Hello friends, Romans, countrymen
It's a snowy day and I'm feeling sort of lazy, so for today I'm just going to post something that I already wrote for a class.
But perhaps I'm being unfair to myself.
I wrote it, in fact, as part of my final exam on the Nicaragua trip, and over the last few days I've been struck by the truth and utter brilliance of my own words. So naturally, I expect that you will be, too.
Technically, I'm plagiarizing myself right now. Thus, legal issues compel me to include the following disclaimer:
I, Hillary Goldstein, do hereby grant myself, Hillary Goldstein, temporary rights to the following work that I, Hillary Goldstein, wrote.
Granted, the odds of my suing myself would seem pretty slim, but you never know with some people.
The prompt for this essay was, to paraphrase: The documents we've read and opinions we've heard in Nicaragua have not always placed the US government in a positive light. As citizens of a democracy, aren't we directly responsible for any of our government's misdeeds and faults?
So I said:
While I am often appalled by the ignorance and indifference that many American citizens express towards current affairs, I do not think that Americans can necessarily be held responsible for every government action. First, to do so implies a completely different type of democracy than actually exists today. With the exception only of the president, the government itself is elected on a state-by-state basis, giving any individual a very limited say on the ultimate body. It would be unreasonable to expect the citizens of Maine to understand and try to influence an election in Hawaii, and it would be unreasonable to expect the citizens of Hawaii to endure people of completely different states trying to impact their elections. While state elections in Hawaii do ultimately affect Maine, it would be impossible to keep track of all the elections in all fifty states.
Second, campaigning for office has long involved politicians essentially manufacturing images of themselves. Promises are made and never kept, deals made in secret change how politicians actually vote once elected, and even Americans who do make an effort to be informed have little real knowledge on which to base their voting decisions. For example, when former President Bush was re-elected in 2004, a great deal of information regarding the original intentions, and subsequent mismanagement, of the Iraq war had not yet been released (or were dismissed as extremist rumors). Whether this knowledge would have changed the outcome of the election is another question, but in any case it was simply impossible at the time to make a truly informed decision. In the case of Nicaragua, I doubt that the voters who elected the officials the siphoned money to the Contras were focused on that issue in particular, or even that they knew the US government was involved in Nicaragua at all (though I am not sure of when exactly the scandal became apparent). However, I do not mean to downplay the responsibility that Americans hold for our general ignorance of current affairs. In this age, when any information can be accessed in minutes and online news is updated every ten seconds, there is simply no excuse for not being aware of the world’s events.
More frustrating to me than outright ignorance, though certainly just as serious, is when people fail to act on information that they do know. While I don’t expect everyone who reads Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma to immediately become a vegetarian, I am mystified when people who claim to be disgusted by the practices the that book describes continue to support the exact same brands that they always have, even knowing that in doing so they perpetuate the very system they resent. The dollar vote may be even more powerful in America’s consumer culture than the civil one, yet we don’t seem to take our dollar votes any more seriously that those at the ballot box. Consumer sovereignty is not all-powerful, but it comes shockingly close: public preference removed Styrofoam from McDonalds’ meals, and put organic yogurt on the shelves at Wal-Mart. These changes happened more quickly and effectively than any government-mandated regulation, showing true power of the conscious consumer.
My sense of the average American citizen’s relationship to the electoral process is best summarized with a quote by Marianne Williamson: “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.” Many people who express indifference to current events claim that their lack of participation doesn’t matter, because their contributing would make no difference. If more people invested their time and wallets to reflect their morals and opinions, the results would be dramatic.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Thirsty: A watery tale
As promised, today's lecture will be an environemental, social, and economical rant on water.
Luckily for you, you brave readers of my blog, I happen to be an environmental science nerd. Enjoy the ride.
Why water, you ask? Why not earthquakes, or nuclear proliferation?
Simple:
Lack of clean water is killing a lot more people than nuclear proliferation these days.
First off, let's review why water is essential to human life (a minor detail that we like to conveniently forget). The human body is 70% water, and can survive without water for about a day and a half. My own relationship to water became aggressive when, on a trip to Thailand, I was ordered to drink 128 ounces of water every day. (I never made it past 80) But more importantly:
Environemental science fun fact!
Without water, earth would be uninhabitable for humans. (Not counting all the reasons I just mentioned.) Water has unique chemical properties that allow it to release heat when the air is getting colder, and absorb heat when the air gets warmer. This keeps the global temperature relatively constant, as is the reason why deserts experience greater temperature extremes between night and day than coastal regions. Even better, the oceans of the world absorb massive amounts of carbon every day, such that the ocean floors contain enough carbon to raise the global temperature to disastrous levels immedately.
As the wise artist Sting sings in a song that I may or may not have played endlessly while studying for my ecology 101 exam, "On and on the rain will fall, like tears from a star/On and on the rain will say, how fragile we are."
Fragile, indeed. But where does poverty come into all this? Aren't certain regions, like deserts, always going to have less water than others, like tropical forests?
Well, yes. But there's a lot more to the story.
I usually dislike statistical representations of reality. But as far as water goes, the statistics are revealing:
-30,000 children under the age of five die DAILY around the world. (This is the average, and may be higher on days when, say, earthquakes strike overpopulated, underprivelaged capitals of certain Caribbean nations).
-The leading causes of death for children under five are malnutrition, malaria, and diarrhea (or other gastrointestinal illnesses). All these are either caused directly, or could be greatly reduced, by lack of access to clean water.
To explain, malnutrition in young children occurs often as an indirect result of there not being enough water to grow food, or else dehydration magnifies the effects of malnutrition so that it becomes fatal more quickly than it otherwise might. Malaria is spread my mosquitos, which breed more readily in stagnant or shallow water than in pure, deep water. Diarrhea and related illnesses are caused directly by drinking contaminated water.
It's often quoted that 1.5 billion people live on less than one dollar per day. At the same time, 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water. Would you be suprised to find that those are the same people?
(Spoiler: They are.)
Sometimes, environmental issues are really humanitarian issues. In fact, environmental issues are usually intrinscially tied to political and humanitarian unnease, such as the death toll in a certain overpopulated, underrepresented Caribbean nation's earthquake. This is more clear on the subject of water than anywhere else. The poor are more likely to live in more infertile areas, to have less technology that would allow them to take advantage of what water they do have, and yet tend to spend a higher percentage of their income on water than any other demographic in the world. It is not a coincidence that sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most agriculturally unproductive regions of the globe, and also one of the poorest.
We in the US are lucky, both from an environemental standpoint and from one of relative affluence. North America lies on a fairly temperate latitude, so that we are less affected by climate extremes and climate change than areas (such as the Sahara) that were fragile to begin with. Yet, we are not as removed from the issue as we may like to think.
When one thinks of California, one probably envisions palm trees, bling, and orchards growing fruit to be shipped to New York in January (cuz you can't go without peaches for a whole three months, can you?). So what's up with these wildfires we keep hearing about?
The truth is, California is a desert. Its ecosystem cannot support the amount of agriculture currently in place, and only has for this long because of intensive irrigation that has made California the state that consumes the most water.
Similar ecological nightmares, in which the colonizing people instituted economies that just weren't appropriate for the climate, include sheep farming in Australia, beef production in the Middle East (although this has been mostly stopped due to its sheer lunacy) and...intensive agriculture in a certain Caribbean nation. Granted, I'm not sure if slavery is well-suited to any ecosystem, so maybe Haiti (suprise!) deserves some slack.
If you're still reading, I salute you. You deserve a latte and a pat on the back for swimming through all this madness.
Luckily for you, you brave readers of my blog, I happen to be an environmental science nerd. Enjoy the ride.
Why water, you ask? Why not earthquakes, or nuclear proliferation?
Simple:
Lack of clean water is killing a lot more people than nuclear proliferation these days.
First off, let's review why water is essential to human life (a minor detail that we like to conveniently forget). The human body is 70% water, and can survive without water for about a day and a half. My own relationship to water became aggressive when, on a trip to Thailand, I was ordered to drink 128 ounces of water every day. (I never made it past 80) But more importantly:
Environemental science fun fact!
Without water, earth would be uninhabitable for humans. (Not counting all the reasons I just mentioned.) Water has unique chemical properties that allow it to release heat when the air is getting colder, and absorb heat when the air gets warmer. This keeps the global temperature relatively constant, as is the reason why deserts experience greater temperature extremes between night and day than coastal regions. Even better, the oceans of the world absorb massive amounts of carbon every day, such that the ocean floors contain enough carbon to raise the global temperature to disastrous levels immedately.
As the wise artist Sting sings in a song that I may or may not have played endlessly while studying for my ecology 101 exam, "On and on the rain will fall, like tears from a star/On and on the rain will say, how fragile we are."
Fragile, indeed. But where does poverty come into all this? Aren't certain regions, like deserts, always going to have less water than others, like tropical forests?
Well, yes. But there's a lot more to the story.
I usually dislike statistical representations of reality. But as far as water goes, the statistics are revealing:
-30,000 children under the age of five die DAILY around the world. (This is the average, and may be higher on days when, say, earthquakes strike overpopulated, underprivelaged capitals of certain Caribbean nations).
-The leading causes of death for children under five are malnutrition, malaria, and diarrhea (or other gastrointestinal illnesses). All these are either caused directly, or could be greatly reduced, by lack of access to clean water.
To explain, malnutrition in young children occurs often as an indirect result of there not being enough water to grow food, or else dehydration magnifies the effects of malnutrition so that it becomes fatal more quickly than it otherwise might. Malaria is spread my mosquitos, which breed more readily in stagnant or shallow water than in pure, deep water. Diarrhea and related illnesses are caused directly by drinking contaminated water.
It's often quoted that 1.5 billion people live on less than one dollar per day. At the same time, 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water. Would you be suprised to find that those are the same people?
(Spoiler: They are.)
Sometimes, environmental issues are really humanitarian issues. In fact, environmental issues are usually intrinscially tied to political and humanitarian unnease, such as the death toll in a certain overpopulated, underrepresented Caribbean nation's earthquake. This is more clear on the subject of water than anywhere else. The poor are more likely to live in more infertile areas, to have less technology that would allow them to take advantage of what water they do have, and yet tend to spend a higher percentage of their income on water than any other demographic in the world. It is not a coincidence that sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most agriculturally unproductive regions of the globe, and also one of the poorest.
We in the US are lucky, both from an environemental standpoint and from one of relative affluence. North America lies on a fairly temperate latitude, so that we are less affected by climate extremes and climate change than areas (such as the Sahara) that were fragile to begin with. Yet, we are not as removed from the issue as we may like to think.
When one thinks of California, one probably envisions palm trees, bling, and orchards growing fruit to be shipped to New York in January (cuz you can't go without peaches for a whole three months, can you?). So what's up with these wildfires we keep hearing about?
The truth is, California is a desert. Its ecosystem cannot support the amount of agriculture currently in place, and only has for this long because of intensive irrigation that has made California the state that consumes the most water.
Similar ecological nightmares, in which the colonizing people instituted economies that just weren't appropriate for the climate, include sheep farming in Australia, beef production in the Middle East (although this has been mostly stopped due to its sheer lunacy) and...intensive agriculture in a certain Caribbean nation. Granted, I'm not sure if slavery is well-suited to any ecosystem, so maybe Haiti (suprise!) deserves some slack.
If you're still reading, I salute you. You deserve a latte and a pat on the back for swimming through all this madness.
An Open Letter to Superman (a.k.a. Barack Obama)
Dear Mr. President,
Let's first clarify one thing: I like you, man. Quite a bit, actually. In spite of all you haven't accomplished since you took office one year ago, I still think you're an all-around brilliant and decent human being. And you kind of look like my dad. (Remarkable, since my dad is white and Jewish, but true nonethless. My mother agrees.)
Just wanted to let you know that you really shouldn't take this too personally.
In the earlier days, between that first victory in Iowa and the day before my 18th birthday (that would be November 4th, 2008) I really stood up for you. When my conservative friends said you'd never make it, I shouted "Yes we can!" and pumped my fist in the air until they were awed into silence. When my father tried to tell me why Hillary's experience would make her a better choice, I cited Kennedy and Lincoln in such persuasive detail that my history teacher would have been impressed. (Though I admit I stole a few "Hillary for President" stickers just to boost my self-esteem.) When my uncle told me that no one could change Washington, I told him that I didn't expect any miracles.
But I was lying.
I tried to stay realistic, I really did. I thought that living in New Jersey and growing up under the Bush doctrine wold surely have developed my cynicism to an unbreakable shell that I could retreat into at any time for a reality check. But you got to me, Barack. Like everyone else, I caved. You said, "America, now is our time," and I thought- I knew- that you were The One that would save the world.
Did you know that dreams make a pretty sound when they shatter? Really, I swear I can hear them.
I guess it's unfair for me to blame you, per se. It's not really your fault that Congress watered down, and now probably won't pass, the beloved healthcare bill that was supposed to save thousands of people every year. Or the climate bill that was supposed to finally give America back some credibility with developing countries. Or that you won a Nobel Prize for breathing. Or that the Supreme Court just handed the future of democracy to the wealthiest coorporations.
But really, can't you show some remorse about it?
At first, I thought that your lack of apparent anger at the GOP's blatant efforts to bring you down were a sign of your superior strategizing and cool-headedness. Now, you just seem indifferent. Indifference is not a very presidential quality.
It's one thing to be stoic when your own dreams get destroyed. But they were mine too, Barack. Mine and aproximately 51% of the rest of the country's.
You promised to bring bi-partisan efforts back to Congress. Epic fail. You also promised to fight for the middle class, the youth, and all the huddled masses. Nada. And frankly, I'm sick of the emails I keep getting from your various managers about your "victories" and new initiaties for "change."
If I didn't know better, Barack, I'd think the GOP was cowing you. You didn't really think they were just going to let you tax bonuses, did you? Why aren't you ready to fight for it, then? Get down and dirty with the GOP, since they're way ahead of you on that game and I'm starting to fear that they will win. If you want to be socialist, go for it. You promised some pretty radical things during your campaign, so you can't get scared now that they're putting Hitler mustaches on your picture.
You love to talk about your hero, Abe Lincoln. The bi-partisan efforts didn't go so well for him, either. He dealt. Man up. You promised us a revolution, and you will have one on your hands if you don't start fighting it yourself.
Yet, even though you've made me pretty angry these last few months, I still believe in you. I still think you're the best chance America has for living up to its promise of liberty and justice for all. I still catch my breath when I hear you speak. I still suspect that you're The One.
No pressure.
Sincerely,
Hilldog
P.S. If you ever need a babysitter for your freakishly adorable daughters, please let me know.
Let's first clarify one thing: I like you, man. Quite a bit, actually. In spite of all you haven't accomplished since you took office one year ago, I still think you're an all-around brilliant and decent human being. And you kind of look like my dad. (Remarkable, since my dad is white and Jewish, but true nonethless. My mother agrees.)
Just wanted to let you know that you really shouldn't take this too personally.
In the earlier days, between that first victory in Iowa and the day before my 18th birthday (that would be November 4th, 2008) I really stood up for you. When my conservative friends said you'd never make it, I shouted "Yes we can!" and pumped my fist in the air until they were awed into silence. When my father tried to tell me why Hillary's experience would make her a better choice, I cited Kennedy and Lincoln in such persuasive detail that my history teacher would have been impressed. (Though I admit I stole a few "Hillary for President" stickers just to boost my self-esteem.) When my uncle told me that no one could change Washington, I told him that I didn't expect any miracles.
But I was lying.
I tried to stay realistic, I really did. I thought that living in New Jersey and growing up under the Bush doctrine wold surely have developed my cynicism to an unbreakable shell that I could retreat into at any time for a reality check. But you got to me, Barack. Like everyone else, I caved. You said, "America, now is our time," and I thought- I knew- that you were The One that would save the world.
Did you know that dreams make a pretty sound when they shatter? Really, I swear I can hear them.
I guess it's unfair for me to blame you, per se. It's not really your fault that Congress watered down, and now probably won't pass, the beloved healthcare bill that was supposed to save thousands of people every year. Or the climate bill that was supposed to finally give America back some credibility with developing countries. Or that you won a Nobel Prize for breathing. Or that the Supreme Court just handed the future of democracy to the wealthiest coorporations.
But really, can't you show some remorse about it?
At first, I thought that your lack of apparent anger at the GOP's blatant efforts to bring you down were a sign of your superior strategizing and cool-headedness. Now, you just seem indifferent. Indifference is not a very presidential quality.
It's one thing to be stoic when your own dreams get destroyed. But they were mine too, Barack. Mine and aproximately 51% of the rest of the country's.
You promised to bring bi-partisan efforts back to Congress. Epic fail. You also promised to fight for the middle class, the youth, and all the huddled masses. Nada. And frankly, I'm sick of the emails I keep getting from your various managers about your "victories" and new initiaties for "change."
If I didn't know better, Barack, I'd think the GOP was cowing you. You didn't really think they were just going to let you tax bonuses, did you? Why aren't you ready to fight for it, then? Get down and dirty with the GOP, since they're way ahead of you on that game and I'm starting to fear that they will win. If you want to be socialist, go for it. You promised some pretty radical things during your campaign, so you can't get scared now that they're putting Hitler mustaches on your picture.
You love to talk about your hero, Abe Lincoln. The bi-partisan efforts didn't go so well for him, either. He dealt. Man up. You promised us a revolution, and you will have one on your hands if you don't start fighting it yourself.
Yet, even though you've made me pretty angry these last few months, I still believe in you. I still think you're the best chance America has for living up to its promise of liberty and justice for all. I still catch my breath when I hear you speak. I still suspect that you're The One.
No pressure.
Sincerely,
Hilldog
P.S. If you ever need a babysitter for your freakishly adorable daughters, please let me know.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Como mi Toña, niguna!
Spoiler alert: In this post I will make you jealous of my Latin America experience and then make you feel guilty about Haiti. Partaaaaaay!
Hola amigos,
Sadly, even after two weeks of coconut bread and Tonas (the Nicaraguan favorite beer), that still represents most of my Spanish language capacity. I did discover that I can understand Spanish better than Creole, which is odd since Creole is based partly in English, but either way I managed to make myself understood.
“Quanto?”
“Trenta corduba.”
“Ah. Si. Gracias.”
“You’re welcome.”
But enough with the banter.
Some backround on Bluefields:
Before coming to Nicaragua, I was so ignorant of its geography that I didn’t know I was ignorant. Nicaragua is divided into the central region (referring to the government, not its position on the map), the Southern Autonomous Atlantic Region (RAAS) and the Northern Autonomous Atlantic Region (RAAN). Managua is the capital of the country at large, Bluefields is the capital of the RAAS, and I have no idea what the capital of the RAAN is. Bluefields has approximately 85% unemployment, and most people get more of their income from money sent home by people who have left to find work elsewhere.
For our part, we didn’t actually do much in Bluefields. After all, this was a sustainability class, and those projects where Americans jet in and build houses are unsustainable, because you haven’t actually improved the country’s ability to build their own houses. So, instead we worked with students at the university in Bluefields to make a tourism website (this may sound fluffy and it is on some level, but there was no information on Bluefields at all on the internet before we began). Since making a website is not really a 30-person job, this implied a lot of strolling around the city, stopping occasionally for a Toña or a water (usually water for me, usually Toña for the frat boy in my group), and copying down a few phone numbers.
For those of you who know me well (which is probably all of you, realistically), you can probably suspect that this drove me a little nuts. I don’t do strolling very well.
My feelings were shared by several people on the trip, including my new friend Ania. Ania is a freshman, like me at UVA. She lives in a dorm close to mine, but we had never met before the trip. Ania is from Haiti, specifically, from Port-au-Prince.
Oui.
Out of respect to Ania and her family, I don’t want to talk too much about the details of what she specifically experienced when we found out about the earthquake. I will say that it was eerie that I spoke and thought more about Haiti in the week leading up to the earthquake than I ever had in my life. For me, the most telling moment of what life in Haiti must be like came not after the earthquake, but a few days before it. One night, one of our roommates woke up screaming because of a dream (she couldn’t remember the dream; we blamed the malaria pills). The rest of us asked if she’d seen a bug or something. Ania thought she was being kidnapped and hid under the bed, as she’d been taught. Ania is the bravest person I’ve ever met.
There’s only so much we as individuals can do to help the victims of the earthquake, or the impoverished of Bluefields, or the billion and a half people who live on less than one dollar per day. It is times like these, though, when the warm water in your shower and the clean water you don’t have to boil to drink and the fact that you woke up again this morning start to mean a little more. Or so I hope.
But water is another post for another day.
Hola amigos,
Sadly, even after two weeks of coconut bread and Tonas (the Nicaraguan favorite beer), that still represents most of my Spanish language capacity. I did discover that I can understand Spanish better than Creole, which is odd since Creole is based partly in English, but either way I managed to make myself understood.
“Quanto?”
“Trenta corduba.”
“Ah. Si. Gracias.”
“You’re welcome.”
But enough with the banter.
Some backround on Bluefields:
Before coming to Nicaragua, I was so ignorant of its geography that I didn’t know I was ignorant. Nicaragua is divided into the central region (referring to the government, not its position on the map), the Southern Autonomous Atlantic Region (RAAS) and the Northern Autonomous Atlantic Region (RAAN). Managua is the capital of the country at large, Bluefields is the capital of the RAAS, and I have no idea what the capital of the RAAN is. Bluefields has approximately 85% unemployment, and most people get more of their income from money sent home by people who have left to find work elsewhere.
For our part, we didn’t actually do much in Bluefields. After all, this was a sustainability class, and those projects where Americans jet in and build houses are unsustainable, because you haven’t actually improved the country’s ability to build their own houses. So, instead we worked with students at the university in Bluefields to make a tourism website (this may sound fluffy and it is on some level, but there was no information on Bluefields at all on the internet before we began). Since making a website is not really a 30-person job, this implied a lot of strolling around the city, stopping occasionally for a Toña or a water (usually water for me, usually Toña for the frat boy in my group), and copying down a few phone numbers.
For those of you who know me well (which is probably all of you, realistically), you can probably suspect that this drove me a little nuts. I don’t do strolling very well.
My feelings were shared by several people on the trip, including my new friend Ania. Ania is a freshman, like me at UVA. She lives in a dorm close to mine, but we had never met before the trip. Ania is from Haiti, specifically, from Port-au-Prince.
Oui.
Out of respect to Ania and her family, I don’t want to talk too much about the details of what she specifically experienced when we found out about the earthquake. I will say that it was eerie that I spoke and thought more about Haiti in the week leading up to the earthquake than I ever had in my life. For me, the most telling moment of what life in Haiti must be like came not after the earthquake, but a few days before it. One night, one of our roommates woke up screaming because of a dream (she couldn’t remember the dream; we blamed the malaria pills). The rest of us asked if she’d seen a bug or something. Ania thought she was being kidnapped and hid under the bed, as she’d been taught. Ania is the bravest person I’ve ever met.
There’s only so much we as individuals can do to help the victims of the earthquake, or the impoverished of Bluefields, or the billion and a half people who live on less than one dollar per day. It is times like these, though, when the warm water in your shower and the clean water you don’t have to boil to drink and the fact that you woke up again this morning start to mean a little more. Or so I hope.
But water is another post for another day.
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