Recycling a Call to Action

Posted on 4 October 2015 by Carol

A few nights ago, my mother, my friend Shelley Feldman, and I went to a concert entitled “Women of Woodstock”.  I imagined beforehand that the songs would be a nostalgia trip, prompting in me, perhaps the urge to sing along.  I did not imagine that the concert would fill me with the passion and tenderness that marked the Woodstock era.*  The four singers and three instrumentalists beautifully recaptured the emotions of the time; they sang songs that varied from the loud insistence of a Janis Joplin style, demanding political action, to the soft love songs that epitomized our Utopian belief in human goodness, in the capacity of human beings to love each other and live in harmony.

‘Rise, Ye Oldsters!’ (below)was written some years back, perhaps a decade ago when I feared GW Bush’s re-election, a fear that proved justified.  It recognizes the need to stand up and be heard.  But it fails to capture the full range of what ‘the 60s generation’ sought.  Besides our political and anti-war activism, we had Utopian longings.  We imagined, and experimented to bring about, a world in which justice prevailed, in which people were treated equally and well, in which human diversity was acceptable, even sought. 

I just read a paper by Marshall W. Murphree in which he roughly quotes G.K. Chesterton: “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”  This brought to mind my feeling about many purportedly collaborative approaches to international development:  rather than fail at implementing a difficult approach, the name was kept but the genuine effort was abandoned.  It seems that the 1960s goals have likewise been abandoned, in large part surely due to the difficulty of implementing them.  We often acknowledge that anything worth doing requires effort, in this case, sustained effort.  We globally have given up, we have been faint of heart.  It’s truly time for the youth (and oldsters like me) to raise our voices, and loudly demand a better world.  It will not happen without such demands.

Rise, Ye Oldsters!

An Australian television show brought it all back. In 1972, a photograph that captured the horror of the Vietnam war was widely circulated. It was a little girl, running naked down a road, with arms outstretched, screaming in pain. She had been hit by American napalm a few moments earlier. The TV program featured the girl, now a woman, and documented her life since.

For me, the images brought back vividly the passion and anger of my generation as we saw our government making mistakes that meant death and destruction in another part of the world. In the 1960’s and early 1970’s young people ranted and raved, wrote letters and articles, demonstrated, had sit-ins, and discussed these abuses publicly and privately. And finally, in 1975, the US withdrew from Vietnam.

From my point of view—nearly 40 years later—the same mistakes are being made again, or at least mistakes with similar effects on the ground. People are suffering and dying, their homes and infrastructure are being destroyed because of American bombs, weaponry, funding and policies.

Yet, the youth are silent. Almost everyone is silent. And those who do speak out, complain more about the expense than the death and destruction.

Events suggest that we are needed again. It is time for the ‘60s generation’—now in our 60s—to make our voices heard again. Most of us are still capable of ranting and raving, of writing letters and articles, of demonstrating and holding sit-ins. We can still discuss these issues publicly and privately—and loudly!

An election is upon us, an election that can make a difference if we elect the right people. It is time for us to do a repeat performance. Let’s do it!

Again, in 2015, an election is upon us.  This time, if it’s possible, the views expressed by the Republican candidates are even more anti-humanity than those of George W. Bush and his advisors.  The hopes and imaginings of the 1960s appear to be fading even further into the background, as those of us now in our 70s move out of the ‘command generation’ even more concretely.  There are those, like Bernie Sanders, who speak up for the kind of world we imagined so long ago.  I hope that his growing popularity represents an openness in the American citizenry to such humanistic values, that there might grow a movement of people who want and demand (and create) a world of peace and fairness and natural beauty.  If we do not, we Americans will not suffer alone; the whole world will suffer with us.  We humans are united on one small globe on which the US has inordinate power and influence, for good or ill.  Only we can make certain it is for good. 

 

*The Woodstock concert itself took place on 17 August 1969.

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American Republican Politics – Scary

Posted on 20 September 2015 by Carol

A few nights ago, I forced myself to listen to the two Republican debates on television.  The first debate consisted of the four least popular candidates, as determined by polls; and the second displayed the 11 most popular.  Having 15 candidates for one party’s nomination, in the US, is in itself noteworthy.  It certainly hasn’t happened in my lifetime (since  1945).  I expected to be distressed by the tenor and contents of the debates, and my expectations were not disabused.  However, my anticipation was nowhere near as frightening as the reality.

Every last one of these candidates expressed his (and [the lone] her) desire to de-fund Planned Parenthood.  They seemed, without exception, to believe that Planned Parenthood obtained living babies and watched for them to die so they could ‘harvest their organs’ for subsequent sale.  I do believe that Planned Parenthood personnel, in cases where dying children and fetuses have usable organs, would hope and try to use those organs for the good of other children who need them.  This is a logical and humanitarian thing to do.  I have been listed as an organ donor myself for decades (though probably my organs are a bit too old these days…).  Who would truly want a viable organ to be wasted when some child in need could benefit? 

I simply do not believe Carly Fiorina’s impassioned declaration of having seen a video of a living baby kicking on a bed in a clinic, with Planned Parenthood personnel coldly discussing harvesting its organs.  I do remember having seen a video of Planned Parenthood personnel sitting in a pub or coffee shop, discussing the upcoming death of a fetus or baby and their intention to act quickly to save those organs for subsequent use.  The wording used by the particular person was insensitive; I grant that.  But one common mechanism—particularly when relaxing with friends—for dealing with the necessity to perform difficult operations / procedures is to protect oneself by flippancy and humour.  Medical students are famous for misbehaviour when dealing with corpses in their anatomy classes—we all recognize it as a coping mechanism.  And I suspect the insensitivity expressed by the Planned Parenthood worker was just that.  In any event, turning one interchange of that sort into an across-the-board condemnation of a whole national institution that has done countless good deeds for young women (and men) is patently ridiculous.  Yet every single Republican candidate believed Fiorina’s image (or pretended to), and supported the idea of de-funding Planned Parenthood (which has now happened in the House; whether it will pass the Senate remains unknown).

This is frightening enough for American women, many of whom—particularly those in financial straits—have depended on Planned Parenthood to supply health care and birth control. But even more frightening to me is the near unanimity with which these august personages expressed their readiness to invade other countries, to ‘stop talking and start acting’ on the international stage.  Most wanted to tear up the agreement with Iran; most wanted to send troops into the Middle East; all wanted to show strength, often by acting apparently unilaterally and pre-emptively.  Oddly, Rand Paul, a Libertarian and a bit of a nut case in his own right, was the voice of reason on international affairs.  They also want to build a fence between the US and Mexico.  One, Ben Carson (the popular black physician, at the time of the debate No. 2 in the polls of Republican candidates), wants to make it double, with a highway running between, from one side of the country to the other!  They all want to repeal Obama Care, which has made health care available for so many who did not have it previously—including my own son and daughter in law!

A perhaps more fundamental worry that was reinforced by these debates is the lack of respect these candidates have for the truth.  Carly Fiorina’s attacks on Planned Parenthood were completely false (Since the debate, she now holds the No. 2 Republican spot in the polls); Jeb Bush spoke of how his brother had ‘kept America safe’ (a statement that is particularly jarring given that 9/11 happened on his watch and he got us embroiled in disastrous and unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among many other harmful and incompetent  actions).  Trump linked vaccination to autism, reinforcing the strange movement to avoid vaccinations [The movers and shakers in the anti-vaccination group obviously weren’t around when I was a child: children died of whooping cough, measles, diptheria, and friends at school were paralyzed by polio!  I myself became dangerously ill with measles, prior to the availability of a vaccine; and I watched helplessly as 9 children died in the village of Long Segar, East Kalimantan in October 1979, where vaccines were not available].  The debates were full of patent falsehoods.  The environment was notable by its absence as an issue. Acceptance of the neo-liberal economists’ doctrine (low taxes = good business), so obviously flawed if one pays any attention to the changes in policies as they relate to economic recoveries, was universal. 

Most of these candidates are extraordinarily worrying:  Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson all show obvious lack of common sense and express views that would endanger the world and the country.  Lindsay Graham seems intent on believing that ISIS is literally on our doorstep, ready to invade.  Marco Rubio speaks his dangerous views unusually articulately. Jeb Bush, John Kasich, George Pataki, and Rand Paul would seem to be among the lesser evils—though they too entered the competition to appear as right-wing as they possibly could. At least the first three of these appear closer to the ‘middle of the road’ than most others. Donald Trump, the frontrunner, though obnoxiously bombastic, seemed slightly less out of touch with reality than the rest (to my surprise)—though his ability to fund his campaign on his own and to whatever extent necessary makes his candidacy (and his popularity) scary as well.  It’s a kind of absolute power.

I console myself, not entirely successfully, with these hopes: 

– that these views are not as popular with the electorate as with those running for office.  These 15 seemed intent on out-doing each other in their Tea Party leanings.  Perhaps they will self-destruct, and some reasonable Republican candidate will emerge.

– that the US political system is unwieldy enough to prevent most actors, if elected, from accomplishing all that they set out to do (as we’ve seen, sadly, with many of Obama’s efforts).  The balance of power has some advantages when nut cases are elected.

Two issues come to my mind that one would think/hope might enter the candidates’ minds.  The first is that loving and being proud of America does not necessitate hating (or even being unaware of) the rest of the world.  These candidates surely love their families, as well as their country.  Can they not see that loving the Earth and the people who inhabit it is as consistent as simultaneously loving their family and their nation?  Why do they put this firm conceptual boundary around this country?  Do they not see how interconnected the world has become, that we really do have to manage to get along?

The second is the simple fact that actions have consequences.  Tearing up the Iran nuclear agreement will encourage Iran to go nuclear and it will necessitate continuing sanctions that are adverse for the people (women, the old, the sick, the children, even the men!) of Iran.  We know what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan after we sent troops there—surely we cannot escape some responsibility (though not all) for the mess that exists in the Middle East these days—and now in Europe too!  Will sending our youth into battle again really help, or simply exacerbate the conflicts—spiraling up perhaps to a World War III?  Fencing off Mexico, even if it could be successfully accomplished, would stop or hinder the flow of workers who currently fill labour needs in this country.  My son and his wife own a small business in Oregon.  They struggle mightily to get reliable American workers (their legal immigrant workers are the most hardworking and dependable)—representative of a wider and longstanding trend: This country was built by immigrants, as people often forget.

The format for the debates is better, I think, than it has been previously, as it provides the candidates with a clear opportunity to express and exchange their views.  Having four candidates allowed for more indepth discussion than was possible with eleven. I anticipate that the Democratic debates, with fewer candidates, will be more interesting and also, given my own views, much more encouraging.  Let’s hope so!

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‘Open Access’– a Quagmire or a Panacea?

Posted on 15 September 2015 by Carol

Having lived in the ‘Developing world’ or the global ‘South’ for about half of my life, I am very aware of the paucity of research materials available to would-be researchers there.  I have welcomed the idea of ‘open access’ publishing with great enthusiasm from my first introduction to the idea.  That enthusiasm grew further when I returned to the US in 2009, and found myself in the incredibly luxurious position of having access to Cornell University’s library system.  Having such access means that with a few strokes on the keyboard of my computer, I can instantly download decades of relevant journal articles.  I can go to any of the more than 20 libraries on campus and check out books for up to a year at a time; and I can order books, typically delivered in a few days, from libraries all over the world, for shorter periods.  Many of my colleagues and almost all of the students take this access for granted; they’ve either always had it or have had it for long enough to have forgotten what academic life is like without it. I have not.

In Bogor, Indonesia, where I lived for more than a dozen years, I had access to the tiny library of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR, for whom I worked).  It was focused on global forestry issues (somewhat less central for an anthropologist); and toward the end of my stay there, I had access to a small number of current electronic sources.  This access was still far better than the typical Indonesian researcher.  There has not been a significant library tradition in the country; and correspondingly there are few libraries.  Those institutions that do have a library have been (in some cases, until recently) poorly staffed with people who have had no library training and few books to manage.  Budgets for library acquisitions are practically non-existent, and journal subscriptions similarly.  Finding a relevant book or obtaining a reprint has been a significant and unexpected bonus.  Similar conditions apply in many countries (see Edmonds 2014, for some comparative access statistics).

The disadvantages rendered by this state of affairs for Third World researchers are difficult to exaggerate.  In planning research, the extant research on similar topics remains unknown; when analyzing findings, one cannot compare what one is finding with what others have found; when writing up and trying to publish one’s analyses, one is criticized for not having cited relevant literature.  The lack of access to relevant literature functions to exacerbate the gap between research in the ‘West/North’ and that in the ‘South’.

So.  With this background, I have welcomed the idea of open access more perhaps than most people.  I am now in the midst of sorting out what it actually means in practice, and I thought my experience might be of broader interest.  My colleagues, Bimbika Basnett, Marlene Elias, and I have submitted a book on gender and forestry (Gender and Forestry:  Climate Change, Tenure, Value Chains, and Emerging Issues), Volume I, to the publisher Earthscan/Routledge.  Although most of the book is new material, five of the 18 chapters have been previously published in journals.  We arranged with Earthscan to print 500 extra copies of the book, for free distribution in developing countries (funded by CIFOR); and we negotiated the right to post the book on CIFOR’s website nine months after the book is published—to give Earthscan some time to sell it beforehand.  Earthscan made it very clear that we would need explicit permission to reprint and publish the five articles on line eventually.

We first obtained permission from the authors of these five articles; and then sent messages, outlining these details, to the editors of the journals asking permission to reprint.  In one case, we were sent on to the publisher (Taylor & Francis).  The editors of the other four articles responded positively; Taylor & Francis requested a fee of nearly 600 British pounds for the one article.  Even they, though, were willing for us to use the article in book form; they balked at the Open Access requirement.  As the correspondence continued, we gradually realized that at least one of the other four editors had not noticed the Open Access element in our initial letter.  I initiated further communication with this editor—from whose journal we hoped to reprint two articles.  He had not in fact realized we were talking about Open Access; and only after considerable discussion did we obtain his agreement (despite his firm personal commitment to the idea of Open Access).  The journal’s need for ongoing income was one complicating factor, although this journal was not designed as a money-making proposition—they still needed operating funds.  Another issue was that Earthscan would be making money that should by rights have gone to the original publisher.  At this point we await further news from the remaining two editors/publishers.

Meanwhile, I was contacted by Elsevier, which is the publisher of World Development, in which I have a recent article.  They invited me to pay for Open Access for this (new) article.  CIFOR had decided a couple of years ago that researchers should be moving toward Open Access for all their publications.  The decision was made by my institution to pay for Open Access in this case.  The cost:  an exorbitant US$1800.  In the course my discussions with the not-for-profit journal editor mentioned earlier, I learned that he had agreed to publish in Open Access an entire special issue of his journal for $200, though the usual fee from his publishing company was $1000 per article.  There is definitely little clarity in this evolving world of Open Access.

Prior to getting totally embroiled in this complicated situation, I had personally contemplated its possibilities repeatedly because I participate in ResearchGate and Academia.edu—two repositories for people’s own publications, which are then accessible to other participants.  In posting a paper, I was rarely certain whether I was in fact allowed by the publishers to do so.  In most cases, I took the risk and posted my own work, hoping that if indeed I was not supposed to, the relevant ‘publication police’ would not notice. 

Soon I will be further embroiled.  We plan to produce a second volume on gender and forestry, to be called The Earthscan Reader on Gender and Forestry.  We have imagined (and still plan to try) reprinting ‘classics’ in the field, and distributing in the same way as we planned for the current Volume I, outlined above.  Our dilemma:  How do we anticipate how much each chapter will cost us, for budgeting purposes?  And can we persuade publishers to let us distribute freely or for minimal sums?

The costs of Open Access, at least many of those passed on to authors, editors, and institutions, can obviously be prohibitive for developing country scientists, researchers and institutions.  I agree with Edwards (2014) who urges the development of a ‘Do it Yourself’ (DIY) model to move Open Access forward.  Another useful idea Edwards proposes is the development among scholars of a ‘gift culture’, with free sharing of our ideas, plans/designs, research, and findings.  She argues persuasively that there is in fact a long history of such traditions among scholars, on which we could and should build. We really need to be figuring out ways to pay for the true costs of actual publication of these materials, while minimizing adverse impacts in a world where financial and informational resources are so inequitably distributed.  Charging more for those who have more is one partial solution; persuading governments and donors to pay a larger share is another.  Perhaps publishers could agree on a low upward limit for such charges; or seek some other avenue for funding publications than through (often exorbitant) page charges or charging for Open Access.  Perhaps the Open Library of Humanities (https://www.openlibhums.org/), of which Edwards write, may be a partial solution.  I, for one, will be very grateful if Open Access becomes the norm.

 

EDWARDS, C. 2014. How can Existing Open Access Models Work for the Humanities and Social Science Research? Insights 27:17-24.

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On ‘The Invention of Wings’

Posted on 11 July 2015 by Carol

I had no idea what I was getting in for when I innocently picked up The Invention of Wings (2014, Penguin Books, New York) in an airport bookstore. I needed something to entertain me on a couple more flights.  I’d just finished a rather under-whelming anthology of mysteries.  As I quickly scanned the bookshelves in an airport store, I looked briefly and unsuccessfully for  a John Irving novel that had been recommended.  When I saw a book by Sue Monk Kidd, the author of The secret Life of Bees (which I vaguely remembered reading and enjoying), I opted to try this newer one. 

But this story is far heavier than The Secret Life of Bees, partly because it includes considerable faithfulness to actual events.  Sue Monk Kidd takes her inspiration from the lives of Sarah and Angelina Grimke, two sisters from Charleston, South Carolina, who are best known for their involvement in the abolition and feminism movements of the mid 1800s in the US. Kidd adds a mostly fictional slave girl who is about the same age as Sarah and who is given to Sarah for her 11th birthday.  The book is divided into six, two to three year segments, beginning in 1803, when the girls are children, and ending in 1838, when they are middle aged.  It alternates between portrayals of events (many real) from the perspective of the elite southerner, Sarah, and mostly imagined ones in the life of her slave, Hetty.

Kidd’s character development is exquisite, bringing the reader fully into the lives of these two women—so fully that I found myself in tears repeatedly.  She also brings several second-rung characters fully to life (Sarah’s sister, ‘Nina’, Hetty’s mulatto mother, Charlotte, and others).  The device of separating the flow into six distinct segments allows the story on the one hand to portray a sense of history, as broader events in American society unfold; and on the other, to take the reader along the progression of these women’s lives.  Stories told by Hetty’s mother, Charlotte, about her own mother and her Fon tribal background, even bring the reader back into their past.  Kidd weaves a complex story that is sufficiently gripping that I read it from one day to the next.

As I child, I was horrified by slavery (like the protagonists in this book), and I remember learning about and admiring the anti-slavery book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Sojourner Truth’s rousing refrain “Ain’t I a woman?”.  I grew to adulthood in the 1960s when we were confronted (as we are again today) with the racial inequities that continue to plague our society (not to mention the gender inequities that came again to the fore in the 1970s).  I remember on my first trip to Zimbabwe in 2002, seeing a black woman picking cotton in a cotton field with a turban wrapped around her hair. The image I’d learned in my childhood of slavery was of just such a woman.  I didn’t know if she picked her own cotton or that of someone else, but the image, and the sorrow and pain that went with it, was powerful enough to move me to tears.  I couldn’t watch.

And that is how powerful Kidd’s book is, as well.  She brings it all to life, from the guilt and internal conflict that thinking southerners felt to the cruelty of those who thought only of their trade and their comfortable way of life to the pains the slaves suffered whether by having a child or spouse sold out of their lives or being beaten or tortured for minor (or major) failings.  One passage sticks in mind: Hetty says to Sarah “My body might be a slave, but not my mind.  For you, it’s the other way round.” 

The way that concerns about slavery and women’s rights came together was never so clear in my mind.  The women who began speaking out publicly (against ideas of proper decorum) were responding to their own consciences, which forced them to speak up and speak out against slavery.  But their behaviour was maligned, they were treated as pariahs, and they became aware of how their own voices and thoughts, even as white women, were muted.  They realized that they too were shackled.  Similarly today, people who try to address ethnic and gender inequities together are criticized for diluting the efforts to right ethnic injustices.  In the Grimke’s day, even male abolitionists maligned them, saying the sisters’ efforts to link slaves’ and women’s rights were divisive, splitting the country when slavery was ‘the real problem’—forgetting perhaps that half the slaves were women.

These issues are beautifully and powerfully captured in this book. It’s a novel, but its spirit rings true.

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Anticipating a Visit from the Elders

Posted on 10 June 2015 by Carol

The elders, three of them, arrive in a few hours.  They include my 91 year old mother and her two friends from the UK, one 90 years old, the other 80.  As I approach 70 myself, I am struck by the irony of how times have changed.  My whole life—on the fairly rare occasions when the topic of aging has passed through my mind—I’ve considered 70 to be pretty old.  I imagined I’d be slowing down substantially, perhaps enjoying a peaceful old age, one of quiet contemplation, perhaps doing some writing based on my long life’s experience.  I imagined that I might be the object of my children’s concern, as my body and perhaps my mind deteriorated, that I would be the recipient of some care, though of course I hoped not much would be needed.  Instead, I have benefited from the longer lifespan of those in the western world; I am comparatively active and healthy.  I’ll be the youngest and the healthiest among the five of us who will be in my home over the next week. 

Children and grandchildren always remain in our minds, occasionally (in my case) needing attention.  But I find my mind occupied increasingly with concerns about my mother.  How serious is her forgetfulness?  How dangerous is the fact that she continues to drive short distances (she’s had the good sense to curtail her own driving to daylight hours, good weather, and a 3 mile radius from home)? How worried need we be when she takes long trips on her own?  How can we balance her remaining good sense with her occasional peculiar decisions—granting her the human right to self-determination as long as we possibly can?  We cannot avoid the fact that as we age, others eventually may have to take over the responsibilities we have shouldered.  It’s a great relief that my son and his wife live with her, so we needn’t worry about unattended falls that might leave her to die alone and unable to rise on the floor or in the bathtub—the latter nearly happened to my similarly aged mother in law a few years ago.

As the elders’ arrival draws near, I go over my house with elder needs in mind:  I have bought the extra sanitary pads of various thicknesses, in case of need; added to the supply of toilet paper in each bathroom; opened the ‘Wet wipes’ (as these are both needed and difficult for extra-old hands to open) and taken the toothpaste tube out of its box (again, hard to open).  We have rearranged the bedrooms, adding comfortable chairs (into which the elders won’t sink so far they will not be able to rise) near the beds where they will sleep.  The beds are made with extra pillows in case these are needed for arranging elderly bodies in positions that minimize the pains of arthritis.  We learned that the two visitors are fairly fit, so we are putting them upstairs; my mother is not, so she is downstairs—where she won’t have to maneuver stairs.  Both beds have extra blankets, as the elderly get cold easier than the rest of us. 

In imagining what entertainment to provide we have had to consider the short distances my mother can travel on foot, and the importance of flat surfaces for her walker.  We opted out of a boat ride, as getting her in and out of the boat would be difficult.  The two visitors are good walkers, so we will have to figure an entertainment that allows both walking and sitting—like Cornell’s Sapsucker Woods, which has the Lab of Ornithology connected to it, with nice chairs and telescopes for looking at the birds, as well as beautiful walks.  My mother wants to visit Watkins Glen, at the southern end of Seneca Lake (the next Finger Lake to the West): a nice ride for the group.   Such a trip will obviate some of the dilemmas of walking long distances.

I have listened to the advice of my 72 year old cousin, who has lived here longer, and has also had more visits from her own aged mother when she was still alive.  Lime Hollow is a nearby nature center that is flat and that I have never visited (which will be nice for me as well).  And if it rains, we can go to the Johnson Art Museum at Cornell.  We wondered if we could get a temporary ‘Handicapped sticker’ for our car.  We remembered that on weekdays elders get into New York’s State Parks free.  We also remembered that old people need a lot of rest—so we don’t want to schedule all the time or too many things on one day.

As I consider all these things, in anticipation of this visit, I realize again that I am of an age where such care might have had to be taken with me; and that the time will come—sooner than I would wish—when I will need all these considerations as well.   I recognize that my stamina and physical strength are far less than they used to be; I bemoan my inability to remember names of things multiple times every day (though thankfully the names do still eventually come to mind); my reflexes are not as quick as they used to be, my balancing ability less reliable.  There’s no doubt all these things indicate my own aging process.  But I find myself surprised at my good health, what stamina and strength I do have—a pleasure and a relief. 

As I struggle sometimes with the need to care for others, I realize that these same considerations are going on all over the US (and other countries in which people live longer), as people remain healthy longer and/or simply live longer.  Old people are caring for still older people.  I’m grateful that I remain healthy and strong enough to do it;  that we, as a family, share what care my mother needs; that she remains so healthy and active; and that I am blessed with her continued living presence on earth.

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A Prisoner’s Memory Strikes a Chord

Posted on 18 January 2015 by Carol

“It struck me that day that kayaking on the lake was a good analogy for the way I wanted to live my life on this planet:  powered by my own efforts,

gliding in harmony with the forces of nature, moving through water without leaving a heavy footprint.”

These are the words of Gordon Grilz, a prisoner in Arizona; his words, published in the magazine, Orion:  Nature/Culture/Place, struck me as well.  I liked these ideas about how to live one’s life.  Orion had produced a special section devoted to creative works by prisoners, guest edited by Richard Shelton, a man who had directed writing workshops in prisons for four decades.  The works—poetry, prose, photography, paintings—are excellent, poignant reminders of the human capacity that is wasted in prison.

Several events have brought prisons to my mind recently, and I remembered my youthful fascination with them.  As a teenager, I was upset that the crime of rape was, at that time (1950s), punishable by life in prison or even death.  Although I abhorred the crime, I did not think it warranted such a severe punishment.  I went on to write a theme on capital punishment for a class at school.  I researched the differing practices in the (then-only-48) states,  emphasizing the various arguments against it: the possibility of error, the moral unacceptability of killing fellow human beings, the human capacity to repent and return to society a better person, the ethnically inequitable sentencing that occurred, and that still characterizes our system—conclusions I retain.

In college in the early 1960s, I began as a sociology major, a discipline in which crime garners significant attention.  I learned more about the inequities of our legal and welfare system, about conditions in slums and prisons, and differential economic opportunities for different races and genders.  I became more convinced that such inequities, such injustices, were a major factor in the incidence of crime.  I was even spurred to try to visit the main jail in Portland, Oregon; it was on Rocky Butte (also a favorite hill where young people went ‘to park’, ostensibly to view the city lights, but more often a euphemism for the physical sharing of affection).  However, I was turned away at the office; the guards said that seeing a young woman would be too disruptive for the prisoners, who were denied feminine companionship.

During most of my professional life, I have had no involvement with prisons, though I have sometimes had occasion to look at crime (prostitution in timber camps, illegal logging in national forests, the labeling of swidden agriculture as criminal by states—none of which led me to developing country jails).  But in the last few years, I’ve regained some of my interest in our own prisons.  My most consistent reminder has been my cousin, Dr. Nancy Koschmann, who goes every week to a prison in Auburn, NY.  She teaches yoga, meditation, and various courses on social science.  She is passionate about this work, struggling with unwilling and uncooperative prison officials, rigid and stultifying rules about what cannot be brought into the prison, the unpredictably of some key volunteers, no pay, and a shortage of books for the students.  She even sometimes has trouble getting into the prison after all these barriers have been overcome and after driving the 37 miles from Ithaca to Auburn to teach her classes.  There are periodic ‘shutdowns’, whenever any kind of trouble might be perceived to be in the works.  Yet her pride in her students’ accomplishments is palpable; and their appreciation is equally obvious (see for instance http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=23339034&msgid=135882&act=019E&c=1393191&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fcpep.cornell.edu%2Fgraduation-gallery%2F). 

At my mother’s church in Portland, Oregon, there is a group of women who teach prisoners how to knit, as a marketable skill to aid them in their transition to normal life.  The church also has an art gallery, well known for the quality of its exhibits, that recently pulled together images created in Oregon prisons.  Many were of beautiful butterflies, created using paints made by melting the colors off M&Ms!  The prisoners had also made note cards, which the women sold for them as a fund-raising activity—perhaps to buy real paint!

As I read the Orion collection, my thoughts turned to a broader scale.  I remember being horrified, as well as entertained by a pictorial atlas in the 1980s (perhaps called The State of the World?), which I cannot now find.  But there was a section on prisons in the US, which showed our populace as disproportionately incarcerated, compared to other countries.  This prompted me to check on the current state of affairs, and I was again horrified to read Paul Waldman’s 2013 opening statement in an article on prisons, in The American Prospect: “Why is the United States the world leader in sending citizens to prison?”  Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, he goes on to say,  “In 1992, there were 1.3 million inmates in America’s prisons and jails; by two decades later, a million more had been added”.

Thankfully, the historical horrors outlined in Michel Foucault’s 1977 book, Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, which compares recent approaches to those in previous centuries, no longer apply in these American jails.  But a different kind of horror, that of the total institution, as described by Erving Goffman (1968, Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates), has replaced the earlier emphasis on physical pain with a more psychic form.  The emphasis in these recent prisoners’ artistic efforts on natural phenomena suggest their longing for that connection, so absent in a prison.  The increase in incarceration in recent decades suggests that we have made little progress addressing the underlying causes of injustice and inhumanity that spawn crime, allow an unfair police and justice system to thrive, and emphasize punishment over rehabilitation.

As I write these words, I am also struck by my knowledge that many countries deal with these issues even worse than we do!  But my own passions are aroused, both because of the waste of human potential that prisons represent and by the injustice that we continue to allow to flourish in our society.  The talents of the men who wrote for Orion and of those who displayed their art in the Portland church is undeniable.  Can’t we come up with a better, more humane way to mete out real justice?

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On Pets and Morality

Posted on 29 December 2014 by Carol

When I returned to the US a few years back, I found myself very disapproving of the common American fixation on pets.  Many of my friends and relatives were spending vast amounts of money on their pets, even tens of thousands of dollars!  Even students, usually among America’s poor, expended great effort and expense in caring for their dogs and cats.  Having recently semi-retired from a job in which I regularly travelled to remote areas and saw the shortages that vast numbers of people endured, even expected, I was mildly horrified that such sums would be used for people’s pets.  As time has gone on, more and more evidence of the ubiquity of this kind of pet-mania has emerged.  I struggled a bit with my own disapproval, disapproval of people whose general morals I found appealing and compatible with my own.

Two things have helped me to moderate my negative attitude:  First, I got a cat myself.  My mother in law had just died, an event about which my husband and I were quite sad.  We were wandering around in an Agway Store in Ithaca, NY that very day, when I was drawn to a very cute little cat in a cage put there by the SPCA.  The cat was a small, muted calico/tabby Manx.  One touch of her amazingly soft fur and her sweet response to our attention captured my heart.  We decided that taking her home would be a soothing poultice for our saddened hearts.  I blogged about this at the time (and my amazement at how much it cost to bring her home!).  Since that time, my husband and I have become increasingly enamoured of this furry little creature, despite the fact that she sheds white hairs all over the house, requires cat-care when we take a trip, and generally complicates our lives.  We revel though in her attachments to us, chuckle at her loud purring, and take comfort from her presence generally.  This has given me more empathy for those who spend thousands of dollars on their animals.  I still imagine that I would not do so, should the need arise (though I’m not 100% positive I wouldn’t).

The second thought, justifying the American fixation of which I so generally disapprove, came to me recently:  I remembered that Americans are among those who consume more than other populations.  The statistics do not make us look good.  Scientific American reports:

“’A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil,’ reports the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, adding that the average American will drain as many resources as 35 natives of India and consume 53 times more goods and services than someone from China.”

I am quite sure that there is something in our genetic makeup that urges us to care for living things.  Almost all parents love their children; and many care deeply for their aging parents.  I reasoned then, if people are programmed to care, then if they lavish this love (and resources) on their pets, rather than on having more children, the overall impact on the Earth is probably less.  Perhaps I should be appreciating and encouraging this pattern rather than disapproving of it.

I’m still not entirely convinced by my own affections or logic….

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An Ode to Bathing

Posted on 15 November 2014 by Carol

I stood in the shower, the warm water cascading over my body.  Random thoughts came to mind: 

My mother, telling me, as a pre-teen, that one of the tests of ‘lying’ on psychological tests was ‘Do you like to bathe?”.  Those who answered ‘yes’ were suspect.  This reminded me of the added trouble of bathing during my childhood in Turkey.  My father had to build a fire in the bottom of the water tank to provide us with hot water; the tap water supply was so unreliable it had to be supplemented by a bathtub full of clean water—so before a bath could be taken, the ‘insurance water’ had to go down the drain.  Still, even at the time, I found this lying test to be based on the questionable assumption, that everyone, underneath, disliked bathing.

Then I remembered another bathing experience from the 1950s.  My family took a trip to the Turkish town of Bursa, where we stayed at a very elegant old hotel called the Cilek Palas (Strawberry Palace).  In the lower reaches of the hotel was a cavernous area, decorated with arches and blue tiles, and featuring a number of shallow pools of very hot water for communal bathing (decked out in swimming suits).  My parents told stories of how the Romans had used hot water in baths such as these as a therapy for troubled minds.  We all lolled about in these waters, gradually reaching amazing levels of relaxation.  But we stayed in so long that the culmination was utter exhaustion, so extreme we could hardly make it to dinner.

My mind turned then to a near-ecstatic experience of bathing, in Bali in 1979.  I’d gotten up at 4 AM, and accompanied a group of considerably younger college students to the volcano, Gunung Agung, which we all intended to climb.  As the morning progressed and we marched along a gravelly spine of lava, the sun rose higher in the sky and I began to fade.  The students urged me on, telling me to ‘do it for your daughter’ (an admonition I found rather odd in the circumstances, but still one that, with some cognitive manipulation, helped to strengthen my resolve).  I did in fact make it to the top with everyone else; but when I got back to my Balinese host’s home, I fainted from heat exhaustion or heat stroke or some such thing.  When I finally woke up, having been placed somehow on the bed, the maids had prepared a hot bath for me.   I cannot describe the heights of delicious, luxurious feeling.  I still remember vividly, 35 years later, the utter and ecstatic delight of dipping the warm water out of the plastic tub, and pouring it over my tired and aching body.  This was the first and only hot bath I had during my three month stay there (all water had to be heated, pan by pan, on the cook stove).

Then I remembered another, reverse experience of bathing in East Kalimantan, not long after this Balinese bath.  Our ‘bathtub’ was the Telen River, and we (small groups of 3-6 of my housemates and neighbours) would go down in flexible and informal shifts to a raft shared by several households, for our late afternoon bath.  There, we would come together, chatting, sharing the day’s events, pleasures, troubles.  It was a companionable time of the day (and for an anthropologist, particularly informative).  But there were physical pleasures as well.  Long Segar is located almost exactly on the equator, so the days are very hot.  Life is sustained by rice cultivation, a labor intensive crop that required us to be out in the sun all day, with only a short break at mid-day (the hottest part of the day).  So arriving hot and sweaty at the raft, in my sarong, I would first put my toes into the water, then gradually submerge my feet, my legs…then dropping off the raft, my whole body, eventually hanging on with only hands and head out of the water as it flowed around me.  Sometimes I would swim a bit in the fast current, but mostly I would just hang on and enjoy the coolness of the late afternoon and the water flowing over and around my body: what a delight.  

These pleasures stay with me, brought to mind this morning in my ordinary American shower.  Today the warm water struck my body gently, the warmth rolling over my back, each wave pleasing, more than pleasing.  I did a yoga roll-down to expose  each segment of my back to the force of the water droplets; and then I turned around, like a pig on a spit, allowing the water to strike me, front and back again.  I had set the timer controlling the blower that clears the steam from the bathroom; and I listened for it, realizing that I should get out after the allotted 10 minutes—saving water, saving electricity. But I resisted; the flowing water felt too good.  It soothes away troubles, focusing the mind on the here and now.  I resist taking a bath, yes; it takes time and trouble to take off and put on one’s clothes; but once in the shower, who could not find it pleasurable!?

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A Beautiful Moment

Posted on 9 November 2014 by Carol

O, look, a wedge of the sky, between the trees and the house next door is a lovely pink, just a few inches above the horizon. Will it spread and fill the sky?

Now I see it due East as well, peering through the trees, a lighter version of pink. As I write, the world lightens, the sun works its morning glory. Perhaps the white of the snow makes the light more obvious more quickly. The landscape brightens before my eyes. And the pink on the horizon expands as I watch. Suddenly I can see the birds in the bush before me, approaching our feeder.

Where the pink of the sky filled only 2 inches, it is now 6, and the color deepens directly before me…Will it be able to overcome the grey grey color of the sky, so full of clouds (dark turning to light, grey to pink)?

Now there are wisps of pink toward the top of the window (3 feet, not 6 inches!). The pink is taking over the sky. A quarter or a third of the sky is dotted with pink in some places, wisps in other places, pure pink in still other places. It’s so beautiful I braved the freezing cold and went outside to see a full scape of the beauty.  I’m thankful that I can type without looking. It is a symphony of color, changing moment by moment:  ‘sky blue pink’.

Now the pink has expanded, affecting the clouds out the window to my left and overhead, turning the grey to blue behind the pink. The color before me is becoming a bright yellow, as the sun comes closer to actually rising.

And now, there is a band of brightness, of yellow across the horizon, the pink almost gone from the sky above and the sky more blue than grey or pink. I move from the kitchen window to the dinette window to the porch, even to the walkway behind to get all the beautiful views of the color shifts.

It will soon be over, but what a gift, what a few moments of beauty to start the day, to remind me of the exquisite nature of the world in which I live. I can now make out the coloring and markings of the chickadees at the feeder; the magic is dissipating, but leaving a warmth and gratitude that fills me with pleasure and awe.

Aaah, the grey sky has turned a light blue, and only tiny wisps of pink remain. The day begins.

Our soft soft cat licks her paw, probably oblivious to such beauty.

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On Warriors, Men and Gender Studies

Posted on 30 October 2014 by Carol

The word ‘warrior’ isn’t one that has rolled off my tongue very many times, but in recent months, it seems to be appearing more and more in daily discourse.  I’ve heard about ‘Wounded Warriors’ (people who used to be called wounded soldiers).  Karl Marlantes writes of warriors in his two books on men coping with the experience of war (one fiction, one memoir).  I just picked up a book (not a new one, admittedly) at my cousin’s house called The Woman Warrior.*    We even have a yoga pose called ‘warrior’: taking that pose fills me with confidence and purpose, as I start my day.

Recently I’ve been thinking about the term as I consider the neglected male side of gender studies.  The existing material on men and gender is surprisingly negative;  specifically, it emphasizes men’s roles in HIV-AIDS transmission, domestic violence, and warfare.  This seems….not exactly a fair representation of men’s lives.  So what are the things we value about men?  No doubt they vary culturally, but for my own gender system, I’d include a whole range of traits, from physical strength, responsibility,  to a deep voice, an aesthetically appealing [ideal] physique, even a tendency for cleverness at fixing things.  Qualities we tend to value in men include protectiveness, capability, authority, an ability to lead (though these are surely valuable traits regardless of gender).  Some would also include teamwork—thinking of men’s fascination with and commitment to team sports, for instance—which implies both cooperation and competition.  In the 1970s, I studied sports in rural America; I found that the men of ‘Bushler Bay’ saw the school sports program as crucial in preparing young men for their future roles as providers, which in turn depended on their ability to compete in what these men saw as a dog-eat-dog economic context.

In 1974, Peggy Sanday wrote an article in which she divided human effort into production, reproduction and defense.  Academicians have written a lot about production in gender studies, somewhat less about reproduction (in the sense of reproduction of society, not just having babies), and almost nothing about defense.  I’m beginning to suspect that ‘defense is [or is seen to be] to males as reproduction is [or is seen to be] to females’.  Are young men raised specifically in ways that ensure society has the capacity to defend itself, just as women have been raised in ways that ensure the reproduction of society?  Are sexual violence and warfare simply defense ‘gone terribly wrong’?  The capacity to defend implies strength, which in turn allows a person to dominate physically.  Nor are men’s larger average size and women’s unique ability to bear children facts without relevance.

Thinking in terms of solutions, it seems unlikely that we’d want men (or women, for that matter) not to be strong.  Strength definitely has its good side:  from opening jars and rescuing cats in trees, to plowing, carrying harvests and offspring, even protecting women and children from violent men and other dangers.  Similarly, we’d not want to discourage a sense of responsibility, though I have long thought that we should abandon the idea that men should be solely responsible for a family’s well being (not a pan-human inclination anyway).  We have established clearly enough that both men and women tend to have responsibilities in production; and when men are busy with warfare (or away earning money), women take on the responsibility for production even where they are not normally so involved.

How do we create a planet in which the need for defense is minimized and men can focus their valued traits only on socially constructive activities?  We work toward allowing women to reduce their reproductive responsibilities so that they can either contribute more productively or self actualize (fewer children, better labor saving devices, higher education, etc.).  What are we doing to diminish the need for men to be able and willing to kill other people?  What are we doing to reduce our need for defense? 

And how do we integrate attention to men and their needs, preferences, and goals more effectively into research through a gender lens?  We say we’re trying to look at power dynamics between men and women; it’s widely agreed that we need to do that.  But we haven’t really figured out how.  I have been dissatisfied with studies of intra-household bargaining.  Though I recognize that it takes place and is worthy of study, there exist other forms of significant interaction between husbands and wives. Mulyoutami has written about a comparatively gender-equitable region (southern Sulawesi) where there is a great deal of cooperation between men and women in production and decision-making.  

As I read Mulyoutami’s work, I remembered the differentiation that some scholars make between ‘power over’ (the ability to dominate), ‘power to’ (the ability to accomplish something, capability) and ‘power with’ (the ability to cooperate toward shared goals).  If we take these differentiations seriously, then including cooperation in our investigations of ‘power dynamics’ makes sense.  Could an emphasis on cooperation—the ‘power to’ and the ‘power with’ rather than the ‘power over’—gently move us toward a reduced need for warriors who have to kill?  Even without such a shift, we need to recognize more systematically the many positive male traits as we better incorporate men into the gender equation.  Women are not always the victims, as we’ve come to realize; nor are men always the perpetrators.

 

*I doubt, from reading the jacket, that it’s about women soldiers—it’s billed as a memoir of a Chinese American woman and was published in 1975.

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