Third World Green Daddy Part 14: the Circle of Life

Having a kid makes you think a lot about life from a bird's-eye perspective. I've always been a rather morose, contemplative person, but now with Sam in the picture, I find myself thinking even more about life's beginning, its end, how small and finite one life is, but at the same time how immense and ongoing is life in general. At night I marvel placidly at my luck to be sleeping next to the woman I love, with our wonderful child nearby, and I realize that I'd better savor every moment in the scant time allotted me on this earth.

In spite of my upbringing in the world's epicenter of soulless commercial consumerism, I'm seeing ever more clearly that living a good life does not consist in trying all the new flavors of Fruit Roll-Up, collecting the entire set of Marvel action figures, screwing as many women as you can, dying with the most toys. No, basically a life well-lived is finding good people to be around and fulfilling things to do, and then enjoying them for the few decades we're allowed if we're lucky. Not more, not less. This finite understanding of life may seem depressingly simple to some people, but to me it's liberating to escape from the neurotic idea of acquiring ever more, striving for immortality through our purchases. Either way, liberating or not, this understanding of one's life as brief and limited is how it is, so it's best to accept it and work within its bounds.

Sometimes my son and I stare at each other in sort of a melding of minds. Of course he can't talk yet, but these sessions are like conversations. In moments like these I can't conceive how I could possibly love another child as much as I love my Samuel. But it seems that parents have been loving multiple children for all of history, and I see how my wife loves both our son and my stepdaughter, so apparently it is possible. This speaks of the boundless, infinite aspect of life.

It's part of the circle of life, to quote Elton John. I remember my dad's songs, his counsel, his voice, but in my mind these are rendered no longer in my father's voice, but in my own, which has become his. In turn my son is almost a carbon-copy of how I looked in my baby photos. I'm sometimes amazed to think that I'm a father now, feeling as I do not very different from when I was a fifteen-year-old punk kid. But again, I guess this is another part of the circle of life. I may not feel so sure of my standing as an adult, but life makes you an adult de facto, regardless of your own perceptions. The death of a parent, the birth of a child, these rites remind us that we are moving through a cycle, leaving old things and becoming new.

Life is mysterious, boundless, surprising. I am often reminded of this here in Colombia. A young man who was working on my house rehab project is expecting a baby from his even younger girlfriend. But instead of worry, tension, thoughts of abortion or giving the baby up for adoption, as he might experience were he in the US, Jairo is happy to be having a son, or at least accepting of it. He goes along with the flow, continuing his studies, trying to find work when he can. The other day, when I warned him to watch out for a pointy iron bar he was straddling, as it might castrate him, he joked that it didn't matter anymore; his balls had done their work!

Another amazing story comes from a recent issue of the Tiempo newspaper of Colombia. One year ago, a 20-year-old girl was accosted by two girls of 14 and 16, who tied her up, took her to a warehouse, and performed a DIY Caesarean on her, ripping her 7-month-old fetus from her womb. Apparently the 16-year-old had recently miscarried, and wanted to replace the child that was the only thing holding her together with her 21-year-old boyfriend. Anyway, both the assaulted girl and her daughter survived the ordeal, though the two perpetrators have never been tried for their crime. The 16-year-old left the country, and the fourteen-year-old is now a mother and the single head of a household. Anyway, aside from the fantastic, grotesque nature of the story, I'm amazed at the tenacity of life. Both this woman that had her belly slit open, and her baby who was taken prematurely from the womb, are alive and well today, though not without some psychological scars. Life is an unstoppable force.

Having my child, and having him here in Colombia, has thus taught me many lessons about what really matters. Recently I've been sort of depressed because things haven't been working out for me on the job front. This has had me feeling like I can't do anything right, like I'm not doing anything meaningful in professional terms. One day I was at the worksite of my house rehab project, and I kept working, excavating earth, even as a heavy rain set in. One of the people I've hired to replace the roof on another part of the house told me I should get under cover, out of the rain, but I told her I wanted to advance some on the digging, and leave some mark that I actually exist in the world. She replied, wisely, "But Don Greg, of course you've left a mark on the world. You have your son, and no one can ever erase that!" My job-driven, short-sighted mentality, ingrained in me by my US upbringing, was blinding me to what really matters.

I receive National Geographic in English, delivered to my house here in Colombia. Of course there's some lag time for the delivery, so I just received the January issue, which talks about world population trends. Prominently featured is the so-called demographic transition, whereby countries with high infant mortality and low levels of education (especially for women) place a major value on having lots of kids. Thus we have countries like Niger or Afghanistan, where each woman has upwards of five kids. As women gain in education, and people realize that infant mortality isn't as high as it used to be, families start having fewer kids, because they are confident most of their kids will survive to adulthood. These are countries like South Africa or my home, Colombia. The endpoint of the demographic transition is when people are so caught up in their own consumption and prosperity (like in Japan) or in their economic malaise and depression (think Russia) that they practically stop having kids.

Colombia is a funny case, because we have very educated women, but still pretty high fertility. Many of our friends had an unplanned child in their late teens, subsequently finished college and became professionals, and are only now having their second child, in their late 20s or 30s. Who knows if they'll have more, but many of them would like a large family with lots of kids. So people have their first kid young, like in Africa, but then they delay or don't have a second kid. And later on they want more kids. We want to offer each child lots of attention and resources, like a low-fertility Chinese or Spanish parent, but we also value a big family, where each child gets a bit less attention. We defy the rigid demographic curve.

And now I'm a part of this transition. I'd always thought I wanted a big family, with lots of kids running around. I guess this goes with my agrarian tendencies, whereby children are seen as prosperity, extra workers, extra security. But now with Sam, I want to give him my undivided attention. It's not that I'm concerned with the economics of child-raising; Sam has been cheap thus far, and our do-it-yourself, artisanal ways of eating, parenting, and living tend not to cost much money. I'll never worry about how many kids I can afford to send to private school, or to expensive summer camps. But in our way of living, time and presence are what count, and these are finite. So I vacillate as to whether I'd prefer for Sam to have more of my attention, or more siblings to play with and learn with. Of course Sam already has a sister (my stepdaughter), but she's fifteen, so I don't feel like there's a real conflict for time or attention between the two, as they're in totally different moments in their lives. Perhaps this points to a solution for my impasse--we could have more kids, but spaced a few years between each one.

Either way, despite how much I love having a child of my own flesh and blood, I can't ethically justify having lots of kids biologically. As a member of the portion of the human race that consumes an undue share of our planet's limited resources, I can't justify adding a whole lot more people to our beleaguered globe. Better to adopt kids that are already here and need a loving home. And hopefully I and my children can learn not to consume so damn many resources!

This conflict between the greater good and my selfish interest in my child also manifested itself recently as we vaccinated young Samuel. This week Sam completed two months of life on this earth, so he was due for his first major round of vaccines. One day we took him to the old site of our town's hospital, which now serves as the university's medical school, but it turned out that they no longer administer child vaccinations there. We had given Sammy some baby Tylenol in drops before heading to the vaccination place, which left him knocked-out, vomiting, and cranky for the rest of the day. The next day we went to the city's social services agency, which does give out vaccinations, and Sam got oral vaccines for polio and pneumococcus, plus shots for rotavirus and diptheria, tetanus, and whooping cough. I felt proud of my adopted country for assuring that all children are vaccinated against the major childhood diseases. It speaks of a level of organization and infrastructure, as well as a well-guided political will, that this is possible in a poor country like ours.

In Colombia, as in many other countries of the world (save the US and the Netherlands), children are administered a one-time vaccine against tuberculosis when they're born. My wife and stepdaughter have a circular scar on their arms attesting to the vaccine, though I haven't seen it yet on Samuel. In the US we don't administer this vaccine, because public health authorities have concluded that it's less effective than frequent monitoring for the disease. Indeed, in many countries it seems that the TB vaccine isn't very effective against pulmonary tuberculosis, but it is effective against brain tuberculosis, a deadly childhood affliction.

Sam had a mild adverse reaction over the next day and a half after this latest round of vaccines. He had low fevers, which we treated with more liquid Tylenol and frequent baths, and he was generally irritable. Between his fevers, the Tylenol, and his fatigue, he was at times sort of limp and vulnerable, totally unlike his typical strong, alert character. Despite the robust medical evidence against the supposed links between vaccines and autism, I found myself worrying about him, reading online about the issue, and trying to engage eye contact with my son to make sure he hadn't gone to the other side. I somewhat understood those San Diego parents who don't want to vaccinate their kids, though this type of self-indulgent, destructive license so typical in the US is totally unthinkable here in Colombia, where our management of really lethal epidemic diseases is tenuous enough that people are aware of the dangers of not vaccinating, for themselves and their entire community.

In the case of vaccine-refusing parents as in many other cases, it's useful to keep in mind that life is a great circle, and each one of us is just a tiny element within it. One person's life is pretty small change, but life as a planetary force is tenacious, unlimited, even infinite. We'd do well to remember this whenever our personal interests go against those of other people or against the planet as a whole. Let's not allow one or a few lowercase lives to interfere with the uppercase, capital force of LIFE!

Mother Jones on Unions

This is a good article linking the economic decadence and income inequality I've so lamented in the US with the decline of union power over the past few decades. It's yet another reminder (as if we needed more) that big business does not operate to suit the interests of the working class, but rather the interests of shareholders. When there is no brake on this tendency to cater to the owning class, both the economy and politics end up hurting most of the population, and you end up with the oligarchic mess we've got today in the US.

The article is a propos of the Wisconsin governor's recent union-busting antics. I don't like the means Democratic Senators in Wisconsin have used to block the governor's regressive law, because it sets a precedent for obstructionism that Republicans can and will use in the future (think the health care debates last year in the US Congress). But nevertheless, it's nice to see politicians taking a stand for labor. I haven't seen much of that in my Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush lifetime.

David Brooks and a rosy view of the US economy

Here's an article from David Brooks. He argues that perhaps the slow economic decline of the US since the 1970s isn't such a problem, because people are shifting their values away from consumerism and towards other ways of enhancing their lives. I'm all for a shift away from consumerism, but Brooks's assessment seems silly and pollyannaish. Essentially he is saying that it's not a big deal that we have fewer jobs and stagnating incomes in the US, because people are valuing things that don't show up on a balance sheet. He gives the hypothetical example of an event coordinator that organizes intellectually-stimulating lectures and that gets a big kick out of his iPhone, adventurous vacations, and Facebook. Many of his pleasures cost little, so he doesn't need as much income.

In Brooks's world, the US is experiencing great gains in happiness that simply don't show up in economic figures. If this were the case, we would see subjective life satisfaction rising in the US over the past decades. But according to surveys, people are no happier today than in the 1970s. Furthermore, the hypothetical case that Brooks gives is of a well-off, educated person with a steady job, enjoying lots of high-tech consumer goods and things like regular vacations. This does not represent the norm in the United States.

So while I don't at all agree with David Brooks's diagnosis of our stagnating economy, I do see a promising career ahead for him. Brooks has a remarkable ability to paint the ugliest aspects of life in the US (consumerism, suburban sprawl, lack of jobs, a stagnant economy, debt) as if they were virtues or advantages. In a century in which our country seems determined to become mediocre, Brooks can become a great prophet of mediocrity, telling us that everything will be alright, that we shouldn't worry about things going to hell around us. All that decadence you see around you? It's really the sign of a great nation.

Lead on, great prophet...

Real food

Here's a New York Times article that examines all the sophistry and confusion surrounding food. Even the USDA can't just say, "Eat real food, not processed shit." It's something my mother often laments. Could it be that we in the US, or modern people in general, are so enthralled by the new--new gadgets, new exercises, new diets, new industrial edible products--that we can't just eat smart? We have to turn food into one more complicated, indecipherable realm of magical cures and breakthrough technology.

Third World Green Daddy Part 13: Milk, Music, and Marshmallows

Our baby Sam is a pretty laid-back kid. He cries for one of only a few reasons--either he's hungry, he's cold, or he's tired. Mainly it's when he's hungry. Consequently, a major part of his existence (and consequently my wife's and my own) revolves around milk. He eats a lot, though as he nears two months of age he's eating with less frequency but greater volume.

Sometimes Sam doesn't eat all of the milk that my wife's body has created. So Caro pumps this excess milk with a breast pump. Initially the breast pump seemed to me like just one more gadget to clutter up space, but I was quickly convinced of its utility. If my wife didn't express her milk, it would build up in her breasts and maybe cause an infection. And expressing it with a hand-powered pump would be tedious and slow. With our trusty breast pump, she can just plug it in and get pumping.

For a while we would store this expressed milk in the fridge or the freezer. But since Caro is always with Sam, we never used the stored milk, and it invariably went bad. Nowadays we just throw it on our plants, for which the milk serves as a nitrogen-rich fertilizer. It pains me to "waste" this breastmilk, but we've found out that there's no milk bank in our town to share our bounty with others. At least if we throw it on our plants the milk goes to good use, and eventually nourishes us again when we use our herbs and other potted veggies.

One time a few weeks ago my wife had to run some errands, so she left me alone with the baby. He got to crying desperately, yearning for milk, so I took out a bottle of recently-expressed, unspoiled milk from the fridge and heated it up a bit. Sam had never drunken from a bottle before, and I had mixed feelings about it. Our hospital had warned us that the best thing for newborns is to drink breastmilk directly from the source. Sucking a bottle is different from sucking a tit, and babies can get so used to the bottle that they don't want to breastfeed anymore. On the other hand, Sam was hungry, and the option of occasionally bottlefeeding him could allow my wife a bit more freedom of movement when she had to take care of work or other obligations.

So I gave Sam the bottle, which he initially couldn't manage very well. The milk came out in a strong stream that he would choke on, and I had to pull it away now and again for him to swallow. It occurred to me that a tiny baby probably doesn't even know how to swallow as a separate act from sucking. For a while Sam was not at all on board with the whole bottle thing, which while it frustrated me, also assuaged my fears of his becoming a bottle addict. Finally he and I got the hang of drinking from the bottle, and it felt special to share with him something that he had only done with his mom before. But my wife soon rushed home to breastfeed him, and we haven't had a repeat experiment with the bottle.

In my wife's urgency to return home and breastfeed Sam, I detected sort of a jealous guarding of the special shared space of breastfeeding. Even when I had finally gotten Sam to drink from the bottle more or less contentedly, Caro could barely stand to have him eating from a source other than her breast. There must be something instinctive, primordial in the mother-child bond formed during breastfeeding.

We've also heard some stories recently about other mothers that zealously protect their breastfeeding bond with their children. For instance, a friend of ours was recently at his niece's house with his daughter. The daughter was hungry, and though she eats solid food now too, I guess she wanted breastmilk. Our friend's niece also happens to be breastfeeding her daughter, so she gave her baby cousin a little suckle. When our friend's wife found out, she was livid. On the other hand, we've heard stories from aunts and grandmothers about women relatives who lived together and shared breastfeeding duties communally among children and nephews alike.

While I am not very directly involved in Sam's milk supply, I have sort of carved out a niche in another type of sustenance: music. I'm usually the one that sings to our son, mainly to help him fall asleep, but also sometimes just because I like singing to him. I'd say that our music selection is broad but not very deep. I remember a lot of lullabies and kids' songs that my mom used to sing me, but for most of them I only know one verse--sometimes not even that! There's Baa Baa Black Sheep, the Muffin Man, Hush Little Baby, Farmer in the Dell, things like that. I recently called my mom and told her that sometime she'd have to refresh me on the complete version of those songs, but she said that she didn't know the other verses either. She usually just sang me the same damn thing over and over again until I fell asleep!

I also remember snippets of traditional songs from my grammar school music classes. Red Red Robin, John Henry, Casey Jones, Little Orphan Annie, Erie Canal, In the Good Old Summertime... Of course when I was a kid I thought these were all stupid and corny, and spent most of the class time snickering and mocking with my friends. It never occurred to me that music class, which seemed like a pointless inanity, was a training for life, adulthood, parenthood. I think this is a real shortcoming of modern, consumer-style societies. Kids are naturally short-sighted and a bit sarcastic, and traditionally the role of adults has been to temper this, to give them long-term perspective or even impose certain things that they knew was for the kids' own good. But if the surrounding culture is also short-sighted and sarcastic, and cynically dismisses anything old or traditional in favor of the newest flavor of Fruit Roll-Up or the new release of Ninja Turtle toys, kids never overcome their worst childish tendencies. And they become adults like me, robbed of the sustenance of traditional music and culture because as kids they were too stupid to appreciate them, and the adults in their lives too timid to force the issue. The internet is a decent remedy to this though--I can look up any song and find the lyrics, if I really want to.

I also sing Sam a lot of religious songs. Admittedly, the Catholic songlist is more somber and less singable than the US Protestant classics, and during my childhood the Catholic church in the US was caught between the influences of post-Vatican folk music and a general aesthetic Protestantization. Parish churches were getting away from icons, statues, even crucifixes, heading toward an architecture more reminiscent of basketball stadiums or Walmarts than Gothic exaltation. Our songs were either insipid guitar-strumming tripe, or rollicking Protestant tunes. All this, in addition to my contact with the more southerly, Baptist half of my family, means that most of the Christian music I know is more Protestant than Catholic. Amazing Grace, Were you There, Just a Closer Walk with Thee, His Eye is on the Sparrow, How Great thou Art, things like that. I've also been singing and playing for young Sam an amazing tape of Sam Cooke and his pre-fame Christian group, the Soul Stirrers.

The dearest songs to me are those that my dad used to sing as I fell asleep. Sixteen Tons and Tom Rush's On the Road Again are the two I remember thus far, but other songs sometimes come to me in bits and pieces. Again, I don't recall all the verses to these songs. I can find them on the internet, but I don't want to hear anyone else singing them, lest I lose my scant remaining clear memories of my father. So I recently had a buddy listen to On the Road Again and transcribe the lyrics for me.

There have been a few times when I've been charged with Sam for long stretches. Sometimes it's to get him to sleep, sometimes just to play with him while my wife is busy with other things. Most recently I had to keep him asleep during the half-hour or so of a banging, whirring MRI scan. So over the din of the machine, I kept up a steady stream of whatever songs I could remember. In such situations I often rediscover popular songs from my own youth that had long been buried in my subconscious. Obviously much of the rap and New Jack Swing I came of age to doesn't translate well to baby songs. But the rock music I discovered as a teenager has been coming back to me. Sweet Child of Mine, Plush, When Doves Cry, Sweet Leaf, Little Wing. I'm surprised at how much of the lyrics I can come up with on demand.

As I sing all these songs to my boy, I realize with wonder how different his life will be from my own. The music I grew up with, the street corners, the TV shows, the racial and social tensions of 1990s Chicago... I can describe all these things to Sam, and he'll be able to understand them on a conceptual level. But many of the influences that so shaped me, who I am, won't be present in Sam's life. That said, my father's upbringing in a decrepit working-class Okie slum, my mother's coming of age in a small Midwestern industrial town of the 1950s, these things influenced me profoundly. I never experienced them firsthand, but both through the stories of my parents, as well as through their way of thinking and raising me, I came to know and be shaped by my parent's childhood realities. Surely something similar will happen with Sam, whether he's growing up in central Colombia or 21st-century Chicago (and frankly, I often feel that our bleak, humble central Colombian town has a lot more in common with my childhood environs than does modern-day Chicago!).

Aside from music and books, there are other ways I'll try to expose Sam to the good things of my culture, my upbringing. Last week I was at a friend's house, and I made a bonfire with his kids. I had long been planning for this--this friend is the guy who's been receiving my wooden building waste from the house rehab project. He's got a big pile of junk wood in his yard now. Some of it he burns in his fireplace, but most of the wood and cane is too long, quick-burning, and often lead-painted for indoor burning. The best way to get rid of such wood is a big, old-fashioned campfire. When some friends visited us in January, I asked them to bring Hershey's bars and graham crackers expressly for the bonfire I wanted to make.

Anyway, my friend's kids and I built a high tepee of old cane and floorboards, with paper and dry grass stuffed within. I explained to them the dynamics of fire, so they'd understand why we were laying the wood in that way. Then we waited a few hours for nightfall. When it finally came, we set the blaze a-roaring. Even though we'd only built the tinder about half as high as I used to back home in Wisconsin, the flames leapt up and threw off a fierce heat in the chilly night. I was actually sort of worried that the flames would set afire the woodpile, which we'd built the bonfire uncomfortably close to. I kept the water hose close at hand, and in the end we had no problems.

This type of bonfire was totally new for my young friends. It appears that one thing that still defines us in the US vis-a-vis other cultures is our sort of backwoods culture. Lots of us know how to lay a good fire, pitch a tent, sort of the basic things we learn when we go out camping with family, or to summer camp.

I told a ghost story around the fire, a modified version of something my mom used to tell me when I was little. It's about a fat kid who visits an old woman neighbor every day, and she slowly gets younger and more vital, while the little boy gets skinnier and wastes away. It was a bit subtle for my younger listeners, but the older kids got it and dug it.

Then we beat down and spread out the fire a bit, and I whittled some sticks down to a point. It was time to make Smores! The kids and I roasted our marshmallows, then I showed them how to load up a graham cracker sandwich. This delicacy was a big hit. I felt like I was really bringing special experiences to these kids.

We finished the night by looking at the stars. I'm no expert on constellations, and I depend on the northern ones to get my bearings, which right now during our equatorial winter are hidden near the horizon. So Orion was the only thing I could show the kids, but they thought it was pretty cool.

Sam spent most of that night indoors with relatives. We figured it was a bit chilly for him to be outside. But I hope things like bonfires and ghost stories and camping will be a part of his youth, just as they made me part of who I am today.

As I finish this blog, I realize that A Prairie Home Companion just finished this week's show, and I missed it. This was another semi-regular feature of my childhood, listening to Garrison Keillor from our cozy digs in central Wisconsin. Again, thanks to Internet, I hope to share this with Sam and Caro in the years to come.

And I hope my readers will share with me special things from their childhoods that they feel are important for me to expose Sam to. In the meantime, I leave you with a lovely column from Keillor about parenthood, summer camp, and God's protection of our kids.

Like a Prayer

In one of my rare bouts of television viewing, last night I ran across the video for Madonna's 1989 song "Like a Prayer". I am familiar with the song both from my own childhood, and from the incessant plays it got as a cute retro song at parties and bars during my college years and thereafter. The facile, repetitive lyrics might be considered blasphemous by some, but I think in the end they validly explore the similarities between the exhilaration of romantic or sexual love and worship of the divine.

But the video is offensive in a predictable, provocative way. Basically Madonna is in a church, and a saint statue comes to life. Madonna then kisses the saint, and there are long, voyeuristic takes on --gasp-- a white woman kissing a black man. Really bold stuff a mere 25 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed!

Then Madonna inexplicably acquires stigmata, the marks of Christ's crucifixion on the hands, feet, and side that Catholics believe are indicative of exceptional sanctity in a person. It is a flouting of things that are sacred to lots of people--perhaps today as a fervent converted Jew (or at least the self-absorbed, Hollywood Kabbalah version thereof) Madonna can understand that throwing around special symbols is in no way constructive. It just hurts and offends.

Next we're treated to shots of Madonna dancing in front of burning crosses. Again, it's provocation for the sake of provocation, which is to say mediocre shit. If I make a trivial pop song about something like my favorite flavor of ice cream, and then I show footage of a mangled Emmett Till or the Auschwitz liberation, it's not groundbreaking. It's frivolous junk overlaying serious images that we'd be better off treating with awe and not merely playing with in order to shock.

Perhaps the most offensive aspect of the video is Madonna's awful, jerky, awkward 80s dancing. She squirms around like Elaine Benes in that Seinfeld episode. All the while she has a (Protestant-style) black gospel choir singing in a Catholic church. With this Madonna adds herself to the ranks of silly pop musicians who try to add currency or gravitas to their fare simply by grafting on black gospel singers, a la Billy Joel in "In the Middle of the Night" or U2 in "Still haven't found what I'm looking for" (though in all fairness, U2 sang the gospel vocals themselves, and it's a pretty decent song). We know Madonna is in solidarity with black folks, a regular, bona fide soul sister, because in the video she testifies in favor of a black man unjustly accused of murder. Madonna is the savior of black people!

When art provokes as a corollary to its artistic or moral message, it's not a bad thing. There are things that must be said even though they may offend. But when an artist sets out to offend, and there is no message or craft aside from the offense (or what little message there is is simplistic and obvious, like, "Black folks get a raw deal in the US legal structure"), it's just crap.

In the end I guess it's fitting that Madonna is now a caricature of herself. A self-absorbed celebrity, following a commodified version of religion that's even more laughable than the Catholicism she spent years ridiculing. Today Madonna, in her luxurious perch in the UK as an Artistic Expat, is presumably in no more solidarity with downtrodden US black people than black folks are with her latest vacuous, tinny electronic music. Whatever message she thought was so important to send in 1989 with "Like a Prayer" doesn't seem that important anymore, neither to her or her erstwhile listeners.

Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, these men offended as they artfully delivered an important message. Surely they must have had laughable personal foibles, but that isn't what endures in our memory of them. Madonna, on the other hand, has reaped the fruits of her labor. Her shallow, provocative songs no longer even seem that provocative, and most of them won't endure beyond my generation's nostalgic reminiscences. What remains is a goofy has-been, not standing for anything worthwhile, and still taking herself too seriously.

Feasible outlines for recycling building waste?

This is an interesting article and video showing a hypothetical way of recycling construction waste and repurposing it to build a park. Concrete rubble is crushed to constitute pavers, glass is ground down to make a pebbly ground cover, wood is made into benches, and steel is used for rebar and ground cover. I don't know if a 100% recovery would be possible--concrete doesn't become soft again, there's only so much need for glass pebbles, and usually materials come mixed together in such a way that it's tough to separate wood from glass, etc. In the case of my house rehab, we've been able to recycle lots of the traditional building materials--mud blocks, sand wall plaster, clay roof tiles, cane from the roofs and ceilings--and the rotten wood we've used mostly for firewood. But the concrete and brick debris, as well as much of the earth we're excavating, has gone to the landfill. Perhaps if we had more operating space to store stuff, it would be possible to recycle or repurpose even some of the concrete and soil debris, but time and space constraints have obligated us to use the landfill a fair amount recently.

Saxeville

Saxeville

9/IX/2010

Melancholy, my wife calls this land,

amid wails of sandhill crane

and purple autumn breathing on the evening marsh.

There are no people here,

only wandering roads

and bulging pastures

and grey horses that leave

ancient barns to greet you

As if the life of this place were frozen long ago.

But if she could see

the burgeoning children we were,

creating worlds from marsh and decay...

Entropy assails us without pause,

and is fought only with

joy and work.

Oblivion may have triumphed for now,

but a look at books and projects from long ago

hints that this place has long been,

and can again be.

Green construction in Colombia

This is an interview with the head of the Colombian Council for Sustainable Construction, Cristina Gamboa. According to her, the construction sector generates 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, consumes 20% of potable water and 25% of planted wood (and I'm sure more of logged natural forests), 30-40% of energy, and 40-50% of all raw materials. So by being responsible with our construction practices, we can have a big impact.

It's very interesting for me to see what people in the Colombian construction sector are thinking about in terms of sustainability, because on my own smaller scale with the house I'm rehabbing for my family to live in, I'm trying to be as green as possible. We're recycling a lot of the demolition materials, building with raw earth instead of cooked bricks, I'm avoiding toxic synthetic substances in the construction, and the finished house will collect rainwater, recycle greywater, and perhaps have a small wind turbine or solar electric panel on it. I'm using some cement, which is a big energy-user, and some high-quality wood that comes from fragile ecosystems and sometimes warzones. In future projects, perhaps I can be more responsible with these last two points. But in general I feel good in terms of how we're going about the construction.

In the interview above they mention specifically the water issue, and what they recommend is what I'm doing. So I feel validated by that. Perhaps once Colombia has its own LEED-style certification, I can get my buildings certified.

Drug lessons from Latin America

This is an interesting translation of an article in which various former Latin American presidents scold the US for its paltry efforts to control drug consumption. Countries like Colombia and Mexico say they are making a huge effort and lots of sacrifices to curb drug trafficking, but they feel like the US is not pulling its own weight in the collaboration. Until the US has reduced consumption on its own soil, any attempts to stem the flow of drugs to the States will ultimately prove futile.