I have been travelling (more on that soon), and will not be doing a show again until November. One of the November stories will likely be a review of Charles Hudson’s Southeastern Indians, a truly multidimensional work. If you are curious about what I am stockpiling for possible inclusion in next month’s show, check out my Stumble site…see you next month!
Here’s a link to some pictures of where I went:
“Who cares for you?” said Alice (She had grown to her full size by this time.) “you’re nothing but a pack of cards!”
At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her: she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.
`Wake up, Alice dear!’ said her sister; `Why, what a long sleep you’ve had!’
`Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!’ said Alice…
from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, pps. 123-4
I often wish I would wake from this curious, diseased dream, and find my eyesight restored, my pulse and blood pressure always boringly normal, my ability to function on six hours’ sleep given back to me, my memory as good as it used to be, and the raft of prescription medicines and supplements that I am taking disappeared from my medicine shelf–or, at least in the case of the supplements, diminished to what a healthy person would use to stay healthy.
Alas, dreaming is my only respite from awareness of my condition. In my sleep I don’t even have the tinnitus and deafness that used to be my worst medical complaint, and so it seems that the only waking that will dispel the physical suffering that is, in some measure, my constant companion, will be waking out of this life into whatever comes after it.
The pack of cards that harasses me is a constant stream of bills for medical services; so far, my debt is growing faster than am paying it down. This notion of medical debt seems bizarre to me. I am recovering from a heart attack and a stroke. and any doctor worth his or her medical degree would tell me to avoid stress; but it’s hard not to feel stressed about my deepening debts, especially now, with the economy tanking and the ranks of the unemployed swelling. On a homestead like ours, I always feel like I’ve got something better to do than go beat the bushes for a job, but money is still a concern.
And so, in spite of my best efforts (or, to be Buddhist about it, non-efforts) to maintain my equanimity, sometimes my heart rate soars and plunges, and my blood pressure along with it, and I find myself wondering once again if I am taking my final roller-coaster ride. So far, none of these episodes has lasted long enough to land me back at that painfully expensive emergency room, but just when I think I’m out of the woods and going to be just fine, I get another reminder that I am not a young man any more and that I am now, thanks to my stroke, as pharmaceutically dependent as any junkie. If things ever get to the point that I can’t get warfarin any more, I will just have to eat lots of raw garlic, smoke lots of weed, drink gingko tea, and stay calm. That regimen might work as well as coumadin in preventing strokes, but frankly I am not enthusiastic about the possibility that I will eventually be a human guinea pig for such an experiment.
Unlike what Alice found in Wonderland, the doctors I have dealt with (other than the humorless chap at the clinic) have not been a pack of nut jobs. The cardiologists I see are a couple of enthusiastic, open-minded young women, one from Africa and the other from the Middle East. They appreciate having a patient who is eager to be proactive, and greeted my desire to avoid statin drugs with tolerance, if not perhaps total understanding, and readily prescribed niacin for me as an alternative. (I should explain that I have remarkably high cholesterol readings for a vegan. I attribute it to, first, stress from my congestive heart failure, and second, inactivity. We’ll discover in June if renewed activity, getting over CHF, and taking lots of niacin have lowered my cholesterol levels.) (I have to wonder if eating a lot of unfermented soy products and large quantities of leafy green vegetables acted to disrupt my thyroid function, which can lead to heart irregularity.)
I regard statin drugs with a great deal of suspicion, Our bodies have good reasons for making cholesterol, some of which involve facilitating brain and muscle function, and the huge amount of money that statin drugs generate for their manufacturers makes me wonder if its serious drawbacks will soon be exposed in the same way that medical frauds like Vioxx and hormone replacement therapy turned out to be far more harmful than helpful.
This points to one of the main reasons we need to reform our entirehealth care paradigm. Private companies are out to make a profit, and only secondarily to serve the public good. Only when the first purpose of medical research is service and healing, and profits and shareholders are removed from the equation, will we have a truly unbiased medical system. There is no profit for private corporations in prevention, nor in herbal medicines people can grow for themselves, and these modalities will not get a fair hearing in our current medical paradigm.
The doctor I see most often is the guy who adjusts my warfarin levels, which need to get checked every couple of weeks to a month. He is, I suspect, more tolerant than enthusiastic about my interest in herbal medicine, as he occasionally lets out little things like “studies have shown ginkgo isn’t really effective, anyway, so you shouldn’t be upset about not being able to use it with warfarin.” That, as far as I can tell, is a half-truth; ginkgo has been found to be effective for some things and not for others, but often the slant of the mainstream medical press is to discredit herbal or vitamin-based remedies. They can’t be patented, so there’s no money in them, y’know?
One example of this is that research discrediting vitamin E has all been done with Alpha-tocopherol vitamin E only, while nutritionists are touting mixed-tocopherol vitamin E.
Another is the fact that the amount of resveratrol present in a glass of wine is not enough, when isolated, to have any effect on health–but when that amount of resveratrol is combined with the other chemicals present in wine, a synergistic effect takes place that results in health benefits. Thus the “French paradox”: the French diet is high in fats and other substances that should result in a much higher rate of heart disease than actually occurs in France. Western science, with its take-the-watch-apart-and-see-how-it-works approach, just doesn’t get it, and I doubt if my warfarin guy will either, so I don’t argue with him very much. We’re likely to have a long relationship, and I want to keep it friendly.
I have been through a major life transition since last August. I am no longer the oldest young man around; I’m now on the young edge of being an old man. I do my best to get to bed early, tend to feel like leaving social events no later than ten PM, and think frequently about when I need to take my next medications. I take my blood pressure twice a day, and listen to my heart with a stethoscope daily. I wonder if I will ever see the New Mexico back country again, or take the communion of Santo Daime or the Native American Church, or take part in a sweat lodge or even enter a sauna. I have been made painfully aware of my own mortality, and nothing can make me forget the ghost (my own) that stands at my side. I take responsibility for diet and lifestyle decisions I made. and emotional habits I allowed to continue, that may have helped rob me of my good health, but I also know that this probably wouldn’t have happened to me in a society with a saner health care system. I know my time and strength are limited, and I know I had better make the best use of them I can.
A number of bits of local news and commentary have come to my attention lately: Mayor Dean’s “State of the City” address, the report of the Green Ribbon Committee for a Sustainable Nashville, news that the “reform” of Tennessee’s waste management policies is not only a shambles but a sham, and the renewed push for construction of Maytown Center, along with the howls of misguided (or intentionally misleading) protest that accompanied my characterization of its neo-feudal potential last month.
Hizzoner the Mayor used his moment in the spotlight to push for a new Nashville Convention Center, a sort of “build it and they will come,” Hail Mary pass proposal that has been so thoroughly excoriated by the Nashville Scene that I hardly need to go into detail here, except to answer their “what are they smoking?” question with, “must be crack, ’cause any self-respecting pot smoker would see through this welfare-for-developers proposal in a minute.” I would also add that anybody who thinks any kind of tourism is going to make a comeback is inhaling the wrong kind of smoke. The only big influx that I see in Nashville’s, or America’s, future, is Chinese and various Middle Easterners coming to repossess whatever they can in consideration of America’s unrepayable debt to them. The “T” in “T-bills” is gonna stand for “toilet paper,” boys and girls. Can you say “Confederate money”?
And, speaking of smoking crack, I have to repeat and re-emphasize that anyone who thinks Maytown Center is going to be good for Nashville is still living in the delusionary world of the Bush era. Growth is over. If it is built, Maytown will either rapidly turn into a ghost town or suck the air out of the rest of the city and become a gated version of downtown, so the upper crust doesn’t have to cross paths with the homeless.
We would be much better off using the energy that the city’s movers and shakers are putting into these mirages to fast-track and expand some of the proposals in the Green Ribbon Committee’s report, which is at least well-intentioned, if woefully under-ambitious. I feel bad about having to say that. I know some of the people on the Committee, and I trust their good will. I went to one of their public meetings, and I think the document they have produced is radical and edgy–for 1975. At this point, it is too little, too late. Can we create a sustainable local economy that will support our current population? Can we produce enough hoes and digging forks for everybody to turn up the ground it will take to keep ourselves in potatoes, let alone manufacture our own shoes and clothing? Ain’t none of that happening here in Nashvegas any more, — how many weavers and cobblers are there in this town? We sold our industrial capacity to the Chinese for a mess of profit, and we are about to find out that money is nothing but funny-looking paper once everybody agrees it’s worthless.
The landfill proposals that so outrage my friends at BURNT (Bring Urban Recycling to Nashville Today) are another head-shaker, another high-stakes poker game, played with a marked deck, in the tilting first-class lounge of the Titanic. Of course, as James Howard Kunstler points out in World Made By Hand, all the recyclables we stick in landfills now are a kind of savings account that we will be able to mine in coming decades, when we will be out of natural resources and the ability to acquire them through commerce, and will have nothing better to do than dig up old city dumps, straighten bent nails, melt down and recast plastic and metal, and treasure the one or two chemists in our city who figure out how to make matches from local materials–because all those disposable lighters we take for granted are gonna be a thing of the past in the future, folks. Do I have to remind you that you are going to have to cook with a wood fire, unless you’re lucky enough to have a solar cooker and a sunny day? And where will you be gathering your firewood?
Oh, and speaking of rigged poker games on the Titanic, our newly-Republican legislature is attempting to make sure that we don’t switch to optical-scan voting machines in time for the next election, presumably so they can rig it more easily, since they are doing such a patently bad job of running the state that they know they won’t be able to win an honest election…not that the Dims would be much better, it’s just a question of who controls what’s left of the state’s treasury. Well, OK…the Dims would be doing nothing instead of forbidding local living wage laws, allowing people to carry guns everywhere and restricting abortion rights. “Respect for human life”? HELLO?
As all the various antics listed above indicate, either both parties are clueless about the scope of what we’re in for in this country, or they are figuring the best way to survive is to cut as many people out of the loop as possible. If national politics are any guide, I would say the Repuglyicans are trying to cut as many of us out of the loop as they can (leaving more goodies for themselves), and the Dim-ocrats are simply clueless. In this state, most seem to think the best strategy is to try and be as conservative as the Repugs, but since they lack the intense commitment to self-aggrandizement that characterizes so many Repugs, they end up coming across as clueless namby-pambys, which is one reason (besides ignorance and its bastard child, racism) they have been fluffing so many elections lately–like, it wasn’t just that Harold Ford is black, it’s that he’s barely to the left of Bob Corker. Not only is Harold no Jesse Jackson, he’s not even a Barack Obama.
Let me make something clear here–I am as threatened as anyone by the future I foresee. Western civilization as we know it needs to end for the planetary ecosystem (including humans) to continue, and I, an aging man with health problems, may not survive the change. With that in mind, I want to make that transition as smooth as I can, so I am living as simply as I can, and supporting organizations that I believe will help cushion our descent, like our local bioregional council and the Tennessee Green Party. As long as we have a functioning statewide political system (and I am not going to hazard a guess on how long that may be), we need to take advantage of it and use the framework of the Green Party to raise real issues: local sustainability, resource conservation, universal access to health care, economic justice, and grass-roots democracy, to name the first few broad headings that come to mind. There is SO much to do, and we’re running the Green Party of Tennessee with a skeleton crew–so come on aboard, there’s plenty of room.
music: Eliza Gilkyson, “Unsustainable“
I was brought up Jewish. As a child I went to temple regularly, went to Sunday school (It was a Reform temple, so we had Sunday school–and I’m sure some people will say that’s where I started going wrong!), was confirmed at 16–declined Bar Mitzvah because I couldn’t, with a straight face, say “Today I am a man!” at the age of thirteen….
As a teenager, I started having radical leanings early. I recently found an essay I wrote at the age of fourteen, in 1962, decrying the emptiness of suburban life in America. lBut still, I saw the kibbutz movement in Israel as a wonderful, living embodiment of utopian democratic socialism, and thrilled to the action in Leon Uris’s Exodus as the brave Jews battled the dastardly British and the ignorant Arabs to establish a homeland where they could create their dreams and live in peace.
But a doubt started eating at my unquestioning support of Israeli policy, a doubt that sprang from a seed at the heart of Judaism. One of the most highly regarded Jewish scholars of all time, Moses Maimonides, was asked, somewhat in jest (because we Jews are known for our loquaciousness) if he could tell somebody the essence of Judaism while standing on one foot. The great Maimonides took his foot off the ground long enough to say “Treat other people the way you would like them to treat you.”
The more I have learned about the Palestinians, the more I have sighed and cried about my fellow Jews. I cannot reconcile the way the ostensibly Jewish state of Israel has treated the Palestinians–from the getgo, from before Israeli independence. There has always been arrogance, insensitivity, and a sense of entitlement. “We’re coming back for our promised land, so move along, now.”
The situation is full of ironies. First of all, we have to understand who” the Palestinians” really are: they are the descendants of the original Jews of the Bible. It’s true that many Jews left after the various unsuccessful revolts against the Romans, spreading Jewish practice and communities from England to India. But many Jews, probably the poorer, peasant ones, also stayed in Palestine, and were there when Mohammed’s armies swept out of the desert and made Islam the preferred religion. By a process of what you could call spiritual osmosis, many of those who had been Jews became Muslims, just as the Buddhist populations of Afghanistan Pakistan, and central Asia became Muslim under similar circumstances.
Jews spread out from Palestine after the rebellions of the first and second centuries,. but apparently not very many reproduced. DNA studies reveal that most European Jews seem to have descended from just four “women of Middle Eastern descent” who arrived in southern France around that time.
Then, there is the case of the Russian Jews, most of whom have no genetic tie to Palestine. They came to their religion when the Khazar kingdom of southern Russia officially converted to Judaism around the year 800 CE. Of course, this was not accomplished without some input, doubtless genetic as well as spiritual, from originally Palestinian Jews who settled in the ports of the Black Sea as Roman and Byzantine influence had penetrated in that direction and Palestine had become not such a good neighborhood–”too much gangs and violence,” as we might say now.
The irony starts to thicken when we look at one of the central issues that hangs up Israeli-Palestinian negotiations–the “right of return” that the Palestinians insist on, the right to return to the areas their (by now) grandparents were forced out of in the struggles of the late forties and fifties. This, of course, would produce a state with a non-Jewish majority and so is consistently and understandably rejected by the Jews, who nevertheless insist upon their “right of return” after an absence of a mere eighteen hundred years (or, in the case of Russian Jewry, no historical presence whatsoever).
Then there’s the inter linked questions of imperialism, racism, and sustainability. I had long criticized the goat- and sheep-herding practices practiced by native Palestinians (and everybody else in the Mediterranian basin)as the major cause of the erosion and desertification of the Mediterranian basin, but after reading my fellow Jew Starhawk’s reporting on Palestinian culture, I began to understand that what we were looking at was a native, land-based, long term culture (the Palestinians) that, by itself, could be tweaked into sustainability–except that it has been overwhelmed by a very westernized, economically-oriented society that has no deep roots and apparently no sense that it is responsible for the long-term welfare of the whole planet and not just a small circle of friends and relatives. Yet, at the same time, Jewish culture is very vital and precious and nourishing to those who live in it. What does anybody, ultimately, really want besides a sustainable, deeply rooted culture? Even if you are too alienated to know what you really want, which most of us are, to some extent, that’s the only thing that will satisfy you.
But I digress…what we have, historically speaking, in Israel/Palestine, is a trickle of Europeans turning into a flood and overwhelming native resistance, not unlike what happened here in America, or what the Chinese have done to smaller cultures on the fringe of their homeland. In the case of the Jews’ entry into Palestine, we were encouraged, first by our own history and mythology, and then by the sympathy of a world horrified by the genocide of the Jews of Europe in the thirties and forties.
That awful crime certainly demanded redress and restitution…but why did it have to come at the expensive of the Palestinian people, whose plight increasingly resembles that of the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe? What difference is there, really, between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto? What is the point, and what is the result, of allowing more and more Jewish settlements in supposedly Palestinian territories, of checkpoints and travel restrictions, arbitrary arrests and detainments, “targeted” assassinations that take out dozens of bystanders and maybe the object of the murder? Is it because somehow guaranteeing Lebensraum for the Jewish people is a holier cause than guaranteeing Lebensraum for the German people?
No, the Palestinian response to the oppression inflicted on them by the Jews has not been morally perfect, but neither was the establishment of Israel. When Menachem Begin became prime minister of Israel, it was conveniently forgotten that his methods of operation had been described by Albert Einstein and many other leading lights of the late forties as
closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties, (inaugurating) a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community
…as well as the Palestine Arab community, where they committed at least one major massacre of innocent civilians.
So, the Palestinians protest their oppression with suicide bombers and rinky-dink rocket attacks. But who faults the Jews of Warsaw for the pinpricks they inflicted on their Nazi tormentors? And let us not forget that part of the “crime” for which Jesus was crucified was his attempt to throw the money changers of out of the temple. It was a small act of insurrection, but it was enough of an excuse for the Romans to take action. Like the modern-day Jews, The Romans had superior firepower and an unswerving conviction that they were doing the right thing. Jesus was a Palestinian; today, instead of one special representative being singled out for torture and slow death, we have the painful prospect of millions of people herded into a small area that then serves as a shooting gallery for another group of people. If this is still treating others the way we would like to be treated, the Jews of Israel are setting themselves up for a lot of pain.
So, what’s a “Green” solution to this mess, this clash of opposing forces with different, mutually exclusive agendas for the same small piece of turf?
This is not a problem that can be solved merely by agreements among leaders, any more than civil rights in the US was “solved” by the Supreme Court. The solution to this conflict will start with an agreement between leaders, but it will then need to be solved by millions of people listening to each other and talking with each other in small groups where everyone can be heard. Reconciliation is not abstract. It is intensely personal. We need to put an end to the cycle of vengeance. We have to initiate a new cycle of agreement , mutual consideration, and mutual aid, and we need to set an example here in the US first.
This is not an easy task, and the downward momentum of this conflict, which has been going on in one form or another since modern humans spread out of Africa and encountered Neanderthals in the Eastern Mediterranian, may be impossible to overcome. If that is the case, then the prognosis for this planet and its people is grim. If the Israel-Palestine conflict continues to be a black hole, it will drag us all in, and that, along with the the climate change we have been too busy fighting to avert or prepare for, will be the end of our aspirations for a peaceful, sustainable future.
“Treat other people the way you wish to be treated.” If we allow the Palestinian crucifixion to continue, can our own crucifixion be long in coming?
music: Steve Earle, “Jerusalem“
My state representative, Gary Moore, is usually both a very reasonable guy, and responsive to the needs of his constituents. Not only is he good enough that he hasn’t had a Republican opponent in several election cycles, he’s good enough that I, as a Green, don’t feel like taking advantage of that and running against him—why risk alienating somebody you can work with?
Because he’s so reasonable, I was surprised to learn that he introduced the bill to ban bicycles from River Road, a stunningly scenic byway that winds along the south shore of the Cumberland River west of Nashville. Ban bikes? You got to be kidding!
But as I studied the issue, I started to understand what was going on. “Winds” is definitely the operative word for River Road, which traverses hills, blind curves, and occasional long straightaways on its way from Charlotte Pike to Ashland City. In many ways, it’s a beautiful, peaceful place to ride a bicycle; but, because River Road is an old road, there are no shoulders. Pedestrians, equestrians, trucks, cars, school buses, farm equipment, and bicyclists all have to share the same narrow right-of-way. And that is where the problem begins. River Road gets a lot of recreational bicycle traffic, and that’s unnerving the residents, who are concerned that they might hurt somebody and annoyed that they have to slow down and watch out for a bunch of people who don’t live in or even relate very much to their neighborhood but who feel entitled to use it for recreation—and some possibly some feel a little bugged about these folks who have the time to be out there sporting on their bikes while the residents have to dash around in their cars taking care of business. Kind of an ant-and-grasshopper thing, y’know?
So, they asked Rep. Moore if he would draft a bill that would ban bicyclists from River Road, and, being responsive to his constituents, he did, and then the fun began. Bicycling organizations all over the state raised a fuss, concerned about the precedent it would set. Mayor Dean, himself an occasional cyclist, informed the legislature that the City of Nashville is opposed to the bill—but he has made funding for sidewalks and bicycle lanes a priority in the city’s budget. Hopefully, River Road will be near the top of his list.
Cyclists thought they had scored a victory when Rep. Moore temporarily withdrew the bill from a committee hearing date, but that, it turns out, is because the residents of River Road wanted additional time to buttress their case. The bill will be back .Banning bicycles as the automobile heads off into the sunset is pretty counterintuitive—but even if this bill passes, when the gas runs out, it will be ignored.
Meanwhile, there’s something very important that hasn’t happened. There has apparently been no communication between cycling groups and the neighborhood, which would seem to me to be the first step to take. River Road Neighborhood Association representative Rena Clark says she would welcome such talks, but has been unable to set anything up. As of this writing, I have been unable to connect with Walk Bike Nashville, one of the main bicycle advocacy groups involved in opposition to the ban, to get their side of the story, but it seems like there should be an attempt to work this out at a lower level before setting a solution into the stone of state law. Can we talk?
music: Queen, “Bicycle“
When I say “we wuz robbed,” I’m not having a flashback to the 2004 election. Sometime during the week before Thanksgiving, somebody evidently walked into our property, entered our greenhouse-workspace, which is some distance from our home, and walked back out with both our chainsaws. I didn’t usually leave them up there, but I had gotten lazy and left them out of the house just that once. Since we heat with wood, this was a particularly essential item for a thief to snatch.
I say “someone evidently walked into our property” for a variety of reasons. One is that the trails that lead out towards the back of our property, from which it is at least a mile to any other home or road, were thick with undisturbed autumn leaves. I know what leaf-covered roads look like after an all-terrain vehicle has passed over them, and they were not disturbed. We were home most of the time, and would have noticed anybody approaching from the back of our property–and anyone coming in from that direction would have had no way of knowing if we were home, or in the greenhouse, at the time. Furthermore, only the two saws were taken. Several other power tools were left, and a thief on an ATV would have probably cleaned the place out–but even the sharpening files and chainsaw tools were left. Clearly, our thief was a pedestrian.
The land we live on is a narrow valley framed by steep hills–walking straight up our hillsides is like climbing stairs. We have only one common boundary with a neighbor that is at all accessible–their back yard butts up against a pasture at the foot of one of those steep hills, and at the other end of the pasture is our greenhouse. It is invisible from the street we live on, a dead end road used only by us, our neighbors, and anyone who comes to visit any of us. It is very rare to see a strange vehicle back here.
It seems very unlikely to me that our neighbors stole our chainsaws. They are an aged couple, primevally Tennessean, and he is so crippled he drives his truck to the mailbox. But they have a grandson, probably in his early forties, who has quite a reputation in the neighborhood. The story is that he steals lawnmowers and takes them to his grandpa to fix up a little and sell. He has, according to the police, done time for robbery, and is also reputedly a crackhead, altho I have no confirmation of that, thank Goddess. As we talked to our other neighbors, we discovered that one had had his home ramsacked and all his wife’s jewelry stolen; another had left her riding lawnmower and weed eater sitting out while she went to run a few errands, and returned to find them gone. Another told of having the suspect engage him in a conversation about buying–a used lawnmower! from him, a conversation which was terminated abruptly when his wife phoned him to tell him that the suspect’s companion was looking in the window of his open, unattended workshop with the kind of eagerness usually associated with kids and candy stores.
Now, that last incident was nothing to call the police about, but we called the police about our chainsaws, and the other robbed neighbors had also called the police–and gotten, basically, no response. In our own case, we connected with a police detective who took my chainsaw serial numbers and entered them in a stolen property database, ensuring that if anybody ever pawns them, they will turn up as stolen. Somehow, I doubt if they will ever end up in a pawnshop. The informal economy, for better and for worse, offers too many other options.
The detective also told us that our neighbor’s grandson is known as a thief, and frequently hangs out with a buddy who is likewise a known thief…probably the guy who was casing our neighbor’s shop.
Now, I would be the first to admit that all the evidence against our neighbor’s grandson is what they call circumstantial–but what do you make of a guy who shows up on the coldest day of the year with a pickup truck full of lawnmowers?
Since we were dissatisfied with the police response to this, we complained to our metro council member, who promised to talk to the police about it. This resulted in a rather perfunctory call from the detective involved, who refused to talk with my wife about the robbery, even though I was not available, and she knew as much about it as I did, and more about the neighbors. I returned his call at my earliest opportunity, but got no immediate response. That was in early January. I complained to my council member about this, but did not heard back from him, either.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, we got a triumphant email from our guy at the police force. Our neighbor’s grandson had been arrested for driving without a license and parole violation, and was now in jail in another county. His buddy had been caught in the middle of a home break-in and captured after a high-speed chase. He also let us know that he had visited our neighbors and questioned them about their grandson, who they said “sometimes” came to see them. (He showed up almost every day around lunchtime.)
I looked out my window after reading this email and…heard the mufflerless rumble of the perp’s pickup truck coming up the driveway…emailed Mr. Detective back and informed him, “he must have sweet-talked his parole officer” was the explanation offered…only support of his ailing grandparents….y’know….
My wife, Cindy, who has known the guy since 1982, decided that the missing chainsaws, the frequent loud noise from his truck, and the fact that somebody was repeatedly driving off the road and into our lawn while gong up their driveway (which runs along the edge of our property) all added up to Time To Talk. She accosted him as he drove up the driveway. “Larry,” she said, you’re bothering me coming in and out of here all the time with that loud muffler. It could get you arrested. And, by the way, I think you stole our chainsaws and have been driving up on our lawn.”
Larry (not his real name) looked her in the eye and denied having anything to do with either trespass. He may be lying, or he may be truthful–one of his buddies may be the actual chainsaw thief. It was what you could call a “tough but friendly” exchange, and since then he hasn’t been speeding up and down the driveway, though he still hasn’t gotten his muffler fixed. Cindy is thinking about baking some cookies for Larry and his grandparents, thinking that cultivating them will create more friendship and security than confrontation will produce. But we keep our new chainsaw in a much less vulnerable location.
Those are, more or less, the facts of the matter. How ’bout the ol’ Deep Green Perspective?
I have no faith in the positive results of putting either of these guys in jail. They will get free room and board and hours of instruction in a wide array of criminal techniques, and when they are released they will have a few new things to try, and likely be even more unemployable than they are now. Actually, that room and board won’t be “free”–it will come out of our taxes. Last time I checked, it cost about twenty to forty grand a year to keep someone in jail. That will buy a lot of chainsaws, lawnmowers, and jewelry, not to mention it’s more than the annual cost of a college education.
Looking at this situation through a different set of filters, we are likely to see a lot more people turning to petty thievery as the economy and social fabric of this country continue to devolve. We had a taste of this social devolution when my wife encountered another neighbor, or rather former neighbor. She had known him, like maybe-thief Larry, since he was a teenager, and had occasionally hired him to do chores around here. Like Larry, he has been in and out of jail as an adult. She ran into him at a grocery store we don’t frequent, and discovered that he was working there ( a change for the better) and living in his car. (not so good) The guy had an alcohol problem, and apparently still does, judging by the way he behaved when he showed up, uninvited, at our home one evening, full of threats to put the fear of God into the suspected thief–and asking us, on his way out the door at last, if he could rent a room from us. We cautioned him not to do anything that could hurt anybody or land him back in jail, but couldn’t offer him shelter. I mean, it sucks that he’s living in his car, but that doesn’t mean we have to take him. Me and my heart attack are enough tsouris for this household.
Another neighbor said that if he caught Larry or his friends prowling around his place, he would have no hesitation about uncorking his shotgun on them. Frontier justice. First robbery rises, then the homicide rate goes up…in response. Great!
Events like these hint to me that my commitment to nonviolence may be seriously tested in the coming years. I’ve heard stories of people talking sociopaths out of heinous deeds–gee, I may find out if I can do it too!
My wife and I have always trusted that, if our intentions are strong and good, we will not attract crazy negative energy–like thieves–to our homestead. This incident has tested our commitment to those principles. Someplace up ahead in the swirling, uncertain future, we’ll once again find out how we are doing. Either something will happen, or–nothing will happen–we will continue to function undisturbed. Time alone will tell, and right now, time ain’t telling.
music: Cracker, “Mr. Wrong“
As you may recall, the first installment ended with me being grilled by a clinic doctor about where I got my marijuana. Although his information on the great herb was misguided, I figured I could trust him to report accurately on the condition of my heart and what to do about it, so I drove across town to Nashville General Hospital, also known as “Meharry,” becaue it is associated with Meharry Medical School, a “historically black” school that took on Nashville’s publicly owned hospital when the city could no longer subsidize it.
This makes it Nashville’s hospital of last resort. If you’ve got money or insurance, you’re going to go to Vanderbilt or one of the other big private hospitals that made fortunes for Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen and the Frist family. If you don’t have much money, it’s Nashville General for you, over in the dark side of town.
On my way to the hospital, I stopped at a health food store and bought some soft tofu; I was planning to make chocolate tofu pies for our family’s Thanksgiving dinner the next day. Now, you may be thinking, “”Chocolate and tofu together?! YUCK!” but I strongly suggest you blend a block of soft tofu and a tablespoon of honey together ’till they’re creamy, and then melt about an equal weight of dark chocolate and stir it in quick before it solidifies…you will have the nectar of the gods, my friends. Alas, that particular batch of godly nectar has yet to be made. I had no idea what was about to happen to me.
I parked in the garage at the hospital and walked into the emergency room, handing the desk clerk the results of the electrocardiogram that had been done at the clinic. After a few minutes observing the people around me and wondering what had brought them there, an orderly with a wheelchair came out to greet me. “I don’t need that,” I said. “In the shape you’re in,” he replied, “we want you in it.” Whatever…I let them wheel me into the examination area, where they did another electrocardiogram on me which, apparently, confirmed the results of the first one. “You’re in atrial fibrillation,” a doctor told me, and explained, “that means your heart is beating in a very disorganized fashion. In fact, you’re running at about a quarter of normal heart function. It’s a wonder you’re able to stay awake and talk to me.” For my part, I was surprised to hear that I was in such dire shape. I felt tired, but thoroughly functional. They sent me to the Intensive Care Unit, because, according to their standards. that was where somebody with a heart condition like mine should be. All around me, people were barely conscious, struggling to hang on. I sat on a bed in my street clothes and read a book and fretted about how much this little adventure was going to cost me.
Cost is certainly an interesting factor to consider. At the poor people’s clinic, they had charged me $30 for an office visit and $60 for the electrocardiogram; the whole thing took about an hour and a half. When I received the emergency room bill, I nearly had another heart attack–my hour and a half there had cost me over $1100 dollars, most of which was paid to a doctor who charged $700 an hour to read my ECG and order a course of treatment. I have no insurance, and have rarely earned over $1100 take-home pay a month, and here’s a doctor charging me that much for an hour and a half of his time. If he works forty-hour weeks, fifty weeks a year, he’s making 1.4 million dollars a year. I think that sums up at least one aspect of this country’s health care problem pretty succinctly.
So there I sat, looking very out-of-place in the ICU. I had called my wife, who brought me the rest of the books I was reading at the time, my journal and a few other personal effects, and an excellent, home-cooked dinner. Now, “hospital food” is a running, if ironic, joke–there you are, trying to get healthy, and they’re serving you the lowest common denominators of the supremely unhealthy standard America diet–overcooked green beans, mashed potatoes, and mystery meat, with some unholy gob of corn syrup and other fixins for desert–but when I told the dietician I was a vegan, and didn’t eat meat or dairy products, they sent me a big plate of iceberg lettuce two meals a day, and dry cereal with no milk for breakfast. I am still trying to get an itemized copy of my hospital bill–I am very curious about how much I had to pay for all that lettuce. Fortunately, my wife and friends kept me fed over the course of my hospital stay. By the time of my last meal in the hospital, an old friend who worked there as a nutritionist got wind of the fact that I was there and sent me a veggieburger with all the fixins. It was a great meal to go out on–thank you, Karen!
Night came to the ICU. It was noisy. I was hooked up to monitoring machines, which beeped almost constantly and occasionally made alarm-level sounds. One device I was saddled with was an automatic blood pressure cuff, which would activate every hour or two and squeeze my arm so hard my hand got numb. I was awakened in the wee small hours for a blood drawing–no, I didn’ twin some blood, they stuck a needle in me and took some out. Wake to experience pain! Now try to go back to sleep! Other people would ring their call buttons as they needed help or attention, and these were loud enough to rouse the whole floor. It’s hard to imagine a less soothing environment in which to fall into a healing sleep–well, a subway station is noisier, OK. But I did manage to fall asleep, somewhat to my surprise. At home, I can’t handle ticking clocks.
Next morning, Thanksgiving morning, a conference with my doctor revealed my condition and a game plan. I had severe atrial fibrillation, which had resulted in a lot of fluid buildup around my heart, otherwise known as congestive heart failure. This was why I had been getting winded so easily. I had apparently had a heart attack sometime in the last few months, as indicated by various chemical levels and the condition of my heart. Aha…the August episode explained. My blood pressure and heart rate were both dangerously high. They were going to put me on medication to lower my heart rate and blood pressure and lessen the likelihood of a stroke, and give my heart a shock treatment to get it beating in regular rhythm. And no, I didn’t need to be in the ICU, but I definitely needed to stay in the hospital until my heart rate was down and regular–and, due to the holiday weekend, the people who perform the heart-shocking procedure would not be in until Monday. I longed for my friendly, quiet home environment, and said as much to the doctor, a thickset, dark skinned man with one of those three-letter African last names, which I wish I could remember. I could tell by the way he talked that he was definitely not from Nashville.
“Well, gee, ” I said to him,” if all I’m doing is waiting until Monday and taking some pills every few hours, couldn’t I go home and do that? I feel fine, I don’t see why I need to be in a hospital.”
The doctor responded in his rich African accent, “Mr. Holsinger, you may feel fine, but you are a ticking time bomb! You could explode at any minute, and if you explode, you had better be here.”
Reluctantly, I acceeded. I didn’t know it, but–I was about to explode.
music: The Rolling Stones, “Dear Doctor“
Folks, I am taking a little break for a while….not for want of subject material or inspiration, or even because I just got out of the hospital, where I was treated for heart problems (atrial fibulation due to a previous, undiagnosed heart attack in August), but because either my condition or the treatment I accepted for it has rendered me temporarily (I hope!) able to read and write only with great difficulty due to blurry, overbright vision. Hopefully, this will clear up in the next month, and I will be back in January with both the local and the personal–my down-the-rabbit-hole tour through the Great American Medical System, and a Deep Green Perspective on local criminal justice (somebody, probably my neighbor’s crackhead grandson, stole my chainsaws), the national–the ongoing disconnect between the very human Mr. Obama and his strange cast of Clinton retreads–the international–observations on America’s place in a post-hegemonic world, and the global–chronicling the planet’s ongoing immune response to the human disease, and our all-too-halfassed attempts to be less of a parasite and more of a symbiont.
Well, I hope I typed that legibly enough for you to understand, and didn’t gCW RGW JWTA IBW KWRRWE IDDM if you know what i mean…
if you miss me, do check out my unindicted co-conspirators listed on my sidebar, especially my amazing neice Steffani and my mom’s star student, Ted Rall…and of course there’s Sharon Astyk and Carolyn Baker, whom I’m gonna have to bookmark one of these days when I can see what I’m doing…
hope to be back here for you in the new year..y’all have a warm and relaxing solstice and i’ll see you when the sun starts to return
thanks
mh
So, on the appointed evening, the wife and I rolled down out of our hollow and across the bridge to Looby Library and Community Center for the Great Green Ribbon Meeting. The lot was full of cars, and we felt cheered by the prospect of a big turnout, but when we entered the basketball court, which was laid out with chairs and tables in expectation of a turnout of a hundred or so, it was pretty much us and the visibly concerned committee members. Whatever people were flocking to the Looby Center for last Thursday night, it wasn’t concern for the future of Nashville. Cindy and I were the only people signed up to speak.
Just as the meeting was set to begin, a small flush of people entered the room, maybe thirty-five in all. Quite a few were old friends from the Bioregional Council or Bell’s Bend; but, here in the heart of Nashville’s ghetto, there were only two black faces.
The meeting began with “citizen input”–and three more people had signed up. I stood up first and talked about the importance of local food, how there are areas, some owned by metro and some owned privately, that could be turned into community gardens or local CSA’s, because whatever development was going to happen there, it probably isn’t going to happen for a good long time, and with people losing jobs, helping people get a start in small farming covers a lot of bases–food sustainability, local economy, putting people to work. I brought up my estimation that it would take five thousand CSA’s to feed Nashville, and emphasized that the city needs to be more open to allowing individuals to raise small animals for food in their backyards, because man does not live by salad alone….I wish I’d thought of that line in time! I said something about putting motion sensors on security lights and turning off streetlights in low-traffic, non-residential areas, like out where I live–Clarksville Pike, Ashland City Highway, and White’s Creek Pike are lit up all night long, when the traffic frequency approaches one vehicle per hour. Firing up all those sodium vapor lights costs a pretty penny, and guess whose taxes pay for them?
I also talked about disaster preparedness, how nobody wants the worst, but we need to prepare for it anyway by having a hospital that can at least function minimally if the grid goes down, and by having a one-month fuel reserve for emergency vehicles and a city fleet of solar-powered electric cars, fire trucks, and ambulances. The Green Ribbon crew took notes and looked interested. I was amazed at how much I managed to pack into four minutes, even if I did forget to say anything about lawnmowers and mandatory mowing.
Cindy presented the idea of creating neighborhood councils that would come up with local solutions to local problems and ease the burden on metro courts and social services. This was probably not what the panel was expecting to hear, but it takes more energy to maintain centralized infrastructure than it does to maintain decentralized infrastructure, whether you’re talking about water and electricity or codes and family court.
Next, a young lady got up and talked very earnestly about getting metro to quit using broad-spectrum pesticides to combat alleged mosquito outbreaks, especially since there has never been a problem with mosquito-borne illness in this area. It was a neat feat of gymnastics to relate this to the topic of sustainability in Nashville, but she hooked it in to biodiversity, if memory serves.
Mack Pritchard was the next speaker. He pointed out that Metro has a tendency to take parks and fill them with buildings–Looby Center, it seems, is in an area that was once called Buena Vista Park–and also emphasized the importance of finishing Nashville’s “Greenways” program so there is a network of walking/bicycling paths connecting all parts of the city. He also mentioned “green streets” paving, which is a new, porous kind of pavement that allows rainwater to soak through into the ground instead of shunting it all off into storm sewers and overloading the system.
One of the two people of color in the room spoke next. He was concerned about transportation. “I ride the bus to work,” he said, “and have to transfer. If the first bus I ride is a minute late, the second bus is gone and I have to wait a half hour for another one. We need to do something about these kinds of things.” Indeed, better public transportation was the first choice of more people than anything else in the committee’s poll, coming in at thirty percent, more than twice the runners up, increased recycling and “increased use of renewable energy,” and three times the next batch of answers, which included more local food, more open spaces, and green building incentives.
Next, it was the city’s turn to talk to us. Jenna Smith, who runs the mayor’s office of sustainability, talked about how the city is instituting recyling in all its offices, encouraging its employees to ride the bus to work, insisting on LEED certification for all new metro buildings, getting ready to do a census of pollution sources, and, yes, Mack, finalizing plans to connect all the greenways.
Next, we broke up into small groups for brainstorming sessions, in which somebody from the Green Ribbon crew sat at each table and wrote down everybody’s suggestions, which were then taped to the wall. We each were given three blue sticky circles, and asked to put them next to the three ideas we liked the best. Well, I’m pretty shameless in some ways, so I voted for my own ideas, then found some sticky circles that had been abandoned and voted again.
Most of the ideas offered were, from my point of view, a little pathetic. Just a little. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with better bus service, outlawing plastic bags, having better parks, instituting “dark skies” lighting all over town (thanks, Manny Zeitlin!), encouraging recycling, outlawing unnecessary vehicle idling and the drivethrough windows that promote it. It’s just that this is a form of bargaining: “If I promise to be a good boy, can I please, please please pretty please keep my comfortable American Way of Life?”
I’m sorry, the answer is no. It doesn’t matter if you make sure the deck chairs on the Titanic are made from recyclable materials that can be recycled once again when they are no longer functional deck chairs. We have still hit an iceberg, water is still pouring in, and the ol’ Titanic is starting to list pretty badly and the hull is riding down in the water. To get off the metaphor, our credit is completely drawn out. There’s nothing more to borrow against, and little likelihood of paying back what we owe already, as the black magic of compound interest pushes our national and individual debt further and further over our heads. It isn’t just individual home buyers who are “under water,” folks, it’s the whole American three-ring circus.
The future is going to be nothing like the past we have always known, because we cannot afford to keep up the pretences that we have taken for granted all our lives. I am doing my best to be materially, psychologically, and spiritually prepared for this, and it still scares the hell out of me–but it’s also the great adventure I’ve always wanted. Ready or not, here it comes.
In June, Mayor Dean created a “Green Ribbon Committee on Environmental Sustainability” that is charged with coming up with an action plan that will “allow Nashville to remain one of the most livable cities in the United States.” To further this goal, the Committee is having four open public meetings this week and next: on on Tuesday, Nov. 11th, at the Nashville Convention Center, rooms 209-210, from 5 to 7 PM; one on Thursday the 13th at Looby Library, 2301 Metrocenter Boulevard, also from five to seven; a third on Saturday, the 15th at Green Hills Library from 10AM to noon, and a final meeting Thursday, Nov. 20 at Mt View Elementary School, 3820 Murfreesboro Road, from five to seven PM. I’m planning to go to the Looby meeting, which is closest to my home.
It’s all very well organized. There are four subcommittees: Natural Resources, Mobility, Energy & Building, and Public Involvement, Education and Outreach. Each is charged with identifying three categories of improvement: “low hanging fruit” that could be implemented with no budgetary cost, changes that could be funded from next year’s budget, and programs that will need longer-term planning and financing.
I could be cynical about this. I could ask how we could “remain” one of the most livable cities in the US when we aren’t on any list of “America’s most livable cities” that I could find, and say that I suspect that, with our pedestrian-unfriendly streets, blazing summer heat and humidity, limited public transportation, strangling traffic, and smog-inducing topography, we are among the least livable cities in the country. On the other hand, we do have, in spite of NES’s best efforts, an “urban forest” to be proud of, and it does not get mind-numbingly cold and snowy the way it does in some parts of the country.
Anyway, here are some suggestions I will be making to the Green Ribbon folks.
In the realm of zoning and codes: allow people to keep small animals such as chickens, turkeys, rabbits, guinea pigs, etc., at home, and to butcher them at home (currently, home butchering is illegal, to the best of my knowledge). Owners with lots over a certain size ought to be able to keep larger animals, such as goats, sheep, pigs, or even cows. This will go a long way towards encouraging food sustainability. I’m a vegetarian, but I understand that a lot of people aren’t, and won’t be, and I also know how hard it is to raise a year’s worth of beans. Also in the realm of food sustainability, individual and neighborhood gardens should be encouraged. People should be encouraged to take down fences and create backyard commons, both for food production and as a form of community integration and organizing.
The lawn mowing ordinance should be repealed or modified to exempt lots above a certain size or distance from a house or public thoroughfare. This will free people up to do more essential things and improve air quality–lawn mowers do not have catalytic converters and are a major source of urban/suburban pollution.
Another codes suggestion would be to waive non-hazardous codes requirements for owner-built-and-occupied structures, including the requirement that they be hooked to the water/sewer/electrical grid, clearing the way for more innovative housing solutions in Davidson County. I think it is appropriate for the city to inject itself into building standards for commercial construction, but there ought to be a homeowner’s loophole. Likewise, we need to loosen up about home businesses, although maybe there should be some limits. For instance, we have a neighbor who has a lawnmower repair shop at his home, and so we get a lot of very annoying lawnmower noise; however, since we hope to buy his place some day, we’re not reporting him, ’cause we want to stay on his good side, and he’s a very old man, and what else would he do? Perhaps the point that this illustrates is that flexibility and responsiveness to the local community are more important than enforcing the letter of the law.
On a totally different subject, there are a number of buried springs in Nashville, and I think these should be uncovered and turned into public fountains, both as neighborhood beauty spots and as a place to go to fill a bucket if the city water system ever goes down. And, while we’re uncovering things, let’s also undertake burial of all the city’s electric lines, starting in the most wooded neighborhoods, where NES regularly has to cut a very ugly swath to keep the lines clear.
Another “green” undertaking I would suggest to the city is that it establish a one-month supply of fuel for city emergency vehicles. As I reported in July, there is currently only a one-week supply of gas for Nashville’s fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars, which means they’d run out at about the same time as the city at large, which is likely right when we’d need such services the most. (“NEED police?” my inner anarchist screams, but my inner elitist sniffs “Most people aren’t smart enough to make their own rules, so we’d better have some police around” But I digress….) Anyway, this gas backup should be supplemented with a program to create a pool of solar-electric charged city vehicles. Maybe it would be difficult to power a full-service ambulance on batteries, but you could at least get somebody to a solar panel/generator-powered hospital (and there’s another project!) in a hurry.
So those are some of my ideas. They are based on the likelihood of collapse, and may sound a little strange to the commission. I suspect many of them have not entertained the idea that our civilization with its multiple, highly complex inputs, could cease to function, even temporarily. That’s the 900-pound gorilla in the room when we talk about sustainabilty. Here’s hoping they acknowledge he’s present. I’ll let you know next month.
music: Kate Wolf, “These Times We’re Livin’ In”
