Weekend Update: Life on the Hill

At the beginning of this month, I finally got over my fear of spending money on living expenses and moved out of MD and into a really excellent community house in the Capitol Hill/Eastern Market area of DC. Yes, it's Southeast -- but around here that means shaded streets and whiffs of lavender from miniscule front yards, an arts workshop and a public library, and fresh produce from the farmers on the weekends (which can be supplemented by Yes! Market natural food store when needed).

I live in a house with 9 other people, most of whom are working on the policy-related nonprofit end of social justice and poverty campaigns. Some are faith-based, but not all; many share international interest and I've learned a lot about some topics I only knew a little about before -- NAFTA in Latin America, U.S. pesticide companies' conflicts of interest in the War on Drugs, debt forgiveness in Africa, and all about German customs, including all-night wedding bashes.

Life in the city hasn't been all gloom and circumstance, though! Here are some fun things I did in the past few weeks that make my days in MD look pretty tame:

• Visiting Dumbarton Oaks in upper Georgetown: a lovely estate turned into a Harvard-run botanic conservatory and center for archaic arts (Byzantine, ancient Greek?). There's an awesome mosaic garden of stones all precisely oriented in swirling patterns and vibrant earthy colors.. and some nice flowers too.
  
• Hitting up one of my favorites in Dupont circle with an old friend (and fellow Merckie) -- Teaism. There are several locations around the city, but their tea-house atmosphere, hot and cold beverage variety, and veg-friendly asian food can't be beat.
• A wandering, though brief, visit to The National Art Gallery. There are so many great things to do on the mall, though I regret that much of the huge, two-building facility seems to be poorly explained by even sparser text. They have nice large-space art installations, and some cutout pieces by Matisse were a good feature, though the Afghanistan exhibit was way too crowded to enjoy properly.
  
• The American Film Institute's SilverDOCS festival in Silver Spring screening of Kassim the Dream. The main character and his coach cum adopted uncle and guiding force stood up during the questions to the director session at the end! Kassim was taken into the army in Uganda as a child and used Boxing as a way to deal with the day-time images of horror that continued to dog him after escaping to the U.S. His story of redemption was funny and packed a punch. The film from the Displaced Person camps in Uganda were particularly powerful.

I'm still working on doing the whole biking to work thing, and I'm looking forward to the Corcoran's exhibit on AIDS photography in Africa called Access to Life and a National's game this Friday. Did I mention I also started up the compost heap here? I'm the resident enviro-nut.. and loving it.

So, consider this your open invite, my readers, to come and do fun things in DC with me -- there is no shortage of them to be had.

Constituent does not equal Consumer

Every morning I wake up to C-SPAN radio, before it even gets light outside. For some reason, it's easier for my brain to come to waking when political speakers are demanding my attention, asking for Change, insisting Yes We Can or trying to drum up some party unity.

This morning I noticed that, when addressing all manner of issues (from health care, investment and the economy, environment, education), decision-makers tend refer to their constituents primarily as consumers - as if the only factor that matters in any of these issues is money.

Excuse me for being picky, but I truly see myself as a citizen first and a consumer at least third or fourth, maybe even last. This way of thinking - the long shadow that "economics" casts - seems to be entrenched in the minds of those who should be thinking of their constituents' needs, not their wallets.

I don't want a politican to look at me and see dollar signs. But how to fix that unless the ubiquitous stakeholder companies are taken out of the legislative, judicial, and executive equation? I read a lot about that problem (and have a few posts on it), but I wonder what other major patterns in American society are contributing to the current myopic focus on money. We should be shaking our politicians out of their avarice and demanding they re-focus on what really sustains people -- health, shelter, family, and an occupation by which to contribute to society.

Profile of Ronald McDonald, The Psychopath

My latest reading list epiphany is from Drutman and Cray's "The People's Business." Some related thoughts:

Corporations are being awarded more and more rights and privileges traditionally reserved for individual citizens. These privileges were originally established to protect you and I from the powerful. Everyone knows of someone whose house has been taken for "justifiable use" whether they wanted to sell it or not, but how inappropriate current corporate law is might be better highlighted by comparison to the psyche of one very scary type of individual: the psychopath.

According to Dr. Robert Hare, a renown expert on psychopathy, a corporation fits the following checklist for an individual who is psychopathic:

1. Irresponsible: In an attempt to satisfy the corporate goal, everybody else is put at risk.
2. Manipulative: They try to manipulate everything, including public opinion.
3. Grandiose: Every company insists they are the best, number one, above their competitors.
4. Lack of Empathy and
5. Asocial Tendencies: Corporations' behavior indicates they don't identify with or care about their victims.
6. Refusal to accept responsibility for their actions: If caught breaking the law, they pay big fines and continue doing just what they did before.
7. Unable to feel remorse: Rarely does behavior change after settling a lawsuit due to wrongs perpetrated on innocents.
8. Superficial: The corporations' goal is to have an appealing public image but that often does not represent what the corporation and its operations are really like.

So what do we do with psychopaths in society, danger that they are? Apparently, we have decided to let them control everything, from our schoolyards to our politics to our homes.

But what should we do with psychopathic corporations? Get them into reform school, at the very least. And that does mean shutting down sales during the rehabilitation period - which most corporations refuse to do even while in court. The thought process behind that: Why lose profits during long-winded litigation, even if a company's means be ruled responsible for harming the public?

My small screen debut

I got my 15 seconds of fame tonight on the Washington Abc news affiliate, WJLA. That's the modern standard for limelight time now. Oh well, it was fun!

Check out the video at the WJLA website: How much trash do you create?
Update: Part 2

My memorable quote: "That brown stuff is bean dip." So inspirational, so green.
It's also funny that they aired the shot of "my trash" that I had to steal from my coworker, who sips on slim fast all day long! Haha.
(The story behind that is: I left the real trash bag on the metro because I kinda forgot about it, it being early in the morning (the bag still weighed 0.0 pounds) -- so I had to "recreate" it when I got to work.)

Third weird connection to this story: My very first AOL screename was 'Garbegegrl,' after my favorite femme-fronted band Garbage, so in a way, I guess I've come full circle. Or as my cousin "The Pool Guy" says, I am the true garbage girl.

When do isolated outliers become a disturbing trend?

Regardless of whether or not you buy into the American high school ideal, it's a sad day when a bright, promising boy picks up a gun and kills his entire family. What stays with me the most is the message of the gun-control advocates: a gun is 22 times more likely to be used against a family member than to be used to protect the family against intruders.

Second is this idea that the system obviously isn't working for many young people. Those who are coming into power now, after the baby boomers take leave. When a school becomes less a fertile socioacademic playground and more a dry, confining standardized testing station -- or when the home becomes more of a repository for techno must-haves, in which there's 0.5 daily hours on average to spend together, since mom and dad work longer hours and dutiful daughters and sons shuttle from activity to activity, essential for the college application, you begin to detect you've developed a major problem. I'm not sure how to synthesize any kind of comprehensive review of what American cultural practices might be contributing to a growing detachment and disaffectation (see Affluenza for that), but this is how it appears in my fish-eye lens: we are judging quantity over quality. And paying qualitative consequences.

Or it could be a lingering consequence of World War II values. That's pretty plausible, observing how that value set has irrevocably altered almost every kind of consumption and industry there is in the US (not to mention the continuing dominance of economics over other values -- sustainability, for example). That reminds me a little of something I heard about that's been going on in Japan: the hikikomori.

Veggie Tales

After writing an essay that did more finger-wag/nagging than reflecting, I'm ready to talk more about what it's been like to live, eat, and think vegetarian. After making it "official," I came to think that veganism would be a truer way to take myself completely out of the meat industry cycle than any of the various categories of vegetarianism. In other words, I chose to be an exclusive vegetarian rather than a lacto-ovo-vegetarian or pesce-vegetarian that entails more a la carte idealism than my choice.

The biggest challenge of veganism: is there animal in this?

Global food culture has undeniable roots in animal and human coexistence and codependence. Lots of the really important and the really banal dishes we regularly go to include not only lactose but things like fat and enzymes and emulsifiers derived from animals. Most of these chemical elements can be found in plants and fungi too, but we humans are far less experienced foragers than we are herders and slaughterers. One notable exception is the happy accident of alcohol production - thanks to yeast, folks around the world have been able to drink and be merry for thousands of years.

Example: cheese.
Lactose is an obvious animal product - goats, cows, sheep, buffalo, yak all produce milk and subsequently cheese, but what about the process itself? I found out from a coworker that rennet makes cheese unfit for even lactose-tolerant veg-heads! Rennet, aka chymosin, is a crucial protein that cleaves casein (another milk protein) micelles which helps transform milk from a diffusing mix of water and protein into a thick, coagulated mass that separates to become cheese. Rennet typically comes from one of two processes involving calf stomachs, a byproduct of the veal industry. Byproduct, or industry in and of itself? I wonder..

There are several rennet alternatives, including microbial and fungal production of chymosin and a biotech way of programming microbes with animal rennet genes. Any of these seem acceptable to me from an ethical standpoint - microbes are so plentiful that we may breed them and slaughter them at will with negligible [observable] effect on the food chain (hence their excellent use in microbiology - thumbs up!). But the real problem has been identifying the source; most cheeses don't tell you how they're made! I'm thinking life might be easier to stick with products marketed to vegans, which sadly limits me to soy cheeses. If you haven't seen a piece of sheese or cheeze, it usually has a certain aesthetic oddness about it.. and don't think of trying to melt it.







There are other foods that challenge me, like chocolate, butter, and baked goods in general. Eating out is also a simple thing that becomes very tough since I'm not really all that keen on salads. Restaurants, unless they cater to veg eating, aren't generally very understanding, though some servers can be sympathetic. And I don't think many of my friends and relatives understand why I'd want to do this to myself, either -- I think it seems extreme to them. I answer that particular charge with a quote:

I don't understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.
-Dean Ornish, MD

But how "natural" is all of this and how can such a diet be "beneficial" for one's nutritional needs? Couldn't you argue that choosing such a contrived diet is to artificially remove myself from the food chain, the very chain that evolved to spawn humans? And wouldn't that be unnatural and dangerous to my health and the survival of my descendants?

Let's think about it. Currently, an interlinked and dynamical "food web" is favored over a linear "chain" in discussion of living producers and consumers. I become a primary or secondary consumer if I choose plants only, and I therefore have a greater supply of food available to me because I am not dependent on animal meat which requires lots and lots of plants. I am no longer one of the few "on top" and have more built-in resilience during times of animal disease or supply shortage. Now I'm feeling pretty superior, pretty on top of my game.

You can also break down conceptions of nutritional need to consider the forces behind them - why do we think milk is good for you? Separate it from the media advertisements adorned with celebs and you might begin to suspect.. it's a myth, propagated by man! Still, go even further out, place yourself out in the countryside away from even telephone lines and cellphone coverage. The idea of gulping down what came out of some cow's teat, intended to nourish its young, is more than a little heinous. So then where to get enough calcium? I'm going to need a source, especially once I am past menopause and osteoporosis becomes a real threat to my health. And what about protein? I like a good tennis match and biking around when it's nice out, so my muscles need some fuel too.

Plant sources. Yep. Some kind of alchemy, right? Nope. Plants provide all of this and more -- minus the added fat and cholesterol. And they provide necessary doses of trace minerals that allow humans to have a full complement of amino acids. Freaking sweet, I'm converted. More information on this is available elsewhere. After reading a little, I must know more.

- Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine's "The Protein Myth"
- SoyStache's Protein Nutrition Chart w/info from the USDA nutrition database
- And of course, SoyStache's Calcium Nutrition Chart

The biggest nutritional issue would seem to be where to get vitamin B-12. Fortified cereals and milk alternatives and the ubiquitous and infamous nutritional yeast seem to be the best sources of this vitamin, but I'll keep an eye out for some others. I'm not the best at remembering to incorporate a B12 source into my daily intake, but I can learn to choose wisely at the grocery store. And a little sprinkle of the nooch on my breakfast granola never hurt.

Also check out some vegan food blogs:
- FatFree Vegan Kitchen
- Vegan YumYum
- Ethnic Vegan

To move back into reasons and motivations, the most interesting aspect for me of choosing veganism is the exercise of learning something, making a choice to change because of it, and self-modifying behavior. It's analogous to an arbitrary social experiment, but with actions that have powerful ecological benefits to back them. I'm willing to stretch myself, and I find myself doing it more and more -- and I don't plan to stop until I find my boundaries. Then I might turn on my inner overachiever and step right over them. Two jobs is a stretch on time. The Peace Corps service stretches cultural practices, communication, standard of living, and more. Being green, for me, stretches the way I think about and use "things" and my surroundings. Family therapy challenges my way of life since, well, forever. Sometimes trying new things is tough, but it's all necessary because I want more than anything to grow and change. In college, I got some book smarts and some teamwork practice, but was it really a stretch? In terms of sleep, yes -- but that's about it.


My conclusion? I feel better than ever on an animal-free diet. My digestion system is happier with me and I avoided catching what was going around at BOTH of my workplaces without an army of sprays and wipes and hand-washing. Coincidence? I don't know, but I won't complain..

I can't say whether or not I intend to make strict veganism a permanent habit - banishing all cookies and pizza from my presence, but I can still be my foodie self -- and now there's a whole new realm for me to explore.

A Common Word

I am greatly buoyed by A Common Word, which is a recent invitation to peaceful interactions between the muslim and christian worlds. Published in October 2007 by a group of highly educated and prominent muslims, this important document was largely ignored by the US media.

I would ask you to read about it on the website even if you are a member of neither faith. The potential impact on international relations is undeniable. Then, share it with your friends and family.

My First Week: A Non-Profit Primer

Here are a few amusing things learned my first week on the job at CHEJ:

• Celebrity is an important thing in the world of non-profits. It behooves an organization to be founded by or peopled by celebrities - everyone wants to be near to them in case some star power rubs off. But also important are celebrity donors, who flock to fancy donor events in big cities to show their support for the cause. Who would have thought my first staff meeting would include a discussion of who's networked with the likes of Brooke Shields, Ralph Nader, and even Hillary?

• Everyone does everything. I'm not just an intern, you know; I'm going to play toxicologist and organizer, too. This will probably be mostly good; first, I won't get bored from being boxed in too tightly, and second, I'll have a more well-rounded set of skills when I leave.

• Staff all seem to know someone who served in or who is currently serving in the peace corps. That means lots of good stories and advice for me! Best so far is my co-worker who built her own greenhouse and quit her PC job-function as an environmental educator to better serve the needs of the community. As she put it, "It's not like they would actually fire you."

• Environmental organizations take running a green office seriously. This means printing and copying with soy-based ink on recycled/reused paper, 100% donated and reused office furniture, a moratorium on paper, plastic, and styrofoam kitchen supplies, and a strictly enforced recycling policy. Needless to say, I'm pleased.

• Public transportation is marvelous. I can knit, I can read all manner of publications, I can mouth the words to old Juanes and Tears for Fears songs, and I can people-watch. It's a relaxing way to wake up or wind down, and not having to worry about terrible snow traffic is amazing. But, you say, this is not limited to non-profit orgs-- and this is true! But it's a first for me, so I say it counts.
  

Affluenza: Treatment

Here are some poignant quotes I wanted to share from the book that started from a PBS series called Affluenza. This particular quote is from a chapter entitled, "Political Prescriptions."

"What if Americans started buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, driving them less and keeping them longer? What if we took fewer long-distance vacations? What if we simplified our lives, spent less money, bought less stuff, worked less, and enjoyed more leisure time? What if government began to reward thrift and punish waste, legislated shorter work hours, and taxed advertisers? What if we made consumers and corporations pay the real costs of their products? What would happen to our economy? Would it collapse, as some economists suggest?

"Truthfully, we don't know exactly, since no major industrial nation has yet embarked on such a journey.

"...But as economist Juliet Schor points out, there are many European countries (incl. Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway) whose economies have grown far more slowly than our own, yet whose quality of life-- measured by many of the indicators we say we want, including free time, citizen participation, lower crime, greater job security, income-equality, health, and overall life contentment-- is higher than our own. Such economies show no sign of collapse. And their emphasis on balancing growth with sustainability is widely accepted across the political spectrum. As former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, a conservative, put it:

'It is true that the Dutch are not aiming to maximize gross national product per capita. Rather, we are seeking to attain a high quality of life, a just, participatory and sustainable society. While the Dutch economy is very efficient per working hour, the number of working hours per citizen are rather limited. We like it that way. Needless to say, there is more room for all those important aspects of our lives that are not part of our jobs, for which we are not paid and for which there is never enough time.'"

Europe Trip 2: London!

Update on Dublin: random people, czech. Cider, philosophy and religion, cocaine and E, irish jazz, check check. That made for a great last night, though missing trains and mass confusion made the next day a bit of a wash. Also: it's good to have British money when you get to Britain so you can eat.

And now... London has been quite exciting, if not loads of fun. Our hostel is out in the boonies but we've been doing as much as we can in the daytime. Met some people yesterday after we figured out the kitchen/movie lounge area was a good place to do that; but a few hours later, there was a stabbing which significantly brought down the levels of fun. No worries - I'm OK, but I'm worried for the mental health of young people (everyone, really) who end up out of their parents' houses and with big problems and no support network. Scary.

BUT, today was my b-day and we saw lots of cool stuff. By midday I had seen remnants of the dead sea scrolls, heard Seamus Heaney read his own poems, and saw the stamps that are a big part of American history: those of the Stamp Act of 1765. By tea-time I had traipsed all over Westminster to get the *real* story behind the uproarious religious herecies in Dan Brown's book, including:
-spotting knight's effigies in the knights' templar church that was consecreted by the patriarch of Jerusalem
-hearing the story of the origin of the Jolly Roger and the 1st traffic lights ever (that also exploded and injured the policeman who changed the color manually)

.. and was then seated for high tea at Kensington Palace. Tonight, I saw Avenue Q in Leicester square, which was great! Yesterday was a great design exhibit on the politics of modern design and the Tower of London.

Europe Trip, Entry 1: Dublin

I'm currently finishing up my 3rd day in Dublin, and it's finally NOT raining! You probably have no idea how huge this is. Dublin is a great, walkable, busy city full of independent shops and many native people with a very matter-of-fact way of being. They have absolutely no bones about writing biting opinions columns in the paper, and I have to say kudos to them for it.

Today I saw two acts of the world championship street performers; both were superb, and both were somewhat secretive about their identities (not unlike the way I've been about my American identity in a crowd; who wants to be that group they make fun of with the Iraq jokes? please). Last night was Int'l night at the Int'l bar (though the only non-Irish was a host from Perth, who was hilarious; will post his website after getting back) in Temple Bar. If you're ever in Dublin.. Temple Bar is a fun place to be. Can't say I've gotten to intimate with the people though, which is a shame -- these ones actually speak my language!

I think traveling with Alberto has a lot to do with *THAT* though. I function a lot better on my own when I don't feel like I need to ask permission to do every little thing. He also has this bit where he doesn't voice his opinion and is perfectly content to do exactly what I'm doing that really bugs me. I start to feel a bit like my ideas are carrying what we're doing and that'd be ok if it were just me, but with two people it begins to feel like a bit of baggage.

Nomatter though-- London is bound to be cool. It's London! Dublin is beginning to feel like a smallish town though, a little like Venice, and maybe my options in my current situation and getting a bit exhausted. It's kind of fun to be able to recognize neighborhoods I've been through a few times, though.

There was a great exhibit at the National Museum of Archeology on bog people - Ireland was once full of bogs! It's a great place to stash a dead body, that's for sure - and while you're at it, you might as well throw in his valuable possessions to hide the evidence. The Irish take on their past is refreshing. There's a bit of nostalgia of course, but why deny a little brutality and pagan practices when they're just facts of life?

Caitlin
Saturday, 19:36

More Baltimore

Since getting back from my first wedding* last weekend, I've been spending a lot of time in Baltimore, my home-city! It's the closest metropolitan-type area around, and was a big part of my childhood and high school years. Now that I can go out, my relationship to it is a bit different - in short, I'm loving it! Here's what I checked out this week...

The Golden West Café in Hampden. What a laid-back, eclectic, awesome diner. I can't say I've ever received a deal on wine (on Wine Wednesday, of course!) and had it be appropriate in such a place before going there. It was the perfect location for catching up with a camp-loving friend I haven't seen in ages. It's also cool to be old enough to know people living in nifty places like Baltimore's center of all things Hon..

I also hit up the Honfest, scoping out some B-more kitsch in the same quirky 'hood. There were hons abounding with freshly-fixed up beehives, leopard print stretch pants, and neon cat's eye glasses - the throwbacks didnt end at the pink flamingoes, thats for sure. They also had garage sales on the Ave, charm city-specific food, and cover bands playing Cash and Evil Ways (while I was there, anyway). And dancing!

Earlier in the week was a Volunteer Central info session-cum-café chat at Xando/Cosí in Charles Village. That's another excellent neighborhood, supported by the hard-working folk at JHU and home to excellent haunts like The Book Thing , many ethnic restaurants, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others.

Speaking of museums, I checked out a Walters Art Museum lunch'n'learn with my dear old mum. A materials science graduate lectured and was surprisingly science-y for an art event. Some of the pieces presented in the lecture on Thai pigments were really beautiful and ornate - I'd love to see more. Afterward, my mom and I wandered around the museum, picking up a half-price Patricia Wells cookbook on bistro cooking, which turned out to be a great buy. One of her (many) potatoes au gratin recipes made a delicious addition to dinner tonight. The Walters also has a quilting exhibit coming soon that I hope I'm around to see, as well as related workshops. I'm hoping my Mom will be motivated enough to go to some of them, as she was making noises about wanting to try quilting. I'm not holding my breath, though -- she did the same for knitting and all that came out of that was a scarf that's holed up in a closet somewhere. Oh well, more knitting needles for me.

I made it to a dance party and sushi but just missed seeing Paris, je t'aime at the Charles Theatre. Oh well, you can't win them all...

By way of a recommendation, if you'll be in the area in July (when I'll be off in Europe!) be sure to check out Artscape, which will be going down around Mt. Vernon. That's always a good time.

* Well, I've been to weddings before. I played the music for that of my cousins in CA a few years back. But now - my friends are starting to get married! This is huge.. and a little overwhelming / crazy. But way fun, too.