The Story of Stuff: a study guide

A year and a half ago, Annie Leonard released The Story of Stuff, a 20-minute video about the dangers of over-consumption. It "has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation," Leslie Kaufman wrote in Sunday's New York Times: "So far, six million people have viewed the film at its site, storyofstuff.com, and millions more have seen it on YouTube. More than 7,000 schools, churches and others have ordered a DVD version, and hundreds of teachers have written Ms. Leonard to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web."

Critics object to the video's negative portrayal of big business, inaccuracies, and oversimplification. Even if you agree with Leonard’s main point—that we buy far too much, and that this is bad for us, for others, and for the earth—you may find the video unnecessarily confrontational.

Like it or not, chances are your kids (friends, relatives, coworkers) are going to watch this video, and it may come soon to a church near you. Stick with it, even if the first three minutes appall you. Leonard raises issues that Christians are already discussing (see, for example, the discussion of fair trade at the Ten Thousand Villages web site) and that we need to talk more about with our kids. For example:

• Let’s assume that some businesses do operate for the benefit of humankind and the earth. How do these businesses care for the environment? What are their policies on work hours? Wages? Health benefits? Child labor? The products they make? The way they market their products?
• Can a business care for the environment and its employees and still make a profit?
• How much of my identity is related to things I buy? Which of my purchases have made me happier? Am I happier today because of anything I bought last year?
  

My parish offers a two-year class in church history, and today we read an encyclical letter, “On the Development of Peoples,” written by Pope Paul VI in 1967. Noting that justice “calls for great generosity, willing sacrifice and diligent effort,” he made the discussion personal:

• Are we “prepared to support, at [our] own expense, projects and undertakings designed to help the needy?
• [Are we] prepared to pay higher taxes so that public authorities may expand their efforts in the work of development?
• [Are we] prepared to pay more for imported goods, so that the foreign producer may make a fairer profit?”

After thinking about these questions for a while, read the New Testament letter of James. It sounds like it was written directly to us.

Home: excerpts

Two paragraphs I liked from Marilynne Robinson's Home. Different approaches from mother and father:

How to announce the return of comfort and well-being except by cooking something fragrant. That is what her mother always did. After every calamity of any significance she would fill the atmosphere of the house with the smell of cinnamon rolls or brownies, or with chicken and dumplings, and it would mean, This house has a soul that loves us all, no matter what. (252)

All bread is the bread of heaven, her father used to say. It expresses the will of God to sustain us in this flesh, in this life. Weary or bitter or bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home. (102)

CSA time again

It's April, and soon the CSA (community-supported agriculture) boxes will start to arrive. Click here to learn about our experience with Genesis Growers, the small Illinois farm that supplied us with excellent produce in 2007. Thanks to John and Wendy Wilson, who introduced us to Genesis Growers. And thanks to John for directing me to a funny and oh-so-true article in Slate magazine, Catherine Price's "The Locavore's Dilemma: what to do with the kale, turnips, and parley that overwhelm your CSA bin." Price writes:

...Each year, toward the end of winter, I run into the Turnip Problem.

Ordinarily, I would never eat turnips. I managed to go 30 years without buying one. But now every winter I'm faced with a two-month supply, not to mention the kale, collards, and flat-leaf Italian parsley that sit in my refrigerator, slowly wilting, filling me with guilt every time I reach past them for the milk. After three years of practice, I've figured out simple ways to deal with most of these problem vegetables: I braise the turnips in butter and white wine; I sauté the kale and collards with olive oil and sea salt; I wait until the parsley shrivels and then throw it out. The abundance of roughage is overwhelming.

Alas, Mr Neff and I were so overwhelmed by our CSA boxes (they were excellent, but how many vegetables can two people eat?) that we elected not to renew our subscription. Instead, last year we spent a lot more time and money at the farmers' market, trying to find locally grown produce that we knew we'd enjoy eating. This meant that we threw out less, but we also learned less. There's nothing like a giant daikon radish to challenge one's ingenuity. Even our little terrier was baffled.

Review: How Starbucks Saved My Life

At the advice of Beth, readers' services librarian at Wheaton Public Library (who has her own blog here), I just read How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else by Michael Gates Gill.

I half loved it. It was a great airport/airplane read, and this week I spent a lot of hours in transit. The author/protagonist, son of New Yorker writer Brendan Gill, left Yale and went to work as an executive at the nation's largest ad agency, J. Walter Thompson (now JWT). Along the way he met lots of famous people and made piles of money. He also ignored his family, lost his job, set up as a consultant, couldn't get clients, had a son by a woman he met at the gym, lost his family, lost his house, ran out of money, lost his health insurance ... and did I mention that he had a brain tumor?

Well, if you read the book jacket--or saw Mr Gill on CBS or CNN or read about him in The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times or any number of other places--you know that, in his 60s, he got a menial job at Starbucks. He had to commute an hour and a half each way by subway, and he spent a lot of time cleaning toilets. Schadenfreude! How are the mighty fallen! And how good it feels, hearing him say that he's happier and wiser as a working man than he ever was as a high flyer!

So why did half of me not love the book? OK, maybe only a third of me. Or a fifth. It really was fun to read. But still, a nagging little voice--echoed, I learned, by a number of people who left comments at Amazon--kept wondering, Mr Gill, have you really changed all that much? Yes, you've learned how to do physical work, and you've made friends with people of other races, and you now feel guilty about the way you treated your wife and children.

But doesn't it make you feel good to tell us that, unlike the people you work with now, you once worked with Jackie O, and unlike the coffee purchasers ("Guests") you chat with now, you once chatted with Ernest Hemingway? And doesn't it feel awesome to write a memoir that not only is immediately published by a major New York house, but also is reviewed by most of the major media and is now slated to become a movie starring Tom Hanks? And hey, you don't suppose Starbucks might figure out that you really love everything about them and maybe will start selling your book in all their stores, do you ... ?

Sure, you've learned important life lessons (which you divulge in a sometimes annoyingly cheery ad copy style--but then, writing ad copy was your métier), and you tell reporters that even if you were offered big bucks to go back to corporate life, you'd stay on at your Bronxville Starbucks. On the other hand, you have no family to support--and not all that much contact with the families you've left behind--so your situation doesn't really compare with that of many of your coworkers. Besides, you now get Social Security and are working only part time.

Yadayadayada. It's easy to carp. Whatever his faults and the faults of his little book, Mr Gill has been through a lot and survived. He may not really be living like everyone else, but he's serving others--literally--and is happy with his life. His book offers a lot of wisdom and quite a bit of humble pie. And maybe its real take-away value isn't so much its paean to downsizing as its first-hand evidence that a hard-working creative guy can turn even the most desperate situation around.

Two and a half cheers, and in a few minutes I'll return the book to the library so you can check it out.

One delightful feature: each chapter begins with an inscription on a Starbucks cup. Here's my favorite, from chapter 7, "Turning Losers into Winners":

The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating--in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life.

--a quote from Anne Morriss, a Starbucks Guest from New York City,
published on the side of a Grande Caramel Macchiato

Tedium

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another;
it is one damn thing over and over.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ms. Millay's observation about life is also true of meals during Lent, though today's repeat of yesterday's meal included several improvements. If you make the black bean stew, do add sweet potato (or steamed plantain) to the mix, stir in a few shakes of turmeric, and sprinkle lots and lots of fresh cilantro on top. Reheated mixed-berry dumplings are slightly soggy but still tasty, especially with a dollop of thick plain yogurt on the side.

If minor additions improve Lenten leftovers, can we do anything to spice up Lent's tedious days? Though spring is due to begin on Friday, we in the Midwest are not easily fooled. It may be 50 degrees out today, but we know it will snow again at least once, and the smarter daffodils will stay buried until late April.

I guess if Lent happened in May, nobody would observe it.

All things are wearisome;
more than one can express;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
or the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:8-9, NRSV

Feeling good about leftovers

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.

--Calvin Trillin

I'm feeling a lot like Calvin Trillin's mother.

Yesterday's fare involved lunch with two friends. I served leftover lentil soup to which I had added sweet potato and turkey sausage and whatever else took my fancy back when I made it a couple of weeks ago. It keeps very well in the freezer.

We also had fresh-baked bread, though I varied the recipe by putting 1/2 c corn meal and 1/2 cup oatmeal flour in the scale before filling it up to the 1-lb level with white whole wheat flour. Cindy brought a lovely salad of spring greens, dried cranberries, feta cheese, and pecans. Vinita brought delightful date bars, and if I can get her to divulge the recipe, I'll post it here.

Last night Mr Neff and I had the final remains of the soup, more bread, and a salad made of leftover arugula, clementines, and almonds. It may sound creative, but really it was what I found in my refrigerator.

So here I am apologizing, and that makes Jacques Pépin unhappy--

It makes me feel uncomfortable when people are apologetic about serving leftovers, because if the cook is good there should be no reason to apologize. . . . Born to a family of restaurateurs and having worked all my life in the world of food, I find it’s second nature to be thrifty and avoid spoilage. I actually hurt when I see food rotting in the refrigerator or people throwing out things like bones which could be used for a flavorful base for dishes....

In the normal working of a professional kitchen, the chefs save food instinctively. The meat is trimmed, the trimmings are turned into ground meat and the bones go into a stock which may be turned into a sauce, and so on. Things move naturally in a logical progression, everything is used in an endless cycle, and practically nothing is discarded. By the same token, at home a good cook should be able to transform a dish and extend its use by making it into a fresh and different creation, rather than a second-rate version of the original.

The most common mistake made with leftovers is to try to preserve the food in its original form. Roast beef will never be a hot roast beef again because it doesn’t reheat well. However, cold roast beef served with condiments and a salad is excellent, while sliced and sautéed with onions, garlic, and beef broth, it makes a wonderful Beef Mironton. . . . Similarly, a perfectly roasted chicken will never taste as good reheated, but turned into a cold salad it tastes fresh again. On the other hand, stews, as well as most soups, often taste better after reheating.

--Jacques Pépin, Everyday Cooking

Less planning, more merriment

For me, the scariest aspect of the Lenten Experiment is not the frugality but the planning. I like to make things up as I go along. I don't like keeping records and figuring out the price of everything.

I'm solving the bookkeeping problem by keeping track of grocery purchases but not trying to price each meal, which would be impossibly complex.

And I've decided to solve the meal planning problem by reverting to my usual method of cooking: looking at what I already have or what is favorably priced in the grocery store, and then imagining what goes well together. I often do this as I cook, after I write my daily blogpost, so I'm going to stop appending "daily bread" summaries announcing what we are going to have for dinner. Heck, it's only 11:00 a.m. How do I know?

But I do want to keep track--what's an experiment without data?--so instead I'll post yesterday's menu, beginning tomorrow. (This approach has the added advantage of not giving Mr Neff or dinner guests advance information about dinner. I don't want to alarm anybody.)

Meanwhile, here's a report from the front. Janet and Ken Tkachuck, excellent cooks both, describe their first couple of days of intentionally frugal eating:

[We] are experimenting with the frugal menu plan but are not giving up meat or wine. The first night we had chicken legs sautéed with onions, sweet peppers, and zucchini and cilantro, on a bed of couscous. The meal came to $6.00, and with a $4.99 bottle, we stayed under budget. Our breakfasts and lunches, like yours, cost pennies. Last night was stir fry with vegetarian scallops, even cheaper. How we're going to work tonight into the scheme I'm not sure. We're sallying forth with our friend Don to a new cheap eats BYOB in Andersonville (Antica Pizzeria, featuring a wood burning pizza oven). ... We'll ask Tetzel to grant us an indulgence for this one night. Or amortize the extra cost over the next week. Cheating already.

No doubt Tetzel will approve, but then so will his archenemy Martin Luther, who wrote to a friend:

Whenever the devil pesters you with these thoughts, at once seek out the company of men, drink more, joke and jest, or engage in some other form of merriment. Sometimes it is necessary to drink a little more, play, jest, or even commit some sin in defiance and contempt of the devil in order not to give him an opportunity to make us scrupulous about trifles.

Amen, Dr. Luther.

Old dogs rule

I am thrilled that America's top dog is old.

Stump, the Sussex spaniel pictured at left, is 10 years old--the oldest dog ever to win Best in Show in the 133-year history of the prestigious Westminster Kennel Club dog show.

Stump, who won quite a few titles in his youth, retired five years ago after a serious illness. Last week his handler got a sudden inspiration and registered him for Westminster. The Associated Press story in today's Boston Herald begins:

Imagine Michael Jordan coming back to make one more jumper. Or John Elway returning to toss a final TD pass. Or Nolan Ryan reappearing to throw a farewell fastball.

That’s what happened in the dog show world.

Depending on who's counting, a 10-year-old dog could be anywhere between 50 and 70 in human years. According to this website, which takes a dog's size into consideration, Stump would be about 60.

Stump's story brings to mind something Auguste Renoir said about his fellow artist Edgar Degas:

If Degas had died at fifty, he would have been remembered as an excellent painter, no more. It is after his fiftieth year that his work broadens out and that he really becomes Degas.

My own old dogs, however, have their own favorite quotations:

Let sleeping dogs lie

and

They also serve who only stand and wait.

Happiness: A History

In my small collection of happiness books, two have long been personal favorites: The Pursuit of Happiness by David G. Myers (1993) for its lucid explanations, and Adventures in Contentment by David Grayson (1916) for its soothing evocations.

Now I am adding a third title to my pantheon: Happiness: A History by Darrin M. McMahon, "a professor of history at Florida State University and a frequent contributor to publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Daedalus."

Selected by the New York Times as one of the 100 notable books of 2006, Happiness is an engaging survey of Western philosophy from Herodotus to today's bioethicists. To learn more about the book, you can't do better than Jim Holt's excellent review. Sample its opening lines:

The history of the idea of happiness can be neatly summarized in a series of bumper sticker equations: Happiness= Luck (Homeric), Happiness=Virtue (classical), Happiness=Heaven (medieval), Happiness=Pleasure (Enlightenment) and Happiness=A Warm Puppy (contemporary). Does that look like progress? Darrin McMahon doesn't think so.

A better woman than I might sit down and read Happiness straight through. Instead, I'm enjoying it in small bites each morning, reading 10 pages or so from one subhead to the next. A couple of days ago I learned that the word fun is "a relative novelty, introduced in English only in the late seventeeth century as a variation of the Middle English fon, meaning jester or fool" (199).

In the eighteenth century a truly radical philosophy developed, one that Lively Dust finds charming:

To dance, to sing, to enjoy our food, to revel in our bodies and the company of others--in short, to delight in a world of our own making--was not to defy God's will but to live as nature had intended. This was our earthly purpose.

Warm puppies are also pleasant.

That necessary measure of irrationality

"Homer may have been blind, but his taste buds were alive to wine, and he reserved his richest adjectives for it: heady, mellow, ruddy, shining, glowing, seasoned, hearty, honeyed, glistening, heart-warming, and, of course, irresistible." So writes English teacher Alexander Nazaryan in "The Tipsy Hero," an op ed piece in this morning's New York Times.

Nazaryn, noting the extensive role of wine in ancient literature, admires "how open the Greeks were about to the role of alcohol in their society (unsurprising, perhaps, for a people whose highest ideal was 'the examined life')." Moderation was in, debauchery was out--but unrelieved sobriety was also out.

"Today," Nazaryn writes, "'irrational exuberance' means bankruptcies and foreclosures; for the Greeks, a measure of irrationality checked the rule of reason."

Uh oh

"The best way to gain weight in America is to go on food stamps."

--Dr. Mehmet Oz on Oprah this morning

So, if we do this Lenten Experiment, will we need to get Easter outfits in a larger size?

Home cooking and love

Like other forms of human affection, cooking delivers its truest and most enduring gifts when it is savored in intimacy — prepared not by a chef but by a cook and with love.

--Marcella Hazan, New York Times, "No Chefs in My Kitchen"

Once upon a time, restaurants lured customers with promises of "home-cooked" meals, food just like Mother used to make. But nowadays we Americans spend nearly half of our food dollars in restaurants, and home cooks now want to imitate professional chefs.

• "No need to leave home, make reservations, and go out," says www.copykat.com. "You can make recipes that taste just like the restaurant without ever having to leave home."
• Buy lots of (expensive) equipment and you can cook "Just Like in a Restaurant Kitchen," suggests Sara Levine in the Washingtonian.
• Google "restaurant taste" + frozen and you'll find a plethora of prepared foods to make your meals (to quote my father-in-law) "just like downtown only not so crowded."
  

Apparently it's not just the high-end restaurants that home cooks are dying to emulate. In Top Secret Restaurant Recipes: Creating Kitchen Clones from America's Favorite Restaurant Chains Todd Wilbur tells you how to copy food from IHOP, Olive Garden, Pizza Hut, Dennys ...

O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;
No more of that.

--King Lear

Marcella Hazan to the rescue! Restaurant food, she writes, is entertainment. Home cooking is something else:

I am my family’s cook. It is the food prepared and shared at home that, for more than 50 years, has provided a solid center for our lives. In the context of the values that cement human relations, the clamor of restaurants and the facelessness of takeout are no match for what the well-laid family table has to offer. A restaurant will never strengthen familial bonds.

Enjoy your turkey leftovers at home, with someone you love.

To my grandchildren--yes we can!

To my Texas grandchildren, Katie, Susan, and Christopher--

Tuesday night I watched the election returns with a group of friends including an 11-year-old boy. He was well informed and articulate, and I enjoyed hearing his perceptive comments as the results poured in. At ten o'clock, when Mr Obama's electoral tally passed the necessary 270, I wished you were in the room too. I would have enjoyed spending that historic moment with you.

I couldn't help thinking back to the presidential election of 1960, when I was a 12-year-old eighth-grader.

John F. Kennedy
I was passionately interested in that presidential campaign. The contenders were John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, and Richard M. Nixon, a lapsed Quaker. Many Protestants were terrified. Norman Vincent Peale, an extremely prominent author and minister, had written that if a Catholic became president, American culture and freedom of speech would be at risk. I believed the fearmongers, and when I awoke the day after the election to learn that Kennedy had won (it took a long time to count all those paper ballots), I was scared.

I don't know how you feel about the election of 2008. I know how Texas voted, so I am guessing that you know people who aren't too happy about the results. Some are even afraid. Here are some wise and calming words from Michael Gerson, speechwriter to President George W. Bush for several years, about why all of us can be proud to call Barack Obama "Mr President":

This presidency in particular should be a source of pride even for those who do not share its priorities. An African American will take the oath of office blocks from where slaves were once housed in pens and sold for profit. He will sleep in a house built in part by slave labor, near the room where Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation with firm hand. He will host dinners where Teddy Roosevelt in 1901 entertained the first African American to be a formal dinner guest in the White House; command a military that was not officially integrated until 1948. Every event, every act, will complete a cycle of history. It will be the most dramatic possible demonstration that the promise of America -- so long deferred -- is not a lie.

New energy
The election of 2008 was historic, and its importance goes far beyond Mr Obama's race. Something is happening in America that I haven't seen since the 1960s. Record numbers of young people are getting involved in public life. Once again, people are thinking we can make a difference in race relations, poverty, world peace, health ("Yes we can!"). There's a kind of positive energy going around that may even reach out and embrace people who didn't originally want Mr Obama to win. People's opinions may change between now and the inauguration.

During the two months between John F. Kennedy's election and his inauguration in 1960, my opinion changed. For one thing, I really liked his wife, Jacqueline, who was only 31 years old and breathtakingly beautiful. For another, I began to believe that the U.S. Constitution was safe with Mr Kennedy even though he was Catholic, and I was inspired by what he was saying about peace, poverty, human rights, and racial equality. And then I especially liked what he said toward the end of his inaugural address:

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.

Selfish decades
Forty-eight years passed between the elections of Mr Kennedy and Mr Obama. We Boomer kids grew up and went to college and went to work and had families. We lost our idealism. Some of us got cynical. After the Vietnam War and the Nixon years, we concluded that government couldn't be trusted. After various scandals in businesses and churches, we didn't want to trust those institutions either.

Some of us decided it was more important to ask what our country, or our business, or our church, or our own God-given talents could do for us, never mind the other guy. The 1970s became known as the "me decade," as "the belief that hard work, self-denial and moral rectitude were their own rewards gave way to a notion ... that the self and the realization of its full potential were all-important pursuits" (Time, August 3, 1981).

It only got worse in the 80s, sometimes called the "greed decade." Americans spent lots of money and paid less taxes, and the national debt tripled. During the 1990s and beyond, people continued to buy more and more stuff, going deeply into debt when they ran out of money. They tore down perfectly good houses and built McMansions. Even average houses more than doubled in size, though families got smaller.

Many people practically stopped saving money. The national savings rate fell from around 10% in the 1960s to 2 or 3%--and in 2005 it even went negative, meaning that people had more debts than savings. Sacrifice, deferred gratification, budgeting--these words nearly dropped out of the national vocabulary. Even after the attack on the World Trade Center in 1991, our president did not ask us to sacrifice. To the contrary, he advised us to go to Disney World.

We forgot
We seemed to have forgotten the inspiring words of President Kennedy's inaugural address. He told us that liberty requires sacrifice:

We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

He warned us that our task would be enormous:

[We are called to] struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

He said that we had to take care of the poor as well as the rich:

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

He predicted that significant change would require many years of hard work:

All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

And he challenged us to get involved in the struggle, to work to create the kind of world we want to live in:

With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.

We listened, nodded, and then went about our own self-absorbed business.

Another chance
The theme of Mr Obama's inauguration will be "A New Birth of Freedom," words taken from President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. Lincoln did not see freedom as a gift, but rather as "a great task." President-elect Obama agrees with Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy: these are difficult times, and a lot of hard work lies ahead of us.

Tuesday night I thought of John F. Kennedy as Barack Obama spoke to 240,000 supporters in Chicago's Grant Park and the nation on TV. Mr Obama, like Mr Kennedy, told us that liberty requires sacrifice:

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

He warned us that our task will be enormous:

You understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime -- two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

He said that we have to take care of the poor as well as the rich:

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

He predicted that significant change will require many years of hard work:

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

And he challenged us to get involved in the struggle, to work to create the kind of world we want to live in:

Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other. . . . And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Yes we can!
The people in Grant Park shouted back, "Yes we can!"

The big question is, Will we?

We Boomers who were excited adolescents in 1960 had the same opportunity you kids have today. We too had an enormous task, and we too had the choice to sacrifice, to struggle, and to work hard and persistently to make the world a better place.

Some of us did just that. Too many of us, alas, chose to be selfish instead. In spite of President Kennedy's challenge, too many of us kept on asking what our country could do for us, not what we could do for our country.

I hope you and your friends get excited about our energetic new president-elect. But whatever your political persuasion, I hope you'll ask--now and all through your lives--what you personally can do for your country, your family, your community, your church, and your world.

I'm ashamed of what my generation has given yours to work with, but most of us aren't dead yet. Maybe we still have time to clean up our act. Maybe we can now turn into wise elders. Your generation, though, has an opportunity to set us a shining example.

If all of us together--Boomers, and your parents' generation, and you who will be running the country in 2040--commit to sacrifice and struggle on behalf of others, then Abraham Lincoln's words will be fulfilled. Then Barack Obama's inaugural theme will come true. Then, and only then,

this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and ... government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Yes we can!

McCain is right

In 1870, just before Italian troops occupied the Vatican and just after most delegates from the Western hemisphere hurriedly left for home, the first Vatican council promulgated the dogma of papal infallibility. It was not the church's finest hour, but it led to one of the most-quoted dicta in the English language. Lord Acton, an English Catholic, wrote this to the Anglican bishop of London in 1887:

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

Members of the U.S. Congress should be forced to pay attention to that quotation--the whole paragraph, not just the famous sentence--several times an hour as they decide what to do about the current financial crisis. If there is a Congressional sound system, perhaps Lord Acton's words could regularly interrupt the soft music. Because no matter how dangerous the current financial situation, we may be facing even more dangerous abuses of power if Congress votes to give the treasury secretary everything he wants.

Paul Krugman, in this morning's New York Times op ed piece, "Cash for Trash," noted that some "are calling the proposed legislation the Authorization for Use of Financial Force, after the Authorization for Use of Military Force, the infamous bill that gave the Bush administration the green light to invade Iraq."

Krugman summarizes the administration's proposal thus:

... a taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached — no quid pro quo on the part of those being bailed out.... Add to this the fact that Mr. Paulson is also demanding dictatorial authority, plus immunity from review “by any court of law or any administrative agency,” and this adds up to an unacceptable proposal.

"After having spent a year and a half telling everyone that things were under control," Krugman says, "the Bush administration says that the sky is falling, and that to save the world we have to do exactly what it says now now now."

This sounds uncomfortably like the situation in 2001-2, when the president argued and Congress agreed that Mr. Bush needed to be authorized to do whatever he deemed necessary to fight terrorism. One result of the Authorization for Use of Military Force has been a major increase in executive power, often at the expense of human rights. If Congress decides to give the treasury secretary free rein to do whatever he deems necessary to fight world financial meltdown, executive power will increase still more.

In 1973, during President Nixon's second term, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote a book called The Imperial Presidency. In 2004 in his book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, journalist Charlie Savage applied Schlesinger's term to the George W. Bush administration. If Congress passes the treasury secretary's proposed legislation, presidential power will have gone way past imperial. What term will historians and journalists coin to describe the result?

John McCain was slow to see the financial juggernaut coming, but his comment this morning was right on:

"Never before in the history of our nation has so much power and money been concentrated in the hands of one person, a person I admire and respect a great deal, Secretary Paulson," McCain said. "This arrangement makes me deeply uncomfortable. And when we're talking about a trillion dollars of taxpayer money, 'trust me' just isn't good enough."

Eat to enjoy

"Instead of Eating to Diet, They're Eating to Enjoy" is the headline of Tara Parker-Pope's article in this morning's New York Times. "The more time people spend on tasks like food shopping, cooking and kitchen cleanup," she notes, "the more likely they are to be of average weight. The Economic Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture found that people of normal weight spend more time on meal-related tasks than people who are overweight or underweight."

This observation goes well with Richard Watson's advice in The Philosopher's Diet: How to Lose Weight & Change the World: Remodel your kitchen! Knock out a few walls! Add a fireplace! Buy a lot of kitchen tools! Here's his reason:

An obsession with food is a love affair. I'd much rather work with lovers of food than haters of fat. If you love food, you'll respond to kitchen dreams. But if you hate fat--something you can grab hold of and feel it being grabbed--then you hate yourself. And kitchens.

(By the way, did you borrow my copy of The Philosopher's Diet? I can't find it anywhere. [Thank goodness Amazon has a search feature.] You can leave it on my front porch between the doors. No questions will be asked.)

The pleasures of the table

This morning's foray to the farmers' market reinforced the message of yesterday's cool, wet weather. Fewer berries than last week. Peaches cost more. But look--a lovely pile of butternut squash. Autumn is just around the corner.

Last year I bought a Community-Supported Agriculture subscription. Every Thursday morning from April through December I picked up a big box of produce. The price was right--under $25 a week--but the radish and cabbage crop seemed excessive. This year I decided to pick out my own produce from, whenever possible, local sources.

I may have paid a bit more at the farmer's market, and I tended to avoid unfamiliar veggies (what does one do with patty-pan squash?). On the other hand, we have really been enjoying our meals. This week's recipes will include fresh corn, zucchini, eggplant, green beans, red tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, red bell pepper, sweet onion, red onion, broccoli, and brussels sprouts. For dessert we will have nectarines, blackberries, and blueberries. Cost: $32.40.

I'm by no means a purist about local or organic food--sometimes the best fruits and vegetables are available at Jewel, and last weekend's treasure was an 89-cent mango from Supermercado La Chiquita. The cover of Michael Pollan's excellent In Defense of Food lays out one part of my food philosophy: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

If Pollan brilliantly describes what we should eat (have you read his Omnivore's Dilemma yet?), Julia Child tells us how: "The pleasures of the table — that lovely old-fashioned phrase — depict food as an art form, as a delightful part of civilized life. In spite of food fads, fitness programs, and health concerns, we must never lose sight of a beautifully conceived meal" (The Way to Cook).

It took a Frenchman, though, to remind us of why eating is so important--if indeed we buy fresh, colorful food, prepare it with attention to taste and beauty, and share it with those we love:

"The pleasures of the table belong to all times and all ages, to every country and every day; they go hand in hand with all our other pleasures, outlast them, and remain to console us for their loss."

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste

Holy Epiphanius, pray for us

Years ago while looking up something in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd edition, I discovered a saint who sounded strangely familiar--Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis (ca 315 - 403). I liked the closing words of the description so much that I copied them on an index card.

And then the index card went astray, and Oxford published an updated edition of the Dictionary, and some misguided editor left out the charming lines. I was bereft.

Until today when, going through a stack of old books at Mr Neff's office, I saw a dusty copy of the Oxford Dictionary. Yes! It was the 2nd edition! The words were there! And here they are. If you know anyone like this, now you'll know that he or she comes from a long and saintly tradition.

His unbending rigidity,
his want of judgement,
and his complete inability to understand any who differed from him
were reflected in his writings
no less than in his life.

Feast day, 12 May.

Resurrection, body and soul

Four months ago I mentioned a pre-publication review of Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews by Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D. Levenson. Since then our rabbi gave Mr Neff a copy of the book, which I've now read. It's a fine study of the resurrection of the body, particularly in the Hebrew Bible and subsequent rabbinic teachings.

Here are a couple of gems about the unity of the person, as taught in the early centuries of the common era:

Whatever notions of the soul circulated in ancient Judaism, in rabbinic theology God was not thought to have fulfilled his promises until the whole person returned, body included. Like death, a disembodied existence was deemed to be other than the last word, for the person is not 'the ghost in the machine' (that is, the body) but rather a unity of body and soul. (204)

Both Tertullian and Irenaeus go to some pains to argue against a view of salvation that is understood strictly in terms of the survival or salvation of the soul.... As the orthodox saw it, the texture of humanity was a seamless, indivisible work of art, composed of flesh and soul--very much like the view of the rabbis we examined in the previous chapter. God will reward the blessed, body and soul. . . . Only if the whole person, both elements of which were created by God, were raised could humanity be redeemed and justice achieved. (233)

And here's a thought-provoking observation about why so many contemporary people do not believe in a literal resurrection of the body:

The major change has been widespread skepticism about the one who performs the expected resurrection--the personal, supernatural God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who intervenes in the course of human and natural events and brings about results that are otherwise impossible. The tendency among many modern people ... has been either to doubt all claims of the existence of God or to redefine God so that the word refers to human ideals and feelings alone and not to the source of miraculous acts and providential guidance. In short, in the modern world, the idea of a God who does things has become highly problematic. And whatever else one may say about a God who does not do anything, one thing is sure: he does not resurrect the dead. (215)

Someone you should know: Dame Frevisse

Margaret Frazer, The Apostate's Tale (New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2007)

By the time I was reading book 3 in the now 17-book Dame Frevisse Medieval Mystery series, I was hooked. Mr Neff quickly followed suit, and you can be sure that when Mr Neff and I both like a book, it’s really good.

The books

Frevisse is a 15th-century nun at St. Frideswide’s priory in Oxfordshire, England. As the niece-by-marriage of Geoffrey Chaucer’s son Thomas and cousin to his daughter Alice, Countess of Suffolk—actual historical characters, by the way—Dame Frevisse rides out of the nunnery surprisingly often, inadvertently getting involved in affairs of state, church politics, and even smuggling. Some of the best tales, though, take place at the priory itself. Practicing hospitality as enjoined by the Benedictine rule, the nuns open their gates to all comers, providing them with food and a place to stay. In turn, the guests offer gifts, adventure, and sometimes mayhem.

In 1431, when the series begins (The Novice's Tale), Frevisse is a thirtyish no-nonsense good-hearted woman who loves tradition and tends to get involved in other people’s problems—a lot like our other favorite heroine, Precious Ramotswe of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Both series stretch the definition of mystery: the crime rarely happens in the early chapters, and in some books nobody gets killed at all. Both are full of local color. And though both protagonists are intensely practical, both also think a lot about moral and ethical questions. In The Apostate's Tale, Dame Frevisse butts heads with a shameless narcissist.

The story begins during Holy Week 1452. Cecely, a runaway nun, has returned to St. Frideswide’s with her young bastard son in tow. At the same time, the ailing mother of one of the sisters arrives. In quick succession follow a businessman and two servants, several members of Cecely’s late paramour’s family, a mother and daughter who differ as to the value of the monastic life, and eventually the Abbot and his retinue. With few winter food stores remaining and not many provisions available in the nearby village, the nine resident nuns wonder how they will manage to accommodate so many guests. And then a would-be murderer strikes—and strikes again. No wonder the prioress has a nervous breakdown.

The authors

Margaret Frazer is the pen name of two women who began the series, mystery writer Mary Monica Pulver and amateur archeologist/historian Gail Frazer. They met at the Society for Creative Anachronism, became friends, and wrote the first six Dame Frevisse novels together. Then Pulver went on to other pursuits and Frazer continued the series on her own—while repeatedly battling cancer.

With Frazer as the sole author, the books have moved closer to the thin line separating period mysteries from historical fiction. Frazer loves research. One of her pet peeves, she said in an interview, is writers who rely on clichés about life in the middle ages (“streets deep in filth,” constant “lawless violence”), “who play fast and loose with facts to make their story-telling easier.” Frazer takes pains to make the Priory of St. Frideswide historically accurate, and Frevisse’s participation in the Benedictine life of prayer rings true.

Soul and body

More than any of the previous books in the series, Apostate slips into Dame Frevisse’s soul as she prays, sings the daily office, and goes about her work. Book 10, The Squire's Tale, foreshadowed this book's spiritual sensitivity with this lovely paragraph about the liturgical hours:

Frevisse ... sank into her own familiar place, made sure of her breviary and Psalter in front of her, then slid forward to kneel in prayer until everyone was in place and the Office began, continuing the unending weave of prayers and psalms begun years into centuries ago and never ceasing, prayed and sung by so many women and men in so many places, their lives given to the prayers and petitions and their lives lost to all memory but God's, that sometimes it seemed to Frevisse that here and now this hands-count of nuns no more made the prayers than someone made a river: they simply stepped into the endless flow, to be carried by it the way a river carried whatever came into its way. (41)

In Apostate, Frevisse’s theological and mystic musings take center stage as she enters the church and joins in the prayer of the church:

Here was the reason for all else. All the duties and rules and limits of her life were for this—these times of prayer when she could reach beyond life’s limits toward God and joy and the soul’s freedom. (35)

Despite her mysticism, Frevisse is realistic and unsentimental about the religious life. She explains to another sister that she hasn’t been given the gift of holiness, and that she doesn’t expect to achieve it in this life:

My hope isn’t for holiness, only that I grow enough—can set my roots of faith and belief and love deep enough—that like a deep-rooted plant growing taller than a shallow-rooted one, I finally come as near to God in my mind and soul and heart as I can, no matter how much in the world my body has to be. (125)

Not that she discounts the importance of her earthbound body. In typical medieval fashion, she values asceticism rather more than we do today, but she also accepts her body’s needs. Up for prayer in the middle of a cold night,

shivering as she went, she thought wryly of how strongly the body fought to prevail over the mind’s soul-longing. Whatever her mind’s intent, her body did not want the cold church and more prayer; it wanted the warm kitchen and more sleep, wanted them very badly. . . . Only for a saint, she supposed, would the desire for God be so great they could not only forgo but even forget the body’s desires. She also thought, equally wryly, that if that were the way of it, she was assuredly very far from sainthood. (54–55)

Such practical realism is typical of most of the sisters at St. Frideswide’s, with the exception of the maddeningly ethereal Dame Thomasine. Eventually even she admits to fatigue. “You haven’t been kind to your body, you know,” the ever-direct Dame Frevisse tells her.

And yet our bodies are God’s gift to us. Shouldn’t we treat them with at least a little pity, with a little kindness, in what little time they have to be alive? . . . Our flesh is the vessel that carries the fire of God’s love. You have no right to break your body, either on purpose or through plain carelessness. (233–34)

Still, these are not books of theology. The characters are well developed, and the stories are entertaining even after a hard day’s work. At first I thought Dame Frevisse would be a pale imitation of the hearty Brother Cadfael, a 12th-century Benedictine monastic who similarly pursues murderers and hangs out with a herbalist. The more I read, the more I preferred Dame Frevisse. Simultaneously flawed and virtuous, she’s believably wise and delightfully opinionated, and she deserves her own TV series. Thanks to the Britain’s ITV, Derek Jacobi is Brother Cadfael. I’ve always thought Queen Latifah would make a fine Mma Ramotswe. But who should be cast as the forthright Dame Frevisse--it's a mystery. Nominations?

Learn more

News article about Gail Frazer: http://erstarnews.com/content/view/2618/141/f

Interview with Frazer: http://jeriwesterson.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/08/interview_with_.html

Frazer's own website: http://www.margaretfrazer.com/index.html

Plot summaries with spoilers: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/philipg/detectives/frevisse.html

Book descriptions:

http://www.margaretfrazer.com/books/frevisse.html

Middle age: coming and going

Countless eons ago when Mr Neff turned 35, I posted an announcement on his office bulletin board: “If, as Psalm 90:10 attests, ‘The days of our years are threescore and ten,’ congratulations to David for having reached middle age!’” Last October when our younger daughter turned 35, I tried congratulating her on the same achievement. “Mother,” she protested, “35 is not middle-aged.”

So I decided I needed an objective definition of middle age. I went to the Web, of course, and found that the Collins French Dictionary and Grammar is right in saying that midlife boundaries are indistinct (one online English-French dictionary defines middle-aged as "of a certain age;" another defines it as "fiftyish").

Though medical researchers often refer to people aged 35 to 55 as middle-aged, most English-speaking Web sites define middle age as the years from 40 to 60: Check out Answer.com, Encarta, Collins, American Heritage, and thefreedictionary, for example.

As lifespans increase and Boomers refuse to grow up, however, many sources are now extending middle-age upward. Wikipedia notes that for the OED, middle age begins at age 45, whereas for Erik Erikson, it ends at age 65. Merriam-Webster suggests ages 45 to 64; WebDictionary, 45 to 65, and Your Dictionary, 40 to 65.

Even the 40-to-60 span reflects changing attitudes: the 1913 edition of Webster defined middle age as "being about the middle of the ordinary age of man; between 30 and 50 years old."

Depending on which definition you choose, my daughters may possibly be middle-aged, or they may hang on to young adulthood for up to ten more years. By the same definitions, I may be middle-aged, or I may have left that category as long as ten years ago. Most likely, though, I'm going to change categories six weeks from tomorrow, when I turn 60. (My kids and grandkids began the celebration early by performing a wicked parody of "I Will Survive"--for the original, click here--and by giving me DVDs of my favorite British comedy, As Time Goes By. I'm guessing this means they think I am leaving middle age behind.)

For the sake of discussion, let's say middle age does end at 60. That makes sense in France, for example, where people retire at 60 and thereafter belong to le troisième âge (le quatrième âge begins in the mid-70s). But just what is a post-middle-aged pre-retired American?

Are we middle-aged longer than the French because we don't know when to quit working?

Or have we become prefixes (post-middle-aged, pre-senior, semi-retired) or present participles (aging, graying, or, in French, les croulants--the crumbling ones)?

What is this space between midlife and old age?

Followers of the Benedictine tradition learn to pause at the threshold when passing between rooms, when entering buildings, and, by extension, when changing activities, experiences, and ways of life. Maybe these are the threshold years--a time to stop, take stock, give thanks, breathe deeply, get ready for the next step.

Threshold: Nice concept, rotten label.

So it's back to middle-aged. "Neither old nor young," says Wiktionary. That's fine. Whatever the term and whatever the age, Epicurus offers this good advice:

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed towards attaining it.