts and universities--turning them all into private institutions?

This is the least of my worries.

I have a lot of worries. I worry about the struggles in North Africa--and when will Gadhafi be driven out of power? I worry about Japan and New Zealand and Haiti--to name just a few of the areas suffering under major natural disasters. I worry when elected officials (no matter how minor) say that disabled and mentally ill individuals should be shipped off to Siberia because they are "defective" (Matthew Descmond). I worry that equal rights between men and women in the workforce (all over the world) has become a muted and ignored issue, so muted that people like Daniel Craig have to perform gimmicks to gain attention for the farce of unequal pay that still exists today.

I worry about senators, and especially the House Speaker, spending so much time and energy to ban gay marriage when there are so many, many REAL issues out there to be solved. Why hold a "war" on people for being who and what they are; why deny anyone such basic civil rights? And why did that crazy congressman in Georgia want to introduce a bill that would make getting an abortion "human prenatal murder" and to even prosecute women who suffer miscarriages (see "Rep. Bobby Franklin Might Hate Women More than He Hates Gays")?

Above all, however, I worry about the way that the rich--and those bought in order to work for the rich--are picking upon the not-rich (the middle class and the impoverished). There is battle between the elite rich (be they in the United States, Libya, or elsewhere) exploit the over-worked poor. They do not want a Middle Class--that level of income and affluence is just too hard for them to control--or so they think. (See, for a humorous twist on one aspect of this issue, The Daily Show's skit, "Crisis in Dairyland--For Richer and Poorer--Teachers and Wall Street.") I thank one of my colleague's for posting a link on Facebook to an article that reminds us of how bad things were 100 years ago, and how bad they still are today. Almost 100 years ago (March 25, 1911), the Triangle Waist Company, caught fire and nearly 150 workers (most of whom were Jewish and Italian immigrant girls ranging in age from their teens to their early twenties) died. According to Peter Dreier and Donald Cohen, "...the deaths clearly demonstrated that companies like Triangle, if left to their own devices, would not concern themselves with their workers' safety," and that, today, "...we still hear much of the same rhetoric whenever reformers seek to use government to businesses to act more responsibly and protect consumers, workers, and the environment" ("The Triangle Fire of 1911, And the Lessons for Wisconsin and the Nation").

Consider this, in the United States, legislation is currently struggling (plotting, planning, playing) with the below facts:

THIS IS WHAT CLASS WAR LOOKS LIKE

"The only good is knowledge,

and the only evil is ignorance."

Vegetarian Chili

2011-03-06T09:29:00.002-05:00

-- 2 TBS. olive oil
-- 2 Spanish onions, chopped
-- 1 green bell pepper, chopped
-- 1 jalapeño pepper, chopped
-- 1 package of extra firm tofu, finely chopped
-- 6 large fresh tomatoes, chopped (Why not canned tomatoes?)
-- 1 can black beans
-- 1 can kidney beans
-- 1 can pinto beans
-- 1 6oz. can tomato paste
-- 2 TBS. garlic powder
-- 1 Tsp. cumin
-- 1 Tsp. paprika
-- 1 Tsp. chili powder
-- 1 cup water
-- 1/4 cup red wine

Heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onions, green pepper, jalapeño pepper, and tofu. Cook until the onions and peppers are tender. Add everything else. Bring to soft boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Eat with shredded cheese and corn muffins.

What He Said, What She Sang

2011-02-27T08:28:00.004-05:00

Realizing that last week's post was not very happy, I thought I might begin with this pleasant video....

This video was flagged. YouTube: "This content may contain material flagged by YouTube's user community that may be inappropriate for some users." Why? What is inappropriate about this? There isn't any violence or sex of any kind! I suspect some un-Christian-like Christian flagged this, but I suppose another sort of narrow-minded, intolerant bigot might have flagged it. It must have been flagged because it promotes "apple butter on a biscuit."

Sometimes, it is hard to remember that the small-minded, thoughtless, rude, and cruel people of this world do not really matter in the long-term of life. It is hard to remember that they don't matter in the long-term of life because, in the current short-term of my life--right now--they are threatening my way of life: no pension, reduced pay, curbed freedom of speech (e.g., no tenure), no right to choice (e.g., an under-developed fetus is more important than a woman's life). It's all a bunch of ballyhoo, based upon mis-guided thoughts thriving upon mis-information. (For example, see "The Wisconsin Lie Exposed--Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing to Public Employee Pensions" for an explanation of how the Tea Partying politicians are thriving upon out-right lying.) It is at times like these that I feel closed-in, and so low that I think that there is no hope. I'm being unrealistic, of course. Life isn't THAT desperate!

I haven't hit bottom--just a valley in the bumpy terrain of life--that's my happy thought for the day. It's time to get angry, yes, but it is also time to get foolish.

Music to Drown By

2011-02-21T22:08:00.013-05:00

Sometimes bad-tasting tea is just bad tea.

I just couldn't post a blog yesterday: I got lost watching Titanic on the television while thinking about other, more metaphorical, sinking ships. There's a great line in this movie: "Music to drown by. Now I know I'm in first class." I could relate: the first class corporations of our ship--not the Titanic, but the United States of America-- are responsible for this crash into the iceberg of economic catastrophe, and I fear that we are splitting in half, about to sink. I live in Ohio, but I'm from Wisconsin, and my heart is breaking in two over the woes in both states: two governors, two mid-western states, same state of mind: both sinking into a deep abyss of political and economic insanity.

Mopping Up Bad Tea

The Tea Party is turning our economic crisis into a witch-hunt: who is to blame for our economic woes? who gets paid too much right now (whatever that means)? who should be fired? One editorial states, "What union leaders aren't stating in announcements on their respective websites is the fact that employee lay off are quite possibly the only other option to stem unsustainable spending" (Tara Dodrill, "Is Senate Bill 5 Bad for Ohio?"). What Tea Party members aren't stating is the fact that employee lay-off is already happening, and has been happening for the past several years, in both the private and public work sectors--or haven't they been watching real news? Oh yeah, I forgot: they only watch Fox Faux News.

Flying around Facebook has been the following little ditty:

This is great... Read this if you appreciate or even hate teachers.

Are you sick of high paid teachers? Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.
That’s right. Let’s give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan — that equals 6 1/2 hours).
Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.
Now how many do they teach in day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.
LET’S SEE…. That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 peryear. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).
What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children
X 180 days = $280,800 per year.
Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here! There sure is!
The average teacher’s salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student–a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)

--Anonymous (I've seen different authors listed with different Facebook posts.)

Most folks have seen what's been going on in Wisconsin in the national news. I do not agree that Wisconsin's crisis is comparable to that of Egypt's. However, it is clear that the agenda of Wisconsin's governor is suspiciously good-ol'-boy-ish, as we all know who and what is funding his current agenda. Furthermore, according to one article, ‎"In a Sunday morning interview from Madison with Fox News, Walker said he did not believe union leaders were really interested in giving up their benefits and cities, school districts and counties will need weakened unions to cut spending for years to come. Walker said he would not compromise and predicted Wisconsin would pave the way for other states to follow suit, much like it did with welfare reform and school vouchers in the 1990s" ("Hundreds Protest Wisconsin Plan to Cut Worker Rights"). I also do not quite see a direct correlation between the Hitler's 1933 act to abolish unions in Germany and the Ohio and Wisconsin governors' movements to abolish unions today (see, for example, newjunkiepost's "May 1933: Hitler Abolishes Unions").

However, it is clear that public servants--with the exception of Republican (including tea-partying) politicos--are not appreciated (see, for example, "Governor Kasich on Labor Issues"). Nor is this lack of appreciation for the worker--public or private--unique to Ohio and Wisconsin. According to NPR, "At a news conference at the Capitol a couple of days later, Boehner was asked whether the spending reductions Republicans were seeking might end up putting even more people out of work. He acknowledged this was indeed possible" ("Threat of Shutdown Looms Large Over Budget Debate").

As one opinion article in Wisconsin stated, "I don't believe that I am overstating the facts when I say our political leaders are declaring war on working families" ("Letters: Mention of Wisconsin National Guard Doesn't Bode Well for Workers"). Northeastern Ohioans know the meaning of entanglements with the National Guard all too well.


Mary Ann Vecchio (14 years old), kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller, who was just shot dead by the Ohio National Guard. (Photo by John Filo) For more information, see: "The May 4 Shootings at Kent State University: The Search for Historical Accuracy" (by Jerry M. Lewis and Thomas R. Hensley)

So, if you feel that the people who teach and care for your children, and the people who prepare you for adult life (both inside and outside the workforce), and the people who protect you from crimes, and the people who save your homes and your lives from fires and other disasters, and the many other people who have just as much right to employment as you do (and who agree that you deserve employment and even fight for you when you lack it), and if you don't understand why women and members of the LGBTQ community are angry (or perhaps you just don't care), then go right ahead and think that way. But if you can't understand why your children do not understand even the most basic of knowledge and are functionally illiterate, and if you can't understand that the reason teachers and professors have the protection of tenure has to do with the awful witch-hunts of the 1950s, including the Scopes Trial, and if you can't understand why you aren't prepared for adult life and career, and if you can't understand why the crime rate in your area has gone up, and you can't understand why your home has burned to the ground, and you can't understand why life has become WORSE, not better, please don't come crying to me because I --as a public employee who teaches at a university and supports the rights of everyone (regardless of race, religion, gender, sexuality, or abilities) -- I will no longer be there for you.

1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+...=∞

2011-02-13T20:53:00.001-05:00

What's that song? That stupid song; it's by Three Dog Night. It starts off this way:

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do
Two can be as bad as one
It's the loneliest number since the number one

I remember listening to the album; it belonged to my brother. I remember laying on the floor of my older brother's bedroom, studying the lyrics in the album cover. I was a kid in the early '70s (10 or 11 years old): my older brother had run away from home again (not the first time, not the last time), and my father had announced that we would be moving again (he was always striving for higher paying white-collar jobs, so we moved a lot). Nixon was in trouble, which meant that the country was in trouble. My family was in trouble, which meant that I was in trouble. No one was happy, it seemed. It was a sad time. And the song's melancholy tune spoke to me.

Ironically, I wasn't alone--one wasn't the loneliest number--many of us were lonely, just not lonely together. Music seems to have been more societal back then, but not as community based as it was before the heyday of electronics. Once upon a time, folks got together and sang, and that was their only choice for music--live music, derived from and thriving within the community. By the 1970s, vinyl records and 8-tracks were in mass production, so that one could sit alone in one's room and listen to songs, songs, and more songs for hours and hours. This ritual seems to have anticipated the MP3 players that stream music into the ear-buds nestled in the two ears of one person today, who may be sitting in a room full of people and yet is listening to that music alone, as one.

As one blogger once noted:

Music history tends to completely overlook the dominance of Three Dog Night from 1969 to 1974, both on the charts and with radio listeners. Then again, maybe they don’t need a critical rethink or a re-mastered reprise, because everything you need to know is in the songs when you run across them. Even though I can barely withstand “Joy to the World” due to endless repetition, it’s still the best description of how people react to their old hits: joy. ("February 1972--Three Dog Night--Never Been to Spain")

So very true...

It's a Green Bay Kind of Day!

2011-02-06T22:23:00.001-05:00

While I am not really into football, particularly pro-football, I have always been an avid supporter of the Green Bay Packers. Why? Well, I'm mostly from Wisconsin, for one thing, and for another: it is a publicly owned team, which I think is rather cool. Even though, according to my husband, they made a lot of foolish mistakes and were rather lucky to have won despite these mistakes, I am happy that they won the Super Bowl. GO PACKERS!

PACKERS WAVE!!:„ø¤º°¨ ¨°º ¤KEEP THE WAVE GOING¸„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤øºHERE WE GO PACKERS! ¤¤º°¨¨°º¤øº¤ø„¸ ¸ø¤º°¨„ø¤º °¨¨ °HERE WE GO! „ø¤º°¨¨°º¤HERE WE GO PACKERS!!!¸„ø ¤º °¨¨°º ¤øºHERE WE GO!!¤¤º°¨¨°¤øº¤ø „¸¸ø¤º°¨GO PACKERS!!!:„ø¤º°¨¨°º¤KEEP THE WAVE GOING¸ „ø¤º°¨ ¨°º¤øº...."SUPERBOWL XLV" !!! └╥┘GO└╥┘GREEN BAY └╥┘PACKERS └╥┘ "!!

Going the Distance with Distance Education

2011-01-30T11:44:00.002-05:00

I teach online courses. All of my college courses this year have been online, so I have rarely felt a need to visit my dusty office, much less come to campus. I refuse to meet students who are in my online classes anywhere but online (because isn't that part of the point of these classes?) Yes, I have become a cyberghost professor.

This does not mean, however, that I have become a negligent professor--I am very much present online--and what's more, I see a lot going on out here in cyberspace. I also see a large educational void developing.

There is this myth about online courses that seems to have developed rapidly: online courses are supposed to be easier than in-class courses; online courses are not as time-consuming as in-class courses; online courses do not require as many hours' work as in-class courses. I don't wish to acknowledge from where these myths might be developing, but I do wish to speak to the fact that this is indeed a myth in my own classes.

In place of classroom lectures and discussion, my students are required to read written lessons and supplemental materials, view video lessons and supplemental materials, and discuss everything (lessons and assignments) in an online forum. Some students have complained that they are putting "way too many hours" into my class. One student, recently, informed me that a 3 credit class should require only 6 hours of work each week. That sounds to me like advice given for an in-class course, advice that has been twisted: 6 hours of HOMEwork in addition to the 2.5 hours spent (at my school) in the classroom: a total of 8.5 hours each week. Regardless, this is not a written rule. Some students are naturally going to work more quickly or more slowly than this guideline. Time is not the issue. Content is the issue.

So I have to wonder: if I put all the requirements and information for an in-class course into an online course and students are complaining that it is more work, what are they thinking?I have to wonder even more when a student complains about the technological challenge: there's no excuse for not having access to a computer for an online class, for example. Furthermore, why would a student who has no clue how to use a computer take an online class in the first place?

I am happy when the first two weeks of the semester are over, when the students who are scandalized by the work required and/or the technological ability needed have all either dropped or conformed. That's when I can really get down to the business at hand--to the business of teaching.

I Don't Know What to Write, So....

2011-01-23T23:55:00.001-05:00

I have this ritual that I'm trying to maintain: writing one entry each Sunday for this blog. The trouble is, sometimes I just don't know what to write. Well, that's not quite true. Most of the time, I know exactly what I want to write, and I am even uber-prepared for those rare times when I am feeling uninspired (drafts of posts to complete later). But today, none of those drafts of pre-conceived notions appeal to me.

And so I sit

at this computer,

WAITING

for inspiration to come.

So far, aside from the idea of doing a little stream-of-consciousness babbling, this blog still seems a bit uninspired.

But wait! There's more!

I posted a little poem on my Facebook entry today:

It's cold outside, but the sun is bright.
The coffee pot has died, and this poem ain't right.

This is a Dylanesque (as in Bob Dylan) poem--as some of my Facebook "friends" seemed to note. Writing and posting it made me feel better about the death of our coffee pot. It isn't great poetry; know that. So the comment about how I shouldn't quit my day job was, I felt, kinda' inappropriate--not inappropriate in a bad way. I just felt misunderstood (like an inarticulate teenager feels when she's not really trying that hard to state anything profound, and yet still hopes it comes off that way, just the same).

Must poetry be great in order to make one happy?
What's wrong with writing something a little crappy?
I believe I will aspire to be a bad poet.
I hope that I don't blow it.
Sometimes a bad day deserves bad poetry.
What's the crime in that?

My Linux Ate Your Apple: Now it's Sick

2011-01-16T21:46:00.000-05:00

Recently, I set out to buy a computer. I have particular desires for this computer: power, the ability to edit high quality video, and happiness. I am familiar with all three of the more commonly known operating systems, so this decision (I knew) would not come lightly.

It has been fairly well established that Apple operating systems are superior to Windows operating systems. If you don't believe me, take a look at Chris Pirillo's "50 Reasons to Switch from Microsoft Windows to Apple's Mac OS X" as just one excellent summation of this argument.

The fact is, however, that Linux still struggles to compete with both Windows and Apple. The average buyer (particularly the average geek) seems to be lazy (for lack of a better word), wanting something familiar (even if it is actually uncanny in a creepy, nagging sort of way). Users of MS Windows are addicted, willing to suffer the side-effects of numerous viruses and other attacks upon their hard-drives, willing to suffer the limitations to creative computing imposed by weak imitations of Apple's user-friendliness.
The real debate should be, now, between Apple and Linux.

One of the central arguments that Linux geeks put forward is the case for free software, as put out by the Free Software Foundation; however, that argument is not universally supported by all Linux users. In fact, many Linux users are promoters of Open Source, as explained by the Open Source Initiative. Having checked the most recent price of Final Cut Pro, I was ready to try something new, especially if it was going to be cheaper! However, at last September's Ohio Linux Festival, I found myself both intrigued: such a friendly atmosphere, such intelligent and confident people, such logic, what wonder, hallelujah!

I also knew that Linux is rapidly replacing Apple editing software in the film industry (see, for example, "Disney, Dreamworks, and ILM Experts Reveal Linux Secrets this Month in LA"). Also, politically, I hate this copyright obsession, which has forgotten the original purpose of ownership laws and instead exploits such laws to limit accessibility to only those with the most dollars. (For a lovely explanation of how corporate media industry has abused copyright protection, see "A Fair(y) Use Tale"--an animated dare made to Disney.)

Ultimately, however, I was disappointed. I saw a demonstration of KDE video editing, which certainly seemed better than Microsoft's film editor, and clearly less complicated than the latest, disastrous, version of iMovie. However, it was still a bit glitchy and did not have the power of even the older, usable version of iMovie (iMovie 6), much less the numerous and complex capabilities of Final Cut Pro. And, after much internal struggle, I bought an Apple and the latest version of Final Cut Pro. It will probably be my last Apple computer.

Five years from now, however, I'm sure that I will be completely switching over to Linux. Then again, maybe I'll go with something else that is out there on the horizon, such as BSD? Life is a mystery.

The FreeBSD Project

What Schools Should be Teaching You

2011-01-02T11:49:00.003-05:00

Cracked.com published an article back in June, 2010 on "The 10 Most Important Things They Didn't Teach You in School"

This is all very nice, but makes me think the question: why must these things be taught in school? Why are schools held responsible for life lessons?

I remember once reading an edition of Henry J. Perkinson's book The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, which (if I remember correctly) argued that the American society has placed too much responsibility upon the public education system--so much so that the true purpose of public education (the development of skills in reading, writing, mathematics, history, etc.) has become lost.

Certainly schools should be teaching us a lot, but teaching us life lessons? No. I think such lessons should come from community and family.

The Importance of Ritual Cleansing

2011-01-02T11:44:00.003-05:00

If I stay honest and do not back-date my blogs, you might notice that I haven't written on here for several months--over half-a-year, actually. I do know that at least two people were reading this blog, and one of these two readers even approached me about why I stopped. There were a lot of little reasons, most of which added to the main reason: I was becoming too stressed. However, I do not see the point in sharing all my personal and professional "dirt" with the general public; I've successfully tamped down the stress by eliminating certain contributing factors. Where have I been? I have been at "home" within myself, "cleaning house" because I was long over-due for a ritual personal and professional cleansing.

I'm not a religious person. In fact, I'm a secular humanist/environmentalist; however, most institutionalized religions practice something that can be quite powerful--so powerful, that even industrial and education institutions have adapted it. In other words, I (once again) realized the importance of maintaining ritual, a way of maintaining the illusion of control over one's life. Rituals help make happen whatever it is that you want to happen. From daily rituals of self-cleansing, eating, exercising to weekly rituals of doing bills and the budget, cleaning the house, and cleaning up the dog poop in the yard--such patterns of life-living not only provide a structure upon which to build, but also a structure from which to generate chaos.

Yes, with ritual construction, I believe there must also be ritual destruction. I'm thinking, now, about my attic and the fact that it has been deprived of its annual clearing out of junk that was stashed up there because I or someone else in the house just couldn't quite let go of it at the time: shoes, printers, old toys--even CANDY! To the garbage it all must go.

And speaking of clearing attics, there is also the spiritual attic to consider. As someone who does not believe in gods or spirits, I have to make clear that when I write of the "spiritual attic," I am writing of an mental/emotional metaphorical attic. (Maybe some of us have a basement, and maybe some of have both, and maybe others have even more than these "spaces," and maybe some of us are really shallow and have neither.) Whatever we have--and I think I have an emotional/mental attic, basement and garage--many of us keep filling these "spaces" with emotional and mental treasures, as well as garbage.

And that, folks, in a nutshell, is what I have been doing since late April: clearing out emotional and mental garbage (from unfinished work to unfinished personal business) from my mental/emotional attic, basement, and (oh yes) the shed.

Having performed this major deconstructive task, which hadn't been done in YEARS, I feel ready for the new year (only by coincidence), ready to pick up the ritual practices of construction again.

See you next Sunday!

TOXIC WASTE

2010-04-25T07:35:00.002-04:00

Note: this is not a healthy food, nor does it look good to eat, but it tastes good--appropriate for humor at parties for children, at haunted houses, or to "celebrate" Earth Day.

2 12 oz. pkgs. white chocolate chips
4 cups mixture of any of the following (or similar items): Cheerios, and other shaped cereals, broken melba toast, small pretzel sticks,...
food coloring
sprinkles

Wrap a cookie sheet in aluminum foil
melt white chocolate in microwave safe bowl for 1-2 minutes (careful not to burn)
mix with non-flakey cereals, melba toast, and/or small pretzels
mix until all is well coated
sprinkle with small drops of various food coloring
mix until just beginning to look disgusting
spread on cookie sheet
sprinkle with various colored sprinkles
let dry; remove the foil and break the mixture up into small pieces
store in plastic container.

Balance: Food and Exercise

2010-04-18T21:36:00.012-04:00

Has anyone seen Food Inc.?

I love to cook. In fact, even though I'm overweight, I have to say, it is NOT because I nibble and eat what I cook. I cook mostly healthy food. Granted, there are moments when I really desire a something chocolately, but when a doctor (or my mother) accuses me of eating too many sweets, it is usually ungrounded. Usually. I have learned not to stress-eat, as I'm told it's called: to eat to calm the nerves. If I do stress-eat, it is either cheese or chocolate. I don't see a large problem with this because it doesn't happen often (usually at the end of the semester, when I'm grading like a crazy person, or else when I have to start a new project, such as a book chapter or journal article, but not always). It's a problem, I admit, but not a big one, and not one I am not able to fix.

I believe in balance: so much "bad" food along with the "good" food, so much exercise, so much relaxation, so much work, so much money saved, so much money spent,.... Balance is the key, and that includes a balance of stresses in one's life.

However, attaining such balance is difficult, as it is difficult to attain any other type of illusion of control over anything. Sometimes I have it; sometimes I don't. I keep trying. It's all I can do.

Respect for Belief

2010-04-11T17:22:00.000-04:00

I try to respect all beliefs--as long as that belief does not endorse abusiveness, violence or some other sort of deconstructive force against mankind and/or nature. So, for example, I respect Christianity, but I do not respect those factions of Christianity that oppress women, gays, or other groups of people, nor do I respect those factions that protect individuals who abuse children. I believe that there is a little good in every religious institution, as well as a little bad--and I respect that fact as well.

There is a difference, of course, between belief and religion. Many denominations of Christianity see homosexuality as a sin, yet many homosexuals hold Christian beliefs. One may be a Christian, a good Christian, and not be considered a sinner for also being a homosexual. And that is just the Christian world. To put it another way, as Karen Armstrong observes, "There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too." Just because the Catholic Church has been protecting leaders within its institution who have broken sacred vows of trust (molesting children, for example), does not mean that pedophilia is a part of the Catholic faith. Likewise, what one believes within a particular religion does not speak for the religious institution as a whole.

Religious institutions seem to inspire both the worst and the best parts of humankind. Armstrong thinks that "one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings." I think that is possible, but I also think the opposite, that religion developed to channel that same murderous bent: from crusades for Christ in the Middle Ages to Jihad terrorist acts today.

What I believe or don't believe--what you believe or don't believe--is personal and therefore sacred. Don't tell me what I should believe, and I won't tell you that your beliefs are wrong (with exceptions as stated above).

Recipe: Lentil Tofu Storm

2010-04-04T12:15:00.001-04:00

Okay, I haven't tried this one--I just made it up, so I'll comment on the made product later on.

2 cups lentils
3 cups water
1 cup finely chopped onions
1 cup parmesan cheese
1 package chopped firm tofu
1 bottle dark beer

Mix the tofu and the dark beer in a glass baking dish.
Tightly cover with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator over night (24 hours).
In a large pot, cook the lentils in the water on the stove, over medium heat, until just tender (about 20 minutes).
Drain the Lentils.
Push the tofu to one side of the baking dish.
Pour the lentils and beer into the baking dish, beside the tofu.
Pour the chopped onions and cheese into the other side of the baking dish.
Thus, you will have three rows of lentils, tofu and cheese & onions. With a spoon, stir from the outside edges in a circle, moving toward the center, so that you have a swirl.
Coat lightly with more parmesan and freshly ground black pepper.
Bake 400 degrees (Farenheit) for 20-30 minutes.
Serve with Naan bread, crackers and/or tortillia chips.

Sweet Teeth

2010-03-28T08:12:00.000-04:00

Is the use of artificial sweeteners a healthy thing? "The role of sweeteners on cancer risk has been widely debated over the last few decades," observes an article in Annals of Oncology (Oct. 16,2006, 2007; 18.1: 40-44). According to the Mayo Clinic, artificial sweeteners are safe--with the exception of aspartame for those who have the rare, hereditary disease, phenylketonuria--they don't cause cancer, and they don't affect the metabolism ("Artificial Sweeteners: A Safe Alternative to Sugar?"). Indeed, it has even been most recently (again) argued, "Ways to promote the use of fat-modified foods and artificial sweeteners merits further research in both prevention--and treatment--controlled trials" (International Journal of Obesity, July 28, 2009; 33: 1183-1190). And yet...

"Psychologists at Purdue University's Ingestive Behavior Research Center report that nine rats given yogurt sweetened with no-cal saccharin ended up eating more and gaining more weight and body fat than eight fellow rodents given yogurt containing plain old glucose (a simple sugar with about 15 calories per teaspoon, the same as table sugar)" (Scientific American, Feb. 11, 2008). And Marcelle Pick (OB/BYN, NP) goes into great detail on the "potential danger" of sweeteners in her article, "Sugar Substitutes and the Poetential Danger of Splenda" --though this article is connected to a Women to Women cite that promotes its Core Balance Diet. According to ABC News' Good Morning America's medical contributor, Dr. Marie Savard, who I think was commenting upon the same Purdue University study (mentioned above), "There's something about diet foods that changes your metabolic limit, your brain chemistry," (Feb. 11, 2008).

I think that moderation is the key--along with a constant reminder that substitution of sugar is not the same as permission to go crazy with ingestion of other kinds of sugars (carbohydrates in general). For more information:

"Are Artificial Sweeteners Safe?" (Denise Mann, WebMD)
"Artificial Sweeteners" (MedicineNet.com)

Stress, Doctors, Sex, & Death

2010-03-21T21:10:00.001-04:00

I have developed a significant distrust of most doctors. (I once had a doctor tell me that I could live on a potato-a-day. That was the start of my many years of bulimarexia.) That distrust continues to grow.

Recently, I met with a doctor who I was considering switching to for a primary care physician (this doctor's specialty is internal medicine). However, before I could fully discuss my concerns and explain my issues, he jumped down my throat, shouting, "C'mon, you're a smart girl! Sugar levels in the blood stream mean that you are over-eating." It was clear, from that moment on, that he had decided that I'm a liar. Why would I lie? I want to regain my former health! After I told him off, explaining that he was passing judgment about me and my illnesses without nearly all of the facts, explaining that I am a smart WOMAN. He backed off, saying, over and over, "You're the boss." Clearly, however, he was patronizing me. He took in all data I could share, but his face showed that he did not believe me. He even said that the only way he could work with me is if I accepted that I was in denial. I gave him several opportunities to change his attitude, but in the end I knew that this sexist, irrational bigot was not going to be my doctor.

I was visiting this doctor, for the first time, because my current physician told me to go on the South Beach Diet. I informed this doctor that I was done with diets, that I was trying other approaches, a combination of approaches, that would take me a long time to balance. This doctor was very upset with my sassy reply (how dare I question the doctor!?) and told me that if I didn't lose weight quickly, then I would have to explore having my stomach stapled. After explaining that I had researched this idea and, in consultation with my diabetes specialist, concluded that this was not a reasonable path, I told her that she needed to listen to me, to work with me. She threw her hands up in the air in frustration, saying, "Well, we need to come to an agreement on SOMETHING because what you're doing or not doing right now isn't working." I agreed, and I explained to her, again, my desire to strike a balance between foods, exercise, insulin and work. And then she said, as if she hadn't heard a word I had just said, "So, South Beach or Atkins--which diet is it going to be?"

To each doctor, recently, I've said that the major factor affecting me right now is stress. I've been saying that a lot, lately: I'm stressed. Or I've been saying that I'm tired. Hell, I'm both! What really stresses me out is prejudice.

I just read an interesting essay in The New York Times today: "For Obese People, Prejudice in Plain Sight. (Harriet Brown). "Stigma and prejudice are intensely stressful," explains Dr. Peter A. Muennig in this piece. No shit?! But what this Columbia professor next says is very ineresting: "Stress puts the body on full alert, which gets the blood pressure up, the sugar up, everything you need to fight or flee the predator." Prejudice, in other words, can cause stress, which can then cause illness. "Over time," explains Harriet Brown, "such chronic stress can lead to high blood pressure, diabetes and other medical ills, many of them (surprise!) associated with obesity."

No person can get rid of all stress in his/her life; in fact, a person needs a little stress. "Because of the overabundance of stress in our modern lives, we usually think of stress as a negative experience, but from a biological point of view, stress can be a neutral, negative, or positive experience." (http://www.medicinenet.com/stress/article.htm#what)

Therefore, we (those of us ill and/or otherwise overweight) might all need more positive stress in our lives. For example, sex is a positive stress that can also cause other (negative) stresses to be released. Have sex, or die?

Diets & Metabolism

2010-03-14T21:28:00.002-04:00

A few months ago, my doctor and I were fighting about ways to control my metabolism. I think that metabolism is one of the key factors in controlling obesity, Type II Diabetes, and other related health issues (such as blood pressure, liver diseases, heart diseases and perhaps even cancer). Going on a diet, particularly a fad diet, however, is not the answer.

A person's metabolism--my metabolism, your metabolism--has a rate and is affected by many factors. Our metabolism can be fast/high and slow/low. Some people burn fat and other calories at a higher rate, faster than others. Some people burn fat and other calories more slowly, at a lower rate than others; they store it for later. Heredity is one of many factors to do with the rate of one's metabolism, but there are many, many other factors, too. Writes Colette Bouchez of WebMD, "Your metabolism is influenced by your age (metabolism naturally slows about 5% per decade after age 40); your sex (men generally burn more calories at rest than women); and proportion of lean body mass (the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate tends to be)."1 Stress is also a factor. According to G. Seematter, C. Binnert and L. Tappy, "In obese patients, mental stress elicits responses which differ widely from those of healthy individuals. While mental stress enhances catecholamine-mediated energy expenditure in obese patients to the same extent as in lean subjects, it fails to decrease systemic vascular resistance due to endothelial dysfunction. This leads to enhanced blood pressure responses and the absence of stimulation of glucose disposal in obese subjects during mental stress."2

However, obesity does not equate slow/low metabolism. According to Molly Kimball, RD, "The simple fact is that the extra weight causes your body to work harder just to sustain itself at rest, so in most instances, the metabolism is always running a bit faster....When you are very overweight your metabolism is already running so high that any small cut in calories will result in an immediate loss."3 Thus, for a quick fix of losing just a few pounds, dieting is the answer. But, in truth, you are starving yourself, and your body will eventually respond by slowing down your metabolic rate, storing more fat (energy) and, ultimately, causing you to regain that weight lost, perhaps even gain additional weight (for the next time you starve yourself).

There is even a danger, I suspect, in the meal plans some companies put out for diabetes. (See the nutrition pages produced by the American Diabetes Association for quality advice on balancing carbohydrates with other foods.) Diets too low in carbohydrates can be very dangerous. You need sugar, particularly glucose. Your brain needs it. (You acquire this glucose from carbohydrates contained in dairy products, a variety of grains, any legumes, as well as other vegetables, and fruits.) "Glucose is the only fuel normally used by brain cells. Because neurons cannot store glucose, they depend on the bloodstream to deliver a constant supply of this precious fuel."4 Your body needs glucose, too, particularly complex carbohydrates.

Just as there slow/low and fast/high metabolisms, there are also complex (slowly metabolized) and simple (quickly metabolized) carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates include: most syrups, fruit juices, milk, and processed (table) sugar. They are found in most processed/refined foods. The body absorbs these very, very quickly, "as if delivered by a syringe."5 Complex carbohydrates include: bread, rice, pasta, cereals (which may also have simple carbohydrates), potatoes, fruits, legumes, carrots and corn. To a lesser degree, complex carbohydrates may be found in green vegetables, such as green beans, broccoli, and spinach. It is better to digest complex carbohydrates than simple carbohydrates. "A sugary snack or soft drink that quickly raises your blood sugar level gives you a boost (and any caffeine adds to the lift), but it's short-lived. When you eat something with a high sugar content your pancreas starts to secrete insulin, responding to a kind of temporary hyperglycemia. Insulin triggers cells throughout your body to pull the excess glucose out of your bloodstream and store it for later use."6 Sometimes the insulin pulls too much out, and you suffer from a temporary glucose deficiency: your thinking slows down, you feel nervous/edgy, and your body feels weak (a kind of temporary form of hypoclycemia).

I believe that people with slow/low metabolisms might feel a drive to get "quick fixes" of simple sugars. I'll research this for another entry. Meanwhile, I think it is important to note that having a slow/low metabolism is not a curse, not a disability.

There are advantages and disadvantages to each extreme. Someone who is able to burn calories quickly is able to function in "sprints" and to use energy in daily activities at an intense rate. Someone who is able to burn calories slowly is able to function at "marathon" levels and to use energy in daily activities at a steady, moderate rate. This does not at all mean, however, that you need less food! What it does mean, I think, is that the balance between exercise (both aerobic and muscle development) and eating is different than for those with high/fast metabolic rates. According to Robert Yanagisawa, MD,"If two people both weigh 250 pounds, and one got there by dieting down from 350 and the other one was always at 250, the one who got there by cutting calories is going to have a slower metabolism. That means they will require fewer calories to maintain their weight than the person who never went beyond 250 pounds." 7

Imagine that! Dieting slows your metabolism. I'll end this entry on that thought.....

Metabolism Working for You?

2010-03-07T21:30:00.000-05:00

Let's start with a general understanding of how metabolism works. According to Charles E. Ophardt (Elmhurst College), in "Overview of Carbohydrate Metabolism," glucose (blood sugar, which comes from other sugars and other carbohydrate foods) is "controlled by three hormones: insulin, glucagon, and epinephrine." The first hormone, insuline, serves to transfer the sugar from the blood stream into cells, particularly liver and muscle, where it is converted into glycogen for storage. When sugar levels are low, then the body secretes the other two hormones, equinephrine and glucogon, to convert the glycogen back into glucose. Ophardt provides a lovely diagram for how this energy is then either used or put back into storage (for later use).

For a larger image, see: http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/images/590metabolism.gif

It is (apparently) important for a constant and steady provision of glucose to various parts of the body (including the brain, which does not itself store glycogen); I suppose that this is somewhat like gas to an automobile engine: you have to keep the pedal steady to maintain a particular speed. For more details on this process, see "Introductory Metabolism Module" (Histology and Physiology 101; University of South Australia) and/or "Carbohydrate Metabolism" (General, Organic and Biochemistry, James K. Hardy, University of Akron).

We all need sugars to survive. The trouble for those with type 2 diabetes is the regulation of that sugar.

Personal Opinion Based on Experience--Anecdotal

This topic is a touchy one for me, a topic closely tied to years of confusion, frustration, and ultimately, anger. I read somewhere that my generation of women, the generation of yo-yo dieters, has suffered tremendously from poor dieting advice and the pressures of advertising and news media to conform to a particular size in an particular way. Since I was 12, when my doctor found that I was "two pounds over the normal weight" for my size and age, I have been placed on or placed myself on diets. Two pounds. More recently, I had a doctor suggest that I go on the South Beach Diet (the latest fad) or else consider stapling my stomach (another recent trend in medicine). There will be other blog entries on how fatness is a social (feminist, masculinist, experimentalist, whatever) issue; however, my point here is that many members of the medical profession (not all, but many) have misled both themselves and their patients. The general impression that I have gotten from doctors over the years is that I should simply reduce either the amount of sugar (from chocolates to breads, dairy products, fruits, and starchy vegetables) and/or the amount of calories. But I firmly believe that this is the central reason that I have become increasingly heavier and heavier. My latest nutritionist and diabetes doctor (both of whom are excellent), when she found out how few calories I was ingesting each day (about 1300-1500, the latter on days of exercise), she exclaimed, "You're starving yourself!" I knew it was true: my stomach kept me up at night with grumblings, and I was having a hard time thinking in my work--but I had been told to ignore these symptoms!

So, back to the topic: we all need sugars (and calories) to survive. This is not the debate, I believe. I believe the debate is quality of sugars, as well as a balance of types of sugars. For example, according to Janet Jankowiak, MD, if you have diabetes (the inability to regulate sugars at a constant level), you "are more likely to have a heart attack or stroke at a younger age" and you may also "be at a greater risk for a decline in mental function--brain decay--or dementia" ("Too Much Sugar May Cause 'Brain Decay', Neurology, 2004). According to Dr. Nicholas Bello, reporting on a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine animal research project:

Dr. Bello and colleagues report that either continuous eating or binge eating a high fat, high sugar diet alters opioid receptor levels in an area of the brain that controls food intake. Opioids are a family of chemicals with actions similar to those of morphine; however, opioids exist naturally in the brain and have been linked to feelings of pleasure and euphoria. “These results are interesting because we saw changes in opioid receptor gene expression in a brain area that controls how much we eat during a meal”, said Bello. (ScienceDaily, Aug. 6, 2009)

So, the questions seem to be:

How much is too much?
How much is enough?
What kind(s) of sugars should be digested (and how much)?

Okay, so this is where the illusion of control becomes a vital issue. I don't want to tell you what to do, for several reasons. I'm not a medical doctor, and I suspect that we all have damaged metabolisms of various degrees: what I find works for my body may not work for yours. You are in charge! Take charge! You should find the answers for yourself--though not by yourself. Consult a good diabetes specialist and nutritionist. Do research of your own. For example, I suggest you take a look at International Journal of Diabetes & Metabolism.

The Good v. Evil of Chocolate

2010-02-28T08:56:00.001-05:00

Mocha (Hot or Iced)

1 cup non-fat milk

water

1 tsp. cocoa

1 Tbls. instant coffee

Equal packets (to taste)

For Hot Mocha

Pour water and milk into a mug and microwave until hot. Add instant coffee, cocoa and sugar substitute and stir. Enjoy.

For Iced Mocha

Run the tap water until hot and put about 1/4 cup into a glass. Add cocoa and coffee. Stir until dissolved. Add ice. Stir until cold. Add sugar substitute. Add milk and water until the glass is full. Stir completely.

Cocoa Cream Cheese Frosting

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter

16 oz. cream cheese

1 cup powdered sugar

1 Tbls. vanilla

1/4 cup cocoa

In a mixer, cream butter and cream cheese together until smooth. Slowly add the powdered sugar. (You may add more or less to your sugar tolerance and/or taste.) Add the vanilla. Add the cocoa. Blend until creamy/smooth.

Chocolate Fudge or Sauce

1 stick unsalted butter

1/4 cup milk (nonfat is okay)

1 cup powdered sugar, or fine grain sugar--use as little of this as possible (to taste)

6 Tbls. cocoa powder

Place the butter, milk, and sugar together a deep bowl and put into the microwave for 2 minutes. Stir. Put it back into the microwave for another 2 minutes, stopping and stirring as the mixture bubbles to the top rim of the bowl. Stir in chocolate or powder.Microwave 30 seconds. Stir until well blended. Pour into greased pan. Cool in the refridgerator for an hour before serving.

Being the Boss of My Health

2010-02-21T09:02:00.002-05:00

In a few weeks, I have all sorts of doctors appointments--I like to do my medical work all at once, at about the same time, or at least as close to the same time as is possible: annual physical, dentist, eye-check,.... However, I like to keep myself informed all the time, so I read up on my various illnesses on the internet as often as possible. When I see a doctor, they have to know that they are dealing with someone who not only will question orders, but might even give orders. This is right. This is good. As one young doctor once told my bewildered mother, who was struggling with heart issues at the time and getting all sorts of conflicting messages from various doctors, "It's your body. You're the boss."

That's right: doctors work for me; the insurance company works for me. They work for you.

So, when a doctor tells me that I have to do this or will be ingesting that, I always interrupt him or her and ask why. If it is a new doctor, this questioning becomes an initial test. If the doctor shrugs me off, perhaps not even bothering to try to answer my question ("You don't need to worry about that."), then I leave the room. I pay my bill, but that doctor, as far as I'm concerned, is fired. If the doctor gives me dramatic, exaggerated declarations ("You could DIE if you don't start taking this medicine!"), then I press onward, continuing to ask, like a three-year-old, "Why?" Usually that doctor will either resort to the first kind of doctor, shrugging my concerns off as inconsequential (and so then is now to be fired), or else moves toward answering my question. If, in answering my question, I find that the doctor is condiscending in any way, however ("This is going to be very hard for you to understand because I'm better educated than you..."), then that doctor goes into a probationary period. On the other hand, if the doctor responds with an intelligent, well-informed reply, then he or she will be promoted toward a more permanent status.

This is my approach to doctors; it may not work for you. I have a Ph.D. in English, which counts for something in terms of experience in researching and understanding difficult texts. I have no fear.

However, anyone can develop a no-fear approach that will works. For example, much medical literature out there is well written and leveled for any non-doctor to understand. Web MD, for example, is a great source of information. Most government-funded and/or non-profit organizations (such as the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, or the American Diabetes Association) tend to provide reliable information. There are a lot of alternative medicine sites and other corporate-sponsored sites that provide good information, too. But all doctors and other scientists must be constantly questioned, as they should (like good scientists) question themselves--changing approaches to treatment or improving upon treatments as often as possible. Especially, in this country, one must question the money angle.

The experience made me think of why I am now about to see a new regular doctor. A while back, I discussed my obesity problems with my old doctor. I had researched everything, from fad diets, to the concept of fats and fatty livers, to issues of metabolism and hormones that affect weight gain and loss. I regretted the discussion of this topic with the doctor almost the moment it started. Why? Because she said, "So, which are we going to get you started on, The South Beach Diet or Atkins?" "Neither," I said, "I'm not interested in doing a fad-diet, and neither is my diabetes specialist." She didn't seem to hear me, started talking about how I'm going to have to have stomach by-pass surgery. I responded with a loud, "Absolutely not!" Again, I had discussed this and other "quick-fix" options with my diabetes specialist, and I had come to the conclusion that not enough research has been done on this latest fad in surgeries. "Well, you have to do something." My doctor said in a scolding voice--as if I were a naughty child. I told her of my plans: now that my job situation and home situation are each less stressful, I have more time to exercise, something I wasn't doing hardly at all; I told her I needed time to de-stress, that I was exhausted. She dismissed my plans, said that they would never work, that I would not be able to make permanent changes to my health. Again, she pushed the surgery; it seemed that, in her mind, it was time for me to do it, tomorrow. A good employee would make sure that I understand the whys and whats before I made a decisions; a good employee would know his/her place and not expect me to be a puppet-leader over my own health-care. This doctor, instead, switched to saying, "You don't need to worry about that. You need to trust me to know what is best for you."

Yeah, sure! I fired her.

The money angle, in the United States, is a huge factor in medicine. Illness is profitable.

Recently, I went to a free all-day Women's Health Expo. I was expecting it to be a lot of booths with various types of useful information on women's health, some samples of health-promoting products, and maybe even some quick forms of check-ups (blood pressure, ....). "Take advantage of free health screenings and enjoy a lelicious, complimentary lunch," it said on the post-card. It was held at this very ritzy private medical center, but it was free and open to the public--though reservations were required (because of limited space). I registered both myself and my step-daughter, thinking this was a feminist, woman-empowering type of experience, a healthy thing.

I should have known better.

There were booths with information, oh yes: all the standard diseases were there, as well as pregnancy and menopause. But the only health screening I saw was at one table, where they were doing small blood tests. There were some health promoting products--every-fifth-woman got a free pedometer at one booth, and at another booth, samples of skin creams were being handed ou intended to help with weight loss. I kid you not. The only thing I didn't see there was something like a magic all-purpose medicine like what used to be sold in the late 1800s: Dr. Schnigonfotter's Magic Medicine. They gave us a very unhealthy breakfast: fattening, sugar-loaded muffins or sugar-coated croissants. There was a wide assortment of soda-pops (oh yes, very healthy indeed), along with a small selection of juices. We sat in a large seminar room, a couple hundred of us, and listened to speakers make various presentations (but if there were any deaf or hard-of-hearing women in the audience, they wouldn't have gotten much out of the presentation--no captioning or interpreters were provided). Topics included, "The Heart of the Matter: Women & Heart Disease," "Urologic Advancements in Female Pelvic Helath," "Thyroid Disease," "Women, Migraine & Hormones: An Interesting Combination" -- each of which sounded potentially very informative. However, beyond showing some interesting pictures and diagrams, most of the information was hyped-up, intended to make one not only worry about becoming ill, but what sorts of tests one should do to prevent such illnesses (most of them expensive tests, by the way). I looked around me: most of the women were my age or older (no one below their 40s, I'm sure); most of the women were dressed in middle-to-upper class clothing (no sweat pants, flannel shirts or anything else costing less than $30.00).

It dawned on me: this was an event for older women with money, for hyporchodriacs with money!

I looked at the rest of the program: "Cosmetic Laser Eyelid Surgery & Cataract Surgery," "Women's Health 101," "Is Weight Loss Surgery Right for Me?" "Breast Health: Are You at Risk for Breast Cancer?" This wasn't about preventative medicine or developing and maintaining a healthy life-style! This wasn't empowering! This was intended to make women paranoid about breast cancer, heart disease, bladder control, and the shape of their eyelids! These doctors were not doing their jobs--they were not promoting healthy lifestyles and preventative medicine--they were trying to sell their wares: tests, examinations, scans, surgeries and magic medicines.

I'm all for tests, examinations and even surgery--when they are truly needed. I support the medical professionals in general, on principle. However, when scientific principles are sold out for profit, I have to step back. If you want to be my doctor: you have to prove that you are a good doctor; you have to earn my trust by holding intelligent conversations about my health with me; you have to treat me like an adult human being (not some silly child), and you have to strive to do what's right, not what's profitable. Otherwise, you're fired.

The Pursuit of Happiness Via Positive, Constructive, Tolerant Thinking

2010-02-14T20:19:00.002-05:00

Recently (actually, over the past several years), I have heard so many arguments that lacked any sort of truly logical thought, much less demonstrated any sort of reflection upon the nature of the matter, that it has begun to drive me insane. I don't have actual quotes; I don't want to directly attack anyone. But here is a small sample of the nature of some of these arguments:

Obama being elected to the presidency has made the issue of racism in the United States obsolete.
We need to help the normal people, first. Then we can help the ___[other "not normal"]___ people. Providing elevators, interpreters, note-takers, enlarged print documents, ramps, hearing aids, glasses, ... should not be a requirement of society, much less of insurance companies. If you need such items: that's your own fault/problem (not mine), and you (not I) should have to pay for it.
If I, as a Christian, were living in the Islamic parts of the Middle East, I'd be dead by now.
A leader of a small group of individuals should be trusted to speak on the group's behalf, without each of the members of that group providing permission. To require such permission is a violation of that leader's freedoms of speech and/or expression. The members should trust the leader represent them without their consent, to say the "right" things for each of them.
There are more women than men attending college now: sexism is no longer an issue for women. In fact, now it's an issue for men!
If you don't believe in my beliefs, then I can't be your friend because your beliefs threaten the foundation of mine.

All of these "rationalities" seem to have at least one thing in common: a fear of some sort. It might be a fear of having to work harder. It might be a fear of the unknown. It might be a fear of losing power, money, community standing, or a sense of self. Another thing they may all have in common is an insensitivity towards -- perhaps even an intolerance of -- others. I'm not really thinking of the ideal human behavior. Furthermore, I know and accept that we all have fears, some quite justified, and we all have needs to preserve our sense of self (and/or our community standing, money, power, known parameters, or work load limitations). However, I'm thinking how this kind of thinking, the actual entertainment of such ideas, is so negative and destructive. In other words, I'm not saying that such thinking is wrong: I am saying that I feel it moves each of us in a direction away from general happiness.

In response to some of the above, for example:

We should try to help all of the people all of the time, knowing that we are doing the most we can for most everyone (and forgiving ourselves if we can't help everyone), regardless of who and what each person may be. The only limitations should be time and energy. Everyone needs something some time. We are all disabled; we are all abled. Recognition of this fact allows for a grace to providing for others. (Providing for others is providing, ultimately, for ourselves. There is no person who is "normal" in some way, who isn't also "abnormal" in some other way.)
If I, as a Christian, were living in the Islamic parts of the Middle East, I'd learn to survive and thrive among my fellow believers and to both tolerate and be tolerated by my fellow non-believers. (I could die any time, anywhere, for any reason-- I have no real control over this fact.) (By the way, I am NOT Christian.)
A true leader works hard to make sure he/she understands and fully represents the views of the collective body of the group and has each member's consent to be represented as a part of a group action (such as by a vote). (Trust is built and maintained in this manner, isn't it?)

Judgements and actions based upon difference (race, gender, sexuality, beliefs, ethnicity, nationality, abilities,...) are almost never justified, and racism, sexism, intolerance of others' beliefs and other forms of intolerance still exist, and may always exist. Perhaps to believe that one can eradicate such intolerance--as if it were polio or some biological disease-- is a set-up for failure, deconstructive and ultimately negative? However, to accept that intolerances of these kinds exist and thus reason that they can be ignored is also deconstructive and ultimately negative.

Striving for high amounts of positive and constructive thinking is a difficult challenge. I like to compare such efforts to striving to jog or walk 20 (okay, even 5) miles in a day, to save $100,000.00 in a year, to make an original scientific discovery, or to create an artistic masterpiece. For me, the journey is worth the efforts.

Everyone is different; the similarities between individuals, much less groups, are the wonderful things that should be focused upon and celebrated--not the awful things that "should" keep us apart.

I don't believe in pushing my ideas upon others, but I suppose that I can't help but represent them. I understand and respect that we each have a right to think, believe and feel as we do, but I also think, believe and feel that negative energy (negative thoughts, negative feelings, negative beliefs) begets destructive behavior. For me, by the way, thinking supersedes belief and feelings, almost always.

Individuals can focus upon the intolerance each has for others, work on the self, in positive and constructive ways, including healing ways: sooth hurt feelings, make statements that rebuild self-confidence, donate money,.... I think, believe, and feel that, ultimately, to practice general tolerance, constructive behavior, and positive thinking-believing-feeling is to strive toward happiness.

So, I write this, thinking (and thus believing and feeling) that I am making a positive statement that is somehow constructive. What am I building? I'll let you know as soon as I know.

Starting with a Recipe

2010-02-08T10:17:00.004-05:00

I'm planning to generate entries on all sorts of topics in this blog--ranging in focus from politics and love to food and exercise. I think I'll start with food, so here are some recipes for a mildly healthy meal. I just created and tried these this past weekend, and they seemed pretty good to me. I have to warn you: I use a lot of seasonings and spices! (Yes, I mean Tablespoon, not teaspoon in the below recipes.)

Parmesan Paprika Chicken (or Tofu)*
--use 1-2 pkgs. of chicken breasts: remove all fat, skin and bones
--cut each breast into palm-size chunks (cut into thirds or halves)
--pound each piece until flattened to an even level
--dip each piece into wet mixture (see below)
--dip each piece into dry mixture (see below)
--place pieces onto a cookie pan or rectangular baking dish that has been lightly greased with Olivio margarine
--bake (with the Zucchnini Splash, below) at 375 degrees F for 30-40 minutes, until lightly golden & cooked completely
Wet Mixture
--for every 2 lbs. chicken, beat together:
1/4 cup dry wine (white or red)
1 egg
Dry Mixture
--for every 2 lbs. chicken, mix together:
1/2 cup unbleached white flour
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
2 Tablespoons of paprika
* I believe that if you replaced the cut and pounded chicken with slices of tofu (take one package and slice it into 8 pieces--and don't pound them), this recipe would work just as well.

Zucchini Splash
1 medium zucchini squash
1 medium yellow squash
1 large vidalea or other sweet onion
1/4 stick unsalted butter
3 Tablespoons garlic powder
black pepper, to taste
salt, to taste
--melt the butter in a microwave-safe dish
--slice the zucchini and yellow squashes into very, very thin "coins" (as thin as possible)
--cut the "coins" in into half-"coins"
--place into glass or ceramic round baking dish (such as a casserole dish)
--cut onion in half, and then thinly slice each half (long strings of onion)
--place into dish with squash
--sprinkle with garlic powder
--salt and pepper to taste
--pour melted butter on top
--stir until all is well coated
--bake (with the chicken) at 375 degrees F for 30-40 minutes

I served the above with a box of StoveTop chicken stuffing (made with a cup of celery--including leaves--and a cup of onion, all sauted together in light olive oil). Let me know what you think!