Does anyone want to suggest a reason why an article on the state of teeth in Kentucky would be the most-emailed article on the NY Times website? Perhaps it satisfies some ignorant view of people in the heartland…wow, we’re even more provincial then they thought. Or maybe there are just a bunch of people who are genuinely concerned about the teeth of people in Appalachia.
Not that I’m helping the attitudes much.
One of the things that I’ve picked up from living in Kentucky is a greater appreciation for agrarianism. Up to this point, I’ve lived in cities and been more or less content to let my produce and so forth magically appear in the grocery store. I mean, I’ve always had an appreciation for a roadside peach and I’ve learned to enjoy fruit in-season as much as possible. But I’d never paid much attention to the distinction of whether what I was eating came from across the state, across the country or across an ocean.
In October, Melanie took me on a trip to an apple orchard to pick apples, something she had enjoyed in her childhood. For the next couple of months or so, I had a hand-picked Kentucky apple with my lunch. But a few weeks ago, we ran out of our handpicked apples and I switched back to the variety we were getting from our local “organic” grocery store which are grown organically but in some other state. Boy do I miss my Kentucky apples. In a way this sets up an interesting question. When posed with two choices, apples that are organically grown then shipped a long distance and apples that are grown locally but with methods that might not be certifiably organic, which should one choose?
And that’s a good question; I’d still like to think about that and find out a way to decide, even if strictly based on a limited set of criteria. But this new awareness of agrarianism has sparked some other questions as well. Many in the Environmental movement see a back-to-roots agrarian lifestyle as necessary. Even though I may not often take advantage of them, there are certainly advantages to living in a city (including limited travel requirements, which is nice when looking at how to limit energy consumption.) And yet the city is unable to be self-sufficient in terms of food supply. There are methods (urban gardens and so forth) that alleviate this. And there are places (e.g. Cleveland, where decades of suburban flight has left plenty of vacant land inside the urban core where this might be especially useful as a strategy on a number of fronts…designing for the problem, so to speak. There are some interesting approaches (and legal greywater reclamation in Oakland comes to mind, as does Oberlin College’s Adam Joseph Lewis Center, which involves some similar concepts.)
There are a couple of critical things missing, though, to make programs like these more widespread. The largest, I would hazard to guess, is design. Certainly the vast majority of new neighborhoods aren’t designed with community gardens in mind and it would be easy to understate how much of a joke the “EnergyStar” requirements are–in other words, it’s a long way off before one imagines mainstream builders even thinking about greywater reclamation (especially with the legal landmines involved.) But even advancements in design aren’t going to push the needle unless you can build demand from a broad segment of people–including middle class people who don’t identify as eco-conscious. This doesn’t have to be a tall order. Grocery stores such as Wild Oats[sic] already appeal to health-conscious consumers as well as those seeking organics. Hybrid cars have a certain “cool” to them that goes beyond the high fuel economy. I’d love to see what creative things we could come up with…hydroponics-ready houses? Neighborhood greenhouses? These sound like things that an efficiency-obsessed culture could go for. I think we’ll have a harder time getting the people of Phoenix to go for composting toilets, but maybe we can address that later.
Ok. I’m going to read to you two paragraphs from a recent AP story (If you know the story already, pretend you’re hearing it for the first time):
The confrontation came after [White's] 19-year-old son, Aaron, was asked to leave a beer bash at a friend’s house. A female guest had complained about a bogus MySpace posting claiming Aaron White wanted to rape her.
He denied making the threat but left the party. Cicciaro and his friends then called the teenager on his cell phone to continue the dispute, allegedly making threats that culminated when they arrived at the White home shortly after 11 p.m.
OK. You’ve read it. Now it’s time for a time-out. Imagine, for a minute, that you are Aaron White’s father. And a group of teenagers have pulled up to your house threatening your son. It may make me a lousy Democrat, but in the world I’d like to live in, I’d think that that man is justified doing whatever necessary to make sure those people don’t harm his property or family.
But apparently, I’d be wrong. And worse (even though it’s certainly not evident that this is racial) when John White (who is Black) was convicted, the AP headline is “NY man guilty in death of white teen.”
We as a nation have somehow convinced ourselves that Justice is significantly more colorblind than at any time in our past. Alas, I don’t remember the sixties or seventies. But it really feels like we’ve backslid.
In manufacturing, we have a number of tools to come up with an optimal decision in cases where risks and benefits aren’t clearly known. What if that same concept was applied to a confounding problem of potential world-wide consequences? Essentially you would get the analysis that Greg Craven (aka wonderingmind42) has come up with and publicized on YouTube:
Just kidding.
So, the FCC voted to allow more media consolidation. It’s a little goofy to link to a newspaper for analysis , but perhaps a little background is appropriate. As I understand it, one company could now own a newspaper as well as the allotted number of TV and radio stations in a given market. This move is ostensibly to give struggling newspapers a chance to survive but given the limited quality of information available through the current “big media” channels, one certainly can see the potential downside.
From the AP, another troubling story on religious freedom and our armed forces.
See folks, it’s things like this that have led me to the conclusion that I can’t support “our” troops. While I think it’s absolutely reasonable to assume that these attitudes are by no means prevalent, there is evidence that they are also not exactly isolated. It’s a real shame that the people we allow to “defend” our country (and even more so, to represent us to the rest of the world) are so browbeaten by ideas of “discipline” and “authority” that it’s rare to hear about people standing up for the same values they claim to be defending. And let’s be clear: I’m talking particularly about Christians in the forces who know the evangelical tack is Wrong but say nothing.
What’s really frightening is the following statement:
“…materials for a Bible studies course from Military Ministry, part of Campus Crusade for Christ International, teach soldiers that the U.S. military and government are instruments to spread the word of God.”
Yikes! Campus Crusade is a fairly prevalent group–according to their website, their 1,500 “ministries” in the US have an average of 30 “involved students” each–that would be a strong organization at my college even if those 30 students didn’t always participate regularly. From their website, you can see their mission statement:
Our vision is to harness media of every sort, print, video, digital, and emerging technologies, to equip and empower the Body of Christ to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all nations. Our desire is to serve you, your church, and other ministries by equipping the Body of Christ with proven and effective resources and ministry services that help mobilize people for the ministry that God has given them a vision and advance the Great Commission.
While it’s watered-down in comparison to the statement in the article, you still understand that they are talking, quite literally, of a holy war. We strike fear in people’s hearts by speaking of Jihad. Seriously, if you can accept a Christian holy war, you need help.
Irrigation equipment not far from a manicured lawn, Russell,...
A cave in the Natural Bridge State Park
cellusd's photo
Outbuilding near Chilesburg development
Spring snow
The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco
A Random Photo
