Lizard Meme

Time Apart

2006-08-10T20:24:00.000-07:00

You might have noticed that the Lizard and I haven't been on speaking terms for a while. We haven't spoken for almost three months, in fact! Maybe the time apart will do us good.

I just can't get past the feeling that the Lizard is secretly wasting my time. I'm too old to be wasting time (at least that's what I think).

I don't yet know if we'll ever reconcile--the Lizard and I. You might have to meet me someplace else, someplace less . . . restrictive, someplace with more of a purpose.

What do you do with a worn out meme?

Bread

2006-05-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

For the last nearly two years, I've been trying to recreate the bread that we enjoyed while living in Germany. I've made crusty bread, and dense bread, and dark bread, but I've never quite achieved my goal. I know I won't be able to match the results of professional bakers and centuries of tradition, but getting close enough to fool our aging memories would be good enough.

Yesterday I made a loaf that signals some potential.

When I pointed out all of the different kinds of bread that I particularly enjoyed, our German friend told me they were all sourdough, using mixed grains. So I tried to create my own sourdough starter, but ended up with a smelly, gooey mass. And my research told me that it can take months, if not years, for a sourdough culture to mature and stabilize. I continued searching.

I eventually found this website: Carl Griffith's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter. Carl, now deceased, was in possession of a sourdough culture that had been in his family for over 150 years! It was his policy to send a small portion of his dried starter to anyone who sent him a self-addressed stamped envelope. The tradition is being carried on by his friends and beneficiaries.

I received my dried starter earlier this week. After a few days of reviving and feeding, I finally had enough to bake a batch of bread. It turned out great for a first try! I have two cultures going now--both wheat and rye versions. This bread was the rye version, which I hope will eventually result in a passable German loaf. I was going to take a picture, but we've already devoured a portion, and it doesn't look so pretty anymore.

I adapted the starter to use in this recipe: Ray's Sourdough Rye Bread. It's hard to believe that so much flavor can be achieved using only flour, water and salt.

I'm looking forward to more experimenting. I especially love the history that is associated with every loaf I bake. I think 150 years is pretty good for an American tradition. And it's fun to think that the same culture probably passed through our area on a covered wagon. If you feel the need to incorporate even more history, look at the old world cultures available from Sourdoughs International.

Pollan Blogs

2006-05-12T06:33:00.000-07:00

Michael Pollan, one of my favorite nonfiction authors, has started writing a blog for the New York Times, focusing on food and its many connections to politics, economics, health, etc. But, if you click on the link to the blog, you'll discover that you must pay to read Mr. Pollan's thoughts. Those bastards! I hate NYTimes Select. I signed up for a free trial in order to get a taste.

I've copied Mr. Pollan's first three posts to give you a sample of his style and subject matter. (Maybe I'll be getting a call from the NYTimes legal team.)

In lieu of following his thought process on a daily basis, you can satiate your appetite for his writing by going to his website. He has links to most of his published articles on the Writing page. You can also look at his speaking schedule. I see he was in Portland last night--Deb, did you go? He will be in DC on May 19 & 21, Dupont Circle Farmers Market on the latter date. Will my friends be going to hear him speak? Living in Kansas, I don't get to take in special events like this very often, so I must live vicariously through my friends.

Here are the blog posts:

May 11, 2006
9:06 pm
Why Eating Well Is ‘Elitist’

Thanks for all the great posts from readers — you’ve given me a lot to chew on, and there are many questions and comments I plan to address in future posts. But for today, I want to look briefly at the “elitism” issue raised by several of you. As you will see it also ties into the good question raised by Paul Stamler about whether consumer action — voting with your forks — is adequate to the task of changing the American way of eating.

It is a fact that to eat healthily in this country — by which I mean consuming food that contributes both to the eater’s health as well as to the health of the environment — costs more than it does to eat poorly. Indeed, the rules of the game by which we eat create a situation in which it is actually rational to eat poorly.

Let’s say you live on fixed income, and struggle to keep your family fed. When you go to the supermarket, you are, in effect, foraging for energy — calories — to keep your family alive. So what are you going to buy with your precious food dollar? Fresh produce? Or junk food?

A 2004 article in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition by Adam Drewnowski and S.E. Specter offers some devastating answers. One dollar spent in the processed food section of the supermarket — the aisles in the middle of the store — will buy you 1200 calories of cookies and snacks. That same dollar spent in the produce section on the perimeter will buy you only 250 calories of carrots. Similarly, a dollar spent in the processed food aisles will buy you 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of fruit juice. So if you’re in the desperate position of shopping simply for calories to keep your family going, the rational strategy is to buy the junk.

Mr. Drewnowski explains that we are driven by our evolutionary inheritance to expend as little energy as possible seeking out as much food energy as possible. So we naturally gravitate to “energy-dense foods” — high-calorie sugars and fats, which in nature are rare and hard to find. Sugars in nature come mostly in the form of ripe fruit and, if you’re really lucky, honey; fats come in the form of meat, the getting of which requires a great expense of energy, making them fairly rare in the diet as well. Well, the modern supermarket reverses the whole caloric calculus: the most energy-dense foods are the easiest — that is, cheapest — ones to acquire. If you want a concise explanation of obesity, and in particular why the most reliable predictor of obesity is one’s income level, there it is.

The question is, how did energy-dense foods become so much cheaper in the supermarket than they are in the state of nature? This is not a function of the free market. It is very simply a function of government policy: our farm policies subsidize the most energy-dense and least healthy calories in the supermarket. We write checks to farmers for every bushel of corn and soy they can grow, and partly as a result they grow vast quantities of the stuff, driving down the cost of the processed foods we make from those commodities. In effect, we’re subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup. And we’re not subsidizing the growing of carrots and broccoli. Put another way, our tax dollars are the reason that the cheapest calories in the market are the least healthy ones.

That situation is a public problem and can be addressed only through public action — by rewriting the rules of the game by which we eat. We need farm policies that will somehow right this imbalance, so that healthy calories can compete with unhealthy ones — so that it becomes rational for someone with little to spend on food to buy the carrots instead of the cookies, the orange juice instead of the Sprite. Until that happens, eating well will remain “elitist.”

May 10, 2006
8:57 pm
Taking Food Seriously

Whenever I’m in the company of other journalists and the conversation turns to our respective beats, mine — food — usually draws a silent snicker. It’s deemed a less-than-serious subject, and I suppose compared to covering war or national security, it can be viewed that way. Even when someone is ostensibly complimenting a food story, as a colleague of mine recently did, it comes out backhanded, like so: “You wouldn’t think a piece about food could be so … interesting.”

No? Excuse me, but are you not dependent on the stuff?

This disdain for food journalism has several springs. One of them surely is sexism: at least in some quarters, food is traditionally women’s work; therefore journalism about it is, too. In general, journalism that deals with everyday life close to home will never enjoy the prestige of the exotic dateline. Another source of this low esteem is the venue in which much food journalism is found: the Wednesday food supplements of daily newspapers, the historical purpose of which has been to keep full-page supermarket advertisements from bumping into one another. Tremendous quantities of fluff journalism have been committed in the name of covering food.

But this is changing: look again at your paper’s Wednesday food section, and you’ll find it brimming with issues of politics, economics and health, not to mention agriculture and cultural politics. Today, instead of “Great Dishes for Which We Have Campbell’s Soup to Thank,” you’re much more likely to find tough pieces on school board battles to drive fast food from the cafeteria, the links between E.P.A. air pollution rules and methyl mercury levels in tuna, backdoor efforts to weaken federal standards for organic agriculture—or as in today’s Times, profiles of mukraking journalists like Eric Schlosser. If you’re interested in reading sharp coverage of political economy, Wednesday newspapers have become one of the best places to find it.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself,” John Muir once wrote, “we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” Some of these things are better hitched than others, and food is surely one of them. We don’t ordinarily think about it this way, but eating represents our most powerful engagement with the natural world — it transforms the world by remaking the landscape more than any other human activity, and it transforms, and defines, us. Whenever a biologist wants to understand the role of a creature in the ecosystem, the first question he or she asks is, What does that creature eat, and what eats it? What, in other words, is its place in the food chain? Well, Homo sapiens is no exception. As William Ralph Inge, the English essayist, wrote early in the last century, “all of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.” Even the eating of a Twinkie represents transactions between species, though in the case of the Twinkie I’d be hard pressed to name all the species involved. (Have you read a Twinkie ingredient list lately? It’s long and full of surprises, one of which is beef.)

I teach a course at Berkeley’s graduate journalism school called “Following the Food Chain,” and what my students quickly discover as they go down that trail is that it takes them to a great many unexpected places. Food connects us to nature, first and foremost, but it also attaches us to all the other large systems that organize our lives — from energy and economics to politics, public health and cultural identity.

In recent years we’ve all come to appreciate the critical links between oil and things like the health of our economy and the conduct of our foreign policy. Crises have a way of laying bare such connections. I’ll wager that food will soon take its place alongside energy as an issue of national security. This would be nothing new. Often in the past, when food has been in short supply or the desire for certain kinds of it (like spices) has been sufficiently powerful, food has shaped the destiny of nations. The fact that we don’t think about food in these terms today is probably a testament to what a good job the food industry has done keeping us well (or at least abundantly) fed, our supermarkets fabulously stocked and our attention fixed on the glossy new products and “value meals,” rather than on the way the food is produced or what it does to us when we eat it. During the last 50 years we’ve been living in a kind of fool’s food paradise, marked by astounding bounty and apparent choice.

Immediately after 9/11, we had a brief taste of the national security implications of the way we feed ourselves. There was much anxious talk about the terrorist threat to our “food security,” a term unfamiliar to most Americans. People in Congress and the Food and Drug Administration worried publicly about the high degree of centralization in the industrial food supply. In a situation where a single meat-processing plant is supplying hamburger – typically ground together from hundreds of cows from many countries on multiple continents — to hundreds of thousands of Americans at a time, a single act or accident of contamination could sicken or kill vast numbers of people. (Only four corporations process 80 percent of the beef consumed in America today.)

There was talk in Congress of reorganizing our food safety system, now Balkanized among several far-flung federal bureaucracies. But that moment passed; the industry wanted to keep things as they are. And although security has since been tightened at many big food plants (incidentally, making it more difficult for journalists to gain access), no one had the stomach to confront the larger problem: that in an era of terrorism threats (and widespread concern about food-borne illness), a highly centralized food supply system is precisely what you don’t want. No, what you want is a food system that is redundant and highly decentralized, so that a crisis in one region doesn’t become a national crisis. In his farewell press conference as outgoing Secretary of Homeland Security, Tommy Thompson broke the silence on this threat once again: “For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do.”

Sooner or later, the inexorable trend toward free world trade also will force the food security issue to the forefront of our attention. Economists will tell you that when we stop subsidizing American farmers (and the pressure to do so is mounting, from an unlikely alliance of the World Trade Organization, developing world countries and U.S. agribusiness companies) and protecting their market with tariffs, our food will come from wherever in the world it can be produced most cheaply. That means it will come from countries where land is cheapest and environmental laws most lax. This is precisely where the logic of free trade is taking us: the iron law of competitive advantage dictates that we should put our land to “higher uses” — like houses — rather than doing something as old-fashioned with it as growing food. And indeed I’ve heard projections from people working for the governor of California suggesting that by the end of this century, the Central Valley – where most of America’s fresh produce is grown — will be wall-to-wall houses and highways: no more farming.

Where will our food come from then? From Mexico, South America and, increasingly, China. And how do you feel about that? I find that, whatever people may think about free trade in sneakers and electronics, they are distinctly uncomfortable about giving up our ability to feed ourselves. Food feels different from other commodities, which may explain why, worldwide, many of the most powerful protests against globalization have centered around food: the protests against genetically modified crops, the movement to defend local food against the global tide of homogenization. We see every day how our dependence on foreign energy has crippled our foreign policy. Imagine how much more debilitating a dependence on foreign food would be. Make no mistake, how we feed ourselves is about to become a national security issue.

May 7, 2006
8:30 pm
Voting With Your Fork

To someone who’s spent the last few years thinking about the American food chain, a visit to Manhattan’s Union Square in the spring of 2006 feels a little like a visit to Paris in the spring of 1968 must have felt, or perhaps closer to the mark, Peoples Park in Berkeley in the summer of 1969. Not that I was in either of those places at the appointed historical hour, or that the stakes are quite as high. (Isn’t hyperbole an earmark of Internet literary style? O.K. then.) But today in these few square blocks of lower Manhattan, change is in the air, and the future — at least the future of food — is up for grabs.

When Whole Foods planted its flag on 14th Street last year, setting up shop an heirloom tomato’s throw from one of the nation’s liveliest farmer’s markets, two crucial visions of an alternative American food chain — what I call, somewhat oxymoronically, Industrial Organic and Local — faced off. And then this spring Trader Joe’s opened in Union Square, further complicating the picture (for both the farmer’s market and Whole Foods) with its discount take on both organic and artisanal food.

The shopping choices laid out so succinctly for New Yorkers in Union Square today neatly encapsulate the kinds of question we will all be grappling with over the next few years as we navigate an increasingly complex, politicized and ethically challenging food landscape. The organic strawberry or the conventional? The grass-fed or the organic beef? And, if the grass-fed, the Whole Foods steak from New Zealand or the Hudson Valley steak across the street? The organic tomato or the New Jersey beefsteak? The omega-3 fortified eggs or the cage-free eggs? (That last phrase is one of my favorite snatches of recent supermarket prose: I mean, does an egg really care whether it’s caged or not?) The ultra-pasteurized milk or the raw? The farmed fish or the wild? In January, the jet-setting winter asparagus from Argentina or the rutabaga from Upstate? And how do you cook a rutabaga, anyway?

I’ve been doing a lot of food reporting over the past couple years and have discovered there are no simple, one-size-fits-all answers to these questions (several of which I hope to take up in future columns). But it seems to me the crucial thing is that such questions about how we should eat, and how what we eat affects both our health and the health of the world, confront us today in a way they never before have. My explorations of the American food chain — or now, food chains — have convinced me that these questions (except perhaps the one about rutabaga) are actually political questions, and much depends on how we choose to answer them. The market for alternative foods of all kinds — organic, local, pasture-based, humanely raised — represents the stirrings of a movement, or rather a novel hybrid: a market-as-movement. Over the next month I plan to use this column as a place to conduct a conversation with readers (or “r-eaters,” as someone at a lecture proposed the other night) about the politics of food.

Union Square, which 75 years ago served as the red-hot center of the labor movement, is now, at least symbolically, ground zero of the food movement. And while much separates the various choices and philosophies on offer here, it’s important to recognize what unifies the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and the farmer’s market, and what has brought so many of us 21st century food foragers to Union Square and all places like it: the gathering sense that there is something very wrong with our conventional food system — what I call the industrial food chain, by which I mean typical supermarket and fast food.

It has become a commonplace to say that the industrial food system is not “sustainable” — indeed, even Monsanto now acknowledges that American agriculture is not sustainable. (Which is why it supposedly needs the company’s genetically modified organisms in place of pesticides.) But it’s worth taking a moment to think through exactly what it means to say that a system is unsustainable, lest the word lose its force. What it means, very simply, is that a practice or activity cannot go on as it has much longer — that, because of various internal contradictions, it will sooner or later break down.

This is the the case with our industrial food chain: evidence of failure is all around us. While it is true that this system produces vast quantities of cheap food (indeed, the vastness and cheapness is part of the problem), it is not doing what any nation’s food system foremost needs to do: that is, maintain its population in good health. Historians of the future will marvel at the existence of a civilization whose population was at once so well-fed and so unhealthy. This is unprecedented. For most of history, the “food problem” has been a problem of quantity. Our shocking rates of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, foodborne illness and nutrient deficiency suggest that quantity is not the problem — or the solution.

To say a system is unsustainable also means it cannot endure indefinitely for the simple reason that it is using up the very resources it depends on: it is eating its seed corn. Certainly this is the case in industrial agriculture, which is literally consuming the soil and the genetic diversity on which it depends: there’s half as much topsoil in Iowa today as there was a century ago, and our single-minded focus on a tiny number of crops (and within those crops a tiny number of varieties) is driving untold numbers of plant and animal varieties to extinction. These are genes whose disappearance we will rue when our monocultures fail, as all monocultures sooner or later do.

“Unsustainable” also means a system can’t go on indefinitely paying the costs of doing business as it has been doing. In the case of the industrial food chain, that includes the cost to the treasury ($88 billion in agricultural subsidies over the last five years); to the environment (water and air pollution, especially from our factory animal farms); and to the public health. Cheap food, it turns out, is unbelievably expensive. Many of the costs of cheap food are invisible to us, but they will soon force themselves onto our attention. Take energy, for example. The industrial food system is at bottom a system founded on cheap fossil fuel, which we depend on to grow the crops (the fertilizers and pesticides are made from petroleum), process the food, and then ship it hither and yon. Fully a fifth of the fossil fuel we consume in America goes to feeding ourselves, more than we devote to personal transportation. (Unfortunately the industrial organic food chain guzzles nearly as much fossil fuel as the nonorganic.) If the era of cheap energy is really drawing to a close, as it appears, so will the era of cheap industrial food.

The last sense in which the industrial food chain is unsustainable is that it depends on our ignorance of how it works for its continued survival. Indeed, our ignorance of its methods is as important to its workings as cheap energy. If I’ve learned anything over the past several years, as I’ve followed the industrial food chain from the supermarkets and fast food outlets back through the meatpacking plants and C.A.F.O.’s (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) and food science laboratories and farm fields, it is that the more you know about this food, the less appetizing it becomes to eat. If people could peer over the increasingly high walls of our industrial agriculture they would surely change the way they eat.

Increasing numbers of Americans aren’t waiting: they’re changing now. This desire for something better — something safer, something more sustainable, something more humane and something tastier — is what’s bringing people to the Whole Foods and the farmer’s market, as well as to C.S.A.’s (community-supported agriculture programs, about which more in a subsequent post) and directly to farmers over the Internet. Taken together the fastest growing segment of the American food system are these alternatives to it. Change is indeed in the air.

And this change is not limited to the marketplace. A vibrant grass-roots movement to change food (and beverages) in the schools is rapidly spreading across the country — witness last week’s tactical retreat of the soda makers from school cafeterias. A debate is just getting underway about food policy at the federal level, as Congress starts work on the next farm bill; it will have to decide whether the government should continue to subsidize high-fructose corn syrup at a time when we have an epidemic of Type 2 diabetes. Animal rights groups are forcing the fast food industry to change the miserable condition in which billions of food animals now live.

I write from the road, where I’m on tour promoting my book, and I’m hearing a lot of anxiety around the subject food but also a lot of hope. Indeed, of all the issues before us today, the food issue is one of the most hopeful. As the tableaux in Union Square demonstrates, we have choices. We no longer have to take the food on offer, which makes this issue unique.

A couple of weeks ago we all paid our taxes. Whenever I write that check, I can’t help but think of the various uses to which that money is put. Whatever your politics, there are activities your tax money supports that I’m sure you find troublesome, if not deplorable. But you can’t do anything about those activities — you can’t withdraw your support — unless you’re prepared to go the jail. Food is different. You can simply stop participating in a system that abuses animals or poisons the water or squanders jet fuel flying asparagus around the world. You can vote with your fork, in other words, and you can do it three times a day.

So this column will take the form of a discussion about how to cast those sorts of votes. I take seriously this idea of conversation. I’ve found that publishing a book in the Internet era (my last one came out in 2001, before the word blog had even been coined) is a completely new and bracing experience, far more reciprocal than writing has ever been. I get e-mail from people reporting they’re on page six and have a question they’d like answered before they go on. (This seems a bit much…) When I go on the radio and say something dubious or sloppy, inevitably someone will straighten me out within the hour. Daily, readers and listeners force me to rethink my positions or consider questions I’d never known to ask. Make no mistake: not all of these questions are so provocative. The other day a reader emailed to ask, “So what do you think about dried fruit?”

I take all these questions (well, almost all of them) as a sign of a healthy ferment rising around the politics of food, and have undertaken this blog to air the best of them in a more public way than my e-mail correspondence. So come gather around this table to talk. About anything — except, unless you absolutely insist, dried fruit.

Home

2006-05-10T05:48:00.000-07:00

I did finally get home, at midnight on Sunday. Six days of travel, with three days spent in Port North, Fla., broken down. Not a good start with a new car. Hopefully it's a fluke. The brakes locked up while I was driving 75 mph on I-75. By the time I got pulled off the interstate, the one wheel was on fire. My Nalgene came in handy . . .

I spent three nights in a really dumpy motel, walking a mile or two twice a day in scorching heat to wait in the Tuffy waiting room. As Florida seems to be the land of strip malls and subdivisions, there wasn't much to see within walking distance. One day I did find a bicycle to rent, which allowed me to go to a mineral springs resort. But I was scared off by the flock of scantily clad senior citizens. Oh well.

The strangest event of the trip was meeting Debra, from South Bend, Ind., in the Tuffy Automotive waiting room. Her husband is a professor of philosophy and law at Notre Dame. The strange part of it was that I ended up riding around in her car for an hour, to the beach to take a picture, and to the library. She was bored, in town to check up on her elderly mother, and I was obviously bored, so we had fun talking about northern Indiana. We found several common points (her husband was friends with John Howard Yoder). She grew up in Rhode Island and lived many years in San Francisco, so not quite your average midwesterner.

I watched lots of bad TV, trying to keep my mind occupied, so I wouldn't think of all the terrible things that could happen in the next 1600 miles of my trip. You see, I broke down after driving 15 miles! This experience only adds to my legendary status as the breakdown king.

While my confidence in the reliability and quality of this Mercedes has been shaken, I still think it's a good car. The brake seizure was not something that could have been predicted or identified by a mechanic. Fate and the Florida humidity were against me.

The car is noticeably crappier than what I saw in my head (most things are). The owner, who turned 89 on the day I bought her last car, did not intentionally mislead me. I'm not so sure about her son-in-law. Those no-good son-in-laws! The mechanic who inspected the car for me was less than verbose on the overall condition. I tried to pry the details out of him, but I guess I failed.

I don't regret my purchase (I did in North Port). I'm doing a thorough maintenance routine to cover everything that might have been neglected. After that, only time will tell. I'm depending on the historic reliability and toughness of German engineering.

I still plan to convert it to vegetable oil. (Sorry for being so predictable, Sarah.) A successful conversion will save us a lot of money, which might make up for the Tuffy bill and the cash I'm sinking into the car right now.

Slower than Molasses in January

2006-04-29T21:41:00.000-07:00

After nearly two years of gestation (procrastination), I'm finally putting all of our photos from Europe on the web in an organized fashion. Oh no, they're not all there for you to see, but at least I've started. Eventually I'll also be posting all of our photos since Europe, too.

We are posting to our Flickr site: J.M.K. See what you think.

I won't tell you how long I worked to get things just right. (I tend to obsess about organizational tasks like this. I often forget to eat when I'm working.) And it's probably not perfected yet. But I'm pretty happy with what I've worked out.

I'm posting photos in chronological order. The best way to start looking at them is to treat the albums on the left hand side as a menu. The top few albums will be the menu choices. For now, click on the top album (A Year in Europe), and then the structure should be clear to you. Flickr doesn't allow things to be set up exactly like I want them, but I've tweaked things to get an approximation.

I'd love to have your comments and suggestions. Let me know how easily you were able to use the site.

New Neil Young

2006-04-29T07:12:00.000-07:00

The ever-enigmatic Neil Young has a new "broadside" album available for free listen on the front page of his website: NeilYoung.com. The songs, written and recorded in the last month, comprise his response to the Iraq war, and the music's delivery (free web stream, then digital download, and finally a CD) is a result of his impatience with the slow music industry.

Read the NY Times article below, or watch this video of a recent interview with Neil, for more information. But first go to his website, so you have something to listen to while you read.

Neil Young's 'Living With War' Shows He Doesn't Like It
New York Times
April 28, 2006
By Jon Pareles

Neil Young unleashes a digital broadside today. His new album, "Living With War" (Reprise), was recorded and mostly written three to four weeks ago and as of Friday can be heard in its entirety free on his Web site, www.neilyoung.com, and on satellite radio networks.

Mr. Young half-jokingly describes "Living With War" as his "metal folk protest" album. It's his blunt statement about the Iraq war; "History was a cruel judge of overconfidence/back in the days of shock and awe," he sings, strumming an electric guitar and leading a power trio with a sound that harks back to Young albums like "Rust Never Sleeps" and "Ragged Glory."

Some songs add a trumpet or a 100-voice choir, hastily convened in Los Angeles for one 12-hour session. During the nine new songs he sympathizes with soldiers and war victims, insists "Don't need no more lies," longs for a leader to reunite America and prays for peace.

In a song whose title alone has already brought him the fury of right-wing blogs, he urges, "Let's Impeach the President." It ends with Mr. Young shouting, "Flip, flop," amid contradictory sound bites of President Bush. But Mr. Young insists the album is nonpartisan.

"If you impeach Bush, you're doing a huge favor for the Republicans," he argued, speaking by telephone from California. "They can run again with some pride."

Mr. Young is a Canadian citizen. But having lived in the United States since the 1960's, he sings as if he were an American. The title song of "Living With War" quotes "The Star-Spangled Banner," and the album ends with the choir singing "America the Beautiful."

The album's release is a high-tech, globe-spanning update of a topical song tradition that's much older than recordings: the broadside, a songwriter's rapid response to events of the day. "They had these songs that everybody knew the melodies to," Mr. Young said. "They'd just write new words, and the minstrels would be traveling around spreading the word. Music spreads like wildfire when you do it that way."

On Tuesday a higher-quality version will be for sale as a download from online music stores, and a CD will be in stores next week as soon as it can be manufactured and shipped. Eventually a DVD will be released with video of the recording sessions, which took place March 29 to April 6. Many of the songs on the album were first takes, recorded immediately after Mr. Young taught them to the band. On March 31 he wrote three songs: "Let's Impeach the President" before breakfast, "Looking for a Leader" after he recorded "Let's Impeach the President" and "Roger and Out" the same evening.

Mr. Young's Web site will have a more elaborate presentation, available free. It will include a page designed like a cable-news broadcast, complete with visuals (including recording-session scenes), ticker and logo: LWW (for "Living With War") rather than CNN. "Even if it turns out that we can't sell it with the news in it, we won't sell it, we'll just stream it," he said. "We don't have to sell it. We can still get it out there. This has nothing to do with money as far as I'm concerned."

Mr. Young wants the album heard as a whole. The online streams play through from beginning to end; until the CD is ready, the downloadable copies will be available only as a bundle of the full album. "That first impression is so important," he said. "Instead of just going to 'Let's Impeach the President,' people will have to absorb the whole thing. To understand the songs, you need to understand where the whole album's coming from. It protects my right as an artist to have the work presented the way I created it."

Mr. Young has always been impatient with the time lag between writing a song and getting it to the world. When four student protesters were shot dead at Kent State University in 1970, he wrote "Ohio," recorded it with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and released it two and a half weeks later by sending acetates — preliminary pressings — to radio stations. (He will be on tour this summer as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in what's billed as the Freedom of Speech Tour.)

After 9/11 Mr. Young wrote "Let's Roll," a song about the passengers who brought down a hijacked plane in Pennsylvania, and released it free online. "Now we have the Internet," he said. "It doesn't sound as good, but it's much faster, and it gets around the world. That's huge, that's as big as we get."

The songs on "Living With War" are straightforward and single-minded, setting aside the allusive, enigmatic quality of Mr. Young's rock classics. "These are all ideas we've heard before," he said. "There's nothing new in there. I just connected the dots."

The protest song, rocked-up slightly from its folky 1960's form, has been making a comeback during the Iraq war, from arena bands like Pearl Jam, the Rolling Stones and Green Day to indie-rockers like Bright Eyes and blues-rockers like Keb' Mo' and Robert Cray. Bruce Springsteen's latest album is a tribute to the protest-song mentor Pete Seeger, although it features old folk songs rather than Mr. Seeger's topical material.

"We are the silent majority now, and we haven't done a damn thing," Mr. Young said. "We've stood by and watched this happen. But there's more of us than there is of them, and we have to do something. When people start talking and see they can get away with it, it's going to happen everywhere. It's going to be a landslide, it's going to be a tidal wave. This is just the tip of it."

Mr. Young said that he made "Living With War" not with a plan, but on an impulse. "I don't know what actually did it," he said. "It happened really fast, faster than I think I've ever experienced. There was just a kind of a wave."

As in the 60's, protest songs risk self-righteousness and preaching only to the converted. Only the most generalized ones outlast the interest in whatever headlines inspired them. There's not a lot of mystery to the songs on "Living With War"; they make their points as forthrightly as possible. Yet in the Internet era information — not just songs but blogs, videos, photos, drawings, e-mail jottings — is in the paradoxical position of being published worldwide and perhaps archived forever, but also being impulsive and ephemeral. A song for the Internet doesn't have to be one for the ages. Like an old broadside, it just has to get around for its moment, for right now. "Living With War" — irate, passionate, tuneful, thoughtful and obstinate — is definitely worth a click.

Drug Policy

2006-04-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

This is a very interesting report on a new Mexican drug policy likely to be put into law. On the face of it, I agree with the intentions of the law. Only time will tell how it actually affects small time drug users and big time drug distributors.

Mexico Votes to Decriminalize Some Drugs
AP
April 29, 2006
9:06 a.m. ET

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexicans would be allowed to possess small amounts of cocaine, heroin, even ecstasy for their personal use under a bill approved by lawmakers that some worry could prove to be a lure to young Americans.

The bill now only needs President Vicente Fox's signature to become law and that does not appear to be an obstacle. His office said that decriminalizing drugs will free up police to focus on major dealers.

''This law gives police and prosecutors better legal tools to combat drug crimes that do so much damage to our youth and children,'' said Fox's spokesman, Ruben Aguilar.

The Senate approved the bill Friday in the final hours of its closing session. Mexico's lower house had already endorsed the legislation.

The measure appeared to surprise U.S. officials. State Department spokeswoman Janelle Hironimus said the department was trying to get ''more information'' about it. One U.S. diplomat, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said ''we're still studying the legislation, but any effort to decriminalize illegal drugs would not be helpful.''

Some worried the law would increase drug addiction in Mexico and cause problems with the United States. Millions of American youths visit Mexico's beach resorts and border towns each year.

''A lot of Americans already come here to buy medications they can't get up there ... Just imagine, with heroin,'' said Ulisis Bon, a drug treatment expert in Tijuana, where heroin use is rampant.

In off-the-record chats and through their communications with U.S. officials, Mexican officials tried to depict the drug bill as a simple clarification of existing laws. But the changes are clear.

Currently, Mexican law leaves open the possibility of dropping charges against people caught with drugs if they can prove they are drug addicts and if an expert certifies they were caught with ''the quantity necessary for personal use.''

The new bill drops the ''addict'' requirement, allows ''consumers'' to have drugs, and sets out specific allowable quantities, which do not appear in the current law.

Those quantities are sometimes eye-popping: Mexicans would be allowed to posses 2.2 pounds of peyote, the button-sized hallucinogenic cactus used in some Indian religious ceremonies.

Police would no longer bother with possession of up to 25 milligrams of heroin, 5 grams of marijuana (about one-fifth of an ounce, or about four joints), or 0.5 grams of cocaine -- the equivalent of about 4 ''lines,'' or half the standard street-sale quantity.

The law lays out allowable quantities for a large array of other drugs, including LSD, MDA, MDMA (ecstasy, about two pills' worth), and amphetamines.

However the bill stiffens penalties for trafficking and possession of drugs -- even small quantities -- by government employees or near schools, and maintains criminal penalties for drug sales.

Sales of all those drugs would remain illegal under the proposed law, unlike in the Netherlands, where the sale of marijuana for medical use is legal and it can be bought with a prescription in pharmacies.

And while Dutch authorities look the other way regarding the open sale of cannabis in designated coffee shops -- something Mexican police seem unlikely to do -- the Dutch have zero tolerance for heroin and cocaine.

Sen. Miguel Angel Navarro of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party argued against the bill. ''This authorizes the consumption of opium, morphine, heroin, cocaine, and a variety of drugs that can only be bought illicitly.''

Roman Catholic Bishop Jose Guadalupe Martin Rabago, president of the Mexican Council of Bishops, also expressed concern.

''It's not by legalizing the possession or use of drugs that drug trafficking is going to be combatted,'' the bishop told reporters, ''and that's why the government should be cautious about implementing this measure.''

The law comes at a time of heightened tensions over a U.S. proposal for immigration reform, including legalization of many of America's estimated 11 million undocumented migrants.

A demonstration by thousands of Mexican workers Friday to promote union solidarity turned into a protest against America's vast influence on the nation's economy, with many protesters saying they will take part in a boycott of U.S. products next week. The proposed boycott is timed to coincide with Monday's "Day Without Immigrants" protest in the U.S., aimed at pushing Congress to approve the immigration reform.

Ethan Nadelmann, director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, said Mexico's bill removed ''a huge opportunity for low-level police corruption.'' Mexican police often release people detained for minor drug possession, in exchange for bribes.

Punta Gorda

2006-04-28T06:12:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, I didn't shy away from traveling-related escapades. I've also owned my share of vehicles (10) and had a few adventures both in and with them. (Remind me to tell you about rebuilding the VW engine in the living room of the Arkansas drug dealer.) But since returning from Germany, I've become downright stodgy. So next week I'm off on another adventurous trip.

On Tuesday, at 6:45 am, I'm flying out of Wichita, bound for Ft. Myers, Florida. I will be picked up at the airport by Ann Kelly and her family, and driven to her house in Punta Gorda, Florida. Earlier this week I bought Ann's car through Cars.com, and I'm flying down to pick it up and drive it 1,600 miles home! Yes, I'll be doing this alone.

I'm buying a 1984 Mercedes-Benz 190D. It's a diesel version of the smallest Mercedes model from that era. There's currently an eBay auction underway for a car nearly identical to mine. I haven't actually seen the car I'm buying, not even a photo, but I'm told it's green with tan leather interior. This should be what it looks like.

I never imagined I would buy a Mercedes. But I recently undertook a search to find a car with some specific characteristics, and this car came up as the best match. I decided that I wanted to get a car that I can convert to run on vegetable oil. If you're not familiar with the concept, look at the Wikipedia, Greasel and Greasecar websites. All diesel engines can run on vegetable oil, with a tiny bit of modification. In fact, Rudolf Diesel intended for his engine to run on peanut oil. I plan to buy a conversion kit from Greasel.

Where does the vegetable oil come from? The primary source of vegetable oil used for fuel is the restaurant industry. Since they must pay to dispose of their waste oil, they are usually glad to have someone take it for free. The waste oil must be filtered before using it in a diesel engine, but the total cost for filters and fuel expenses generally runs about $.19 per gallon. Not bad, especially in a car that gets 40 mpg!

Mercedes diesels from the 1980s routinely last 500,000 miles or more. They are considered one of the most reliable engines ever built. There are fanatics out there who have more than a million miles on their Mercedes! The car I'm buying currently has 110,000 miles, all of them driven by a little old lady named Ann. She put 4,500 miles on the car . . . in the last 5 years! Now her kids have taken her license away, because of her age, so she has to sell her car. And I'm the lucky buyer. I could only have dreamed of getting a single-owner, senior-citizen-driven, low-mileage, Florida car! Since Mercedes cars are such a status icon, their owners usually take very good care of them. Ann and her 190D are no exception. (How can I possibly know this, you ask, since I haven't even seen a photo? Well, I had a mechanic from Punta Gorda do an inspection and give me a full report.)

Barring unforeseen disaster, I'll be puttering out of Punta Gorda sometime on Tuesday afternoon, headed for Kansas. I'll let you know how it goes.

Lizard coup d'état

2006-04-28T05:33:00.000-07:00

These folks are pathetic! Twenty-two days without a single word. They obviously need some management to get their keyboards clacking again. So I'm taking over this listing ship; we'll have things righted in no time.

And from now on there's a new policy-meme: no blogging = no blogger. That's right, Mr. Zimmer, Mr. Medalize, Dr. Ezra & Ms. Lizardé, another stint of bloggy silence and you will be silenced. Don't think I won't kick your ass off this Meme!

Which brings me to another thing. What's with your language? We need some color around here! And write something personal for once. This isn't a book club. You've all been slacking off lately.

I'll be a good dictator and start off by following my own rules. (That doesn't mean I can't change them or ignore if I want to.) But right now I'll tell you what I'm up to next week.

Low @ The Record Bar

2006-04-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

Last night I was privileged to take in one of the best shows I have ever heard! Low performed at The Record Bar in Kansas City, and we drove three hours to join them.

The room was good, the crowd of about 75 people was attentive and responsive, and the music was excellent. After cancelling the end of their tour for The Great Destroyer last year due to mental health issues, Low came back with all of the complexity and creativity I could hope for. They seem to be backing off of their recent pop exploration a bit and revisiting the dissonance and tension they've been mining for the last few albums. They also reached way back to 1994 for a rendition of Lazy off of their very first album, I Could Live in Hope. They played a couple other old songs that I think were on EPs, three or four from Trust, a bunch from The Great Destroyer, and then they threw in a few new songs for good measure.

I think the highlights of the night for me were a frighteningly gripping performance of On the Edge Of, and then a fun second encore with strobe lights and a deafening version of When I Go Deaf. Alan seemed much more relaxed and willing to improvise than I've seen before. He repeatedly tiptoed the line between artful distortion and out of control feedback, always pulling back from the edge to burst back into recognizable song just in time. Previous shows have always appeared quite scripted, and Alan commented a few years ago that he doesn't know how to solo. I think he's breaking out, and I don't think I was the only one to enjoy the experience.

If you get a chance to see them yet this tour, it's worth your money. I think they're currently at the top of their game. Speaking from experience with mental illness, no one knows how long it will last.

Book Recommendation

2006-03-31T07:15:00.000-08:00

Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology
By Eric Brende

This is an interesting account of the author's experiment living among an Amish-affiliated group for 18 months. As an MIT graduate student in a technology field, Mr. Brende's goal was to attempt to figure out just how much technology was necessary to live a full and happy life. His discoveries have changed his life. He now earns his living making soap and driving a rickshaw in St. Louis (I'm sure he gets some nice book royalty payments as well). I recommend this book to everyone.

A Kansas Original

2006-03-30T16:19:00.000-08:00

God's Senator: Who would Jesus vote for? Meet Sam Brownback
Rolling Stone
January 25, 2006
by Jeff Sharlet

Nobody in this little church just off Times Square in Manhattan thinks of themselves as political. They're spiritual -- actors and athletes and pretty young things who believe that every word of the Bible is inerrant dictation from God. They look down from the balcony of the Morning Star, swaying and smiling at the screen that tells them how to sing along. Nail-pierced hands, a wounded side. This is love, this is love! But on this evening in January, politics and all its worldly machinations have entered their church. Sitting in the darkness of the front row is Sam Brownback, the Republican senator from Kansas. And hunched over on the stage in a red leather chair is an old man named Harald Bredesen, who has come to anoint Brownback as the Christian right's next candidate for president.

Over the last six decades, Bredesen has prayed with so many presidents and prime ministers and kings that he can barely remember their names. He's the spiritual father of Pat Robertson, the man behind the preacher's vast media empire. He was one of three pastors who laid hands on Ronald Reagan in 1970 and heard the Pasadena Prophecy: the moment when God told Reagan that he would one day occupy the White House. And he recently dispatched one of his proteges to remind George W. Bush of the divine will -- and evangelical power -- behind his presidency.

Tonight, Bredesen has come to breathe that power into Brownback's presidential campaign. After little more than a decade in Washington, Brownback has managed to position himself at the very center of the Christian conservative uprising that is transforming American politics. Just six years ago, winning the evangelical vote required only a veneer of bland normalcy, nothing more than George Bush's vague assurance that Jesus was his favorite philosopher. Now, Brownback seeks something far more radical: not faith-based politics but faith in place of politics. In his dream America, the one he believes both the Bible and the Constitution promise, the state will simply wither away. In its place will be a country so suffused with God and the free market that the social fabric of the last hundred years -- schools, Social Security, welfare -- will be privatized or simply done away with. There will be no abortions; sex will be confined to heterosexual marriage. Men will lead families, mothers will tend children, and big business and the church will take care of all.

Bredesen squints through the stage lights at Brownback, sitting straight-backed and attentive. At forty-nine, the senator looks taller than he is. His face is wide and flat, his skin thick like leather, etched by windburn and sun from years of working on his father's farm just outside Parker, Kansas, population 281. You can hear it in his voice: slow, distant but warm; a baritone, spoken out of the left side of his mouth in half-sentences with few hard consonants. It sounds like the voice of someone who has learned how to wait for rain.

"He wants to be president," Bredesen tells the congregation. "He is marvelously qualified to be president." But, he adds, there is something Brownback wants even more: "And that is, on the last day of your earthly life, to be able to say, 'Father, the work you gave me to do, I have accomplished!'" Bredesen, shrunken with age, leans forward and glares at Brownback.

"Is that true?" he demands.

"Yes," Brownback says softly.

"Friends!" The old man's voice is suddenly a trumpet. "Sam . . . says . . . yes!"

The crowd roars. Those occupying the front rows lay hands on the contender.

Brownback takes the stage. He begins to pace. In front of secular audiences he's a politician, stiff and wonky. Here, he's a preacher, not sweaty but smooth, working a call-and-response with the back rows. "I used to run on Sam power," he says.

"Uh-uh," someone shouts.

To quiet his ambition, Brownback continues, he used to take sleeping pills.

"Oh, Lord!"

Now he runs on God power.

"Hallelujah!"

He tells a story about a chaplain who challenged a group of senators to reconsider their conception of democracy. "How many constituents do you have?" the chaplain asked. The senators answered: 4 million, 9 million, 12 million. "May I suggest," the chaplain replied, "that you have only one constituent?"

Brownback pauses. That moment, he declares, changed his life. "This" -- being senator, running for president, waving the flag of a Christian nation -- "is about serving one constituent." He raises a hand and points above him.

From the balcony a hallelujah, an amen, a yelp. From Bredesen's great white head, now peering up from the front row, Brownback wins an appreciative nod.

This boy, Bredesen thinks, may be the chosen one.

* * *

Back in 1994, when Brownback came to Congress as a freshman, he was so contemptuous of federal authority that he refused at first to sign the Contract With America, Newt Gingrich's right-wing manifesto -- not because it was too radical but because it was too tame. Republicans shouldn't just reform big government, Brownback insisted -- they should eliminate it. He immediately proposed abolishing the departments of education, energy and commerce. His proposals failed -- but they quickly made him one of the right's rising stars. Two years later, running to the right of Bob Dole's chosen successor, he was elected to the Senate.

"I am a seeker," he says. Brownback believes that every spiritual path has its own unique scent, and he wants to inhale them all. When he ran for the House he was a Methodist. By the time he ran for the Senate he was an evangelical. Now he has become a Catholic. He was baptized not in a church but in a chapel tucked between lobbyists' offices on K Street that is run by Opus Dei, the secretive lay order founded by a Catholic priest who advocated "holy coercion" and considered Spanish dictator Francisco Franco an ideal of worldly power. Brownback also studies Torah with an orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn. "Deep," says the rabbi, Nosson Scherman. Lately, Brownback has been reading the Koran, but he doesn't like what he's finding. "There's some difficult material in it with regard to the Christian and the Jew," he tells a Christian radio program, voice husky with regret.

Brownback is not part of the GOP leadership, and he doesn't want to be. He once told a group of businessmen he wanted to be the next Jesse Helms -- "Senator No," who operated as a one-man demolition unit against godlessness, independent of his party. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a man with presidential ambitions of his own, gave Brownback a plum position on the Judiciary Committee, perhaps hoping that Brownback would provide a counterbalance to Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican who threatened to make trouble for Bush's appointees. Instead, taking a page from Helms, Brownback turned the position into a platform for a high-profile war against gay marriage, porn and abortion. Casting Bush and the Republican leadership as soft and muddled, he regularly turns sleepy hearings into platforms for his vision of America, inviting a parade of angry witnesses to denounce the "homosexual agenda," "bestiality" and "murder."

He is running for president because murder is always on his mind: the abortion of what he considers fetal citizens. He speaks often and admiringly of John Brown, the abolitionist who massacred five pro-slavery settlers just north of the farm where Brownback grew up. Brown wanted to free the slaves; Brownback wants to free fetuses. He loves each and every one of them. "Just . . . sacred," he says. In January, during the confirmation of Samuel Alito for a seat on the Supreme Court, Brownback compared Roe v. Wade to the now disgraced rulings that once upheld segregation.

Alito was in the Senate hearing room that day largely because of Brownback's efforts. Last October, after Bush named his personal lawyer, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court, Brownback politely but thoroughly demolished her nomination -- on the grounds that she was insufficiently opposed to abortion. The day Miers withdrew her name, Sen. John McCain surprised the mob of reporters clamoring around Brownback outside the Senate chamber by grabbing his colleague's shoulders. "Here's the man who did it!" McCain shouted in admiration, a big smile on his face.

Brownback is unlikely to receive the Republican presidential nomination -- but as the candidate of the Christian right, he may well be in a position to determine who does, and what they include in their platform. "What Sam could do very effectively," says the Rev. Rob Schenck, an evangelical activist, is hold the nomination hostage until the Christian right "exacts the last pledge out of the more popular candidate."

The nation's leading evangelicals have already lined up behind Brownback, a feat in itself. A decade ago, evangelical support for a Catholic would have been unthinkable. Many evangelicals viewed the Pope as the Antichrist and the Roman Catholic Church as the Whore of Babylon. But Brownback is the beneficiary of a strategy known as co-belligerency -- a united front between conservative Catholics and evangelicals in the culture war. Pat Robertson has tapped the "outstanding senator from Kansas" as his man for president. David Barton, the Christian right's all-but-official presidential historian, calls Brownback "uncompromising" -- the highest praise in a movement that considers intransigence next to godliness. And James Dobson, the movement's strongest chieftain, can find no fault in Brownback. "He has fulfilled every expectation," Dobson says. Even Jesse Helms, now in retirement in North Carolina, recognizes a kindred spirit. "The most effective senators are those who are truest to themselves," Helms says. "Senator Brownback is becoming known as that sort of individual."

* * *

As he gathers the forces of the Christian right around him, however, Brownback has broken with the movement's tradition of fire and brimstone. His fundamentalism is almost tender. He's no less intolerant than the angry pulpit-pounders, but he never sounds like a hater. His style is both gentler and colder, a mixture of Mr. Rogers and monkish detachment.

Brownback doesn't thump the Bible. He reads obsessively, studying biographies of Christian crusaders from centuries past. His learning doesn't lend him gravitas so much as it seems to free him from gravity, to set him adrift across space and time. Ask him why he considers abortion a "holocaust," and he'll answer by way of a story about an eighteenth-century British parliamentarian who broke down in tears over the sin of slavery. Brownback believes America is entering a period of religious revival on the scale of the Great Awakening that preceded the nation's creation, an epidemic of mass conversions, signs and wonders, book burnings. But this time, he says, the upheaval will give way to a "cultural springtime," a theocratic order that is pleasant and balmy. It's a vision shared by the mega-churches that sprawl across the surburban landscape, the 24-7 spiritual-entertainment complexes where millions of Americans embrace a feel-good fundamentalism.

When Brownback travels, he tries to avoid spending time alone in his hotel room, where indecent television programming might tempt him. In Washington, though, he goes to bed early. He doesn't like to eat out. Indeed, it sometimes seems he doesn't like to eat at all -- his staff worries when the only thing he has for lunch is a communion wafer and a drop of wine at the noontime Mass he tries to attend daily. He lives in a spartan apartment across from his office that he shares with Sen. Jim Talent, a Republican from Missouri, and he flies home to Topeka almost every Thursday. On the wall of his office, there's a family portrait of all seven Brownbacks gathered around two tree stumps, each Brownback in black shoes, blue jeans and a black pullover. The oldest, Abby, is nineteen; the youngest, Jenna, abandoned on the doorstep of a Chinese orphanage when she was two days old, is seven.

Brownback's house in Topeka perches atop a hill, shielded from the road behind a great arc of driveway in a nameless suburb so new that the grass has yet to sprout on nearby lawns. On a recent Sunday, Brownback sits in the kitchen, looking relaxed in jeans and an orange sweatshirt that says HOODWINKED, the name of his oldest son's band. Hoodwinked members drift in and out, chatting with the senator. When the band starts practice in the basement, Brownback walks downstairs, opens the door, jerks his right knee in the air and half windmills his arm. Hoodwinked shout at him to leave them alone.

When he was a boy, Brownback didn't belong to any rock bands. He grew up in a white, one-story farmhouse in Parker, where his parents still live. Brownback likes to say that he is fighting for traditional family values, but his father, Bob, was more concerned about the price of grain, and his mother, Nancy, had no qualms about having a gay friend. Back then, moral values were simple. "Your word was your word. Don't cheat," his mother recalls. "I can't think of anything else."

Her son played football ("quarterback" she says, "never very good") and was elected class president and "Mr. Spirit." "He was talkative," she adds, as if this were an alien quality. Like most kids in Parker, Sam just wanted to be a farmer. But that life is gone now, destroyed by what the old farmers who sit around the town's single gas station sum up in one word -- "Reaganism." They mean the voodoo economics by which the government favored corporate interests over family farms, a "what's good for big business is good for America" philosophy that Brownback himself now champions.

In 1986, just a few years after finishing law school, Brownback landed one of the state's plum offices: agriculture secretary, a position of no small influence in Kansas. But in 1993, he was forced out when a federal court ruled his tenure unconstitutional. Not only had he not been elected, he'd been appointed by people who weren't elected -- the very same agribusiness giants he was in charge of regulating.

The following year, he squeaked into Congress, running as a moderate. But in Washington, in the midst of the Gingrich Revolution, Brownback didn't just tack right -- he unzipped his quiet Kansan costume and stepped out as the leader of the New Federalists, the small but potent faction of freshmen determined to get rid of government almost entirely. When he discovered that the Republican leadership wasn't really interested in derailing its own gravy train, Brownback began spending more time with his Bible. He began to suspect that the problem with government wasn't just too many taxes; it was not enough God.

Brownback's wife, Mary, heiress to a Midwest newspaper fortune, married Sam during her final year of law school and boasts that she has never worked outside the home. "Basically," she says, "I live in the kitchen." From her spot by the stove, Mary monitors all media consumed by her kids. The Brownbacks block several channels, but even so, innuendos slip by, she says, and the nightly news is often "too sexual." The children, Mary says, "exude their faith." The oldest kids "opt out" of sex education at school.

Sex, in all its various forms, is at the center of Brownback's agenda. America, he believes, has divorced sexuality from what is sacred. "It's not that we think too much about sex," he says, "it's that we don't think enough of it." The senator would gladly roll back the sexual revolution altogether if he could, but he knows he can't, so instead he dreams of something better: a culture of "faith-based" eroticism in which premarital passion plays out not in flesh but in prayer. After Janet Jackson's nipple made its surprise appearance at the 2004 Super Bowl, Brownback introduced the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, raising the fines for such on-air abominations to $325,000.

On Sundays, Brownback rises at dawn so he can catch a Catholic Mass before meeting Mary and the kids at Topeka Bible Church. With the exception of one brown-skinned man, the congregation is entirely white. The stage looks like a rec room in a suburban basement: wall-to-wall carpet, wood paneling, a few haphazard ferns and a couple of electric guitars lying around. This morning, the church welcomes a guest preacher from Promise Keepers, a men's group, by performing a skit about golf and fatherhood. From his preferred seat in the balcony, Brownback chuckles when he's supposed to, sings every song, nods seriously when the preacher warns against "Judaizers" who would "poison" the New Testament.

After the service, Brownback introduces me to a white-haired man with a yellow Viking mustache. "This is the man who wrote 'Dust in the Wind,'" the senator announces proudly. It's Kerry Livgren of the band Kansas. Livgren has found Jesus and now worships with the senator at Topeka Bible. Brownback, one of the Senate's fiercest hawks on Israel, tells Livgren he wants to take him to the Holy Land. Whenever the senator met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to talk policy, he insisted that they first study Scripture together. The two men would study their Bibles, music playing softly in the background. Maybe, if Livgren goes to Israel with Brownback, he could strum "Dust in the Wind." "Carry on my . . ." the senator warbles, trying to remember another song by his friend.

* * *

One of the little-known strengths of the Christian right lies in its adoption of the "cell" -- the building block historically used by small but determined groups to impose their will on the majority. Seventy years ago, an evangelist named Abraham Vereide founded a network of "God-led" cells comprising senators and generals, corporate executives and preachers. Vereide believed that the cells -- God's chosen, appointed to power -- could construct a Kingdom of God on earth with Washington as its capital. They would do so "behind the scenes," lest they be accused of pride or a hunger for power, and "beyond the din of vox populi," which is to say, outside the bounds of democracy. To insiders, the cells were known as the Family, or the Fellowship. To most outsiders, they were not known at all.

"Communists use cells as their basic structure," declares a confidential Fellowship document titled "Thoughts on a Core Group." "The mafia operates like this, and the basic unit of the Marine Corps is the four-man squad. Hitler, Lenin and many others understood the power of a small group of people." Under Reagan, Fellowship cells quietly arranged meetings between administration officials and leaders of Salvadoran death squads, and helped funnel military support to Siad Barre, the brutal dictator of Somalia, who belonged to a prayer cell of American senators and generals.

Brownback got involved in the Fellowship in 1979, as a summer intern for Bob Dole, when he lived in a residence the group had organized in a sorority house at the University of Maryland. Four years later, fresh out of law school and looking for a political role model, Brownback sought out Frank Carlson, a former Republican senator from Kansas. It was Carlson who, at a 1955 meeting of the Fellowship, had declared the group's mission to be "Worldwide Spiritual Offensive," a vision of manly Christianity dedicated to the expansion of American power as a means of spreading the gospel.

Over the years, Brownback became increasingly active in the Fellowship. But he wasn't invited to join a cell until 1994, when he went to Washington. "I had been working with them for a number of years, so when I went into Congress I knew I wanted to get back into that," he says. "Washington -- power -- is very difficult to handle. I knew I needed people to keep me accountable in that system."

Brownback was placed in a weekly prayer cell by "the shadow Billy Graham" -- Doug Coe, Vereide's successor as head of the Fellowship. The group was all male and all Republican. It was a "safe relationship," Brownback says. Conversation tended toward the personal. Brownback and the other men revealed the most intimate details of their desires, failings, ambitions. They talked about lust, anger and infidelities, the more shameful the better -- since the goal was to break one's own will. The abolition of self; to become nothing but a vessel so that one could be used by God.

They were striving, ultimately, for what Coe calls "Jesus plus nothing" -- a government led by Christ's will alone. In the future envisioned by Coe, everything -- sex and taxes, war and the price of oil -- will be decided upon not according to democracy or the church or even Scripture. The Bible itself is for the masses; in the Fellowship, Christ reveals a higher set of commands to the anointed few. It's a good old boy's club blessed by God. Brownback even lived with other cell members in a million-dollar, red-brick former convent at 133 C Street that was subsidized and operated by the Fellowship. Monthly rent was $600 per man -- enough of a deal by Hill standards that some said it bordered on an ethical violation, but no charges were ever brought.

Brownback still meets with the prayer cell every Tuesday evening. He and his "brothers," he says, are "bonded together, faith and souls." The rules forbid Brownback from revealing the names of his fellow members, but those in the cell likely include such conservative stalwarts as Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee, former Rep. Steve Largent of Oklahoma and Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma doctor who has advocated the death penalty for abortion providers. Fellowship documents suggest that some 30 senators and 200 congressmen occasionally attend the group's activities, but no more than a dozen are involved at Brownback's level.

The men in Brownback's cell talk about politics, but the senator insists it's not political. "It's about faith and action," he says. According to "Thoughts on a Core Group," the primary purpose of the cell is to become an "invisible 'believing' group." Any action the cell takes is an outgrowth of belief, a natural extension of "agreements reached in faith and in prayer." Deals emerge not from a smoke-filled room but from a prayer-filled room. "Typically," says Brownback, "one person grows desirous of pursuing an action" -- a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy -- "and the others pull in behind."

In 1999, Brownback worked with Rep. Joe Pitts, a Fellowship brother, to pass the Silk Road Strategy Act, designed to block the growth of Islam in Central Asian nations by bribing them with lucrative trade deals. That same year, he teamed up with two Fellowship associates -- former Sen. Don Nickles and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond -- to demand a criminal investigation of a liberal group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Last year, several Fellowship brothers, including Sen. John Ensign, another resident of the C Street house, supported Brownback's broadcast decency bill. And Pitts and Coburn joined Brownback in stumping for the Houses of Worship Act to allow tax-free churches to endorse candidates.

The most bluntly theocratic effort, however, is the Constitution Restoration Act, which Brownback co-sponsored with Jim DeMint, another former C Streeter who was then a congressman from South Carolina. If passed, it will strip the Supreme Court of the ability to even hear cases in which citizens protest faith-based abuses of power. Say the mayor of your town decides to declare Jesus lord and fire anyone who refuses to do so; or the principal of your local high school decides to read a fundamentalist prayer over the PA every morning; or the president declares the United States a Christian nation. Under the Constitution Restoration Act, that'll all be just fine.

Brownback points to his friend Ed Meese, who served as attorney general under Reagan, as an example of a man who wields power through backroom Fellowship connections. Meese has not held a government job for nearly two decades, but through the Fellowship he's more influential than ever, credited with brokering the recent nomination of John Roberts to head the Supreme Court. "As a behind-the-scenes networker," Brownback says, "he's important." In the senator's view, such hidden power is sanctioned by the Bible. "Everybody knows Moses," Brownback says. "But who were the leaders of the Jewish people once they got to the promised land? It's a lot of people who are unknown."

* * *

Every Tuesday, before his evening meeting with his prayer brothers, Brownback chairs another small cell -- one explicitly dedicated to altering public policy. It is called the Values Action Team, and it is composed of representatives from leading organizations on the religious right. James Dobson's Focus on the Family sends an emissary, as does the Family Research Council, the Eagle Forum, the Christian Coalition, the Traditional Values Coalition, Concerned Women for America and many more. Like the Fellowship prayer cell, everything that is said is strictly off the record, and even the groups themselves are forbidden from discussing the proceedings. It's a little "cloak-and-dagger," says a Brownback press secretary. The VAT is a war council, and the enemy, says one participant, is "secularism."

The VAT coordinates the efforts of fundamentalist pressure groups, unifying their message and arming congressional staffers with the data and language they need to pass legislation. Working almost entirely in secret, the group has directed the fights against gay marriage and for school vouchers, against hate-crime legislation and for "abstinence only" education. The VAT helped win passage of Brownback's broadcast decency bill and made the president's tax cuts a top priority. When it comes to "impacting policy," says Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, "day to day, the VAT is instrumental."

As chairman of the Helsinki Commission, the most important U.S. human rights agency, Brownback has also stamped much of U.S. foreign policy with VAT's agenda. One victory for the group was Brownback's North Korea Human Rights Act, which establishes a confrontational stance toward the dictatorial regime and shifts funds for humanitarian aid from the United Nations to Christian organizations. Sean Woo -- Brownback's former general counsel and now the chief of staff of the Helsinki Commission -- calls this a process of "privatizing democracy." A dapper man with a soothing voice, Woo is perhaps the brightest thinker in Brownback's circle, a savvy internationalist with a deep knowledge of Cold War history. Yet when I ask him for an example of the kind of project the human-rights act might fund, he tells me about a German doctor who releases balloons over North Korea with bubble-wrapped radios tied to them. North Koreans are supposed to find the balloons when they run out of helium and use the radios to tune into Voice of America or a South Korean Christian station.

Since Brownback took over leadership of the VAT in 2002, he has used it to consolidate his position in the Christian right -- and his influence in the Senate. If senators -- even leaders like Bill Frist or Rick Santorum -- want to ask for backing from the group, they must talk to Brownback's chief of staff, Robert Wasinger, who clears attendees with his boss. Wasinger is from Hays, Kansas, but he speaks with a Harvard drawl, and he is still remembered in Cambridge twelve years after graduation for a fight he led to get gay faculty booted. He was particularly concerned about the welfare of gay men; or rather, as he wrote in a campus magazine funded by the Heritage Foundation, that of their innocent sperm, forced to "swim into feces." As gatekeeper of the VAT, he's a key strategist in the conservative movement. He makes sure the religious leaders who attend VAT understand that Brownback is the boss -- and that other senators realize that every time Brownback speaks, he has the money and membership of the VAT behind him.

VAT is like a closed communication circuit with Brownback at the switch: The power flows through him. Every Wednesday at noon, he trots upstairs from his office to a radio studio maintained by the Republican leadership to rally support from Christian America for VAT's agenda. One participant in the broadcast, Salem Radio Network News, reaches more than 1,500 Christian stations nationwide, and Focus on the Family offers access to an audience of 1.5 million. During a recent broadcast Brownback explains that with the help of the VAT, he's working to defeat a measure that would stiffen penalties for violent attacks on gays and lesbians. Members of VAT help by mobilizing their flocks: An e-mail sent out by the Family Research Council warned that the hate-crime bill would lead, inexorably, to the criminalization of Christianity.

Brownback recently muscled through the Judiciary Committee a proposed amendment to the Constitution to make not just gay marriage but even civil unions nearly impossible. "I don't see where the compromise point would be on marriage," he says. The amendment has no chance of passing, but it's not designed to. It's a time bomb, scheduled to detonate sometime during the 2006 electoral cycle. The intended victims aren't Democrats but other Republicans. GOP moderates will be forced to vote for or against "marriage," which -- in the language of the VAT communications network -- is another way of saying for or against the "homosexual agenda." It's a typical VAT strategy: a tool with which to purify the ranks of the Republican Party.

* * *

Eleven years ago, Brownback himself underwent a similar process of purification. It started, he says, with a strange bump on his right side: a melanoma, diagnosed in 1995.

Brownback is sitting in the Senate dining room surrounded by back-slapping senators and staffers, yet he seems serene. His press secretary tries to stop him from talking -- he considers Brownback's cancer epiphany suitable only for religious audiences -- but Brownback can't be distracted. His eyes open wide and his shoulders slump as he settles into the memory. He starts using words like "meditation" and "solitude." The press secretary winces.

The doctors scooped out a piece of his flesh, Brownback says, as if murmuring to himself. A minor procedure, but it scared him. In his mind, he lost hold of everything. He asked himself, "What have I done with my life?" The answer seemed to be "Nothing."

One night, while his family was sleeping, Brownback got up and pulled out a copy of his resume. Sitting in his silent house, in the middle of the night, a scar over his ribs where cancer had been carved out of his body, he looked down at the piece of paper. His work, the laws he had passed. "This must be who I am," he thought. Then he realized: Nothing he had done would last. All his accomplishments were humdrum conservative measures, bureaucratic wrangling, legislation that had nothing to do with God. They were worth nothing.

Brownback turns, holds my gaze. "So," he says, "I burned it."

He smiles. He pauses. He's waiting to see if I understand. He had cleansed himself with fire. He had made himself pure.

"I'm a child of the living God," he explains.

I nod.

"You are, too," he says. He purses his lips as he searches the other tables. Look, he says, pointing to a man across the room. "Mark Dayton, over there?" The Democratic senator from Minnesota. "He's a liberal." But you know what else he is? "A beautiful child of the living God." Brownback continues. Ted Kennedy? "A beautiful child of the living God." Hillary Clinton? Yes. Even Hillary. Especially Hillary.

Once, Brownback says, he hated Hillary Clinton. Hated her so much it hurt him. But he reached in and scooped that hatred out like a cancer. Now, he loves her. She, too, is a beautiful child of the living God.

* * *

After his spiritual transformation, Brownback began traveling to some of the most blighted regions in the world. At times his motivation appeared strictly economic. He toured the dictatorships of Central Asia, trading U.S. support for access to oil -- but he insists that he wanted to prevent their wealth from falling into "Islamic hands." Oil may have spurred his interest in Africa, too -- the U.S. competes with China for access to African oil fields -- but the welfare of the world's most afflicted continent has since become a genuine obsession for Brownback. He has traveled to Darfur, in Sudan, and he has just returned from the Congo, where the starving die at a rate of 1,000 a day. Recalling the child soldiers he's met in Uganda, his voice chokes and his eyes fill with horror.

When Brownback talks about Africa, he sounds like JFK, or even Bono. "We're only five percent of the population," he says, "but we're responsible for thirty percent of the world's economy, thirty-three percent of military spending. We're going to be held accountable for the assets we've been given." His definition of moral decadence includes America's failure to stop genocide in the Sudan and torture in North Korea. He wants drug companies to spend as much on medicine for malaria as they do on feel-good drugs for Americans, like Viagra and Prozac. Ask him what drives him and he'll answer, without irony, "widows and orphans." It's a reference to the New Testament Epistle of James: "Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

Brownback is less concerned about the world being polluted by people. His biggest financial backer is Koch Industries, an oil company that ranks among America's largest privately held companies. "The Koch folks," as they're known around the senator's office, are among the nation's worst polluters. In 2000, the company was slapped with the largest environmental civil penalty in U.S. history for illegally discharging 3 million gallons of crude oil in six states. That same year Koch was indicted for lying about its emissions of benzene, a chemical linked to leukemia, and dodged criminal charges in return for a $20 million settlement. Brownback has received nearly $100,000 from Koch and its employees, and during his neck-and-neck race in 1996, a mysterious shell company called Triad Management provided $410,000 for last-minute advertising on Brownback's behalf. A Senate investigative committee later determined that the money came from the two brothers who run Koch Industries.

Brownback has been a staunch opponent of environmental regulations that Koch finds annoying, fighting fuel-efficiency standards and the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. But for the senator, there's no real divide between the predatory economic interests of his corporate backers and his own moral passions. He received more money funneled through Jack Abramoff, the GOP lobbyist under investigation for bilking Indian tribes of more than $80 million, than all but four other senators -- and he blocked a casino that Abramoff's clients viewed as a competitor. But getting Brownback to vote against gambling doesn't take bribes; he would have done so regardless of the money.

Brownback finds the issue of finances distasteful. He refuses to discuss his backers, smoothly turning the issue to matters of faith. "Pat got me elected," he says, referring to Robertson's network of Christian-right organizations. Sitting in his corner office in the Senate, Brownback returns to one of his favorite subjects: the scourge of homosexuality. The office has just been remodeled and the high-ceilinged room is almost barren. On Brownback's desk, adrift at the far end of the room, there's a Bible open to the Gospel of John.

It doesn't bother Brownback that most Bible scholars challenge the idea that Scripture opposes homosexuality. "It's pretty clear," he says, "what we know in our hearts." This, he says, is "natural law," derived from observation of the world, but the logic is circular: It's wrong because he observes himself believing it's wrong.

He has worldly proof, too. "You look at the social impact of the countries that have engaged in homosexual marriage." He shakes his head in sorrow, thinking of Sweden, which Christian conservatives believe has been made by "social engineering" into an outer ring of hell. "You'll know 'em by their fruits," Brownback says. He pauses, and an awkward silence fills the room. He was citing scripture -- Matthew 7:16 -- but he just called gay Swedes "fruits."

Homosexuality may not be sanctioned by the Bible, but slavery is -- by Old and New Testaments alike. Brownback thinks slavery is wrong, of course, but the Bible never is. How does he square the two? "I've wondered on that very issue," he says. He tentatively suggests that the Bible views slavery as a "person-to-person relationship," something to be worked out beyond the intrusion of government. But he quickly abandons the argument; calling slavery a personal choice, after all, is awkward for a man who often compares slavery to abortion.

* * *

Although Brownback converted to Catholicism in 2002 through Opus Dei, an ultraorthodox order that, like the Fellowship, specializes in cultivating the rich and powerful, the source of much of his religious and political thinking is Charles Colson, the former Nixon aide who served seven months in prison for his attempt to cover up Watergate. A "key figure," says Brownback, in the power structure of Christian Washington, Colson is widely acknowledged as the Christian right's leading intellectual. He is the architect behind faith-based initiatives, the negotiator who forged the Catholic-evangelical unity known as co-belligerency, and the man who drove sexual morality to the top of the movement's agenda.

"When I came to the Senate," says Brownback, "I sought him out. I had been listening to his thoughts for years, and wanted to get to know him some."

The admiration is mutual. Colson, a powerful member of the Fellowship, spotted Brownback as promising material not long after he joined the group's cell for freshman Republicans. At the time, Colson was holding classes on "biblical worldview" for leaders on Capitol Hill, and Brownback became a prize pupil. Colson taught that abortion is only a "threshold" issue, a wedge with which to introduce fundamentalism into every question. The two men soon grew close, and began coordinating their efforts: Colson provides the strategy, and Brownback translates it into policy. "Sam has been at the meetings I called, and I've been at the meetings he called," Colson says.

Colson's most admirable work is Prison Fellowship, a ministry that offers counseling and "worldview training" to prisoners around the world. Many of his programs receive federal funding, and Brownback is sponsoring a bill that would make it easier for more government dollars to go to faith-based programs such as Colson's. Social scientists debate whether such programs work, but politicians consider them undeniable evidence of the existence of compassionate conservatism.

And yet compassionate conservatism, as Colson conceives it and Brownback implements it, is strikingly similar to plain old authoritarian conservatism. In place of liberation, it offers as an ideal what Colson calls "biblical obedience" and what Brownback terms "submission." The concept is derived from Romans 13, the scripture by which Brownback and Colson understand their power as God-given: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."

To Brownback, the verse is not dictatorial -- it's simply one of the demands of spiritual war, the "worldwide spiritual offensive" that the Fellowship declared a half-century ago. "There's probably a higher level of Christians being persecuted during the last ten, twenty years than . . . throughout human history," Brownback once declared on Colson's radio show. Given to framing his own faith in terms of battles, he believes that secularists and Muslims are fighting a worldwide war against Christians -- sometimes in concert. "Religious freedom" is one of his top priorities, and securing it may require force. He's sponsored legislation that could lead to "regime change" in Iran, and has proposed sending combat troops to the Philippines, where Islamic rebels killed a Kansas missionary.

Brownback doesn't demand that everyone believe in his God -- only that they bow down before Him. Part holy warrior, part holy fool, he preaches an odd mix of theological naivete and diplomatic savvy. The faith he wields in the public square is blunt, heavy, unsubtle; brass knuckles of the spirit. But the religion of his heart is that of the woman whose example led him deep into orthodoxy: Mother Teresa -- it is a kiss for the dying. He sees no tension between his intolerance and his tenderness. Indeed, their successful reconciliation in his political self is the miracle at the heart of the new fundamentalism, the fusion of hellfire and Hallmark.

"I have seen him weep," growls Colson, anointing Brownback with his highest praise. Such are the new American crusaders: tear-streaked strong men huddling together to talk about their feelings before they march forth, their sentimental faith sharpened and their man-feelings hardened into "natural law." They are God's promise keepers, His defenders of marriage, His knights of the fetal citizen. They are the select few who embody the paradoxical love promised by Christ when he declares -- in Matthew 10:34 -- "I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."

Standing on his back porch in Topeka, Brownback looks down into a dark patch of hedge trees, a gnarled hardwood that's nearly unsplittable. The same trees grow on the 1,400 acres that surround Brownback's childhood home in Parker; not much else remains. When the senator was a boy, there were eleven families living on the land. Now there are only the Brownbacks and a friend from high school who lives rent-free in one of the empty houses. When the friend moves on, Brownback's father plans to tear the house down. The rest of the homes are already taking care of themselves, slowly crumbling into the prairie. The world Brownback grew up in has vanished.

In its place, Brownback imagines another one. Standing on his porch, he thinks back to the days before the Civil War, when his home state was known as Bloody Kansas and John Brown fought for freedom with an ax. "A terrorist," concedes Brownback, careful not to offend his Southern supporters, but also a wise man. When Brown was in jail awaiting execution, a visitor told the abolitionist that he was crazy.

"I'm not the one who has 4 million people in bondage," Brownback intones, recalling Brown's response. "I, sir, think you are crazy."

This is another of Brownback's parables. In place of 4 million slaves, he thinks of uncountable unborn babies, of all the persecuted Christians -- a nation within a nation, awaiting Brownback's liberation. Brownback, sir, thinks that secular America is crazy.

The senator stares, his face gentle but unsmiling.

He isn't joking.

Coming Soon

2006-03-23T18:00:00.000-08:00

This new book by Michael Pollan is at the top of my "To Read" list. It will be available April 11, 2006.

From Publishers Weekly
Reviewed by Pamela Kaufman

Pollan (The Botany of Desire) examines what he calls "our national eating disorder" (the Atkins craze, the precipitous rise in obesity) in this remarkably clearheaded book. It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.

Pollan approaches his mission not as an activist but as a naturalist: "The way we eat represents our most profound engagement with the natural world." All food, he points out, originates with plants, animals and fungi. "[E]ven the deathless Twinkie is constructed out of... well, precisely what I don't know offhand, but ultimately some sort of formerly living creature, i.e., a species. We haven't yet begun to synthesize our foods from petroleum, at least not directly."

Pollan's narrative strategy is simple: he traces four meals back to their ur-species. He starts with a McDonald's lunch, which he and his family gobble up in their car. Surprise: the origin of this meal is a cornfield in Iowa. Corn feeds the steer that turns into the burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients (yikes) in the Chicken McNuggets.

Indeed, one of the many eye-openers in the book is the prevalence of corn in the American diet; of the 45,000 items in a supermarket, more than a quarter contain corn. Pollan meditates on the freakishly protean nature of the corn plant and looks at how the food industry has exploited it, to the detriment of everyone from farmers to fat-and-getting-fatter Americans. Besides Stephen King, few other writers have made a corn field seem so sinister.

Later, Pollan prepares a dinner with items from Whole Foods, investigating the flaws in the world of "big organic"; cooks a meal with ingredients from a small, utopian Virginia farm; and assembles a feast from things he's foraged and hunted.

This may sound earnest, but Pollan isn't preachy: he's too thoughtful a writer, and too dogged a researcher, to let ideology take over. He's also funny and adventurous. He bounces around on an old International Harvester tractor, gets down on his belly to examine a pasture from a cow's-eye view, shoots a wild pig and otherwise throws himself into the making of his meals. I'm not convinced I'd want to go hunting with Pollan, but I'm sure I'd enjoy having dinner with him. Just as long as we could eat at a table, not in a Toyota.

Controlling Life

2006-03-17T05:47:00.000-08:00

I don't fit neatly under one of the labels commonly thrown around in the abortion debate: pro-life/pro-choice. I find the subject much more complex and gray. I first heard Terry Gross's interview and then went back and found the article under discussion. Both pieces grabbed my attention and impressed me as the most honest and wrenching discussions of the complexities of birth, abortion and parenthood that I have heard. These two sentences capture the nuanced tone of Ms. Weil's report:

"The Brancas love the son they wish they hadn't had. My family continues to mourn the child we don't regret terminating."

If more activists on both sides of the inflammable debate could acknowledge the paradoxical emotions represented in these statements, we could have a more productive discussion and perhaps make headway toward a workable compromise.

A Wrongful Birth?
New York Times Magazine
March 12, 2006
By Elizabeth Weil

Like most American women who give birth to a severely handicapped child, Donna Branca became pregnant with A.J. well before the age of 35. Had she been older, her doctors would almost certainly have recommended amniocentesis to screen for genetic disorders. But she was 31, so they did not, despite the fact that she had an unusual pregnancy. Branca bled during her first trimester, a possible indication of birth defects, and at her midterm sonogram, when she was 20 weeks pregnant, her fetus looked smaller than it should have based on when her doctors originally presumed she conceived. Branca had not gained much weight, either, but her doctors — whom she is barred from identifying, by a legal settlement — saw no cause for alarm. "Looking back now, of course, it's easy to say I should have asked more questions or maybe been a little more concerned," she told me last fall, sitting in her grassy backyard in Orangeburg, 20 miles north of Manhattan. Branca is a pretty woman, dark and compact, with a winning suburban New York accent. She glanced at A. J., a 6-year-old with a head of dark curls and the mental capacity of a 6-month-old. Her 3-year-old twins from a subsequent pregnancy ran around collecting acorns.

On April 22, 1999, when Branca was 28 weeks pregnant — four weeks past the legal window for terminating a pregnancy in New York — she saw her regular doctor (for what would be the last time) and was reassured that her baby was fine. But three weeks later, while on vacation on the Jersey Shore, Branca began to bleed again. Her husband, Anthony, drove her to the emergency room at Southern Ocean County Hospital in Manahawkin, N.J. Anthony Branca, like his wife, is compact and mild-mannered. When the obstetrician arrived, the doctor got out a tape and measured Donna's belly, a standard procedure to gauge a fetus's size. Although such measurements are a routine part of prenatal medicine and require only a few seconds, Donna had never had her belly measured. The obstetrician on duty that day asked Donna if she had had any prenatal care at all. Then he told her, based on his calculations, her fetus appeared to be only 24 weeks old, not 31.

An emergency sonogram confirmed that the fetus was indeed abnormally small, and an amniocentesis later performed at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, N.Y., revealed much worse news: Donna Branca's fetus had both a gene duplication and a gene deletion on his fourth chromosome. (It was not until after birth that it would became clear that her baby had Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, which commonly includes mental retardation, physical disfigurement, inability to speak, seizures and respiratory and digestive problems.) After two weeks of bed rest, during which doctors tried to delay labor, Donna delivered A.J. Branca on June 11, 1999, about six weeks before her due date. He was 15 inches long and weighed two and a half pounds, and he didn't cry when he came out. "One of the first things the attending doctor said to me," Donna told me, "was, 'It's not hereditary, so you should just have another child right away."'

What happened next — the years in which the Brancas came to love A.J. deeply and also to file a multimillion-dollar lawsuit claiming that Donna Branca's obstetrician's poor care deprived her of the right to abort him — sheds an uncomfortable light on contemporary expectations about childbearing and on how much control we believe we should have over the babies we give birth to. The technology of prenatal care has been shifting rapidly: sonograms became standard in the 80's; many new genetic tests became standard in the 90's. Our ethical responses to the information provided has been shifting as well. As in many other realms, from marriage and its definition to end-of-life issues, those ethics and standards are being hashed out in the courts, in one lawsuit after another. And what those cases are exposing is the relatively new belief that we should have a right to choose which babies come into the world. This belief is built upon two assumptions, both of which have emerged in the past 40 years. The first is the assumption that if we choose to take advantage of contemporary technology, major flaws in our fetus's health will be detected before birth. The second assumption, more controversial, is that we will be able to do something — namely, end the pregnancy — if those flaws suggest a parenting project we would rather not undertake.

The practice of terminating specific pregnancies, as opposed to aborting pregnancies so as not to have a child at all, is seldom discussed in its baldest terms. It is also poised to rise. Just this past November, scientists at Columbia University published a major paper in The New England Journal of Medicine on the effectiveness of new, noninvasive techniques for screening for Down syndrome in the first trimester, when the decision to terminate will most likely be more common and, some argue, more humane. In in vitro settings, a new technology called P.G.D. — preimplantation genetic diagnosis — allows doctors to test for genetic defects days after fertilizing an egg in a petri dish. Perhaps most important, the number of prenatal genetic tests is increasing exponentially — it jumped from 100 to 1,000 between 1993 and 2003 — and no regulations yet guide parents and doctors about fair reasons for terminating or going forward with particular births. Should it be O.K. to terminate a deaf child? What about a blind one? How mentally retarded is too mentally retarded? What if the child will develop a serious disease, like Huntington's, later in life? According to one reproductive legal scholar, Susan Crockin in Newton, Mass., "As reproductive genetics opens up new possibilities, we should expect to see more of these cases, and we should expect to see more novel issues."

At present, courts in about half the states recognize wrongful birth as a subset of medical negligence or allow lawsuits under the more general malpractice umbrella if a doctor's poor care leads to the delivery of a child the parents claim they would have chosen to terminate in utero had they known in time of its impaired health. In some of these states, like New York, where the Brancas' case was tried, emotional damages — compensation for the distress incurred by having an impaired child — cannot be recovered. No matter the legal context, terminating a wanted pregnancy is no one's first choice, but for the time being at least, when faced with a fetus that will become a severely handicapped child, all the choices are bad. At this moment, we are fairly adept at finding chromosomal flaws and horribly inept at fixing them. There is no chemical or surgical remedy if you find out your child-to-be has cystic fibrosis, fragile X, Down syndrome, Tay-Sachs, anencephaly — the list goes on and on. As Leon Kass, former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, has noted, in prenatal cases, often the only way to cure the illness is to prevent the patient.

The first significant wrongful-birth lawsuit involving a disabled child, Gleitman v. Cosgrove, reached the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1966. One plaintiff was the child's mother, who had contracted rubella early in her pregnancy in 1959. Worried, she consulted her doctor and was assured that her unborn baby would be fine, despite the common understanding that rubella early in pregnancy can lead to birth defects. The baby in question was born with "substantial defects. . .in sight, hearing and speech." Interestingly, the court recognized the physicians' failure as well as the parents' anguish and attendant financial burdens although it still decided in favor of the defendants, in part, it seems, because it did not want to enter the ethical thicket inherent in finding for the parents. "A court cannot say what defects should prevent an embryo from being allowed life.. . ." the opinion reads. "Examples of famous persons who have had great achievement despite physical defects come readily to mind, and many of us can think of examples close to home.. . .The sanctity of the single human life is the decisive factor in this suit in tort. Eugenic considerations are not controlling. We are not talking here about the breeding of prize cattle."

By 1978, however, when the next significant wrongful-birth case was decided by a higher court, the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision had established a woman's right to choose — that is, to terminate a pregnancy. The new case, Becker v. Schwartz, involved a geriatric mother (a medical term for a pregnant woman over 35) who was not advised by her doctor that her advanced age put her unborn child at greater risk for birth defects. Her child was born with Down syndrome, and shortly thereafter the mother sued. This time, the New York State Court of Appeals found in favor of the family, declaring it had the right to seek financial damages for the added cost of raising a child with a disability. The court, however, refused to allow the claim of emotional damages. It did recognize the family's suffering, but reasoned it "may experience a love [for their child] that even an abnormality cannot fully dampen."

This paradigm — awarding financial but not emotional damages — has become the standard in contemporary wrongful-birth lawsuits. Only a few states — including Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Michigan and Utah — have barred wrongful-birth cases through legislation or case law. (Conversely, wrongful-life lawsuits in which disabled children sue doctors for the suffering they are incurring by being alive have generally been rejected. These arguments come down to "better off dead," and courts have claimed it is impossible to weigh suffering versus nonexistence.) Yet the ethical thicket that the first court feared is as thorny as ever. We may not want to give birth to disabled children, but at the same time we do not want to see ourselves as reproducing in a way that calls to mind prize cattle.

The moral quandary we find ourselves in pits the ideal of unconditional love of a child against the reality that most of us would prefer not to have that unconditional-love relationship with a certain subset of kids. "I think the reason that this topic is as loaded and painful as it is," says Adrienne Asch, a professor of bioethics at Yeshiva University in New York, "is that prospective parents want to think that they are open to loving whomever comes into their families, and they don't want to think that they aren't." Asch is one of this country's most outspoken advocates for disability rights and against the "automatic assumption" that prenatal testing that reveals disability should lead to abortion. It is her observation, shared by many on both the left and right, that prenatal testing "is not a medical procedure to promote the health of the fetus. It is a procedure to give prospective parents information to decide whether or not to eliminate a possible future life."

The reasons to oppose termination are both obvious and subtle and not necessarily tied to abortion views in general. (The question of abortion rests on a single issue: is it O.K. to destroy a potential life? Termination involves an infinite number of heartbreaking queries that boil down to this: what about this life in particular?) Some argue that our desire not to raise impaired children is based on prejudice. Others claim that a choosy attitude toward fetuses brings a consumerist attitude toward childbearing and undermines the moral stature of the family. Still others maintain that the act of terminating impaired children drags us into a moral abyss — or its opposite, that raising children with impairments increases our humanity.

I had to face these very questions in my own pregnancy two years ago. I was 23 weeks pregnant with our second child when my husband and I were told that our unborn son had contracted cytyomegalovirius, or CMV, a virus that if contracted by the mother for the first time while she is pregnant and is passed along to her fetus can lead to serious birth defects. Most likely our child would be deaf, blind and have serious mental retardation — a doctor friend told me that this prognosis could make a child with Down look like a walk in the park — but no one could tell us for sure what our unborn son's health would be like. What is more, no good studies existed because most of the women in the samples terminated before birth. The uncertainty was awful: weren't we supposed to be given solid information on which to base a decision? In lieu of that, we were offered a sonogram riddled with anomalies, a 20-something genetics counselor and terrible odds. We tried to take solace in the fact that our older daughter had never picked up on the fact that there was a baby in her mother's belly. We did what seemed right at the time: we aborted.

David Wasserman, a bioethicist at the University of Maryland, wrote a paper with Asch titled "Where Is the Sin in Synecdoche?" in which the two argue that prenatal testing is morally suspect because the system leads people to reduce fetuses to a single trait, their impairment. "Since time immemorial people have felt fear and aversion toward people with impairments, but these tests legitimize those fears," Wasserman says. Parenthood, according to Wasserman, is and should remain a gamble.

Opposing this, of course, is the plain fact that a healthy newborn is the best outcome — what every parent wants. No reasonable person would choose sickness over health, and we seem to have the ability to choose. So how to proceed? Much hand wringing goes on about a sci-fi "Gattaca"-like future in which terminating kids with Down syndrome leads to selecting for only highly intelligent, physically powerful blue-eyed children. Yet in truth we are not at risk of creating a society of such supposedly perfect human beings any time soon. "There's enough evil and caprice to always assure there will be disabilities," says Laurie Zoloth, director of the Center for Bioethics, Science and Society at Northwestern University. "But could there be fewer? When people worry about curing too many things, I'm always glad that bioethics wasn't around when people were thinking about infectious diseases or polio or yellow fever."

The Brancas have little way of making sense of how Donna's primary doctors failed to apprehend that her pregnancy was not going well except to assume that they saw too many patients, believed her baby would be fine because she was relatively young or jumped to conclusions about the Brancas' ideas about abortion based on the gold cross that Anthony wore around his neck. Whatever the case, A.J.'s first days and weeks were a horrendous roller coaster. One of the earliest, hardest moments was when a doctor approached the Brancas with a D.N.R., or Do Not Resuscitate, order. They struggled with the choice, but decided to sign.

During A.J.'s first few months, he was hooked up to oxygen tubes to help him breath and to feeding tubes to help him eat, and he lived in an incubator to regulate his temperature. He remained hospitalized for 17 weeks. Donna spent every day by his bedside, usually returning home to eat a takeout dinner with Anthony and then driving back to the hospital again with her husband. During this time, the Brancas had to decide whether to institutionalize A.J. or raise him at home. Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome is so rare that virtually every doctor who counseled the Brancas could tell them no more than what the Brancas gleaned from a single study they found on the Internet. The Brancas were also cautioned that severely disabled children are often easiest on parents both emotionally and physically when they are infants, as all infants are wholly dependent on their parents.

When A.J. was discharged in October 1999, four months after his birth, he was still "medically fragile," he needed round-the-clock care and he spent nearly as many calories trying to eat and regurgitating his food as he managed to keep down in his stomach. The Brancas feared that if they took A.J. home, he might not make it through his first year. With the encouragement of their families and A.J.'s doctors, the Brancas placed him at St. Margaret's Center for Children in Albany.

"It was just awful," Donna told me, tears streaming down her otherwise composed face as she recently described the experience of dropping him off years ago. "Anthony and I just sat in the car and cried for hours. I was a mother, and yet I didn't feel like a mother. It didn't seem natural. As a mother, you have this feeling: no matter what, you're supposed to care for your child."

Back home in Orangeburg, Anthony and Donna tried but failed to find solace in the Catholic Church. (Neither had been churchgoers before, though both were raised in religious families; both identify with Catholicism culturally but say that families at times need more leeway than the church allows on family-planning issues.) They also started hanging around their single friends because they couldn't bear hearing about children. When A.J. was 5 months, Donna returned to work in marketing for I.B.M. part time because, she says, "I just needed to think about something else, or I was going to have a nervous breakdown." Around this time, too, the Brancas started considering legal action. Anthony's mother, a court stenographer, encouraged Donna to requisition her medical records, and when Donna showed them to Dennis Donnelly, a medical malpractice lawyer in New Jersey, he immediately took the case.

Donnelly cautioned the Brancas that her doctors probably wouldn't settle — about 75 percent of medical malpractice cases are found in favor of the defendant — though he also told the Brancas that if they won, they should expect a settlement in the millions. For the trial, he prepared a video called "A Day in the Life of A.J.," since Donna and Anthony did not want A.J. to take the stand. The trial started in June 2004 and lasted three weeks. By then, Anthony and Donna had 2-year-old twins. In court, Donnelly asked the Brancas' doctors why they had never measured Donna's fundal height, particularly in light of her low weight gain, why they had been unconcerned with her first-trimester bleeding (a possible indication of chromosomal damage) and why they had not done any follow-up testing after her 20-week sonogram suggested the fetus was small. He also showed the video in which the jurors could see A.J. hooked up to a feeding tube and taking endless meds.

The defense, for its part, tried to insinuate that Donna herself had declined to seek follow-up testing and that even if she had sought such testing, the results might not have arrived in time for her to abort. Furthermore, they argued that the Brancas would not have terminated. (Donnelly used the signed Do Not Resuscitate order to argue that the Brancas would, in fact, have terminated.) The doctors conceded that the falloff in Donna's due dates should have raised a "red flag" and that a follow-up sonogram after her 20-week sonogram would have showed a further deterioration in fetal size and weight. Donna's doctors also had little recollection of Donna as a patient, so they could speak only about their practice in general and of her case based on her records.

Separately, both Donna and Anthony told me that they believed they might not have sued had Donna's doctors just called to apologize. "They never felt any remorse," Donna said, "never called me after my son was born to say, 'I'm sorry this happened."'

The jury deliberated for two hours and found the doctors guilty of medical negligence. Ultimately, all parties agreed to a multimillion-dollar settlement — its exact amount is confidential — which remains in a trust for A.J.'s care.

Some people argue against the idea that we should have a right to terminate unwanted genetically flawed children on scientific, not moral, grounds. Bill Hurlbut, a Stanford professor and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, asserts that a lot of genetic testing is hyped. "Genes are not like Legos," he says, mocking the idea that the results of an amniocentisis, often delivered to parents as a neat picture of 23 chromosome pairs, can tell you who a child will be. "Our genes mix with whole societies of molecular interactions, including our environment. It's not just nature-nurture; it's cycles of momentum that get going. A lot of very sophisticated people believe there is a straight line from a gene to an expressed trait, and that is just wrong. We're going to regret we had this phrase, 'It's in our genetics."'

Serious questions have been raised by preimplantation genetic diagnosis. P.G.D. is available to families undergoing in vitro fertilization, and it works like this: an egg is fertilized and starts dividing. When the embryo reaches the eight-cell stage, a single cell is removed and tested for genetic abnormalities. If the cell's DNA looks normal, the embryo is implanted in the mother. If the DNA does not, the embryo is frozen or tossed out. But it is not so simple. In 2005, a team from Reprogenetics in West Orange, N.J., continued growing 55 embryos that previously tested as abnormal and found that a surprising number of the cells, when tested later, were genetically normal. After a few more days, an average of 48 percent of the cells were normal. After 12 days, one embryo contained 76 percent normal cells. This raises some interesting questions: do embryos containing some genetically flawed cells tend to heal themselves? How do you know if the cells selected for P.G.D. are representative? Is basing termination decisions on genetic information as solid a footing as we have thought? If not, how can we conscience the decision to abort?

Susan Crockin, the legal scholar, says she believes that P.G.D., as well as other types of prepregnancy testing, like screening donor eggs and sperm for genetic disorders, will very likely be the causes of all sorts of new lawsuits. For instance, a sperm bank in California has already found itself facing a wrongful-conception lawsuit, brought by parents who argue that their genetically impaired child would not have been conceived at all had the donated sperm been vetted properly. Egg-donor programs may soon be in the same position.

An unintended and particularly disconcerting consequence of all these new reproductive lawsuits is that they may bias the medical establishment toward termination, and some argue that such a bias already exists. This is alarming for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that several studies have shown that the raising of children with impairments is on the whole a lot less difficult and a lot less different from raising so-called normal kids than we imagine it will be. "Families with severely impaired children do not differ significantly in stresses and burdens from families with normal children," Wasserman, the bioethicist, maintains, citing articles like "The Experience of Disability in Families: A Synthesis of Research and Parent Narratives." The idea that a handicapped child will destroy a marriage is exaggerated, he told me: "A child prodigy can have just as large an impact on a family as a child with cystic fibrosis or Down."

The ways in which genetic counseling is biased toward termination are both systemic and subtle. Research suggests that counselors may steer patients toward, as one counselor said to me, "starting again with a clean slate." As another expert, Barbara Biesecker, director of the genetic-counseling training program at Johns Hopkins University, explains, "There's kind of a trend out there to call people at home and then just refer them back to the hospital" — meaning that the family who has learned that a fetus has a genetic disease is quickly referred to someone who will help get rid of it. This, according to Biesecker, is "a cop-out." Delivering the news on the phone, often without a spouse present, is, she says, "filled with assumptions about what's right for people — it assumes that they'll act," meaning terminate. "When I ask counselors why they're doing so much work on the phone, they say, 'That's what people want.' But people are in crisis; they need to slow down. I believe we're capable of making good decisions for ourselves in hard circumstances, but I think we should be putting up roadblocks to quick answers. I don't think it should be easy."

Compounding the problem, most of the news that genetic counselors provide to prospective parents about disabilities is negative and clinical. Face-to-face meetings, which often occur before amniocentesis, tend to be filled with mini-science lectures about how chromosomes replicate or how trisomies occur, not the swirling emotions that surround the news that the baby in your belly may not be the baby you dreamed of having. In an attempt to rectify the situation, Senators Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, and Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, last March sponsored the Prenatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act, a bill designed to mandate that more positive information be given to parents about the life of a disabled child. At a news conference to announce the bill was Brian Skotko, a Harvard Medical School student. Skotko published a paper in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology last spring based on his study, the largest and most comprehensive on prenatally diagnosed Down syndrome. It showed that obstetricians and genetic counselors failed to give expectant mothers who received a prenatal diagnosis of Down encouraging data about raising a Down child. One mother in Skotko's study reported that her genetic counselor "showed a really pitiful video first of people with Down syndrome who were very low tone and lethargic-looking and then proceeded to tell us that our child would never be able to read, write or count change."

Few would be against parents getting a complete and accurate picture of raising an impaired child, but how, exactly, does that picture look? Different families' experiences with similar impairments are wildly disparate, and Skotko's study has been criticized for having sample bias, because he collected his surveys through Down-syndrome family associations, groups presumably filled with people having relatively good experiences with the disease. (Skotko has a sister with Down.) Not included in his sample, for instance, was a 66-year-old woman named Wendolyn Markcrow of Buckinghamshire, England, who last year on Easter Monday gave her 36-year-old son, Patrick, 14 sleeping pills and suffocated him with a plastic bag and then attempted suicide. Patrick had Down syndrome, rarely slept at night and hit himself in the face so regularly and forcefully that he detached his retina. When arrested, Markcrow told the police that she had "snapped."

'Why does A.J. have to get on the bus?" Julia Branca, one of Donna and Anthony's 3-year-old twins, paused to ask her mother, referring to the shuttle that was taking A.J. back to St. Margaret's on a Sunday afternoon. (A.J. has since moved to the Center for Discovery, in Harris, N.Y., closer to the Brancas' home.) The sun dappled the lawn through the tall oak trees. A.J., three years older than his siblings, but about the same size, played with a LeapFrog infant piano in his wheelchair in the shade.

Julia is extremely engaged with the world of disability. At "A.J.'s house," what she used to call St. Margaret's and now calls the Center for Discovery, she says hello to all the kids, whether they respond or not, while her brother Johnny hugs Donna's leg. Julia ran off for a few minutes and returned with a cup full of acorns and set them on A.J.'s wheelchair tray. A.J. raised his head, as if to acknowledge Julia's gift, then sank back into the looping riffs of his musical toy. Nobody knows how much A.J. comprehends. He turns his head toward his family, sometimes reaches out an arm. "One time," says Anthony, "up in Albany, he started to cry when we left. He started to moan."

In A.J.'s infancy, when his son visited home, Anthony slept in the same room with A.J., often in the same bed, dispensing food and meds at one- and two-hour intervals and making sure A.J., who weighed only nine pounds at 1 year, didn't vomit and choke. When he found out Donna was pregnant with twins, he felt guilty because he "knew it was really going to take away from A.J. When the twins were born, it was like having triplets." Now, thanks to the settlement, when A.J. is home, a nurse comes at night. In some ways, being A.J.'s parents has grown harder as he has grown older. Yet despite the direst predictions from some of his doctors, A.J. is progressing, if slowly. No one expects that A.J. will ever talk, but last summer he learned to belly crawl, and his father was intensely proud. "Everyone talks about when their child says his first word," Anthony says. "With A.J., we don't have that. But I think Donna and I have more satisfaction." Anthony sounds calm but surprised, like a man long accustomed to unexpected and unsettling news. "A.J. was voted Most Improved Mobility last year at school," he told me. "I was more proud of that. Every kid who has what he's got doesn't learn to belly crawl. I felt like he'd hit a home run in the Little League World Series."

The Brancas love the son they wish they hadn't had. My family continues to mourn the child we don't regret terminating. "Anything you might say about the wrongfulness or the rightness of a birth," Laurie Zoloth, the bioethicist, says, "the particularity of that choice is only, and always, experienced by a particular set of parents in a particular family with certain grandparents, certain aunts and uncles, in a certain religion on a certain block in a certain neighborhood. These are circumstances that as professionals, and certainly as bioethicists, it's nearly impossible to fully understand. And then, of course, we have the luxury of walking away."

Elizabeth Weil lives in San Francisco. Her last article for the magazine was about childhood obesity in southern Texas.

'Wrongful Birth' and Early Testing
NPR: Fresh Air
Terry Gross
March 16, 2006

Terry interviews Elizabeth Weil, author of the NY Times Magazine article above.

DNA Art

2006-03-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

Fun With DNA

Nell Boyce
NPR: All Things Considered
March 15, 2006

Imagine a yellow smiley face. Now imagine 50 billion smiley faces floating in a single drop of water. That's what scientists have made using a new technique for building super-tiny shapes using the familiar double helix of DNA.

DNA holds our genetic code, and geneticists have studied it for decades. They have developed all kinds of tools to synthesize and manipulate this molecule. About 20 years ago, a researcher named Ned Seeman at New York University realized that scientists should be able to use all that's known about DNA to help them build nano-scale shapes that normally would be hard to engineer.

Since then, Seeman and other chemists have shown that they can use DNA to build really simple shapes such as cubes or octahedrons that are 1,000 times thinner than a human hair. They've done it by laboriously designing small snippets of DNA that will hook themselves up into the desired form.

But a new method for building things with DNA is so much faster and easier that even a high school student could think up a shape and then make a DNA version within a week, says Paul Rothemund, who came up with the idea at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

"Even by the time I was making smiley faces, I didn't really believe that the method worked as well as it did," Rothemund says.

Rothemund's trick is this: Instead of custom-designing small snippets of DNA so that they fit together in a certain way, he borrows a single, long strand of DNA from a harmless virus.

"We take that very long strand of DNA -- it's about 7,000 letters long -- and we add to it about 200 short DNA strands that I call staples," Rothemund says.

The staples bring two distant parts of the DNA strand together so that it folds.

"We actually fold the DNA into any shape that we want," Rothemund says. "So in the case of the smiley faces that I made, I actually fold the DNA into a disk, but then leave two holes for the eyes and the mouth."

Rothemund has developed a computer program that can analyze a shape, figure out the right folding pattern, and then tell you what DNA staples you need to make that shape.

"It's really easy and fun, actually, to make whatever you want at the nano-scale. You design it in the computer, you order the DNA sequences, they come in the mail, you add a little bit of salt water, you heat it up and cool it down, and then an hour and a half later, it's ready to look at under the microscope."

In this week's issue of the journal Nature, Rothemund shows off some of his DNA art. One impressive nano-creation is a tiny map of the Americas. But the real goal of this work isn't tiny maps. Rothemund says that in the future, tiny DNA shapes could serve as scaffolds for quickly building nanostructures made of metals or other materials. Those could be useful in new kinds of electronic devices, such as faster computers.

Two Quotes

2006-03-10T11:07:00.000-08:00

A tree is never confused.

~botanist David Baker, referring to a New Orleans magnolia tree blooming in October.

I suffer from the malady of bibliomania.

~Thomas Jefferson, speaking of bookshopping in Paris, where he bought enough books to fill 250 feet of shelf space.

Prairie Fire II

2006-03-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

Fields become a feast for fire
A runaway grass fire scorches the countryside and threatens homes in Butler County before it is brought under control.
By Dion Lefler
The Wichita Eagle
Thu, Mar. 09, 2006

EL DORADO - Debra Karst stood in her yard Wednesday, looking at the charred remains of a motor home and reflecting on the good times her family and friends had had taking it to motorcycle races across the country.

"The memories that went on, you can't take the memories away," she said.

Memories were about all that remained of the motor home, as well as the 1967 Chevy Camaro Karst got from her father after finishing high school about 25 years ago.

Her neighborhood, off K-196 in rural Butler County, bore the brunt of a fast-moving fire that scorched an estimated 10,500 acres of farm fields and grassland before firefighters brought it under control Wednesday evening.

Just about everyone in the small cluster of homes lost something: woodpiles, sheds, even a small, unoccupied house.

The fire was started by an accident involving a trailer on K-254, said Kathy Guy, assistant director of Butler County Emergency Management.

A sheriff's deputy had spotted a problem with the trailer and pulled the driver over to fix it. As the driver slowed, the tongue of the trailer popped off the hitch, kicking up sparks as it dragged on the pavement, Guy said.

Fed by high winds from the southwest, the fire burned a broad stripe across the countryside, leaving a blackened landscape punctuated by pillars of smoke from where at least three oil storage tanks burned.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius declared a disaster state of emergency for the county to mobilize state resources to help fight the fire. More than 34 state, county and city agencies battled the blaze.

Just before dusk, the wind died out, allowing firefighters to gain the upper hand. By sundown, it was into the mop-up stages.

The smoke caused a two-car accident on the Kansas Turnpike. A Highway Patrol dispatcher said a driver rear-ended a car that had slowed because of reduced visibility.

The turnpike was shut down for about 45 minutes because of the smoke.

As the fire moved closer to El Dorado, officials evacuated Oil Hill Elementary School as a precaution. Students were asked to walk about a half-mile to the parking lot of a nearby Verus Bank.

"We had a special field trip, and the kids walked down here very orderly," said Eliese Holt, superintendent of Circle schools in Towanda.

Sandie Pope, a registered nurse, was assisting in a shoulder replacement at Kansas Surgery and Recovery Center when she got the word that her son had been moved to the bank. As she picked her son up, she said, she had not yet been to her home, which is on K-196.

"The fire is right by our house," she said. "It's scary."

No one was injured by the fire, but it was a harrowing experience for those who watched as flames howled toward their homes.

"I was up watching it on my deck," said Jill Johnson, who lives on Parallel Road about a half-mile south of Karst's neighborhood. "The flames were headed this way from the southwest and I thought, 'it's not good.' "

Some workmen from the nearby oil fields stopped by and helped her water down the deck and other parts of the home.

"All of a sudden, this circle of fire shot this way," she said. "I booked it out of here not knowing what was going to happen."

When she got back, the fire had burned across her yard, to the edge of the detached garage and to within 5 feet of the home. Johnson and her husband, Craig, spent the rest of the afternoon squelching hot spots.

"I don't think I'll sleep tonight," she said. "I can't imagine what's going to rekindle up here."

Next door, the fire burned a corner of J.D. Reinhart's house.

He raced home after a neighbor called him at work to tell him flames were getting close to the house, where he has lived for 26 years. By the time he arrived, at least five fire trucks were around his property with hoses gushing.

"I was relieved when I saw them out there," he said.

While the home suffered minor damage, the fire left a scar by burning the rose bushes that had been tended by his wife, Shirley, who died in January.

"Two-thousand-six hasn't been good to me," he said.

Once the danger passed, he went back to his job at the El Dorado toll both on the Kansas Turnpike, leaving his son Jerry to hose down still-smoldering trees and a power pole in the yard.

George Massey wasn't quite as lucky.

His home was saved, but the fire destroyed an auxiliary one-bedroom house at the back of his property.

"Mainly, we used it for storage," he said as he watched firefighters pour water on the charred remains. His wife collects antique furniture and glassware, much of which was inside.

Wednesday's was another in a series of recent grass fires as strong winds and warm temperatures have lingered in the area, which has been without significant moisture for weeks.

Although there is a 20 percent chance of rain today, forecasters said fire danger should be lessened by temperatures that are expected to reach only into the 50s.

John Weckerling, who tracks fire statistics for the state fire marshal's office, said he didn't yet have any statewide statistics on grass fires this year. But during the past decade, he said, he didn't recall another time when nearly half the counties in the state had active burn bans.

The Wichita Fire Department, meanwhile, was urging smokers Wednesday to not discard cigarettes through automobile windows -- a practice that was blamed for three grass fires within 24 hours.

City fire officials said throwing cigarette butts out of a car is littering and carries a fine of $100 to $1,000. They said that given the current conditions, they were increasing efforts to catch those violating the ordinance.

Prairie Fire

2006-03-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

Grass fire scorches thousands of acres

By Hurst Laviana
The Wichita Eagle

A fast-moving grass fire burned a huge black swath through the center of Butler County today, forcing the evacuation of a school and several homes but causing no significant property damage.

Butler County sheriff's officials said the fire, which burned several thousand acres near the Kansas Turnpike west and north of El Dorado, caused no injuries to humans or livestock.

Smoke from the blaze, which could be seen as far away as Wichita, forced the closing of the Turnpike for about 45 minutes beginning at 4 p.m.

Fire crews said they were able to contain the blaze before sundown.

Today's fire was another in a series of grass fires have plagued south-central Kansas in recent weeks as strong winds and unseasonably warm temperatures have lingered in an area that has been without significant moisture for several weeks.

Although there is only a 20 percent chance of rain today, forecasters said fire danger should lessened by much cooler temperatures that are expected to reach only into the 50s.

John Weckerling, who tracks fire statistics for the Kansas state fire marshal's office, said he didn't yet have any statewide statistics on grass fires this year. But during the past decade, he said, he didn't recall a time other than now when nearly half the counties in the state had active burn bans.

Sedgwick County Fire Marshal Tim Millspaugh said his agency has responded to more than 90 grass fires since the first of the year.

"We've tripled what we normaly run," he said.

The Wichita Fire Department, meanwhile, was urging smokers Wednesday to not discard cigarettes through automobile windows a practice that was blamed for three grass fires within a 24-hour period.

City fire officials said throwing cigarette butts out of a car is littering in Wichita and carries a fine of $100 to $1,000. They said that given the current conditions, they were increasing efforts to catch those violating the ordinance.

Grass-fed Beef

2006-03-08T17:33:00.000-08:00

Scientists point way to greener pastures
Mark Winne
March 8, 2006

The latest health, diet, and environmental news all came from one place yesterday: the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The Union's report -- "Greener Pastures: How grass-fed beef and milk contribute to healthy eating" -- finds that grass-fed cows produce meat and milk lower in unhealthy fats and higher in beneficial fatty acids, such as Omega-3 and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), than grain-fed livestock. The report also notes that grass-fed livestock farming methods do a better job of protecting water, air, and the communities that support family farms.

For those of us who routinely argue in favor of sustainable food production, the report doesn't provide any shocking revelations. Smaller herds of animals that are treated humanely, allowed to move about freely, and eat what nature intended -- grass, not grain -- are naturally going to produce healthier food. So how is it that we've reached the point where we need a team of Ph.Ds and a respected research institution to prove it?

Carefully hidden from the view of the 99% of us who aren't farmers lies the coiled serpent we call the industrial food system. In depopulated and increasingly desperate rural communities across America, remaining locals and immigrant workers have been forced into a kind of modern servitude to factory dairy, hog, cattle, and poultry farms. It is from these places that most of our food is produced today.

Slip past the security gate of Don Oppliger's Land and Cattle Feedlot in eastern New Mexico and you'll see 35,000 head of beef cattle. Confined to small dusty pens, they eat nothing but a rolled corn flake ration until they're sent to the slaughterhouse. The constant shuffling of hooves raises a bacteria-laden dust cloud that's carried by the prevailing winds into west Texas. At one end of the complex sits a giant lagoon which catches the operation's wastewater, chemicals, urine, antibiotics, and other effluvia. A tour of the feedlot requires you to roll up the truck windows tightly to keep the flies out. In the narrow strip of ground that separates the fencing from the feedlot's service roads lie the carcasses of dead cows (a.k.a. "downers"), their eyes bugged out, tongues dangling, bellies swollen in the summer heat.

While none of Oppliger's cattle will taste a blade of grass, at least they are outdoors. By comparison, indoor factory hog farms confine their animals 20,000 at a time to low-ceilinged warehouses only 100 feet in length. They generate an odor so intense it would knock a buzzard off a crap wagon. According to Anita Poole, legal counsel for the Kerr Center, an Oklahoma organization that's fought that state's capitulation to the hog industry, "The average Joe Blow who might stumble into a hog facility would never want to eat pork again."

Texas County, Oklahoma was home to 11,000 hogs in 1990, but thanks to the Seaboard Corporation and all-too-willing local officials, the county now hosts over a million hogs. Because of contaminated water run-off from the hog farms, both groundwater and surface water quality have declined. Even worse, the Ogallala Aquifer upon which the region depends for its water is being rapidly depleted. The Oklahoma Water Resource Board reported that water levels in many Texas County wells have dropped 50 to 100 feet over the last 30 years, due in large part to high water demand created by factory hog operations and the irrigated farm land that supports them.

Got Milk? Got Problems!

Got milk? Eat Taco Bell cheese? Slurp Yoplait Yogurt? Chances are increasing every day that the main ingredient for these products comes from New Mexico, now the nation's seventh largest and fastest growing dairy state. Concentrated in the state's southeast quadrant, New Mexico' factory dairy farms have increased their herd size at least five-fold in the last 10 years. And along with this increase has come a severe rise in groundwater contamination (about 60% of the state's dairy wells exceed allowable nitrate standards), air pollution (the asthma rate for this region of the state is nearly three times higher than the state average), and the cost of community services (expenses for schools, social services, police, and prisons have grown rapidly).

If you happen to be cruising down a New Mexico highway, you're likely to encounter a billboard paid for by one of the state's dairy associations that modestly proclaims the goodness of milk. The scene is of a small herd of black-and-white Holsteins grazing contentedly on very green grass with a lovely red barn in the background. If those cows were alive and really from New Mexico, they'd probably think they had died and gone to Vermont.

A real scene from one of the state's factory dairy farms would be decidedly less pleasing. The picture would be of thousands of cows slithering about in steel pens, amidst dust and manure, without a stem of grazeable grass for miles around. No frolicking about on mellow pasture for these girls, no sir; it's in and out of the 100-cow milking parlor two or three times per day until the age of 2, at most 3, when they are then sent off to the hamburger factory. In addition to regular doses of antibiotics, they will be given artificial bovine growth hormones that stimulate milk production beyond their natural limits.

When you pick up a gallon of organic or sustainably produced milk in the supermarket and say, "Zowee! This is $5.49; I can get the regular stuff for $2.89," you should know what you're paying for -- and not paying for. Smaller herds of cows spending some if not all of their lives on grass, and not pumped up with growth hormones, produce a more costly milk than factory farms. And who pays for the asthma victim's long-term health care, the contaminated water, and the escalating local school expenditures? Not the factory farm dairies that may be the cause, and not consumers who are simply grateful for cheap milk. When these costs are paid at some indefinable point in the future, they are paid by the victims, the taxpayers and, of course, the environment.

The End Game?

Dr. Charles Benbrook is a former executive director of the Board of Agriculture for the National Academy of Sciences. His professional work includes studies of the dairy industry, whose growth west of the Mississippi he finds "very perplexing." Among his comments regarding large, western dairy farms: "If the dairy industry in the Southwest was forced to pay the real cost of water, it would quickly move to the Upper Midwest and Northeast." When I asked him what he thought about the future of the Southwest dairy industry, he said that it was "patently unsustainable because in not less than five years, but surely no more than 20, the dairy waste stream will overwhelm the absorptive capacity of the local environment."

The American Public Health Association (APHA) has said essentially the same thing. In a 2004 resolution, APHA said

Considering the health and economic impacts on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) workers ... children and CAFO neighbors from exposure to large concentrations of manure ... dust, toxins, microbes, antibiotics and pollutants ... APHA urges federal, state and local governments to impose a moratorium on new CAFOs until additional scientific data ... have been collected.

The Union of Concerned Scientists' report has brought us one step closer to understanding the human health benefits of a more traditional form of livestock raising that respects the land, water, air, and animals. At the same time, the form of agriculture proponents tout as "modern" but we critics scorn as "industrial" continues to demonstrate that it lives beyond the capacity of natural systems to support it.

As consumers who want what's best for our bodies, we may have to spend a little more on food products that support smaller scale, sustainable farms. As citizens who want clean air and water, and can see the value of viable farming communities, we may need to raise a little hell with our policymakers. Shop like your life depends on it, but vote like the lives of others depend on it.

Introverts' Rights Movement

2006-03-06T07:38:00.000-08:00

Introverts of the World, Unite!

A conversation with Jonathan Rauch, the author who—thanks to an astonishingly popular essay in the March 2003 Atlantic—may have unwittingly touched off an Introverts' Rights revolution

Atlantic Unbound
February 14, 2006

Most magazine articles do not, as a general rule, inspire impassioned responses. But in 2003, when The Atlantic published a short essay by correspondent Jonathan Rauch on the trials of introversion in an extroverts' world, the reaction was overwhelming. Rauch was inundated with more enthusiastic mail about the piece than for anything else he'd ever written. And on The Atlantic's Web site, it drew (and has continued to draw) more traffic than any other piece we've posted.

"I am an introvert," Rauch declared in the piece. And as such, he contended, he is a member of one of the "most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world." By definition, he explained, introverts are those who find other people's company tiring. Yet the uncomprehending extrovert majority imposes its own gregarious expectations on extroverts and introverts alike—compelling incessant socializing, enthusiastic party-going, and easy shooting of the breeze as norms. Introverts, Rauch pointed out—though an oppressed minority—comprise a significant portion of the population. Their quiet, introspective ways, he argued, should therefore be viewed not as a deviation from standard, but as a different kind of normal.

He addressed extroverts, admonishing them to be more sensitive to their introvert peers: after all, "someone you know, respect, and interact with every day," he explained, "is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts." As for introverts, he wrote, "we can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say, 'I'm an introvert.... Now please shush.'"

If the groundswell of support for these sentiments is any indication, Rauch may soon find himself the unwitting figurehead for an Introverts' Rights Revolution. We decided to have a few words with this author, who has clearly tapped into something important.

Rauch is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. His book, Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, was published in 2004.

I spoke with him in early January.

—Sage Stossel

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

Did anything in particular inspire you to write an article about this? An especially trying plane ride seated next to an extrovert, for example?

I don't think it was any specific incident. The idea was rolling around in my head for a while. To some extent, it was the result of being partnered with an extrovert and realizing that this was a daily source of tension. So I started organizing my thoughts on the subject. Another motivation was, basically, that I thought it would be funny.

It's interesting that you've found it a source of tension to be paired with an extrovert. I've read that introvert-extrovert pairings work well because the person who doesn't like to make small talk can just let the other person do it for them.

That's true. It does work very well in some situations. But for an introvert it also makes for a constant—I guess you might call it "brain pressure." That's a better phrase than "tension," because tension implies conflict and it's not that. It's just that my partner Michael's default mode of being is to talk and interact all the time, whereas mine is to talk as little as possible. We've been together since 1996 and we've spent much of that time just learning how not to drive each other completely insane. Part of my motivation for writing this piece was to pass along some of what I've learned. I was also hoping Michael would read it, which he did.

Did it help?

By the time the piece was published he'd probably heard it all from me before. But it doesn't hurt to go on the record.

If he were a writer he could do the companion piece—"How to Care for Your Extrovert."

Exactly. But of course my view, as I say in the article, is that it's much easier for introverts to understand these things than extroverts. Extroverts really have a hard time "getting" it. And even when they do get it, they still have a hard time modifying their behavior.

You wrote that for a long time you didn't even realize you were an introvert. What caused it to finally dawn on you?

From about the age of eighteen or nineteen, when I went to college, I realized that it was just not my idea of fun to party. In fact, I couldn't see why anyone would want to—I get so monumentally bored at parties. So I realized that I had this fundamental difference with a lot of other people. I didn't put a name on it until a few years ago when a friend of mine, who reads a lot of Jung, informed me that he's an introvert and that, "by the way, Jonathan, you're an introvert, too." He explained what that means and suddenly a lightbulb went on and things fell into place.

Now that you're tuned into it, can you usually tell when you meet someone whether or not they're also an introvert?

No. There's no introvert "gay-dar" that I can tell. One reason is that a lot of introverts are actually very good at being social. It just takes a lot of work for them. I'm like that. I'm not great at small talk, but I can seem quite outgoing for spells of up to an hour or so before I completely run out of gas. So I have to kind of get to know someone before I can figure out whether they're an introvert. Not that it takes all that much getting to know. If you notice that someone's getting tired out by a long conversation, they're probably an introvert. But it's not a first impression kind of thing.

I was surprised to read in your article that it's not typical for introverts to also be anxious or shy in social settings, because I'm both.

I was wondering whether you were an introvert. When did you realize that about yourself?

I'm not sure. I guess it probably hit me in seventh grade when somebody told my older brother, "You know, Sage could be popular if she talked more." Of course, he reported this to me, and I started to brood over it.

That is so unjust. Isn't it?

Yeah—chattiness suddenly seemed like the key to social success and happiness.

That story so sums up the kind of extrovert hegemony that can make life miserable. I think it's particularly hard for girls and women. "You'd be so much more popular if you'd talk more." It seems to me that the world would be a much better place, and that people would be much more rightly popular, if they talked less. Because so little of what most people say is actually worth hearing.

True. Although sometimes it's interesting to listen to other people talk. It's too bad it's not more acceptable to go to a party and just kind of soak things up.

Yeah. They should sell skybox seats at parties for people like us.

You asked about shyness versus introversion. My limited reading on the subject suggests that, psychologically speaking, they're regarded as different things. That reflects my own experience; I'm not particularly shy myself. To me, shyness implies a real reluctance to be socially aggressive or assertive. It's very difficult for shy people to put themselves out there if they need to. For introverts, it's never easy to do, but it's more a matter of reluctance to expend the energy, because it tires us out. That's what I feel most strongly. If I have to go to a party and then a dinner afterwards, I'm completely ruined for the evening. But if I'm called upon to run a business meeting or something, I don't feel any reluctance or anxiety about it. So, in my mind there's always been a fairly clear distinction between introversion and shyness.

You also mention in the article that studies have shown that introverts process information differently from other people.

Yeah, that's something I read back when I was reporting the piece. I can't remember the details now, but it involved brain scans.

It sounds right to me that the process is different. When there's a conversation flowing around me and everyone else is so quick with their responses, I almost imagine that other people's brains are endowed with some kind of fast-acting comment-generating engine.

Yeah, I marvel at Michael who can always somehow turn the conversation right over effortlessly and keep it going even when what he says is not necessarily profound or interesting. What he comes up with is perfectly tuned to the sense and flow of the conversation. But it's not words that are particularly intended to convey ideas or mean things. It's words that socialize—that simply continue the conversation. It's chit-chat. I have no gift for that. I have to think about what to say next, and sometimes I can't think fast enough and end up saying something stupid. Or sometimes I just come up dry and the conversation kind of ends for while until I can think of another topic. This is why it's work for me. It takes positive cognition on my part. I think that's probably a core introvert characteristic that you and I have in common and which can probably be distinguished from shyness per se—that small talk takes conscious effort and is very hard work. There's nothing small about small talk if you're an introvert. But we're good at big talk. Are you good at big talk?

If I get onto a topic I'm interested in and feel strongly about then it's true that I can get animated and engaged. But I'm not so good at chatting about things like the weather.

Right. The weather's not interesting. But once an introvert gets on a subject that they know about or care about or that intrigues them intellectually, the opposite often takes hold. They get passionately engaged and turned on by the conversation. But it's not socializing that's going on there. It's learning or teaching or analyzing, which involves, I'm convinced, a whole different part of the brain from the socializing part.

Do you ever wish you were an extrovert?

Not really. That may be because my "faking it" skills are pretty good. But I do think a lot of us are tired of being told that there's something wrong with us—of this lazy assumption that if you're not an extrovert, there's something wrong with you. I think my article may speak to people in part because of its defiant message. It says, "No, I don't wish to be an extrovert. Not everyone has to be one. And why don't you people get it?"

Your article made me think of that book The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman from the 1950s. He argued that the dominant economic model of each era in a sense "creates"—or privileges—the character type that's best suited to it. So, for example, in the agricultural and industrial eras, what he called the "inner-directed" type was best suited to getting work done and transmitting certain moral and cultural values. And then, with the rise of a more consumer-oriented economy, it became beneficial for people to be gregarious and affable. So teachers started to care more about whether their students were popular and cooperative than if they were interested in the subject matter and doing well academically.

I've never thought about it in those terms. It's true that in a lot of the social jobs that require leadership—whether in politics or in corporations—being energized by dealing with people all day long is a plus. And it's also probably true that, in an urban corporate economic structure, those skills are more important than in a rural peasant economy. But I wouldn't say that it changes the character of the people particularly. I do think that there's been, in the last ten years or so, a major economic resurgence for introversion—the "geek" economy. The prototypical geek is really good at thinking, has superb powers of concentration (which tends to be an introvert trait), and works very well independently. They're often pretty awesomely brilliant people, and they're fairly defiant about being geeks. They've turned this word "geek" into a term that's almost romantic in some ways, and through the Silicon economy, they've been massively innovative and economically important. A lot of them are running circles around the extroverts who are selling shoes. So I think part of what's happened lately is that the digital economy is giving introverts a new place in the sun.

You've gotten more reader response to this article than for anything else you've written. What do you think accounts for that?

Well, I can tell you that I never saw it coming. I thought I wrote this almost for my own fun and so that I would have something to hand people to get them to understand. Part of the problem with being an introvert is that it's hard to explain yourself. You can't say to your friends, "Hey guys, I'm an introvert," and have them know how to deal with you. So I thought it would be pretty darn handy to have something on paper.

Then I got this overwhelming reaction in the mail. It's been a bigger reaction than to anything else I've written. I think it suggests that a lot of people have the same experiences you and I do, and that they haven't had a name for it or a way of understanding it. Having that is very valuable. It tells you how to understand yourself and—maybe even more importantly—it tells you that you're fine and that, in fact, a lot of the problem is with the rest of the world.

People really do seem to be having a real "eureka" reaction to this. At some level, it reminds me of what it's like to discover that you're gay. Obviously there's no structural similarity between introversion and homosexuality, but there is this sense of realizing that you're different in a way that's very meaningful. Understanding introversion as a concept kind of makes the pieces fit together. A number of people have told me that they've Xeroxed the article and given it to their friends, their families, their significant others, and so on, as a communication device.

You jokingly talk about an Introverts' Rights Movement. It seems as though, given the dramatic response to this article, there must be a lot of people out there who are just now realizing that they're introverts and that the dominant culture doesn't really take their characteristics into account in terms of what it expects of them.

Well, that's exactly right. Part of the thrill of this article is that it seems to be helping introverts discover each other. It never occurred to me when I wrote it that there would be so many other people out there with whom this would resonate so strongly. But one of the main points I see over and over again in the mail I've been getting is, "I'm not alone! There are others like me." This sense of empowerment because of not being alone is very important to people. That in itself, to the extent that that takes hold, would be a very important part of correcting the introvert/extrovert imbalance.

Your article has also been one of the most popular pages on our Web site. We posted it three years ago, and it still gets more hits than practically anything else on the site.

Yes. The Internet is the perfect medium for introverts. You could almost call it the Intronet. You know the old New Yorker cartoon with a dog sitting at a computer saying to another dog, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." Well, on the Internet, no one knows you're an introvert. So it's kind of a natural that when The Atlantic put this piece online, introverts beat a path to it; it's the ideal distribution mechanism by which introverts can reach other introverts and spread the word.

Are you aware of anybody else writing about these things today?

I'm not. Some people who wrote in sent me some of their own writings on the subject. But if there are other articles I haven't seen them. We'll see over time.

So if you were to spearhead an Introverts' Rights movement what would be some of the things you'd advocate?

Massive subsidies. I think people like us should have twice as much Social Security.

I like that.

Yeah that's pretty good.

Maybe Greta Garbo could be the mascot.

Good idea. Though she may have just been shy. Did she really say, "I vant to be alone"?

That's what I've heard.

I think that was a line from her movie The Grand Hotel, though, in which case it was just her character who said that. But she could still be the patron saint. Actually, my favorite line is from Waiting for Godot. I can quote it to you exactly: "Don't talk to me. Don't speak to me. Stay with me."

That's perfect.

To me those words sum up the introvert impulse. We love people—we're not misanthropic for the most part. We just can't socialize with them all the time. We want to hold their hand or hug them or just sit quietly and read a book with them.

I was tongue-in-cheek about the introverts' rights movement, but the main principle would just be that it should be as respectable for introverts to be who they are socially as it is for extroverts. We ought to be trying to make extroverts conscious and not uncomfortable about the fact that we're here. Extroverts should understand that if someone is being quiet it doesn't mean they're having a bad time; it doesn't mean they're depressed; it doesn't mean they're lonely or need psychiatric help or medication. A lot of the battle is making the extrovert world more aware. The onus is on us to do that. Maybe this article is a start. One thing you'll notice about the article, by the way, is that it addresses extroverts. I think that's very much the strategy; we need to tell the world who we are. The first step is to understand who we are ourselves, but the second step is to educate extroverts. This is stuff extroverts need to know. They're driving us crazy. We need to tell them.

Introversy

2006-03-06T07:35:00.000-08:00

Caring for Your Introvert
The habits and needs of a little-understood group

by Jonathan Rauch
The Atlantic Monthly
March 2003

Do you know someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is "too serious," or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

If you answered yes to these questions, chances are that you have an introvert on your hands—and that you aren't caring for him properly. Science has learned a good deal in recent years about the habits and requirements of introverts. It has even learned, by means of brain scans, that introverts process information differently from other people (I am not making this up). If you are behind the curve on this important matter, be reassured that you are not alone. Introverts may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world.

I know. My name is Jonathan, and I am an introvert.

Oh, for years I denied it. After all, I have good social skills. I am not morose or misanthropic. Usually. I am far from shy. I love long conversations that explore intimate thoughts or passionate interests. But at last I have self-identified and come out to my friends and colleagues. In doing so, I have found myself liberated from any number of damaging misconceptions and stereotypes. Now I am here to tell you what you need to know in order to respond sensitively and supportively to your own introverted family members, friends, and colleagues. Remember, someone you know, respect, and interact with every day is an introvert, and you are probably driving this person nuts. It pays to learn the warning signs.

What is introversion? In its modern sense, the concept goes back to the 1920s and the psychologist Carl Jung. Today it is a mainstay of personality tests, including the widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Introverts are not necessarily shy. Shy people are anxious or frightened or self-excoriating in social settings; introverts generally are not. Introverts are also not misanthropic, though some of us do go along with Sartre as far as to say "Hell is other people at breakfast." Rather, introverts are people who find other people tiring.

Extroverts are energized by people, and wilt or fade when alone. They often seem bored by themselves, in both senses of the expression. Leave an extrovert alone for two minutes and he will reach for his cell phone. In contrast, after an hour or two of being socially "on," we introverts need to turn off and recharge. My own formula is roughly two hours alone for every hour of socializing. This isn't antisocial. It isn't a sign of depression. It does not call for medication. For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: "I'm okay, you're okay—in small doses."

How many people are introverts? I performed exhaustive research on this question, in the form of a quick Google search. The answer: About 25 percent. Or: Just under half. Or—my favorite—"a minority in the regular population but a majority in the gifted population."

Are introverts misunderstood? Wildly. That, it appears, is our lot in life. "It is very difficult for an extrovert to understand an introvert," write the education experts Jill D. Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. (They are also the source of the quotation in the previous paragraph.) Extroverts are easy for introverts to understand, because extroverts spend so much of their time working out who they are in voluble, and frequently inescapable, interaction with other people. They are as inscrutable as puppy dogs. But the street does not run both ways. Extroverts have little or no grasp of introversion. They assume that company, especially their own, is always welcome. They cannot imagine why someone would need to be alone; indeed, they often take umbrage at the suggestion. As often as I have tried to explain the matter to extroverts, I have never sensed that any of them really understood. They listen for a moment and then go back to barking and yipping.

Are introverts oppressed? I would have to say so. For one thing, extroverts are overrepresented in politics, a profession in which only the garrulous are really comfortable. Look at George W. Bush. Look at Bill Clinton. They seem to come fully to life only around other people. To think of the few introverts who did rise to the top in politics—Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon—is merely to drive home the point. With the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, whose fabled aloofness and privateness were probably signs of a deep introverted streak (many actors, I've read, are introverts, and many introverts, when socializing, feel like actors), introverts are not considered "naturals" in politics.

Extroverts therefore dominate public life. This is a pity. If we introverts ran the world, it would no doubt be a calmer, saner, more peaceful sort of place. As Coolidge is supposed to have said, "Don't you know that four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still?" (He is also supposed to have said, "If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it." The only thing a true introvert dislikes more than talking about himself is repeating himself.)

With their endless appetite for talk and attention, extroverts also dominate social life, so they tend to set expectations. In our extrovertist society, being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable, a mark of happiness, confidence, leadership. Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathic. "People person" is a compliment. Introverts are described with words like "guarded," "loner," "reserved," "taciturn," "self-contained," "private"—narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality. Female introverts, I suspect, must suffer especially. In certain circles, particularly in the Midwest, a man can still sometimes get away with being what they used to call a strong and silent type; introverted women, lacking that alternative, are even more likely than men to be perceived as timid, withdrawn, haughty.

Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain. We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours. "Introverts," writes a perceptive fellow named Thomas P. Crouser, in an online review of a recent book called Why Should Extroverts Make All the Money? (I'm not making that up, either), "are driven to distraction by the semi-internal dialogue extroverts tend to conduct. Introverts don't outwardly complain, instead roll their eyes and silently curse the darkness." Just so.

The worst of it is that extroverts have no idea of the torment they put us through. Sometimes, as we gasp for air amid the fog of their 98-percent-content-free talk, we wonder if extroverts even bother to listen to themselves. Still, we endure stoically, because the etiquette books—written, no doubt, by extroverts—regard declining to banter as rude and gaps in conversation as awkward. We can only dream that someday, when our condition is more widely understood, when perhaps an Introverts' Rights movement has blossomed and borne fruit, it will not be impolite to say "I'm an introvert. You are a wonderful person and I like you. But now please shush."

How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice? First, recognize that it's not a choice. It's not a lifestyle. It's an orientation.

Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don't say "What's the matter?" or "Are you all right?"

Third, don't say anything else, either.

Loss of Faith

2006-03-05T12:28:00.000-08:00

The Book of Bart
In the Bestseller 'Misquoting Jesus,' Agnostic Author Bart Ehrman Picks Apart the Gospels That Made a Disbeliever Out of Him

By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 5, 2006

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. Where does faith reside? In the soul? The mind, the marrow of the bones?

In the long hours of the night, the voices of the evangelical preachers on the AM dial seem to know. Believe, they say. Then daylight comes and the listeners' questions fade.

Bart Ehrman is a sermon, a parable, but of what? He's a best-selling author, a New Testament expert and perhaps a cautionary tale: the fundamentalist scholar who peered so hard into the origins of Christianity that he lost his faith altogether.

Once he was a seminarian and graduate of the Moody Bible Institute, a pillar of conservative Christianity. Its doctrine states that the Bible "is a divine revelation, the original autographs of which were verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit."

But after three decades of research into that divine revelation, Ehrman became an agnostic. What he found in the ancient papyri of the scriptorium was not the greatest story ever told, but the crumbling dust of his own faith.

"Sometimes Christian apologists say there are only three options to who Jesus was: a liar, a lunatic or the Lord," he tells a packed auditorium here at the University of North Carolina, where he chairs the department of religious studies. "But there could be a fourth option -- legend."

Ehrman's latest book, "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why," has become one of the unlikeliest bestsellers of the year. A slender book of textual criticism, currently at No. 16 on the New York Times bestseller list, it casts doubt on any number of New Testament episodes that most Christians take as, well, gospel.

Example: A crowd readies itself to stone an adulterous woman to death. Jesus leans down, doodles in the dust. Says, let the one without sin cast the first stone. The crowd melts away. It's one of the most famous stories in the Bible.

And it's most likely fiction, says Ehrman, seconding other scholars who say scribes added the episode to the biblical canon centuries after the life of Christ.

There are dozens of other examples in "Misquoting Jesus," things that go to the heart of the faith, things that have puzzled scholars for centuries. What actually happened to Jesus of Nazareth, there on the sands of Judea? Was he a small-time Jewish revolutionary or the Son of God? Both? Neither?

These ancient questions have been the guideposts to Ehrman's life. His take on them -- first as devout believer in biblical inerrancy, then as a skeptic who rejects it all -- suggests a demand for black and white in an arena where others see faith, mystery and the far traces of the unknowable.

"I think Bart is writing about his personal journey, about legitimate things that bother him," says Darrell Bock, research professor of New Testament studies at the Dallas Theological Seminary. Like many Christian scholars who have studied the ancient scrolls, Bock says his faith was strengthened by the same process that destroyed Ehrman's.

"Even if I don't have a high-definition photograph of the empty tomb to prove Christ's resurrection, there's the reaction to something after Christ died that is very hard to explain away," Bock says. "There was no resurrection tradition in Jewish theology. Where did it come from? How did these illiterate, impoverished fishermen create such a powerful religion?

"I can appreciate people feel differently. But sometimes I wonder if we are not all guilty of asking the Bible to do too much."
Void in His Heart

On a recent afternoon, Ehrman, 50, pulls off his fedora at the front of an auditorium. Some 350 students are filing in for Religion 22, one of the most popular classes on campus.

His text for today is the Gospel of John.

Thought to be the last written of the four Gospels that form the narrative of Christ's life, death and resurrection, it forms a cornerstone of the Christian faith. The problem is that it is distinctly different from the other three Gospels.

Ehrman looks the professorial part -- a not-too-tall man with a receding hairline, dressed in casual slacks and sport coat over a sweater. His shoes are scuffed. He is energetic and possessed of a gregarious personality that endears him to the student body. (He holds informal office hours on Wednesday nights in a local bar/restaurant.)

But as he paces back and forth across the stage, Ehrman ruthlessly pounces on the anomalies -- in this Gospel, Jesus isn't born in Bethlehem, he doesn't tell any parables, he never casts out a demon, there's no last supper. "None of that is found in John!" The crucifixion stories are different -- in Mark, Jesus is terrified on the cross; in John, he's perfectly composed. Key dates are different. The resurrection stories are different. Ehrman reels them off, rapid-fire, shell bursts against the bulwark of tradition.

"In Matthew, Mark and Luke, you find no trace of Jesus being divine," he says, his voice urgent. "In John, you do." He points out that in the other three books, it takes the disciples nearly half of Christ's ministry to learn who he is. John says no, no, everyone knew it from the beginning. "You shouldn't think something just because you believe it. You need reasons. That applies to religion. That applies to politics . . . just because your parents believe something isn't good enough."

The class files out a few minutes later.

"Most of the students have never heard anything like this in their lives," says Ben White, a graduate student. "For a lot of them, it's very threatening."

Ehrman doesn't mind this. He's often on CNN, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, a scholar amused by "taking something really complicated and getting a sound bite out of it."

"Misquoting Jesus" is just that to some extent, a book of pop history about biblical misconceptions. The first of his 19 books to be a bestseller, it reads like one of his lectures -- an exploration into how the 27 books of the New Testament came to be cobbled together, a history rich with ecclesiastical politics, incompetent scribes and the difficulties of rendering oral traditions into a written text.

To get an idea of how complicated this can be, consider: Greek, the lingua franca of the day, was written without capitalization or punctuation.

Here, you play biblical translator. Look at this, an example in English, from Ehrman's book:

godisnowhere

Does it say: God is now here.

Or: God is nowhere.

Sorting out these mysteries is the life Ehrman saw for himself since he was an uncertain teenager in Lawrence, Kan. He attended Trinity Episcopal on Vermont Street in Lawrence, but he and his family were casual in their faith. Lost in the middle of the pack in school, Ehrman felt an emptiness settle over him, something that lingered at nights after the lights were out, when the house was quiet.

One afternoon he went to a party at the house of a popular kid. It turned out to be a meeting of a Christian outreach youth group from a nearby college. In private talks, the charismatic young leader of the group told the 15-year-old Ehrman that the emptiness he felt inside was nothing less than his soul crying out for God. He quoted Scripture to prove it.

"Given my reverence for, but ignorance of, the Bible, it all sounded completely convincing," Ehrman writes.

One Saturday morning after having breakfast with the man, Ehrman went home, walked into his room and closed the door. He knelt by his bed and asked the Lord to come into his life.

He rose, and felt better, stronger. "It was your bona fide born-again experience."

The void in his heart was filled. The more he read the Bible, he says, the closer he felt to God.

His devotion soon engulfed him. "I told my friends, family, everyone about Christ," he remembers now. "The study of the Bible was a religious experience. The more you studied the Bible, the more spiritual you were. I memorized large parts of it. It was a spiritual exercise, like meditation."

He soon became a gung-ho Christian, a fundamentalist who believed the Bible contained no mistakes. He converted his family to his new faith. Schoolmates went off to the University of Kansas, but he enrolled in the Moody Bible Institute, an austere interdenominational institution in Chicago that forbade students to go to movies, play cards, dance, or have physical contact with the opposite sex.

It was spiritually thrilling.

For the next 12 years, he studied at Moody, at Wheaton College (another Christian institution in Illinois) and finally at Princeton Theological Seminary. He found he had a gift for languages. His specialty was the ancient texts that tried to explain what actually happened to Jesus Christ, and how the world's largest religion grew into being after his execution.

What he found there began to frighten him.

The Bible simply wasn't error-free. The mistakes grew exponentially as he traced translations through the centuries. There are some 5,700 ancient Greek manuscripts that are the basis of the modern versions of the New Testament, and scholars have uncovered more than 200,000 differences in those texts.

"Put it this way: There are more variances among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament," Ehrman summarizes.

Most of these are inconsequential errors in grammar or metaphor. But others are profound. The last 12 verses of the Gospel of Mark appear to have been added to the text years later -- and these are the only verses in that book that show Christ reappearing after his death.

Another critical passage is in 1 John, which explicitly sets out the Holy Trinity (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). It is a cornerstone of Christian theology, and this is the only place where it is spelled out in the entire Bible -- but it appears to have been added to the text centuries later, by an unknown scribe.

For a man who believed the Bible was the inspired Word of God, Ehrman sought the true originals to shore up his faith. The problem: There are no original manuscripts of the Gospels, of any of the New Testament.

He wrote a tortured paper at Princeton that sought to explain how an episode in Mark might be true, despite clear evidence to the contrary. A professor wrote in the margin:

"Maybe Mark just made a mistake."

As simple as it was, it struck him to the core.

"The evidence for the belief is that if you look closely at the Bible, at the resurrection, you'll find the evidence for it," he says. "For me, that was the seed of its own destruction. It wasn't there. It isn't there."

Doubt about the events in the life of Christ are hardly new. There was never clear agreement in the most ancient texts as to the meaning of Christ's death. But for many Christians, the virgin birth, the passion of Christ, the resurrection on the third day -- these simply have to be facts, or there is no basis for the religion.

"The fundamental truth claims of the biblical record were historical things that were believed to have happened, not 'once upon a time' in a fairy tale or somewhere outside of time and space, but at specific times and places that belonged to the total history of the human race and that could be located on a map," writes Jaroslav Pelikan, one of the field's most respected scholars. "If the history of the resurrection of Christ had not really happened, the message . . . according to the authority of the apostle Paul, had to be 'null and void.' "

Ehrman slowly came to a horrifying realization: There was no real historical record. It was, he felt, all incense and myth, told by illiterate men and not set down in writing for decades.
Dark Bubbles

It is a difficult thing to chart the loss of faith.

Where does it go, this belief in things not seen?

Let's look at "In the Beauty of the Lilies." This is John Updike's novel of the fictional Rev. Clarence Arthur Wilmot, a Presbyterian minister, and his loss of faith. Wilmot, beset by doubt one afternoon in the rectory, "felt the last particles of his faith leave him. The sensation was distinct -- a visceral surrender, a set of dark sparkling bubbles escaping upward . . . there was no God, nor should there be."

For Ehrman, the dark sparkling bubbles cascaded out of him while teaching a class at Rutgers University on "The Problem of Suffering in Biblical Traditions." It was the mid-1980s, the Ethiopian famine was in full swing. Starving infants, mass death. Ehrman came to believe that not only was there no evidence of Jesus being divine, but neither was there a God paying attention.

"I just began to lose it," Ehrman says now, in a conversation that stretches from late afternoon into the evening. "It wasn't for lack of trying. But I just couldn't believe there was a God in charge of this mess . . . It was so emotionally charged. This whole business of 'the Bible is your life, and anyone who doesn't believe it is going to roast in hell.' "

He kept teaching, moving to Chapel Hill, kept hanging on to the shreds of belief, but the dark bubbles fled upward. He was a successful author, voted one of the most popular professors on campus, but he awoke one morning seven years ago and found the remnants of faith gone. No bubbles at all. He was soon to marry for the second time and his kids were grown. He stopped going to church.

"I would love for him to be there with me, and sometimes wish it was something we share," says Ehrman's wife, Sarah Beckwith, a professor of medieval literature at Duke University, and an Episcopalian. "But I respect the integrity of decisions he's made, even if I reject the logic by which he reached them."

"Bart was, like a lot of people who were converted to fundamental evangelicalism, converted to the certainty of it all, of having all the answers," says Dale Martin, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, and a friend of three decades. "When he found out they were lying to him, he just didn't want anything to do with it.

"His wife and I go to Mass sometimes. He never comes with us anymore."

* * *

Life after the loss of faith, even for the deeply religious, is not necessarily a terrible thing.

Ehrman tools home from campus on a recent morning in his BMW convertible. He has a lovely house in the countryside, a wife who loves him and an ever-growing career. He is, he says, a "happy agnostic." That emptiness he felt as a teenager is still there, but he fills it with family, friends, work and the finer things in life.

He thinks that when you die, there are no Pearly Gates.

"I think you just cease to exist, like the mosquito you swatted yesterday."

On this particular morning, he turns his attention to his new book, the story of Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed Christ. Judas resides, according to Dante, in the ninth circle of hell.

Ehrman's desk is filled with open books. His study is sun-filled, with a glass door giving onto a patio and the gentle pines of the Carolina forests.

Where does faith reside? Does it leave a residue when it is gone?

Bart Ehrman begins writing, the day unfolding, shafts of light falling through the window, the mysteries of the Gospels open before him.

Progressive Small Town Kansas

2006-03-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

This is in addition to an extensive composting program. They are also doing research into other options such as incineration of trash to produce steam, and with it, electricity. The Harvey Co. government is also open to alternative septic options such as composting toilets. A progressive gem in the middle of the prairie.

Newton Refuses Few Recyclables
BY Christina M. Woods
The Wichita Eagle

Newton, believed to be the only community in Kansas that fines people for not recycling, is out to recycle even more.

Beginning today, residents are expected to add books, sticky notes and cat litter bags to the list of things they have to recycle.

Those who throw out a shampoo bottle, cereal box or crumpled gift wrap face written warnings, $50 fines or possible appearances in municipal court.

Recycling has been mandatory in Newton since 1999.

"If we have to do it, I don't understand why Wichita doesn't have to do it," said Diane Vernon of Newton. "You guys produce 10 times the junk we do."

In Newton, the city runs the recycling program. In Sedgwick County, recycling is left up to private companies and volunteer groups.

Newton residents recycle about 25 percent of their trash, not counting grass and leaves that are mulched or composted.

Sedgwick County doesn't know what percent of its trash residents recycle because trash is hauled by private companies.

The Sedgwick County Commission has talked about increasing recycling, but has put off decisions about a new recycling program until it decides whether to build a local landfill -- a debate that's been going on for nearly a decade.

In Kansas, 129 curbside recycling programs exist. Newton is believed to be the only one that fines residents for not recycling.

"Newton is the exception to the rule in Kansas," said Chiquita Cornelius, director of the Business and Industry Recycling Program in Topeka, which advises communities on recycling programs.

"I was surprised when they took that approach," she said. "In this part of the United States, mandates don't go over well. People don't like being told what they have to do."

City officials say they receive few complaints.

Vernon, of Newton, said her only concern with the city's latest mandate is storage space. She doesn't have a garage.

Paper from envelopes, books, gift wrap, greeting cards, charcoal bags and shredders are a few of the new items required to be recycled. Vernon already has a box in her living room for newspapers. But she doesn't want cereal boxes, egg cartons or toilet tissue tubes stacked in her living room.

"We'll make it work, I suppose," she said.

Newton's compliance rate with recycling is close to 100 percent, according to Randy Jackson, Newton's street and sanitation superintendent.

Trash haulers issue about 220 warnings a month to residents who are caught throwing away recyclable items, he said.

About 27 cases were forwarded to municipal court in 2005, according to Jackson. Residents pay $18 a month for trash and recycling service.

Most Newton residents polled Tuesday said they are pleased with the city's recycling program.

"I think we should be recycling even more than what we are," said Robert Swickard of Newton. "Styrofoam is one of the biggest abusers on the earth."

Newton does not recycle Styrofoam.

Stutzman Refuse Disposal recycling center holds the city's recycling contract.

The community collects about 5 tons of aluminum products and 70 tons of paper products monthly, according to Steve Sawatzky, the recycling center's supervisor. That amount is expected to increase beginning today.

"They've put a lot of teeth in their recycling bylaws," he said. "It hasn't always made happy customers, but it has helped in achieving the goals set out for the area."

Marge Roberson, chairwoman of the Harvey County Commission, said the changes allow people to put all of their paper products in one recycling bin instead of separating them like before.

"We are committed to not only recycling but to finding better ways than just poking our trash into the ground," she said.

Harvey County mandated recycling in 1999 to reduce the amount of trash the county was shipping to distant landfills. Newton was the only community that decided to enforce that mandate through fines.

The main concern people seem to have about the change is figuring out how to keep the wind from blowing the recyclables down the street.

The recycling containers for mixed paper have no lids.

"It's not too hard to figure out," Swickard said. "All it takes is a piece of plywood and a rock."

County Commissioner Roberson said she commends Newton for setting an example for surrounding cities.

"We're making it easier," she said, "for people to do the right thing."

Wichita: Final Friday, 02-24-06

2006-02-26T15:10:00.000-08:00

I took in the Wichita Final Friday Gallery Crawl this weekend. Some of the gallery spaces were impressive, but unfortunately not much of the art followed suit. The galleries in bold type showed work which I enjoyed at least a bit.

FINAL FRIDAY - FEBRUARY 24, 2006

ABODE Home, 1330 E. Douglas
Featured Artist: Chris Frank and Brian Hinkle - Assistant Curator The Wichita Center for the Arts
Exhibition Date: February 24, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 2006, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Regular Hours: Open everyday 10-6, Thursdays 10-8, Sunday 12-5
Contact: 267-1330

Allen-Lee Gallery, 348 N. Washington (1 Building South of 3rd St. on the East side of Washington)
Exhibition: Random Artists
Exhibition Dates: Friday, February 24, 2006 to Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday, 9am - 4pm
Contact: (316) 267-0167
Questions or after hours appointments call: Monika Stockton (316) 644-1124
allenleegallery@yahoo.com

Artists in Old Town, 412 E. Douglas, Suite C. (behind Gallery XII)
Exhibition: Paula Smith - "Americana"
Gallery Members: Rosemary Dugan, Maureen Walter, Judy Dove, Rita Beuttel, Judy Hull, Becky Price, Harry and Mary Ellen Williford
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 6:30 - 10:00 p.m.
To see studios, check on classes or see exhibits call 262-2435 to see when they are open or just stop by.
For further information you may call 262-2435 and leave a message or call Judy Dove, 721-4720, Rosemary Dugan, 722-2255, or Maureen Walter, 744-2175.

The Art Syndicate, 917 W. Douglas
GRAND OPENING: February 24, 2006, 7:00 - 10:00 p.m.
Regular Hours: 10:00 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. Sunday thru Saturday

Beyond Web Design, 501 E. Douglas
Featured Artists: Nicolette Pérez, Justin Epp, El Feyler, Mary Streepy, Shawn Freeman and others
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 5:00 - 9:00 p.m.
The show is free to the public, and refreshments will be served.
For more info, email finalfriday@bwdllc.com.

CityArts, 334 N. Mead
Exhibition: Fortunes in Art: Year of the Golden Dog
Exhibition Date: February 16 - 25, 2006
CITY ARTS WILL BE OPEN UNTIL 8:00 ON FINAL FRIDAY
CityArts celebrates the beginning of the Chinese New Year with a show of artwork is based on fortune cookies, the theme of the golden dog, or both.

Contact: Tabitha Bean or Charla Sanderson, 462-2787
Web: www.wichitaarts.com
New Hours at CityArts: 8am - 9pm, Monday-Thursday, 8am - 8pm, Friday, 10am - 4pm, Saturday, Closed, Sunday

Commerce Gallery, 508 S. Commerce
Exhibition: Noise: "Sofa Size" New work by Lee Shiney
Exhibition Date: February 24 - March 4, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday,February 24, 6:00 - 10:00 p.m.
Contact: Chris Gulick @ 316-945-4440
Web: www.artcontractor.com and www.leeshiney.com

Artist Statement: "The challenge of this show was to create large scale pieces based on my continued focus on mechanically-assisted processes. The result is one big piece, Sequence I, a serial work 70-90 feet in length (depending on my energy level and the available linear wall space of Commerce Gallery). Think of a triptych on crack. The individual 17x24 inch pieces can stand alone, or end-to-end in multiples to form larger pieces. It's a work in progress; more pieces will continually be added to the series. And, it's a return to the "green art" style from my earlier Detritus show, using found pallet lumber and used fencing, and cast-off latex paint."

Fiberstudio, 418 Commerce
Exhibition: paintings by: MARK FLICKINGER and Jewelry by Elfie Lacio
Exhibition Date: February 24 - March 23, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 7:00 - 10:00 p.m.
live music by: GARY GACKSTATTER and 5-MAN TRIO
Resident artists: Marilyn Grisham, Lynda Beck, Nancy Whitaker, Jan Woolery,and Virginia Simmons
The Fiber Studio is open the last Friday of every month, and all other days by appointment, or by chance (ring the bell).
Contact: Marilyn Grisham at (316) 303-1996 or fiberstudio1@sbcglobal.net

Firehouse Gallery, 1402 W. Douglas
Exhibition: Women, Sex, and Art
Featured Artists: Amanda Dickson, Kate Johnson, Danielle Kling, Cynthia Martinez, and Megahn Regnier.
Exhibition Date: February 13 - 24, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 7:00 - 10:00 p.m.
Contact: Kelly Moody at (316) 265-6928
web: www.firehouseartgallery.com

Fisch Haus Studios, 524 S. Commerce
Exhibition: Front Room Series: Ryan Drake
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 7:00 -10:00 p.m.
Contact: Elizabeth Stevenson at (316) 263-6770 or info@fischhaus.com
Web: www.fischhaus.com

Additional info: This month, we're debuting our new Front Room Series (in, obviously, our front
gallery). These exhibitions will be presented in a more manageable format than our usual full gallery shows; designed mainly to facilitate the exhibition of work by emerging regional artists, but also open to mid-career artists who are interested in mounting smaller shows. The first artist in the series is local painter and printmaker Ryan Drake, premiering this Final Friday, February 24th, from 7-10 p.m. See you there!

The Frame Guild, 506 E. Douglas
Exhibition: Taxonomy: Kathleen Shanahan
Exhibition Date: February 24 - April 26, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 6:00 - 9:00
Contact: Trish Higgins @ tlhiggins@sbcglobal.net

Additional info: On friday February 24, The Frame Guild at 506 E. Douglas will open an exhibition of paintings by Kathleen Shanahan titled “Taxonomy”. Shanahan’s new paintings are vertical diptychs that resemble totums; stacked and juxtaposed images from nature with symbols of varied cultures. They are executed in intense, edgy color.

The frame shop/gallery is in a classical revival-style building built in 1913 by Bunny Mead whose own father James R. Mead was a Wichita founding father. Leader Dry Goods was the first tenant. The building was transformed easily and beautifully into gallery space with its 20ft. ceilings, original brick walls and combination of available and artificial light.

“Taxonomy”, paintings by Kathleen Shanahan, will open with a reception friday, February 24 from 6 to 9 pm. The exhibition will hang through April 26. Regular hours at The Frame Guild are monday through friday 10:00 am to 5:30 pm and10:00 am to 2:00 pm on saturday. For more information about the exhibit call Trish Higgins at 316.612.1604 or Pam at 316.684.1361.

GALLERY XII, 412 E. Douglas, Wichita, KS 67202
Exhibition: Rosemary Dugan
Guest Consignment Artist; David Self
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 6:30 - 10:00
Regular Hours: Monday - Saturday, 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Contact: Doug Billings at (316) 267-5915 or art00756@usadatanet.net
WEB SITE: www.wichitagallery12.com

Additional info: Rosemary's new works will include a series of small pastel landscapes of local Kansas scenes. She works in a very impressionistic style with strong textured marks and a bright color palette.

Along with Rosemary, Gallery XII will be exhibiting, for the first time, the enamel works of Brian Hinkle. Brian is on staff at the Wichita Center for the Arts as the assistant Gallery Director and as an instructor in painting and enameling.
Gallery XII Membership 2005:
Carole Branda (Acrylic Painter), Doug Billings (Printmaker), Judy Dove (Multimedia Artist), Rosemary Dugan (Pastels), Ruth Finnell (Pastels), Hermine Greywall (Acrylic Painter), Ann Horton (Pastel & Watercolor), Judy Millard (Oil Painter), Jo Ann Ray (Multimedia Painter), Carole Ranney (Pastel & Watercolor), Jean Shellito (Watercolor), Betty Sieler (Watercolor & Drawings), Maureen Walter (Multimedia Painter), Martha Wherry (Multimedia Artist), Mary Ellen Williford (Pastels), Cathy Fiorelli (Prints & Paintings), Marjorie Mueller (Oil Painter)

The Wichita Downtown Development Corp will once again be running the Trolley which will transport people free of charge to many of the art galleries participating in Final Friday, including Gallery XII.

During Final Friday (6:30-10:00 pm) both parking lots to the east of the building are now available to our guests. Also, the Wichita Downtown Development Corp will be running its trolley during the event. Maps are available at most of the participating galleries.

Lawrence Photo, Inc., 401 E. Douglas, Suite 100
Exhibition: Iraq & I Throw
Featured Artists:
M.Sgt. Maurice Hessel , McConnell AFB Staff Photographer
David Long, Professor Bethel College
Exhibition Date: February 24 - March 27, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 7:00 - 10:00 p.m.
Regular Hours: Monday thru Friday 9:00 - 5:30 and Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Contact: Paul Hudson @ (316) 267-3700 or lawrencephoto@sbcglobal.net

Additional Info:

M.Sgt. Maurice Hessel from McConnell AFB will be showing his photographic work from his recent deployment in Iraq. The night of the reception will also feature additional images presented in a multimedia format.

David Long will be showing 16 of his most recent salt glazed ceramic works (our first showing of 3-diminsional work.)

This show will both excite the senses and bring a sense of the human element to the war in Iraq.

Marquee Motorcars, LC, 2938 E. Douglas ( at the corner of Douglas and Chautauqua)
Featured Artists: Amy Herd, Sarah Herd and Johnny Sutton.
Reception Date: Final Friday, January 27, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Contact: Malea Barrier @ (316) 219-4772

Monica’s Bundt Cake Co., 1328 E. Douglas Avenue (same block as the Spice Merchant on the South side of Douglas)
Exhibition: Oil paintings featuring children’s book illustrations by Carlene H. Williams will be on display. See work from the “Santa’s Stray” series, “Alice in Wonderland”, and others. Linnette Lee of Fresh Paint will display her acrylic paintings.
Exhibition Dates: Friday, February 24, 2006 to Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 6:30-9:30 p.m.
Shop Hours: Monday – Friday 9am – 5:30 pm; Saturday 9am – 4:00 pm . Closed Sunday
Contact: (316) 630-9555
Questions or after hour appointments call: Monica Schlegel 316-630-9555 and leave a message.

The Photographer's Gallery, 1007 West Douglas (in the historic Delano District)
Exhibition: Earl Ward, John Ellert, Vernon McGee, LeAnn Anspaugh and Ron Beeton
Exhibition Date: February 20 - March 25, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Bonus Event – Live-Model shoot set to demonstrate Gallery’s photo studio
Contact: Dave Higdon @ 316-262-4634 or 316-371-4634 or AIRSCRIBE@cox.net
Web: www.davehigdon.com
Additional info: In his first-ever public exhibit, artful Jeff Delp turns his lens toward nature, capturing scenery and landscape in a way that’s almost abstract in its appearance.

And The Photographers' Gallery also plans a live model shoot to demonstrate the capabilities of the in-house studio thanks to the efforts of professional photographer Mike Mathia.

Joining the new photographers exhibiting in The Photographers' Gallery are veterans Earl Ward, John Ellert, Vernon McGee, LeAnn Anspaugh and Ron Beeton, four photographers with their own distinct styles. All five have updated their exhibits with new images, as has resident photographer Dave Higdon

This new exhibition at The Photographers’ starts Feb. 20 and runs through March 25, when four new photographers will debut their first shows at The Gallery during the March Final Friday show.

In a first for a Final Friday, the Arts Trolley will expand its service west along Douglas as far as Seneca allowing fans of the Final Friday Gallery Crawl access to participating galleries in the Historic Delano District. The Photographers' Gallery is proud to be among the three Delano businesses sponsoring the Delano expansion of the Final Friday Trolley. We hope Final Friday participants will use the trolley to also visit sponsoring exhibitors Melange Jewelry and The Vagabond on their way to The Photographers' Gallery.

The Photographers’ Gallery is Wichita’s most unique venue for photography, featuring a fully equipped studio for the creation of photos, professional digital scanning and printing services, and a gallery devoted exclusively to the exhibition of photographers’ images. The studio and print services are available to the public at very competitive prices. Space in the Gallery is offered to photographers on a lease basis free of the steep commissions gallery operators typically levy on sales of exhibited works.

Steckline Gallery
Newman University, DeMattias Hall, 3100 McCormick Ave.
Exhibition: Figure In Space: A Sculpture Exhibit
Featured Artists: Ted Adler, Stephen Atwood, Barry Badgett, Ted Krone, Sean Corner, Susan de Wit, Marc Durfee, Dan Jensen, Beth Van Natta, Ann Zerger
Exhibition Date: February 24, 2006 – March 17, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 2006, 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Regular Hours: Monday - Friday 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Contact: Pam Bugler @ (316) 94 -4291 ext. 2480 or buglerp@newmanu.edu

Tangent Lab, 209 East William Street, Sutton Place, Second Floor.
Exhibition: A Lesson Never Learned New work by: Ian Stewart and Heather Von Feldt
Exhibition Date: February 10 - 24, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 7:00 - Midnight
Regular hours: Weekly by appointment only - email brad@tangentlab.com
Visit: www.tangentlab.com for more information.

WHERE IS THIS PLACE???: Turn South onto Broadway from Douglas. Continue going south on Broadway until you reach William. Turn West on William. Sutton Place will be on your left (south) side. The gallery is located on the second floor.

Wichita Art Museum, 1400 West Museum Boulevard
Exhibition: Successions: Prints By African American Artists from the Jean and Robert Steele Collection Organized by The Art Gallery, the Department of Art History and Archeology, and the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park. It is made possible by major support from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Consortium for Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, University of Maryland, College Park. The Wichita venue is made possible in part by the City of Wichita, the Sam and Rie Bloomfield Foundation, the Sedgwick County Government, the Friends of the Wichita Art Museum, Inc. and KMUW, Wichita Public Radio.
Featured Artists: Romare Bearden, Lou Stovall, Faith Ringgold, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett and many more
Exhibition Date: February 12, 2006 – June 4, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 2006, 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Regular Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m, Sunday Noon - 5 p.m.
Contact: Ashle Stratton, 316-268-4985
Web: www.wichitaartmuseum.org

Additional Info: The Final Friday of February will feature funk, food, and fine art at the Wichita Art Museum. The schedule for the evening is as follows:
5:00 p.m. - Doors Open
5:30 p.m. - Ikenga Drumming Group
6 - 8 p.m. - Soul Injection

The galleries will be open throughout the evening, and light hors ‘d oeuvres and a cash bar will be available. Together with The Kansas African American Museum, we also welcome master printmaker Lou Stovall as our special guest that evening. Collectors Jean and Robert Steele will also be in attendance. WAM, TKAAM and YPW members: Free, non-members: $3.

WSU Shift Space, 326 S. Commerce St.
Exhibition: WSU Shift Space 5: 2nd Annual WSU Sculpture Guild Juried Exhibition
Exhibition Date: February 24 - March 11, 2006
Reception Date: Final Friday, February 24, 6:00 - 10:00 p.m.

Additional info:
WSU Shift Space, in conjunction with the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation, presents WSU Shift Space 4: Still/Moving/Object Explored, an exhibition of recent directions in photography and video by faculty and students in the WSU School of Art & Design. The work of exhibiting artists Chad Case, John Hammer, Kate Johnson, Cory Medina, Kyras Norman, Linda Robinson, Sarah Turner, Aaron Vague, and Robert Bubp will range from black-and-white photography to installations incorporating video, found objects, and drawing.

Contact:
Joey Capadona (316)680-6958, j.capadona@sbcglobal.net
Robert Bubp, (316) 978-7704, robert.bubp@wichita.edu
Conan Y. Fugit, (316) 207-7967, cyfugit@gmail.com
WSU School of Art & Design, (316) 978-5418

The gallery will be open Thursdays 4-7, Fridays 4-9, and Saturdays 12-5 through March 11.

For more information, call the WSU School of Art & Design at 978-3555 or visit www.shiftspace.blogs.com. Support for WSU Shift Space is provided by the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation, Belford Electric, and Wichita State University.

I(finally)Pod

2006-02-23T19:25:00.000-08:00

Today I received, via UPS, my new 5th generation, 60 GB, video iPod. The greatest part? I only paid $25 for it! No kidding. I was definitely a skeptic that the system could work.

After careful research, wise advice and much hesitation, I took the plunge and signed up for one of those "Free iPod*" scams. Only this time the scam was on them. :) I outsmarted their system and didn't get ripped off as they planned. Instead I got a $399 iPod for $25 and a lot of stress!

I wouldn't recommend that you run off and sign up for your own free ___________ that they're now offering. If you're really serious about it, send me an email and I'll help you out with some advice. It takes planning and attention to detail. Careful reading and making deadlines are everything. The closest I came to getting scammed was almost clicking on a hidden link and getting charged $35 for it. But I decided to read the fine print first and saved my pocketbook.

I'm also quite good at canceling accounts--AOL, Rhapsody, PeoplePC (Earthlink). They all use the friendly Indian customer service agents (with obviously fake names like Marilyn and Randy!). Those folks are amazing at verbal sparring. Truly amazing! But I still beat them in the end.

I love getting things for cheap, and so this iPod means so much more to me than just breaking down and buying it. If you don't love the thrill of beating the system as much as I do, you should probably just fork over $379 on Amazon. Save yourself the hours of waiting on hold.

Wal-Mart Art

2006-02-18T16:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=60904

Writer Rebecca Solnit inspects Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton's recent purchase of Kindred Spirits by Asher Durand for $35 million. Walton is the world's second richest woman and ninth richest person and plans to construct the Crystal Bridges art museum near Wal-Mart's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. Solnit also looks at other relationships between ill-begotten wealth and private art collections. I found her article an interesting read. I particularly liked her analogy of museums as taxidermists!

The Power of Imagery

2006-02-08T07:37:00.000-08:00

A Startling New Lesson in the Power of Imagery
New York Times
February 8, 2006
By Michael Kimmelman

They're callous and feeble cartoons, cooked up as a provocation by a conservative newspaper exploiting the general Muslim prohibition on images of the Prophet Muhammad to score cheap points about freedom of expression.

But drawings are drawings, so a question arises. Have any modern works of art provoked as much chaos and violence as the Danish caricatures that first ran in September in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten?

The story goes back a bit further, to a Danish children's author looking to write a book about the life of Muhammad, in the spirit of religious tolerance, and finding no illustrator because all the artists he approached said they were afraid. In response, the newspaper commissioned these cartoons, a dozen of them, by various satirists. And like all pictures calculated to be noticed by offending somebody, the caricaturist's stock in trade and the oldest trick in the book of modern art, they would have disappeared into deserved oblivion had not their targets risen to the bait.

The newspaper was banking on the fact that unlike the West — where Max Ernst's painting of Mary spanking the infant Jesus didn't raise an eyebrow when recently shown at the Metropolitan Museum — the Muslim world has no tradition of, or tolerance for, religious irony in its art.

But there are precedents going all the way back to the Bible for virulent reactions to proscribed and despised images. Beginning with the ancient Egyptians, who lopped off the noses of statues of dead pharaohs, through the toppling of statues of Lenin and Saddam Hussein, violence has often been directed against offending objects, though rarely against the artists who made them.

Educated secular Westerners reared on modernism, with its inclination toward abstraction, its gamesmanship and its knee-jerk baiting of traditional authority, can miss the real force behind certain visual images, particularly religious ones. Trained to see pictures formally, as designs or concepts, we can often overlook the way images may not just symbolize but actually "partake of what they represent," as the art historian David Freedberg has put it.

That's certainly how many aggrieved Muslims perceived the cartoons. Circulating the pictures, they prompted Arab governments like those of Saudi Arabia and Syria, not otherwise champions of religious freedom, to support boycotts of Danish goods and to withdraw their ambassadors from Copenhagen. That in turn led European papers to republish the cartoons in solidarity with Jyllands-Posten and in defense of free speech.

Some of them have been reprinted in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Hungary, New Zealand, Ukraine and Jordan. One appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer. They've spread worldwide via the Web, exacerbating Muslim outrage while leading many nonbelieving non-Muslims to scratch their heads over how such banal and idiotic pictures could ever be given a thought in the first place. Muhammad is lampooned with a turban in the shape of a ticking bomb; he's at the gates of heaven, arms raised, saying to men who look like suicide bombers, "Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins."

Irate Muslim protesters set fire to the Danish and Norwegian missions in Damascus, where Syrian newspapers routinely print the most appalling, racist cartoons of big-nosed Jews. In Beirut, rioters burned the Danish mission and vandalized a Maronite Catholic church, beating a Dutch news photographer mistaken for a Dane.

On Monday, Afghan security forces killed several protesters who tried to storm the American air base at Bagram. Yesterday the leading Iranian daily announced a contest for the best cartoon about the Holocaust, and 200 members of Iran's 290-member Parliament condemned the Danish cartoons: "Apparently, they have not learned their lesson from the miserable author of 'The Satanic Verses,' " the members said in a statement, referring to the fatwah against Salman Rushdie. From Gaza to Auckland, imams have demanded execution or amputations for the cartoonists and their publishers.

Over art? These are made-up pictures. The photographs from Abu Ghraib were documents of real events, but they didn't provoke such widespread violence. What's going on?

In part, the new Molotov cocktail of technology and incendiary art has hastened the speed with which otherwise forgettable pictures are now globally transmitted. Cellphones help protesters rally mobs swiftly against them.

And there is also the deepening cynicism and political hypocrisy now endemic in the culture wars. Last week a State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, simultaneously condemned the cartoons as "unacceptable" and spoke up for free speech, while the Joint Chiefs of Staff were firing off a letter to The Washington Post about a cartoon it ran in which Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in the guise of a doctor, says to a heavily bandaged soldier who has lost his arms and legs, "I'm listing your condition as 'battle hardened.' " The letter called the cartoon, by Tom Toles, "reprehensible" and offensive to soldiers.

The Post's editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, replied that the newspaper would not censor its cartoonists, inspiring John Aravosis, who runs Americablog (americablog.blogspot.com), the Web site where the letter was first reported, to tell Editor & Publisher magazine: "Now that the Joint Chiefs have addressed the insidious threat cartoons pose to our troops, perhaps they can move on to the less pressing issues like getting them their damn body armor."

As is so often the case in the culture wars, choosing sides can be exasperating. Modern artists and their promoters forever pander to a like-minded audience by goading obvious targets, hoping to incite reactions that pass for political point-scoring. The twist in the Danish case is only that a conservative paper provoked Muslims. One may be excused for wondering whether the silence of the art world has something to do with the discomfort of staking a position where neither party offers the sanctuary of political correctness.

An obvious precedent, now comically tame by comparison, is the "Sensation" show at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, a promotional bonanza for the British collector and wheeler-dealer Charles Saatchi, who owned the art in the show. The exhibition incited protests by the Catholic League. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani played the stern dad to a bunch of publicity-savvy artists whose work included a collage of the Virgin Mary with cutouts from pornographic magazines and shellacked clumps of elephant dung.

Previously unmoved to action by Catholic League protests against a play at City Center involving a gay lead character fashioned after Jesus, the mayor, contemplating a Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton, decided he was personally offended by the art, although he had never actually seen it, and threatened to cut off public financing for the museum.

"You don't have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else's religion," he said, foreshadowing a bit the Danish debacle about freedom of religious expression, notwithstanding that the artist of the Virgin Mary, Chris Ofili, happened to be Roman Catholic.

The New York art world was shocked only because it had expected the show to pass without fuss, since the art was already old news to insiders. But then museums nationwide had to hold their collective nose to defend Brooklyn over the issue of free expression, and by the end the whole affair had turned into farce, obscuring even the quality of what were, in fact, a few not-so-bad works of art.

No protester torched the museum or called for beheading anybody. Farce now becomes calamity over the cartoons, a different matter. The current bloodshed, fueled by political extremists and religious fanatics, turns the culture war once again into real war. People forget that Salman Rushdie's Japanese and Italian translators were stabbed (the Japanese fatally) and his Norwegian publisher shot.

What may be overlooked this time is a deep, abiding fact about visual art, its totemic power: the power of representation. This power transcends logic or aesthetics. Like words, it can cause genuine pain.

Ancient Greeks used to chain statues to prevent them from fleeing. Buddhists in Ceylon once believed that a painting could be brought to life once its eyes were painted. In the Netherlands in the 1560's, pictures were smashed in nearly every town and village simply for being graven images. And in the Philippines, enraged citizens destroyed billboards of Ferdinand Marcos.

To many people, pictures will always, mysteriously, embody the things they depict. Among the issues to be hashed out in this affair, there's a lesson to be gleaned about art: Even a dumb cartoon may not be so dumb if it calls out to someone.

In Defense of Free Speech . . .

2006-02-07T18:12:00.000-08:00

. . . I am compelled, not to link to or talk about those cartoon Danishes, but to refer you to a wonderful and insightful website that I enjoy reading:

www.annotatedrant.com

If you're offended by foul language and left-wing diatribes, click at your own risk. If you appreciate biting humor and WWE-style opinionating, I especially recommend the thought-provoking essays on Christmas and the South.

Addendum: If I were energetic enough at the moment, I would register the currently available www.cartoondanishes.com and make a satirical website. But I'm not feeling energetic. I hope someone does something brilliant with my idea. Danishcartoons.com is already taken.

KC Arts

2006-02-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

We took a weekend trip to Kansas City to relax and also to scout the art scene. There were some nice pieces scattered throughout, but overall the selection was unimpressive. Here is our itinerary, with my comments:

Friday:

Kemper MCA
4420 Warwick Blvd.
Kansas City MO 64111
816-753-5784
www.kemperart.org

This museum is associated with the Kansas City Art Institute and has only been open for 10 years. After reading through their website, I was expecting more. I wish we had made it in time for the Marcie Miller Gross: foldover exhibition. On Friday evening there was an opening for Kurt Lightner: Five Acres. He paints with acrylic ink on mylar and then cuts out images and collages them together. His technique is interesting, and his images are bold, but they're not to my taste. It annoys me that he claims the Ohio countryside as his inspiration, yet lives and works in NYC. It was a common theme among all the artists I viewed. But I'll go off on that rant some other time. Well, just one comment: I claim the rural Midwest and in particular the Kansas countryside as my inspiration, and I actually live and work in rural Kansas!

Nelson-Atkins Museum
4525 Oak Street
Kansas City MO 64111
816-561-4000
www.nelson-atkins.org

I'm not a fan of old art. This museum had nothing for me, but I'm sure if you like looking at old art, it would be decent.

Saturday:

Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Backroom Gallery & Beth Allison Gallery
2012 Baltimore Ave.
Kansas City MO 64108
816-474-1919
www.leedy-voulkos.com

I was expecting some representation from Peter Voulkos, and I think I saw one piece, but it was unmarked and collecting dust in a corner. The rest of the art was not my style. Lots of large paintings that looked like literal piles of shit. I'm not into the "torn aesthetic," I guess. Scot Sinclair started with an interesting approach in his Pigmentation exhibition, but in my opinion he beat the dead horse a bit too long. He used gloss enamel on gloss enamel to make large paintings that looked like water pooled on a stainless steel countertop. And he did it over and over, in different colors. One or two was nice. Ten was too many.

Kevin McGraw's Before and After, on the other hand, caught my eye and held it. Click on the link to see images of his work. He used scavenged materials, often old pieces of flat metal, to build collages held within metal frames.

Byron C. Cohen Gallery for Contemporary Art
2020 Baltimore Ave.
Kansas City MO 64108
816-421-5665
www.artnet.com/cohen.html

This was my favorite gallery of the lot. I saw a wide variety of styles and formats in a loose display that was pleasantly overcrowded and haphazard. The main exhibition featuring Grant Miller and James Woodfill was interesting but not astounding. The back room of the gallery is the place to linger.

Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art
2004 Baltimore Ave.
Kansas City MO 64108
816-221-2626
www.sherryleedy.com

Follow this link and click on Judy Onofrio to see images from the current show. I warmed up to these kitschy, visually-overwhelming sculptures. I was amazed to see how many pieces she produced in 2005! Talk about productivity. These are large, very detailed pieces with tiny mosaics and complicated forms (carved from wood, I believe). These works need to be experienced in person.

Blue Gallery
7 West 19th St.
Kansas City MO 64108
816-527-0823
www.bluegalleryonline.com

Hoity-toity designer art. There were some decent pieces, but the highbrow gallery space and presentation outshined the work.

Grand Arts
1819 Grand Blvd
Kansas City MO 64108
816-421-6887
www.grandarts.com

Two pieces comprised this show by Aidas Bareikis. His junk art sculptures are terrifying and grotesque, while visually engrossing. I don't like his work, but I appreciate his talent and vision.

Dolphin
1901 Baltimore Ave.
Kansas City MO 64108
816-842-4415
www.dolphinfineart.com

Telephonebooth Gallery
3319 Troost Ave
Kansas City MO 64109
816-582-9812
www.telephoneboothgallery.com

This tiny brick building in the middle of a run-down neighborhood of condemned houses housed about half a dozen drawings hanging on one wall. Maybe the gallery has potential, but I didn't see it.

Photocopied Art Show

2006-01-31T11:28:00.000-08:00

A Street Seer's Vision, or Photocopies of It at Least
New York Times
January 31, 2006
By Holland Cotter

As I see it, David Hammons, born in 1943, is one of the three or four most interesting and influential American artists of the last 30 years. By this I mean, among other things, that he has deeply influenced the most interesting younger artists to have emerged during that time.

I bump into Mr. Hammons all over New York City. Not the artist himself, whom I've never met, and chances are never will, but the cosmopolitan poetry of his work, an art made of found street stuff (chicken bones, shells, chains, hair, liquor bottles, snow), music, silence, history, ideas, light and bodies (his, yours, mine).

I see a Hammons poetry in sidewalk sales and trash bins piled high like altars, and in the way people, homeless or otherwise, casually, ritually, put their everyday lives together. I hear it in qawwali tapes in smokeshops, in subway drummers, in Sun Ra on a boombox, in Nina Simone's ticked-off voice. It's there in the way the city keeps falling apart and miraculously cohering; in the way wind from a grate makes a crazy balloon of a plastic bag, sends it soaring and brings it down.

The poetry is also detectable in "David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective" at the Triple Candie gallery in Harlem, though Mr. Hammons and his art are conspicuously absent. For several years, this nonprofit space in Harlem has been after the artist to do an exhibition, of new work or old. But he has kept his distance, and collectors have refused to make loans. The gallery's directors, Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, decided to do a show anyway, a career survey, no less.

How do you do a show if you don't have art? Use copies. How do you get copies? Find photographs of the original art. So that's what Ms. Bancroft and Mr. Nesbett did. They photocopied illustrations of existing, or once existing, Hammons pieces from books and magazines, and downloaded other images from the Internet. They then taped the 8½-by-11-inch prints to the gallery walls.

There are nearly 100 of them in chronological order, from Mr. Hammons's intensely political art of the early 1970's through his more disembodied conceptual work of the last few years. Not everything is accounted for; a terrific piece Mr. Hammons created in 1993 for the feisty Tribes Gallery in the East Village, for example, is missing. But a lot is here.

In an important sense, as a gallery news release states, the show isn't about Mr. Hammons at all. It's a conceptual gesture, a critical statement about how art is marketed and shown. Twice in the past, the gallery presented solos by artists who chose to remain anonymous, identified only by their work. Anonymity is inimical to an art industry that supports itself entirely on a currency of brand-names, and enlists a legion of functionaries — critics, curators and dealers — to cook names up.

"David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective" is a flipped version of the anonymous solo. In this case, the artist's name is boldly advertised, but there is no product, or no authentic product. Without product, the art-world apparatus of institutional display, of exclusive ownership, of critical opining, is unmoored, left to flap in the wind.

But the show is something else, too. It is a homage to Mr. Hammons, one peculiarly suited to an artist who has maintained a strategically elusive relationship with the art world. As a documentary timeline of his career, it confirms what many people believe: no contemporary artist has integrated so many cultural sources — Euro-American, Asian, African, African-American — with such passion, probity and wit. And none have made a visual art that so closely approximates the fleetness of jazz, the tautness of dance and the punning, mind-prying resonance of the poetic word.

What's surprising is how much of all this comes through in the photocopies that line the walls and make up the catalog. I showed the catalog to someone close to me who is highly attuned to art but has a healthy skepticism about contemporary work and no direct knowledge of Mr. Hammons's. He was knocked out. Even in crummy photocopies, he could see what Mr. Hammons, very basically, is: a planetary griot in a locked-down nation, a great eye, a seer of the African-American street, connoisseur of mutability. The real deal.

Surely no artist could have a more mutable retrospective than this one, which will probably end up in the trash at the end of its run. Triple Candie says it has no idea what Mr. Hammons thinks of their efforts. He may feel furious, ripped-off, ready to sue for theft of aesthetic and intellectual property. He may be touched by the admiration the show conveys.

It has even crossed my mind that "David Hammons: The Unauthorized Retrospective" could be a David Hammons piece. Like his art, it is as much a brain experience as an eye experience. It baffles your thinking, sharpens your senses; in short, makes you more alive. Walking down West 126th Street, after my visit, I saw a neatly swept-together mound of refuse on the sidewalk: dirt, paper, a pint bottle, dead flowers, a perfect little altar, or still life, with no sweeper in sight.

DADA

2006-01-27T06:48:00.000-08:00

Attacker of Duchamp's urinal sentenced
Jan. 24, 2006
PIERRE-ANTOINE SOUCHARD
Associated Press

PARIS - A court has convicted a 77-year-old French man for attacking artist Marcel Duchamp's famed porcelain urinal with a hammer, rejecting the defendant's contention that he had increased the value of the art work by making it an "original."

The court gave Pierre Pinoncelli a three-month suspended prison sentence Tuesday and ordered him to pay a $245,490 fine.

Pinoncelli also was ordered to pay $17,616 to repair "Fountain," a work worth millions of dollars that was chipped in the Jan. 4 hammer attack at the Pompidou Center. The work was part of an exhibit of the early 20th century's avant-garde Dada movement.

The Pompidou Center had sought more than $523,930 for the damage.

Pinoncelli - who announced that he plans to appeal the decision - told reporters that what he had done was not vandalism but a "wink" at Dadaism that had Duchamp's blessing. "I told him in 1967 that I would do something," Pinoncelli said.

"I added to its value," he said, assuring that Duchamp would "have had a good laugh."

Duchamp, who died in 1968, emphasized the creative process, and a role for the spectator.

The work has an estimated value of $3.4 million, said Marie Delion, a lawyer for the Pompidou Center. The original was lost but in 1964 Duchamp created eight other versions of the work.

After buying his ticket to the exhibit on Jan. 4, Pinoncelli attacked "Fountain" with a hammer before writing "Dada" on the sculpture.

Pinoncelli, a former salesman who calls himself a participant in the creative process as conceived by Duchamp, said that his hammer attack was an artistic endeavor. During questioning, he had told police his attack was a work of performance art and said then it might have pleased the artists of Dada.

The January urinal attack was not the first for Pinoncelli. He urinated on the piece during a 1993 exhibition in Nimes in southern France.

"The day that you understand that what belongs to someone else does not belong to you, things will go better between yourself and society," the court said after handing down the sentence.

Pinoncelli's actions are not limited to the Dada movement or works of art. He cut off his own finger as an expression of solidarity with Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, held hostage by leftist guerrillas since 2002.

Duchamp's idea to transform a urinal into a work of art first appeared in 1917 when he tried to display the piece at a New York show using a pseudonym, R. Mutt. It was refused.

A 2004 poll of 500 arts figures ranked "Fountain" as the most influential work of modern art_ ahead of Pablo Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," Andy Warhol's screen prints of Marilyn Monroe and "Guernica," Picasso's depiction of war's devastation.

Institute for Small Town Studies

2006-01-25T05:27:00.000-08:00

There's a great organization based in Fairfield, Iowa, called the Institute for Small Town Studies.

"We provide community design assistance and small town planning services, pursue historic preservation, and develop educational programs based on small town themes."

Browse the site and look at the news articles that have links. If the ideas interest you, email the director and request that your name be added to the mailing list for their publication, fishwrap. I have the latest 4 copies, and I can vouch for their high quality.

This is an organization I would be happy to support. Their focus on small town community reminds me of the E.F. Schumacher Society. E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful is on my personal top five list of most influential books.

Check it out after you look the ISTS website.

Artist Tyeb Mehta

2006-01-24T06:53:00.000-08:00

(click on photo for images of artwork)

Indian Artist Enjoys His World Audience
New York Times
January 24, 2006
By Somini Sengupta

MUMBAI - The man who makes the most coveted art in India lives in a small fourth-floor walk-up apartment in a crowded, unremarkable suburb. A sign in the hallway warns of an irregular water supply; the bustle of striving metropolitan India seeps in through his shuttered windows, making it even harder for the artist, 80 and hard of hearing, to entertain a visitor. The only luxury item in his living room is a snowy white iPod, resting on a set of speakers, unless you include a 1959 portrait of his wife, drawn in Chinese ink, that hangs above their dining table, and his 2003 painting "Falling Bird."

Tyeb Mehta's paintings fetch the highest prices of any living Indian artist: last fall, "Mahisasura," a 1997 rendering of the buffalo-demon of Hindu mythology, brought $1.58 million at Christie's in New York, the first time a contemporary Indian painting had crossed the million-dollar mark. (The turning point came five years ago, when a room-size triptych by Mr. Mehta, "Celebration," sold for more than $300,000, signaling a surge of market interest in Indian art.)

Mr. Mehta's career has mirrored the changing fortunes of contemporary Indian art over the last six decades, from the intellectual fervor of its birth at Indian independence in 1947, to a lifetime of aesthetic and financial struggle, to the improbable rise of the Indian art market in the last few years. As the Indian economy has galloped forward, art galleries have mushroomed, prices have skyrocketed and contemporary art has become the latest marker of affluence among the newly minted rich.

Mr. Mehta seems to have taken it all in with a sense of amused detachment. He calls the surge in art prices "meaningless." Still, the recognition pleases him.

"Good it happens in our lifetime," he said. "I'm 80 years old. I could be bumped off anytime by the Almighty. If somebody has some money, they can buy. Let them buy."

Yet Mr. Mehta has, in fact, reaped little financial reward from the art boom. His work has ballooned in price, but the pieces have changed hands several times since he made them, so the sales are in the secondary market. He could churn out drawings and paintings now to profit from the bull market, but he hasn't. Mr. Mehta has never been terribly prolific, and he produces very little today. Art critics rank him among India's least commercial artists. Vincent van Gogh, he is fond of pointing out, died hungry.

Tyeb Mehta was born in 1925 in rural Gujarat, in western India, and was reared in the Crawford Market neighborhood of Mumbai, also known as Bombay, in an orthodox Shiite community known as the Dawoodi Bohras. His family was in the movie business, and he too worked in that world for a few years. But he soon left the family trade, joined the Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art here and met the seminal circle of Indian modernists, the Progressive Artists Group.

Not long after that, he left the family fold altogether. Mr. Mehta recalls it this way: One night, after what was probably an insignificant argument with a member of the extended family, he and his wife, Sakina, walked out of the house. He now calls it the turning point in his life. He was 29.

"There was no exposure to the outside world," he said, describing the insularity of that milieu. "You break the rules, you're out. That's the demand of a community. I chose to leave."

Mr. Mehta is a frail, cheerful man, with graying hair that nearly reaches his shoulders. One must strain to hear him - his voice is nearly gone. He speaks with a studied, quiet seriousness.

The central passion of his work stems from his country's central wound: the 1947 partition of British India that left a million people dead, drove millions from their homes and inscribed a deep sense of anguish across his imagination. In the Hindu-Muslim clashes that broke out around 1947, Mr. Mehta watched as his neighbors butchered a stranger to death. The victim was Hindu and the attackers were Muslim, but it happened the other way around in other neighborhoods. Many Indians his age have an identical memory.

"That violence gave me the clue about the emotion I want to paint," he explained. "That violence has stuck into my mind."

The bull became a favorite figure. Not a bull in repose, but a tied-up, writhing, mutilated bull. "I was looking for an image which would not narrate, but suggest something which was deep within me, the violence that I witnessed during partition," Mr. Mehta said. "Have you seen a bull running? This tremendous energy being butchered for nothing."

Figures are constants in his work: the falling human figure, the buffalo-demon of Hindu lore, the rickshaw-puller and then, in the late 1980's, the goddess. In his hands, the Hindu goddess Kali is potbellied and squat. Her arms are flailing and her mouth is a terrifyingly gorgeous gash of red. The art critic Yashodhara Dalmia credits Mr. Mehta with making the mythic modern. She calls him an "arch modernist."

"In terms of art history, he is very important," said Ms. Dalmia, who is organizing a retrospective of Mr. Mehta's work later this year at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. "He has reused the modernist method in a wholly inventive and original manner, where the conflict in his environment, the political and social events in his environment, are expressed with a great subtlety of means. It's always personal and public at the same time."

Another critic, Ranjit Hoskote, argues that Mr. Mehta's Shiite upbringing, and the central themes of violence and martyrdom in Shia thought, are the foundations of his work.

Mr. Mehta's own list of his influences includes the ancient sculptures of Elephanta off the coast of Mumbai, European Renaissance painters, Francis Bacon, Paul Klee and Barnett Newman. Certainly, painters of his generation studied them all.

But they also knew they were making their own path. There was no Indian modern tradition to turn to. "One had to create from nowhere," Mr. Mehta remembered. "We learned painting together by talking, by looking at each other's work, by criticizing, by appreciating."

And also by struggling. Once, there was not enough money to buy canvases to put together a show. Another time, he told his wife they would starve. "She said, 'O.K., we will starve together,' " Mr. Mehta recalled.

It is rare to hear Mr. Mehta speak of his life without referring to his wife. It was she who worked outside the house and paid the bills. It was he who read and painted at home. It was only after 12 years of painting that he made his first sale: to a buyer brought by his friend and fellow painter M. F. Hussein. Mr. Mehta sold her four canvases for what is now roughly $30.

"It felt great," Mr. Mehta said. "Life was cheap in those days. You could live simply. Now simplicity is gone from our lives."

Kurt Vonnegut

2006-01-23T06:25:00.000-08:00

There was a splendid little interview with Kurt Vonnegut this morning on NPR's Morning Edition. Incredibly enough, to both Steve Inskeep and me, Mr. Vonnegut actually defended intelligent design a bit. That was after he talked up Chinese communism for a moment. What a guy.

The Long View: Kurt Vonnegut Judges Modern Society

Vonnegut.com

PostSecret

2006-01-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

"PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.

New secrets are posted here every Sunday."

postsecret.blogspot.com

Cheese

2006-01-20T06:28:00.000-08:00

The deli clerk at my local grocery store knows me now. I'm the cheese guy. A few months ago I asked about some discounted specialty cheese, wondering what they would do with it the next day when it passed its expiration date. She told me they would throw it out per food safety regulations. I thought, "Why should I pay 1/2 price now, when tomorrow they will throw it away?" I asked her if I could get it the next day, and she said she had to sell it for $0.99--store rules.

So the next morning I went in at 8am and bought seven packages of Brie, for $0.99 each instead of for $4.99 each! I immediately put them in the freezer, and we enjoyed Brie for the next two months.

Now I regular check the deli display and keep a list of upcoming expiration dates. Last week I bought three packages of Hummus with Chipotle Pepper for $0.99, instead of $3.

Today I hit the jackpot! I cleaned out their (recently outdated) selection of imported French Brie as well as six packages of fresh mozzarella. I paid $12.63 for what would regularly have cost $63.65! That made my week.

So the next time you're browsing your local grocery store and drooling over the expensive Rochefort, take note of the expiration dates. The day before they expire, mention to the deli manager that you would like to purchase the outdated cheese the next day. Ask for the best price, and you should get a deal. My only requirement is that you report back on your score!

Cheese is an aged product, and thus does not go "bad." Blue cheese is intentionally moldy. Kept in the freezer, most cheese will stay fresh for a long time. If some does happen to get moldy, just trim off the mold and wash the remainder--it's good as new! Don't buy cheese for $10/lb when you can patiently wait to get it for $2.

Want to come over for fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil salad?

Tao Te Ching

2006-01-15T05:57:00.000-08:00

Eleven

Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

Million Dollar Homepage

2006-01-11T05:42:00.000-08:00

A crazy Brit came up with a great idea to make money and pay for "Uni." His "Million Dollar Homepage" is made up of one million pixels that are sold as advertising space. Prices start at $100 for a 10x10 space. He guarantees the site will remain online for at least five years. His site traffic is already more than one million visitors per week!

The last 1000 pixels are now being auctioned on Ebay; current price: $140,300.

I think this idea could be adapted into a unique art project. It could be done to raise money in a similar way, or it could just be a method for creating random design.

Fictional Nonfiction

2006-01-10T05:30:00.000-08:00

I tend to be a fan of oddball humor disguised as truth. I adore Andy Kauffman's brilliant comedic endeavors where he wrestled and defeated women, sang horrible music and irritated audience members. I love art that pokes a finger in the eye of the institution. I don't mind being hoodwinked once in a while.

But James Frey went too far. The New York Times and the Smoking Gun have articles exposing the fabrications and falsehoods in his "memoir" A Million Little Pieces. It looks like he used his life experiences as a rough outline and then filled in graphic and violent details to make a better story. I wouldn't mind quite so much, except that he has now given millions of people the idea that 12-step programs aren't that great, and that his super willpower approach is better. How many sorry addicts will refuse AA or NA because they want to try the James Frey method? His fiction isn't worth much as fiction, which is why he finally decided to peddle it as nonfiction, I guess. I'll be very interested to see what happens now. I hope Oprah dumps him.

A different story is in the works exposing a different author, who happens to not exist. It seems the author, JT Leroy, is a concoction represented by one woman in person and another woman in public. I don't know as much about this story, since I haven't read any of his (their) books. Here's the article from the NY Times:

The Unmasking of JT Leroy: In Public, He's a She
New York Times
January 9, 2006
By Warren St. John

It has been one of the most bizarre literary mysteries in recent memory: Who, exactly, is the novelist JT Leroy? An answer, at long last, is taking shape.

Mr. Leroy's tale was harrowing in its details and uplifting in its arc. He was a young truck-stop prostitute who had escaped rural West Virginia for the dismal life of a homeless San Francisco drug addict. Rescued as a young teenager by a couple named Laura Albert and Geoffrey Knoop and treated by a psychologist, he was able to turn his terrible youth into a thriving career as a writer. JT Leroy has published three critically acclaimed works of fiction noted for their stark portrayal of child prostitution and drug use.

Along the way Mr. Leroy gained the friendship and trust of celebrities and noted writers, who supported his career financially and offered him emotional support when he declared that he was infected with H.I.V. Sales were good, and his books were published around the world. Shy and reclusive, Mr. Leroy, now 25, appeared in public often disguised beneath a wig and sunglasses.

But the young man in the wig and sunglasses, it turns out, is not a man at all. The public role of JT Leroy is played by Savannah Knoop, Geoffrey Knoop's half sister, who is in her mid-20's.

A photograph of Ms. Knoop at a 2003 opening for a clothing store in San Francisco was discovered online. Five intimates of Mr. Leroy's, including his literary agent, his business manager and the producer of a forthcoming movie based on one of his books, were shown the photograph and identified Ms. Knoop as the person they have known as JT Leroy.

"That's JT Leroy," said Ira Silverberg, Mr. Leroy's literary agent, upon seeing the photograph. Mr. Silverberg said he had met Mr. Leroy a number of times in person. Lilly Bright, a producer of "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things," a 2004 film based on Mr. Leroy's 2001 collection of stories, was no less certain. "It's JT Leroy," she said, adding that she had worked with Mr. Leroy extensively on the production.

Nyoka Lowery, a Bay Area hat designer who appears in the photograph alongside the person in question, also said she knew that person well.

"That's Savannah," Ms. Lowery said. She said she had known Ms. Knoop for years. Ms. Lowery identified Ms. Knoop in another photograph online, on the events page of a site for a San Francisco clothing company called Nisa (www.nisasf.com). Umay Mohammed, an owner of Nisa, said in a telephone interview that Savannah Knoop was a friend, and a model on her company's Web site.

Reached by telephone, Ms. Knoop said, "I don't need this in my life right now," before hanging up. She did not respond to several voice mail messages seeking further comment.

But the discovery of the public face of JT Leroy is only part of the mystery. Still unsettled is the question of who writes under that name.

Writers like Dennis Cooper, Mary Gaitskill and Mary Karr were among those who offered support to Mr. Leroy's literary career, as did several prominent editors at Manhattan publishing houses, and numerous film and pop music celebrities offered him emotional support, including Courtney Love, Tatum O'Neal, Billy Corgan, Shirley Manson and Carrie Fisher.

And of course there were journalists (including, in November 2004, this reporter), who wrote credulous profiles of the successful young writer after interviewing him, often in person. The New York Times even published an article last September under the byline JT Leroy in a Sunday magazine supplement, T: Travel. (A subsequent T: Travel article by Mr. Leroy, about the HBO series "Deadwood," was reassigned by editors when questions about his identity began to surface.)

The unmasking of Ms. Knoop adds to a mounting circumstantial case that Laura Albert is the person who writes as JT Leroy. Pressure to admit the ruse has been building on Ms. Albert since October, when New York magazine published an article that advanced a theory that she was the author of JT Leroy's books.

The New York article, written by Stephen Beachy, portrayed Ms. Albert, 40, and Mr. Knoop, 39, as unfulfilled rock musicians who concocted the character of JT Leroy to gain access first to literary circles and, later, to celebrities. The scheme began, Mr. Beachy wrote, with faxes, e-mail messages and phone calls by Ms. Albert, speaking in a West Virginia accent as JT Leroy. The article also described an acquaintance of Ms. Albert's who said she had asked him to type and fax manuscripts that bore striking thematic similarities to work later published by JT Leroy. When that name became famous, Mr. Beachy theorized, an actor was needed to play JT Leroy in person; he did not know, he wrote, who that actor was.

Mr. Beachy discovered that the advance for Mr. Leroy's first novel, "Sarah," published in 2000, was paid to Laura Albert's sister, JoAnna Albert, and that further payments to JT Leroy were made to a Nevada corporation, Underdogs Inc.

The president of that company, according to public records, is Carolyn F. Albert, Ms. Albert's mother, who lives in Brooklyn Heights. Reached by telephone, she declined to comment. The payment for Mr. Leroy's article in The Times was also made to Underdogs.

After the publication of Mr. Beachy's article, The Times began to examine the circumstances of the T: Travel article written by Mr. Leroy, about a trip to Disneyland Paris. A review of the paperwork accompanying the assignment revealed a discrepancy: the article described four people on the journey. Expense receipts submitted to T: Travel by Mr. Leroy, however, included only an Air France itinerary for three people.

Employees at Disneyland Paris and at two Paris hotels identified Ms. Albert from photographs as the person who presented herself as JT Leroy. Those employees said no one remotely resembling photographs of JT Leroy was traveling with Ms. Albert, who told them her companions were her husband and son. Ms. Albert and Mr. Knoop are the parents of a young son.

When hotel employees told Ms. Albert they were under the impression that JT Leroy was a man, they said, she told them that she had had a sex-change operation three years before and was now a woman.

Ms. Albert did not respond to numerous voice mail messages requesting comment. Reached by telephone, Mr. Knoop declined to comment.

Peter Cane, a Manhattan lawyer, responded to phone and e-mail messages left at the number and e-mail address JT Leroy provided his editors at The Times.

When The Times asked Mr. Cane to provide his client's passport to confirm his identity and that he had traveled to Europe, Mr. Cane declined. Later, however, he gave this reporter an e-mail statement from JT Leroy in response to questions about Savannah Knoop: "As a transgendered human, subject to attacks," the statement read, "I use stand-ins to protect my identity." In the past, JT Leroy has invoked transgenderism to explain confusion over his identity.

It is unclear what effect the unmasking of Ms. Knoop will have on JT Leroy's readers, who are now faced with the question of whether they have been responding to the books published under that name, or to the story behind them. The identification of Ms. Knoop may also have repercussions for the publishing world; JT Leroy is under contract with Viking for a new novel, and Mr. Silverberg, his agent, said his books were on sale in as many as 20 different countries. Carolyn Coleburn, the director of publicity at Viking, said simply, "We stand by our authors."

But perhaps those most affected by the revelation that Ms. Knoop has been playing the public role of JT Leroy are those who went out of their way to help someone they thought was a troubled young man.

"To present yourself as a person who is dying of AIDS in a culture which has lost so many writers and voices of great meaning, to take advantage of that sympathy and empathy, is the most unfortunate part of all of this," Mr. Silverberg said. "A lot of people believed they were supporting not only a good and innovative and adventurous voice, but that we were supporting a person."

An Essay on Writing

2006-01-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

Music and Talking
by James Frey

I spent ten years teaching myself to write. I spent ten years trying to find my voice. I spent ten years alone in front of a computer scratching my head, kicking my desk, yelling at the wall. Throughout that time, one of my goals was to remove any and all signs of obvious influence from my work. I did not want to be a clone. I did not want to be the next version of someone else. I did not want to be a copy artist. I wanted to be the first me. I wanted to write in a voice that was new and different, consistent with the voice that I felt in my heart, consistent with the voice that I heard in my head.

Two things led me to that voice. Two things influenced me more than any individual writer or book or series of books. The two things were not obvious to me at first, and were things that I took for granted. The two things are music and talking.

As I write, I work with a simple formula: where was I, who was I with, what happened, how did it make me feel. The first three parts of this formula — where was I, who was I with, what happened — are the facts. They are usually simple and inform the reader as to the basics of any given situation. The fourth part — how did it make me feel — is what is most important to me. I believe that feelings, physical or emotional, define any individual's state of existence. Feelings are what makes us human, and they are what makes the experience of life unique and worthwhile. In my work I try to express my feelings as simply and honestly and effectively as I can, with the goal being that the reader will come to an understanding of my state of existence at any given time. If I am in pain, I want the reader to be in pain. If I feel joy, I want the reader to feel joy. If I feel sick, I want to make the reader sick.

In order to do this, I needed to feel what I was writing about as I was writing about it. If I cried in the book, I was usually crying as I sat at my computer. If I was angry in the book, I was angry as I wrote, and I pounded the keys of my keyboard and swore to myself and sometimes screamed. If I was violent in the book, I was violent at my desk, that violence usually expressing itself in the breaking of glass or smashing of plastic cups. Because the events in my book took place many years ago, I almost always needed to manipulate myself into the proper state of mind. To do that I listen to music. All sorts of music. Happy music, sad music, cheesy music, angry music. I listen to beautiful music and repulsive music, music that I don't understand, music that confuses me. I listen to hardcore punk, gangster rap, heavy metal, love songs, the latest teenage pop hits, classical symphonies, classic rock, opera, jazz, disco, new wave from the eighties, funk from the seventies. I have a two thousand song library of music on my computer and it is always on while I write. I flip from song to song as I work, always searching for the closest match to whatever it is I am trying to express. When I can't find specific songs to help me, I listen to Bob Dylan. When Dylan doesn't help, I usually take a break.

After music, the second most important influence on my work is talking. I don't talk to other people, I talk to myself. As I compose sentences, I talk them through before I set them down. Sometimes I only need to say something once. Sometimes twice. Sometimes five or six or ten or twenty times, I speak my sentences over and over and over, I speak them aloud until they are correct. I do this for three reasons. The first reason is because I believe that my speaking voice is my most authentic voice, and it is the closest and most accurate expression of my thoughts. Though I allow myself to refine it through repetition, the spoken word forces me to listen to what would come out of me naturally, and it helps me capture it.

The second reason I talk is rhythm. There is a rhythm to speech that is different from the rhythms of most writing. It is an easier rhythm, a more natural rhythm. It is a rhythm that is closer to the rhythm I feel inside me. Talking, and transcribing my speech allows me to capture that rhythm more easily than if I didn't talk. It forces the natural rhythm of my speech on the page and removes what I consider a false written rhythm.

The third reason for talking to myself is so I can write realistic dialogue. In my view, most books don't have realistic dialogue. They have clunky, writerly dialogue that is slowed down and encumbered with proper spellings and correct grammar. If read out loud, the dialogue sounds stupid and formal. I don't use quotes and I could care less about grammar. I have conversations with myself where I put myself into the frame of the individual characters, and I literally speak for them. This allows me, I believe, to write dialogue that is accurate and realistic. It is what a person would actually say, instead of what a writer might have them say through writing. There is a difference.

If anyone were to ever watch me write, they would probably think I was either an idiot or lunatic or both. I dance, I yell, I throw shit and kick shit and break shit. Sometimes I cry and sometimes I shake and sometimes I'm sick. I talk through all of it, say the same sentences over and over and over. While writing this essay, every single word was spoken before it was written, most of them several times. I listened to Bruce Springsteen, Anthrax, Run DMC, Taj Mahal, Queen, Journey and Debbie Gibson.

Brokeback Mountain

2006-01-07T18:02:00.000-08:00

I saw Ang Lee's new film the second day it opened in our area. It was one of the most memorable films I've seen in a while. The theater was packed for the matinee performance, even in our conservative midwestern city. The audience was a mature and middle-aged group, with probably a quarter gay and lesbian, also middle-aged. There were a few white haired gay couples well past retirement. In the midwest, few venues exist for the middle-aged and older gay and lesbian community to gather. This film briefly served this function.

While I didn't find this film as overtly powerful as Apocalypse Now or Schindler's List, the images and emotions are still with me. I would like to watch it again to let it soak in a little deeper.

As a citizen of the midwest, and a resident of ranching country, I found no faults in the characters and narrative of the film. Ennis and Jack are genuine cowboys, with the gait and drawl of the cowboys at the livestock auction on the east side of my small town.

The passion, as well, felt entirely real and convincing. My interactions with my gay friends and visits with them to midwestern gay bars and events gave me no reasons to doubt that these two men loved each other deeply. Their struggles to work out their identities resonated with my observations in the real world.

I strongly recommend seeing this film in a theater to experience the power of the landscapes of the west.

Reason #666 to Boycott Microsoft

2006-01-06T08:01:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Shuts Blog's Site After Complaints by Beijing
New York Times
January 6, 2006
By David Barboza and Tom Zeller Jr.

BEIJING, Jan. 5 - Microsoft has shut the blog site of a well-known Chinese blogger who uses its MSN online service in China after he discussed a high-profile newspaper strike that broke out here one week ago.

The decision is the latest in a series of measures in which some of America's biggest technology companies have cooperated with the Chinese authorities to censor Web sites and curb dissent or free speech online as they seek access to China's booming Internet marketplace.

Microsoft drew criticism last summer when it was discovered that its blog tool in China was designed to filter words like "democracy" and "human rights" from blog titles. The company said Thursday that it must "comply with global and local laws."

"This is a complex and difficult issue," said Brooke Richardson, a group product manager for MSN in Seattle. "We think it's better to be there with our services than not be there."

The site pulled down was a popular one created by Zhao Jing, a well-known blogger with an online pen name, An Ti. Mr. Zhao, 30, also works as a research assistant in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times.

The blog was removed last week from a Microsoft service called MSN Spaces after the blog discussed the firing of the independent-minded editor of The Beijing News, which prompted 100 journalists at the paper to go on strike Dec. 29. It was an unusual show of solidarity for a Chinese news organization in an industry that has complied with tight restrictions on what can be published.

The move by Microsoft comes at a time when the Chinese government is stepping up its own efforts to crack down on press freedom. Several prominent editors and journalists have been jailed in China over the last few years and charged with everything from espionage to revealing state secrets.

Another research assistant for The New York Times, Zhao Yan (no relation to Zhao Jing), was indicted last month on charges that he passed state secrets to the newspaper, which published a report in 2004 about the timing of Jiang Zemin's decision to give up the country's top military post.

China closely monitors what people here post on the Internet and the government regularly shuts Web sites and deletes postings that are considered antigovernment. A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the company had blocked "many sites" in China. The MSN Spaces sites are maintained on computer servers in the United States.

Ms. Richardson of Microsoft said Mr. Zhou's site was taken down after Chinese authorities made a request through a Shanghai-based affiliate of the company.

The shutdown of Mr. Zhao's site drew attention and condemnation this week elsewhere online. Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, wrote on her blog, referring to Microsoft and other technology companies: "Can we be sure they won't do the same thing in response to potentially illegal demands by an overzealous government agency in our own country?"

Robert Scoble, a blogger and official "technology evangelist" for Microsoft, took a public stand against the company's action. "This one is depressing to me," he wrote on Tuesday. "It's one thing to pull a list of words out of blogs using an algorithm. It's another thing to become an agent of a government and censor an entire blogger's work."

Another American online service operating in China, Yahoo, was widely criticized in the fall after it was revealed that the company had provided Chinese authorities with information that led to the imprisonment of a Chinese journalist who kept a personal e-mail account with Yahoo. Yahoo also defended its action by saying it was forced to comply with local law.

Mr. Zhao is so well known as a blogger that he served as China's lone jury member last year in Germany for a world blog competition.

A former computer programmer, Mr. Zhao worked as a journalist for a Chinese newspaper and as a research assistant for The Washington Post before joining The New York Times in 2003.

Mr. Zhao, in an interview this evening, said he had kept a personal blog for more than a year and was regularly censored in China, even though he has tried to be careful not to write about significant issues related to his work at The Times.

He was apparently one of the first on the Internet to mention that several editors could be fired from The Beijing News. He said he posted something about possible firings on Dec. 28.

Two days later, after the top editor there was dismissed, Reuters reported that about a hundred journalists had gone on strike over the dispute and added that several Chinese blogs and Internet chat rooms were discussing the issue. The report said Mr. Zhao had used his blog to urge readers to cancel their subscriptions.

Mr. Zhao said in an interview Thursday that Microsoft chose to delete his blog on Dec. 30 with no warning. "I didn't even say I supported the strike," he said. "This action by Microsoft infringed upon my freedom of speech. They even deleted my blog and gave me no chance to back up my files without any warning."

David Barboza reported from Beijing for this article and Tom Zeller Jr. from New York.

Vice #1

2006-01-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

The first edition of ABC's Dancing With the Stars might have hooked me. I don't like TV. It's been years since I watched anything regularly. But I might be starting again. If there must be reality TV, what could be better than reviving a public interest in ballroom dancing? I admit, the outfits and gyrations of the female professional dancers look a bit more like MTV than Lawrence Welk, but the moves are amazing! And it is produced by the BBC, so it must be quality.

Drew Lachey, formerly of the band 98 Degrees, danced a pretty impressive Cha Cha with his partner, professional dancer Cheryl Burke. I didn't think their chemistry was all that great, but the judges sure loved them. Shows you how much I know about ballroom dancing.

I cast my online vote for former NFL wide receiver, Jerry Rice! He and his partner, Anna Trebunskaya, danced a mean Cha Cha. That guy can swing his hips! Impressive.

Check out the show next Thursday evening, if you have nothing better to do. Next week's dances will be the Rumba and the Quickstep.

A Million Little Pieces

2006-01-04T20:52:00.000-08:00

Read all 430 pages in the last 30 hours. This book isn't light reading, but if you have had any experiences with or around drug and alcohol addiction, it will pull you in. This is the first time I've heard of a recovered meth addict, which gives some encouragement. This guy gave up a lot more than just meth, too. His story, albeit more gruesome, parallels some of my own observations of a friend's addiction.

My previously liberal or progressive views of drug policy are slowly shifting, I think. I at least recognize the need for more and better and accessible drug treatment options. I highly recommend this book, in spite of Oprah's endorsement. Lord knows I'm not the kind to jump on bandwagons!

Talk in a Box

2006-01-03T13:33:00.000-08:00

Real Talk for Real People
Changing the World One Conversation at a Time

Talk in a Box: click to go to the official website for more information or to purchase your own copy of the game.

Antidepressant

2005-12-14T06:04:00.000-08:00

Wellbutrin

Bupropion (amfebutamone) is an antidepressant of the amino ketone class, chemically unrelated to tricyclics or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). It is similar in structure to the stimulant cathinone, and to phenethylamines in general. It is a chemical derivative of diethylpropion, an amphetamine-like substance used as an anorectic.

History

Bupropion was first synthesized by Burroughs Research in 1966, and patented by Burroughs-Wellcome (later Glaxo-Wellcome, and, as of 2000, GlaxoSmithKline) in 1974. It was approved by the FDA in 1985 and marketed under the name Wellbutrin as an antidepressant, but clinical trials indicated that incidence of seizure was two to four times greater than other antidepressants and the drug was quickly pulled from the market. Glaxo, realizing that seizure risk was a function of dosage, then developed and marketed a sustained-release (SR) version of Wellbutrin which, when ingested, releases bupropion hydrochloride at a constant, gradual rate into the body. Because of this altered mechanism of delivery, incidence of seizure with Wellbutrin-SR is comparable to, and in some cases, lower than that of other antidepressants.

In 1997, bupropion HCl was approved by the FDA for use as a smoking cessation aid. Because the name Wellbutrin was still associated with high seizure risk, Glaxo subsequently marketed the drug under the name Zyban to help people stop smoking tobacco by reducing the severity of withdrawal symptoms. It can be used in combination with nicotine replacement therapies. Bupropion treatment course lasts for seven to twelve weeks, with the patient halting the use of tobacco around ten days into the course.

Mode of action

Bupropion is a selective catecholamine (norepinephrine and dopamine) reuptake inhibitor. It has only a small effect on serotonin reuptake. It does not inhibit MAO. The actual mechanism behind bupropion's action is not known, but it is thought to be due to the effects on dopaminergic and noradrenergic mechanisms.

Pharmacokinetics

Bupropion is metabolised in the liver. It has at least three active metabolites: hydroxybupropion, threohydrobupropion and erythrohydrobupropion. These active metabolites are further metabolised to inactive metabolites and eliminated through excretion into the urine. The half-life of bupropion is 20 hours as is hydroxybupropion's. Threohydrobupropion's half-life is 37 hours and erythrohydrobupropion's 33 hours.

Chronic hepatotoxicity in animals

In rats receiving large doses of bupropion chronically, there was an increase in incidence of hepatic hyperplastic nodules and hepatocellular hypertrophy. In dogs receiving large doses of bupropion chronically, various histologic changes were seen in the liver, and laboratory tests suggesting mild hepatocellular injury were noted.

Indications

management of depression
adjunctive in tobacco withdrawal
attention deficit disorder

Contraindications

epilepsy and other conditions that lower the seizure-threshold (alcohol withdrawal, active brain tumors etc.)
concomitant treatment with MAO-Inhibitors
caution with the concomitant use of sympathomimetic drugs (e.g. Ephedrine)
active liver damage (e.g. cirrhosis)
anorexia, bulimia
severe kidney disease
severe hypertension
anxiety disorders (caution), agitated patients
pediatric patients (see below)
use considerable caution in treating patients where suicide may be a risk

Side effects

Common side effects include dry mouth, tremors, anxiety, loss of appetite, agitation, dizziness, headache, excessive sweating, increased risk of seizure, and insomnia. Bupropion causes less insomnia if it is taken just before going to bed, or in the morning after arising. Activation of mania and psychosis have both been encountered.

Scattered abnormalities of liver function studies are noted, without evidence of hepatotoxicity. Cases of significant liver damage with or without jaundice (icterus) have been seen rarely. In a German database covering side effects, five cases of pancreatitis with elevations of serum-amylase and lipase as well as clinical symptoms (e.g. abdominal pain, anorexia), reversible after termination of bupropion, have been reported. Currently, it is unclear, whether preexisting alcohol abuse or dependence might predispose patients to develop pancreatitis.

Infrequently, dose dependent hypertension is noted. Single cases of myocardial infarction (heart attack) have been noted, but the causal association to the use of bupropion is currently unknown.

Few cases of the urological emergency priapism (painful erection) have been seen. Immediate treatment is necessary, because the untreated patient may lose his possibility to have erections totally.

Interactions

Quite a great number of drugs show clinically significant interactions with bupropion. Study the packing insert carefully and ask your prescribing physician in any case of doubt.

Abuse liability

In animal studies and small studies with persons having experience with the use of amphetamines or cocaine, bupropion caused drug-seeking behaviour (animal experiments) and was recognized as an amphetamine-like drug by the humans. In a scale ranging from placebo on the lower side to benzedrine, it was given an intermediate score indicating moderate likelihood of abuse. In clinical practise, bupropion has been shown that the dose required for significant abuse would cause seizures in most patients. Abuse has not become a significant problem in clinical usage, but the drug should be given with caution to patients with a history of drug or alcohol abuse or dependence. Bupropion is not a controlled substance.

Use in pediatric patients

Bupropion has been shown to increase the incidence of suicidal thoughts and attempts in children and adolescents with depression. When treating major depressive disorder in this group of patients, clinical benefits should be weighed carefully against therapeutic hazards. Usually, bupropion is not indicated for pediatric patients under age 18.

Risks in the treatment of tobacco withdrawal

In the UK, more than 5,000 reports of potentially hazardous side effects have been collected, among them more than 40 cases of death attributable to bupropion treatment. This study is questioning the benefit-risk-ratio in assisted tobacco withdrawal with bupropion. Also, 107 cases of serious side effects have been reported in Germany.

Dosage

depression : usual dose is 300mg daily, starting with 200mg in the first few days
tobacco withdrawal : 150mg initially, may be increased to 300mg if indicated and directed by physician. In patients also receiving Insulin, sympathomimetic anorectical drugs, or antimalaria agents, the daily dose of bupropion should not exceed 150mg.

Limitation to tobacco withdrawal

In some countries bupropion is approved only as a smoking cessation aid and not for treatment of depression.

Influence on sexual function/libido

An advantage of bupropion over most conventional antidepressants is that it causes no sexual dysfunction in men and may even increase libido. According to a recent study, bupropion does also increase libido in women with "hypoactive sexual desire disorder" but without signs of depression. It is too early to come to conclusive evidence whether to treat these women or not. Further controlled studies are required.

Potential indications of bipolar and schizoaffective disorder

The effects of bupropion HCl in treating eleven patients with bipolar or schizoaffective disorder were examined in an open trial. Most patients had been intolerant of or showed minimal to moderate improvement on lithium, neuroleptics, antidepressants, or a combination of these drugs. All patients were maintained on bupropion alone or bupropion in combination with low-dose neuroleptics or anxiolytics for one year or more, with little or no relapse and few side effects. Although these results are encouraging, additional larger studies need to be conducted to confirm this indication (study conducted by G. Wright et al., 1985, published in : J Clin Psychiatry, 1985 Jan;46(1):22–5).

External Links

Doctor

2005-12-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

Diane Nightengale, MD, FAAFP

Dr. Nightengale graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 1986. She completed her residency in Wichita. She has been a Board Certified Family Physician in El Dorado since 1989, and is currently a Fellow in the American Academy of Family Physicians. Dr. Nightengale is a clinical assistant professor of the University of Kansas Medical School and is co-medical director of the diabetes education program at Susan B. Allen Memorial Hospital. She was awarded the status of Exemplary Teacher of the Year by the American Academy of Family Physicians in 1999.

Dr. Nightengale enjoys family-oriented healthcare, including obstetrics and pediatrics, and preventative health care for all ages.

Depression

2005-12-12T07:16:00.000-08:00

(from the National Institute of Mental Health)

In any given 1-year period, 9.5 percent of the population, or about 18.8 million American adults, suffer from a depressive illness. The economic cost for this disorder is high, but the cost in human suffering cannot be estimated. Depressive illnesses often interfere with normal functioning and cause pain and suffering not only to those who have a disorder, but also to those who care about them. Serious depression can destroy family life as well as the life of the ill person. But much of this suffering is unnecessary.

Most people with a depressive illness do not seek treatment, although the great majority—even those whose depression is extremely severe—can be helped. Thanks to years of fruitful research, there are now medications and psychosocial therapies such as cognitive/behavioral, "talk" or interpersonal that ease the pain of depression.

Unfortunately, many people do not recognize that depression is a treatable illness. If you feel that you or someone you care about is one of the many undiagnosed depressed people in this country, the information presented here may help you take the steps that may save your own or someone else's life.

WHAT IS A DEPRESSIVE DISORDER?

A depressive disorder is an illness that involves the body, mood, and thoughts. It affects the way a person eats and sleeps, the way one feels about oneself, and the way one thinks about things. A depressive disorder is not the same as a passing blue mood. It is not a sign of personal weakness or a condition that can be willed or wished away. People with a depressive illness cannot merely "pull themselves together" and get better. Without treatment, symptoms can last for weeks, months, or years. Appropriate treatment, however, can help most people who suffer from depression.

TYPES OF DEPRESSION

Depressive disorders come in different forms, just as is the case with other illnesses such as heart disease. This pamphlet briefly describes three of the most common types of depressive disorders. However, within these types there are variations in the number of symptoms, their severity, and persistence.

Major depression is manifested by a combination of symptoms (see symptom list) that interfere with the ability to work, study, sleep, eat, and enjoy once pleasurable activities. Such a disabling episode of depression may occur only once but more commonly occurs several times in a lifetime.

A less severe type of depression, dysthymia, involves long-term, chronic symptoms that do not disable, but keep one from functioning well or from feeling good. Many people with dysthymia also experience major depressive episodes at some time in their lives.

Another type of depression is bipolar disorder, also called manic-depressive illness. Not nearly as prevalent as other forms of depressive disorders, bipolar disorder is characterized by cycling mood changes: severe highs (mania) and lows (depression). Sometimes the mood switches are dramatic and rapid, but most often they are gradual. When in the depressed cycle, an individual can have any or all of the symptoms of a depressive disorder. When in the manic cycle, the individual may be overactive, overtalkative, and have a great deal of energy. Mania often affects thinking, judgment, and social behavior in ways that cause serious problems and embarrassment. For example, the individual in a manic phase may feel elated, full of grand schemes that might range from unwise business decisions to romantic sprees. Mania, left untreated, may worsen to a psychotic state.

SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION AND MANIA

Not everyone who is depressed or manic experiences every symptom. Some people experience a few symptoms, some many. Severity of symptoms varies with individuals and also varies over time.

Depression

Persistent sad, anxious, or "empty" mood
Feelings of hopelessness, pessimism
Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, helplessness
Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities that were once enjoyed, including sex
Decreased energy, fatigue, being "slowed down"
Difficulty concentrating, remembering, making decisions
Insomnia, early-morning awakening, or oversleeping
Appetite and/or weight loss or overeating and weight gain
Thoughts of death or suicide; suicide attempts
Restlessness, irritability
Persistent physical symptoms that do not respond to treatment, such as headaches, digestive disorders, and chronic pain

Mania

Abnormal or excessive elation
Unusual irritability
Decreased need for sleep
Grandiose notions
Increased talking
Racing thoughts
Increased sexual desire
Markedly increased energy
Poor judgment
Inappropriate social behavior

CAUSES OF DEPRESSION

Some types of depression run in families, suggesting that a biological vulnerability can be inherited. This seems to be the case with bipolar disorder. Studies of families in which members of each generation develop bipolar disorder found that those with the illness have a somewhat different genetic makeup than those who do not get ill. However, the reverse is not true: Not everybody with the genetic makeup that causes vulnerability to bipolar disorder will have the illness. Apparently additional factors, possibly stresses at home, work, or school, are involved in its onset.

In some families, major depression also seems to occur generation after generation. However, it can also occur in people who have no family history of depression. Whether inherited or not, major depressive disorder is often associated with changes in brain structures or brain function.

People who have low self-esteem, who consistently view themselves and the world with pessimism or who are readily overwhelmed by stress, are prone to depression. Whether this represents a psychological predisposition or an early form of the illness is not clear.

In recent years, researchers have shown that physical changes in the body can be accompanied by mental changes as well. Medical illnesses such as stroke, a heart attack, cancer, Parkinson's disease, and hormonal disorders can cause depressive illness, making the sick person apathetic and unwilling to care for his or her physical needs, thus prolonging the recovery period. Also, a serious loss, difficult relationship, financial problem, or any stressful (unwelcome or even desired) change in life patterns can trigger a depressive episode. Very often, a combination of genetic, psychological, and environmental factors is involved in the onset of a depressive disorder. Later episodes of illness typically are precipitated by only mild stresses, or none at all.

Depression in Women

Women experience depression about twice as often as men.¹ Many hormonal factors may contribute to the increased rate of depression in women—particularly such factors as menstrual cycle changes, pregnancy, miscarriage, postpartum period, pre-menopause, and menopause. Many women also face additional stresses such as responsibilities both at work and home, single parenthood, and caring for children and for aging parents.

A recent NIMH study showed that in the case of severe premenstrual syndrome (PMS), women with a preexisting vulnerability to PMS experienced relief from mood and physical symptoms when their sex hormones were suppressed. Shortly after the hormones were re-introduced, they again developed symptoms of PMS. Women without a history of PMS reported no effects of the hormonal manipulation.

Many women are also particularly vulnerable after the birth of a baby. The hormonal and physical changes, as well as the added responsibility of a new life, can be factors that lead to postpartum depression in some women. While transient "blues" are common in new mothers, a full-blown depressive episode is not a normal occurrence and requires active intervention. Treatment by a sympathetic physician and the family's emotional support for the new mother are prime considerations in aiding her to recover her physical and mental well-being and her ability to care for and enjoy the infant.

Depression in Men

Although men are less likely to suffer from depression than women, 3 to 4 million men in the United States are affected by the illness. Men are less likely to admit to depression, and doctors are less likely to suspect it. The rate of suicide in men is four times that of women, though more women attempt it. In fact, after age 70, the rate of men's suicide rises, reaching a peak after age 85.

Depression can also affect the physical health in men differently from women. A new study shows that, although depression is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease in both men and women, only men suffer a high death rate.

Men's depression is often masked by alcohol or drugs, or by the socially acceptable habit of working excessively long hours. Depression typically shows up in men not as feeling hopeless and helpless, but as being irritable, angry, and discouraged; hence, depression may be difficult to recognize as such in men. Even if a man realizes that he is depressed, he may be less willing than a woman to seek help. Encouragement and support from concerned family members can make a difference. In the workplace, employee assistance professionals or worksite mental health programs can be of assistance in helping men understand and accept depression as a real illness that needs treatment.

Depression in the Elderly

Some people have the mistaken idea that it is normal for the elderly to feel depressed. On the contrary, most older people feel satisfied with their lives. Sometimes, though, when depression develops, it may be dismissed as a normal part of aging. Depression in the elderly, undiagnosed and untreated, causes needless suffering for the family and for the individual who could otherwise live a fruitful life. When he or she does go to the doctor, the symptoms described are usually physical, for the older person is often reluctant to discuss feelings of hopelessness, sadness, loss of interest in normally pleasurable activities, or extremely prolonged grief after a loss.

Recognizing how depressive symptoms in older people are often missed, many health care professionals are learning to identify and treat the underlying depression. They recognize that some symptoms may be side effects of medication the older person is taking for a physical problem, or they may be caused by a co-occurring illness. If a diagnosis of depression is made, treatment with medication and/or psychotherapy will help the depressed person return to a happier, more fulfilling life. Recent research suggests that brief psychotherapy (talk therapies that help a person in day-to-day relationships or in learning to counter the distorted negative thinking that commonly accompanies depression) is effective in reducing symptoms in short-term depression in older persons who are medically ill. Psychotherapy is also useful in older patients who cannot or will not take medication. Efficacy studies show that late-life depression can be treated with psychotherapy.

Improved recognition and treatment of depression in late life will make those years more enjoyable and fulfilling for the depressed elderly person, the family, and caretakers.

Depression in Children

Only in the past two decades has depression in children been taken very seriously. The depressed child may pretend to be sick, refuse to go to school, cling to a parent, or worry that the parent may die. Older children may sulk, get into trouble at school, be negative, grouchy, and feel misunderstood. Because normal behaviors vary from one childhood stage to another, it can be difficult to tell whether a child is just going through a temporary "phase" or is suffering from depression. Sometimes the parents become worried about how the child's behavior has changed, or a teacher mentions that "your child doesn't seem to be himself." In such a case, if a visit to the child's pediatrician rules out physical symptoms, the doctor will probably suggest that the child be evaluated, preferably by a psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of children. If treatment is needed, the doctor may suggest that another therapist, usually a social worker or a psychologist, provide therapy while the psychiatrist will oversee medication if it is needed. Parents should not be afraid to ask questions: What are the therapist's qualifications? What kind of therapy will the child have? Will the family as a whole participate in therapy? Will my child's therapy include an antidepressant? If so, what might the side effects be?

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has identified the use of medications for depression in children as an important area for research. The NIMH-supported Research Units on Pediatric Psychopharmacology (RUPPs) form a network of seven research sites where clinical studies on the effects of medications for mental disorders can be conducted in children and adolescents. Among the medications being studied are antidepressants, some of which have been found to be effective in treating children with depression, if properly monitored by the child's physician.

DIAGNOSTIC EVALUATION AND TREATMENT

The first step to getting appropriate treatment for depression is a physical examination by a physician. Certain medications as well as some medical conditions such as a viral infection can cause the same symptoms as depression, and the physician should rule out these possibilities through examination, interview, and lab tests. If a physical cause for the depression is ruled out, a psychological evaluation should be done, by the physician or by referral to a psychiatrist or psychologist.

A good diagnostic evaluation will include a complete history of symptoms, i.e., when they started, how long they have lasted, how severe they are, whether the patient had them before and, if so, whether the symptoms were treated and what treatment was given. The doctor should ask about alcohol and drug use, and if the patient has thoughts about death or suicide. Further, a history should include questions about whether other family members have had a depressive illness and, if treated, what treatments they may have received and which were effective.

Last, a diagnostic evaluation should include a mental status examination to determine if speech or thought patterns or memory have been affected, as sometimes happens in the case of a depressive or manic-depressive illness.

Treatment choice will depend on the outcome of the evaluation. There are a variety of antidepressant medications and psychotherapies that can be used to treat depressive disorders. Some people with milder forms may do well with psychotherapy alone. People with moderate to severe depression most often benefit from antidepressants. Most do best with combined treatment: medication to gain relatively quick symptom relief and psychotherapy to learn more effective ways to deal with life's problems, including depression. Depending on the patient's diagnosis and severity of symptoms, the therapist may prescribe medication and/or one of the several forms of psychotherapy that have proven effective for depression.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is useful, particularly for individuals whose depression is severe or life threatening or who cannot take antidepressant medication.³ ECT often is effective in cases where antidepressant medications do not provide sufficient relief of symptoms. In recent years, ECT has been much improved. A muscle relaxant is given before treatment, which is done under brief anesthesia. Electrodes are placed at precise locations on the head to deliver electrical impulses. The stimulation causes a brief (about 30 seconds) seizure within the brain. The person receiving ECT does not consciously experience the electrical stimulus. For full therapeutic benefit, at least several sessions of ECT, typically given at the rate of three per week, are required.

Medications

There are several types of antidepressant medications used to treat depressive disorders. These include newer medications—chiefly the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)—the tricyclics, and the monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs). The SSRIs—and other newer medications that affect neurotransmitters such as dopamine or norepinephrine—generally have fewer side effects than tricyclics. Sometimes the doctor will try a variety of antidepressants before finding the most effective medication or combination of medications. Sometimes the dosage must be increased to be effective. Although some improvements may be seen in the first few weeks, antidepressant medications must be taken regularly for 3 to 4 weeks (in some cases, as many as 8 weeks) before the full therapeutic effect occurs.

Patients often are tempted to stop medication too soon. They may feel better and think they no longer need the medication. Or they may think the medication isn't helping at all. It is important to keep taking medication until it has a chance to work, though side effects (see section on Side Effects on page 13) may appear before antidepressant activity does. Once the individual is feeling better, it is important to continue the medication for at least 4 to 9 months to prevent a recurrence of the depression. Some medications must be stopped gradually to give the body time to adjust. Never stop taking an antidepressant without consulting the doctor for instructions on how to safely discontinue the medication. For individuals with bipolar disorder or chronic major depression, medication may have to be maintained indefinitely.

Antidepressant drugs are not habit-forming. However, as is the case with any type of medication prescribed for more than a few days, antidepressants have to be carefully monitored to see if the correct dosage is being given. The doctor will check the dosage and its effectiveness regularly.

For the small number of people for whom MAO inhibitors are the best treatment, it is necessary to avoid certain foods that contain high levels of tyramine, such as many cheeses, wines, and pickles, as well as medications such as decongestants. The interaction of tyramine with MAOIs can bring on a hypertensive crisis, a sharp increase in blood pressure that can lead to a stroke. The doctor should furnish a complete list of prohibited foods that the patient should carry at all times. Other forms of antidepressants require no food restrictions.

Medications of any kind—prescribed, over-the counter, or borrowed—should never be mixed without consulting the doctor. Other health professionals who may prescribe a drug—such as a dentist or other medical specialist—should be told of the medications the patient is taking. Some drugs, although safe when taken alone can, if taken with others, cause severe and dangerous side effects. Some drugs, like alcohol or street drugs, may reduce the effectiveness of antidepressants and should be avoided. This includes wine, beer, and hard liquor. Some people who have not had a problem with alcohol use may be permitted by their doctor to use a modest amount of alcohol while taking one of the newer antidepressants.

Antianxiety drugs or sedatives are not antidepressants. They are sometimes prescribed along with antidepressants; however, they are not effective when taken alone for a depressive disorder. Stimulants, such as amphetamines, are not effective antidepressants, but they are used occasionally under close supervision in medically ill depressed patients.

Questions about any antidepressant prescribed, or problems that may be related to the medication, should be discussed with the doctor.

Lithium has for many years been the treatment of choice for bipolar disorder, as it can be effective in smoothing out the mood swings common to this disorder. Its use must be carefully monitored, as the range between an effective dose and a toxic one is small. If a person has preexisting thyroid, kidney, or heart disorders or epilepsy, lithium may not be recommended. Fortunately, other medications have been found to be of benefit in controlling mood swings. Among these are two mood-stabilizing anticonvulsants, carbamazepine (Tegretol^®) and valproate (Depakote^®). Both of these medications have gained wide acceptance in clinical practice, and valproate has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for first-line treatment of acute mania. Other anticonvulsants that are being used now include lamotrigine (Lamictal^®) and gabapentin (Neurontin^®): their role in the treatment hierarchy of bipolar disorder remains under study.

Most people who have bipolar disorder take more than one medication including, along with lithium and/or an anticonvulsant, a medication for accompanying agitation, anxiety, depression, or insomnia. Finding the best possible combination of these medications is of utmost importance to the patient and requires close monitoring by the physician.

Side Effects

Antidepressants may cause mild and, usually, temporary side effects (sometimes referred to as adverse effects) in some people. Typically these are annoying, but not serious. However, any unusual reactions or side effects or those that interfere with functioning should be reported to the doctor immediately. The most common side effects of tricyclic antidepressants, and ways to deal with them, are:

Dry mouth—it is helpful to drink sips of water; chew sugarless gum; clean teeth daily.
Constipation—bran cereals, prunes, fruit, and vegetables should be in the diet.
Bladder problems—emptying the bladder may be troublesome, and the urine stream may not be as strong as usual; the doctor should be notified if there is marked difficulty or pain.
Sexual problems—sexual functioning may change; if worrisome, it should be discussed with the doctor.
Blurred vision—this will pass soon and will not usually necessitate new glasses.
Dizziness—rising from the bed or chair slowly is helpful.
Drowsiness as a daytime problem—this usually passes soon. A person feeling drowsy or sedated should not drive or operate heavy equipment. The more sedating antidepressants are generally taken at bedtime to help sleep and minimize daytime drowsiness.

The newer antidepressants have different types of side effects:

Headache—this will usually go away.
Nausea—this is also temporary, but even when it occurs, it is transient after each dose.
Nervousness and insomnia (trouble falling asleep or waking often during the night)—these may occur during the first few weeks; dosage reductions or time will usually resolve them.
Agitation (feeling jittery)—if this happens for the first time after the drug is taken and is more than transient, the doctor should be notified.
Sexual problems—the doctor should be consulted if the problem is persistent or worrisome.

Herbal Therapy

In the past few years, much interest has risen in the use of herbs in the treatment of both depression and anxiety. St. John's wort (Hypericum perforatum), an herb used extensively in the treatment of mild to moderate depression in Europe, has recently aroused interest in the United States. St. John's wort, an attractive bushy, low-growing plant covered with yellow flowers in summer, has been used for centuries in many folk and herbal remedies. Today in Germany, Hypericum is used in the treatment of depression more than any other antidepressant. However, the scientific studies that have been conducted on its use have been short-term and have used several different doses.

Because of the widespread interest in St. John's wort, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted a 3-year study, sponsored by three NIH components—the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and the Office of Dietary Supplements. The study was designed to include 336 patients with major depression of moderate severity, randomly assigned to an 8-week trial with one-third of patients receiving a uniform dose of St. John's wort, another third sertraline, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) commonly prescribed for depression, and the final third a placebo (a pill that looks exactly like the SSRI and the St. John's wort, but has no active ingredients). The study participants who responded positively were followed for an additional 18 weeks. At the end of the first phase of the study, participants were measured on two scales, one for depression and one for overall functioning. There was no significant difference in rate of response for depression, but the scale for overall functioning was better for the antidepressant than for either St. John's wort or placebo. While this study did not support the use of St. John's wort in the treatment of major depression, ongoing NIH-supported research is examining a possible role for St. John's wort in the treatment of milder forms of depression.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a Public Health Advisory on February 10, 2000. It stated that St. John's wort appears to affect an important metabolic pathway that is used by many drugs prescribed to treat conditions such as AIDS, heart disease, depression, seizures, certain cancers, and rejection of transplants. Therefore, health care providers should alert their patients about these potential drug interactions.

Some other herbal supplements frequently used that have not been evaluated in large-scale clinical trials are ephedra, gingko biloba, echinacea, and ginseng. Any herbal supplement should be taken only after consultation with the doctor or other health care provider.

PSYCHOTHERAPIES

Many forms of psychotherapy, including some short-term (10-20 week) therapies, can help depressed individuals. "Talking" therapies help patients gain insight into and resolve their problems through verbal exchange with the therapist, sometimes combined with "homework" assignments between sessions. "Behavioral" therapists help patients learn how to obtain more satisfaction and rewards through their own actions and how to unlearn the behavioral patterns that contribute to or result from their depression.

Two of the short-term psychotherapies that research has shown helpful for some forms of depression are interpersonal and cognitive/behavioral therapies. Interpersonal therapists focus on the patient's disturbed personal relationships that both cause and exacerbate (or increase) the depression. Cognitive/behavioral therapists help patients change the negative styles of thinking and behaving often associated with depression.

Psychodynamic therapies, which are sometimes used to treat depressed persons, focus on resolving the patient's conflicted feelings. These therapies are often reserved until the depressive symptoms are significantly improved. In general, severe depressive illnesses, particularly those that are recurrent, will require medication (or ECT under special conditions) along with, or preceding, psychotherapy for the best outcome.

HOW TO HELP YOURSELF IF YOU ARE DEPRESSED

Depressive disorders make one feel exhausted, worthless, helpless, and hopeless. Such negative thoughts and feelings make some people feel like giving up. It is important to realize that these negative views are part of the depression and typically do not accurately reflect the actual circumstances. Negative thinking fades as treatment begins to take effect. In the meantime:

Set realistic goals in light of the depression and assume a reasonable amount of responsibility.
Break large tasks into small ones, set some priorities, and do what you can as you can.
Try to be with other people and to confide in someone; it is usually better than being alone and secretive.
Participate in activities that may make you feel better.
Mild exercise, going to a movie, a ballgame, or participating in religious, social, or other activities may help.
Expect your mood to improve gradually, not immediately. Feeling better takes time.
It is advisable to postpone important decisions until the depression has lifted. Before deciding to make a significant transition—change jobs, get married or divorced—discuss it with others who know you well and have a more objective view of your situation.
People rarely "snap out of" a depression. But they can feel a little better day-by-day.
Remember, positive thinking will replace the negative thinking that is part of the depression and will disappear as your depression responds to treatment.
Let your family and friends help you.

How Family and Friends Can Help the Depressed Person

The most important thing anyone can do for the depressed person is to help him or her get an appropriate diagnosis and treatment. This may involve encouraging the individual to stay with treatment until symptoms begin to abate (several weeks), or to seek different treatment if no improvement occurs. On occasion, it may require making an appointment and accompanying the depressed person to the doctor. It may also mean monitoring whether the depressed person is taking medication. The depressed person should be encouraged to obey the doctor's orders about the use of alcoholic products while on medication. The second most important thing is to offer emotional support. This involves understanding, patience, affection, and encouragement. Engage the depressed person in conversation and listen carefully. Do not disparage feelings expressed, but point out realities and offer hope. Do not ignore remarks about suicide. Report them to the depressed person's therapist. Invite the depressed person for walks, outings, to the movies, and other activities. Be gently insistent if your invitation is refused. Encourage participation in some activities that once gave pleasure, such as hobbies, sports, religious or cultural activities, but do not push the depressed person to undertake too much too soon. The depressed person needs diversion and company, but too many demands can increase feelings of failure.

Do not accuse the depressed person of faking illness or of laziness, or expect him or her "to snap out of it." Eventually, with treatment, most people do get better. Keep that in mind, and keep reassuring the depressed person that, with time and help, he or she will feel better.

WHERE TO GET HELP

If unsure where to go for help, check the Yellow Pages under "mental health," "health," "social services," "suicide prevention," "crisis intervention services," "hotlines," "hospitals," or "physicians" for phone numbers and addresses. In times of crisis, the emergency room doctor at a hospital may be able to provide temporary help for an emotional problem, and will be able to tell you where and how to get further help.

Listed below are the types of people and places that will make a referral to, or provide, diagnostic and treatment services.

Family doctors
Mental health specialists, such as psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, or mental health counselors
Health maintenance organizations
Community mental health centers
Hospital psychiatry departments and outpatient clinics
University- or medical school-affiliated programs
State hospital outpatient clinics
Family service, social agencies, or clergy
Private clinics and facilities
Employee assistance programs
Local medical and/or psychiatric societies

Shadows and Art

2005-12-10T10:02:00.000-08:00

Tracing Shadows
December 10, 2005
New York Times
By Conrad Mulcahy

It began this spring without explanation: fire hydrants, street signs and bicycles all over Park Slope and Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn were suddenly standing watch over their own distorted chalk outlines, as if anticipating some violent demise. Whoever did this left no clue other than an ambiguous signature: "© Ellis G. 2007," scrawled next to the chalk etchings.

During daylight, the outlines did not make much sense. Shopkeepers and bar owners had little information. Deliverymen muttered to themselves as they moved their outlined bicycles indoors. Parents were just as confused as their young children.

But under the orange glow of the streetlights, the intent became clear: the outlines are shadows, burned into the sidewalk.

The man behind this mystery, who in the last six months has outlined thousands of objects throughout Brooklyn, is "Ellis G.," or as his parents know him, Ellis Gallagher, a Brooklyn artist. His chalk drawings are a private joke between him and anyone in Brooklyn who takes the time to look at his work before the snow or rain washes it away.

"This work won't be around," Mr. Gallagher said. "God knows, it could be gone tomorrow."

His chalk outlines, inspired by his own brush with crime, are "exhilarating for me," he said. "I can do it at any time of the day and I don't have to look over my shoulder. I can do it right in front of the police."

For Mr. Gallagher, 32, keeping his art on the right side of the law is a relatively new endeavor. He spent many years putting graffiti on New York's train tunnels, walls and other public spaces. But graffiti "missions," as they are known in some circles, took their toll on Mr. Gallagher, who works as a waiter when he is not making art. There were the fines, the frantic footraces with police officers (when he was lucky) and the nights in jail (when he was not). A 1999 arrest resulted in a community service sentence and probation, court records show.

But Mr. Gallagher's passion for graffiti was extinguished for good early one morning in 2001, when he and Hector Ramirez, a close friend, were painting in the F train tunnel between Bergen and Carroll Streets. A train roared by, and Mr. Ramirez was struck and killed. Mr. Gallagher was not injured. "After that," he said, "I'd had enough."

He turned to painting, working out of a studio and focused on displaying his work in shows with other artists, including a forthcoming book called "Adhesives" that is a collection of stickers made by graffiti artists from all over New York.

Earlier this year, Mr. Gallagher was mugged on his way home from a shift at Bar Tabac on Smith Street, where he worked as a waiter. "I turn around and this guy's got a two-foot machete in my face," he said.

Mr. Gallagher was unhurt and the mugger was later caught by the police, but one night soon after the mugging, with the image of his attacker's dark silhouette still burned into his memory, Mr. Gallagher was mesmerized by a shadow on the sidewalk. He reached into his pocket and felt the chalk he had used to write the outdoor menu at Bar Tabac, and he dropped to his knees to outline it.

Shadow art was born.

Now Mr. Gallagher heads out on foot or on his bike with a backpack full of chalk, looking for shadows to trace. When he tells you that "everything is fair game," he means it. He has traced everything from hydrants to whole city blocks.

While most people in Carroll Gardens and Park Slope have never seen him, many know his work and they seem to like it. (While the city's administrative code says defacing streets is illegal, it is unclear whether that holds true for sidewalks.)

Patty Wu, owner of Handmade on Smith Street, knows Mr. Gallagher's work because he often stops to trace the shadows of objects in her window display, like women's shirts and lingerie sets. "I love it; It's great, it creates a lot of visual interest and people stop and then see the store," Ms. Wu said of the chalk outlines.

It even stirs a little friendly neighborhood rivalry. "People across the street say, 'How come he does it in front of your store so much?' and I say 'Because I have good lighting,' " Ms. Wu says with a smile.

More than anything, Mr. Gallagher will tell you, his work is meant for pure enjoyment.

"All of my chalk drawings are like graffiti," he said. "It's putting out public art for people who normally wouldn't go to a museum."

Claude DeCastro, the owner of the Hoyt Street bar Kili, saw Mr. Gallagher's chalk art and invited him to put up a show of paintings on canvas in the bar, where it is now displayed.

"I think that public art is important," said Mr. DeCastro, who once owned a gallery. "It expresses what people are feeling in society at the time, and it puts it out there. It's not like a museum, where things are hidden away for 20 years."

On a recent evening, a man named Steve stopped to watch Mr. Gallagher work, despite the cold. "A million times I walked by a street sign, how come I never thought to do something like that with a piece of chalk?" Steve asks. Mr. Gallagher smiles when he hears this, watching a new fan walk off down the street.

"It's very touching," he says sincerely. "People tell me 'you make me smile' or 'you make me stop and think,' and that's cool. I make a difference in people's lives. It inspires me to create more."

Then he's on his feet again, clapping the dust off his hands. He grabs his bag of chalk, and a bright smile flashes across his face when he sees a bicycle is casting a hard shadow on a wide stretch of sidewalk nearby.

"Oh, that's a good one," he says to no one in particular.

Before you know it, he's back on his knees, tracing another shadow.

Tom Waits

2005-12-07T05:56:00.000-08:00

From The Writer's Almanac for Dec. 7, 2005. Maybe someday my short bio will read like the second paragraph. I guess there's still hope.

"It's the birthday of the singer, songwriter and actor Tom Waits, born in Pomona, California (1949). As a teenager, his parents moved around a lot, and instead of making friends, Waits became obsessed with music. He didn't listen to rock and roll like his classmates. He was more interested in older music: George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Frank Sinatra, Jerome Kern, Cab Calloway, and the old Nat "King" Cole Trio. He later said, "I... slept right through the '60s. Never went through an identity crisis. Never had no Jimi Hendrix posters on the wall, never ate granola, never had any incense."

Out of high school he worked odd jobs, as a fireman, a cab driver, a gas station attendant. He said, "[At one point] I worked in a restaurant... [as] dishwasher, waiter, cook, plumber, janitor—everything. They called me Speed-O-Flash." He wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life until 1968, when he read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The book made him want to do something big, and a few weeks later he saw a local guy he knew playing jazz at a nightclub, and he realized that he needed to start making his own music.

Waits recorded a series of albums in the 1970's, but his breakthrough as an artist came in 1981 when he married the playwright Kathleen Brennan. He said, "She gave me the guts to just do it... …helped me open up and not be afraid to do something." He began to write concept albums about oddball characters, conmen, murderers and lunatics, and he often sang like a circus sideshow barker. Instead of using conventional piano or guitar, he filled his songs with tuba, pipe organ, accordion, and all kinds of percussion. It took him thirteen months to find a distributor for the first album in his new style Swordfishtrombones (1983) but when it finally came out, it was cited by many critics as one of the best albums of the year.

Waits has since begun to write for musical theater, including an operetta he wrote with William S. Burroughs called The Black Rider (1993), and the musical Alice (2002) loosely based on the life of the girl who inspired Lewis Carroll to write Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

What Sour German Mood?

2005-12-06T06:42:00.000-08:00

Germans Told to Cheer Up. 'Why Should We?' Some Say.
December 6, 2005
New York Times
By Richard Bernstein

BERLIN, Dec. 5 - First there are trees silhouetted against a pastoral horizon; then a distinguished-looking elderly lady appears on screen looking you right in the eye as she says, "You are Germany's miracle."

From then on, as this slickly produced spot broadcast on German television continues, a succession of people, famous and not famous, appears, each speaking a segment of a larger inspirational message.

"A butterfly can cause a typhoon," a well-known television hostess says. A young Asian woman holding a baby follows with, "The blast of wind that comes from its wings may uproot trees kilometers away."

The television message includes gay and handicapped people speaking from among the concrete pillars of Berlin's recently opened Holocaust Memorial, the Olympic figure skating champion Katarina Witt and a cluster of small children pointing straight into the camera and shouting the main slogan: "Du bist Deutschland!" - "You are Germany!"

Produced free by one of Germany's leading advertising agencies, the television sequence is part of a broader campaign, pretty much ubiquitous in the country these days, aimed at cheering up the presumably gloomy population, nudging Germans toward an unaccustomed optimism.

It is intended to make the public believe that, like that butterfly flapping its wings, a large number of small gestures can add up to a big difference.

Whether this is an appropriate way to battle the national melancholy - and opinions vary greatly on this issue - the very existence of such a campaign, reportedly the first of its sort in this country, is a sign of what is generally recognized here: that Germany is indeed in a sour mood, its economy in the doldrums, its financial deficits too high and none of its leaders strong or visionary enough to lead the way out.

"When you live in Germany, you feel that a lot of people are not sure about what is going on here," said Oliver Voss, the director of the Jung von Matt advertising agency in Hamburg, who came up with the slogan. "A lot of people think that their fate is controlled by somebody else, and in our eyes that is a mistake."

The campaign, appearing on billboards and in movie theaters all over Germany as well as on television, was the idea of a group of media executives who gathered toward the end of last year and decided something needed to be done to change the psychological atmosphere, in the hope that renewed self-confidence might help to set off a national recovery.

In this sense, to be sure, nobody is arguing that things are going well. The big disappointment probably is in what was, a decade and a half ago, this country's biggest thrill, national unification after more than 40 years of cold war division.

But it has now settled pretty deeply in the collective awareness that unification has been an economic and a spiritual failure. It cost, and still costs, a staggering amount of money in financial transfers from the former West to the poorer and smaller former East, where the money seems to have vanished without a trace.

Now, the westerners are unhappy because the disappearance of all that money is seen as the root of Germany's economic stagnation and high unemployment. The easterners are notoriously unhappy because life is less secure than it used to be under Communism, and, as this cycle continues, the westerners are irritated that the easterners are unhappy.

Faced with this situation, the group of media executives hired Mr. Voss to come up with a campaign, to be carried out entirely pro bono. It began a couple of months ago, and it would probably be hard to find a single person in Germany who has not been subjected to the message.

"When the campaign started," Mr. Voss said, "in the first hour, more than one million people went to the Web site to check out what was going on. Every second, more than a thousand people went to the Web site. That's an amazing number."

Yes it is, but there are critics ready to rain on this parade anyway, arguing that what Germany needs is not singers and athletes (and literary critics, television anchor women and 8-year-olds) telling them to cheer up, but serious attention to the country's real problems.

The intellectual weekly Die Zeit heaped scorn on the campaign, labeling it "propaganda" and excoriating its creators in particular for what the paper deemed their "tasteless" use of the Holocaust Memorial as a backdrop to the "You are Germany" chants of the gay and handicapped people.

"Unemployment is depicted as a consequence of the bad mood, a private phenomenon, which at any given time could be corrected by self-contemplation and positive thinking," wrote the paper's commentator, Jens Jessen.

"One would like to see how the scriptwriters who concocted such nonsense would explain to a 50-year-old engineer that he had lost his job only because he forgot that August Thyssen, Ferdinand Porsche and other famous workers of the German past once also started from scratch," Mr. Jessen continued, referring to a 19th-century mining and steel magnate and the sports car maker.

Mr. Voss's reply to this is, in part, that the criticism shows that people are paying attention, and that this generation of a discussion is a measure of the campaign's success. He also cites a widely circulated survey showing that in Germany only 30 percent of the people think they can do something about their own fate, compared with 60 percent in the United States. In other words, Germans are by nature pessimistic, and that does have something to do with the poor economy.

"To put a smiley face over our problems was not the intention," he said. "And if you look at the actual campaign, you'll see that it says very simply, 'Don't withdraw your influence; try to see where the problems are and do what you can do.' "

Or, as five different characters say at the end of one of the spots: "Beat your wings. And uproot trees. You are the wings. You are the tree. You are Germany."

"I like the message," said Alexander Göhrs, who is 20 and one of Germany's four million unemployed people. "Times are really hard. We all see that."

But though he liked the message, he doubted that the campaign would have any practical effect.

"It's not changing anything about my situation," he said.

Low Shows

2005-12-05T18:38:00.000-08:00

If you've never heard the band Low,
or been privileged to take in a show,
then this is your chance
to boogy and dance.
you should go (for the dates, see below):

Fri. Dec. 9
An evening with Low
Special holiday concert
First Avenue
Minneapolis, MN
$15
6 p.m.
21+

Sat. Dec. 10
Sacred Heart
Duluth, MN

Thur. Jan. 26
Miramar Theatre
533 East Center St.
Milwuakee, WI
416-263-4555
6:30 p.m.
All ages
$12.50 advance, $14 day of show

Fri. Jan. 27
Logan Square Auditorium
2539 N. Kedzie Blvd.
Chicago, IL
773-252-6179
8:30 p.m.
All ages
$15

Sat. Jan. 28
Grog Shop
2785 Euclid Heights Blvd.
Cleveland Heights, OH
216-321-5588
8 p.m.
All ages
$10 advance, $12 day of show

Mon. Jan. 30
Magic Stick
4140 Woodward Ave.
Detroit, MI
313-833-9700
8 p.m.
18+
$14

Tues. Jan. 31
Lee's Palace
529 Bloor St. West
Toronto, ON
416-532-1596
8 p.m.
18+
$18.50 CAD advance, $20 CAD day of show

February

Wed. Feb. 1
LA Sala Rossa
4848 St. Laurent
Montreal, QB
514-284-0122
7:30 p.m.
All ages
$15 CAD

Wed. Feb. 2
Somerville Theatre
55 Davis Square
Somerville MA
617-625-4066
All ages
7 p.m.
$14 advance, $16 day of show

Fri. Feb. 3
South Paw
125 5th Avenue
Brooklyn, NY
718-230-0236
18+
8 p.m.
$15

Sat. Feb. 4
Black Cat
1811 14th St NW
Washington, DC
202-667-4527
All ages
9:30 p.m.
$13

Mon. Feb. 6
Bowery Ballroom
6 Delancy St.
New York, NY
212-533-2111
18+
8 p.m.
$15 advance, $18 day of show

Fri. Feb. 24
The Black Sheep
2106 East Platte Ave.
Colorado Springs, CO
303-443-2227
All ages
8 p.m.
$10 advance, $12 day of show

Sat. Feb. 25
Larimer Lounge
2721 Larimer St.
Denver, CO
303-291-1007
21+
8 p.m.
$12 advance, $14 day of show

Mon. Feb. 27
In the Venue
579 West 200 St.
Salt Lake City, UT
801-328-0255
All ages
7 p.m.
$13 advance, $15 day of show

March

Wed. March 1
Club Congress
311 E. Congress St.
Tucson, AZ
520-622-8848
21+
9 p.m.
$10 advance, $12 day of show

Thur. March 2
Casbah
2501 Kettner Blvd.
San Diego, CA
619-434-7240
21+
8:30 p.m.
$14

Fri. March 3
Troubadour
9081 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
310-276-1158
All ages
8 p.m.
$15

Sat. March 4
The Independent
628 Divisadero St.
San Francisco, CA
415-771-1420
21+
8:30 p.m.
$17

Mon. March 6
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E. Burnside St.
Portland, OR
503-793-8126
21+
8 p.m.
$15

Tues. March 7
Neumos
925 E. Pike St.
Seattle, WA
206-709-9467
21+
8 p.m.
$13 advance, $15 day of show

Thur. March 8
Richards on Richards
1036 Richards St.
Vancouver, BC
604-687-6794
18+
8 p.m.
$20 CAD advance, $25 CAD day of show

April

Tue. April 4
Maintenance Shop
2229 Lincoln Way
Iowa State Univesity
Ames, IA
515-294-2772
All ages
8 p.m.
$15 advance, $18 day of show

Wed. April 5
The Record Bar
1020 Westport Rd.
Kansas City, MO
816-756-9624
18+
8 p.m.
$14

Thur. April 6
Opalis
113 North Crawford
Norman, OK
405-820-0951
All ages
9 p.m.
$12

Fri. April 7
Ridgles Theater
Wall of Sound Festival 6025 Camp Bowie Blvd.
Fort Worth, TX
All ages
11 a.m. (Low onstage at midnight)

New Music

2005-12-04T08:07:00.000-08:00

I'm really digging a CD I copied from my brother (yes, illegally). It's not so new (Jan. 2005), but it's the first time I've been able to sit down and listen to it.

I'm Wide Awake It's Morning by Bright Eyes

I love the duets with Emmylou Harris. I like the way they use a guitar as percussion once in a while. I laugh everytime the song "Land Locked Blues" breaks into a trumpet solo playing Taps. Right now, this CD is the one I'm drawn to every day.

The Holiday Season

2005-12-03T17:56:00.000-08:00

The rush of family visitors, biting cold, memories of depressing Christmases past, friends strung out on crystal meth and all the stress of eating so much food in such a short short time. Blogging was forgotten for a spell. Where is the support for those of us who don't find Christmas a time of fuzzy family fun? I'll be glad when it's over.

Art & Taxes

2005-11-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

Senate Bill Lets Artists Claim Price for Gifts
November 22, 2005
New York Times
By Robin Pogrebin

Living writers, musicians, artists and scholars who donate their work to a museum or other charitable cause would earn a tax deduction based on full fair market value under a bill just passed by the Senate.

Currently such work receives only a deduction based on the cost of materials unless it is donated posthumously by the estates.

The measure was approved as an amendment to a broader $59.6 billion tax relief bill passed by the Senate early Friday. It now goes to a House-Senate conference committee. The House version of the tax relief bill does not include the arts provision, but the senators who introduced the amendment - Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Pete V. Domenici, a New Mexico Republican - said they were hopeful that the committee would support it.

Under the bill, artists could donate their work during their lifetimes at full market value provided that it is properly appraised and handed over at least 18 months after it is created.

The provision seems likely to open the way for more acquisitions by cash-strapped museums. "It's very important for cultural institutions and libraries to be able to be the recipient of these works of art that otherwise might go into private hands," said Mimi Gaudieri, the executive director of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

"Especially for small to midsize institutions with modest acquisition funds, as a gift from the artists, it's a great opportunity to enhance their collections," Ms. Gaudieri said.

The donated work must be related to the purpose or function of the museum or charitable organization receiving the donation.

Mr. Schumer, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said the measure would even the playing field for arts donors. "Right now, artists are better off waiting until after they die to donate their works to a charity or a museum," he said, adding that the amendment "fixes that problem and treats artists the same as anyone else who works hard and wants to donate something to charity at the fair market or appraised value."

Arts professionals described the measure as long overdue. "Artists donate to cultural nonprofits or other nonprofits, and all they get is the cost of their materials," said Tom Healy, president of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which represents arts groups downtown. "If you have a painting that's worth $5,000, you may be able to deduct $20 for the canvas."

As long as the work is physically tangible, it can be contributed as a deduction, said Robert L. Lynch, president and chief executive of Americans for the Arts, an advocacy group. "A score has value just like a painting," he said.

Applying the provision may present challenges for the Internal Revenue Service, given that appraising a work of creativity is often a highly subjective process. "It's a pretty new day in tax policy," said Dean A. Zerbe, a senior tax lawyer and investigator for the Senate Finance Committee. "It has the potential for people to want to go back and expand it."

He suggested that some professionals might seek a deduction for a product like a legal brief or a medical operation. "It's something the house will have to look at closely," Mr. Zerbe said.

The bill also comes with stricter rules for the qualifications of appraisers. "The public is now going to be made aware of what a qualified appraiser is," said Fran Zeman, the former chairwoman of the personal property committee of the American Society of Appraisers. "It's important for everyone to understand the importance of using someone who is qualified."

Ms. Zeman said that noncash contributions to charitable groups are often overvalued. The Internal Revenue Service has grappled with the valuation of donations ranging from automobiles to frequent-flier miles.

Mark W. Everson, the I.R.S. commissioner, raised that issue in testimony last spring before the Senate Finance Committee. "Valuation issues are often difficult," he said. "Overvaluations may arise from taxpayer error or abuse as well as from aggressive taxpayer positions."

Sackgasse

2005-11-19T07:38:00.000-08:00

From dict.leo.org:

ENGLISH		GERMAN
		6 search results
Direct Matches
	close	die Sackgasse
	impasse	die Sackgasse
	blind alley	die Sackgasse
	cul-de-sac especially [Brit.]	die Sackgasse
	dead end	die Sackgasse
	dead-end street	die Sackgasse

Completed

2005-11-18T21:31:00.000-08:00

Sackgasse
Acrylic latex on canvas
510 mm x 741 mm (about 20 in x 30 in)
2005

Hobart

2005-11-17T06:14:00.000-08:00

(Direct prints of the bottoms of two Hobart dishwashing racks)
Acrylic on paper
each 20 in x 20 in
Germany, 2004

For anyone who has worked in a food service environment with a Hobart commercial dishwasher, these images may trigger memories. These patterns are only visible as watermarks for a few seconds after the trays are lifted off of a slightly wet stainless steel rack table. I decided that a direct print was the only way to truly capture the image. The process involved quite a bit of after-hours sneakiness, but we got it done. Here are the images to prove it.

Here's a picture of the real thing:

Work in Progress

2005-11-16T18:07:00.000-08:00

Sackgasse
Acrylic Latex on canvas
510 mm x 741 mm (about 20 in x 30 in)

Inspiration #2

2005-11-15T19:05:00.000-08:00

I'm not an athlete, and I don't like inspirational stories, especially sports-related ones. But this kid inspires me. I can only dream of being so fearless.

Blind Kansas football player lets folks see life’s possibilities
By Fred Mann
The Wichita Eagle

KANOPOLIS, Kan. — The task for Jason Hughes, defensive lineman for Kanopolis Middle School, was to fire out as soon as the football was snapped and hit somebody.

Anybody.

Knock somebody down and cause a pileup, said his coaches.

So in a couple of games this season, Jason, who is blind, lined up on defense and plowed into the first opponent he could locate at the snap of the football.

Twice, the person Jason plowed into happened to be carrying the ball.

Both collisions resulted in solid tackles, including one behind the line of scrimmage that resulted in a loss of yardage for the opposition.

Teammates cheered, and so did the crowd.

Even the kids lined up on the other side of the ball told him, “Good job.”

Jason, 13, has only memories of vision. He has plastic prosthetic eyes. Cancer claimed the real ones — the first when he was 18 months old, the second when he was 4½.

State and national high school officials said a blind student competing in football is rare, and perhaps unprecedented.

“As I’ve talked with people that have been around football longer than I have, they don’t remember a totally blind student participating in football,” said Jerry Diehl, assistant director of the National Federation of State High School Associations in Indianapolis.

Records for impaired athletes are sketchy, especially at the middle school level, he said.

But Rick Bowden, the Kansas State High School Activities Association’s assistant director who oversees football, said, “In my 13 years on staff, I cannot remember any student with that condition who’s ever tried to play football.”

Jason, an eighth-grader, played in only the last two games of the season, which ended in late October.

He had started the season as team statistician. He also snapped the ball in practices during drills and did other noncontact work with the team.

But standing on the sideline during games didn’t interest Jason. He learned the game as a kid from his older brother C.J., now a freshman defensive lineman at Chadron State in Nebraska, and he wanted to get onto the field.

“I never really had a thing for being a manager, or someone who doesn’t get in a game,” Jason said. “It’s not my opinion of being on a team.”

But he had to wait until both of his parents, including his father in Wyoming, signed a release form.

Then he had to learn the position and work on technique before Kanopolis coach Steve Bolton allowed him to play.

Jason’s mother, Bonnie, who moved with Jason to Ellsworth from Rock Springs, Wyo., last November after she and her husband separated, said she had no qualms about letting him play. She was used to having a son playing football, and Jason already was an athlete accustomed to contact. He had wrestled since age 7, and won his weight division at a tournament in Wyoming.

He’s also a risk-taker who once jumped out of a swing 12 feet to the ground in front of startled counselors at a camp for blind kids.

“He does things when I’m not looking, which is good because if I was looking I probably wouldn’t let him do it,” Bonnie Hughes said.

“I’ve gotten used to it. So if he wants to do it, I know he knows where his limits are and he’ll quit if it’s more than he can deal with.”

Bolton and his staff decided to try Jason at nose guard, placing him opposite the other team’s center. All Jason had to do was go forward at the snap of the ball and create a pile, they figured.

“Funny thing is,” Bolton said, “he didn’t just create a pile. If left unblocked, he got into the backfield and grabbed the first person that got in his way.”

Still, Jason said, it was “nerve-racking” the first time he went into a football game.

“It was awkward the first time to go out on the field against someone you knew was going to go full blast at you,” he said.

Jason had to be taken to the huddle, and positioned on the line. If the other team snapped the ball quickly, he could hear it and take off on his own.

If the other team changed the cadence, a linebacker playing directly behind him would, at the snap, tap him on whichever side of his rear he was supposed to rush.

If he didn’t run into anybody when he launched himself into the fray, he listened for footsteps.

The first time he made a tackle, Jason didn’t know he’d stopped the ball carrier. He was just plugging a hole, he said.

But on the second tackle, he knew.

“Ball carriers run different than linemen do,” Jason said. “I don’t know if it’s that they stand up, but they run differently.”

Opposing teams were told in advance that Kanopolis had a blind lineman on defense. But they were surprised by Jason’s tackles and began paying him the compliment of double-teaming and trapping him.

Jason wasn’t put into games for a few token plays. He played the last two quarters of his first game, and three quarters of the second game. The team won neither, finishing 0-7.

In Wyoming, he hadn’t been allowed to play at all.

“This school has been extraordinarily wonderful,” said Bonnie Hughes, who works in admissions at the hospital in Ellsworth. “If he wants to try something, they do all they can to figure out how to help him do it. They haven’t denied him anything.”

Jason, who gets A’s and B’s in his classes, also plays sousaphone in the school’s marching band. He holds onto a bar that’s attached to a set of drums so he can follow the band.

The band received a top rating at a competition in Ellsworth this year, and the judges didn’t find out until later that one of its musicians was blind, said Ken Cravens, principal of Kanopolis Middle School.

Next year, Jason will be a freshman at Ellsworth High School. He hopes to play football again.

“Football is just too fun. I can’t play it for just one year,” he said.

Ellsworth’s head coach, Ken Windholz, doesn’t rule out the possibility.

“I would be open to the opportunity. He’s demonstrated he can do some special things at the middle school. We’ll just have to see,” Windholz said.

Jason knows that doing something nobody thought was possible could inspire other blind kids to try new things.

“Blind kids don’t have to do just wrestling,” he said.

But so far, his example primarily has inspired those who can see.

Starting with his coach.

“Just watching him, it brings you a sense of joy to see there’s somebody that has the gumption to actually do something that a lot of other people would just sit back and say, ‘It’s not possible,’ ” Bolton said.

What is Your World View?

2005-11-14T16:50:00.000-08:00

I'm a Cultural Creative. I don't like real personality tests and surveys, but online quizzes that offer absurd conclusions and sweeping generalizations make me laugh. This one actually put me in a pretty well-fitted box.

What is Your World View?
You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

81% Cultural Creative

75% Postmodernist

63% Idealist

56% Romanticist

56% Existentialist

31% Modernist

31% Materialist

31%Fundamentalist

The Belief-O-Matic quiz tells you what religion or faith you ought to practice. It also pegged me pretty accurately. My top three results were:

100% Liberal Quaker
98% Unitarian Universalism
92% Mahayana Buddhism

What's Your Spiritual Type? tells you how spiritual or religious you are. I scored 51 on their scale, which makes me a "Spiritual Straddler - One foot in traditional religion, one foot in free-form spirituality."

I guess I only like these kinds of quizzes when the results reaffirm my perceptions of myself!

Google = God (Part 2)

2005-11-14T04:47:00.000-08:00

These are some pretty incredible ideas Google is exploring--searching your own genetic code?! I do love their online books, though. I find it much easier to browse and decide which book to buy (specifically nonfiction, on a specific topic). While their power makes me nervous, I'm very interested to see what else they can do.

What Lurks in Its Soul?
Washington Post
By David A. Vise
Sunday, November 13, 2005; B01

The soul of the Google machine is a passion for disruptive innovation.

Powered by brilliant engineers, mathematicians and technological visionaries, Google ferociously pushes the limits of everything it undertakes. The company's DNA emanates from its youthful founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who operate with "a healthy disregard for the impossible," as Page likes to say. Their goal: to organize all of the world's information and make it universally accessible, whatever the consequences.

Google's colorful childlike logo, its whimsical appeal and its lightning-fast search results have made it the darling of information-hungry Internet users. Google has accomplished something rare in the hard-charging, mouse-eat-mouse environment that defines the high-tech world -- it has made itself charming. We like Google. We giggle at the "Google doodles," the playful decorations on its logo that appear on holidays or other special occasions. We eagerly sample the new online toys that Google rolls out every few months.

But these friendly features belie Google's disdain for the status quo and its voracious appetite for aggressively pursuing initiatives to bring about radical change. Google is testing the boundaries in so many ways, and so purposefully, it's likely to wind up at the center of a variety of legal battles with landmark significance.

Consider the wide-ranging implications of the activities now underway at the Googleplex, the company's campuslike headquarters in California's Silicon Valley. Google is compiling a genetic and biological database using the vast power of its search engines; scanning millions of books without traditional regard for copyright laws; tracing online searches to individual Internet users and storing them indefinitely; demanding cell phone numbers in exchange for free e-mail accounts (known as Gmail) as it begins to build the first global cell phone directory; saving Gmails forever on its own servers, making them a tempting target for law enforcement abuse; inserting ads for the first time in e-mails; making hundreds of thousands of cheap personal computers to serve as cogs in powerful global networks.

Google has also created a new kind of work environment. It serves three free meals a day to its employees (known as Googlers) so that they can remain on-site and spend more time working. It provides them with free on-site medical and dental care and haircuts, as well as washers and dryers. It charters buses with wireless Web access between San Francisco and Silicon Valley so that employees can toil en route to the office. To encourage innovation, it gives employees one day a week -- known as 20 percent time -- to work on anything that interests them.

To eliminate the distinction between work and play -- and keep the Googlers happily at the Googleplex -- they have volleyball, foosball, puzzles, games, rollerblading, colorful kitchens stocked with free drinks and snacks, bowls of M&Ms, lava lamps, vibrating massage chairs and a culture encouraging Googlers to bring their dogs to work. (No cats allowed.) The perks also include an on-site masseuse, and extravagant touch-pad-controlled toilets with six levels of heat for the seat and automated washing, drying and flushing without the need for toilet paper.

Meanwhile, the Googlers spend countless hours tweaking Google's hardware and software to reliably deliver search results in a fraction of a second. Few Google users realize, however, that every search ends up as a part of Google's huge database, where the company collects data on you, based on the searches you conduct and the Web sites you visit through Google. The company maintains that it does this to serve you better, and deliver ads and search results more closely targeted to your interests. But the fact remains: Google knows a lot more about you than you know about Google.

If these were the actions of some obscure company, maybe none of this would matter much. But these are the practices of an enterprise whose search engine is so ubiquitous it has become synonymous with the Internet itself for millions of computer users. And if the Google Guys have their way, their presence will only grow. Brin and Page see Google (its motto: "Don't Be Evil") as a populist force for good that empowers individuals to find information fast about anything and everything.

Part of Google's success has to do with the network of more than 100,000 cheap personal computers it has built and deployed in its own data centers around the world. Google constantly adds new computers to its network, making it a prolific PC assembler and manufacturer in its own right. "We are like Dell," quipped Peter Norvig, Google's chief of search quality.

The highly specialized world of technology breaks down these days into companies that do either hardware or software. Google's tech wizards have figured out how to do both well. "They run the largest computer system in the world," said John Hennessy, a member of Google's board of directors, a computer scientist and president of Stanford University. "I don't think there is even anything close."

Google doesn't need all that computer power to help us search for the best Italian restaurant in Northern Virginia. It has grander plans. The company is quietly working with maverick biologist Craig Venter and others on groundbreaking genetic and biological research. Google's immense capacity and turbo-charged search technology, it turns out, appears to be an ideal match for the large amount of data contained in the human genome. Venter and others say that the search engine has the ability to deal with so many variables at once that its use could lead to the discovery of new medicines or cures for diseases. Sergey Brin says searching all of the world's information includes examining the genetic makeup of our own bodies, and he foresees a day when each of us will be able to learn more about our own predisposition for various illnesses, allergies and other important biological predictors by comparing our personal genetic code with the human genome, a process known as "Googling Your Genes."

"This is the ultimate intersection of technology and health that will empower millions of individuals," Venter said. "Helping people understand their own genetic code and statistical code is something that should be broadly available through a service like Google within a decade."

Brin's partner has nurtured a different ambition. For years, Larry Page dreamed of tearing down the walls of libraries, and eliminating the barriers of geography, by making millions of books searchable by anybody in the world with an Internet connection. After Google began scanning thousands of library books to make them searchable online, book publishers and authors cried foul, filing lawsuits claiming copyright infringement.

Many companies would have reached an amicable settlement. Not Google. Undaunted, Google fired back, saying copyright laws were meant to serve the public interest and didn't apply in the digital realm of search. Google's altruistic tone masked its savvy, hard-nosed business strategy -- more books online means more searches, more ads and more profits. Google recently began displaying some of these books online (print.google.com), and resumed scanning the contents of books from the collections of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the New York Public Library and Oxford. But legal experts predict that the company's disruptive innovation will undoubtedly show up on the Supreme Court's docket one day.

From Madison Avenue to Microsoft, Google's rapid-fire innovation and growing power pose a threat of one kind or another. Its ad-driven financial success has propelled its stock market value to $110 billion, more than the combined value of Disney, Ford, General Motors, Amazon.com and the media companies that own the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Its simplified method of having advertisers sign up online, through a self-service option, threatens ad agencies and media buyers who traditionally have played that role. Its penchant for continuously releasing new products and services in beta, or test form, before they are perfected, has sent Microsoft reeling. Chairman Bill Gates recently warned employees in an internal memo of the challenges posed by such "disruptive" change.

Microsoft also worries that Google is raiding the ranks of its best employees. That was threatening enough when Google operated exclusively in Silicon Valley. But it grew worse when Google opened an outpost in the suburbs of Seattle, just down the road from Microsoft headquarters, and aggressively started poaching. Microsoft finally sued Google for its hiring of Kai-Fu Lee, a senior technologist who once headed Microsoft's Chinese operations. Lee is now recruiting in Asia for Google, despite a court order upholding aspects of a non-compete clause that Lee signed while at Microsoft.

Google's success is neither accidental nor ephemeral. Brin and Page -- the sons of college professors who introduced them to computing when they were toddlers -- met in 1995 at Stanford, where they were both Ph.D candidates in computer science and technology. They became inseparable and set out to do things their own way. Professors laughed at Page when he said one day that he was going to download the Internet so he could improve upon the primitive early search engines.

Seven years ago, Google didn't exist in any form beyond a glimmer in the eyes of Brin and Page. Then in the fall of 1998, they took leaves of absence from Stanford, and moved their hardware into the garage and several rooms of a house in nearby Menlo Park. Armed primarily with the belief that they could build a better search engine, they have created a company unlike any other.

With Brin and Page setting the tone, Google's distinctive DNA makes it an employer of choice for the world's smartest technologists because they feel empowered to change the world. And despite its growing head count of more than 4,000 employees worldwide, Google maintains the pace of innovation in ways contrary to other corporations by continuing to work in small teams of three to five, no matter how big the undertaking. Once Google went public and could no longer lure new engineers with the promise of lucrative stock options, Brin invented large multi-million-dollar stock awards for the small teams that come up with the most innovative ideas.

A good example is Google's latest deal -- a far-reaching, complex partnership with NASA, unlike any agreement between a private firm and the space agency, to share data and resources and employees and identify ways to create new products and conduct searches together in space. Although NASA is a public entity, many of the details of the partnership remain hidden from public view.

Despite all that has been achieved, Google remains in its infancy. Brin likes to compare the firm to a child who has completed first grade. He and Page gaze into a glittering globe in the Googleplex that shows billions of Google searches streaming in from around the world, and notice the areas that are dark. These are the places that have no Internet access.

Quietly, they have been buying up the dark fiber necessary to build GoogleNet, and provide wireless Web access for free to millions or billions of computer userspotentially disruptive to phone and cable companies that now dominate the high-speed Internet field. Their reasoning is straightforward: If more people globally have Internet access, then more people will use Google. The more books and other information that they can translate into any language through an automated, math-based process they are developing now, the more compelling the Google experience will be for everyone, and the more wealth the company will have to invest in their vision.

Supremely confident, the biggest risk that Brin, Page and Google face is that they will be unable to avoid the arrogance that typically accompanies extraordinary success. Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos jokes that Brin and Page are so sure of themselves, they wouldn't hesitate to argue with a divine presence.

But the fact remains that they are human beings, and inevitably, both they and Google will make mistakes. Unless any of these prove lethal, however, Google -- through its relentless focus on disruptive innovation -- appears likely to wreak havoc on established enterprises and principles for many years to come.

Author's e-mail: vised@washpost.com

David Vise is a Post business reporter and the co-author with Mark Malseed of "The Google Story," published this week by Random House.

Everyone Needs an Alter Ego

2005-11-13T05:50:00.000-08:00

From the website of the Black-eyed Snakes, who are the musical side project of Alan Sparhawk, mastermind of slowcore phenomenon, Low:

"The first time I saw the Black-eyed Snakes, I thought I had walked into a parallel universe. Alan Sparhawk, typically a sedate and melancholy musician, appeared to be having some sort of epileptic fit. He was thrashing around violently and screaming sounds that didn't even sound human, let alone lyrical. Apparently, it was supposed to be blues he was singing, but it wasn't anything like blues I knew. He was like John Lee Hooker being electrocuted. Meanwhile, Bob Olson, Brad Nelson, and Justin Sparhawk backed him up on guitar and drums; their demeaner suggested they were not playing music but butchering pigs. The whole sound seemed to reach into my chest and drag out my soul like a vine. This wasn't a show, this was voodoo.

And I wasn't the only affected one. The room had the atmosphere of a back-ally Rottweiler fight. We all felt like something lowdown and sordid was going on, as if the vice squad might come crashing in at any moment and haul us away. And on some level, the Minnesota, Midwestern, Scandinavian level that makes us remain stoic, objective, and restrained, we felt like that wouldn't have been such a bad thing, for whatever it was that made poor Alan Sparhawk spaz out like that was making all of us do the same. It couldn't be legal.

Later, like an addict, I would return to show after show, and learn that Sparhawk kindly named his maniacal persona of his 'Chicken Bone George.' I also learned that when the spirit enters him, it has terrifying results, causing him to tear down ceilings, somersault off a drum kit and land flat on his back, to fall recklessly onto the floor and flip around, or even, godhelpus, cover Moby.

Since then, word of the group has spread. The group was voted 'Minnesota's Best New Band (2001)' by City Pages in Minneapolis and the reader's choice for the same honor in Duluth's Ripsaw. The band continues to pack hot, smoky rooms with freaked-out fans, and the icy Minnesota restraint seems to be melting just a touch. As the Snakes performed their greasiest song, '8-inch Knife,' at the last gig in a month-long weekly stint at a seedy dive in Superior, Wis., the dance floor looked something like an orgy. The Black-eyed Snakes are on to our dirty little secret. They know we're all hungry for a let-out, the real deal, the greasy meal, the knife in the back, so to speak. And they're going to give it to us, whether we like it or not.

Barrett Chase, Duluth's Ripsaw"

Containers

2005-11-12T06:30:00.000-08:00

I'm fascinated by shipping containers. I see them pass by on the trains traveling through town, and I love their multitude of colors and logos contrasted with the monotony of identical forms.

I'm interested in modular forms and images, as well as basic commercial icons. I think of stretched canvases as being standardized and modular, much like these shipping containers. I like that these containers function on ships, trains and semis alike. I'd like my art to be so versatile!

I'm curious about any sculptural applications of these containers. I don't think of standard formats for sculpture in the same was as for painting. These containers are only shells: colors and logos (2D) applied to the exterior, objects and forms (3D) packaged inside.

I like the different views of shipping containers. They can be seen (albeit only in photos, or perhaps in port) stacked in giant blocks on ships, or strung out in a line so long you probably can't see the whole train, or more often pulled individually behind semi tractors.

Here is a link to a site just like I've been looking for: Intermodal Container Website. This site is specifically for shipping enthusiasts and train modelers, but if you browse the photos pages, you might see why I like it as well. So far my favorite shipping containers are Maersk Sealand and P&O Nedlloyd. I see both of these quite often on local trains.