IF YOU LIKE MY WRITING

Hey, if you all like my writing style, you should know I am available for hire on a free-lance basis. I do arts reviews, travel, issues, short plays, and comedy writing. Contact me at writerstuartk@gmail.com.

Stuart

The Tipping Point, Social Networking, Social Networks, Industrial Revolution,

I read this speech I wrote before the general assembly of Occupy Boston on Oct. 15, 2011.

The tipping point is the critical point at which a system is displaced from a state of stable equilibrium into a different state. Change cannot be stopped.


Systems, whether the chemical creation of life or social networks, are pushed to the edge of chaos and the brink of the tipping point, where they either transform or collapse. If they are to survive, they must adapt by recombining creatively into new forms.


Ladies and Gentlemen: Welcome to the Tipping Point.


Mark Taylor said conditions are right for a revolution as profound as the industrial revolution.


Our actions have led us to the point when we must choose between collapse of our network and change that preserves the best of it. Stagnation of power in the hands of the few at the cost of the many must give way. Either revolution or a spiraling down of Earth into violence and environmental disaster.


This is not about a few tents in a park. It is about a change in mankind.


There is no turning back. Soon things will get very strange. Reality will collide with representation. Reality will triumph. In the Information Age certain unpleasant truths will manifest, and the whole structure of deceit will begin to unravel. We will be left with a void once filled with self-deception. At that point we will have conflict with each other. Decisions will be forced on us all. Sometimes friend will become enemy, enemy friend.


If we are to live together, we have to face ourselves. Progress will force us upward in the long run. The quest is ever forward. Life doesn’t evolve backward, but toward a better place.


Thank you.




Stuart Kurtz

October 12, 2011

The Radical Mind

Dear Occupiers Near and Far:

And so here we are, in the Revolution. Make no mistake. This is the big one. How big, we'll only know when we come out on the other side.

I was thinking: Who are we? What makes a radical, a dissident? I mean, I know many liberal people on the Left who do not protest, but keep the law and go about their business as law-abiding citizens of these states and elsewhere. But who are the ones who actually take to the streets in crisis, or, better yet, the ones who do so when there is seemingly no crisis (but, or course, there is always crisis)?

I used to think there was something wrong with me. Why was I so suspicious of my teachers, my guidance counselors, in fact my family? They all functioned alright. Things got done. The schools processed the kids; the churches saved our souls; the state kept democracy going. But I always resisted, made trouble. Something was wrong with me, the teachers said.

And then, much later in adulthood, I started trying to fit in. I even had a short-term government job. It wasn't the culture around me, so much, I thought. It was me.

Now we are seeing the truth. Our republic is collapsing from under us, and the dissidents don't look so bad now. Maybe we will see that it is not the ones who fit in, but the outsiders who hold the truth. Society moves forward not by the followers but by the rebels, the mavericks, the ne'er-do-wells, the freaks.

So stop asking yourself, if you are, "what is wrong with me?" People, there is nothing wrong with you and everything right. Nature has chosen you to feel the weight of oppression and have the sense to no something is wrong with the so-called just republic.

The ones contented to turn a blind eye will not see the oncoming train. We do and, some of us have always seen it. Now is our time. In a few years the normals might be saying, "What is wrong with me?"



Stuart Kurtz
November 17, 2011 Day of Action in solidarity with Wall Street crackdown

The Blimp's Full of Hot Air

The Blimp's Full of Hot Air

A few years back the news featured a story of how Goodyear or Fuji let a man use their blimp's LED board to propose to his girlfriend, who was down in the stadium with her. She said yes. Goodyear probably made out better than the man.

It made me wonder why Goodyear would take away precious advertising time to help
a guy out. Sure, sure, they did it for the publicity. It makes them look good, and so the consumer might be inclined to shop for tires there more. But something else might be going on.

If the man just published a new book, believe me, Goodyear would not promote it with free advertising. If he just one first place flipping the log in the Scottish Games, Goodyear would say sorry, no free ads. So it must be something special about his proposing to his girlfriend that would make Goodyear turn good.

Why would the man's new book contract or the Scottish Games not affect Goodyear's heart? No other personal success, not a new job, or climbing Mount Everest would do the trick. So it's something particular about marriage that Goodyear has an interest in.

Marriage must move along the same processes that keep Goodyear rolling in dough. Now, nothing is wrong with marriage on its own terms. It's the fulfillment of two people's love. But in terms of the Capitalist system there is something wrong. In Capitalist terms marriage creates stable home life, and that means stable workers. It often produces children - more workers for production. In fact, some women have been scorned for being selfish when they say they don't want children. What business is it of theirs? The business is that the production of children fuels the production of commodities, so that offspring themselves become a commodity - in Marxian terms, anything that has exchange value. It is the promise of future labor that makes the worth of new offspring.

Our lives are not just our own but the Capitalist system's. It is not just for the common good but for the production of surplus value - profit for the managers - that the messages of the state creates for all of us a complicity with the methods of production.

The Danger of the Virtual

The Danger of Virtuality.

Virtual reality has changed our world dramatically. We have Autocad, by which architects can create any structure whatsoever by letting the program configure the possible physics. We have medicine whereby surgeons can go in with a fiber optic camera fed to a computer which can tell the doctors where to go. We have the most advanced games imaginable, that thrust kids into alternate worlds.

Eversion, acc. to Marcos Novak, is the casting of virtuality away from its technological systems and into lived experience. That should send up an immediate red flag to you. When we can't distinguish between reality and virtual reality, it opens the doors for forces to take advantage oof our false sensibility to prey on our very real property and health.

That is why we had the "virtual wheat" scam of 2010, MF Global got involved in unauthorised trading in CME wheat futures. Deceptive speculators created an artificial bubble of grain futures. In 1971 Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard, so the promise of paper currency that there was gold in Fort Knox to back it up was false and a kind of early virtuality in a way. Representation through advertising creates images of false worlds where everybody is happy and free from pain. Virtual games, psychologists say, are making kids separate from the real world. And many of us get lost in our technologies, interacting with false Facebook friends than real ones.

Keeping us tuned in to this virtuality, advertisers, business, and government keep us away from the very real foreclosures, layoffs, and medical crisis going on around us.

The Golden Fleece

What makes us love gold? It's shininess and luxury. Ah, but brass is also shiny and beautiful. But people want the gold. If you were a castaway on a desert island and had some brass, you wouldn't care that it weren't gold. So it's something not about the physical properties of the gold but its relation to something else. What is that something? Well, you are alone on the desert island and in that case do not care whether your telescope is made of gold or brass. So it must be a relation to something absent. The comforts of civilization of course. But some of those are shiny luxury goods, and you don't care about the gold, so you won't care about them. So what is missing?

Other people are missing. When you are back home, they admire your finery, but here you are alone. So the relationship between you and gold is really the relationship between you and other persons. They put the value on the gold (diamonds, furniture, car), but the gold is really the intermediary between you and the appreciator.

Money works this way. On that island the money is just paper. You could make better use of it as kindling, but try to barter with it. So value rests in the relationship one person to others. The greater the value the object, the greater the value of the relationship. But is it?

In many countries people regard people with wealth with greater esteem. Think of how impressed some are with the people who have yachts, private jets, and mansions. The press in America used to have headline features of what the rich were up to: "Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt to Hold Gala Ball." And you get the royal treatment when you dine in Tavern on the Green, but go into a greasy spoon, and the waitress says: "Sit over there. I'll be there in a minute, Hon." So many people dole out respect according to how much wealth you have.

The relationship then is not ego to object but ego to ego. As the medium of exchange in relationships is often gold (or money, silver, commodities in general), relationships are often built on falseness. And, as they are not really built on value of others' spirits or goodness or good deeds but on the wealth they acquire, we can give to relationships a negative premium. It is based on "love thy neighbor"...if thy neighbor owns more.

Technology and Changing Power

In Citizens: a Chronicle of the French Revolution writer, Simon Schama asserts that the first hot air balloon may have initiated the French Revolution. In 1783 at Annonay, France the Montgolfier brothers sent up the first balloon, and later the Aeorstat Revellion at Versailles with crew of sheep, duck, and rooster, and later a manned flight. It captured the public imagination.

Schama believes it allowed French subjects to imagine themselves as Montgolfier, lofted above the earth and freed in some way from worldly bounds.

Every revolution is precipitated by some new invention.

The Renaissance brought perspective in painting and then the printing press. Marshall McLuhan said this:

Print technology transformed the medieval zero into the Renaissance infinity, not only by convergence - perspective and vanishing point - but by bringing into play for the first time in human history the factor of exact repeatability. Print gave to men the concept of indefinite repetition so necessary to the mathematical concept of infinity. 1


The uniformity and repeatability of print permeated the Renaissance with the idea of time and space as continuous measurable quantities. The immediate effect of this idea was to desacralize the world of nature and the world of power alike. The new technique of control of physical processes by segmentation and fragmentation separated God and Nature as much as Man and Nature, or man and man. 2


The discovery of the New World later in the Renaissance opened up new physical territory and exploded the myth of a flat world. A cognate was found in Renaissance perspective which removed the mystical, godlike space in art the church fed the masses. Renaissance people now wanted rational art and narratives. that ended the unified, all-encompassing space of Medievalism and ushered in the measurable, logical world of Man, in which Man was the center of this world, and God was confined to Heaven.

Turning points in history come in with changes in the political and social sphere, but they are founded on new technological inventions, devices that change the way people look at the world. The old ways of command and control can't work any more, and the power structures in place are shaken to their core.

Take the photograph. Daguerre created the first silver negative in 1839. Photography's reliable reproduction of reality made citizens no longer dependent on accounts of reality fed to them by the press and its government in the way With a new reliance on themselves to observe naturalistic reality in all its starkness, Europeans created the revolutions of the 1840s.

With the end of the 1848 climax of the revolution the Second Industrial Revolution began, in which mass consumption, made possible with advanced industry, was in bloom. People were not only free to revolt but to consume. McLuhan mentions the transience of the photograph.3 An analogy to it is the limited-use commodity, such as the raft of souvenirs created in the mid-19th century. The early Renaissance, prior to printing press and perspective nevertheless brought in a degree of human nature into the art of Giotto, Masaccio, Donatello, and others. From this "invention" came the workshops and guilds, which created a mass market for art for wealthy patrons.

Now we have the very mass media of the Internet and social networking. They have their down sides, as they isolate some of us into an unreal world. And Facebook friends are not your real friends. They do, in fairness though, remove the unilateral nature of earlier mass media. We are not dependent on what NBC has to tell us. We can search the Net for hundreds of news sources. And without social networking we would have no 2009 Iranian uprising, no Arab Spring. The Internet and social networking do not have a command structure as the networks do. Every point (person, that is) is equivalent to every other. As others have said, the dissemination of knowledge is limitless, like Renaissance infinity and the printing press, but much more so. With it power of the elites is weakening into more democratic expression.

The last technology for this essay is the conversion of analog to digital.


NYU Professor, James Carse, once told his class that he opened up his country house and found a leak in the well. So he put his hand over it. But the water shot out at another hole, so he put his hand over that to plug it up. But water came out of two new holes. He said he couldn't figure out the source of the leak until he realized the water was coming from everywhere. And that's the case here. The information revolution is unleashing a wellspring of knowledge in a democratic way. It can't be stopped. It's what we do with information that's the test.

A more abstract development in technology is the conversion of transmissions from analog to digital. Analog technology is structural in its processes. It depends on a hierarchy of steps A - B - C on variable waves. It's frequencies have a theoretically endless number of values. It's cognate would be social organization of the past with kings at the top, then bishops, ministers, knights, merchants, commoners; or president, prime minister, cabinet, and down to voters. Analog depends on a chain of command along a linear path. Its, well, analog in the social and political field is hierarchical power. That is until now.

With digital technology, everything is reduced to binary code...ones and zeros. It is dependent on sampling. Marcos Novak says:

In a world of fields, the distinction between what is and what is not is one
of degree. There can be as many sampling points where something is not as
there are where something is. Sampling involves an intermediate sense of
reality, something between real and integer numbers, a fractal notion of
qualified truth, truth-to-a-point. An object's boundary is simply the
reconstructed contour of an arbitrarily chosen value.4.

While binary leaves itself open to an either/or outlook and can be used to continue a bipolar world view, inviting class conflict, racism, social Darwinism, sampling takes the ones and zeros of binary along a bandwidth of qualified truth, as Novak says. It is not structured the way analog is.

Humanity is becoming more networked, more egalitarian like this digital bandwidth. We are evolving more into one community, certainly not in the short term, but as an impetus for centuries to come.

Stuart Kurtz
November 12, 2011

1. McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media, (M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1964, 1994, Ninth edition 2001)pg. 116.
2. Ibid, pg. 176.

3. Ibid, pg. 196.

4. Novak, Marcos, Transmitting Architecture: The Transphysical City, Edited by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker,ctheory.net/text_file?pick=76 (published 11/29/1996)

Don't Underestimate the Power of Agression

Don't Underestimate the Power of Agression
Submitted by Stuart Kurtz on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 5:39pm.
When we ask people all over the globe for their highest values we will always find two at the top. The first is God, or a higher power. That makes sense; humans have held up under extreme adversity, violence, and degradation with the belief that God (or a higher power) will see them through, but, if not, that they will be rewarded with everlasting life in a higher state of being. But let us look at a strange point to the contrary.

In ancient Egypt the pharoahs were not considered to be the gods' representatives on Earth, but gods themselves. You did what the god told you to do; his (or her in a few cases) word was absolute. That is one reason Egypt was so stable for around two thousand years.

Consider though the various plots against pharoahs. According to the Egyptologist, Manetho, bodyguard of King Teti of the 6th Dynasty murdered him. King Amenemhat I of Dynasty 12 probably met his end to murder. Rameses III of Dynasty 20 had a conspiracy against him known as "The Harem Plot," that might have succeeded. King Seqenenre Tao of Dynasty 17 has mortal wounds to his skull. Hatshepsut, the first female pharoah, ruled as regent for Thutmose III until she arrogated the role of Pharoah - unheard of until then - to herself. Some historians believed Thutmose may have murdered her out of a long standing grudge and then took the throne. Some believe Akhenaten, the monotheist, who incurred the wrath of his ministers for his firebrand ways, may have incited them to kill him. And then there was Tut. King Tuthankamen, son of Akenaten, may have been assasinated by those who wanted to remove any vestiges of the reign of his seditious father. Some now say he died of an infected broken leg, but the point remains that there was intrigue at court, and probably the plots or actual assasinations.

How could a subject possibly consider killing the Pharoah, a god on Earth? The gods were the highest value of all; they were the reason the sun rose and set, the Nile flowed, and the crops grew in abundance. So what was this higher value?

The second value people all over the world will claim as most important is probably more important than God, as many do not believe in God or a higher power. That subaltern value, or course, is their children. People will do anything for their children. They will move Heaven and Earth for their children. In fact, that is a bilogical imperative. Mammals will put themselves in harm's way to protect their offspring. For humans, who have the power of abstract thought and so a conception of the future, children are a continuation of us. They are our immortality. Indeed, there is something selfish in that. Be that as it may, we must consider some other strange cases.

We have all heard cases of parents cutting grown offspring out of their wills for marrying out of the faith, or being gay, or engaging in acts the parents believe have shamed the family, such as crimes or scandals.

There are parents who cut children out of their lives for the same perceived infractions or for lesser ones. Parents have stopped talking to their children for the friends they keep or for some terrible insult. This is not only true; it is fairly common.

Then there are the honor killings in some Asian countries. Family members, including fathers, immolate daughters (nieces, sisters, etc.) for dressing inappropriately, refusing arranged marriages, homosexuality, performing trysts, or even for non-sexual relationships that might lead to sexual relations. It is true that these perpetrators believe they do this for a higher calling, God's law; it nevertheless violates the second principle of this article, that people will do anything for their children.

The case of the South Carolina mother who suffocated her own small children because she "wanted to be free" [of parental responsibility] or the other South Carolina woman who drowned her two toddlers in her car for fear that her boyfriend would leave her due to the kids getting in the way.

What was going on here? In one case it was the desire for "freedom" and in the other the fear of lost support.

In both cases there was no higher power, and no insults on the children's parts. Thus, on the dark side of the human behaviour spectrum there must be a higher value than God or the imperative to bring one's offspring into adulthood that they may procreate themselves.

What's higher than God? What's higher than children? For some, those who give in to their deeper, darker impulses, this value is power. And behind power is agression. Many of us do not give in to these impulses, but the cases cited show that many do. That is why hatred and agression seem to be more powerful forces than love in this world. Please prove me wrong.



Stuart Kurtz

February 25, 2011

If you like my writing style, consider hiring me on free-lance contract. Reach me at writerstuartk@gmail.com My blog is www.stuartkurtz.blogspot.com

If You Like My Writing...

Hey, if you all like my writing style, you should know I am available for hire on a free-lance basis. I do arts reviews, travel, issues, short plays, and comedy writing. Contact me at writerstuartk@gmail.com. Thanks.

Travel Piece: Summer Lodging Maine Style. Book Now.

Many of the day trippers from Portland disembark from the Casco Bay Line ferry on Peaks Island, Maine and make a bee line for one of the "happening" restaurants there. The first is a whopping 20 yards from the gangplank. They lose their inhibitions and sobriety downing margaritas to the tunes of (who else) Jimmy Buffett. Some will rent bikes and peddle the charming lanes for a few lazy hours. But there is another Peaks that is not so "happening," where you may have a hard time sifting out the past from the present.

Just past Long Point is the Eighth Maine Regiment Memorial, a lodge and Civil War museum. Come for a stay or for the tour alone. Either way you will have the treat of Mr. Dick Adams bending your ear on island lore. And he should know it too. He first came to the lodge as a baby in 1928, and he's been here ever since, save for a few years spent where Mainers call, "from away."

Mr. Adams started approached me for the tour in his friendly way. He wore a purple, green, and navy nylon slicker, faded black jeans, and a cap with a harness racer on it. He has a ruddy complexion and skin that draws around the cheeks, gill-like, when he smiles. His nose is as red as any drunkard's in a Peter Paul Rubens tavern picture. His days of being the manager of the lodge are behind him; his son took the mantle some years back.

Every so often Adams will tighten his neck muscles, purse his lips, and strain out a punch line. Sometimes it's not even a punch line, but some term he thinks might need a little emphasis: "pup tent," or "ping pong."

Before you get into the fun stuff, Mr. Adams will show you to the old double schoolmaster's desk that supports the guest register. You might think it's a relic for you to ogle at. It's actually a work in progress. You sign into the lodge just the way guests have since 1924. Somehow the past doesn't seem so distant.

It's a noble pedigree. The Eighth Regiment Maine Association started in 1872 for its soldiers to get together to commemorate their trials during the Civil War. Colonel William Macarthur led the men in the war's last year. He won $75,000 in the Louisiana lottery. When the wife of Captain Smith, provost of the regiment, told Macarthur the wives were tired of living in pup tents during reunions and that he should build a place, Macarthur built the lodge.

Some things have stayed pretty constant since those days. Each family still gets a little gas burner assigned for cooking their own meals. And they have this status system, being whoever sits closer to the window in the basement dining room, has the most status. One fellow made a reservation and said, "Put me by the window." Mr. Adams told him, "If you come for 40 years or 60 years, you may get there."

The window side table aside, every guest here has no problems with getting his share of the intangibles. You can see Whitehead, a prominence named after Chief Whitehead, and Graham Island Light from one of the many window banks. You can also see "The Witch's Cauldron," a little shoal off shore where Mr. Adams' father once slipped on the slime while fishing and had to be rescued by the fire boats. The only real danger now is to the kayakers who shoot its miniature rapid for a few seconds of thrill.

The Eighth is a hulking, brown structure with wraparound porch. Its weathered shingles cling to it like the scales of some fish that crawled onto land from the sea, some 40 yards from it, depending on the tides.

The summer breezes waft in and blow dappled sunlight around in swirling eddies. It’s hard to feel separate from the waves outside. Memories are arrayed on the walls. You can an etching of the Eighth at Hilton Head, South Carolina. The regiment took freed slaves to Jacksonville, so they could fight The South.

Mr. Adams' great-grandfather, George Cappers was in the regiment.
Adams can only show you the lithographs of Civil War days, but not so when it comes to another war. He is the living keeper of World War Two memories on the island.

He tells you how his grandmother, coming back for the summer on Peaks, couldn't accept that you couldn't drive around the island due to wartime restrictions. So she took a group of folks around on foot. She ignored the sign clearly saying, "military reservation. No trespassing," and got them all in a heap of trouble. A gal whose parents ran the lodge piped up, "Where are you going with my folks from the Eighth?" The officer said they were in serious trouble. This gal, Phoebe, said, "'Well so are you, 'cause if you don't take them back right now, you'll never have a date with me tonight or any other night,' " said Adams. He adds, "This fella she had in the afternoon. She might have had a different one at night."

Adams remembers how some boys his age found the charred bodies of three German U-boat sailors during the war. The cemetery board refused to bury them in the cemetery. There were also 3 live German sailors who made it in from Portland one blustery day in January. They were dressed like shipyard workers with coveralls they probably got from sympathizers, relates Adams. They bought food at the little store that's still there and made it out on a little rubber dingy to a waiting sub. Convoys of our ships used to assemble off the coast within sight of Peaks.

The blackout paper over the transom of one of the guest rooms is a reminder of those perilous days. The only danger around here now seems to be the treachery of "The Witch's Cauldron.

There is danger of another kind these days. Some island folks are losing their homes. Others help out. They want to stay due to a kind of love affair with the island only islanders can understand.

Adams shows you a painting on piece of the old pear tree that Col. Macarthur did not want to cut down when he bought the lot. Visitors used to get engaged under that tree. Love affair.

Adams also shows you a highchair his grandmother from up-country sat in as a kid. Now, all his grandkids and maybe a great grandchild will sit in it. It and that desk register keep the line between the past and present a little fuzzy.

Stuart Kurtz
July, 2009

Eighth Maine Regiment Memorial Association
13 Eighth Maine Ave.
Peaks Island, ME 04108
207-766-5086
www.eighthmaine.org


Tours of the lodge/Civil War museum are daily at noon and 3, closed Mondays. Suggested donation $5 per person. For large parties (over 6), please make a reservation, so we can accommodate you.

Casco Bay Lines
Commercial & Franklin Sts., Portland, Maine
207-774-7871
FAX 207-774-7875
www.cascobayline.com
Email: info@cascobaylines.com
The ride is 17 minutes to Peaks.

Give Peas a Chance

GIVE PEAS A CHANCE


Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
Thiamin, niacin, metabolism, magnesium, potassium
This-ium, that-ium, ium ium ium
All we are saying is give peas a chance
All we are saying is give peas a chance

(C'mon)
Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
Legumes, heirlooms, spring blooms, and crop booms
Snap peas, snow peas, wasabis, and Black-eyed, Bye bye, Bye byes
All we are saying is give peas a chance
All we are saying is give peas a chance

(Let me tell you now)
Ev'rybody's talkin' 'bout
Can revolution, freezing solutions, innovation, scarification, soil rotation
oxidation, lipid creation, mite invasions, infestations
All we are saying is give peas a chance
All we are saying is give peas a chance

Evr'ybody's talkin' 'bout
Split and sugar, minty marjoram, rosemary,
Little Marvel, Chef Emeril, Gregor Mendel
dominant-recessive, Bean Stalker, Betty Crocker
Ho ho ho Green Giant
All we are saying is give peas a chance
All we are saying is give peas a chance



By Stuart Kurtz
Parody of Give Peace a Chance by John Lennon

Back to Feudalism?

Have you got your tunic on? Plow hitched to your ox? No?
Maybe you are lucky enough to be a baron or clergyman. Or maybe even luckier. Maybe your a lord.

In feudal times, also called The Middle Ages, land management was in the control of lords, who divided their vast holdings into parcels, or fiefs, and put local barons in charge of them. Barons held local power but still held loyalty, or fealty, to the lords.

The church was the other great governing body, and it held and divided great plots of land.

Ten percent of the population were clergy, barons, or lords. Everyone else was condemnded to be the peasantry, working the land for the lords and barons in exchange for meager food and protection from invaders.

Feudalism still existed in weakened form in Europe and elsewhere for centuries after Medieval times in that an overwhelming peasantry supported a minute noble class (the King, Tsar, Emperor in China.) The French Revolution and the American Revolution put the ax (or the Guillotine in France) to the system and ushered in a large middle and upper-middle class. Soon the French Bourgeosie consolidated its power, and a new consumer class fueled the Industrial Revolution (which had started around 1770 in England).

Pundits say America is doing away with its middle class. This country has the largest one in history, and these events pose an enormous problem. We need a large middle class to purchase imports from China and services from our own country. If we shift the wealth to a larger, but still small upper class, and create a very large lower and working class, we will be, in some way, going back to a kind of Feudalism.

The other problem is that under true Feudalism the serfs were all completely uneducated. In America we have a huge amount of college-educated and skilled people who are being forced to settle for jobs beneath their skills and education, or, worse, to remain among the unemployed or underemployed. You can't maintain a large educated underclass without friction.

The Tyranny of Manners

Lots of smiling lately. What's going on with all the intense manners? I'm suspicious. In fairness, many people say we are becoming a ruder society of line-jumpers, road ragers, professional sports brawlers. True, yet, at the same time, I notice a politeness trend running concurrently. It is not appropriate to show anger or displeasure in this current. It is not good manners to go against the grain. Do your work. Enjoy all the consumer options. What have you got to complain about? Smile.


There is a scene in How Green was my Valley in which one of the sons of the Morgan family proclaims he will join the coal miners' union to fight injustice. His father chastens him for speaking when not spoken to; it's bad manners. The son, defiant, says good manners or not, he will support the union and move out if he has to. The father's breeding teaches no matter what the social circumstances are one should never defy authority with a show of impropriety.

The idea is that social codes are meant to keep us all civilized. Now what, you might ask, is my point? Is this man saying we should be rude to eachother? Reach over the table to retrieve the salt? I am not. There is a place for civility, and the reason for it is to show respect and kindness to others.

But aside from a necessary binder of respect, the enforcement of good personal manners is used for a far more incidious end. As papa Morgan showed in the movie, manners also keep us from speaking our minds, from speaking up against injustice, for taking on unjust authority. They are appropriated as a form of social control.

Two employees reflected the cowed among us. One has a professor who taught her that we should not complain about the lack of jobs in this economy, as "there are others less fortunate than you." In other words, shut up, and don't make trouble. The other was shocked to hear Michelle Obama wrote a college paper once condemning white America for its ways of keeping minorities in poverty. This employee thought that was wrong of her - in other words "manners before morals."

As antivirus software protects our computers from threats, threats to the extablished order are met with social "viruses," public disapproval, as the main trunk of society clamps down on anyone not with the program.

While manners are the ostensible target, I believe the real threat is those who dare to defy power. That means social and political power, but, in its basest form, it is economic power. That is the greatest threat to those in power.

Something far worse than lack of protest is going on. A loss of individualism is happening to us, the unsuspecting victims. We know what a repressed culture America created under The early Cold War, and its forms returned with the age of George W. Bush and Globalization. In favor of "good manners" many of us are forgoing creative, challenging, and, yes, confrontational thought. We are becoming a country of mesmerized consumers lulled into contentment by shopping networks rather than human networks.

I don't like what I see. It makes the Reagan era look radical. Afraid to speak up for fear of being impolite, most of us keep quiet, while our souls petrify to stone. I won't be intimidated. I won't take it lying down. And I'm not smiling.

Recipe from Chef Robert

Hello and welcome readers,



Below is a veggie recipe from Chef Robert. He conducts food tours of Boston too. He will show you how to navigate the farmers markets in Boston and how to prepare organic vegetarian recipes. Eating without preservatives has been proven to be healthier. See below:


Nutrition & Health Series June 2007 presents: Red Lentil Chili
Lentils are an excellent source of Folic Acid and Iron.
Folic Acid helps in cellular growth and essential for women of childbearing age.
Iron helps in the development of blood and muscles.

PREP TIME: 12 Minutes Total Servings 6
COOKING TIME: 50 Minutes
NUTRITION INFORMATION
RED LENTILS 2 cups red lentils (dry) 278 Calories per serving
4 cups water 42 grams carbohydrates
1 to 2 tablespoon vegetables oil 14 grams protein
1/2 teaspoon salt 10 grams fiber
CHILI 2 tablespoons canola oil 6 grams fat
1 diced white onion
2 minced garlic cloves
14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 large carrot and green bell pepper, diced
1/2 teaspoon chili powder, oregano, paprika each
1/4 cup cheddar cheese
2 ounces parsley or cilantro (fresh or ground)

Red Lentils: 1. Place washed lentils into a large pot and cover with 4 cups of
water or to one inch above the bean,
2. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons oil to prevent boiling over. Season with salt.
Gently boil with lid titled for 30 minutes until lentils are tender.
Chili: 1. Heat two tablespoons canola oil over medium high heat. Add onions
and garlic, and cook for 3 to 4 minutes until vegetables are soft.
2. Add tomatoes, diced carrots and green peppers, and cook for 4 to 5
minutes until vegetables are tender.
3. Stir in lentils and herbs: chili powder, oregano and paprika. Heat uncovered for 6 to 8 minutes or until heated thoroughly.
4. Top with cheddar cheese. Garnish with parsley or cilantro.
Serve in bowls.
CALORIE GUIDE
1 tablespoon canola oil 100 calories 1 can diced tomatoes 100 calories
1/4 cup cheddar cheese 135 calories
MEAT & BEANS, Food Pyramid Chart
Choose low fat or lean meats and fish
Bake, broil or grill
Vary your selection of protein
Select more fish and beans
Eat 5 1/2 ounces every day
Meat group includes meat, fish and beans.
The equivalence to an ounce of meat is 2 ounces of cooked beans.

NUTRITION EDUCATION OUTREACH PROJECT: PROJECT COORDINATOR-ROBERT SONDAK
P. O. Box 766 Brookline, MA
(617) 283-2532
bosonma@yahoo.com

NEOP web blog: http://neopneop.site11.com.
Recipe and food clipart from NEOP.











The recipe recipe flyers were designed by Nutrition Education Outreach Project-cProject Coordinator Robert Sondak.Robert is a Apple computer designer witha background in Food Science and Dietetics.Robert worked as a Clinical Diet Technician previouslyfor the New England Medical Center.
bosonma@yahoo.comhttp://neopneop.site11.com/.Collaboration design http://www.rowatmultimedia.com/ and Jennnifer Goeden logo design.

The Gulf Oil Spill: Thought

The BP oil platform disaster and resulting spill may be a blessing in disguise. It may convince more world citizens that alternative fuel is the way of the future (and present).

Thought for the Day

If we didn't have critics, Dumb and Dumber would win the Academy Award.

Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum

Here's another tip for Toronto: The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). See one of the largest collections of dinasaurs in the world, including a T-Rex and a baby Bronto. There is a top shelf Egyptian collection. Right now the museum is featuring the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The blockbuster show is The Dead Sea Scrolls. The parchment fragments themselves don't make you drop your jaw, but knowing how important this discovery was will impress you. There is also a great Chinese collection featuring a Ming tomb, totem poles, Near East collections, Indian art, fossils, suits of armor, a temporary Wedgewood show, twentieth century design, and on and on. It really is one of the world's great museums. The weird building by Robert Johnston is no slouch either. Here's a link: http://www.rom.on.ca/

The Sleepless Night

Hey, you all might like to know about this ultra cool yearly event in Toronto. www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca It's called the Nuit Blanche, which means sleepless night. It started in Paris in '02 and has passed on to other cities. Toronto is the only North American city to offer it. For 12 hours, from sundown to sunrise, the city becomes one big art exhibit. There are three zones, each with a different theme, where participants encounter strange, fantastical, and sometimes provocative surprises.

This year, 2009, there was a gigantic L.E.D. light sign suspended above city hall chambers that flashes four letter words (clean kind), codes, and DNA sequences determined by human operators, themselves controlled by computers.

Jeff Koons' giant Rabbit baloon hung menacingly in the atrium of the Toronto Eaton Centre.

Monopoly with Real Money was just what it says. Actors portayed bankers in a "real stakes" game of high finance.

Gone Indian was about a roving truck in pow wow trappings and a First Nation drummer doing his thing at uncertain moments.

Dance of the Cranes was a worked out by a choreographer and crane cab operator (There's a match made in Heaven). Two construction cranes were rigged with eerie blue lights. They circled around to music in the moonligt. Who would have known cranes could be so beautiful.

Cubemmunity was a large cube covered with four screens on which images footage from the neighborhood were projected. As the creator hit particular keys on the keyboard, they threw certain images on the cube. People could dance and interact with the cube.

And Ghost Stories was too bizarre for me to explain. You would have to be there.

Check out the website, and consider going next year. It puts a whole new face on Toronto.

Measure for Measure

Has anyone noticed that everything seems to have a measurability to it? Machines at bakeries and fast food shops will tell you exactly how many calories your almond croissant has. Rate Your Professor is a website that reduces the quality of teachers to numerical evaluations. There is room for commentary, granted, but the numbers are what sticks. Focus groups ask people to rate their experiences with products based on numerical rating scales. Pollsters gather opinions on candidates and issues using concise clear-cut yes or no questions. Economists look at purchasing patterns over time. Measurements are king.

The problem of reducing everything to measurements and scales is that you lose the grey areas in-between numerical assignments. You don't look at gradations.

Psychologists evaluate patients based on progress they have made, on changes of perception and action over time. Psychologists take in all factors of the patients' case histories and personalities. The total picture is what they view.

The pollsters and chart-masters think every experience is finite and reducable. They are charting the experience, but they leave out the human factor. Humans are complex, unpredictable creatures. Their likes and dislikes are personal, so they depend on all the quirks and aberrations of personality. Economists are now looking at the human factor when they make predictions. The economy and all social sciences are not extant independent of us. We created them. Human nature is the lynchpin that keeps a product or service connected to our habits.

Don't worry about using that calorie counting machine, though. Your waist line is measurable.

Doubtful Quote

"I thought I said to love one another."

In the spirit of Jesus