Experiment reaches first conclustion: new blog

I have struggled with whether to keep this blog going for a few months now, and I've decided: No. I have a new blog, connected to A's and my road trip website: storiesfromtheroad.com.
So, head on over there!

on our pedestrian dehumanization ability

You know that hackneyed phrase, "(insert category of person here) are people too!" ?
Why do we need a reminder that people we call by a general category name like "moms" or "politicians" or "old people" are actually - hey, what a concept - people. As in, human beings like me, who fall in love and get mad and have indigestion and make bad jokes and have ideals.

Is there something about human nature that makes it easy for us to dehumanize each other with abstract concepts? Is this ability not a primary reason soldiers and officers and citizens are able to justify fighting and killing people we've never met, and with whom we have no history of direct argument or grievance? Because someone else we've never met says it's for the good of "our people"?

Is this categorical dehumanization ability uniquely human, or uniquely cultural (yet ubiquitous)? Or some combination?

Whatever the answer, probably subject to years of research, I think it's wise to remind ourselves of our own and others' mundane and meaningful humanity - at every opportunity. Like walking to your car after work when you see someone and realize you've made a very odd and embarrassing assumption about him when he does something you do not expect. Or watching your most reviled politician on TV while you curse and snarl. Or when talking to the customer service agent who has her professional customer service voice down so well, you don't really feel like you're talking to a person.

Sure, this isn't a grand proposal for social change, but it is a very real way to deepen your daily understanding of and curb your frustration and dissatisfaction with our fellow wayward Homo Sapiens, and the world we create and re-create together.

a typical monday

Today was fraught with dull frustration – hours dealing with printers for work, and no resolution by day’s end. I think the dullness came from driving over 17 twice and eating 2 donuts, the second of which made me sick, as was apparent before I finished it. I had a small hope, as I told my friend at dinner later, that it would kill my sugar obsession to get a little sick on those dastardly fried cake globules. It was not worth it: Headache, dullness, feeling sorry for myself that I ruined my lunch with one fairly good donut and another large mediocre donut. I have a feeling my quest for a really good donut is not over yet. But perhaps the next time I will be prudent enough to eat just one. *sigh*

The donut torpor was temporarily alleviated by This American Life, a truly wonderful radio show that rarely fails to remind me of the fullness of humanity in this country, even when the actions and speech of those whose stories are told through the airwaves shock me to no end, I still feel an incredibly compelling, circular completeness. a kindred spirit rises within me and I feel hopeful and humbled and empowered.

This particular show was about the undecided in the election, and was aired a few days before Super Tuesday (“Here comes Super Tuesday”…anyone remember this obscure song on the radio, which I last heard over a decade ago to the tune of Ruby Tuesday?) Not that I had any doubt before, but my word, the dirty election politics! Especially on the republican side. It was a fascinating show. I highly recommend it. To hear it: log onto This American Life’s website and do a search for Swing Set, broadcast date 10/29/04. You can listen with Real Audio.

A friend and I had dinner at a Japanese restaurant downtown that I thought I liked just as well as the one I usually go to. Now that I have eaten there again, I disagree with myself. I had the amazingly expensive unagi donburi (just over $25 all told), the leftovers of which are now in my fridge, and will hopefully be eaten by me, though I don’t think I can face it tomorrow. I need to eat normal food that I know makes me feel good. White rice, fresh water eel and seaweed…well, I just don’t know about it. It started tasting kinda fishy (even though it’s fresh water) at the restaurant and I had to stop eating it. The wasabi and ginger made a nice masking of the fishiness, but know I don’t have that to work with here at home. Wait…I do have pickled ginger and wasabi paste in the fridge! Whaddya know.

We talked a blue streak, like we always do, my friend and i. it felt good. We had to make an effort to look at the menu and place our orders. By the way, raw fish is intense (I tasted some of her tuna nigiri). It creeps me out more than I thought it did. Maybe because it’s so powerful to eat a creature that close to life. I wonder what it would be like to eat a live animal. I don't need to find out, but I do wonder.

We went to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Convocation at the civic center. Now here is a holiday I can actually celebrate. Forget Christmas and Solstice. Afterward, we walked back downtown in the rain feeling inspired. I feel connected to thousands of people I don’t know working for civil justice and human rights in all ways small and large.

Dr. Joseph Lowry was the keynote speaker, a contemporary of Dr. King. He is a good story teller, as it seems Baptist ministers generally are (okay, i have only heard 4, and though two of them weren’t quite “good,” in the context of what i was expecting (a talk about organic farming in the South), listening to them was a unique experience I have decided I am glad I had). His voice was raspy as a rusty can, but that didn’t stop his spirit from enveloping his words with power and emotion. I was more open (less resistant) to hearing him invoke the lord, and jesus, now that I’ve sat through an intense and unexpected preaching experience (that’s another story). I sort of let “the lord” and “jesus” equal “universe” and “the embodiment of compassion,” so I didn’t tense up. I don’t know entirely why my resistance to hearing religious speak is so ingrained in me. i think part of it is that I sense those who use it are trying to get me to convert, even if they are not directly proselytizing. anyhow, hearing his stories of marches in the 60's, 70's, and 80's was remarkable, as was his humble, powerful eloquence on matters of the day like affirmative action, the war in iraq, the state of the union, and the state of voter registration (millions more to go).

So here's to Dr. King and most importantly, his legacy: all of those people who work for the values he championed: compassion and non-violence and human rights and social justice.

favorite foods and gecko catching on christmas eve

The day before yesterday was my grampa harmon's birthday. He ate his favorite foods, which, it turns out, are macaroni & cheese and bread pudding. I imagine that in his younger years that food symbolized something to him, and that's mostly why it's now his favorite. Bread pudding is quite good, but there are so many foods in the world that are knock your socks off delicious, it doesn't seem likely that one's experiential associations have nothing to do with that perfect feeling of knowing one's favorite.
Come to think of it, my favorite food changes all the time - does that mean i don't really have a favorite? It changes with the seasons, how I’m feeling, how long since I’ve had a certain dish… I’m not as gung ho about the Hawaiian papaya this time round, maybe cause I’ve been here so many times before, and maybe also cause I feel more detached about my experience – fewer expectations, less highs and lows, more just being in the moment. I don’t know why that results in being less enthralled in the moment. Like yesterday's moment of tasting my first bite of papaya in over a year.

Like the moment of triumph today when the gecko I am stalking flings itself to seeming safety on my arm and I walk out the door, onto the grass where I can catch it again easily if it leaps onto the green and squirms as fast as it can toward cover. It does do this many times. I decide it might be more at home, (and look rather intriguing) perched atop a coconut. I find one that is just beginning to rot - it's tip dark brown with odd-shaped holes, but the rest bright green. I roll it over the lawn with my foot, holding my arm out beside me with the gecko watching everything. I sit down between the overhanging milo tree and the shrubbery. It takes a while to entice the neon creature to step its sticky toe pads onto the slick husk of the coconut, but it finally settles there, looking up at me. Its dominant skin color nearly matches the coconut's. Three licks of hot pink behind its head and tiny yellow spots lining its belly hold my gaze. It breaths deeply, quickly. It suddenly begins to lick its mouth systematically from nose at the center westward toward right eyeball. Yes, it licks its eyeball. No need for eye drops of the sea or rain, saliva does the trick, apparently. It’s a tickling sight to see a cute, brightly colored, cartoonish reptile lick its own black eye ball with a narrow pink tongue. Why are so many creatures’ tongues in the pink family, I wonder. The exception to my generalization leaps to mind - the giraffe that thought it might nibble a morsel from my hand at age 8 stretched its black-purple tongue nearly a foot from its smiling snout into the car, reaching in vain for food we did not give it. We shied away, in awe at the color as much as the fact that - my god, a giraffe has its head a foot from our faces and is trying to lick us!
Not for the first time today, I am thinking: there's still time to become a biologist. But I think that about so many things that excite me. What keeps me excited is writing and the kind of thinking I do when I write.
Here's to the wonders of the living world, and finding new favorites, and having old favorites on special occasions.