Terrifying News!

Want to read about something terrifying? I read in the paper about something called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. When you're walking down the street and you see all the soda cans and plastic bags and cigarette butts in the gutter, you're not thinking, “where does it all go?!” if you're a regular person and not an environmentalism nut, but it turns out that it all goes into the ocean and not only that, but there's sort of a big catch-all area almost twice the size of Texas, where every bit of garbage that was in the ocean ends up, more or less, so I can add that thing to the list of things to sit around and worry about when I'm not busy worrying about what I'm going to do with my life. And if the Great Pacific Garbage Patch doesn't make you panic! fleeing over the hills to some place you might think is the last safe space, other topics on the list include terrorist attacks on the subway (esp. poisonous gases), global warming, murderers breaking into our apartment while we're asleep and murdering us in our beds, nuclear attack and insects that crawl into your mouth while you're asleep and lay eggs embedded in the soft flesh that makes up the inside of your cheek.

In school, in this class I took on ecological history, someone started yelling about how cars are just big metal boxes on wheels! and that's a totally crazy thing to say, if only because there's a lot of complex mechanics and technology going on under the hood of a car. Also, because people can't all be idealistically perfect all of the fucking time. He also said that everyone should drive hybrid cars, which is a totally awesome idea, if not for the fact that most people probably can't afford a hybrid because they're expensive and most mechanics don't yet know how to repair them so you would have to go back to the dealership if you had to get it fixed. Then other people in the class started to say things like, “yeah, and nobody should use plastic bags anymore and we should all recycle and yell at people who don't” and I'm thinking that this is the thing – the thing- that I hate about people with a strong belief system. It's cool with me if they want to believe in something, but if they're going to go and make other people feel bad for not believing in the same something, and if they're going ignore the fact that some people just can't afford -either monetarily or otherwise- these proposed “solutions,” then they're not really solutions, are they? Just like those plates and cups and things that are made out of corn and they're supposed to be biodegradable, but they actually don't break down at all, so how is this cutting down on our waste? It just isn't, but it makes people feel better about themselves, like they're working towards something.

Even so, this Great Pacific Garbage patch is really bothering me a whole lot, because it's not going to get any smaller, although at least it's not moving, because when I heard about it first, someone told me that it was like a whirlpool that was headed our way and it seriously freaked me out, but it's just sitting there, accruing more garbage. Which is awful, and there isn't any way to fix it. That's the thing with all the stuff on my list: I'm completely powerless to prevent any of it from happening, except maybe being attacked by a murder in my sleep, because we have a chain that goes on the door and I'm not sure why anyone would want to break into our apartment and kill us anyway.

The Driver of the Eternally Late B71 Bus Might Be Thinking This:

Instead of driving this bus around responsibly, so that it might reach its many destinations in a timely manner, I will drive extremely slowly, even stopping randomly in the middle of a block so that I might enter into a conversation with another bus driver, also very late to his many destinations. By the time I reach it, the bus will have already missed the stop four times and will then appear to be early for the fifth run, thus deluding patrons of the MTA that the bus does come on time occasionally, making them run to get there on time so they do not miss their bus, only to leave them waiting for upwards of an hour. I vow to do this so many times that the entire bus system will be in shambles by the end of my career. Why? Why do I do this? I revel in chaos. I abhor a routine. I live for the moment. It isn't because I am lazy; far from it, I work hard at what I do. Rather, I want to make people's lives exciting. I want people to be shaken from their everyday routines, from the little lives they lead, and to think that everything they know and rely on can change. That we might live in a concrete world, but underneath is a seething mass of molten rock ready to explode, showering us with its beauty.

Reality

I watch a lot of T.V. this summer. I read a lot, too, though. I'll still be sharp when I enter The Work Force (which makes me think of a large group of men, muscular and gigantic, marching in the street, identically suited and shiny-shod, briefcases in hand ready to go out and do something). The thing about watching this much television is that it really rots your mind; this isn't just some lie your parents fed you when you were little, it's the god's honest truth. The filth that they put on T.V. is astonishing! Can you see the executive director of a channel saying to himself, “Yes, yes, it's brilliant! We'll have a bunch of vapid and voluptuous girls compete for the attention of a man but- here's the catch!- his mom is the one who gets to pick out the girl and they don't even know it! And, improbably, they all think he's rich but he's really a construction worker, or vice-versa! And maybe he's actually a transsexual as well!Or, wait, he's actually in jail for murder, although they think he's a millionaire! And they haven't a clue!”( Not that, of course, I would think that a television executive would have enough knowledge to use words like “voluptuous” or “vapid” or even “improbably.” And you can forget about “vice-versa,” too!)

Now, here's what I think would be a swell turn of events for reality T.V.: they might have real people in them, but when television writers go on strike, they go off the air because they're all scripted. The network executives are thrown into a panic and they replace reality T.V. with nature programming, which is completely unscripted and also completely uninteresting, because it's not reality T.V., it's real T.V. Real life is a lot less interesting than reality on television. People keep waiting for the drama and excitement to begin, but a lot of it is of animals sitting around cleaning themselves and producing excrement. When it comes right down to it, a lot of peoples' lives are spent sitting around and cleaning themselves and producing excrement. That's what I think should happen to the reality television industry. No more! Throw it away! Burn the negatives! Toss it out into the street where it belongs and never give it a second thought!

Things I was doing at work in a public garden when someone shouted, "Look, she's planting!" presumably to educate their child about gardening

Weeding (i.e., pulling plants out of a garden. That is, the opposite of planting.)

Watering

Raking woodchips in a path

Picking dead leaves out of a garden bed and putting them in a large plastic bucket

Scooping leaves with net out of a small pond

Making a fence by hammering bamboo poles into the ground (Is this really what people think planting looks like? Really?)

Pruning (i.e., cutting things off of plants)

Bonus: While I was walking through a gate with a tub full of dead leaves, a mother shouted, "Look, honey! She's.... gardening."

True that.

Blogging for school is over, but I really like the name of this blog, and apropos of that as well as a total lack of anything to do, I'm going to continue to use this space for my own things. Here come the lists.

Thin vs. Living Democracy

Frances Moore Lappe's description of a 'Thin Democracy' reminded me of Alexis de Tocqueville's warnings in his 1835 book, Democracy in America, that democracy, when not vigilantly attended to can turn into 'soft despotism.' Furthermore, that conformity to the majority and complacency among its citizens can lead to the downfall of a democracy. How incredible, that hundreds of years later, we're still writing about the same problems in America! What I found most interesting about these worries is that they could easily be found in literature from the fringes of either political party-- ironically, those most opposed to each other are essentially afraid of the same thing.

Unemployment is an Adaptable Challenge

My brother is making a documentary on unemployment among college grads/students and here's my interview. I hope it's enjoyable and not thoroughly depressing, but according to my brother's report of his class as they watched the interview, everyone was incredibly depressed and miserable afterwards. I've spent so much time in class (and out of it) talking about and analyzing the effects of unemployment that I think I'm not going to say much here about how it relates to leadership, I'm just going to let the interview stand on its own. Enjoy?

Rockin your Pesachs off, Politically

Next week is Passover, which is one of my favorite holidays. Unfortunately, the seder that I usually attend is this weekend, so I will be sulking accordingly. I'm only sort of joking. Passover is great, specifically because of its ritualized eating interwoven with stories. Our Passover (celebrated at a friend's house) is fairly nontraditional, and the stories always include a political element.

Passover celebrates Moses and the freeing of the Jews from Egyptian slavery, and our Passover Haggadah has always been edited and updated to reflect the politics of the times (Example: the Jews were freed from oppression and someday, there will be no more indefinite imprisoning of "detainees" and there will be no more genocide in Darfur and some day, all people will be able to marry those that they chose to spend the rest of their lives with, regardless of gender, and there will be no more oppression of Palestinians in Israel. This last one more traditional Jews would probably not support, I suppose), which was truly my favorite part of the seder. Not only did we celebrate our people's (and how powerful to feel that connection to a people from ages ago!) freedom, but we dedicate time to remember that there are other, parallel struggles that take place daily around the world and that as people lucky enough to have been freed so long ago, we should consider it our duty to aid the oppressed in this struggle.

The specific political examples (I suspect this year's focus will be health care as a human right) might be unique to our Passover, making these ideas concrete for us, but our people do seem to bend towards social justice issues, perhaps because of this tradition of a group retelling the story of how we once were oppressed reminds us in subtle ways that we should be trying to do the same for others. Passover doesn't say, "things were bad, but now they're good;" it says "things were bad for us, now they are better and by next year we will have made things even better for everyone."

Going Veg.

I just finished Jonathan Safran Foer's new book, Eating Animals, which delves into the many layers behind why (and more importantly, how) people eat meat. It was a good book, not too hung up on the gross-out business (a vegetarian's best weapon), but I still came away from the book with a less-than "right" feeling about it. It wasn't guilt- I only eat meat maybe once or twice a week (interestingly enough, environmentalists ask that people reduce the amount of meat they eat by that much- that is, that people cut meat from their diet one or two days a week to reduce the toll raising meat takes on our planet, but I honestly can't imagine eating meat more than the couple of times a week I do- the thought kind of grosses me out). I had read in several reviews that this book does not present the farmers in a positive light, but that wasn't what was bothering me about the book. Honestly, I thought that the farmers came across okay, as people doing their work to live their lives.

And the problem was not with the format, which was lovely: interwoven between interviews and statistics are family stories about eating, because families and stories and eating are intrinsically linked.

No, the problem I had with the book- the point at which I felt it was good, but didn't sit well, was the smugness of vegetarianism. That holier-than-thou attitude, that outrageously poor leadership! If you want to convert someone to your beliefs, to your cause, then the exact wrong way to go about it is to insistently tell people that you are dong the right thing, that you are better than everyone else and therefore they should try to be like you. I know I've spent a lot of time on this blog finding out about the wrong ways to lead, but I think that when you can identify the wrong things- the ways you know will not help you lead- then you can better identify the good ways to lead. For the record, I was a vegetarian (twice, actually), but I always framed the discussion (which would invariably come up at barbecues, where there is never anything for vegetarians besides one sad salad) as a personal choice; that there were things in meat that I don't want to eat, for example, or that I just like vegetables better (true). I would never say that I'm doing it because I care more about animals (thanks, PETA) than anyone else. I probably don't. If you want to convince people to follow you, you have to connect with them around a common idea (we all want to be healthy, for example, and meat, particularly corn-fed meat, is not) and then expand from there. Otherwise people will just feel that you are lashing out at them and respond with clichéd, knee-jerk reactions we've all been hearing for years. It's hard to convince people to do the right thing, especially when it's not as easy or as delicious, but it's a much easier discussion if it is a discussion and not a fight.

(Apologies for the late post; my computer crashed earlier)

Leading the Revolution

Yesterday I was watching this incredible movie, Chicago 10: Speak Your Peace, which is about the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the protests by liberal groups (specifically, MOBE and the Yippies) because LBJ was not challenged by an anti-war candidate. The movie covers the protests (called riots, but as far as I could see, only due to outrageous behavior by the police) as well as the wholly ridiculous trial of eight men (called the leaders of the riot, tried for conspiracy to incite), including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby Seale and others.

One of the most striking things about this movie, which weaves together footage of the protests with animated reenactments of the trial, is the repeated use of the word leader. Specifically, members in the establishment (the news media, the judge an prosecutor at the trial) repeatedly called Hoffman and others the "leaders" of various conspiracies to cement the state's case against them. Jerry Rubin outright rejects this term, stating that the people aren't "led" to rebel against things that are unjust, but that the people lead themselves. Likewise, Allen Ginsberg, called a "hippie spiritual leader" by the prosecutor, rejects the term, saying that he's simply "being"and not leading anyone everywhere. Indeed, in footage of the rally (legal) followed by the march to the convention (illegal), Ginsberg says that he is going to march (despite the lack of permit), not as a leader, because he is not asking this of anyone else, but as a person, and if there are or are not other persons with him, then so be it (leading by example, perhaps?).

I find all of this rejection fascinating! First, they clearly rejected the title of leader (probably because of how it does not fit well with the philosophy of the groups), but in that they make speeches (in which Jerry Rubin proclaims, "I am not going to get you to do anything you weren't going to do already!") and literally lead marches and rallies, are they not leaders, then? Is the rejection of the title merely strategy, or do they truly believe that they are not leaders, per se, but something else? If we reject the title leader, does it make us 'better people in charge,' or is it like Caesar rejecting the crown three times- is it merely a put-on to inspire one's followers? So-called populist leaders have a fervent following, perhaps because their leader has rejected that term (Sarah Palin rejecting the Governorship?), so that their followers think, "That person isn't a leader, s/he's a person just like me. I'll do what they say."

Needless to say, the rise of populism and decline of want for a true leader is a much longer and more nuanced discussion (you can read about it in Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason, actually), but I wonder if people can truly reject the title of leader, or if it is inherently an act, a put-on, something that will excite the masses into wanting to follow you.

Religion, Politics and Common Ground

In light of our discussion of politics and religion in class, this article is quite timely. One of my favorite things is when two (oppositely) extreme groups meet up again at the other side, so to speak. In this case, concerning charities. Often liberals are unwilling to work with religious charities, when, if they did, they could potentially be doing the most good. I'm currently reading this book, entitled Good Book, which is about all of the interesting stories, etc found in the Bible. Some of the most striking things are the very different ideas that people have about morality as it was practiced in Biblical times and as it is practiced today. In another post, perhaps, I will have to delve deeper into the fascinating leaders in the Bible and the choices they made (example: Moses and God believe in and practice the separation of church and state, because it will lead to a more stable religion and government?!), but for now, I have to say that I'm definitely expanding my comfort zone as well as my knowledge base.

Back to the New York Times article, and one of the most fascinating paragraphs in the piece:

"In one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49.)

Hmm. Imagine if sodomy laws could be used to punish the stingy, unconcerned rich!"

Indeed! That's something we might all be able to get behind.

Leading by Example.

I've been following the developing Governor Paterson stories with great interest, as he is displaying some of the most shameless and un-leader-like qualities. In fact, he is one (out of many recent ones) example of the exact wrong way to lead, skipping out on meetings, hanging out in the Hamptons with friends (er, "campaigning"), spending outrageous amounts of campaign funds on expensive dinners for himself and friends (er, "strategy meetings") and trips to various places, like Florida (for some reason), and hiring former girlfriends who are unqualified for top positions. When asked about his behavior, Paterson stated that he never asked to be governor and that he is "standing up for the people of New York." Unfortunately, Paterson's definition of "the people of New York" seems to only apply to wealthy people in the Hamptons and upstate New York, who he has been courting since appointing Kristen Gillibrand to Hilary Clinton's seat.

Of course, Paterson is only one example of many local government officials (governors, specifically), who are not leaders and are distracted by the amount of power they have instead of trying to do something for the people. Paterson has the distinct dishonor of belonging to the ranks of Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer, Rod Blagojevich, and other politicians who used their rank to get the things that they want, not the things that the people need.

On that note, the most grievous offense to the city (another way to appeal to upstate voters) is cutting funding to the MTA, which would have continued to provide free MetroCards to New York City schoolchildren, who need to travel far to get to their schools. Meanwhile, in rural areas, they wouldn't dream of cutting a bus program, which is the only way they can get to school. Well, in the city, this is how kids get to school and without the program, it costs $2.25 a ride and some kids have to pay twice each way, adding up to $9 a day. Access to public school is supposed to be free.

Way to lead, Paterson.

Take a Leadership Role

In my family (originating in my mother's job), the phrase 'take a leadership role' has a very important meaning. If, for instance, the dishwasher was waiting to be emptied, one might be asked to 'take a leadership' role in putting them away. Or, for example, the living room was incredibly messy, one might be expected to just 'take a leadership role' in cleaning up.

What I'm trying to say is that the phrase 'take a leadership role' is code for doing a job that nobody else wants to do. More than that- in calling this thankless chore 'taking a leadership role,' it allows the parental units to mislead their children (or, from whence this phrase came, to allow a boss to fool his worker) into believing that they are Leaders. Because in the end only a young person or a fool allows himself to be manipulated into being in charge of an unpleasant mess.

Recalibration

Just prior to moving to Cambridge, MA, I tried very hard to think of this as not only an opportunity, to be ripped from my firmly rooted life in Brooklyn, NY, but as a city. After all, "The true New Yorker secretly believes that anyone living anywhere else has got to be, in some sense, kidding," according to John Updike. I don't know if I think that everyone is kidding about living in other places, but as soon as I moved I came to the highly prejudiced conclusion, that perhaps Updike has a point: You have to be kidding about this being a city. You have to. Because a city is endless, with train lines that have plenty of transfers before you get to the last stop, and you could not even conceive of walking across the entire thing in an hour or so. While I have grown to like where I am, I am still not fully convinced of the city-ness of this place, which does not in any way negate the experiences of people living here.

Because in New York City, we too have a gradient along which appears different levels of city-ness, and Cambridge and Boston have a relatively similar scale: Kendall, with its office buildings and restaurants that are only open to serve workers, and then JP, with endless stretches of green.
New York, with Wall Street and the suits, and then Bay Ridge at the other end of the scale.

Although I have never had the pleasure of living there, I have been a visitor to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Bay Ridge has such a basic Brooklyn charm, with its bodegas and store windows with dusty, aging merchandise and mingling cultures and delicious falafel. Located at the very southern most tip of Brooklyn, it is severely isolated, which serves to keep the rent down and the newcomers out. You can be from Bay Ridge, but it is highly unlikely that you will be moving to Bay Ridge.

I imagine that sometime in the distant future I will live there and enjoy that insular nature. Cambridge might just be that place. Or it could be that Boston and Cambridge might have a Bay Ridge in it somewhere else, as of yet undiscovered.

I have heard that Somerville is the Brooklyn of Cambridge, making Cambridge the Manhattan of Cambridge, which seems highly unlikely. Boston is probably the Manhattan of Cambridge and Cambridge is the Brooklyn of Boston, which makes, most likely, Somerville the Queens of Cambridge, or possibly the suburbs. Which would make Somerville.... New Jersey. Which makes no sense.

This led to the improbable logic that Bay Ridge is the Brooklyn of Brooklyn, if you follow me. Brooklyn, which began as an isolated farming outpost and developed into the shipping industry's headquarters and then developed in to the family borough has changed again, turning into the cool borough, with bands and bars and hip people, but Bay Ridge -oh, Bay Ridge!- located within and outside of Brooklyn, will never be cool. It will remain, forever, the Brooklyn of Brooklyn.