What's wrong with wanting a smart President?

Ditto (Megan Daum LA TIMES)

" With political discourse reduced to screaming contests and actual news eclipsed by exclusive and shocking footage of celebrities without makeup, we've become not only impatient with but downright opposed to the kinds of ideas that can't be reduced to a line on a screen crawl or a two-sentence blog entry.

But even if Obama is not an intellectual in the classic sense, there's no doubt that he's absorbed the trappings of erudite rhetoric. He offers up ideas that don't lend themselves to sound bites but require some sustained attention. And according to the media and the political spin machine, that's proof he's snobby and out of touch."

ok that's 3 sentences, not 2 but you get my drift... This election isn't a popularity contest about who you'd like to go drinking, hunting, or lapel-flag shopping with... its about who you want to be thinking through the Big Decisions on the future of our country. Why not pick somebody intelligent this time?

Misc. updates from last week

Well I'm back after a break for a beach vacation in FL. Yeah! I wasn't on a total news blackout, but it felt like it. Its strange not to be surfing the web and having news come at you all day every day. I need to make a concerted effort to be more diligent about controlling the amount of time I spend on being a news junkie and internet addict. Ugh.

That said here are the top links I've read today, some about things I didn't hear much about last week.

(1) The Yoo memos: There was an excerpt in the Trib today about evilness (my summary) of John Yoo and his ideas that all bets are off wrt Torture if President Bush wants to be in a perpetual state of war. If I was a student on his campus I would protest all of his classes at Berkeley.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/04/the-guilty-men.html
(fortunately for me, but not him, AS was not blogging much last week either!)
plus http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/yoo_i_thought_torture_was_a_ba.php
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002785
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/04/memo_justified_warrantless_sur.php
http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/convictions/archive/2008/04/01/yoo-s-utter-glib-certainty.aspx
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/guantanamo200805?currentPage=1
looks like a must read

(2) http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/04/worse-case.html
ooh - a great quote, from 1954:
"There is something about this quest for absolute security that is self-defeating. It is an exercise which, like every form of perfectionism, undermines and destroys its own basic purpose. The French have their wonderful proverb: Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien--the absolute best is the enemy of the good. Nothing truer has ever been said . A foreign policy aimed at the achievement of total security is the one thing I can think of that is entirely capable of bringing this country to a point where it will have no security at all. And a ruthless, reckless insistence on attempting to stamp out everything that could conceivably constitute a reflection of improper foreign influence in our national life, regardless of the actual damage it is doing to the cost of eliminating it, in terms of other American values, is the one thing I can think of that should reduce us all to a point where the very independence we are seeking to defend would be meaningless, for we would be doing things to ourselves as vicious and tyrannical as any that might be brought to us from outside.
" -George F. Kennan's 1954 The Illusion of Security

(3) http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/04/by-patrick-toda.html
MLK Letter from Birmingham jail excerpt - more to come about our detour stop in Montgomery AL...

(4) and speaking of Alabama....Siegelman released!
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/03/siegelman_released_from_prison.php
I actually saw the headline in the paper WHILE I was checking into a hotel in Montgomery. Just a litte factoid... the Dexter Ave Baptist church where MLK preached is less than 2 blocks from the AL statehouse... Its on the same street! -in view of each other. More on this later once I get my pictures uploaded. Anyway it just struck me as a personal coincidence that this happened while I was there - in the town of the scene of the crime, so to speak.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSeL9Pkmt2M
Wow and I thought IL & Chicago politics took the cake.

Obama's speech

I must admit I left my office upstairs to go downstairs to watch THE SPEECH on race by Barack Obama. As usual, Andrew Sullivan says everything I feel (and more!) with much more eloquence then I'll ever be able to muster in a 1000 years. Please watch the whole speech. I am absolutely convinced Senator Obama is going to be our next President. He is the Right man at the Right time. No politician has EVER been this candid! It was emotional for me and I can only imagine what significance it has for the African-American audience.

Sullivan: " But I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

And it was a reflection of faith - deep, hopeful, transcending faith in the promises of the Gospels. And it was about America - its unique promise, its historic purpose, and our duty to take up the burden to perfect this union - today, in our time, in our way."

The Motherhood drive

Update on previous post about surrogate mothers and the motherhood "imperative" /drive:

Meghan Daum (in response to the Atlantic article by Lori Gottlieb):

".... I don't really blame Gottlieb for the premise; she's merely reflecting the values of her culture. And I don't mean the affluent, urban, progressive culture suggested by the details she provides about her romantic quandaries. I'm talking about the way baby hunger has become such a consumer force in this country that some women want a baby in the same way they want a Louis Vuitton bag because they've been told to want one.

Most people eventually want to become parents. But in the 21st Century, there is no good reason to see childbearing as an inevitable extension of a committed partnership or even as an ordained personal ambition. Instead, we need to view it for what it is: a profoundly important and difficult job that should be undertaken only by those who have the will and temperament to do it.

Because we're biologically programmed to take on that job -- or at least fill out the application -- it's unlikely we'll run out of humans. And by all means, if you're truly listening to yourself rather than buying society's relentless parenthood sales pitch, have a child, find a mate or both.

But when it comes to Gottlieb's case for "settling" -- for doing that at all costs -- I can't help but wonder if what's missing from the prototypical unhappy single woman's life isn't a man or a baby but an imagination. There are infinite ways to define a fulfilling life. Why enshrine the one whose accompanying illustration shows a marriage certificate and a baby stroller? Talk about settling."

So now I'm going to read the Gottlieb article after reading so much about it..... hmm. Well now that I've actually read it I agree with a lot of it. In fact I think I should send this to my single brother, who is 32, very handsome and has a job he loves (as a detective!). Knowing myself I really don't think that I would have accepted not becoming a mother -either biologically or by adoption. Even when I was in my early 20's I felt a really strong pull to be a Mom - I couldn't imagine then or now having a fulfilled life without becoming a Mother. I was settled in my career by that point and was sick of dating and tired of the never ending focus on SELF. ( I guess I wasn't in a voluteer/activist mode at that point). Anyone who knew me at the time could honestly say I settled for the wrong guy 'status-wise', but I was totally in love and quite naive. Even with the tears and drama of a divorce now in retrospect I can say I'm glad it happened this way. Its nice to point out now that women don't have to become mothers to have a fulfilling life, but I think that a very large majority of women desire this experience not just because of the social or status reasons - its certainly biological but also more than that. Its your investment in the future, a loving intimacy and history that you'll share with a child. Its about love. Its about experiencing childhood again. Its a herculian and yes, imaginative lifelong effort. A challenge that I would not personally choose to miss out on and have been blessed not to have faced that ticking-clock situation.

Hence - the compromises she discusses.

"They believe that part of the problem is that we grew up idealizing marriage—and that if we’d had a more realistic understanding of its cold, hard benefits, we might have done things differently. Instead, we grew up thinking that marriage meant feeling some kind of divine spark, and so we walked away from uninspiring relationships that might have made us happy in the context of a family.

All marriages, of course, involve compromise, but where’s the cutoff? Where’s the line between compromising and settling, and at what age does that line seem to fade away? "

Protestant decline in US

Interesting (USN&WR)

" But now Protestants are on the verge of becoming a statistical minority in the U.S., according a study released today. Whereas nearly two thirds of Americans identified themselves as Protestant as recently as the 1980s, only 51 percent identify as Protestant today, the study found."

That's a big change in less than 30 years. I think the revulsion to the tactics of the Religious Right may be why more people are defining themselves as "unaffliliated". I'm pretty sure Lutherans are considered "mainline" even though we have E- for Evangelical in our name (ELCA).

I saw this quote as the intro to a book I picked up at the library ( Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq):

" Remeber those who are in prison,
as though you were in prison with them;
those who are being tortured,
as though you yourselves were being tortured". (Hebrews 13:3 ,NRSV)


Update: A follow up in the 2/26 Trib with a graphic

Art--> Voice for Tortured Detainees

Artist Daniel Heyman "Abu Ghraib Detainee Interview Project" -showing at DePaul Art Museum thru' May 4th

from here to here to here to here

" When asked, I'll sometimes say I'm writing about torture, but I've found that when I say the word torture, many go glassy-eyed, as if I had just dropped a stone into a deep, deep well. When asked, I'll sometimes say I'm writing about the way photographs are a type of dream, or I'll say that I'm writing a memoir of bewilderment, and leave it at that, but what I mean is the bewilderment of what it is to wake up in an America that has legalized torture. (p.3)" Nick Flynn, Esquire- Feb 08

The New Abolitionists

So last night my neighbor Bob and I went to hear a speech at Wheaton College by Jim Wallis- he is promoting his new book, "The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America" . I really enjoyed it, and I just ordered the book on Amazon today. I had never heard of this man before, because I haven't really been reading religious blogs all that often. Anyway, I was really impressed -although I'll admit that I'm easily impressible. The room was packed, young and old. I believe this is the voice I've been looking for when I made this comment on an earlier post " this is what every pastor should be preaching". Here's a taste from a recent interview with my favorite TV interviewer, John Stewart on the Daily SHow:


oh here's another one I found from 3 years ago!




I'll update later after I've had a chance to read the book. Here are some notes/references I jotted down during the speech:

-referencing other great movements such as abolition, women's sufferage, child labor, civil rights-- we will be the new abolitionists against poverty and inequality, it will take time!
- flourishing churches (high growth) in failing cities -->concept of parish neighborhood where inner-city churches accept responsibility for what happens in their 12 blk radius
- politics of the common good, challenges selective moralities of Left vs Right
- politicians do not change history, social movements change politics
- "evangel" --> root word for Good News, Luke 4:18- Jesus' first public speech/ mission statement: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor"
- hob nobbing & working with Bono and Bishop Desmond Tutu
- Big Choice: Hope vs Cynicsm - Hope is a decision " believing in spite of evidence --> then watching the evidence change". Christians -prisoners of Hope
- Justice Revivals this summer, sojo.net

PADS

My church supports DuPage Public Action to Deliver Shelter (PADS). Every 3rd Monday we provide food for the homeless. It was really cold outside last night. I got there late ~ 6:45 and most of the guests were inside already. I wish there was a more permanent solution to homelessness that we could wave a magic wand and everyone would have a place to stay....

J & her friend S helped me carry in the stuff I voluteered to bring this month:

-a big pan of baked mac & cheese
- a cocunut bundt cake w lime/yogurt/confectioner's sugar glaze and toasted coconut on top -very tropical I thought for a night below 10 degrees! (next time I'll take a picture!)

- 3 liters of Diet pop

I love to bake so its actually fun to make desserts and then not have to gain the calories by having it around the house to tempt me!

Ministry of Truth

This was a good article I just read on Salon.com by Michael Massing

In his reflections on politics and language, Orwell operated on the assumption that people want to know the truth. Often, though, they don't. In the case of Iraq, the many instruments Orwell felt would be needed to keep people passive and uninformed -- the nonstop propaganda messages, the memory holes, the rewriting of history, Room 101 -- have proved unnecessary. The public has become its own collective Ministry of Truth -- a reality that, in many ways, is even more chilling than the one Orwell envisioned.

Several books were mentioned in the article that I've added to my To-Read list... stories from soldiers and journalists who have been there and see the profound damage to the civilian Iraqi population. I feel sorry for the soldiers too -first having to deal with this extremely stressful situation of kill or maybe be killed, but also that nobody pays attention to the psychological damage they're going through when they get back home.

Shooting at Northern (NIU)

So sad... very very sad. Its awful when it happens ANYWHERE and this really feels too close to home.

(Updated with graphic on 2/26- I saw this in the Trib on 2/19. Artist: Scott Stantis -Birmingham News)

Against Marriage?

Against marriage (since 1966!)

" Even when subjected to the enormous strains I have described, the habits, customs, traditions, and taboos that make up our courtship and marriage cycle are uncommonly resistant to change. Here and there creative and courageous individuals can and do work out their own unique solutions to the problem of marriage. Most of us simply suffer without understanding and thrash around blindly in an attempt to reduce the acute pain of a romance gone sour. In time, all of these individual actions will show up as a trend away from the old and toward the new, and the bulk of sluggish moderates in the populations will slowly come to accept this trend as part of social evolution.

I wish I had not rushed into being married. I wish that I had not been so naive at age 26. I don't necessarily think that the institution of marriage is doomed to failure I just think that people need to go into it with more REALISTIC expectations. I think marriage is the best institution in which to raise children, our beloved next generation. But you have to really know who that person is. Love and expectation about what it means to be an "adult" can blind you. I don't know that anyone could have stopped me from making a big mistake based on the info and societal expectations I felt at the time, but I wish someone would have told me the realities of marriage beforehand. I don't necessarily think living together first is the best option either. I just think no body prepares you for the hard times and unlimited compromises - especially if you come from a relatively happy two-parent household! I hope my worldview doesn't jade my daughter J from the benefits of finding "true love" - but she will know that it doesn't always work. And I will tell the same thing to my nieces. Go to college, find a career you really enjoy, be prepared to take care of yourself and your kid if it doesn't work out. Also I will tell them never underestimate the force of societal expectations that work against your personal happiness. That said, the outcome of my failed marriage, was a freedom from my previous definition of a failed marriage as personal failure,... and best of all, one very awesome kid! Yeah for J - I love her so much.

Finally, I can't believe this was written in 1966 !! ( a good year for bein' born) . Ahead of its time. (BTW Have I mentioned lately how much I love -platonically!- Mr. Sullivan - he always finds these cool topics!) My heart belongs to Mr. Shannon. And he doesn't want to marry me... but I know he loves me.
" many should be encouraged to carry out their own creative experiments in living together in a relationship that is wholly voluntary. If the demands of society to conform seem overwhelming, the couple should know that simply to be defined by others as married will elicit married-like behavior in themselves, and that is precisely what they want to avoid. How do you marry and yet live like gentle lovers, or at least like friendly roommates? " (especially if you aren't going to have kids together... I'm sure everyone at my church would disagree)

As my favorite songwriter sings, "spare parts and broken hearts keep the world turnin' ....around".

Debt and Sacrifice

I just went through some expenses and a review of personal spending yesterday.I decided I'm going to save my refund for J's college fund, and start cutting back, make sure I have enough saved to give to my charities at the end of the year.... . Unpatriotic?, so be it.

sacrifice now or sacrifice later... (dailyKos by zic)-regarding the " tax rebate "
I agree. I want to yell : "America: Take Head Out of Sand"

Our federal government does know how to ask us to sacrifice, it just refuses to ask. Because if they don't ask, if they pretend it's not needed, If they don't disturb us too much, of the young just sit still a few days longer, they can take a little bit more to fill their emptiness. They can buy our complicity a few more days while they try and steal a bit more of the future away from our children.

If the rest of us are gonna get back some money -- it's a rebate, we've got it coming to us -- to spend now, and you know what? it's another part of the national debt that those young Americans are being asked to pay down the road. But just mabye it will jump the economy enough so that our theft of their future won't be noticed for a few more days.

Back when I was young ( early '20's) there used to be a political organization called Lead or Leave, lobbying for the middle-agers and old folks not to screw us over with the debt. This was in the pre-internet days so that fact that I even found out about it once to go to a meeting in San Diego was something. Well, the chickens are coming home to roost. I hope the Republican Gen-Xers receive the inheritance they were expecting from their wealthy parents. Now we all can pay for their free drugs and free rides on Metra too. Young people need to VOTE, there is no other way to get this balanced out. The politicians will give the benefits to the generation that votes in the largest numbers. That said, I'm not young anymore but that doesn't mean I'm not looking out for my daughter! I just wish more of the older generation had done the same for us. Debt clock link. Now the debt/GDP is at least 10% higher than it was in the early 90's, even though the economy has obviously grown over that time. Can't afford it.

I'm on track for an UPswing

I just sent this email to my sis and best-est friends. One way to look on the bright side and cheer up my pals:

Ladies :

Did you see this on the news? ... Science research update-for-the-day: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22896014/

" Middle age is miserable for many, according to a study using data from 80 countries showing that depression is most common among men and women in their 40s" "It looks from the data like something happens deep inside humans. For the average person in the modern world, the dip in mental health and happiness comes on slowly, not suddenly in a single year. Only in their 50s do most people emerge from the low period. But encouragingly, by the time you are 70, if you are still physically fit then on average you are as happy and mentally healthy as a 20 year old. Perhaps realizing that such feelings are completely normal in midlife might even help individuals survive this phase better."

also, http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/researchers_find_that/

" In the US they found a significant difference between men and women with unhappiness reaching a peak at around 40 years of age for women and 50 years of age for men"

- hey we should be on the Upswing by now!!!

Come next May, instead of crying about being another year (or 4-6 months!) older than most of you, I'll be really and truly much happier that I'm that much closer to climbing out of my "middle-age" funk. By the time we're 70 we should be as happy as we were when we were 20-yr-olds! Woo Hoo!

Even better- by comparison we can look forward to NOT driving around in pea-green Pinto-hatchback-death-mobiles (Trish!) or barf-brown Volare station wagons (mine- aargh!) from the 1970's ;~) Hey as long as we're not in wheel-chairs everything should be A-OK peachy keen by then. Hopefully! (Then our kids can be depressed for us.... aahh the circle of life.)

Let's not wait until we're 70 to have some fun though...

L.B.

Here's a pic I found online that's similar

Electronic Frontier Foundation, FISA & privacy

I'm on the EFF email list... lot's of stuff going down this week.

Since I already know that Durbin's fighting against the FISA Telecom Immunity Bill I just called a left a message with Obama's offices -at his DC office, his Chicago office, and an #800 they gave me to pass along my feedback to the campaign. This would be a very good way to demonstrate "presidential-ness". No lame excuses to avoid the vote even if they don't have enough votes. He could be in there influencing the vote of his colleagues right now- as could Senator Clinton!

Glenn Greenwald from Salon.com is also on the case!

History & Totalitarianism

Very interesting article in WIRED (h/t Instapundit) about a project to find out what was written on all the East German Stasi reports on their people- alot of them were ripped up or shredded and now they are trying to piece them all back together with technology. This caught my attention for 2 reasons. (1) I finished reading "1984" by George Orwell a couple of weeks ago. It was certainly THE most depressing book I've ever read - (... well, OK "Sophie's Choice" is a close second). But I'm really glad I read it because its so relevant to our times,... issues about privacy, terrorism, torture, PRESERVING HISTORY. I'm still absorbing it. It certainly inspires me to NOT take any government actions for granted, benign or otherwise. (2) I loved the movie referenced, "The Lives of Others"! Its a foreign film I rented on Netflix last summer and its one of those that also really sticks with you long after you watch it, Highly Recommended!

" Requests dipped in the late 1990s, but the Oscar-winning 2006 film The Lives of Others, about a Stasi agent who monitors a dissident playwright, seems to have prompted a surge of new applications; 2007 marked a five-year high. "Every month, 6,000 to 8,000 people decide to read their files for the first time," Bormann says. These days, the Stasi Records Office spends $175 million a year and employs 2,000 people.

This being Germany, there's even a special word for it: Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or "coming to terms with the past." It's not self-evident — you could imagine a country deciding, communally, to recover from a totalitarian past by simply gathering all the documents and destroying them. In fact, in 1990 the German press and citizen committees were wracked by debate over whether to do just that. Many people, however, suspected that former Stasi agents and ex-informants were behind the push to forgive and forget.

By preserving and reconstructing the Stasi archives, BStU staffers say they hope to keep history from repeating itself. In November, the first children born after the fall of the wall turned 18. Evidence suggests many of them have serious gaps in their knowledge of the past. In a survey of Berlin high school students, only half agreed that the GDR was a dictatorship. Two-thirds didn't know who built the Berlin Wall."

Obama MLK speech

This is why Obama will be President next year....

Martin Luther King Day - 2008 - Where is the Love?

I heard MLK's great speech on WBEZ on the way back from my chiropractor appointment this morning: Beyond Vietnam speech . Absolutely mesmerizing. (text here) .... I'd never heard it before. I want to hear it again! It was a political speech he gave exactly one year before his death. It focused on Vietnam, but it was so so relevant for today. His predictions seem to have come true:

The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

.....
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just."

Listen to the WHOLE thing!

It was definitely one of those driveway times when you just can't pull yourself out of the car because you don't want to miss one single word. Where are our leaders? Who could do this today? Why do only politicians have a soapbox to stand on, ....

With my sister, we do a 15 minute music session for the 2nd -5th graders before their Sunday school classes. Yesterday we decided to have them listen to Springsteen's version of "We Shall Overcome" and sing it together. I also had downloaded a 3-min snippet .mp3 of Dr. King explaining the significance of this song in civil rights history. So I think it was surprising to some of them to actually hear his voice. I wish we had had more time to do more,.. it was a little out of the ordinary lesson for them. But whatever! That's the teacher's prerogative!

I wanted to play this Black Eyed Peas video too, but we didn't have time!

Too much stuff, too much food, too much info

I've got most of these problems, including "infomania". Aargh.
Remember this....!
I've gradually started to wean myself off of the celebrity news sites, I used to read PerezHilton and EOnline every day. I don't really miss it... plus if anything major happens I'm sure to read about it on a regular "news" site like msnbc.com, or cnn.com. I guess I've always had the too much info thing....it can certainly be anxiey provoking if all you're reading is BAD news. Sometimes its hard to step away from the computer. But I LOVE to read pop-science stuff like this. Go figure.

streamline material possessions
eat slower and less
drag yourself away from the computer once in awhile!

RTWT

In Defense of Food!

Michael Pollan - one of my top non-fiction book writers....

He has a new book out this month - In Defense of Food - An Eater's Manifesto which I'm actually going to BUY instead of get at the library because I loved his other books SO MUCH!

Our Decrepit Food Factories - NYT

Whenever we try to rearrange natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever we may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared to treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice word.

Also great interview (~ 35 minutes) on Science Friday, NPR with Michael Pollan:

Notes as I listen:

- "Nutritionism!" a new word/ideology for adding or altering nutrients as individual components (beta-carotene, omega-3's etc) in "functional foods" versus just the whole food itself.... ie that we need a scientist now to tell us what's healthy to eat and confusing the issue/discourse.

- Tradition is a reliable source of distilled wisdom -eat food your great-grandmother would recognize as food ( not too many ingredients). I agree -I think the hardest part isn't eating healthy but eating LESS. That's the monkey on MY back.

- "Eating is about other things BESIDES our health"!

- How to recognize organic beef- look for the word "pastured"... cattle are eating the equivalent of our fast food diet, with antibiotics. Free running hens far superior, best eggs are pastured - go outside and eat grass and bugs etc... eggs are higher in O-3's, higher in nutrients.

- Be willing to pay more MONEY for good healthy food- pay more, but eat less! Industrial food is artificially cheap. Spend more TIME on food.(buying, prep, eating, cleaning up). Don't outsource your food making.

- Cooking shows make cooking at home look too difficult or intimidating - like comparing porn videos to "regular" sex!

-Best choices for your health turn out to be best choices for the environment

Misc Monday links & Op-Ed's

George McGovern op-ed in WaPo calling for impeachment.

Stewart & Colbert are coming back tonight! Yeah!!

This Op-Ed by Dennis Jett was in Sunday's Tribune Perspective section. It says everything I want to say about what's happening:

Why is it that those who proclaim their patriotism the loudest often demonstrate the least understanding of what this country stands for? Or to put it more accurately, what this country should stand for.
....

Many people who normally urge a limited role for government somehow expect from it absolute security in an uncertain world. They see no reason for government to protect others from hunger or ill health while conferring on it unlimited powers to protect them from any foreign threat, real or imagined. These patriots claim they support our troops, but they think there is no price too high for our soldiers to pay so that they may enjoy a greater sense of safety.They also assume that the actions they propose will produce only the desired results and never have unintended consequences.

We must ask ourselves: If we are not unequivocally against torture, then what do we stand for?The State Department each year does a human-rights report card on every other nation in the world. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice often asserts with a straight face that the Bush administration lives up to its commitments and bases its foreign policy on our values. She also has explained why: "When we respect our international legal obligations and support an international system based on the rule of law, we do the work of making the world a better place, but also a safer and more secure place for America."

That, in the end, is the best way to protect America: to live up to our rhetoric and our values.

RTWT!