The last two weeks of have brought two major developments, both which bring joy and pain, excitement and stress, and generally force me to more deeply contemplate the meaning of life.
The first is that my husband I decided to move. This was a sudden and unexpected decision (we had originally planned to move a couple years from now) we came to for a variety of reasons, including the lower interest rates for mortgages, an increase in our income, and the lowering of prices on desirable houses. The stressful part of this is that - holy crap, we're selling a house and buying a new one while both working and while I'm pregnant - argh! The sad part about this is that I love our current house. It is a beautiful place with real character, and will always have a special place in my heart as the first house I owned.
In case there are any readers out there interested in a well-kept and beautiful house in Germantown, Philadelphia, here's the listing.
I was very happy that they used a picture of the front of our house with my perennial, multi-colored mums in full bloom from last autumn. I will definitely plant mums again at my new house!
The other major development is that, being five months pregnant, I now feel like I have a tiny baby living in my gut. The first few flutters of movement were quite endearing to me, and I'll never forget the look on my husband's face when he got to feel his first kick. But after just two weeks, my beloved, little "notacat" is proving to be a night owl who treats my bladder and other internal organs like punching bags for hours, starting around 9pm. Ouch.
The best way to describe how the middle-area of my body feels is like a sore bubble. My lower back is just beginning to hurt and my sense of balance is deteriorating. I'm no longer able to really do my pilates routines, so I've switched to yoga, light weight training, and walking. In short, I'm adhering to the 13 rules of safe pregnancy - posted on the very useful website babycenter.com.
Yesterday I was a bit too ambitious and attempted to walk to a coffee house 2 miles away. About halfway back I started feeling aching and sharp pains in my abdomen which caused me to stop and sit on the curb ever few blocks. I'd love to ride my bike, but the balance problems make me too worried about getting into an accident.
Adding the moving and the constant uncomfortable changes in how I physically feel has definitely raised my normal levels of stress. I'm having mood swings and random bouts of fatigue.
While this is all pretty frustrating, it reminds me of one concrete truth: I am an animal. A very intelligent, emotional, social, and sentient animal, but an animal none-the-less. So much of my experiences which shape who I am are physical and based on aspects of what I am that I can't control. The subjective mind's eye attributes all kinds of wonderful meaning to my life and life in general, but it all starts with the objective physical reality of my existence.
I can't say I enjoy being pregnant. (I can say I'm pretty confident that I'll only do this once!) But I am grateful for this experience, not only because the end result will hopefully be a healthy baby of my own to raise, but because part of living life to the fullest is dealing with the stress and pain and limitations that come with the territory. The meaning of life isn't happiness, it is the experience of life itself.
I have started my second trimester. That means that that there's a fetus inside me that is about the size of a large fig. It has a face and all its basic parts, and while it is moving, I can't yet feel it.
My reasons for not posting an article in Humanist Mom during my first trimester - not even to announce that I was pregnant - can be summarized as I felt really crappy.
To be sure, I'm thrilled about having a baby. After all, that was the plan. Friends have already begun knitting and crocheting booties and blankies that I too happily accept. And while I wanted to adopt, I'll admit that since we're making one the old fashioned way, I'm contemplating the ways in which my future son or daughter will look like me, my husband, and our relatives. That's sort of neat.
I'm very glad that I planned this pregnancy. I'm relieved that I spent months getting in good physical shape and building a relationship with a counselor because within 2 weeks of finding out I was pregnant, I got sicker than I've ever been and all that regular exercising and healthy eating went right out the window. First came nausea. Not just in the morning (morning sickness is a misnomer) but from when I woke up to when I fell asleep at night. I had nightmares right away which were obvious allegories for being infected by a nasty parasite and then having my body held hostage by a ruthless gunman. After two weeks of nausea I started wishing I could throw up. And then I did start throwing up. It was like having the flu, but it just went on day after day. I started calling off work (and when you're an independant contractor that means losing money.) At one point I managed to wear the same pajamas for 7 days in a row. I mostly slept and watched re-runs of "Coupling" and "CSI" or just whatever was on the boob tube.
Then came a day where I could keep nothing down at all. I threw up 7 times by 2pm, so I called my doctor and got an appointment for that afternoon. Their solution: stop taking the prenatal vitamins (the iron supplement was probably making things worse) and take an anti-nausea medication - promethazine - as needed. I needed it every 4-6 hours for 3 days, and then started taking it less and less, and finally not at all.
In addition to the physical stress, I found out in February that one of my jobs - in fact my main source of income - will end in mid-June. Normally this wouldn't be stressful at all, but as we all know, the economy is in the shitter, and I've noticed a seriously lack of jobs on all the normal employment boards I check. This provides a wonderful excuse, er, I mean reason to put myself full force into my fine art career. But that means investing some serious time and money without much of a return, possibly for years. Not a good thing to be doing with a baby. But if not now, when? Gotta start somewhere and some time. If we're going to be struggling financially, might as well be doing something worthwhile at the same time.
I had thought that having a blog during this pregnancy experience would be helpful, but these first three months I have felt no desire to share these crappy experiences and career anxieties with anyone other than friends and family. Hopefully the worst (other than the obviously painful final hours called labor) has passed.
Since feeling much healthier, I've gone back to my regular pilates and yoga routines and started eating vegetables again. Much of my worries about pregnancy has been alleviated by getting to hear the heartbeat - that was awesome! Especially seeing my husband's face get all mushy at the sound.
Also, I have a lead on a really great summer job. If I get it, I'll post details later.
As my hometown just won a major sporting event, I'm moved to write about kinesthetic motor intelligence, or the use of information through the sense of touch, muscles, balance, and movement to learn about the world.
It's not a subject I see written about or discussed frequently among Humanist communities where there are lots of sweat pants and not much sweat. This probably helps explain why I didn't even know the Phillies were in the World Series until a week ago. Humanists tend to value intellectualism, especially scientific inquiry, philosophical skepticism, and general curiosity about the natural world. But what about the personal knowledge which can be gained through the experience of shaping our physical bodies? Humanists tend to value camaraderie built on shared social concerns. But what about the value of sportsmanship and the ecstasy of physical engagement? Perhaps many Humanists undervalue sports and other physical activities because we long to balance out the over-embrace of sports (often to the degree of cult-like fanaticism) alongside anti-intellectualism in mainstream American culture.
A few years ago, the Matrix movies inspired the creation of The Animatrix, a collection of nine short animated films set in the fictional Matrix world. One, "World Record," caught my attention in particular. It featured a champion track runner, Dan Davis, who escapes the virtual reality of the Matrix through sheer kinesthetic motor intelligence. In an intense race, understanding of how his body works, its strength, speed, and in pushing it to its limits, Davis rips away the sham of the virtual world. When he suddenly awakens in the "real world" he is shocked, frightened, and confused, and I felt a deep sense of compassion, realizing that on top of having no literal concept of what he had achieved, in the "real world" his olympian muscles were atrophied and left him at the mercy of the machines. Yes, I know, the lesson is an oldie in the realm of science fiction - but a goodie!
I once dated a computer programmer who bragged about his rejection of exercise. Ironically, he later dated a woman who was so athletic that he, too, came to love biking and other physical activities long after that relationship dissolved.
People get physical for all sorts of personal reasons. My brother Geoff originally got involved with exercise and weight training to be more competitive on his high school wrestling team. As match day came closer, he'd fast and run in a garbage bag to knock off as many pounds as possible for the weigh-in. Later Geoff developed aspirations to become an actor, an unforgiving profession which requires constant physical maintenance and control. Over the years Geoff has become increasingly sophisticated about both his diet and body sculpting. Many of his former classmates didn't even recognize him at his ten year high school reunion and remarked that he had "changed the most" in his appearance. Geoff currently does an hour and a half of yoga a day and bikes wherever he can. His passion for yoga even inspired a side career, working toward certification in Budokon yoga with founder Cameron Shayne (pictured below engaged in Zen meditation.)
Two guy friends of mine both got involved in weight training to bulk up their naturally slim physiques. Just as too much fat is deemed unattractive by conventional standards of beauty, being too skinny - particularly in men - is considered undesirable.
My dad used to walk constantly, to the point of benefiting from the high of endorphins that physical activity releases. Years ago when he was a smoker, he'd manage to quit for short spurts of time by walking half a day's journey to his brother's house, spending the night, then walking back home the next day. The intensity of such extensive walk would actually take away his cigarette cravings for the following three weeks! Today my dad insists that walking is not enough. Just as his marathon walks didn't help him quit nicotene permanently (years of weaning himself off with chewing tobacco and then nicorette gum did that,) his walks weren't enough to ward off heart disease. After bypass surgury, my dad has become the model of physical health. His 10% fat vegan diet and morning workouts at the recreation center are treated with religious devotion.
I never had great coordination, but I was naturally thin, so in high school I ran track and cross country. I hated competition, but enjoyed the energy a good run would give me that lasted the rest of the day. The continued jogging for years after high school, until at the age of 23 I developed plantar faciitus. Plantar faciitus is the most common cause of foot pain. It involves an inflammation of a ligament which stretches across the arch of one's feet. Mine is probably caused by high arches which caught up to me as I slowly gained weight with age. At first I went into denial about the pain, continuing to run and making the problem worse. Eventually it got bad enough that I had to quit regular jogging for good, but after several years I've learned to manage and prevent the pain through simple exercises, good shoes, and a night brace. Losing my ability to run lead to years of foregoing regular exercise, which for the most part didn't matter since I, like my father, always walked a lot. But after graduate school, I got a job commuting. I gained fifteen pounds, suffered from frequent migraines, and became generally miserable about my body. I made a lot of excuses about why I couldn't exercise, but eventually my excuses ran out. It has taken a while to get into a consistent routine, but I've finally found a nice mix of biking instead of driving whenever possible, and doing regular pilates and some yoga.
My journey toward a regular exercise routine really took off with exercise videos. My brother recommended a yoga instructor, but that didn't work out. I'm not a huge fan of yoga. I become easily bored and frustrated with long poses. To be honest, most of the videos I've tried have ended with me shouting obscenities at the screen and deleting them from my Netflix cue within the first twenty minutes. What can I say, I'm picky. But I've found one instructor I like a lot.
Instructor Ellen Barrett(pictured here) did a series of videos through the NYC fitness center Crunch. My favorites are Fat Burning Pilates, Super SlimDown, and Burn and Firm, and I couldn't tell you how many times I've watched each one - each at least once a week for the past three months, with no sign of boredom. I've lost the fifteen pounds I gained the last two years, and much to my joy and relief, am no longer commuting.
Obviously everyone has to find their own comfort zone with physical activity. We're not all shaped the same way, and we all have our own limitations. Just as I found myself cursing at videos of the yoga instructor my brother adored, I'm sure many would find Ellen Barrett's classes corny, or a real bore. One friend of mine who happens to be heavy told me about a yoga class uniquely tailored for overweight people that she enjoyed.
The coolest part of biking, pilates and yoga for me is that I find myself flexing muscles that before I wasn't even aware of. I'll be rubbing a print and realize that I'm toning my abs, or walking up steps and feel the strength I've gained in certain leg muscles. It reminds me of when I learned something in math class as a kid, and then suddenly had an opportunity to use what I learned in real life. Indeed there is knowledge to be gained through exercise; the term "kinesthetic motor intelligence" makes a lot of sense. It is my hope that the type of knowledge I gain from all this physical activity will help me deal better and even conquer some of my fears of pregnancy.
Of course what anyone gains from intense physical engagement is quite personal. Experiences can be described, but not shared. As in art, opposed to math, the emotional connection to physical activity is penetrating. If I wake up sad but have to bike an hour downtown and then back again, my mood is elevated and I go to bed at night content and happier to be alive. The dancer and choreographer Martha Graham wrote, "Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart." May we all recognize the joy and necessity of dancing every day.
This month my Humanist group's movie night featured Michael Moore's latest film: Slacker Uprising. The documentary follows Moore's tour to energize the young and politically apathetic to vote for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. It is mostly a series of speeches and musical performances by Moore and other celebrities who participated in his tour's rallies.
I was most moved by Joan Baez singing "Finlandia" not least of all because she said the song was the Finnish National Anthem, and yet the lyrics talk of how the skies in other lands are as blue as in "my land" and then goes on to wish for peace in and between all nations.
Alas, Baez got it wrong. I did a search for "lyrics Finland national anthem" and kept finding a song with completely different lyrics. I then found this comment about the performance on YouTube:
Hate to put a damper on a touching performance, but not only is "Finlandia" not the national anthem of Finland, its original Finnish lyrics are in fact made up of very traditional patriotic sentiments of a small nation's struggle against tyranny.
Joan Baez is in fact singing a Methodist hymn composed to the same tune. Even us Finns can only dream of saluting our country with such universal sentiments of solidarity and peace between nations.
This disappointment aside, I contemplated the lyrics of the USA's national anthem - a beautifully-worded poem about war. Beautifully-worded poems about war are a lot like beautifully-painted art about war: they romanticize and glorify that which should never be romanticized or glorified.
Washington Crosses the Delaware byEmanuel Leautze
Ever come across the entire lyrics of Star Spangled Banner? Check 'em out. Throughout the poem, there's images of death: havoc, blood, gloom, grave. And yet these are intermingled with the ever-present and triumphant image of the waving flag (victory not only justifies the carnage, it exalts it), and the reassuring message that a Higher Power wanted the new nation to triumph and thus made it so. We end with:
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: "In God is our trust": And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
How reckless and arrogant must people be to assume not only that a just God favors their nation over others, but that this favoritism justifies one of the worst of man-made horrors: war.
Paintings which glorify war often do the same. They present the "good guys" in a way which makes them seem supernaturally fated in their struggle (note the glowing light around Washington as he towers above his companions) and even when there is the depiction of dead or mutilated bodies, they are prettied-up caricatures, which distance us from the disturbing realities of war violence.
Thank goodness more contemporary artists such as Francisco Goya and John Singer Sargent, and countless journalistic photographers, broke from this absurd and harmful tradition by presenting images of war as the gruesome and frightful reality that they are.
Francisco Goya, Los Fusilamentos del 3 de mayo en Madrid, 1814
Timothy H. O’Sullivan, Harvest of Death, 1863
John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1918
As I contemplate the lyrics of my own country's national anthem, I can't help be reminded of other songs about America, and wonder if there aren't some far more appropriate than a big glorification of war and claim that God is firmly on our side for an official national anthem.
Probably the most popular is "America the Beautiful" (sung amazingly by Ray Charles.) This song, like our anthem, has a lot of beautifully-worded and descriptive poetry, but instead of being about war, it is about the landscape. And while it does mention God, at least it doesn't assume God is on America's side, but rather, it asks for blessings. Sadly, if you look at its lyrics in their entirety, not only is the song largely a prayer (not exactly a choice anthem for the most religiously diverse nation in the world - including 15% nonreligious - and the first to establish church-state separation,) but at some point it, too, romanticizes the Revolutionary War as little more than a glorious battle between victims and tyrants:
O beautiful for glory-tale Of liberating strife When once and twice, for man's avail Men lavished precious life! America! America! God shed his grace on thee Till selfish gain no longer stain The banner of the free!
Whether the Revolutionary War caused more good or ill, war is never something to celebrate, and the circumstances of war are never so purely noble, or black and white.
Back to the movie. For a liberal like me who is depressed-to-the-point-of-feeling-numb by the longterm negative impact the Bush administration's War on Terror and Iraq, watching Slacker Uprising was more bitter than sweet. I went door to door for MoveOn in 2004 and spent all day at the polls. When I saw Philly carrying Pennsylvania for Kerry, I rejoiced and truly believed he would win. The loss just put me in a state of emotional deadness, which is how a lot of political apathy starts.
Michael Moore must have a clear understanding of the apathetic, because as the film came to a close, all those speeches and musical performances had actually got me to feel again. As if Kerry were losing the election all over again, for the first time I felt tears start to whell up in my eyes. Worse yet, while I felt sad, I also felt helpless and hopeless, and it was just at that moment that Moore ordered his audience to buck up, and with a smile on his face said,"There's no crying in politics!"
If only that were true.
But hey, even if it isn't true, hearing that made me smile instead of cry. And I signed up today to work the streets on election day. Whether there is crying in politics or not, there should always be hope.
A few months ago I discovered a book while browsing the children's section of a local book store. The title was And Tango Makes Three. The cover featured a delightful watercolor illustration of a family of penguins.
I picked it up and read it, perhaps because I'd recently seen and loved the movie Happy Feet, and was quickly struck by two surprises: first, that the penguin parents on the cover were two male penguins, and that the story - about their pairing-for-life and eventually "adopting" a needy egg - actually happened at the New York City's Central Park Zoo.
I found both the writing of the story and the illustrations so adorable that the book stayed in my mind. I added it to my Amazon.com wish list, with the intention to purchase once we have children, or perhaps to buy as a gift for the children of friends. And when I started this blog I figured that I would write about it, but hadn't yet found a relevant context to bring it up. Then, this week on Radio Times (10/3/08, hour 2), in honor of the American Library Association's Banned Book Week, I caught Marty Moss-Coane mentioning this title in a list of books which have been either "banned or challenged" in public libraries.
I should expect that a children's book about a healthy, functional family involving a gay couple would raised criticism from social conservatives, but I couldn't help feeling outraged. First of all, this story wasn't made up in some contrived fashion - it really happened. Second, everyone, including kids, should know that homosexual behavior happens in the animal kingdom. It's just a biological fact for goodness's sake! And third, it is a sweet story about the spirit of family. The story is relateable to anyone with has not only homosexuality, but adoption, or any other unconventional grouping, such as a live-in grandparent or close friend in their household. In other words, this book is about what makes family a good and important thing: behaving in a loving way toward each other.
Social conservatives criticized Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials for being anti-Catholic, but I just read it, and I find these critics lacking in imagination and artistic sense. The triology obviously uses a lot of the tone, imagery, and terminology from the history of Catholicism to address the abuse of innocents. While I read certain portions of the book, I found myself thinking of child soldiers and human trafficking. The abduction of poor children from the streets by the "Gobblers" reminded me of a segment I heard on the radio last year about a group of Muslim extremists in Iraq who would desensitize new recruits by making them kidnap children who sell wares in the subway and then murder them. Children are among the most vulnerable in our population, and so they have always been victims. The abused in Pullman's trilogy could represent people from any culture or time in human history. Why did Pullman use Catholicism? Oh, gee, maybe because in the church's history it has often abused its power (just like most powerful institutions in history.) And all those elaborate costumes, titles, and rituals which just makes it perfect for fantasy fiction writing. Not to mention that when we recognize bits of our own world in speculative fiction, it makes the story more real for us.
I find myself thinking back to when the art exhibition Sensation was exhibited in New York City, and the outcry from Mayor Guiliani and other Catholics about Chris Ofili's Madonna:
One of his paintings, The Holy Virgin Mary, a depiction (portrait) of the Virgin Mary, was at issue in a lawsuit between the mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art"Sensation" exhibit. The painting depicted a black African Mary surrounded by images from blaxploitation movies and close-ups of female genitalia cut from pornographic magazines, and elephant dung. These were formed into shapes reminiscent of the cherubim and seraphim commonly depicted in images of the Immaculate conception and the Assumption of Mary. Following the scandal surrounding this painting, Bernard Goldberg ranked Ofili #86 in 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Red Grooms showed his support of the artist by purchasing one of Ofili's paintings in 1999, even after Giuliani famously exclaimed, “There’s nothing in the First Amendment that supports horrible and disgusting projects!”
Ofili is of Nigerian decent, and in Nigeria elephant dung is regularly used in religious artwork and other ritualistic objects. In an interview, Ofili mentioned being raised Catholic and how the emphasis on Mary being a virgin made her a sexually charged figure for him, especially when he would go to museums and see painted versions of the Madonna (often of models who had slept with the painters who depicted them.) In this context, Ofili's paintings aren't offensive; they make genuinely unique and thoughtful observations about how some people come to understand religious icons through a subjective point of view.
But more important than this background info on Ofili's ethnicity and what he says about his own work is the work itself. So here, look. Does this look like something made to be blatantly offensive to Catholics? (The elephant dung, btw, are the 3D pieces on the bottom and the stone on her necklace chain, not that anyone would know that if they weren't told.)
Just as the gay dad penguins in And Tango Makes Three are a part of the story discovered along the way, the pornographic imagery and decorative use of the dung are parts of an image that tell a much greater story with a much more broad and nuanced meaning.
What is with the lack of imagination on the part of so many social conservatives? Do they just not understand what fiction and art are and do? They need to stop censoring what kids see and grow up themselves.
(Image: Woodcut of a Grapevine by Wouter Ten Broek.)
It's the first day of fall - Happy Autumn Equinox!
Although the leaves might still be green, we in the northern hemisphere can feel the change in the air. There is a comfortable breeze to break the sun's heat, sunflowers have turned brown and bent over to spill their seeds, and mums are for sale wherever plants are sold.
I am pleased to be in rural Kentucky this time of the year. Rolling hills are out all my windows. I jog in the cool mornings with the five adorable dogs who live here. I hadn't planned to be at Artcroft (an artist residency in Carlisle, KY) in September because of the weather; that was just a happy coincidence. Alas, I'll have to return to Philly before the leaves turn their many spectacular colors.
I was fortunate enough to be here for a fundraiser yesterday, hosted by Artcroft and to benefit Kentuckians for the Commonwealth in their mission to stop Big Coal from ruining the Appalachian mountains and communities with mountain top removal. In some counties, coal mining has devastated over 25% of the land, resulting in a total transformation of the environment that the locals depend on, including poisoning water supplies, killing indigenous wildlife, and making the area generally just ugly and barren (which obviously would lower property values and, more importantly, hurt peoples' quality of life.) Kentuckians for the Commonwealth took a group of Kentucky writers on a tour of the coal mining in Kentucky, including a plane ride so they could witness how widespread the devastation is from the air. The writers were deeply disturbed by what they saw, so yesterday many of them showed up to share letters, poems, essays, and songs about the injustice of mountain top removal.
As I listened to these activists, writers, and musicians, and looked around at the audience of all ages and attire, I knew that this was a real community. These people weren't united by one or two ideas. They were united by tangible concerns about their land, and a deep-rooted drive to preserve their particular ways of life here in rural Kentucky.
What I witnessed moved me, and it is the sort of community I long for with Humanism. There are some full and genuine Humanist (and other freethinking) communities, who develop a particular local flavor and issues, who meet several times a month for social, service, and educational events, and include a healthy proportion of children, young people, and women, but these are rare.
Most Humanist and other freethinking groups are basically a monthly lecture series, or social club united by the single and general issue of opposing the religious right. And of course there's nothing wrong with such organizations. But since they are not fully fleshed-out communities, they cannot serve the needs of those who desire such a thing, and those people will continue feeling longing and isolated, or joining religious congregations for the secular values and fellowship that most religions include with their faith. Especially parents with young children.
As the Coordinator of PhillyCor (Greater Philadelphia Coalition of Reason), which unites four local nontheistic organizations, I recently started a Secular Service Club. When I scheduled the first workday at a local food bank, I admit I was a little worried about the turnout. Nontheist clubs aren't exactly known for our community service efforts. But to my surprise, not only did we get plenty of volunteers, most of them were women I'd never met before. Several of these were people who had been lurking on the outskirts of communication with our nontheist local clubs, but hadn't yet got involved because they weren't into lectures and sitting around in a restaurant bitching about Pat Robertson. They wanted to do something.
Our groups in Philly continue to grow and strengthen our ties to each other and the national freethought movement, and so we resemble a real community more and more all the time. This December we're putting up a Tree of Knowledge display near the Constitution Center in Philly, and we'll throw what will probably be our largest HumanLight/Winter Solstice party ever, featuring the musician George Hrab (who also played at James Randi's Amaz!ng Adventure in the Galapagos Island this year), and storyteller Bill Wood.
When people have real community, they feel emotionally engaged and secure in a network of friends and acquaintances who will support them in times of need. That help can come in so many different forms: a small circle of people who will listen to your problems and offer sound advice or encouragement; people who send you get well cards or meals when you are ill; people who stand as a diverse array of positive role models for your children and grandchildren; and so on. The Humanist community I used to belong to took care of a member who had no immediate family in the area and who was dying of cancer. For some people, the community becomes their only family. On the flip side, most of us find deep gratification in helping others. Doing good works takes us outside of ourselves (in a consumer culture that presses us to be obsessed with self), and suddenly our own problems seem smaller and more manageable.
Community cannot be built on a contrived foundation. Don't get me wrong - people do have to work on intentionally building a community. But it still has to happen in an organic fashion that feels genuine to everyone who ends up involved. Obviously communities come in all different shapes and sizes. But so long as we maintain our values of critical thinking and secular ethics, while integrating creativity and emotional engagement, and perhaps most importantly: don't become too insular (it leads to group think and a rigid ideology!), nontheist communities have the potential to fully replace and vastly improve on many faith-based congregations.
So, back to celebrating autumn. At the fund raiser yesterday, all sorts of wonderful, locally grown and organic food was served. Most was provided by Jennifer Gleason of Sunflower Sundries. She makes soaps, jams, mustards, and other wonderful products right out of her home (and you can buy online, so check it out.) I bought some spicy, pickled asparagus and okra - how awesome is that!? I also feasted on pinto bean and vegetable stew, fresh greens salad, and out-of-this-world cornbread.
In honor of autumn, I now offer my own recipe for a delicious stew made with seasonal crops (seasonal in at least my part of the globe) and which is the colors of autumn leaves:
Marf's Autumn Stew:
2 T olive oil 3 T butter 2 large parsnips, peeled and chopped 2 large carrots, peeled and chopped 2 large celery root, thinly sliced 1 small butternut squash, cut in half with seeds taken out 1 large yellow onion, chopped 1 can white beans 1/2 t each of ground cinnamon, cumin, patrika, and thyme pinch cayenne 1 T each brown sugar, honey, ground ginger 4 cloves garlic, minced or crushed 4 c vegetable stock 3 T raisins 1/2 cup chopped cilantro A couple squirts of lemon juice or the juice of one lemon
1.) Bake the butternut squash in the oven at 350 degrees for an hour. 2.) Roast the carrots and parsnips at 400 degrees for half an hour 3.) Saute the onions and garlic in some broth or if you like, a little olive oil or butter. 4.) Put all of the ingredients in a pot on the stove and simmer for half an hour before eating.
I like books. You know why? They don’t cost anything so long as you have a library card. And if you know how to use them they provide endless free education.
If our society can provide books for free, why can’t we get health care – er, nevermind, this column isn’t about that.
A few years ago a friend of mine used a single book to inspire a journal of personal discovery that lead to a much more satisfying career. She had been working at Enron (before the scandal and collapse) but while she made good money, she wasn’t fulfilled. She got a hold of the book What Color is Your Parachute, and unlike most people when they read a self-help book, she thoroughly followed the book’s advice. In other words, she worked for it. And as a result, she got out of Enron before the proverbial shit hit the fan and eventually became a Spanish teacher – a career she loves.
There are many other good books for helping people find themselves so to speak. These are literary works which give us perspective and help us form a flesh-out worldview. I read Walden the summer after I graduated high school, and it still influences me twelve years later.
Other books are good for helping people figure out what to do once they know who they are and what they want to do. For loosey-goosey free-lancers such as myself, Paul and Sarah Edwards’s book Working From Home has been immensely helpful.
But like any other education, no book will help a person unless the person also helps themselves. Like my friend, we all have to work for it, whether that means taking the time for mental digestion of an idea or leaning how to develop a press list.
If we want to escape the world of Dilbert, we must do no less than work hard, think outside of the box, and find our passion.
And so I come to my point: I find it highly regrettable that the system of higher education in this country keeps greedily monopolizing training for careers which people used to learn on the job. In other words, making people pay for what they used to get paid for. Public school teachers, for instance, are required to acquire increasingly specific certification these days. What that means in practice is that someone like me – who has a Masters in Fine Art and 5 years of diverse art teaching experience including two years at a private school and 3 with a highly regarded community service program – cannot even apply for a crappy art teacher job at a Philadelphia public school without getting (and paying through the nose for) an entirely new degree.
My husband is a sleep technologist, although his degrees are in Political Science and History. However, he slipped just under the wire, and now his profession – which he is very good at despite his humanities degrees – would be out of reach for people without more specialized higher education.
These days even journalists are expected to get a degree in journalism – although by law this cannot be required.
While in art school, I eventually found it odd that art degrees were even offered at standard colleges and universities. Look at the history of art training, and you see apprentices working under master artists and craftspeople. But in academia, art students often receive mediocre training in the actual crafts of painting, drawing, and sculpture, and end up having to read a bunch of out-of-touch theory and write papers and artist statements. And to top it off, they rarely receive any education on how to make a living as a professional artist. Getting a degree in art is often like four years of floating through Romper Room. I once remember a student getting a C for a class that he showed up for only three times the entire semester and did a fraction of the work that his classmates did. The rest of us received As. With such standards, what is an A even worth?
It makes me wonder what other college degrees programs are often a bit bogus. Especially considering the rising cost of higher education. Consider this:
A student who gives up accepting a job right of high school paying $25,000 a year to attend school full time will incur a $25,000 per year opportunity cost. Add to that the cost of tuition and books and it is not unusual to add another $10,000 and more per year to the educational investment. If we assume that this individual will start at $33,000 right out of college, and that they will experience the same rate of growth over their careers, they would be financially better off ($50,000 in present value terms) without the college degree. Borrowing to finance the tuition costs would only make the deficit larger.
In Season 3 of “Bullshit”, Penn and Teller (note that Penn Gillette does not have a college degree, and Teller doesn’t use his in his lucrative career as a magician) took on the issue of what a college degree is worth:
College degrees will lead us to future happiness, enlightenment, fun, preparation for life, a fulfilling job, as well as national prosperity. At least, that's what we've been told and sold. That's brochure bullshit! Been to a college lately? Rather than beacons of enlightenment, colleges have become bloated 400 billion dollar a year corporations, islands isolated from the real world, treacherous minefields where free speech and individual liberty often get trampled. And not only that, but going to college offers no sure path to an enriching life…or even a blue-collar job!
The usual argument put forth in defense of a four-year degree is that it contains a decided wage premium. Studies have consistently found that those who have a degree on average earn more than those who don't. . But all these studies were conducted before the new global economy fully emerged. Its presence calls into question long-held assumptions.
If Alan Blinder, former vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, is correct, the only jobs that will be secure in the next decade will those that cannot be sent abroad electronically. That means plumbers, electricians, and auto mechanics, for example, will be working steadily while many of their degreed classmates will be collecting unemployment checks.
Gardner goes on to warn how pushing college prep courses such as Algebra I at the high school level only hurts poor and minority students by increasing the drop out rate:
For schools serving large numbers of poor and minority students, the results are expected to be disproportionately felt. That's because career and technical education, which has proved instrumental in the past in boosting graduation rates for these students, will lose more funding to accommodate the Algebra 1 mandate.
Even if the funding were somehow to materialize, however, tens of thousands of students will not be allowed to enroll in vocational electives in middle school if they haven't mastered Algebra 1. This unintended consequence has become so threatening that the presidents of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association and the State Building and Construction Trades have jointly denounced the requirement.
I had a conversation recently with someone who worked as a social worker for teens about thirty years ago. He told me that he and his coworkers typically told the kids to either get a factory job or join the military. The problem with such advice today is that the factory jobs aren’t there, and as for the military… well, duh. I work with social workers today as a teaching artist, and now they tell the kids stay in school and go to college. But many of the teens I work with can barely write a coherent paragraph, much less hack college.
One definition of a bugbear is “a goblin that eats up naughty children."
I feel that this is what education – as it is often discussed in political and social discourse - is becoming for many kids and young adults in our society. We keep saying they need more “education” but we don’t stop and consider what kind of education they need. Someone is educated whenever they are exposed to any new experience, whether it is walking through a new neighborhood, reading a novel, or learning arithmetic. Kids today need to have an imagination and to be able to keep themselves informed about both history and current times as much as they need basic math and reading skills, otherwise they’ll never get ahead. And schools too often cram 30 or 40 kids into a class with one burned-out teacher, where they’re treated like dogs and taught to punch in, do what your told, and punch out. In other words, public schools are preparing poor kids for jobs that just don’t exist for them anymore, and then social workers are pushing the pipe dream of college because they just don’t know what else to say.
Education can be a bugbear to middle class kids, too, who drink and party away their college experience instead of actually trying to educate themselves.
Oftentimes we’ll read in the news that there is an increased demand for people with specific training, such as Computer Programmers. The idea is to encourage college students to major in these subjects and fill the job gaps. But the problem is that if someone gets a degree because they assume that someone will just hand them a well-paying job at some point in the future, they probably aren’t very into the subject, and therefore won’t be very good at the tasks the job involves. And now, around the world, Computer Science graduates have a higher unemployment rate than most other college degrees!
nearly every developer I've talked to on the matter has said that a general computer science (or fine art, digital media, or what have you) degree from a good university is worth infinitely more than a specialized trade school degree. A few lucky souls may wind up producing art or doing programming for projects directly out of trade school, but for the vast majority, unemployment at the hands of a limited skill set will be the unfortunate reality.
I see commercials for places like this all the time on television, and feel a tinge of disgust with the people who perpetuate such pie in the sky.
There is no friggin’ short cut. There is no simple set of instructions that one can just follow by rote and end up with an awesome, well-paying, and personally satisfying career. It is all risk. Life is risk. Think of all the factory workers who after watching their fathers support big families on blue collar wages and retire well, then had their own retirements slashed or their jobs deported. No one is ever completely safe. Primitive humans evolved into existence hunting and foraging for subsistence on a daily basis, and at the bare-bones level, not much has changed.
So if you happen to have a passion, educate yourself and then work your ass off. And if you don’t have a passion, get a tolerable Dilbert-type job that pays well, gives good health insurance, and vacation days so you will at least fully enjoy the other 50% of your waking hours. Or, hell, if it suits you, be like the guy who lives down the street from me and start a car washing business out of your home.
Embrace your inner caveman (or woman) and simply find some way to bring home dead meat and berries. Yawlp!
In case there are any readers out there interested in a well-kept and beautiful house in Germantown, Philadelphia, here's the listing.
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