Stepping in a New River

My lack of posts of late is despicable. Somebody should have yelled at me, but I won't blame you.

Several developments of late: I've begun studying for the LSAT(-an). Again.

Once back in the summer and fall of 2006, I pretended to study enough and horribly underestimated it's difficulty. Granted, I also was really unsure about what to do with my life, had fallen asleep every time I sat in on county criminal court, had 3 roommates who played Madden football 6 hours a day, and it was football season at Notre Dame. Many excuses, and all of them amount to a great big bagel when your sitting in a stadium sized classroom with 500 of your peers who seem to be flipping pages much faster than you, and you start Christmas treeing the answer sheet when you have 2 minutes left but have given up a long time ago.

I made the mistake, and you might say, of not canceling that score. At the time my sub-conscious wanted to prevent me from having any chance to get into law school, so I decided to keep it. I think I also wanted to punish myself for the embarrassment warranted when you commit to something and then bullshit and procrastinate for a few months until you wake up in the middle of the night with rapid heartbeat.

Less than a year later, I made the best, and most unlikely, decision for my future that I could have ever considered.

I came to California.

I loosened up. Went to an acting studio. Got healthy. Lost weight. Engaged my mind. Did Yoga. Made new friends. Found my girl. Lived differently. Grew personally and became more flexible. And best of all, I started to care again.

Oh, I kept drinking, but eventually I chose to avert hangovers. I found other outlets for my energy. And even now, I still don't know exactly what I'll do with my life.

But I found a direction, or maybe more specifically, a collection of philosophy and experiences that I was both very lucky to seek and encounter so quickly, and that I most likely would have never found in law school, or many other places in the US that I might have chosen if I didn't harbor a deep, albeit naive, dream of making it as a Hollywood screenwriter.

So I find myself trying to ford the LSAT river yet again. But this time it feels very different, and I'm a transformed pilgrim.

Annoyances, and A Note of Support for Smart Healthcare

In my recent procrastinations, I've been busy with trying to expand my mind in (hopefully) fruitful ways. Listening to the In Defense of Food audio book until its used book price on Amazon comes down; circularly soul-searching about the future and what career/educational direction to take (which I'm hoping to soon emerge from with a decision); reading some Chomsky; and opening far too many tabs for one sitting on Firefox. I digress.

The other day I reluctantly stopped at Whole Foods for a quick pick up and saw a sign that disproportionately pissed me off. "Come visit us on our Facebook Fan Page."

Wow, I thought. Now there is a way that giant corporations can invite us to do their own advertising for them, by becoming a fan and showing our patronage to all of our "friends," while at the same time doing what Stewie from Family Guy once deemed as, "displaying the creative work of others to personally express myself."

My contempt for how the glutton of marketing in our society makes sheep out of the American consumer -- often unwittingly -- has grown for a number of years. I have phased out most any piece of clothing I have that displays the company or institution's name, and the only shirt that I've bought with writing on it in the past couple years is a used yellow Schlitz Beer T-shirt. Clothing is an area that I shouldn't start talking about, but in short I think the less of it I own and the less I buy from any manufacturer that has labor practices that attempt to stay above the region's laws to the lowest degree possible - as most do - the better.

Before this rant becomes any less organized, let me be coherent for a few sentences on the national health debate. Nurses are marching on Washington and getting arresting during hearing in an attempt to get the attention of senators beholden to their insurance industry lobbyists and campaign contributors.

Bill Moyer's interviews a nurse with the right idea. Single-payer health insurance is a combination of ideas from the right and the left, and answers concerns that each side has. It's a system where private companies administer the care, so no horror stories of poorly state controlled hospitals that take weeks to deliver on surgery, etc (which in countries with nationalized health care like Canada, France, and even Cuba, never happens). The only thing that gets nationalized? THE BILL. Not only does this simply the present and future catastrophes that will no doubt occur if we extend this same system, but it will reduce the amount that people will have to pay in the long run, and protect those who really need the care and can't help it. If we can dump trillions of dollars into failing banks, we should at least be able to give essential care to those who really need it -- and this solution will not change who is giving the medical care.

What America is this?

I've been thoroughly confused over the past few years, so much so that it's hard to reconcile all of the common assumptions and belief about American identity and heroism that I had absorbed all through growing up. We get imagery pumped into us every day through television (woefully ignorant and advertising-beholden advertising pundits), the internet, and even conversation and drive home the ideas of the American ideal, and ridicule, decry, or ignore crucial actions and facts that go against it.

Beyond the fact that listening to a television newscaster about health care, whose advertising is bought by pharmaceutical companies; or about politics, whose bosses have investments tied up in the status quo they have so profited from and have lobbyists to ensure passage of favorable legislation on Capitol Hill; or the financial industry, when they, their peers, or bosses jump back and forth between news and Wall Street and reap the benefits of giving "expert advice" to the masses as a distraction while their money is being swept away in back room inside trading?

This issue isn't about Foxnews, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, etc., though they all have taken a part. This shouldn't be a fight about one side being for Democrats or Republicans, Liberals, or Conservatives, and because "I don't like" or "He said what" or somebody's a Communist. That ship has sailed, and only leads to a bunch of hens clucking at each other.

Question: Why can't each of us look at what is really in our best interest as Americans?

Answer: Because we have so much bad information being shoved in our faces while just trying to relax after a long day at work, and they don't have time to think about what's being done behind the scenes by politicians they elected because he or she seemed to at least be more trustworthy than the other person. We can't fathom all the negative things being done -- and have been done -- in the name of our country, and maybe don't even want to know about all of it.

I don't foresee everyone getting along on all the issues -- it's an impossibility. But certain things, like people being in favor of issues against their own interests and the common interest of the rest of the nation, need to be addressed (perhaps because they are most easily understood).

Number one: realize that the images you see and news you hear are both put in front of you due to systems seeking profit and influence on your opinion. So everything said, done, and shown - even things that might make you say "hey, he looks like he must be a good guy, different, and looking out for my best interests" - are typically done to achieve this end. That doesn't mean that these individuals retreat into their evil lair's and stroke a cat while they laugh at others' demise. They may believe completely in what they are doing, and that it is right and just. For that matter, so did Judas.

Number two: listen, but don't be convinced easily. Choose your opinions with some consideration, and most importantly, compassion. The bottom line: think for yourself. And that DOESN'T mean listen to a fat and/or bald guy, or attractive woman in her thirties, who acts like/says that they think for themselves. Since, as we know from above, of course they'd say that. And they'd compliment you on the same.

Lastly, please, please, please, don't forget that you can get angry and be civilized at the same time. Of course, power in numbers can possibly make your voice better heard. But throughout the whole endeavor of speaking out for injustice and those who are being mistreated, don't forget to be humble, and to listen. Not only will you gain much by learning how the other side feels, it will also strengthen, if not your argument, then the argument for a better solution.

Critical judgment.
Humility.
Compassion.
Willingness to take action.

With all this in mind, revolution can and should be a positive word for long-overdue change.

Buy Local

I've been engrossed in reading about health and sustainability as of the past several days, which will be a subject frequently commented on in upcoming posts. The more I read, the more it ties into thoughts on political, social, and economic history, mistakes, successes, and opportunity. Americans are facing many problems that aren't so new but get increasingly worse, while the developing world could only wish they could face similar problems with the relative comfort that we enjoy in a society mostly without violence, fear of not being able to make the next meal, or get necessary care and medicine for an ailing loved one or child.

You can't attack the broad issues all at once, so let's pick a bunch of little ones to gain momentum. Start supporting your local economies again. Forego chains and go back to the locally owned shop or restaurant. Keep money circulating and accumulating within your community, and as this notion spreads throughout a small town or rural village and everyone takes part, we won't need to worry about the worldwide corporations following tortuous distribution chains and come in to undersell local businesses. Start seeing your neighbor as a necessary ally and build relationships instead of equating the cheapest product or meal as the best choice regardless of how it got on your plate or into your shopping bag.

With the exposure of why we shouldn't trust big business and big financial institutions, the time is ripe to gain independence from them while the wool has been removed from our eyes.

And if your interested in what I've been reading, check out everything Michael Pollan has to say about food, health, and the social and moral implications of bad agribusiness practices, as well as Greg Horn's comprehensive Living Green: A Practical Guide to Sustainability.

Also, Pollan has a great TED talk which can be viewed here.

Renaming the Recession

In tearing through research on different graduate programs, I came across this passage about the dire state of the academic job market: "So it's not simply "the economy" that has given us a job crisis, as if the economy were our inexorable and monolithic fate; it's a host of social, political, and cultural forces, values, and constituencies that can be acted upon, that can be influenced and modified." (Nelson & Watt, Academic Keywords, 1999)
It struck me how thoroughly relevant this idea is to this long, unpunished series of supremely selfish and horrible choices that resulted in a worldwide meltdown which we call our current economic crisis.
We all accept the term "economic crisis" because we don't know much about it, except for that it's obvious and blaring consequences involve money: shriveled up retirement funds, wall street busting, repossessed homes, fallen financial giants (read: the dirty needle that infected the whole system), and inability to easily gain financing or find a job after getting pink slipped.
Yes, it involves money now. That money has mysteriously vanished, or in other cases, been given as government approved aid to financial institutions that are somehow legally protected from their gambling with others' chopped up investments because they know that they can push their political buddies to make the uninformed masses pay for it and blame themselves.
Regardless of your affiliation, be it R or D, Liberal or Conservative, I really don't care. Can we just come to agree on some basic facts? This should not be considered a problem caused by a faceless force. Our problems today are because of decades of mismanagement by both sides of the party line (of which there is no economic distinction between those who were making the decisions). No top-level person involved in the financial meltdown that occurred, publicly or privately employed, should be spared from forced reparations. Not like this kind of behavior is unprecedented, but how long must it go before some kind of justice is served when the general public gets screwed because of corporate shrewdness and greed? When can we stop arguing against or in defense of political leaders because we like or dislike their public persona, and start educating ourselves for collective action as a people?

It takes four and a half hours to travel 3,000 miles. I guess I'm still getting used to the 1970s. I ate a Pat's cheese steak at 8:30 AM eastern tie after landing in Philly, which also equates to 5:30 AM according to my body's west coast chronology. My intestines are still paying the price.

I've been reading a lot of Jiddu Krishnamurti lately, an 20th century philosopher that blows my mind. Trying to single out one quote is futile. Of the several topics that hit home with me, he speaks of how one can be addicted to knowledge, and in this addiction a person can become deadened to their experience and, in the human need to qualify and identify with traditions and ways of thought, avoid what is unknown. To my understanding, the unknown can only be reached through risk and action. Intention or latent ability cannot jump off the cliff to see how the water feels below.

Every time I come home I wait for something profound to happen or reveal itself to me. I think lately the problem has been that I've left my eyes closed to experience, thinking and trying to take connections too much. Profundity doesn't linger, as it shouldn't - there are more surprises ahead. Waiting for it is a blindfold, even if you often only catch it as it speeds past.

Mama, Mama I'm comin' home

Tomorrow night I’ll take a flight back home to where I spent my youth. It’s a town that calls itself a city due to its bloated population in the 1940s or earlier when it applied for a city charter. It only makes the mainstream news for some quirky oddity or for some things more radical that have smeared its name in the polarizing acts of its mayor, who, seeking political notoriety, and despite decades of decline caused by everything from the post-industrial exodus of jobs to bad luck and extremely poor management and foresight, chose to blame illegal immigrants for causing all of the local issues of lack of funding, lack of jobs, an incapability to retain most of it’s college educated youth, crime, and drug traffic (which, I might add, had been in existence there since the 70’s at least).

I knew since I was young I couldn’t stay there. Streets I roamed as a kid into the late hours of the night are now places where, partly due to fear mongering, I need to keep scanning with a watchful eye. It’s unfortunate, but change is always inevitable. I grew up among people who thought that things in my town shouldn’t have changed since mid century, and indeed many things didn’t – I cherish many of them. The joke was that our town was a great place to be when the world came to an end, since everything always arrived or happened there twenty-thirty years late.

Arriving into the time warp is evident even on the drive into town on 2 lane “highways,” where the absence of Los Angeles freeways does nothing short of delight my eyes. I’m lucky enough to go to visit a dozen or two older relatives, many now octogenarians and children of the Depression era. My grandmother is 80, and still cooks twice a week for family dinners. In a rare act among other locals her age, she recently took up Tai Chi. Some things do change.

She’ll sit us down and have to be told that we can get our own drinks, that she needn’t need to serve us. The kitchen is always warm, the warmth that comes from over 4 decades of use and bringing family together around her table. Time and again I’ll sneak back to where she keeps the family photo albums to hear stories about people I can barely remember, and some that I’m not able to stop inquiring about.

Her husband of 50 years died 6 years ago this Sunday. Besides being the man who gave the inspiration for the name of this blog, he was one of my biggest role models. Much as he has become mythologized in my mind over the past 6 years, coming to see his humanity has brought me to understand and appreciate his example even more. Abandoned by his parents, raised by his immigrant grandparents, working from the bottom to VP of his company. The night before he died, he asked my great uncle -- his brother-in-law – what he thought about a person’s chances in the afterlife. When he took his second heart attack, we shook hands with those who dropped by the funeral home to offer their condolences through a line down the block for two and a half hours straight. I’m inclined to think that what caused that was quite a special, genuine magnanimity, and a selflessness that he shared with my grandmother and their children, as well as many of those I’m lucky to call family.

The town I grew up in is now more a narrative about the past, but I'll visit what's left, and everyone who remembers it. "And so it goes, and so it goes, and as the Book says, 'We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us.'"