Arturo Rodriguez invites Americans who think immigrant farm workers are taking away jobs to work in the fields.
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Friday, July 9, 2010
Work in the fields
Uncertainty
You Are There by Erica Jong
From The Writer's Almanac
You are there.
You have always been
there.
Even when you thought
you were climbing
you had already arrived.
Even when you were
breathing hard,
you were at rest.
Even then it was clear
you were there.
Not in our nature
to know what
is journey and what
arrival.
Even if we knew
we would not admit.
Even if we lived
we would think
we were just
germinating.
To live is to be
uncertain.
Certainty comes
at the end.
From The Writer's Almanac
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Nobody
I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
Emily Dickenson
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
Emily Dickenson
all which isn't singing is mere talking
all which isn't singing is mere talking
and all talking's talking to oneself
(whether that oneself be sought or seeking
master or disciple sheep or wolf)
gush to it as diety or devil
-toss in sobs and reasons threats and smiles
name it cruel fair or blessed evil-
it is you (ne i)nobody else
drive dumb mankind dizzy with haranguing
-you are deafened every mother's son-
all is merely talk which isn't singing
and all talking's to oneself alone
but the very song of(as mountains
feel and lovers)singing is silence
e.e. cummins
The truth hurts
"All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings."
Diderot
Diderot
Kudos for bad writing
Seattle writer wins 2010 bad writing contest Story user rating:
Published: Jun 29, 2010
Online: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
Published: Jun 29, 2010
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - An unseemly sentence that compares a kiss to the union of a thirsty gerbil and a giant water bottle has won the top prize in an annual bad writing contest.
San Jose State University said Tuesday that Molly Ringle of Seattle was the grand prize winner of the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which the university has sponsored since 1982.
In her winning entry, Ringle wrote: "For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss - a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil."
The literary competition honors the memory of 19th English century writer Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who famously opened his 1830 novel "Paul Clifford," with the much-quoted, "It was a dark and stormy night."
Entrants are asked to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels, with winners chosen in several categories.
Steve Lynch of San Marcos, Calif., won the detective category: "She walked into my office wearing a body that would make a man write bad checks, but in this paperless age you would first have to obtain her ABA Routing Transit Number and Account Number and then disable your own Overdraft Protection in order to do so."
Linda Boatright of Omaha won the Western category: "He walked into the bar and bristled when all eyes fell upon him - perhaps because his build was so short and so wide, or maybe it was the odor that lingered about him from so many days and nights spent in the wilds, but it may just have been because no one had ever seen a porcupine in a bar before."
Online: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
Monday, July 5, 2010
Pine Mouth
Pine Nuts May Be To Blame For That Bitter Aftertaste
by Allison Aubrey
To listen to the story Click Here.
You know it's a bad sign when the bride texts her guests to ask if anyone has a metallic taste in their mouth.
That was Morning Edition Producer Selena Simmons-Duffin's first clue that she'd been struck by a weird food syndrome known as Pine Mouth.
What is Pine Mouth you ask? It's a vile, bitter-metallic taste in your mouth that you just can't shake after eating pine nuts. "Anything I eat or drink tastes revolting," writes The Greasy Spoon, one of many food blogs to complain about the problem recently. The nasty taste can last a few days or up to two weeks.
For Simmons-Duffin, it was the wedding rehearsal dinner that done it. "We had this lovely salad with arugula, goat cheese and the fated pine nuts," she told Shots.
Ilse Bendorf
Selena Simmons-Duffin demonstrates the face that comes with Pine Mouth syndrome.
Simmons-Duffin said the good news is you don't really feel sick. The condition is mostly just an annoyance, because nothing tastes good for awhile.
When Simmons-Duffin and some ME colleagues posted a Facebook thread on Pine Mouth, they were surprised by how many people jumped into the conversation. "For a post at 1 a.m., 22 comments made for quite a lively thread" said Simmons-Duffin.
So how many people experience Pine Mouth? Official numbers are hard to come by. The FDA documented 53 complaints in 2009. They don't have updated numbers for this year, but it's likely that many cases don't get reported.
An FDA spokesperson said that most cases are not considered illnesses, since there are usually no accompanying symptoms. "Taste disturbance" is the category FDA gives Pine Mouth.
No one is certain what causes it. One theory is that people don't store the nuts properly, so they go bad.
"We know from agricultural research that pine nut oil can go rancid quickly," said Dr. Marc-David Munk of the University of New Mexico. Munk got interested in Pine Mouth after he came down with it.
In Munk's case, he ate a handful of pine nuts from a restaurant salad bar. He published a paper in the Journal of Medical Toxicology about his experience. Since then, he says he receives a couple of emails a day from people who are curious to know more.
Munk says there's another theory about what causes the bitter taste: Chinese imports. Researchers in Switzerland recently did a chemical analysis of imported pine nuts and identified two species that have not traditionally been part of the food supply.
"One was the Chinese White Pine and the other was the Chinese Red Pine," said Munk. So the second theory is that Pine Mouth is caused by an inedible species of pine nuts that have made it onto the market.
The problem is, there's no way for most consumers to tell. They look the same on the salad, so you might want to approach these nuts with a little caution. If you've been struck, there's a Facebook group you can join.
by Allison AubreyTo listen to the story Click Here.
You know it's a bad sign when the bride texts her guests to ask if anyone has a metallic taste in their mouth.
That was Morning Edition Producer Selena Simmons-Duffin's first clue that she'd been struck by a weird food syndrome known as Pine Mouth.
What is Pine Mouth you ask? It's a vile, bitter-metallic taste in your mouth that you just can't shake after eating pine nuts. "Anything I eat or drink tastes revolting," writes The Greasy Spoon, one of many food blogs to complain about the problem recently. The nasty taste can last a few days or up to two weeks.
For Simmons-Duffin, it was the wedding rehearsal dinner that done it. "We had this lovely salad with arugula, goat cheese and the fated pine nuts," she told Shots.
Ilse Bendorf
Selena Simmons-Duffin demonstrates the face that comes with Pine Mouth syndrome.
Simmons-Duffin said the good news is you don't really feel sick. The condition is mostly just an annoyance, because nothing tastes good for awhile.
When Simmons-Duffin and some ME colleagues posted a Facebook thread on Pine Mouth, they were surprised by how many people jumped into the conversation. "For a post at 1 a.m., 22 comments made for quite a lively thread" said Simmons-Duffin.
So how many people experience Pine Mouth? Official numbers are hard to come by. The FDA documented 53 complaints in 2009. They don't have updated numbers for this year, but it's likely that many cases don't get reported.
An FDA spokesperson said that most cases are not considered illnesses, since there are usually no accompanying symptoms. "Taste disturbance" is the category FDA gives Pine Mouth.
No one is certain what causes it. One theory is that people don't store the nuts properly, so they go bad.
"We know from agricultural research that pine nut oil can go rancid quickly," said Dr. Marc-David Munk of the University of New Mexico. Munk got interested in Pine Mouth after he came down with it.
In Munk's case, he ate a handful of pine nuts from a restaurant salad bar. He published a paper in the Journal of Medical Toxicology about his experience. Since then, he says he receives a couple of emails a day from people who are curious to know more.
Munk says there's another theory about what causes the bitter taste: Chinese imports. Researchers in Switzerland recently did a chemical analysis of imported pine nuts and identified two species that have not traditionally been part of the food supply.
"One was the Chinese White Pine and the other was the Chinese Red Pine," said Munk. So the second theory is that Pine Mouth is caused by an inedible species of pine nuts that have made it onto the market.
The problem is, there's no way for most consumers to tell. They look the same on the salad, so you might want to approach these nuts with a little caution. If you've been struck, there's a Facebook group you can join.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Something to think about
Mexico: America’s Victim
Neal Peirce / Jul 01 2010
For Release Sunday, July 4th, 2010 ©
2010 Washington Post Writers Group
Profoundly immoral — and fiscal folly, to boot.
That’s how the United States’ continuing “war on drugs” and its horrendous impact on our neighbor Mexico deserves to be seen.
Why?
First, it’s our appetite for official forbidden drugs — marijuana, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine — that’s driving the chaos on our southern border and deep into Mexico. President Felipe Calderon expected — but has clearly failed — to crack the vicious drug rings through police and military power. But he’s dead right on one score:
“The origin of our violence problem begins with the fact that Mexico is located next to the country that has the highest levels of drug consumption in the world. It is as if our neighbor were the biggest drug addict in the world.”
The conclusion is simple: if the United States were to decriminalize drugs, end the criminal prohibition on growing or selling them, prices would plummet.
This means that the massive profits the Mexican druglords reap — their “take” on an estimated $15 billion a year cross-border trade — would literally evaporate.
That, in turn, would put an end to most of the barbaric drug-driven crimes — shootings, kidnappings, beheadings — and that are currently being committed by the Mexican gangs as they struggle with each other, and with sometimes-complicit police, for bigger slices of the market.
Annual drug-related killings in Mexico total 22,000 since 2007, according to a leaked Mexican government report. At the scale of deaths reported since January, the total could top 13,000 just this year. Late in June the remains of 64 people, some decapitated, were discovered in a 50-story former mining pit near the tourist town of Taxco. From the wounds, it appeared many were alive when they were thrown down the shaft.
So how are we supposedly moral, righteous Americans reacting? Mostly with indifference, as if it’s “someone else’s” problem. Even the supposedly progressive Obama administration, while saying it wants a shift from interdiction to prevention and treatment of drug abuse, won’t make the connection between our drug prohibition laws and the mass killings in Mexico. Rather, it’s funneling more cash to the Mexican police and armed forces, money to support a bloody, unwinnable war.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, interviewed by the Associated Press on a trip to Mexico City, was asked why the U.S. pursues its clearly-failed, decades-long war on drugs. Her reply:
“This is worth fighting for because drug addiction is about fighting for somebody’s life, a young child’s life, a teenager’s life, their ability to be a successful and productive adult.”
But does U.S. drug prohibition accomplish that, when our teenagers report it’s easier to get a marijuana joint (because it’s unlicensed) than a six-pack of beer (its sale to minors government-enforced)?
Let’s assume drugs were decriminalized in the United States. And let’s acknowledge some added addiction occurred (even though the predicted rise in use is not reported in countries such as Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland, where decriminalization has been introduced).
Even if more Americans would have to battle with addictions, we need to ask: Are American lives so precious, so superior, that Mexicans can or should be obliged to suffer tens of thousands of deaths because we’re too timid to lift our legal prohibition on drugs? Is this kind of behavior, belief in our moral immunity, what our chest-thumping Fourth of July celebrations are all about?
And then there’s the fiscal folly point. For Mexicans, the continued drug horrors darken any prospects for an economically successful nation — one that’s an effective trade partner with the United States, and able to provide strong incomes for its families so that fewer feel compelled to immigrate north across the border.
And for the the U.S. economy there are big stakes too. We could save tens of billions of dollars — at a time when the federal and practically all state and local budgets have moved into deep deficit territory — by moving rapidly to terminate our war on drugs.
There’s strong parallel to the Great Depression time of the early 1930s. Repeal of the Prohibition Act, which outlawed liquor from 1920 to 1933, not only quashed the Al Capone-style crime rings but created tens of thousands of new legal jobs.
A parallel move today would also stop the epidemic of drug arrests that have driven our prison populations — and costs to taxpayers — to world-record levels.
A 2008 survey by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron found legalizing drugs would save $44 billion yearly in government prohibition enforcement for arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations. State and local governments could enjoy $30 billion of the savings. And government taxes on drugs, by Miron’s estimates, would yield taxes of $33 billion — even if the rates were set no higher than current alcohol and tobacco levies.
Morals and fiscal common sense both dictate that we end our drug prohibition. And not some decades from now, but quickly.
Neal Peirce’s e-mail is npeirce@citistates.com.
Neal Peirce / Jul 01 2010
For Release Sunday, July 4th, 2010 ©
2010 Washington Post Writers Group
Profoundly immoral — and fiscal folly, to boot.
That’s how the United States’ continuing “war on drugs” and its horrendous impact on our neighbor Mexico deserves to be seen.
Why?
First, it’s our appetite for official forbidden drugs — marijuana, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine — that’s driving the chaos on our southern border and deep into Mexico. President Felipe Calderon expected — but has clearly failed — to crack the vicious drug rings through police and military power. But he’s dead right on one score:
“The origin of our violence problem begins with the fact that Mexico is located next to the country that has the highest levels of drug consumption in the world. It is as if our neighbor were the biggest drug addict in the world.”
The conclusion is simple: if the United States were to decriminalize drugs, end the criminal prohibition on growing or selling them, prices would plummet.
This means that the massive profits the Mexican druglords reap — their “take” on an estimated $15 billion a year cross-border trade — would literally evaporate.
That, in turn, would put an end to most of the barbaric drug-driven crimes — shootings, kidnappings, beheadings — and that are currently being committed by the Mexican gangs as they struggle with each other, and with sometimes-complicit police, for bigger slices of the market.
Annual drug-related killings in Mexico total 22,000 since 2007, according to a leaked Mexican government report. At the scale of deaths reported since January, the total could top 13,000 just this year. Late in June the remains of 64 people, some decapitated, were discovered in a 50-story former mining pit near the tourist town of Taxco. From the wounds, it appeared many were alive when they were thrown down the shaft.
So how are we supposedly moral, righteous Americans reacting? Mostly with indifference, as if it’s “someone else’s” problem. Even the supposedly progressive Obama administration, while saying it wants a shift from interdiction to prevention and treatment of drug abuse, won’t make the connection between our drug prohibition laws and the mass killings in Mexico. Rather, it’s funneling more cash to the Mexican police and armed forces, money to support a bloody, unwinnable war.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, interviewed by the Associated Press on a trip to Mexico City, was asked why the U.S. pursues its clearly-failed, decades-long war on drugs. Her reply:
“This is worth fighting for because drug addiction is about fighting for somebody’s life, a young child’s life, a teenager’s life, their ability to be a successful and productive adult.”
But does U.S. drug prohibition accomplish that, when our teenagers report it’s easier to get a marijuana joint (because it’s unlicensed) than a six-pack of beer (its sale to minors government-enforced)?
Let’s assume drugs were decriminalized in the United States. And let’s acknowledge some added addiction occurred (even though the predicted rise in use is not reported in countries such as Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland, where decriminalization has been introduced).
Even if more Americans would have to battle with addictions, we need to ask: Are American lives so precious, so superior, that Mexicans can or should be obliged to suffer tens of thousands of deaths because we’re too timid to lift our legal prohibition on drugs? Is this kind of behavior, belief in our moral immunity, what our chest-thumping Fourth of July celebrations are all about?
And then there’s the fiscal folly point. For Mexicans, the continued drug horrors darken any prospects for an economically successful nation — one that’s an effective trade partner with the United States, and able to provide strong incomes for its families so that fewer feel compelled to immigrate north across the border.
And for the the U.S. economy there are big stakes too. We could save tens of billions of dollars — at a time when the federal and practically all state and local budgets have moved into deep deficit territory — by moving rapidly to terminate our war on drugs.
There’s strong parallel to the Great Depression time of the early 1930s. Repeal of the Prohibition Act, which outlawed liquor from 1920 to 1933, not only quashed the Al Capone-style crime rings but created tens of thousands of new legal jobs.
A parallel move today would also stop the epidemic of drug arrests that have driven our prison populations — and costs to taxpayers — to world-record levels.
A 2008 survey by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron found legalizing drugs would save $44 billion yearly in government prohibition enforcement for arrests, prosecutions and incarcerations. State and local governments could enjoy $30 billion of the savings. And government taxes on drugs, by Miron’s estimates, would yield taxes of $33 billion — even if the rates were set no higher than current alcohol and tobacco levies.
Morals and fiscal common sense both dictate that we end our drug prohibition. And not some decades from now, but quickly.
Neal Peirce’s e-mail is npeirce@citistates.com.
For reprints of Neal Peirce’s column, please contact Washington Post Permissions, c/o PARS International Corp., WPPermissions@parsintl.com, fax 212-221-9195.
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