PNM Is (Not the Only Utility) On the Wrong Track

May 7, 2012 by Leave a comment

Do you know about the San Juan Generating Station, owned (in part) and operated by PNM? Or the Four Corners plant on Navajo land nearby, owned mostly by Arizona and Southern California utilities? These plants are each almost 40 years old, and are requiring hundreds of millions of dollars of upkeep because it’s older, therefore dirtier, technology.  Rather than retire these plants, and transitioning to wind, solar, and geothermal – energy sources that don’t generally cause asthma in children, for example – the owner utilities prefer to keep these behemoths limping along.

Bad business loves company, and we are not alone. Apparently much the same problem is occurring in Canada, where protesters, including one Nobel Prize laureate, blocked the train tracks taking coal to the offending plant.

Of course, somehow, the police in Canada have also come to believe that their responsibility is to protect smoke stacks that kill people and damage the environment, rather than helping the people to shut down the plant.

RCMP Police Chief Roseberry, also on the scene in White Rock, stated that her concern was for public safety, and preventing human injury as a result of protesters on the train tracks.

Which must be why she arrested protesters. It’s a crazy world.

“Coal is a likely target for climate stability advocates because it has the highest greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy of all fossil fuels and because there is enough economically available coal to trigger run away climate change.”

“Nobel Prize Laureate and SFU professor Dr. Mark Jaccard was among those arrested. “I’m a naïve product of working class Burnaby,” he said. “I’ve never broken a law in my life. I’m very uncomfortable taking this position. If governments were acting to reduce GHG emissions, or slow the rate of increase, I wouldn’t be here today,” he continued. “I’d be helping those governments to do that. But in the last few years, especially in Canada under Harper, the emphasis has been on accelerating the rate at which we are destroying the planet. So I have to ask myself and I have to ask everyone else, ethically, what is the right thing to do? It’s made me read more about civil disobedience, people like Mahandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Henry David Thoreau.””

PNM is holding their shareholders meeting at their offices at 4th and Silver in Albuquerque on May 15, a week from tomorrow. There will be a protest there that morning.

Inform yourselves. Here is PNM’s info on San Juan. And here is a statement from a New Mexico environmental group that gives an overview of the battle to close down dirty coal.

Filed under business as unusual, culture, environment, local, News, politics, science Tagged with , , , , , , ,

For the Love of Wendell

April 25, 2012 by 1 Comment

Wendell Berry, sui generis

Mark Bittman has a lovely article and interview with Wendell Berry, my favorite author, in the New York Times.

There isn’t a more down-to-earth, inspiring thinker alive today. He’s much more than the “spiritual founder of the food movement,” though he is certainly that. He’s the no-nonsense yet patient father of a vision of a way of living that would foster the goals many of us seek: sustainability, certainly, but also, and as important, enjoyability, neighborliness, and satisfaction. If, in your heart of hearts, you are troubled by what we might have to give up to be what we want to be, Wendell shows that there’s no need to worry. If you have not read him, you have an unassuming new inspiration awaiting you.

Bittman does us the favor of providing a link to a page of Berry quotations, from which I plucked this one, that resonates with me particularly well these days:

“There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say “It is yet more difficult than you thought.” This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

If you have never read poetry because it’s just so . . . hard, unclear, taken with itself, try Wendell Berry’s poetry. Here is a sample:

The Wild Rose

Sometimes, hidden from me in daily custom and in ritual
I live by you unaware, as if by the beating of my heart.
Suddenly you flare again in my sight
A wild rose at the edge of the thicket where yesterday there was only
shade
And I am blessed and choose again,
That which I chose before.

 

I had that one made into a calligraphy for my nephew and his bride. If you don’t get a sigh out of your long-time partner from leaving a copy of this poem on his or her nightstand, I’d be surprised.

If you are of a more revolutionary bent, here is a manifesto:

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

See what I mean? It’s almost impossible to stop quoting the man himself, because everything he writes is so much better than what can be said about him.

If I had to decide what kind of inspiration to put in a paper or on a web site to supplement or supplant, say, Biblical quotes and horoscopes, I’d have no trouble deciding: I’d have a regular feature called “A Berry A Day,” and would get a straight shot at heaven for having come up with the idea.

Filed under culture, inspiration, literature, business as unusual, environment Tagged with , , , , , ,

The Morrigan and the Rage of Women

March 27, 2012 by Leave a comment

Boudicca/The Morrigan/Amazons

From the essay, Amazing Rage, by Barbara Mor, co-author of The Great Cosmic Mother. The essay is found in The Beacon Book of Essays by Contemporary American Women, Boston 1996.

Morrigan means “Great Queen,” but you can see: this is not anyone’s idea of a legal, regal lady. The Irish chose wildness as their metaphor, particularly vis-à-vis the linear Anglo conquerors. They also chose female power over female beauty. In all descriptions, the Morrigan is a pugnacious sight. . . .

You see my bias. I love this Hag. One good leg, one eye, one tooth: the Stubborn One. Fist in the chest that clenches, opens, clenches again as the world’s relentless pulse goes through it. Politics is not pretty. Earth today is not altogether serene. Nor is the Morrigan. Feisty; but she is frustrated. For this reason: she is the Earth. She cannot sell out, exploit herself. Take dishonest shortcuts to survival. Source of all wealth, power, work, real value, she cannot therefore turn herself into quick cash, properties, paper assets, profitable junk, or bombs. She is not a necrophiliac dealer, a stockbroker, a land developer, a sharky hustler of trends and markets. She cannot pimp her own flesh: her home, her body. Nor her children: animals, trees, humanity. Nor her imaginative power: her dreams. She pays herself lousy wages, indeed.

She can only boil in her belly, turning from day to night through all weathers, while the rage for poetry and justice flies out of her, continuously, circling and cawing in a mood of black wings. And hope that we are Her Daughters: to see, and listen, and do the same.

When they say anger is not spiritual, they lie. When they say spirituality and politics don’t mix, they lie again. Politics can be a dream of the body. And the body of the Earth is definitely spiritual. And definitely has a right to rage. Her righteous rage. Earth can be made sick, beat up, enslaved, can die: she has a right to defend herself. She is not obligated to be nice, negotiable, nonargumentative, nonthreatening. She does not need to Look Good: she is Real.

A short, amazing, nearly feral essay. If you can find a copy of the book, buy it, especially, but not only, for this essay.

I leave you with two related quotations.

“Depression is rage spread thin.” (attribution uncertain)

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” ~ Dylan Thomas

Filed under culture, environment, irreligion, opinion, Women's Rights Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

What To Do About the High Price of Gas

March 27, 2012 by Leave a comment

In a word: nothing. There is not a thing you can do about the high price of gas. Nope. Carbon companies are in business to maximize their price, margins and profits. If they don’t, their stockholders can sue them. They are not, after all, B Corps.

And please: if you see something like the following

Think about this for one minute

ignore it. It’s delusional, and Snopes debunked it years ago. Saying that we shouldn’t buy gas on this day matters to carbon companies as much as if you said we shouldn’t buy gas between the hours of 3 and 4 PM. They don’t notice, and wouldn’t care if they did. What you don’t buy between 3 and 4 you will buy before then or after then.

There are three problems with this suggestion, the least of which is that it won’t work.  The second problem is that it ignores the waste and pollution occasioned by cheap fuel. The third, and most important, problem is that, as activism goes, it is passive, not active. It makes us dependent on carbon companies to operate against their interests.

Let’s start with the good news: this protest won’t work. Not all misguided efforts benefit from being utterly ineffectual. If all we are doing is buying the same amount of gas a day earlier or later, it won’t raise a blip on the carbon companies’ weekly, much less annual, reports. Oil is becoming scarce. We learn in Econ 101 that as a commodity becomes scarce, it becomes more expensive. The most this protest will do is inconvenience protesters.

A friend in the auto industry declared that oil companies have no moral obligation to keep prices low, and he’s right. If anything, he said, their obligation to the environment would lead them to keep prices high, because high prices reduce demand and discourage waste.

Which suggests the next question and its answer: why would we want this protest to work anyway? We’ve had among the lowest gas prices in the industrialized world for the better part of a generation, and we have the lowest fuel economy of any auto-making country. The desire for lower gas prices is incompatible with environmental concerns. The only reason to want lower gas prices is that it costs us too much. That issue looms so large for some people that they can’t think clearly.

It’s like reading about the collapse of bee colonies around the world and worrying about whether the price of honey will rise.  We may understand some of the implications, but we’re missing the main point, which is close by.

Lowering the price of gas is not the only way to lower its cost to us. We are not so dependent and helpless as we think.

Whether we write letters, wave placards, sign online petitions, or send checks, we are sending one consistent message: we are unable to do anything about this ourselves, so we are asking the people in charge to help. But what if that’s not true, and not just about the price and cost of gas, but about other things as well?

Small changes can cause big change. If we stop focusing on price, and start focusing on cost, everything tilts. Suddenly we are in the position of taking action instead of asking for help with something we can do ourselves. We can begin to address environmental and other issues that we may be surprised to find are connected to the way we deal with our gas problem.

Here’s how to lower your costs. And I promise you – I guarantee you – that, unlike the April 15th placebo, this will work. It will be like magic: you will be able to lower your cost without the price of gas going down a penny. You can wait for someone else to lower the price for you, but they won’t do it. They don’t care. It’s not their job, anyway. It’s up to you, and it’s something you can do without asking permission.

Here are some alternative ways to spend April 15th. Go online to cars.com. Click “Research Cars”. Find a used car that gets at least 20% better gas mileage than your current car. You want it to be significantly better to make it worth your trouble. Do this for each and every car you own. It may take you an hour, but probably not. If you have a car that gets 22 MPG, combining your usual city/highway usage, and you replace it with a car that gets 20% better mileage (26.5 MPG, roughly) you will, in effect, lower your cost of gas from $3.75/gallon to $3.00/gallon. You don’t have to wait for some overpaid CEO in Gucci loafers (does Gucci still make loafers?) and a Rolex watch to give a damn.

Want to do more? If your used car has a lower insurance rate attached to it, you’re saving money on insurance. If you send e-mails to co-workers or friends and begin planning to carpool one or more days per week – and maybe have breakfast that day before work, or play pool and have a beer after work – then you have kept still MORE money out of the pockets of Big Carbon and Big Insurance and in your own, and you’ve had a chance to network or visit with friends. Without having to ask permission. It gets better.

Are you paying to go to a gym and ride a stationary bike? You know where I’m going with this. Get a real bike and ride it to work. Spend less on gas, insurance, and that gym membership. Also, save visits to the doctor about your cholesterol, your high blood pressure . . . That’s not all.

By doing it yourself, all manner of things begin to fall into place. Opportunities arise to spend more time with friends and co-workers, to get into shape, to make the difference you told yourself you wanted to make after New Year’s or during Lent or after your last doctor’s visit.

Doesn’t it make you wonder why we’ve allowed ourselves to become dependent on others to do what we can do, especially when they are unlikely to do it?

If we can, single-handedly, lower the cost of gas, the cost of owning a car, and diminish our impact on the environment, all without asking permission, without waiting for a response, without the price going down a penny, what else can we do?

Don’t like the commercialism of Christmas?

Don’t like stores selling you food sprayed with poison and dripping with trans fat?

Don’t like what the US government is doing with your taxes?

Worried about the mass extinction that is already under way?

Don’t like how banks can play fast and loose with the rules (which they have written, remember), and yet get bailed out?

Using the model above, we can do something significant about every one of those things, without waiting for someone else to fix it. If we just can’t abide that these problems persist, we can enlist friends and family members to join us in getting it done ourselves.

We must begin with the realization that being concerned or angry is not enough. Asking corporations and government to fix it has not, and will not, work. Have you noticed them do anything to turn back climate change? Even the ones who squeal about debt have had no trouble borrowing and deferring payment when their party has been in office. Hell, who knew you could buy a war – or two – on credit?

Action is no longer just one option. It has become an urgent necessity.

We need to begin by doing, rather than by asking someone else to do what is against their interest – a futile request if ever there was one. Once we’ve begun, we find that we can affect more than we thought possible on our own. But what do we do when our government suspends habeas corpus? Or when a corporation, in a Mordor-like frenzy for short-term profits, fouls the food, air and water needed to sustain life itself?

We don’t ask them to stop. We tell them they must stop. If they have bought politicians who have allowed them to write laws to say that they can do what they want, putting profits before people, as they are used to doing, we either run for office (people do, you know), or we come to understand that these are, truly, matters of life and death for us and our children. And then we do whatever is necessary.

We made dozens of advertisers flee Rush Limbaugh’s show.

We made the Komen Foundation reverse their decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood.

We made the US Justice Department and a grand jury investigate the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Spring has just begun. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote in Timequake, “We have been sick for a long time, but we are better now, and there is work to do.”

This is a Do-It-Yourself Revolution. Outsourcing is so 20th century.

Making the Old Ways Obsolete

Filed under business as unusual, culture, environment, inspiration, local, News, opinion, politics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Men Step Out Against Rape and Domestic Violence

March 22, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Sisters are doing it for themselves as they fight the War Against Women. But men can come along.

IF they have the right shoes.

Walk a Mile in Her Shoes is an organization that gives men the opportunity to stand up in public, in a playful, non-confrontational manner, and say to other men that violence against women is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Each year, an ever-increasing number of men, women and their families are joining the award-winning Walk a Mile in Her Shoes®: The International Men’s March to Stop Rape, Sexual Assault & Gender Violence. A Walk a Mile in Her Shoes® Event is a playful opportunity for men to raise awareness in their community about the serious causes, effects and remediations to sexualized violence.

This is not just a figure of speech. Men walking in our own shoes, down the street, saying we’re “walking a mile in women’s shoes”: what kind of notice would that get?
But put a bunch of men in, say 4″ cherry red heels, and you have better visuals, and you KNOW the women will show up to see men walking down the street in heels!
I hear you, gents: “No way they make heels in my size.”
Au contraire, mes frères.
Voilà!

Do These Shoes Make My Ass Look Big?

Sizes 9 to 14. Order now, and strut your stuff for the women you love.

Filed under business as unusual, culture, miscellaneous, opinion, sex, shameless crap Tagged with , , , ,

In Honor of World Poetry Day

March 21, 2012 by Leave a comment

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Filed under culture Tagged with ,

Looking For An Honest Man? Meet Greg Smith of Wall Street

March 14, 2012 by Leave a comment

Diogenes, Meet Greg Smith

Oh, this is delightful! It turns out Diogenes, in his perpetual search for an honest man, may have been able to find one on Wall Street, of all places.

A former executive director of Goldman Sachs, Greg Smith, left the company because he was fed up with their sleazy corporate culture and business practices, and took them to task in an editorial in the New York Times. Goldman Sachs was one of the main culprits in Wall Street’s meltdown just a few short years ago. If the company was based in Japan, we’d no doubt have seen some of the executives resign in shame, or even commit seppuku, after dragging their company, their customers, and their nation’s economy over the cliff in a selfish pursuit of reckless profit for its own sake. But we’re not in Japan, and our Wall Street execs have no such sense of honor or shame. Smith says,

I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

And in what must surely be one of the most unexpected and welcome pronouncements from a Wall Street executive in 21st century Gordon Gecko- and Ayn Rand -worshipping America, Smith says,

I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

And then he tops that one with

I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm.

What’s sad is that this kind of sentiment is so unusual.

But not only unusual: despised. As financial media giant Bloomberg demonstrates in a petulant unsigned editorial that paints Mr. Smith as a starry-eyed idealistic naif – the same Mr. Smith who, after 12 years at Goldman Sachs, had clients whose total net worth was over a trillion, with a tr, dollars. How big does one have to be to impress the editorial staff at Bloomberg? What part of Smith’s editorial comes in for the most dismissive attack from Bloomberg? His emphasis on serving the customer and putting their needs first. N.B., Goldman Sachs’ customers are not you and I with our little savings account in a credit union or our 401K. Goldman Sachs’ clients are the 1%, by and large: the average balance in an account there is over $18 million. Now, it might be fashionable to enjoy the prospect of the 1% getting reamed by their own bankers, but this corporate culture is obviously infectious and communicative, and the results affect us all. But no matter: Bloomberg thinks Smith is being unfair and unkind to his former employer, and they are prepared to step in and defend the beleaguered institution.

Bloomberg: "Leave Goldman Sachs Aloooone!"

What is delightful and refreshing to see is the response of Bloomberg’s readers. Phil ad wrote,

Wow what a vicious and childish article this is! Obviously the writer of this is angry with mister Smith and does not understand what it means to make money in a responsible, reasonable fashion.

RupturedToad wrote,

Pathetic.  An entire editorial attacking a straw man of your own creation—namely that Smith was against making money.  It is entirely possible—desirable even—to make money whilst acting ethically and regarding the interests of one’s clients as paramount.

And indigo144 wrote,

This article is as honest as a GS sales pitch — no wonder no Bloomerg editor would put his/her name to it. Mr. Smith pointed out that there is a difference between making money for clients and making money off clients. Apparently Bloomberg shares GS view that the former is a quaint notion for the very naive.

 Refreshing, yes? Smith says he is not aware of any illegal activities at Goldman Sachs. This may mean that the long hoped-for indictments of the people responsible for the sabotage of Wall Street and our economic system will not happen. Which means it is up to us, and to the 1%, even, to withdraw funds from anyone doing business with Goldman Sachs and their ilk. We also need to replace legislators who allow these crooks to write legislation to protect their immoral activities from being subject to the legal remedies of their customers and communities.
Money out of politics: it’s an old song, but not enough people have learned the chorus yet.

Filed under business as unusual, culture, News, opinion, politics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Get Kony! Get Assad! Get Busy Filming!

March 13, 2012 by Leave a comment

Roger Cohen wrote an excellent rumination in today’s NY Times on the whole Kony video and its backlash.

It made me wonder why this video became so popular – and why the dismissive backlash came so quickly.

My theory is that it catalyzed at least two things: The desire of people, especially young people, to do something to remedy injustice in the world; and the fact that the media often  fail to tell us What We Can Do.

So much of media coverage consists of scaring us – the “If it bleeds it leads” principle – and then giving us nothing to do about it, making us feel powerless every single day. I think the power of the video is in the message it begins and ends with: we can do something about this. Having led with that message, people stuck around for 30 minutes – in the age of Twitter, that’s an eternity – to find out how they could help.

Regardless of the concerns about Invisible Children’s fundraising or the accuracy or timeliness of the video’s content – all valid concerns – the medium is the message here: told that we can help, and what to do, we show up in incredible numbers. At least, we do in this case.

There must be more to it than just being given the opportunity to help. Perhaps it was 1) the project’s particulars (children in peril, the moving testimony of Jacob, etc.), 2) the fact that we would be joining an in-gear effort that already had some success to show, 3) the fact that helping was something we could do at our keyboards, 4) the fact that it had a do-by date of April 20, or a combination of these factors.

I have even seen critics refer to the Kony video and Invisible Children as a psy-ops campaign. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? How viral the video went, how enthusiastic everyone was, and how quickly others came in, first with reality checks, and then with conspiracy theories.

Cohen finishes his piece with a plea to roll out this kind of response in support of the Free Syrian Army, the opposition to the mass murdering head of state there, Assad. But a Twitter post and hash tag are not enough. Invisible Children taught us that we need something flashier to catapult us into action. Explications of the details in Foreign Affairs, or OpEds in the NY Times, are not enough – or even relevant, perhaps, for most people. We will respond. You just have to hit us in the right way. The Stop Kony video may have given us a very useful clue. Watch for imitators.

Meanwhile, #StopAssadinSyria and #StoptheWarOnWomen. See the following videos.

Filed under culture, human rights, News, opinion, politics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Limbaugh Is Just Batting Practice: State Legislatures Are Ground Zero For Women’s Rights

March 9, 2012 by 1 Comment

The least of women’s worries in 2012 is Rush Limbaugh calling them names.

Women are waking up and preparing to rise up all across the country, thanks to Mr. Limbaugh and to state legislatures passing laws restricting women’s rights at an unprecedented speed and level.

We thought all was well so long as Roe v. Wade was not overturned. We are like a woman leaning on her cane and not noticing that the ground has been eroded: as she goes over the cliff, she swears that her cane was fine just a moment ago. It’s not the cane that let her down. A woman can still choose to have an abortion – but good luck finding someone qualified to do it. Nationwide, 88% of counties have no abortion service provider. Fewer than half of ob-gyn residency programs offer training in the procedures required for a first trimester abortion.

Opponents of abortion have drawn the line against contraceptives and sex education – the very things most effective at preventing unwanted pregnancies and abortions. You may have just begun to hear about this, but it is not new.

Eleven states have given doctors and pharmacists – who may not know the patient or her situation – veto power over women’s health care decisions, because state legislatures value the moral and religious considerations of doctors and pharmacists over those of every woman.  National and state legislatures want to give employers, who know nothing about medicine, the same veto power. Who gets it next – the local police? Your dry cleaner?

It’s hard to keep track of all the fronts of this war on women. Personhood bills give a fertilized egg the full rights of personhood from the moment of conception, effectively making hormonal contraception and abortion illegal. Transvaginal ultrasound bills require a doctor, against medical advice, if necessary, to insert an instrument into a woman’s vagina, with or without her consent – an action that in every other circumstance would be considered rape. A bill just passed by the Senate in Arizona protects doctors who withhold information from a pregnant woman if that information might be used to justify a decision to abort the pregnancy – even if the situation threatens the life of the woman or her fetus.

The weapons of misogyny are not restricted to Limbaugh and legislatures.

• In 2010 alone, 19,000 sexual assaults were perpetrated in the military – to which newscaster Liz Trotta said, “What did they expect?”
• In 2012, women earn only 77% of what men earn for the same work.
• In 2011, only 12 of the Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs.
• In 2012, women comprise only 17% of the members of the US Congress and, on average, only 26% of state legislatures.

And on and on.

We are the daughters (and sons) of Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth, Gloria Steinem and Susan Faludi. We must do as they did: we must speak out in public, we must march, and we must be prepared to fight to reclaim the rights that women inherited from their struggles.
There will be a march, a first step in reclaiming the inalienable rights of women, on April 28. It will take place in every state capital in the country. Join us, and tell your friends, sisters, mothers, daughters, and pro-woman men to join us, too.

Whom did they choose to mace? The Woman, of course.

Understand that there will be resistance. This is why it must be a movement of all of us, not just a few. Sojourner Truth and Susan B. Anthony may have been the leading lights of their time, but they were backed up by thousands of others. If you think the authorities are not threatened by women when they assemble, look at the abuse riot police in Virginia recently gave to peaceful women who protested the transvaginal ultrasound bill there. Women have power; it’s been much too long since they unsheathed it.

Finally, consider this: resistance to women’s rights has always been a problem at the state level. When Tennessee ratified the 19th Amendment in 1920, it gave women across the land the right to vote. Do you know how long it took other states to ratify?

Georgia (23.7), North (22.4) and South Carolina (9.4) and Louisiana (16) did not ratify it until the 1970’s. And Mississippi (14.9) did not ratify it until 1984. The numbers in parentheses are the percentages of women in the legislatures of those states in 2011.

The march is just the beginning. Women must be better represented in legislatures throughout the country. Run for office, or press other qualified women to do so. Run, or prepare to be run over, again and again.

We still have some choices in America. But the most fundamental one in 2012 is this: do we take over, or do we take cover? Our freedom and dignity depends on each other’s answer.

[See also my article, Will Women Rise Up in 2012?]

Filed under culture, human rights, miscellaneous, News, opinion, politics, religion, sex Tagged with , , , , , ,

Passion of the Christ

February 21, 2012 by 5 Comments

In honor of Ash Wednesday, I thought I would publish a review of Mel Gibson’s film.

This is a profoundly disturbing film. It is beautifully set and filmed, and very well acted. The Aramaic dialogue lent authenticity and beauty to the scenes. I, personally, did not find the film to convey a message of anti-Semitism.

But it is not the film it might have been. Why? I’m a stickler for a well-written script, and this film not only didn’t have one, it hardly required one. Also because, though I am not a believer, I have respect for the story, and a desire to see it told well. Gibson’s peculiar obsession with violence overwhelms it. Jaroslav Pelikan’s Jesus Through the Centuries points out that, while we think of Jesus as being a challenge to dominant cultures, the portrayals of him are usually a reflection and an endorsement of the dominant culture. So, in our extravagantly, pornographically violent times, Gibson produces a movie that extracts the most violent day of Jesus’ life and makes it stand in place of the whole story. In an age of religiously-inspired violence, it is a tragic decision for a director to make.

Gibson presumes that everyone knows Jesus and is sympathetic toward him. While that may be mostly true, it also absolves Gibson of the director’s difficult role in a tragedy: make the audience care for the characters, tell them why these people are worthy. Instead, he involves us in an orgy of gore, reveling in the blood spilled, and raising the awkward question: If this is the whole purpose of Jesus’ life, then what are we to think of the “villains”, Judas and Pilate, et al, who simply brought about that which must be done, that made that Friday, ironically, Good?

But Gibson as storyteller/evangelist is not interested in conundrums. He wants to make us feel good about feeling so bad. And he fails, at least in my case. I want to be ennobled by this story, as by stories of other selfless teachers who fell to the authorities of their times. I was appalled by the parents who took their children to see it. It is, hands down, one of the most graphically violent movies you will ever see, and parents should exercise the same caution with this film as they would with any other portrayal of a death by torture.

I knew that it was violent, and graphic, when I went to see it. What I hoped for was that Gibson would try to convey a sense of solidarity between Jesus and others who have been murdered, tortured, and persecuted. That sense was entirely missing. If he had run the quotation – “Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me” – at the end, all of the violence might have been somewhat redeemed by urging us to treat others with the same compassion Gibson wants to evoke in us for Christ. Instead, he gives the resurrection a bare moment at the end, accompanied by military music, as if Jesus came back to kick some serious butt in retribution. I found the film, and its violence, utterly lacking in redemptive value. There is no grace here. I am not surprised that Gibson followed it up with yet another portrayal of human sacrifice, since that is what he reduced this story to: a mere barbaric bloodletting.

Filed under belief, culture, film, religion Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

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