Dusty Dog Reviews The whole project is hip, anti-academic, the poetry of reluctant grown-ups, picking noses in church. An enjoyable romp! Though also serious. |
Nick DiSpoldo, Small Press Review (on Children, Churches and Daddies, April 1997) Children, Churches and Daddies is eclectic, alive and is as contemporary as tomorrow’s news. |
You know, I thought I got all of the election talk our of my head after the last editorial, but I keep seeing things now that remind me of the mess we might be in because of November ‘04.
Oh, this is the part where I’m supposed to mention in detail what I’m talking about, or mention specific details to make my case.
Okay, here goes.
I mentioned in a performance art show recently that the thing that scared me most about the Bush campaign was that he had a television advertisement that ended saying that this country relies on Freedom (what this country was founded on, good sign), Family (the stuff I suppose that is supposed to lead to healthy procreation, the furthering of our species), Faith (Yes, President Bush, you have to throw a religious connotation in there somewhere), and Sacrifice (You want us to do what? That doesn’t sound like the capitalist in you, you know, the stuff we we’re supposed to be founded on...).
I mention this to you, while reminding you in the last editorial that when the President found out that he won reelection, he told a cabinet member or two that it was now time to start working on his plan (Whatever that may be... I’m starting to get frightened thinking about it...), but it reminded me of a quote I read in the Ayn Rand Column from the Los Angeles Times, in a column called Our Alleged Competitor, and I quote:
And whenever anyone asks a nation for sacrifice, it is not progress that he will achieve.
Okay, sorry, this might be the part where I’m supposed to keep putting these pieces together here...
Let me see what I can do.
I look around me, and I see two political parties fighting for a goal, and their platforms sound similar. I know you think they’re not, and on the surface they don’t seem to be. But say, for instance, you don’t want troops in Iraq. Kerry might have seemed like a better choice. In debates, however, he said that although he didn’t like the fact that we were there, he knew that we had to be there.
What?
Let me think about this. He has said on record that he supported the idea of using force as a threat to Saddam Hussein. Then he said on record that even though they now know that he didn’t have nuclear missiles or WMDs, he still would have supported us going over there to get Hussein out of power. Then he even said in a Presidential debate that he doesn’t like the idea that our troops were there (that he supported bringing to Iraq in the first place), but he couldn’t just pull the troops, and couldn’t give a timeline to anyone about when troops would be able to leave.
Hmmm. Sounds like Bush’s plan.
Sounds like two sides to the same coin - they may be opposite sides, heads and tails, but they are the same damn coin.
They’re the same damn coin and we’re not given a real choice of anything different here in America.
In Post-Mortem, 1962, another Los Angeles Times column from Ayn Rand, she even went so far as to say
There was only one political program offered to the voters: the status quo — and only two kinds of leadership: those who wish to leap or those who wish to crawl into the same abyss.
Yeah, she wrote that in a column in 1962, but has the sentiment changed at all, forty-two years later? (I know 42 is supposed to be the meaning of life according to the Hitchhiker’s Guide, but we haven’t solved our political problems in that many years, and it looks like our situation may only be getting worse.)
Everything that was presented to the people by Bush and Kerry in their scripted debates were generalities that either side could take to mean whatever they chose, so both parties could think they did a wonderful job. And after every debate, and after every media moment each candidate had to spout their views or rip on their opponent, all of the media talking heads in the liberal media like MSNBC (I know it stands for Microsoft NBC, but I prefer to think of it as Multiple Sclerosis NBC...), or CNN, or Headline News, or even the slightly less liberal Fox News, they leaned toward a victory of Kerry (ah yes, liberal media, hindsight in this election has shown us how unbiased you really are...). But they’d have reporters at both parties always stating that their candidate won, spouting the usual rhetoric necessary to make people believe they are telling the truth.
Of course both parties would claim they won. Could we draw the same conclusion? Probably not, because nether party really talked about differing goals or programs. If Kerry was against having troops in Iraq, he didn’t mention morally why, and he didn’t give Americans anything to really sink their teeth into - I mean, he didn’t give us a core set of beliefs and values that we could support because it was different from President Bush’s core set of beliefs.
He didn’t do it.
If we knew the moral differences between our political candidates, we might have had an easier time being able to make our political choices. People say they liked Bush - but why? Because we don’t feel safe anymore, and we need his guidance (I think that dictators like to keep their power by playing on fear to make then feel needed by their minions, and the past three years have been a Republican plea to remind people that the Republican cabinet will make the people safe).
Other people say they liked Kerry - but why?
Honestly, tell me why.
And don’t use the “because he’s not Bush” answer either. I’m looking for real moral values and differences here. (It’s hard to come up with differences when your two choices were both Yale graduates, which are actually very distantly related. Yeah, these are your two choices...)
Okay, Kerry said he had a plan, but we never got any details about it. And you know, that makes me think about when I was little, and me and my friend Sheri would play. We didn’t play house, but we played office - we had desks, and I had a control panel of switches and stuff that my sister put together into a console that could go on our desk, so it could look like we were doing important work. We’d talk on the fake phone, and we’d flip the little toggle switches on the fake console panel we had, so we could be getting work done. So we could be doing something. So we could be getting ahead.
But looking back, we were only playing. We didn’t have a plan. We acted like we knew what we were doing, but we didn’t know what those little switches and buttons on our fake console panel did, we didn’t even question where those switches and buttons led to, and we pushed those buttons anyway in bliss, getting things done.
What things? No answer.
Kerry is a senator that wanted to jump in and start flipping the toggle switches to alter the fabric of the American life. And the thing is, I couldn’t tell you if he would do a better job of pushing the right buttons to make America work well.
I couldn’t tell you because I had no idea of what he’d do.
And I don’t know if he knew, either.
MTV and pop stars and rap stars and actors were telling you to vote. Some of them we even saying to vote for the Kerry/Edwards ticket. I mean Hell, if Bruce Springstein is for the Democratic ticket, all of today’s youth should be a Democrat, because the guy that produced the #1 rock album Born in the USA 25 years ago has to know what is best for the country.
MTV might have been telling the youth to vote. But although the world likes to think the youth doesn’t think, I think the youth (along with the adults) want a set of values they can hold on to and make sense of.
And although they had a problem with Bush (because, you know, Bush is sending their peers to go to a war people don’t think we should be in, why are we liberating people on the other side of the world when the are people in our own country that need to be rescued from poverty, lack of jobs or education, or rescued from the sexism or racism that holds them back from their true potential?), because they don’t like seeing President Bush making all political choices based on his idolatry of his Christian savior, they want a real alternative. Kerry said he’s the one for you, but he didn’t explain why or how.
He left you connecting the political pieces.
And more importantly, he left you picking up the moral pieces.
That was the problem.
Not because there’s a moral problem to opposing Bush’s plan, but because no moral ground was laid out for the people to understand. Bush had a ton of talk radio personalities (and yes, a few of the television personalities too) agreeing with people daily, live, for hours about how Bush is the right choice. He morally makes more sense. How we need him.
And people heard this political moral line, and they took it. Hook, line and sinker.
Whether or not we agreed with the moral choice people made, some people made a moral choice. I made my moral choice on Election Day at the polling booth, and my choice was based on the fact that I couldn’t stand to vote for either candidate. I voted for someone else, and I voted on my conscience. I voted knowing my choice wouldn’t win, but I voted knowing I could sleep comfortably with the fact that I made the right choice at the polls that November day.
If only everyone knew of the morals at stake in this Presidential election, maybe the candidates would have told us what we needed to hear to make an informed decision. Maybe then this election would have turned out differently.
“Did that billboard say ‘Babies Were Meant to be Breakfast?’”
My father laughed, and I resented his amusement. It wasn’t my fault I couldn’t read the billboard correctly. I was concentrating on keeping up with the flow of traffic and making sure I didn’t drive into a ditch.
“No, it said ‘Babies Were Meant to be Breast-Fed.’”
“Oh.” The amazement I got from my mistaken perception was gone. There was nothing shocking or amusing anymore. Just some more propaganda designed to encourage extreme conservatism and keep women in the home, chained to their kids, I thought.
My misreading reminded me of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” Written in 1729, it is one of the best examples of political satire. The subtitle of this essay is: “For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being A Burden to Their Parents or Country, and For Making Them Beneficial to The Public.” Swift saw the poverty around Ireland and knew something had to be done about it. Since so many children were born in a year (he estimates 120,000), it is obvious why he saw them as a solution to the problem. To make them beneficial, this essay does not advocate a conventional remedy such as education reform. Instead, Swift calls for something a bit more unconventional: reserve 20,000 children for breeding purposes, and turn the rest into commodities. “That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom . . . A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish . . . “ Beyond eating infants, Swift also suggests that their skin “will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.” Swift does an excellent job of making strong arguments for his unconventional idea. He reasons: “Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress and help to pay their landlord’s rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown.” When I first read this, before realizing it was a satire, I was half-convinced that raising children as commodities would actually be a practical idea. We breed all sorts of animals for food and clothing; why not our own species? It would certainly help the overpopulation problem. Even I might be more enticed to have a few kids if I could make some money off of them. Instead of them draining all my money, I could get something in exchange for all my trouble, without having to go through the hassles of toilet training.
In the animal kingdom, consuming one’s offspring for nutrients is a common practice among many species. Last year, when I was in my women’s studies phase, I took Psychology of Women. One of the many articles we read was “Natural-born Mothers,” by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. This article broke down the notion that motherhood is the most natural thing in the world by showing that, if faced with adverse conditions, animals will engage in fitness trade-offs. If animals conceive or bear offspring during periods of food shortages or other hardships, the mother will sacrifice her young if it means preserving her own well-being and the possibility of being able to reproduce again under better conditions. The most common example is that of the golden hamster: “In addition to building a nest, licking their pups clean, protecting and suckling them - all pleasantly conventional maternal pursuits - these hamster moms may also recoup maternal resources otherwise lost in the production of pups by eating a few.” But hamsters aren’t the only ones: mice, lemmings, voles, and badgers all have similar strategies to maintain their reproductive fitness if their babies are born during food shortages, droughts, or if there are predators lurking around. Some people might argue that fitness trade-offs in animals are the equivalent of adoption in humans. The point of a fitness trade-off, however, is to restore the resources lost in pregnancy and birth. In giving a baby up for adoption, the mother loses the child, but does not have the chance to gain anything from the sacrifice.
When I first read this, I thought it seemed like such a waste. I couldn’t imagine why, after all the work that went into producing offspring, a mother would want to just give it up. All that time and all those resources wasted for nothing. Even if animals recoup the losses by eating their children, it still means that all the energy they put into procreation went right back into their systems, leaving them where they were before.
However, most animals don’t invest as much into a pregnancy as humans do. None of the above animals has a gestation period of more than two months. Since the maternal investment is smaller, these animals have less to lose if they decide they need to give up and try again. When fitness is based solely on fertility, any method of improving reproductive potential is acceptable. An animal’s most important mission in life is to make sure its genes get passed on; the only way for it to secure a permanent spot in the world is to produce as many offspring as possible. So if a female bears children while there is a predator lurking around, it makes all the sense in the world for her to cut her losses, replenish her resources, and try again later. Maybe the babies would survive, but with all the uncertainties in life, sometimes it’s better not to take a chance.
Despite the fact that it was originally intended to be satirical, “A Modest Proposal” provides some very practical ideas for dealing both with poverty and overpopulation. Although nearly 300 years have passed since this was written, these are still two common problems all over the world. Strangely enough, nobody has actually taken Swift’s proposal to heart. In the centuries that have passed since Swift made this idea public, nobody has tried it, and we’re still struggling, which leads me to believe it just might work. Plus, we have proof from other species. Human beings are animals just like elephants, cats, and hamsters. If other species can use their offspring for their own benefit, we can, too. Of course, we don’t need to eat our own children. In a capitalist society, Swift’s idea works better. With all the time involved in pregnancy, as well as all the money that goes into good prenatal care and birthing expenses, a healthy baby would be worth a large sum of money in the eyes of gourmet chefs. As more and more women caught on to this idea, the price of babies would drop, and they would be an accessible food source for everyone. Of course, this leads to ethical questions about genetic engineering and methods of artificial reproduction such as in vitro fertilization. Some people might try to design exceptionally edible children that would be worth more on the food market, and some might try to artificially conceive twins or even triplets to increase their earning capacity. But I doubt multiples would be as desirable, considering they tend to be smaller; people would want the plumpest, juiciest specimens available. I feel similarly about genetically engineered children; they might have excellent characteristics, but since they would just be stock animals, they would fetch only a basic price. The exceptionally rare babies would be worth more. A genetically engineered baby is like salmon reproduced in a farm setting. But a perfectly formed child conceived naturally would be the equivalent of salmon caught in the wild.
Critics of the American capitalist system maintain that it puts families at a disadvantage, particularly the ones in which one of the parents (usually the mother) stay home to raise the children. They also say it puts single parents, especially those living in poverty, in a no-win situation. They argue that the work it takes to be a full-time parent is equivalent to any paid occupation, and we need to value it in the same way. I agree that society has to place a stronger emphasis on caring for children. But we don’t have to revert to a socialist system of government-controlled childcare to improve the situation. Instead, we need to recognize the economic potential of motherhood. Family life does not have to be an oppressive institution which costs one of the parents their economic mobility. Instead, being a mother could lead to a great deal of prosperity and freedom. A woman would not depend on her husband’s wage due to the income she earned from her offspring. Swift’s proposal creates a win-win situation for everyone in society. Family life does not need to cut mothers off from the work world; the home can become one of the most lucrative sites of labor in the world, and womanhood would finally earn the respect it deserves.
After seeing the ball drop in New York January 1 1995, we stopped in the Poconos on our drive back home to Chicago. As we went into our cabin in the Poconos, another guest’s cat (even wearing their owner’s neon collar) walked up to our door and pretty much invited itself in. We actually played with this cat for almost an hour, knowing it was someone else’s cat, and I started thinking about this cat as it played in out hotel room.
I looked at this cat and thought, ‘You know, in other parts of the world you’re considered a delicacy.’
I sat for a second, and then I thought, ‘And in some parts of the world, the cow is sacred.’
This was probably about the time when we decided that we had to let the cat out of our hotel room so it could get back to it’s owners. And I thought for a minute, and I knew that, well, I could never kill a cow or a chicken or a turkey or anything. But then I quickly reminded myself that that was the beauty of capitalism, that we can work on what we want to do, and pay other people do to everything else.
And after a second, I thought, well, maybe I don’t want to pay someone else to kill the animals for me.
And that’s when I decided to become a vegetarian.
Why did I tell that story? Well, because when I tell people I’m a vegetarian, people ask me, “Can you eat eggs or milk or cheese?” And I respond by saying, “Ah, I’m all for the animal’s torture, just not their death.” Translation: although they don’t treat cows well to get milk and make cheese, and they don’t treat chickens well to get eggs, I am willing to have that. I just can’t tolerate letting animals die so I can have a roast beef sandwich or a Chicken McNugget from McDonald’s (which, by the way, is made with all the remnants from parts of the chicken you’d never eat unless it was fast-cooked and lost all of it’s flavor, and then mashed back together and have spices added to it so it would taste like meat again).
So this is how I have lived, as a vegetarian, for almost ten years, by having a stir fry and adding an egg to the mix to hold flavors together there, or by enjoying a good deep-dish pizza with extra cheese (but no meat), and maybe adding a topping, like a good amount of garlic.
And yeah, just under the ten-year mark I learned of some more bad news for us vegetarians. I thought we were in the clear on this test, but the majority of cheeses that are produced (like Kraft cheese), use rennet to help process the materials that end of making cheese.
Oh, and rennet is an enzyme derived from calf’s stomach lining.
Yeah, I know they could be getting the enzyme from the calf (you know, the baby cows they keep restrained so the baby cow meat will stay tender) they’re killing for veal, so...
Wait, I don’t want them making veal either.
The thing is, cheese can be made with vegetarian products, and it actually costs less to make it that way. I think big name companies just use the products they’re used to in making cheese, and it doesn’t matter to them that a vegetarian option not only costs less, but is also more moral.
Why bother being more moral when you could spend more money, and help contribute to more animal deaths?
So in the last few months (well, since right before Thanksgiving 2004), I’ve been trying to remove most cheeses from my diet as well.
But adding a good slice of Farmer’s cheese to a vegetarian sandwich makes it taste so much better. And I know that having some of the animal derivatives in dairy products can be helpful for the human dietary needs (if they don’t eat a highly specific diet as a vegan), so I’ve tried to figure out if there is a way I could continue to being moral and still eat well.
My husband John took me to the store Trader Joe’s, where they have listings of what kinds of cheese don’t have rennet in them. Found some fresh mozzarella, and since John eats meat, he had no problem with eating the rennet-derived fresh mozzarella in our fridge, so we could have caprice salads. And we bought shredded rennet-free cheese, so that we could go to our favorite local pizza parlor and ask them to use our own cheese when making their pizza (which, by the way, tasted great, and our cheese when reheated melted better than their original cheese). And it was nice to know that where we went to get sliced Farmer’s cheese, they didn’t use rennet in the production, so it was safe for me too.
And I know to the meat eater it sounds like I’m whining, but... But I guess that’s what you get when you have to be moral like this.
Sorry, that was blunt and rude of me. It’s just hard.
It’s just hard when I can’t eat Cheese Doritos or Cheese Pringles, or eat nacho cheese at a bar. Or have cheese fries. Or if a place happens to serve a veggie patty hamburger, you have to make sure they don’t add cheese to the burger. And don’t get focaccia bread or Asiago cheese bagels because of the cheese. And remember, pesto sauce uses cheese in it. And Parmesan cheese is right out, which people add to spices and mixes. And the Brie and hard cheese my husband and I had for a romantic evening are foods I can no longer eat.
God, is this poor wench bitching. She’s complaining that she can’t eat the Brie has already has in her fridge.
Sniff sniff. Bitch moan.
I have to say that so I know how trivial this may sound to the meat eater. But when you decide to make a moral decision like this, these little things are a big deal when most of your diet is altered in this meat-eating country.
The United States is the country where fast food restaurants have decided over the years to make it expected to have French fries go with their Whoppers or Big Macs. Where over the years fast food places have decided to expand the amount of processed meat in their menus (consider things like the Bacon Double Cheese Burger). Consider the notion that all drinks and all orders of fries have been made larger and larger over the years (Hell, a man tried to eat only McDonald’s for one month straight, and whenever he placed an order, he had to answer “yes” whenever he was asked if he would like to “supersize” his meal).
This is the society we live in. A society that has gotten used to having an excess of everything, and when we in America don’t have to worry about killing the animal to get the prime rib steak on our plates, we have a much easier time forking over the cash and diving in.
There I go, ripping on people again.
Sorry, I get on my irritating moral high ground, and... well... I get snippy.
I mean, I have much less of a problem with meat eaters who understand the entire process of how this meat gets on their plate than I do for the average person. I’m married to a meat eater, but he was a hunter since he was a child, and has, after killing his animal, brought it back home, skinned it, cut it up and prepared it for food.
I’ve got to have some respect for that.
I understand that we have gotten to the top of the food chain, and we can kill animals for food if we need it. But I also remind myself that we’re at the top of the intellectual chain too, and we don’t have to kill others in order to eat.
So, I still have to say that if someone can understand the process of killing that animal for food, they have earned my respect.
And Hell, I wasn’t looking for this in my potential meat-eating husband when I was single, but I like thinking of this story of when John was hunting deer. He used a rifle, and was able to kill the deer. Then he heard that he could use a handgun, but he might not be able to aim as well with it. So he tried it, and when he was able to hit and kill every deer with one shot, he decided he would learn archery, to use a bow and arrow to hunt deer.
Which he did, and did wonderfully.
He did this because he didn’t want it to be too easy for him to just randomly kill an animal. He wanted the animal to have a chance in the struggle. So he restricted his abilities, until he could get better at his hunt.
I think of this, and then I think of my past, where I worked for a food magazine publishing company, where magazine editors would have meal tasteings (with meat) from different restaurants for reviews. An associate editor (whom I won’t name, you know, because I don’t like picking on people without giving them a chance to respond...) said that she would never eat rabbit for a meal tasting, in her words, “because a bunny is cute.”
And I thought, ‘Oh, so since cows and chickens are ugly, they’re okay to eat. Good philosophy.’
This is the mentality that kills me. This is the mentality that makes me sick of how people don’t keep a cohesive set of values in their lives. This makes me think of people who are whores, contracting Herpes from sleeping with the wrong men, who then later cover their lives up to get married in the Catholic church, and have the gall to wear a white dress.
And I’m afraid this is the mentality of a lot of people in today’s over-consumption society, where we don’t have to think about what we’re doing with out lives. We have become a people that thinks it’s okay to purchase things on credit cards, and just pay the minimum balance every month, just so we can have that second SUV (which in my book is a Sub Urban Vehicle, or something that is only for the people less than urban, or something lower than urban, or something below urban). There is a mentality that we can over-extend ourselves now, and we’ll somehow make up for it later. We won’t think about the consequences (I mean Hell, there will be a credit consolidation company to help us with our debt later, or worst-case scenario, we can declare bankruptcy and still keep our car so we can make the payments on the house we own).
We’ve decided to push ourselves too far, and we wonder why American has the highest rates of heart attacks (could it be the stress in our lives and our excess meat in our diets?). And we wonder why diseases strike us like AIDS (of course it has nothing to do with sharing needles with sick people when you’re taking illegal drugs, and it has nothing to do with having unprotected homosexual sex, both of which are habits we could change). And we wonder why people age and get osteoporosis (because we drink milk from another species, and we drink it after infancy, and we consume so much protein that it actually pulls the calcium from our bones, making it easier to make our bones weak as we get older).
We define our own problems with our actions. We work to solve our life-threatening diseases, when we give oursevles these problems with our behaviors. We accept the way things are, then work to try to solve their damaging habits, instead changing the habit that cause our downfall.
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” - Voltaire “Religion is the opium of the people.” - Karl Marx “Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.” - Friedrich Nietzsche “Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.” - Napoleon Bonaparte “Faith is believing something you know ain’t true.” - Mark Twain |
One piece in this issue is “Crazy,& #148; an interview Kuypers conducted with “Madeline,& #148; a murderess who was found insane, and is confined to West Virginia’s Arronsville Correctional Center. Madeline, whose elevator definitely doesn’t go to the top, killed her boyfriend during sex with an ice pick and a chef’s knife, far surpassing the butchery of Elena Bobbitt. Madeline, herself covered with blood, sat beside her lover’s remains for three days, talking to herself, and that is how the police found her. For effect, Kuypers publishes Madeline’s monologue in different-sized type, and the result is something between a sense of Dali’s surrealism and Kafka-like craziness. |
As for the fiction, the piece by Anderson is quite perceptive: I liked the way the self-deluding situation of the character is gradually, subtly revealed. (Kuypers’) story is good too: the way it switches narrative perspective via the letter device is a nice touch. |
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I really like (“Writing Your Name& #148;). It’s one of those kind of things where your eye isn’t exactly pulled along, but falls effortlessly down the poem. I liked “knowledge& #148; for its mix of disgust and acceptance. Janet Kuypers does good little movies, by which I mean her stuff provokes moving imagery for me. Color, no dialogue; the voice of the poem is the narrator over the film. |
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Some excellent writing in “Hope Chest in the Attic.& #148; I thought “Children, Churches and Daddies& #148; and “The Room of the Rape& #148; were particularly powerful pieces. |
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Dusty Dog Reviews, CA (on knife): These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding. Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself. |
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