I Do or Not I Do

I’ve declared to my mom more than a few times that I’m going to end up following in her footsteps and spending my life single.  It might have started out as a pseudo-serious statement, uttered in my moments of greater romantic cynicism.  But I realized the other day that I really can’t picture myself getting married.  For all the social custom and persisting (if increasingly relaxed) expectation surrounding the institution, marriage fits awkwardly at best into my sense of life and self.  This realization came about around the time when Prop 8 passed in California and the depressing prospect of the time it would take to legalize gay marriage throughout the country absent Supreme Court intervention loomed particularly large.  For those like me who aren’t so enamored of the tradition of marriage, and for those who are excluded from it by law whether enamored or not, it may be time for an alternative—an alternative in the form of a reinvention of the institution on non-institutional grounds.

I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with the existence or institution of marriage in and of itself.  In fact, a robust case can be made for marriage on the grounds of the practicality of signing one agreement that affords all the protections and arrangements that a couple committed to one another for the rest of their lives would naturally want in place: parental guardianship, inheritance rights, hospital visitation, decision-making power in the event of medical misfortune, joint tax filing—the list goes on.  And yet, while it’s sensible and helpful to have a system in place for dealing with the logistical matters of conjoining two lives, the meaning and power of marriage is rooted in the commitment to conjoining in the first place.

As soon as contracts are signed and formal arrangements made, a sense of legal obligation comes to bear.  Despite major advances in the acceptability of divorce in recent decades, still the marriage contract carries with it a weight of implied permanence—and it should; that’s the point.  Any union—at least one involving close physical quarters!—that is to be sustained over the long term will go through periods both good and bad, and the bad are not always indicative of a deep-seated plague to the union that can only (and for the better of both involved, should) be removed by separation.  Rather, sometimes the problems can—and again for the better of both involved, should—be overcome through effort and compromise.  But for every case of a couple that stays together for the better, thanks largely to the sense of obligation imposed by institutional matrimony, there is at least one case of a miserable couple clinging to their paper commitment absent a long-gone sense of emotional-spiritual commitment.

Of course, before making rash decisions about whether to sustain a union or not, it is important to recognize what feelings constitute said “emotional-spiritual commitment” and how they may evolve over time; as Stevie Nicks says, “the feeling remains even after the glitter fades.”  But careful consideration to the merits of continued union can be given whether the union carries with it the sense of insititutionalized obligation that comes from a formal legal marriage or not.  What, then, is the urgent necessity of legal marriage?

The most inspiring commitment is the one based solely and genuinely in the power of the love behind it and sustained through turbulent times by that power alone.  The easier it is to break a commitment to another person (the less institutionalized and socialized the commitment, the less red tape involved in its severance), the more meaningful continued togetherness becomes.  Suppose there was no such thing as formal legal marriage.  In its stead, bonds formed between two (or, hey, maybe more if they feel it) people and symbolized as they see fit (ring, ceremony, what-have-you).  To be married would be a matter of consensual declaration, meaning no person or institution could interfere to prevent people bound and united by love from getting “married.”  The legitimacy of a marriage would depend simply on the depth of its parties’ genuine mutual commitment to togetherness.  Heterosexual, homosexual, what have you—all arrangements equally legitimate in the eyes of social tradition and equally invisible in the eyes of the law.

As for all the practical rights bound up in one easy signing of the marriage contract, those are pretty undeniably pretty damn convenient.  So the best alternative in the here-and-now would probably still be to just open up our traditional contractual marriage mechanism to a wider variety of individuals and situations.  But barring a timely such opening, there is a perhaps equally appealing alternative for anyone who is fed up with the widespread preservation of discrimination within this mechanism: that is, for each couple who would normally make the marriage commitment through established legal channels (it’s not enough for just gay people to do it while the rest of us reap the benefits of traditional marriage) to make that commitment in spirit and declaration only.

I am not advocating a reckless abrogation of contract-based marriage by all those who are impatient with waiting for our legal system to recognize a wider variety of unions. Rather, I am suggesting that by deconstructing institutionalized commitment in a conscientious and thoughtful way, we could actually strengthen the power of long-term commitment.

We could also weaken it.  It is possible that, in a world absent legal marriage, social custom would shift over time such that the majority of people would end up alone by the time they reached old age.  More likely, the old-timers would simply be with partners of, say, ten years versus forty or fifty—but more importantly, even in the case of widespread geriatric singlehood, there is no reason to believe people would, on the whole, be worse off than they are now.  Rather, the locus of our human need for love and solidarity would simply shift to relations other than spouses—namely, friends.  Of course, there is something uniquely special about going through thick and thin with one single other person for forty-, fifty-odd years.  But for that very reason, many people would still aspire to long-term partnership—so it would still be possible, and it would still exist.

If this “spiritual marriage” alternative to fighting for gay marriage rights is an “equally appealing” alternative as I’ve suggested, it is admittedly appealing on very different grounds; it is future-oriented and idealistic, with the aim of affecting social transformation, while a political approach is on-the-ground realistic with the aim of achieving useful rights under the current system.  Preference is personal.  At the end of the day, something’s gotta give, and one or the other change—in the system or of the system—will have to come first.

Journal Entry from 11/7/08 – Edited

I’ve always been excited thinking about long-term prospects.  In some sense, I care about nothing more intensely than the big picture—the problems of the world, the flaws of society at large and how they all might be remedied “some day.”  But on another level, my day-to-day motivation comes from life’s ups-and-downs, the fluctuations in and deviations from routine.  In fact, I’ve been struggling with a contradiction in my feelings that disturbs me intensely: on the one hand, the usual overwhelming yearning for something bigger, something greater (than the inevitable inanity of the single human life-space I occupy), and on the other hand, a relative lack of motivation to do things that might relate to/propel me toward some bigger, greater realm.  In a way, maybe I just don’t really care about the larger ills of the world in the same deep, personal, invested way I care about my own stupid life.

One problem is, the bigger picture can’t quite excite me like it once did.  Maybe that’s because, with each passing year, I’m less able to cloak myself in the airy comfort that I’m not really supposed to know where I’m going or what I’m doing yet, not supposed to have answers yet.  Or maybe it’s because I knew less when I was younger.  Less, that is, of what I didn’t know.  What I know now is that the problems I want to tackle are so massive and entrenched and tangled together that it would take lifetimes of studying merely to understand a fraction of the various systems that underpin these problems.  Take the economy, the key such “system.”  Even the experts can only hypothesize, theorize, argue about this system that both controls and reflects every facet of our lives and beings.  So every problem, every reality, is created by a web of forces the entirety of which we cannot physically wrap our human heads around and by the very mindsets, philosophies—paradigms—that in turn govern our behavior and our relationship with said forces…. What does that leave me to do?  From where does that leave me to seek inspiration?

Thus far I’ve found inspiration in a commitment to changing the paradigms.  But I keep running into two key problems.  First, faced with the seemingly irreconcilable deficit of proper knowledge, I can’t know what to prescribe.  Second, and more disturbing: as I sit trying to educate myself and striving to attain the ability to communicate or expose the paradigmatic ills I see, the world continues going to shit.  I, by default, accept the parameters of the [highly privileged, wildly unsustainable] lifestyle I, by virtue of the culture and location I’ve been born into, live; I “do little things” where I can but adopt (having imbibed, and constantly imbibing) the basic standards of our society.  I have to conform.  We all do.  I have to hold down a job, even if it means contributing my cog to the inexplicable economic wheel that churns out our lives and our world; I have to make “little sacrifices,” “justifiable trade-offs” on my “principles” (as if principles are separate from pragmatic action).  I have to constantly and subconsciously affect the separation between principle and pragmatism and mediate between the two.  All the while, I am living within (and so with) the constraints of my environment.

And so I have to tell myself that all I can do—the best I can do—is to follow the Lupine Lady: concentrate on leaving the world a more beautiful place.  This way of looking at things is, I’ve come to believe, the best way to look at things—but only in the face of all the obstacles to looking at them any differently.  Every little (or big, or even humongous) positive action I can ever take will be accompanied by countless equally little and big actions that work against me.  The carbon footprint I leave merely by being alive in the developed world is—I honestly, seriously suspect/fear—enough to cancel out even the best I could ever do for nature and for the world at large.  There is, then, no real satisfaction to be attained in striving to “be the change,” even as there remains still less satisfaction in the prospect of tacit acceptance of my place in the world.  I wish I could try to find total peace in living and wanting simply, in building my life out of what is available to me and doing the best I can by/for the relatively few people I can reach.  In fact, I admire many people for their unique ways of believing and manifesting just such a philosophy.  But I can’t internalize it myself.  Because no matter my choices, meanwhile to the course of my life, the rainforest continues to disappear, the holes in the ozone widen, the polar bears die, and my counterparts in [insert third-world country here] grovel in a garbage dump, freezing, hungry and utterly fucked.  The sheer scale, force and complexity of the quagmires corners me into apathy while the (I can only assume, human) tendency toward absorption in the immediate emotions of mice & men, love and life, thoroughly distract my head and heart.  The distractions (be they for better or for worse in supporting productivity by preserving some measure of personal sanity) further immobilize my already objective paralysis.

I know I will continue to strive for large-scale change.  I know I will continue to feel motivated and purposeful and inspired by the prospect of working to attain my dreams, contradiction-mired as they might inescapably be.  I can’t help it.  But a friend of mine hit on something that struck a chord with me when he said: “one day, you wake up—old—and realize it’s too late, you’re just not going to make it to those dreams.”  He’s 28.  And I feel this potential—the potential for failure—hovering increasingly acutely, ever persistently about me as I surge into the real world and realize anew each day how far I have yet to go, how long it takes to get anywhere and how very little idea I have of “where” to go anyway.  It’s a realization, not just or so much of how little chance I have to “be the change I want to see,” but of how little chance I have to see the change I want to be.  And if it’s not in my lifetime, it’s not in time.  Tellement future day of awakening—whether it be alone in my bed still desperately yearning for “the great wide out there” (and wondering where that is), or whether it be in the arms of the love of my life (who, as an emotionally immediate aspect of existence, has eclipsed all bigger cares and concerns I once had)—is perhaps my greatest fear.

In “God” Some Trust – first draft inspired by an encounter in Times Square, July ‘09

“Do you believe in God?”  The missionary girls on the street wanted to know.  I looked at them for a second, trying to frame my response.

“Well,” I started, “I think that’s the wrong question.”

It’s something I’ve been telling people for a while now, ever since I realized how many devout believers have only the vaguest, if any, idea precisely what it is they are saying they believe in when they say they believe in God.  They know the set of principles and values that comprise their belief system; they know what actions are required of them and what actions are prohibited under this belief system.  But these principles, values and actions are the implications, the mere systemic aspects, of a system that revolves around “God.”  If the standard baseline assessment of someone’s religious and/or spiritual leanings hinges on the question of her/his belief or non-belief in “God,” the questioner should have some idea of, not just the socially-manifest moral principles and actions implicated in the question, but the nature of the entity I am claiming to believe in if I answer, “yes, I believe in God.”

So I’ve taken to suggesting what I think—or thought—was a better question.  I suggested it to the missionary girls: “What form do you believe God takes?”  Met with the usual vague replies, I posed a more pointed preliminary: “does God even have form?”

I’ve been surprised by how many people (the majority so far) say, “no.”  No, God does not have form, is not a physical being.  This seems to me strangely at odds with their (/our, general societal) willingness to throw around a word (“God”) which, as a widely popularized proper noun, in itself compels a notion of form.  Indeed, the question “do you believe in God” is often used interchangeably with, “do you believe in the existence of God.”  The word existence, similarly, implicates form.  So I ask, if not a physical being, God must be a force, an energy?  Again surprisingly, the same people often protest.  I suppose “force” and “energy” sound too much like that scary, heretical spiritual stuff most people have been taught to see as counter to their “God”-based system.

But then the missionary girls offered me something that seemed to almost land us in the same school of thought: “God is a completely different dimension,” they said. “We can’t know what form he takes because our minds were not built to comprehend.”

“Yes!”  I thought.  Radical subjectivity.  I went a step further.  “If we can’t know what form ‘God’ takes, if we can’t even begin to comprehend the workings of this other dimension,” I asked, “what makes it special?”

That is, how can we attach significance to something the workings of which we claim to be entirely incapable of comprehending?  It’s a paradox.  Something cannot, at once, have substantive significance to our human world, and at the same time be utterly bereft of qualities in our imagination.  After all, I’m not asking for the truth about the form of God (or, certainly, for there to be a truth); I’m asking each individual what God is in their mind, their imagination.  I’m asking, what, substantively, are you left believing in when you say you believe in God? We can cloak ourselves in the frustratingly convenient paradox of agnosticism when dealing in truths (for all matters, religious and otherwise), but as soon as we commit to a belief we can’t deny having a personal version of truth.  Belief is truth—a version of truth—personal, individual and imagined.

But the missionary girls never gave me their versions.  At that point they smiled with polite satisfaction; it was time for their punchline. “All we know,” they said, “is that God created the world—and,” here whipping out a little bible, “gave us this book of truths.”

Book of truths?!  This from the girls who had just claimed they could have no idea—not even an idea—of the constitution of God, had claimed that God was beyond truth and beyond form.  And yet here was a God so personified that He could deliver unto us mere uncomprehending mortals The Truth.  In a fucking book.

I realized then what my “better question” should be.  Not, “what form does God take,” but a query that comes from taking a couple steps back.  The heart of the matter, as a starting point at least, must be: “is God sentient?  Sentience?”  Is “God” essentially a rational actor—an actor at all, motivated or possessed (as is “the actor” of our linguistic conventions) by some fundamental linearity?

Because if God is a form of, or possessing of, sentient rationality, then no, I don’t think I do believe in God.  Rationality is a human convention, and as I believe there is a level—a dimension, a force, call it what you will—beyond human rationality, I see no compelling reason to believe the world begins and ends with sentient and/or linear and/or reasoned action.  But then again, I see no compelling reason to root my personal version of truth—my belief—in the contrary either.  And those compelling reasons will never be found, partly because they are—as the word “reason” itself adverts—limited to the bounds of the very human rationality they would set out to either deconstruct or deify, respectively, and partly because they don’t really exist.  Truth only exists within a framework, from a certain starting point or perspective, and so the only truths that really matter are the ones that bear upon our limited human perspectives, the ones we can derive from our limited surroundings.

That train of thought led me to my (for now) “final” conclusion.  We can’t approach the nonexistent absolute truth about how the world began or how it’s going to end.  We can’t know how life began or where or how it’s going to end when death becomes us.  We can’t know what “God” is or, maybe, even agree on what Her/His “existence” means.  All we can know are those values that make up the system that so often surround the idea of God but in fact need not necessarily be attached to a form-or-sentience-suggesting proper noun at all.  Our framework is society.  Regardless, then, of what lies beneath, beyond, we have a framework for ethical action.  What we should be concerned with is not who believes in God or what that means.  We should be concerned with how we treat each other while we’re here.  If it takes a religious system, if it takes a “God,” to inform or create one’s ideas about how to treat others, more power to that system and that “God” that encourages kindness, love and generosity.  But don’t ask me if I believe in your God.  Ask me the real, functional questions—questions that can’t be answered short of a genuine in-depth discussion: how do you believe we should interact with those around us?  What are your ethics?  What, simply, purely, do you believe?

Represent Yourself, Bitch – 1st draft written in July 09

I loved RuPaul’s quotes in the June/July issue of MetroSource NY.  My favorite was his comment aimed at people who complain that drag queens are holding back the advancement of the gay community by misrepresenting gays; he says, “Bitch, we ain’t trying to represent you.  We’re just doing our thing…How about you represent yourself and we’ll represent ourselves?”  This is a great statement on the politics of drag, but it’s more than that too.  Ru goes straight to the heart of larger issues of stereotyping vs. understanding and acceptance vs. exclusion.

I think there’s an overwhelming tendency among all of us to sift through the masses by throwing everyone we meet and observe into some kind of pre-defined category.  Then, more often than not, we decide whether to like or dislike, include or exclude, accept or reject this person based on our understanding of the category we’ve just assigned them.  Not only do too many people lack a healthy willingness to revise their initial impressions of others, but for each successive revision they might afford someone, their evaluation is still based on shallow categorical definitions of what somebody can be.  And yet, contrary to linguistic convention, people are not types.  It’s time we moved beyond pre-definition.

One example about which I’ve written extensively in another piece (posted below) is particularly salient considering the source of the quote that got me started on this subject in the first place.  That is the issue of (bi)sexual identification.  Gayness is becoming increasingly accepted, but the bulk of the population perceives a clear polarization in straight versus gay.  Even those who recognize bisexuality as real and legitimate will frequently assume the term denotes a more-or-less clear 50/50 split and dismiss anyone who admits to new or evolving feelings of homo- or heterosexuality as a cunning opportunist (at worst) or clueless dilettante (at best) who will soon revert to their “original” straight or gay identity, perhaps leaving a couple broken hearts in the wake of their little game.  Doubtless there are those who fit such a description—but that doesn’t make it okay to dismiss a person as “one of them” before at least engaging that person in an open conversation about how they experience sexuality or otherwise making an individualized assessment rooted in a fine attention to nuance.

It is this kind of attention to the nuances and individuality of others that we need to develop in regards to all aspects of being and character.  In doing so, and thereby giving people a real chance to represent themselves in the way RuPaul defiantly suggests, we would also begin to cultivate a wider sympathy for, and appreciation of, others.  (And since some of the most obnoxious and anti-social behavior patterns are bred of continued misunderstanding, discrimination and exclusion, a greater number of people would likely develop sociable traits we can all appreciate more easily.)

What I’m talking about is something broader than learning acceptance in the way we’ve so far been pursuing it, along the lines of anti-discrimination and protected classes.  Racism, classism, sexism—no matter how many isms we come up with, those are limiting categories too.  Identifying disadvantaged groups has allowed us to make progress toward a more open and accepting outlook, but this tactic also encourages us to measure whether each person we meet fits into an ism-ized group as a first step to determining the degree of sympathy to afford that person.  Now it’s time to take what we’ve learned and move onto the next step.  We need each only listen to RuPaul: represent yourself, and let others do so too.

From Bill O’Reilly’s article, “What President Obama Can Teach America’s Kids”:
“Consider the odds. The United States is a nation of more than 300 million citizens. Only one person is currently the Commander in Chief. That man had no fatherly guidance, is of mixed race, and had no family connections to guide him into the world of national politics.
That adds up to one simple truth that every American child should be told: ‘If Barack Obama can become the President of the United States, then whatever dream you may have can happen in your life.’
It all depends on lessons learned.”

Is anyone else tired of this “you can do anything you dream” bullshit that we (in America and perhaps elsewhere) have been spoon-fed since birth?

It doesn’t “all [depend] on lessons learned.”  Yes, quite a bit of what one can achieve depends on lessons learned and effort put in–but quite a bit else depends on ones’ affinities, character and even physique. Examples of individuals who have overcome incredible adversity to rise to a position that once would have seemed impossible do not prove that every individual can overcome any and every adversity.

In fact, I think the majority of what one makes of oneself depends, not on “lessons learned,” but on the ability to constantly engage, over the whole of one’s life, in a 3-part process: first, recognize where your talents lie; second, recognize your deficiencies and which of them might be overcome; and third, embrace both your talents and deficiencies in order to make the absolute most of yourself and your life.

Or maybe all we really need to do is change the way we evaluate the meaning of achievement. Achievement is not becoming some specific type of person or reaching some specific position; it’s achieving joy, positivity and the ability to transmit both to others. I could never be a professional ballerina with any of the top companies of today, because I don’t have the flexibility, and that’s an insurmountable physical limitation I became aware of long ago.  I can, however, recognize that I possess natural talents in other arenas and that I’ll be able to contribute more to the world (and to my own ultimate sense of accomplishment) if I pursue those talents.  Of course, sometimes recognizing one’s talents can lead, in unexpected ways, to overcoming the original deficiencies; for example, perhaps I could pioneer a highly-reputable dance company comprised of graceful and well-trained–but relatively inflexible–dancers.  (I wouldn’t, by the way, be the first to try.)  I also wouldn’t necessarily succeed.

I’m not saying everyone should give up on activities they love just because they don’t happen to be skilled at them. I stuck with ballet for 15 years (over the course of which it was made very, often painfully, clear that I was not professional material), and I still take classes whenever I can.  And if I had truly felt that nothing could make me as happy as dancing, I’m sure I could have found a smaller company to join somewhere. That is what’s so cool about this country and many other parts of the world: there’s both enough variety and enough freedom of choice out there that we can all at least give a fighting chance to whatever lifestyle suits our fancy. But I could never be a prima for ABT, and not everyone (or anyone) who wants to be president of the United States could make it there for all the effort and “lessons” in the world.

I just think–or I hope–we can all learn to love what we can do and make the most of it–for our own sake and everybody else’s.

I’m using this blog more as an archive/sharing space than a chronicle of my life, and I can’t find a way to rearrange the order I posted things in, so the posts are not in chronological order. The best way to browse is to use the links to the categories I set up (on the right side of the page).

The Natural Golden Rule – also originally written sometime last fall or winter

Feminist debates have long raged over what is and is not biologically “natural” for women and men. To those who defend certain qualities as innate, it is unrealistic to hold humans to a higher standard than the limits of our biological programming, or “nature,” would dictate. To critics of this line of thought, “natural” is all too often (mis)used as a substitute for “excusable.” A classic example is the argument that women can avoid sexual harassment by wearing non-revealing clothing. You’ve heard it: women who wear mini skirts and halter tops are “asking for it” because men “naturally” have a stronger and less controllable sex drive than women. Catherine McKinnon put it best, in response, when she said something along the lines of, “Most men don’t go around raping women. There is nothing natural about it.” I would like to offer a second line of reasoning to arrive at the same basic, but broadened, conviction. Even if natural, sexual harassment—and all forms of negativity toward others—is not—are not—okay.

Many women, reacting strongly against the idea that women could be at fault for our own victimization, yet fail to offer a real counterargument as to why, if men have a naturally hard-to-control sex drive, women who try to be sexy are not at least partly to blame for unwanted sexual advances. I call their argument, “yes, but—.” Yes, men have a crazy sex drive, but that doesn’t make it okay to rape or otherwise sexually assault women. Okay, but if you’re going to take this view of the “nature” of man, why is his nature not at least a mitigating factor in an assault? Wouldn’t nature make his actions sort of understandable, even if not totally okay? For the sake of argument, let’s just assume that men are in fact biologically endowed with a stronger and less controllable sex drive than women and that all women know this.

So aren’t women who nonetheless choose to flaunt their sexuality in front of men sort of “asking for” any sexual attention they might subsequently receive—violent, demeaning, generally unpleasant or otherwise? Yes—so long as we allow ourselves to be limited by nature.

But think of all the times you’ve heard someone extolling the ingenuity of the human brain, praising the wonders of technological innovation, marveling at the “uniquely human” ability to overcome or manipulate nature thanks to our remarkable “capacity to reason.” And then think how easily the very same people fall back on the logic of “boys will be boys” to explain, to at least partially excuse, the rape of a scantily clad woman, the unsolicited sexual advance of a teenage boy on a cute young girl. “It’s unfortunate,” they might say, “but it’s natural.” Natural. But what, really, is natural about modern life? Is working for twelve hours a day, enclosed in concrete and glass, and sleeping for a mere four or five, really natural? Is traveling thousands of miles in a matter of hours really natural? Is eating food created from a combination of chemicals we don’t recognize (and certainly can’t pronounce) natural? Is monogamy even particularly natural, for either sex? Is treating someone you despise with diplomatic politeness natural?

Humans have been defying the limits of “natural” possibility for more years than we can count—socially, physically and technologically. As a species, we have adapted to wildly different conditions over time, and (more importantly) we have conformed to wildly different notions of proper social conduct. So if reason is our defining characteristic, let us take charge of our instincts and bring them into line with this reasoning: every human being deserves reciprocal respect. No human being should be treated with offensive aggression or violence; every human being should be given equal chance to prove the capabilities she or he believes her or himself to have. Treat others as you would like to be treated. We all have certain tendencies that need to be forcibly restrained for the collective good. If we only spent less time transcending the limits of external nature—polluting up the planet and wreaking latent havoc on future generations in the process—and more time transcending the ugly “limitations” of our own internal natures, we could achieve real progress towards a more harmonious world.

Doubt – written last fall or winter sometime. just found it and edited it up a bit.

“One of the things going on in this country is that we’ve developed a culture of debate, of Crossfire and Hardball, of adults shouting each other down and not listening to each other. Our leaders are not allowed to show doubt, uncertainty, ambiguity. In our culture at this time, these things are perceived as signs of weakness. And I think that’s a big mistake.”
-John Patrick Shanley

I went to see Bill Maher’s editorial film, Religulous, last Friday. If you’re not familiar with it, that’s “Religulous” as in, religion + ridiculous. In the film, Maher interviews all kinds of deeply committed religious believers and pokes merciless fun at their faith. One of the central ideas, clashing ironically with Maher’s belligerent methods, is that we just can’t know. That is, nobody can know her or his religious ideas are right, and nobody else (aside, apparently, from Maher) can know they’re wrong. Filmmaker’s hypocrisy aside, the agnosticism he professes is the basis for exactly the kind of attitude we, as individuals and a social collective, need to cultivate more widely. I’ve often found myself forced to admit that the only thing I can really believe, sadly paradoxically enough, is that I don’t know what to believe. Sure, I claim certain beliefs as mine, certain ideas as truth; we’ve all got to do that, to avoid utter paralysis if nothing more. But at the end of the day, I can never really say “I know.”

Consider conspiracy theories. The very word “conspiracy” is like code for “bullshit.” People hear an idea—any idea—that questions what they perceive to be the fundamentals of society or the world, and they roll their eyes. They close their ears, they laugh, they smirk. And yet, as far as I (your average non-connected non-conspirator) can tell, many of the claims made in conspiracy-theory literature are based on the same meticulous attention to evidence and logic as any legitimate mainstream material. There are references, primary sources and reasonable expressions of suspicion over conflicts-of-interest in powerfully-positioned people and groups. Admittedly, I haven’t fact-checked all the claims in the conspiracy theories I’ve read, and I haven’t run any kind of detailed check on their sources (though presumably the publishers have). But I haven’t done any of that for non-conspiracy literature either. I can’t. I’m one little person with the resources and connections of most other “one little persons” in the world. That’s my point: as an individual making my way through an endlessly complex, compartmentalized, interconnected, and hierarchical modern society, I have virtually no way of knowing shit about the true legitimacy of all the sources of information I encounter along the way. That is the crux of radical doubt at its horrible finest, and it’s something conspiracy theories can go a long way in showing everyone regardless of the theories’ actual proximity to the truth (which proximity is precisely what we can never know).

Let’s put it this way: you don’t have to believe that the American government had a hand in bringing down the Twin Towers on 9/11 to recognize how very much could be going on behind closed doors, beyond the reach of most citizens’ knowledge—beyond, even, our wildest dreams. In fact, it doesn’t even take a conspiracy theory to illuminate the extent of the secrets in high-up places; hundreds of formerly-unknown dealings and lies (NSA wire-tapping, WMD, the list goes on) make it clear that there are power structures of which we are simply unaware acting upon us and shaping our lives.

So what I think we need to do is first recognize our uncertainty and then embrace it. Embrace it enough to listen—really listen, and really listen closely—to one another. Then maybe we can start really conversing too, not just firing off the litanies of talking points we’ve all become so accustomed to hearing and employing.

I would have liked to interview some of the religious leaders Bill Maher met with in his film. I’d have liked to ask them some questions I consider more interesting, more telling, about what exactly they believe and where those beliefs come from. Maybe I could find some reasonable underpinnings to their beliefs—or, hey you never know, even potential points of reconciliation. A friend of mine has been known to say, when asked about her religious views, “I’d rather have a mind opened by wonder than closed by belief.” There’s an element of surprise in wonder, and we can’t have either if we don’t allow ourselves to explore the unfamiliar.

On Growing Healthier Kids and Communities, in the Garden – Summer ‘08 – published online by MN2020

When I first heard the term “community garden,” I pictured a big, open plot in the middle of a neighborhood—a large garden accessible to, and maintained by, any and all members of the community who would like to help maintain it.  In fact, Community Gardens take many forms, and the most common form is the allotment garden: a piece of land divided into plots that are then rented out to individual gardeners or small groups.  Of the communal variety I initially imagined, there are only a handful in the Twin Cities. All types of community gardens can offer multiple and similar benefits to their surrounding communities, but some arguably deliver more benefits more effectively than others.

 

The three-year old Loring Schoolyard Garden, an integral component of a program called Kids Cook Classroom, is a novel concept and an effective model in face of the difficulties that plague many Twin Cities community gardens.   

 

Twin Cities Community Gardens and Their Challenges

 

GardenWorks, an organization established in 2005 to document and promote community gardens in the Twin Cities area, has thus far counted about two hundred community gardens (of all structures) in the area.  Many got their start on vacant lots in the 1980’s and beginning of the 1990’s when property values were in decline.  However, with the property market boom of the last decade or so, most of these gardens have been consumed by development projects.  Those that survived face mounting financial pressure due to government budget cuts.  The three basic resources necessary to sustain a community garden are land, labor and water, and the cost of leasing land is on the rise along with the water bills.  These increasing costs can make it difficult for garden organizers to stay afloat, much less afford other important resources like tools, seeds, compost, soil and hoses.  According to the Twin Cities Community Gardens Sustainability Report published in 2005, “Taxes can also be burdensome to community gardeners, and do not make sense when garden sites are open for the entire local community to enjoy.” 

 

For almost thirty years, Twin Cities community gardens were able to obtain liability insurance and reduced-price leases through the Sustainable Resource Center’s Urban Lands Program.  However, this program was canceled in 2002.  In 2004, the Twin Cities Greening Coalition (TCGC) decided to develop a plan for sustaining community gardens.  The Sustainability Plan Final Report, cited above, recommended that a Community Garden Association be established to collect data on community gardens, promote information-sharing among gardeners across the city and generally assist community gardens in any way possible. 

 

GardenWorks was formed in response to this recommendation, but of course, many of the difficulties identified in the report persist.  In addition to financial burdens, problematic trends that GardenWorks hopes to tackle include a lack of information resources for new garden organizers and the narrow leadership base of many community gardens.  To remain sustainable in the long-term, most gardens need a larger core group of committed volunteers and more diversified leadership among volunteers.

 

The Loring Schoolyard Garden

 

The garden at Loring School is an example of one of those few communal community gardens.  Its story begins with a program called Kid’s Cook, an optional after-school cooking class that volunteers Robin Krause, Starla Krause and Susan Telleen started teaching five years ago at Loring Elementary School in Minneapolis.  Eager to help students understand and appreciate the origins of food in this age of pre-packaged, processed meals, they focused on the basics of home cooking from scratch.  Children learned how to cook a chicken, roast vegetables, bake bread and make a variety of healthy foods like vegetable stock for soup and curry.

 

Two years into Kid’s Cook, they the three program leaders converted the school courtyard into a modest garden where the children could grow their own ingredients.  Now in its third year, the garden has expanded to include many more plants and the beginnings of an orchard.  Robin, Starla and Susan have always taken on the bulk of responsibility for garden maintenance, but as the program has grown, so has community and student involvement.  The children contributed after-school for the first two years of the garden, and they were encouraged to volunteer over the summer.  Just last year, the after-school gardening and cooking classes were incorporated into classroom curriculum in the form of a program dubbed Kids Cook Classroom. 

 

 

Benefits: The Case for Community Gardens

 

Kid’s Cook Classroom and the Loring Schoolyard Garden are delivering on many of the benefits often associated with community gardens.  The first of such benefits, unsurprisingly, is building a sense of community—or, instilling in people a sense of ownership over and loyalty to the community that can in turn lead to more active participation in local politics or just personal benefits in the form of feeling more connected.  Community gardens are said to promote this sense of community by getting people involved in a joint project (or similar projects in shared space), allowing people to expand their circle of local friends and generally increasing the amount of interaction between community members. 

 

Also unsurprisingly, advocates of community gardens cite neighborhood beautification and the fostering of greater appreciation of nature as benefits.  For those gardens that include or emphasize food production, advocates also talk about nutrition benefits that come with “access to nutritionally rich foods” and an increased awareness of the natural forms and origins of food.  Though enthusiasts have long linked these nature- and nutrition-related benefits to better physical and mental health for community members, only more recently have scientific and systematic studies in the field of “people-plant interactions” yielded a solid stock of concrete evidence that community gardens can have positive side effects for human well-being.  Some “background theories” related to people-plant interactions suggest that gardens and other natural settings reduce stress by offering our systems a break from “the noise, movement, and visual complexity of the modern world.”  In The Biophilia Hypothesis, Edward Wilson and Stephen Kellert discuss the ways in which human evolutionary history may in fact necessitate human interaction with nature.

 

Numerous studies support such hypotheses and highlight the potential impact of Community Gardens on physical and mental health.  For example, a study of prison inmates showed that those who have views of greenery from their cells tend to need less medical care and report fewer physical problems than those who have no view of nature.  In a 1990 study of cancer patients after they left the hospital, those who agreed to take part in activities that brought them into regular contact with nature improved more rapidly than those who did not.

 

It is also well known that vegetation “restore[s] oxygen to the air and reduce[s] air pollution” while helping control the surrounding temperature.  It stands to reason, then, that the more vegetation in a community, the greater the health benefits for its members.  Greening could help mitigate asthma, headaches and other health problems. 

 

Where to Go from Here?

 

The problem with many of these celebrated benefits of community gardening is that they rely on one or both of two key assumptions: first, that enough people will participate in the garden to render it a significant community-building and health-boosting arena, and second, that the garden itself is big enough to have a noticeable impact on factors like air quality and access to nutritious food.  How many people can these gardens really affect, and how deeply?  This question might well be the crux of the problem when it comes to winning public sector support for Community Gardens—support that can contribute significantly to their success and sustainability. The City of Chicago, for example, has a green space preservation fund.  Zoning laws can also be made more or less favorable to the preservation of green spaces.  Boston has a zoning code designed specifically to protect community gardens. 

 

Unfortunately, even with studies to back up the positive effects of people-plant interactions, making the case for community gardens cannot be as easy as making the case for something that produces more measurable effects and for which participation is more assured.  People can generally be expected to make use of a well-placed hardware store or supermarket because everybody has to run errands.  But it may be hard to believe that many people will take the time to leave home for gardening.  Beyond neglect, downright disrespect for community gardens might also be a concern. In short, with nobody assigned the decisive responsibility that comes from exclusive ownership, any common space could easily be subject to tragedy.  It is therefore difficult to justify a real need for public support for community gardens in light of tightly stretched government budgets.

 

Enter Kid’s Cook Classroom and the Loring Schoolyard Garden.  Together, they offer a model way to deliver significant benefits of community gardening with minimal need for government support.  True, all community gardens need a great deal of support from volunteers and from whatever other entities can help assure the provision of land, labor and water.  But in the case of the Loring Schoolyard Garden, that support has come from self-sustaining fundraisers and from Loring School, not to mention the work of the three program coordinators. 

 

The garden does not depend for survival on the often fatal expense of leasing, renting or otherwise obtaining and holding onto its land because Loring School acts as its fiscal sponsor by donating the use of its schoolyard rent-free.  For other expenses, the garden is self-sustaining; students use the food they grow to prepare meals for fundraisers and for other community events where they offer homegrown products for sale.  They are able to raise about ten thousand dollars a year. 

 

Moreover, the design of the program ensures maximal benefits by targeting children, engaging a large group of people and focusing on food.  Involving children as part of their school curriculum minimizes the risk that the garden will be used only by a select group of community members who have extra time and happen to be interested in gardening, thus ensuring that benefits are significantly wide-reaching.  The school setting is conducive to cultivating new garden enthusiasts because it exposes children to an activity they might otherwise have little chance to explore.  Although Robin, Starla and Susan still take on the bulk of the organizing work, the program design helps them avoid the most serious hazards of a narrow leadership base by spreading out the burden of actual garden work and engaging a large (and constantly refreshing) group of potential future garden leaders.

 

The program, by integrating gardening with cooking and community-building, does a better job than stand-alone gardens of promoting healthy habits, greater appreciation for nature and community engagement. Because the Loring Schoolyard garden is part of a process that includes using food from the garden for cooking, the health benefits of access to nutritionally-rich foods and increased knowledge of natural foods are far more assured than they would be if the garden were not tied deliberately to cooking and learning.  Children are able to directly see where their food comes from and how to use it so that they can understand (and taste) the difference between home-grown and processed food.  Likewise, because the meals and dishes that students learn to prepare are in turn frequently used to bring the neighborhood community together for events, the oft-cited benefit of promoting a sense of community connectedness is also more assured than if the garden were not part of a program that includes purposeful community-building. 

 

Perhaps most importantly, all these lessons learned in the garden are particularly effective when embedded in the school setting because children, still in their formative years, are best able to absorb what they learn as a set of lifelong skills and values. 

 

There is no easy or clear-cut way to export the Kids Cook Classroom program, but it can definitely serve as a model for a school with some extra yard space and a group of community volunteers with a passion for gardening and organizing.  It is a model worth serious consideration as a long-term investment to produce a healthier and more community-conscious future generation.

Is Wind Energy the Answer? – Summer ‘08 – published online by MN2020

            Among the chorus of voices clamoring for renewable energy development, one claim in particular caught my ear: Minnesota, I heard, should not only be developing renewable energy, but should be concentrating on wind energy above all.  Does that mean, I wondered, that Minnesota is particularly well-disposed to harness wind power relative to other states?  It turns out, Minnesota is around the ninth windiest state in the U.S.   It also turns out, there is good reason for anyone to choose wind power over other renewable technologies when given a choice; wind power emits no pollutants or greenhouse gasses during electricity generation.  There are environmental impacts from building and transporting wind turbines, but these are certainly no greater than the negative impacts of other renewable technologies.  And while many people worry about turbine interference with the migration patterns of birds, studies tend to show that avian collision levels are negligible when quantified.  It seems, then, that Minnesota is on the right track. Wind power already provides 4.6% of the energy for our state, second only to Iowa but decidedly below our full potential.  There is more to wind power than just wind, and our state can boast a number of favorable conditions.

            The most efficient way to harness wind power on a large scale is through wind farms, or concentrated groups of large wind turbines. In order to benefit from economies of scale, these farms should be big enough to generate at least twenty megawatts of energy, and 50 MW wind farms are not uncommon. Although such utility-scale wind farms require about 60 acres per megawatt of generating capacity, only about five percent of that area is actually occupied by turbines.  The other ninety-five percent can be put to use for farming or ranching.  In fact, “in California, Minnesota, Texas, and elsewhere, wind energy provides rural landowners and farmers with a supplementary source of income through…arrangements with wind power developers.”  The need to make such arrangements is one reason establishing a wind farm can be a complex undertaking.

While wind farms can be built in eighteen months to two years, it only takes about six months to actually install the turbines.  The rest of the time is likely to be spent obtaining construction permits, navigating zoning laws that govern the selected area and measuring the area’s wind flows. Site selection is a delicate matter and requires working with (or around) local regulations designed to protect a range of environmental and social interests including wildlife well-being and noise levels in local communities.  Considerations like potential conflict with airplane routes are also important.  Additionally, before building a wind farm, the developer must identify a utility willing to purchase (and able to access) the electricity that will be generated.  Wind power can deliver a significant amount of electricity to existing power grids, but due to its high variability it cannot stand alone as a means of powering modern society.

In fact, wind power is unique in its dependence on an unpredictable system: the weather.  As the American Wind Energy Association explains, “utilities must maintain enough power plant capacity to meet expected customer electricity demand at all times, plus an additional reserve margin.”  For this reason, utilities prefer conventional energy generation techniques. The three main interconnected power networks that operate in the United States, and the smaller “control areas” that comprise these networks, adhere to strict standards for maintaining a minimal frequency and a minimal backup capacity at all times. But as long as wind contributes only about ten percent of the electricity to a power system in any given hour, the flexibility built into the system can easily cover for its variability.  If wind power contributes ten to twenty percent of the energy for a system, the application of wind forecasting and other careful management techniques can keep it running smoothly.  Only once a system relies on wind for more than twenty percent of the electricity it delivers does the system’s overall variability increase enough to demand significant additional expenditure for regulatory equipment. Thus, the goal is to maximize the use of wind power use in conjunction with energy sources that can ensure system stability.

            In order to integrate wind power into existing systems, access to transmission lines must be established to transfer energy from wind farms to energy providers (and ultimately consumers).  Because building new transmission infrastructure is extremely expensive and time-consuming, wind energy is most feasible when access to existing lines can be established.  According to a spokesman for the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, while wind farms can be erected in eighteen months, building a line can take upwards of seven years.  Thus, Phase I of a statewide study recently commissioned as part of the Governor’s Next Generation Energy Initiative of 2006 assessed “the potential ability to install 600 MW of dispersed renewable generation throughout Minnesota with minimal impacts on the transmission system.”  Dispersed renewable energy includes wind, biomass and solar energy.  The study demonstrated that it would indeed be possible to achieve the target 600 MW without greatly impacting the transmission infrastructure.  Looking at wind energy alone, the 2006 Minnesota Wind Integration Study found that Minnesota’s power system could accommodate enough wind energy to account for twenty percent of retail energy sales “if sufficient transmission investments” were made.  So while maximizing our wind power potential would inevitably require transmission investments, it also seems that significant advances could be attained as a first step without altering the transmission.  Working toward this first step, Phase II of the statewide study on dispersed renewable energy generation will investigate the actions that would be necessary to interconnect the wind farm locations identified in Phase I.  It is important to have dispersed but interconnected sites to minimize variability; if geographically scattered wind plants work together, the chances that some of them will be producing power at any given time are greater.

            Although southwestern Minnesota is windier than most of the country, other select parts of the United States are far windier.  Nonetheless, Minnesota is one of the most promising candidates for one specific use of wind power.  In a 2006 presentation, Michael Reese of the University of Minnesota discussed the possibility of converting wind power into storable substances—mainly, hydrogen—instead of transferring it to a power plant for distribution.  Wind power can be used to make anhydrous ammonia, the key ingredient in fertilizers.  Thanks to corn production, Minnesota is in the heart of the region with the greatest demand for anhydrous ammonia.  To produce fertilizers locally using wind energy would minimize the environmental impacts from production and transportation. Because transmission lines would be by-passed, it would also be an alternative to battling with the low transmission grid capacity in many rural areas.   

Aside from providing open, windy space for wind farm development, and opportunities for innovative uses of wind power such as fertilizer production, Minnesota is additionally well-disposed to concentrate its efforts on wind power because it is already a leader in wind energy policy.  The Community Based Energy Development Tariff is one example of progressive policy in Minnesota.  Also known as C-BED, this legislation “is intended to allow community-based projects easier access to better financing, and empower communities to develop local wind resources and keep the economic benefits of those projects within the community.”  C-BED requires that utilities purchasing from community-based or -owned wind farms offer higher rates for the first several years of their contract, thus easing start-up costs by essentially allowing the wind farm developers to borrow from the later years.  Another initiative is Minnesota’s Renewable Energy Standard, passed in February 2007.  This standard requires that twenty-five percent of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by the year 2025.  There have also been several statewide studies (like those mentioned earlier) to investigate the ease with which wind energy could be developed using existing infrastructure.  Our state is definitely moving in the right direction, and we must make sure we continue to generate considerable human energy, on both the community and policy levels, to move toward generating more wind power.