My bike broke

This is simply a tragedy. Well, maybe more of an inconvenience.

My bike’s derailleur apparently fell off while I was riding home the other night, about 2 kilometers from home, so I simply sat on the bike, and kicked off of the curb with one leg the rest of the way (like skateboarding). It is being fixed by Canadian Tire, but to be honest, I am getting sick and Canadian Tired of my bikes needing fixing shortly after I get them.

Two things. First, I wanted to share this link I found of bike usage in Copenhagen. Crazy!

I wanted to take this opportunity to post some images of my ride home, at 3am or thereabouts. They are mostly shots of trash that I am overrun by on the streets. For some reason, I have to dodge endless trails of plastic water bottles, Tim Horton’s cups, and aluminum cans. What this tells me is that the main thing people like to throw out of their cars is drinking containers. Any thoughts on this? The only good use for plastic bottles is this idea I stumbled upon during my daily blog-reading routine.

Here are the photos: enjoy!

I think it’s funny that I was able to make the changes from strapping my huge doctor’s satchel to my bike rack with a 1/4″ cable used for electric instruments. How indie/rock can bike riding get?  Also, the image of me above, riding with headphones, was discouraged recently by someone looking out for my safety, but you must understand that I LIVE  music. I do nothing BUT listen to music at work, so when I ride, I listen to talk-radio podcasts, so the five cars that pass me on my 10km-ride are heard from a mile away.

An update. Leadership.

I have not been sick for almost 18 months. All winter, I watched the hacking coughs and congested faces of people cycle through the bar, while I washed my hands the usual 50 times per night.

This week, I played basketball with a clan of little children at the school my brother teaches at, and they got me. Their grubby little playground hands, the melange of germs, mingled together on the basketball, making it a flying orb of death.

Needless to say, I have been unable to post anything here, because my joints were puffed up like Joseph Merrick.

On top of that, while riding my bike last night, 2 kilometers from home, my derailer jumped off of my bike, unprovoked, and had me skateboard-style cruising home. Yes, I sat on the seat and pumped my leg on the cub to go mildly faster than a slow jog.

Enough excuses.

I wanted to share this item the day I got it, but I was not yet blogging when this came to me in the mail.

My mom likes to send me things the old fashioned way, by Canada Post. Mailman, or mailwoman, or mail carrier please. Almost always, it is something reflective, of contemplative, or complimentary. It is always a treat to get a Windsor Salt-blue envelope in the mailbox, as I know it is from her.

This was sent to me weeks ago. A note which had the following, titled “17th Verse of the Tao”:

With the greatest leader above them,

people barely know one exists.

Next comes one whom they love and praise.

Next comes one whom they fear.

Next comes one whom they despite and defy.

When a leader trusts no one, no one trusts him.

The great leader speaks little. He never speaks carelessly.

He works without self-interest,

And leaves no trace.

When all is finished, the people say, “We did it ourselves.”

Well I’ll be!

Where to begin…

This piece of wisdom struck a chord with me. Firstly, it reminded me that I talk too much. If I want to be a leader, which is a nice concept, I feel that I need to shut my yap more often. It’s hard to do when I think I have something to add to a conversation…although when I actually give it some thought, I realize that it would better serve the conversation to simply push the talk along with some prodding, rather than always producing an anecdote that I care more about than anyone else in the world.

But the first two lines of the verse are perfect. People barely know that a great leader exists if he/she is doing their job correctly. I was particularly interested in the line, “He works without self-interest and leaves no trace,” because I think about MOST of the perceived great leaders of our time, and how all of them have huge monuments and statues dedicated to them. Even some of the best leaders, arguably, ever, are on Mount Rushmore, or are having monuments attributed to them (Martin Luther King Jr., Dalai Lama, Jesus Christ, and the list goes on). And I feel that these are things done posthumously by people who feel that the leader deserves the praise. Whereas the leaders themselves would likely protest the idea of an idol made in their image.

Leadership, as I’ve been discovering, is something many step into for reasons unbecoming of a leader, in the truest sense. The power, the prestige, the money, and the self aggrandizement are hard to resist, as we are told day in and day out that this is the best we can be. The spotlight is not only the most effervescent light, but it is the ONLY light to be considered lucky to be under. “Power corrupts” is a concept that never made sense to me until I started having closer contact with leaders. Community leaders, business leaders, band leaders, and those of the like, are the kind of leaders I know personally. Even on this microcosm scale, it is evident that there is an insatiable, prehistoric need to be on top, and to cast your net of dominion among those who originally drew a sense of respect from and whom were inspired by a different version of the now-ego-drunk leader.

These are the examples that I wish resonated more within me, as I find that my ego needs to be deflated more often to allow me to see how to properly lead.

My mother has always been a sage-advice giver. She is always living the path that she covets and professes. I have the best example I need in my brilliant maternal link. Need I look further? I think not.

The news. I like.

I am dumbfounded. I’ll tell you why in a paragraph or two.

Listen, I will not pretend to know what is going on in Canadian politics. It is one of the priorities on my list.

Why? You may ask that for good reason. Well, I just like to know when someone is lying to me. I like being able to call “bullshit” when someone in the political spectrum , or someone speaking for one of those boobs, says something completely outrageous. I don’t like hearing things, and gobbling them up like a nice little consumer. I like to know the details.

For starters, our robotic, yet intelligent, Prime Minister of horse-puckey has made a move that I am FINALLY impressed with. He stated today that under the current definitions and rules around saying food in Canada is “Made in Canada” there are problems… As of right now, if 51% of the work being done to prepare food, and make it consumer-ready is done in Canada, companies are legally allowed to say Made in Canada. Which is a stretch, to say the least…I think we’ll all agree.

“Hey gringo, these bananas were grown in Canada…well, that’s not entirely true. You see, we grew them in South America and then they were juggled and handled and banged around vociferously in some shit-hole cannery plant in Ontario, so technically, they’re Canadian…right?”

No. I want to know where my food is grown, prepared, and “managed”.

Stephen Harper has made a promise, of sorts, to adjust this rule, so the definition is less clandestine and malleable to make sense to only those who work in the industry. Food must be grown and prepared fully in Canada to have the label Made in Canada. If it isn’t, it must say where the other “components” (a fruit salad mix, I guess?) are from.

I just love how Harper said something along the lines of, “It’s what Canadians want, so we have to provide it,” as if this dude gives one ounce of care what “Canadians want”. I digress. I must tip my cap to the man who I know to be intelligent and otherwise incompetent. He made good with me on this story.

And in other “news” The Globe and Mail has FINALLY decided to write about The North Pacific Garbage Patch! Holy geez! Someone at Phog told me that I would be happy that it was finally being covered. While reading the piece, I was floored, yet not surprised (we have a Conservative government) to read this admission from Diane Lake, a spokeswoman with the Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans. She “said that while the ministry is aware of the North Pacific Gyre, it is conducting no real research on the extent or effects of the plastic pollution.” Perfect. Nice work Diane. Nice to see you give a shit. You know, Canada has a border that kinda touches the Pacific Ocean. Hey wait! That’s one of the words in the North Pacific Garbage Patch! Come to think of it, we’re North too…but, we don’t really need to be studying this. You know, it’ll all go away, like climate change, and racism, and mental illness, and corporatocracy raping us from dusk till dawn…yeah, someone else is taking care of it, I’m sure.

Here’s a shortlist, from The Globe and Mail, of what Captain Moore has been finding: A trail of Taco Bell wrappers, Dolls and action figures, Umbrellas, Tarps, Bottles, Tofu containers(for those of you who think you’re saving the earth with tofu. Maybe we need to be writing letters to tofu companies asking them to consider new packaging?), Lego, Grocery bags, Foam coffee cups, Checkers, Furniture, Toothbrushes, Cigarette lighters, Syringes, Rubber ducks, Basketball shoes

See, this is exactly the kind of thing that should make backbones stiffen. It should make you, reading this, totally annoyed with the laissez faire attitude of people who are paid by us to work for us. These are the issues that will be affecting your family’s family’s family. But what can we do besides thinking globally and acting locally? I’m actually shocked that the fishing industry in the west hasn’t pulled a page from the Argentinian farmers’ handbook.

Get angry at this lack of interest in your job, your industry, and your culturally significant knowledge. Stop fishing until the Department of Fisheries and Oceans decides to look into stemming this abuse in the oceans, and possibly even going so far as to suggesting that maybe we are drowning in our own plastic…and that we should step back from it…sloooowly…with biiiiig steps.

I must also place this in here…as I was listening to Q on CBC with Jian Ghomeshi, I heard the guest talking about food, and mentioning our good friend Michael Pollan. It was “Montreal writer Taras Grescoe on the search for ethical seafood” talking about his new book, Bottomfeeder. I kind of want to read this now. The “Q on CBC” in the first sentence of this paragraph is a direct link to the podcast of this show. It was a GREAT interview, worth listening to…

I bit off more than I could chew. Now I want to get into the whole argument we had at Phog last night…about bananas, how we won’t be eating yellow ones in 5 years, and about the plague/waste of sandwich (Ziploc) bags.

Another time.

Holy garbage Naples!

This is one of those stories that has caught me off guard to the degree that I wonder why newspaper editors even wake up in the morning. This story is so profoundly indicative of what is to come, that I cannot understand the lack of attention being given to it!

Naples. Yes, the one in Italy associated with beauty and culture. Well, they have not had their garbage collected SINCE DECEMBER of 2007!!!!!!

Think right now for a second about how bad your streets/lawn would look if the entire city’s garbage wasn’t picked up for 6 months. Holy Jesus! What kind of strike would lead to this kind of unsolved dispute? There was no strike. The city simply ran out of room in the landfills. There are no legal dumps open at all in all of Naples! They have filled the dumps!

Again, this is one of those issues we sweep under the rug (the topsoil) in our daily lives. We just put these bags of refuse out to the curb and they magically disappear in the morning on “garbage day”. There is really no responsibility for people who abuse the system and refuse to recycle, or who just consume at such an incredible rate, that they leave 10 bags of garbage to be picked up per week. I often see houses on garbage eve, with up to 15 bags of garbage waiting to be heaved into a hole in the earth at the outskirts of town. I almost always end up shaking my head, lost for expression.

You see, I bust my hump to recycle and limit my trash output, and when I see a repeat-offending trash hoarder unloading a lifetime of garbage EVERY WEEK, I get a little miffed.

And I wonder, in Naples, if these people are starting to USE LESS! If you look a the pictures in the stories attached, you can see the plethora of stink left rotting in parking lots, streets, and yards. How has this not sparked HUGE health issues in the area? How has this story been untold to the masses as a warning of what can happen when you haphazardly toss away belongings like nothing matters at the end of this process?

I have always wondered how my neighbours (over the years) cannot realize how profound the imbalance is between the output of trash from themselves and the people living next to them. All I can say, really, is that if I put 6 bags of garbage out every week, and my neighbour put out 4 bags per month, and some weeks putting out nothing at all, I know I would wonder how the hell they do it. Lugging filth the curb is work. It’s almost too much work for our society’s most active, to haul out bags of garbage. But what this kind of trash output tells me is that the lack of awareness of the impact of trash on our city, environment, watershed, etc. makes it insatiable to citizens. There is no end in sight for the long line of garbage when no one is held accountable for the amount they waste.

I heard a conversation at the bar recently, where the discussion weaved into the possibility of paying for trash output. Citizens pay for the amount of bags (over the allotted amount) they require relief of, and if they stay under the limit, they pay nothing extra. Taxes take care of the minimum allotted amount. I love this idea. The only people who don’t like it seem to be those who are unable to put a little thought into the products they buy, maybe reducing output by buying things with less packaging.

If these kinds of garbage crises are going to “surface” in other cities, you can bet your bottom that people are going to pay.

I just wanted to share this with all of you, and maybe spark the question about how much we throw away. How much waste are you making? Do you rely on the magic of disappearing curb garbage fairies every week a little too much? Could you be easing the strain on your landfill?

Sideways Glance Books

I’m reading a book.

It’s good.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. My brother Todd heard I was reading Democracy Matters by Cornel West, and said with a smirk, “Read this.”

I wonder sometimes, when people hand me knowledge with sideways glances, that they might be working with the divine, as they usually end up being the best books. The sideways-glance books.

It’s not like I need more of a reason to question the voracity of elected officials and corporations for raping the world for all it’s worth, an doing so in the name of nation building and democracy-furthering, but this book lays it out.

Simply put, there are people who go to countries who have little in the way of infrastructure, who want to be more advanced than they are currently. These assholes known as Economic Hitmen, on the payroll of engineering and consulting firms(not the CIA or NSA), go into these countries with orders. Their orders are to overstate the benefits of corporations (U.S.) moving into the area to build power plants and roads, etc. They then convince the World Monetary Fund or The World Bank to lend these countries billions in aid to further these countries, based on the outlandish econometric outcomes forecast by the HITMEN.

The countries almost always end up paying all the loan to US engineering firms (example: Halliburton) and then going bankrupt. This is done by design. It is in the country’s takeover-mentality’s interest to make these developing countries fail. Elite corporate owners and politicians have been in bed with each other since time immemorial. Politicians are bought and paid for in FULL. If it isn’t engineering firms, it’s pharmaceuticals or lobbyists, or any number of people with money to throw at those who hold office. When the countries go bankrupt, they are in debt to the United States…because of their ties with the IMF and World Bank. Then, the U.S. simply demands that they are given the capability to place military outposts in these regions, thus furthering the reign of capitalism and Christianity.

Why would this happen? People have asked me this when they read the book jacket. Well, why do we put it past the sociopaths running today’s corporations that they might actually be more interested in their dollar-worth than a million lives in a third world country?

Is it THAT hard to believe? Really? I mean, if you were a megalomaniac, trying to make as much money as possible to further your genetic seed until the end of the world, do you really give a shit who you snuff out? It’s pretty plain to see that these allegations by John Perkins (ex-Hitman and reformed Hitman) are plausible simply by considering the history of nation-builders. All of the empires of the world have done this kind of “weakening from the inside” tactic, and the U.S. has been masterful at pin-pointing the weakest, in their greatest time of need, and then ballooning their grip on the political and religious landscape by pressuring indebted countries into doing as they wish.

This is, as many will defend, business as usual. Granted. But the faceless, nameless dead and suffering, too depressing to get TV time (unlike Paris Hilton) are a line that never ends. It reminds me of the ants in my garden. I don’t know where they come from, but they JUST KEEP COMING. The countless lives of people who were the victorious at one point. The miraculous connection of sperm and egg to make this unique gift, who then procreate themselves, are meaningless outside of themselves. Their plight is on mute. We are busy reading US Weekly and watching Access Hollywood. While Billy Bush is bullshitting about outfits that Beyonce is wearing to the Grammys, his uncle George is fumbling through the winter of his rule, and continuing to do nothing about the millions of suffering worldwide.

Sadly, I know that everyone cannot be fed. Everyone cannot be living lives we live in North America. But this sense of humanity halts me. I am unable to simply brush aside the cobwebs of turmoil that are being undertaken on behalf of multi-national corporations to the detriment and soul-soiling treatment of those unfortunate enough to be born 6000 miles east or 3000 miles southwest of Grace Hospital, Windsor, Ontario, where I was born.

I tremble for these victims. Victims of greed beyond the usual bling culture I’ve been unfortunate enough to come up within. So much excess. It’s numbing.

If you want a grasp of SOME of the factors involved in the manufacturing of suffering around the world in the last 80 years, pick this book up, as it has more to offer than this bleak reality I’ve unfurled in front of you here. Something to think about though…

William Branch: Where are you?

My brother Cary invented a toy called Stak-Its Building Cards. It was an educational, fun, non-tech, building toy. Dr. Toy gave it an award at least once, I believe. The company was sold by my brother after several frustrating years of trying to break into the world of toys on a major scale, although, the company in it’s most recent management and ownership figured out a way to get Slinky to carry it alongside their products for a short time.

Not only did it legitimize itself as a brilliant invention, it was responsible for a lot of my youth travel. I think I have been to Manhattan a half dozen times for the International Toy Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Center, to Orlando (for an educator’s conference), New Orleans (pre-Katrina), Toronto for the Canadian Toy Fair, and of course…Elizabeth, New Jersey for a night of sleep before catching a flight from Newark.

In the time spent in New York, I met some cool people, as you’re bound to do. Dan Heffer, an American Apparel worker who helped me with a sound project, the son of the inventor of the Slinky (Tom James), the Irwins of Irwin Toys, the sales heads of Topps Trading Cards (I was a huge sport-card collector), the owner of an amazing restaurant near Times Square called Rendezvous, and the most intriguing of them all, William Branch.

Who is William Branch? Well, he is an enigma, to say the least. My brother and I, when we would wander into Manhattan, would get into The Travel Inn and adjust until the next morning when we would go to the deli at the base of the hotel. According to a review I read just now, it was called River West Café. There were about 60 seats in the place, and one server. He was a fit black man in his fifties. His eyes and heart were/are ageless. Across the street from the deli was a New York City Police Department. The cops were a heavy part of the traffic in this deli where they served the usual New York fare. We chose hot egg and cheese (breakfast) bagels with steaming, strong, incentive-to-breathe coffee.

The thing that had us going back every day was not the gooey cheese. It wasn’t the ability to watch policemen chomp lox. It was the lone server. The main man. The man known to take your order and abruptly shout, “Wunderbar!” pronouncing the “w” as a “v”. And he was buoyant beyond any expectation of a tourist, or a conference attendee (of which there were many in this deli every morning) having heard all the rumours of how New Yorkers are grumpy. This guy was a consummate pro at making people smile, and realize that they were alive and in New York. His thick one-of-five-boroughs accent was so endearing, it was like making a direct connection with the soul of the city itself. He was the Gaia of New York.

Every year we went back, he was in fine form, talking of his treks to Germany, where he had his girlfriend, and where he planned to return and live one day. This was, of course, the source of his Wunderbar shouts.

In fact, on one of the trips, I brought William something he had never heard of, the candy bar with the name Wunderbar. As I understand it, Americans don’t get the array of Cadbury products that we get. They have a dearth of chocolate options compared to the Great White North.

We became more than acquaintances. In time, he was coming to the Toy Fair, as my brother secured him a pass to be allowed to walk the floor without paying a stupid amount of money. He wanted to see the show he had been hearing about for years.

The last time I saw him was likely 2005 or thereabouts. That was the time he came to the Toy Fair on a day off, wearing a full length black cape and matching beret. He looked as close to the word “dashing” as one could look without having a sword in hand and a feather in his hat.

We had some wild laughs we did, Cary, William, and I.

He even gifted me a poem that he had written about 9/11, as he was working his day job when the proverbial shit hit the fan. I have the poem somewhere, and when I come across it, I’ll print it here. It’s incredibly good. And good poetry, is truthfully, difficult to find. Especially in a deli.

Now for the twist in the story.

One day after coming home, Jhoan says to me, “Look at this picture I found.” You see, we both like to scour the web for ideas and stories and inspiration from the works and designs of well-known and lesser-known artists and writers. We share the stuff that floats to the top. Well, Jhoan was scrolling though some photos from a guy whose work was being shown on one of the content-collector sites we frequent, when she sees a guy that she remembers meeting on a trip to New York. She knew who he was. She knew the stories about him. She met him and was charmed by him while wearing the cape and the beret.

So here is the image of the man. We do not remember where Jhoan found it. The site, who knows? I did a screen-capture, and then lost the page. The image is of Katz’s Deli on Ludlow (where they filmed the orgasm scene for When Harry Met Sally). I can see why William would want to work there. But this might just be a photo excursion. He may not be working there at all. We don’t know. We do not even know who the photographer is, but if we did, we are sure he/she would know how to find William, and if he worked at Katz’s.

We know one thing. We know that the Gaia of New York is the heart of this shot. William, where are you? I miss you friend. I hope someone who knows you sees this eventually.

A Discussion on Food

Being at Phog all of the time, I am treated to conversations of people who know WAY more than I do. Often, these talks are lost on me. They occur in my periphery, and I am unable to recount any of the details.

On this night, some friends went to a Wild Game dinner night at Three: A Tasting Bar, a restaurant in Windsor, and ate some outrageous number of courses, and were mystified by how delectable it was.

Neil and Charles are both cooks. They know food. They talk food sometimes and people in the vicinity who are not cooks (which is almost no one) put up the invisible “not listening” curtain. But these guys speaking about food is like poetry in a language I don’t speak. I equate it to listening to mathematicians discussing physics or something. Wait, don’t physicists discuss physics? You get the idea.

This is a recording (they knew it was being recorded) of their talk about this meal, and others like it. It’s more like a podcast, but it’s totally worth a listen. Not being from Windsor, I would be emphatic about hearing a conversation between strangers in a strange city. It’s like a peek into the slow night at one of the more renowned music venues in Canada. Yes, you can hear my annoying laugh and intermittent banter throughout. Neil makes me laugh without trying. It might be his endearing lisp mixed with crumplingly sharp wit.

Neil and Charles discuss wild game and all things foody.

The first two minutes will be much louder than the remainder of the clip. This conversation took place at least a month ago…maybe two.

This link will not be working by June 12th, but if someone reads this after that time and wants to hear it, I will re-post it. It is being posted to an online location free for a month.

Food

Michael Pollan strikes again.

I just went ga-ga over his article in the green issue of the New York Times Magazine, Why Bother?, and now I get this link from Boing Boing about his new book, In Defense of Food. Maybe I like this guy because he looks like and reminds me of my brothers, Rodd and Todd.

It’s a video almost an hour long of his discoveries about food, ranging from the disturbing reality that there is not enough convincing science (at least not as much as he expected) about food, all the way to comparing nutrients to God (which I loved as an example), as nutrients are invisible and we thus need doctors, journalists, nutritionists to tell us the right amounts we need, which is what holy practitioners do for their flock when trying to respect something as invisible as nutrients.

The idea of how we’ve SLOWLY progressed (but progressed nonetheless) from “chewing songs” urged by Horace Fletcher, who thought you were supposed to chew every bite 100 times, makes me wonder how viable the science we have now really matters.

I mean, I like to believe that scientists stand up for us. They think on our behalf for the greater good. But if anyone knows about food lobbyists, like the Egg Board and Milk Board and Cheese Board (I think those are all viable Boards) they know that they have their own scientists working on their behalf, to ensure steady and increased sales of their product/commodity. So maybe there’s a reason that for as long as I can remember there have been reports on how bad/good/bad/good again coffee, red wine, red meat, a glass of beer is supposed to be for you. His example of butter being touted as evil and margarine being the hero (for a time) until it was realized that the trans fats in margarine were WAY worse than the saturated fats in butter. So who do we trust? I don’t know, but he likes the idea of pushing to recognize cultural impact on food-health. Watching people who stay healthy from other cultures…and take notes. Makes damn good sense to me.

Carrying on, I liked how he pointed out that food is always broken into evil vs. good bits. The evil now is trans fats. The hero now is Omega 3 Fatty Acid. Carbohydrates are moving out (Thanks Atkins), and fibre is heroic now for a while. But I remember when it was protein! It was all about protein! Funny enough, I remember reading a book by John Robbins who said that there was enough protein in a glass of milk to nullify the calcium. Yes. In human chemistry, too much protein (which has been shoved down our throats for as long as I can remember) means that you will pee out your precious calcium. I don’t like it either, but it’s just science.

That said, with people eating tons of meat (adding HEAVILY to the climate change epidemic) and then having any green veggies with calcium in it, they were doing the same thing. I mean, come on people. We drink more milk than anyone else in the world. Why do we have the highest cases of osteoporosis in the world if we’re so full of calcium!? Why don’t Japanese and Chinese citizens deal with this on the level we deal with it? Hmmm. Something to be further looked into I think.

He talked about “orthorexics” which is a term for people who have an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy. Sadly, I know a few of these. Pollan also laughed about the American paradox of food. We want healthy food, and we obsess about getting healthy food, yet we are fatter and less healthy than the French counterparts who eat fatty foods and do all of the things we’re told are negative. Why is this happening? Since nutritionism began in the 70s, the overall health in America (Canada) is worse. Huh!? Yeah, nice paradigm shift Michael, I really needed that to think about.

He blew me away when talking about beta carotene and how it was thought to be the gold medal winner of carotenes (there are many more) when in fact it did nothing to improve health significantly, and in some cases made things worse. Perhaps then, because there is so much more to the carrot than we thought, maybe you HAVE TO EAT THE CARROT to get the longevity associated with it and other vegetables. Maybe there’s some mystical combination of things that happens when you eat the carrot that makes you healthier. As of now, according to Pollan, not one nutritionist knows the answer to this. Not specifically. Any idiot can say that eating vegetables every day is good for you, but someone who tries to say that nutrient X in this and nutrient Y in that is the reason for the longevity, is lying. They don’t know why.

I was shocked to hear that the science is just not there. Just. Not. There.

He blew my mind with, “You have as may neurons in your digestive tract that you have in your spinal column.” What? Exactly. Why do I have brain cells in my lower intestine. According to Pollan, no one knows. Yet. But this kind of info is fascinating to me. Not only will I be buying this book eventually, but I will be reading every column he has on the subject of healthy living and healthy planet, as he has proven to me in short bursts of information, that he is not flowing downstream like many of us. He is going against the current to ask important questions. I like that. I wish I could be more like that.

Go watch it. Then you can remember it.

Stand up

Reading lately about more and more people taking a stand.

And in the same neurological impulse, I am realizing how absent this idea is from Canadian way-of-life and modern U.S. way-of-life also.

With exception to that last comment, I see that the Sean Bell injustice is not going away. There was a demonstration that got squashed in a hurry, but it was a broad and powerful display of supporters who shut down several arteries in Manhattan for times between 30 and 90 minutes.

When I saw this had happened, with the organization of Al Sharpton, I was proud to see that it had. As of late, I’ve been reading Democracy Matters by Dr. Cornel West. The book is clear in stating the general apathy of American citizens is something that needs to change. According to West, who is such an amiable character (and whom I think everyone should have the joy of watching speak) democracy is dependant upon outspoken debate, Socratic questioning of self, tragicomic approach to the future, and a love of truth. But the questioning is slowing from the sources it needs to come from. Everyday people. We need to question more, care more, wonder more, and give into the soma of TV and “celebritizing” and consumerism LESS.

That said, I have been seeing the contrary of this apathy in other places in the world who have relatively newer democratic experiments on the go. Yes, the American and Canadian democratic situation is also an EXPERIMENT, which I think a lot of people are unaware of…we/they think that the lawmakers take care of everything, and that all injustices are stopped before they get far, but understanding truly what’s going on in democracies means that there has to be CONSTANT (even in the best times) questioning and auditing of the day’s goings-on. We need to care and be aware at all times, because government answers to and FOLLOWS the people. It is NOT the other way around (thanks to my brother Todd for that insight).

Argentina farmers have been losing thier shit over this tax increase on their crops to the extent that they are closing down roads for three WEEKS! Hello!? Three weeks! The protests in New York were shut down in 90 minutes. It is uplifting to see people who are aware of their rights and their impact on the electorate stand up and say, “BULLSHIT!”

Here in Canada, where I live in Windsor, politicians push things through at will, with very little outrage or commitment from citizens, to looking out for each other like they do in countries where this democratic ideal is fresh, and in dire need of protecting. In provincial and federal politics, similar to state and federal in the U.S., people make their 6-figure salary opposing, partisanly, anyone on the other side of the floor. They’re not, for the most part, looking out for a solution, but just toting the party line and arguing in the best interest of their job, being re-elected (Duh).

Knowing this, we should be more involved in our view of this freedom we appreciate. We should be more like the monks in China. We should be more like the farmers in Argentina. We should be more like the voters in Zimbabwe. They realize the importance of the experiment of democracy, and they don’t want that dream to die in a tsunami of corruption and disinterest.

Knowing and Living: An Inconvenient Truth

Coming from the “more north” of Ontario, visiting my brother and his family, I am feeling mentally recharged. Not in that way you get when you are ultra-relaxed though. I am more or less recharged because I have been reinvigorated in a larger sense.

Yes, my brother gave his slide-show of An Inconvenient Truth. Yes, it was eye-opening, even though I pay attention to every utterance about the environment, and almost primarily because of listening to so many podcasts. Harry Shearer’s Le Show has a copyrighted feature called “News of The Warm” that keeps on top of the most recent info about our crumbling planet. My brother did an incredible job, and commanded a hushed room of 25 people or so.

The presentation was yet another piece to this expanding interest in the vital signs of Earth for me. It was a reminder of the article in the New York Times Magazine, Why Bother? by Michael Pollan, which made a strong impact on me, almost calling me out for having been remiss to ACT. Applying Gandhi’s Ideas to Climate Change by Peter Applebome was another article in the New York times that made grand references to the differences between thinking something and acting on something.

I am in the first category primarily. I know the correct thing to do, but I often don’t go as far as I should. I find myself waffling in the face of adversity when it comes time to choose correctly for the planet, for the dignity of others, for the dignity of myself. These two articles had superb reminders in them, telling me to get my head in the right space. Do it because it is right. Do it because it is virtuous, even when doing things because they are virtuous is dropping out of style. Why bother? For yourself. Doing for yourself, in the greater sense of self, in turn, is actually doing for all, even when on a small scale, such as picking up trash while walking on a nature trail in northern Ontario (thanks Martha). We spend so much of our day, our relationships, our lives, taking, taking, taking…but if we’ve learned anything in science class, things must balance. It’s time to give back.

Also, while on the 7-hour-drive home from the weekend trip, I listened to This American Life. The episode had a bit about Schindler’s List. A guy (a friend of the host who is involved in charity and philanthropic work) who watched this film, commented to the host (Ira Glass) that he did all the work he did, as taxing and time-consuming that it was, because he KNEW he was going to be like Schindler in the end of the film. He knew he would be asking why he didn’t sell his car, his watch, to get enough money to save more Jews. This man didn’t want to be thinking he could have done more.

I don’t want to be the regretful man who, lying on his deathbed is thinking, “I could have done more for others.” I want to do what is to be done. The nausea associated with being a failure, failing myself, no one else, is not an acceptable outcome, and I am geared to see that this life is more heavily geared toward giving.

The Zen Archery approach of intention meeting action is a wonderful way to look at the process from A) learning truth to B) living truth. And the funniest thing about these articles I mentioned is that I was gung-ho to introduce them to my brother Todd. I was thinking about it more like a useful tool, maybe a hand-out at future events or talks. But the irony of me giving a man whose entire family knows the truth and lives truth constantly was lost on me until writing this post. Todd and Martha have been beacons to me of how to live a low-impact life physically, and a high-impact life mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Hey brother, if you’re reading this, I get it! I know you know. I know you don’t need the info in those articles, but I thought it might help relay your message to people like me who need a bit of nudging from knowing to living truth.