The cost of our cheapness

Last Friday, in a quest for a tortilla press (I was later informed that real Guatemalan women use their hands, not fancy gadgets, but since I’m Puerto Rican, tortillas do not run in my blood the way red beans and rice do, so I need a fancy gadget, so there) I trudged through the snow to the local kitchenware store.

Not too far into my jaunt, something struck me as rather odd. Though the snow on the sidewalk was too deep to detect any signs of said sidewalk- in some places I sunk down knee deep- the street was perfectly clear. The only other pedestrians I passed were those forced to brave the drifts to catch their bus.

Cars zoomed past as I clumsily negotiated the icy sludge. If there was ever a doubt that we cater to motorized vehicles over foot power, this illustration pulverized them.

But clearing the public sidewalks would take immense amounts of money, and we don’t even have a sufficient budget for plowing the streets. Yeah, I get that. We have to save money where we can. Other ways we choose to save money include:

1. Roads devoid of bike lanes. Even new roads in this city do not include a lane for bikes. After all, not that many people bicycle (maybe because they fear being sideswiped by rude, careless motorists?)

2. Highly processed food. Michael Pollan outlines in his book “Ominvore’s Dilemma” the attraction of the cheap crop of inedible corn that creeps into most of the processed food we consume. Sure the preponderance of high fructose corn syrup contributes to painful, debilitating diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and heart failure, that are killing Americans by the millions, but it’s cheap.

3. $0.79/lb chicken breast and $0.89/lb beef. Ever wonder how you could possibly raise a chicken or a cow for this measly amount of money? You don’t want to know. Really. But it’s already hard enough for struggling Americans to feed their families, especially in this economy. Most can’t afford to buy meat at the prices necessary for sustainable farming. But here’s a well guarded secret: we don’t actually need meat at every meal. We don’t even need it once a day. In fact, our over-meat consumption also contributes to the diseases listed above.

4. Education. Let’s look at American businesses. Those who want to excel and beat the competition attract the best and the brightest employees and managers through generous compensation and healthy working environments. Those businesses satisfied with substandard production and sinking revenue try to get as many work hours for the dollar as possible. Which business models do most of our public schools follow? (This is not a slam on teachers or administrators. The ones I know do the very best they can with the resources they’re allotted, sometimes with fantastic results, but some of the very best burn out before their time).

Are these over-generalizations? Perhaps. They were just the thoughts running through my head spurred on by frozen calves. But then I read this in this morning’s paper, about the ever escalating percentages of Americans with unhealthy diets, weights, and life-styles, despite the increasing amount spent on gyms, diets, and workout equipment. It’s not an individual by individual problem. It’s a massive social issue that requires massive social change.

Because our cheapness is costing us billions of dollars and millions of lives.

I'm on the library's most wanted list

This is not normal for me. I'm usually fairly responsible person; I pay my bills on time, I'm prompt, I keep my house fairly clean- well, clean enough. I just have this little problem with library books and that whole bring-them-back concept that libraries are so uptight about. So, for the first time in my life, I had a bill sent to collections and, although I finally did return most of the books (still can't find one) my fines were high enough that I had to set up a 3-month payment plan with the library.

It's embarressing and a little surprising, so I spent some time digging down deep within myself to discover why I struggle so much with responsible library patronage. Here's what I finally came up with:

I don't like returning books.

I mean, I really, really don't like returning books.

I love them. I love to hold them, smell them, listen to that sweet crackling when they are opened, spend hours bonding with them, scribble thoughts in their margins ( another big library no-no, admit turn out), stay awake all night sharing a bottle of wine with them, and drifting off to sleep with them. Returning those who have come to mean so much to me after only a few short weeks seems crude and heartless.

Now, if I were advancing in my spiritual practices, this is where I would talk about the need to release our attachment to the things of this world. I would even rejoice over this discovery of another fetter in need of breaking.
I'm not going to do it. Not just because I'm stubborn (which I am), but also becuase I have discovered freedom in the discovery. Instead of purging myself of this relationship with books which I find so nourishing and pleasurable, I need to adjust my lifestyle so that I no longer damages my credit or taxes the patience of those sweet librarians.
So, no more removing books from the library for me. Research will only be conducted within it's walls; books with whom I would like a deeper relationship I will buy (Half Price Books is my new best friend) and, once the relationship has run its course, will sell back.

If the rules of the game don't work for me, then it's time to change the game. I'm at peace with that, as are all of my new lovely books.

Tweaking Twain: Publisher introduces new and improved "Tom Sawyer" and "Huckleberry Finn"

Read this on the news a couple of days ago. I had to double check the website to make sure it wasn’t a satirical news website. It wasn’t: it’s true. They’re coming out with new and improved Mark Twain, rest his soul.

To make Twain’s classics “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” more palatable for readers, publisher NewSouth Books in Alabama is working with Twain scholar Alan Gribben to publish the classics with some revisions, such as replacing each occurrence of the word “nigger” with the word “slave.” Gribben claims this word is less offensive to readers and so people will be more likely to embrace the classic novels.

You know, kind of like deep-fat batter frying okra. It’s a southern thing.

Which issue do we tackle first? Well, for starters, I’m offended by the idea that the word “slave” is somehow less offensive. A human who owns another human like any other property- cattle, clothing, a house- is absurd, inhumane, and evil. That this word is somehow more acceptable might be a clue as to why we have more slaves in the United States now than we did before the civil war. It’s just not offensive enough to us.

But let’s get back to that dirty n-word. Is it an offensive word? Absolutely. Is it demeaning to an entire race of people? No doubt. Does it need to be completely purged from our current vocabulary? Certainly. Should we pretend like it never happened? No.

Twain didn’t write fairy tales. And though the protagonists in these books are children, they are not children’s books. He wrote about and for the times, often using humor as the medium for his cutting criticisms of society, a society deeply entrenched is racism, who used words like “nigger” because a majority of them believed that black people were inferior human beings. To turn our eyes from this reality, to pretend it didn’t happen, that it is not a prominent part of our country’s history, is to doom us to ignorance, stagnation, and repetition.

You may disagree with me. You may think that works like Twain’s have no place in a cultured, educated person’s library. Fine. Keep it off your shelves. But for god’s sake, don’t bastardize the man’s writing. If, 100 years from now, someone were to republish my writing removing or changing all the little parts they found offensive, I would rise up out of my grave and knock them over the head. Assuming that Mark Twain was no less spirited than I, let’s not risk it.