Progress not Results

“You have to do a reset,” I told my wonderful 65 year-old cousin, Brook, who is recovering from Pancreatic cancer surgery. 

Brook was lucky that his cancer was operable.  He (like Steve Jobs, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg) had a Pancreaticoduodenectomy (Whipple procedure). The surgery is a tough one, taking place deep in the gut.  His surgeon removed a neuroendocrine tumor, as well as part of the pancreas, and parts of nearby structures including the small intestine, bile duct, gallbladder, and the stomach.  Then everything had to be attached and reattached.

There were complications after the initial surgery including leaking from the various connections among organs that the surgeon made, bleeding and an infection. His doctor did a second surgery to address these issues.

So now, Brook, a very active and fit guy, is knocked on his ass big time. He says he has no energy, and he’s having a hard time eating (he’s lost 15 pounds of weight that he didn’t really have on his body in the first place). He is struggling to readjust to his day-to-day reality. He gets depressed and impatient with himself.  He just wants to be back to his 100%.

I reminded him that he can’t view and measure where he is at in the same way.  He needs to give himself at least 9 months to come back; and during this time, he needs to be assessing the delta between where he is today, and where he is tomorrow (or where he was last week and where he is today). He must embrace the progress, not the result (his idea of 100%).  There may be setbacks and breakthroughs along the way.  And he’s going to have to adjust his expectations around these as well.

I gave him the analogy of how teachers and schools are evaluated by the test results of the students.  This is completely the wrong model for assessment.  Rather than measuring the results of test scores, what should be measured is the progress each student has made during the year.   Brook recently retired from being a Community College Administrator and prior to that was a Guidance Counselor for many years. So he knows what I’m talking about and agrees.

The healing intent of the body is real. It needs to be accepted and worked with, not against.  It takes a whole lot of energy to heal. 

Brook told me that he had walked 1.6 miles on the treadmill the day I spoke with him about all this. He was arguing with his wife Nina, the consummate hiker (she can do 20 miles a day without batting a eye), about not wanting to take a nap, even though he needed one.

“Brook,” I said. “Celebrate that 1.6 miles. And as a reward, give yourself that nap.”

Oh No, Not the Bow!

Yesterday when I took Sophie’s violin bow to be re-haired at Ifshin Violins in El Cerrito, on the counter, I noticed a one-page article with the headline, “Budapest Orchestra Has Bows Seized Over Ivory Concerns.”

Early this summer, U.S Fish and Wildlife Service inspectors at Kennedy airport confiscated seven of the musicians' bows even though the Budapest Orchestra believed that the bows did not contain the forbidden ivory. 

In the past ten years, alarming numbers of savannah and forest elephants (up to 30,000 per year) are being slaughtered to supply the global ivory trade. In an attempt to protect African elephants, the Obama administration has enacted regulations that place a near-total ban on anything made with ivory moving in and out of the U.S.

The executive director of the Budapest Orchestra said that they had gotten documentation for each bow from bow makers, stating that the bows did not contain banned ivory; however, the inspectors disagreed, and since the Orchestra did not have a special ivory import permit, the government officials refused entry for the bows and issued a $525 fine.

 “Does this bow have ivory on it?” I asked the Ifshin Violins guy.  He looked at the small fingernail size white piece that protects the head of the violin and supports the plug that holds the horsehair into the stick. “I don’t think so, “ he told me.  “It’s probably a synthetic material, not elephant ivory, but the problem is it’s very hard to tell for sure.”

Following an international ban on ivory in the early 70’s, instrument makers started using plastic, mammoth ivory, fossil ivory, or even bone. However older, antique bows do contain elephant ivory, as do piano keys, and inlays on old guitars and mandolins.

If you can prove that ivory in your instrument was legally acquired before 1976, for $75 you can obtain a travel permit in about 45 days through the USFWS.

The League of American Orchestras and the American Federation of Musicians are lobbying for more flexible rules to address traveling musicians entering the U.S. with instruments containing small amounts of African elephant ivory, or not, since determining what’s really elephant ivory is not a slam dunk. The permit process and complicated enforcement procedures need to be revamped.

Who would have imagined that addressing wildlife conservation goals and protecting international musical activity would be discordant? Every time I hear about another elephant being poached for ivory, I shudder.  While it makes sense to completely STOP buying any products that contain ivory of any kind, I’m not convinced that harassing musicians is a good solution.

How about having these professional musicians who own instruments with ivory in them, perform at concerts benefitting an organization like Roots&Shoots, founded by Jane Goodall and students in Tanzania “to make positive change.”  There are a number of other good organizations out there that would welcome donations including:

International Elephant Foundation 

Elephant Care International

The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

African Wildlife Foundation

Amboseli Elephant Research Project

When I pick up Sophie’s bow, and pay for it, I plan to donate the same amount to one of these groups. 

Penguins and Prejudice

The two male penguins, who care for an errant egg in the Central Park Zoo, are officially ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.  And the children ‘s book, “And Tango Makes Three,” documenting this abhorrent situation, according to the National Library Board in Singapore, must immediately be “pulped. “

Explaining that “prevailing norms support teaching children about conventional families, but not alternative, non-traditional families,” the Minister of Communications and Information, Yaacob Ibrahim ordered two other books destroyed, including “The White Swan Express: A Story About Adoption,” and “Who’s in My Family: All About Our Families.”

In the “twisted” plot in Tango, based on a true story, Roy and Silo, male penguins build a nest together like other mating penguins, but alas, they can’t lay an egg.  A Central Park Zookeeper (probably a deviant himself) brings them an egg to sit on; when the egg hatches, the penguin couple have the audacity to parent the chick, who they name Tango.   “The White Swan Express “ follows several families to an orphanage in China, where they adopt girls, who under the “one child per family” policy, have been abandoned primarily because of their gender.  One of the adopting families is oh no, a lesbian couple.

Ornithophobic, homophobic, or just plain idiotic?

When our adopted daughter was itty bitty, I read her all three of these books.  Over and over and over.  We checked them out of our public library and I often talked to the librarian, Miss Kitty, about making sure they had plenty of the available titles that positively portrayed non-traditional families.  She agreed wholeheartedly.

On the first day of kindergarten, in the circle when all the kids introduced themselves and described their families, when they got to our daughter, she said,“I’m Sophie, and I have 2 moms.”  “Two moms, you can’t have two moms,” some of her classmates protested. “Actually, I have three moms,” Sophie insisted.   She has always been comfortable with who she is and with her family constellation.  Instrumental to this was having stories and books that reflected her reality.

I am galled that sixteen years later, reading material that normalizes gay and adoptive families is being banned in a multi-cultural, modern city of 5.4 million people. This ban is driven by surprise, surprise, religious conservatives.  But these forces aren’t limited to Singapore.  In the U.S., the library books most often petitioned for removal are about “homosexuality." 

The American Civil Liberties Union explains that "the urge to censor is hardly the monopoly of any political group. But the greatest threat today comes from the fundamentalist right, with its ideological hostility to other religious or philosophical systems, to homosexuality, to sex education, and indeed to the basic idea of secular education."

This year I plan to make it a point to celebrate Banned Books week on September 21-27.  They have a great website at:  http://www.bannedbooksweek.org., that includes a reading list of must read “banned” books.

Outrage over Central American crisis

Are they cattle or kids?  And who cares, anyway?

It took the publication of photos showing children huddled together like frightened livestock in a Texas holding facility while they wait processing, to get us to pay attention to the humanitarian crisis that is happening at our southern border.

Since October, 52,000 children have entered the U.S., primarily from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.  They flee for their lives, in the face of violence from drug gangs, domestic abuse, and extreme poverty.

In the Bay Area, there are an estimated 350 children from Central America showing up alone each month, overwhelming the non-profit organizations that provide them and their families with assistance.

U.S. foreign and economic policy has contributed to the destabilization of these countries over the past decade; yet, our politicians for the most part, do nothing to meaningfully address immigration reform.  There is a stalemate with no end in sight.

Where is our compassion? We are talking about children ranging in age from 5 to 21 years old. Their journey is perilous.  In the hands of smugglers who make between $2000 and $9000 per child, these kids put garlic on their shoes to repel rattlesnakes, collide with cactus in the night, and ride precariously on tops of moving trains.  Once they arrive, we detain them in overcrowded, unsanitary, dismal detention centers. 

This week the UN high commission for refugees called for Central American migrants to be treated as refugees displaced by armed conflict. “The US and Mexico should recognize that this is a refugee situation, which implies that they shouldn’t be automatically sent to their home countries but rather, receive international protection,” the agency said.

ref·u·gee,

refyo͝oˈjē,ˈrefyo͝oˌjē/

noun: refugee; plural noun: refugees1.a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster."tens of thousands of refugees fled their homes"
Synonyms:  émigré, fugitive, exile, displaced person, asylum seeker, boat people.

But Americans are not talking about officially changing the status of these children.  Instead, Congressional Republicans, as well as the Obama administration have proposed ending a 2008 law mandating that child migrants must appear before an immigration judge. Border Patrol agents could decide whether to deport them or allow them an additional hearing. Wrong.

Obama requested $3.7 billion in emergency funds that would be used to strengthen border security, provide more overtime pay for border patrol agents, hire additional immigration judges to expedite processing, provide funds to pursue smugglers, create more detention centers, and help Central American countries repatriate people sent back.  Wrong again.

Why are we spending all this money to send innocent children back into intolerable conditions? We must find humanitarian answers, create new immigration laws and apply funds to efforts that actually help these people. 

I am reminded of the Kindertransport that took place in WWII, where about 10,000 Jewish children were sent to England and adopted by foster families, or placed in schools and hostels.  This effort was spurred by British public opinion, and organized by refugee aid committees. Private citizens or organizations had to guarantee to pay for each child's care, education, and eventual emigration from Britain. In return for this guarantee, the British government agreed to allow unaccompanied refugee children to enter the country on temporary travel visas. Call me simplistic, but this seems like a much better way to go.

Notes from the Heartland

“You’re raising that stalk from a seed to maturity in 120 days. The time you get the stalk up there and you get the ear on, you’re done. You usually around here, you can start growing if everything’s right around the first of April.  Usually, it’s best to wait till the 15^th, and the 20^th is better. The earlier you get it in the better off you are. You want to get it in as the spring is advancing to summer, as the days get longer.”

“If I could plant all my corn on the 20^th of April, I’d be tickled to death.   But you can’t always do that because of the rain.  You can plant corn up until June and some people plant as late as July. But you have to have so many degree units, so many heat degree units to mature a crop, and the sun and the moon have a lot to do with how the crop grows, how it germinates and grows and pollinates, and all that. “ 

 “As the season goes on, the dominant ear will suck all the energy out of the less dominant ear, and make a big one.  If you have the one ear standing all by itself, if he’s only got 16 rows on it, and the second one has 16 rows, you’ll have two nice ears.  Rarely can you have three ears since we plant it so thick anymore. There is always an even number of rows on an ear of corn. 12 to 24 rows.  Normally, 14 to 16 rows.  It’s all dependent on the weather.”

My daughter’s grandfather, Richard, is a 75-year-old farmer from Blandinsville, a town in western Illinois. A college graduate with a degree in agriculture, he has been farming 138 acres of land since he was a boy, growing primarily corn, soy, and alfalfa.  He has raised hogs, sheep, and cattle, but he no longer raises animals, as they require too much physical labor.  He rents most of his land from the same family his father struck an initial deal with in the depression.  The terms are the same; they profit share 50-50, a pretty sweet deal for the landowner.  He owns about 50 acres outright and rents them to another farmer.

This is the second visit we’ve made to see this family, and as we tool around in large pick-up truck, Dick tells us all about farming the land, the history of both the area and his family. He can trace his genealogy back seven or eight generations.

My wife and daughter think I’m a bit crazy, as I listen intently, and ask all kinds of questions about farming.  I’m not sure why it interests me so much.  At home I dutifully water a few plants and try to eat local organically produced food as much as possible. The level of specificity about growing crops that Dick goes into captivates me.  That and the fact that farmers like him are both an American tradition and sadly, a dying breed. 

According to Department of Agriculture statistics, there are about 2 million farms today, down from 6.8 million in 1935.  39% of the U.S population in 1900 lived on farms; today, only 2% of Americans live on farms. There isn’t less farming actually taking place; rather, farming is dominated by big agribusiness, food processing conglomerates, and big seed companies like Monsanto.

Dick explains that there are no jobs in the area. Young people just leave, and young families no longer farm in the area. Most of the schools have consolidated, and several have been closed and torn down.  “That used to be a school,” Dick tells us pointing to a field of mowed green grass.  He shows us similar former school sites in about 3 or 4 small towns we drive through. The population of Blandinsville is only 800 people, mostly older adults. The downtown area is about 2 blocks long; there are 2 cafes, a bar, a law office, a few churches, and several empty storefronts, a few of which are filled with rural debris covered in dust.

My recent trip to the Corn Belt has made me think more deeply about agricultural sustainability, and what is happening to people in rural communities.  I don’t talk farm politics with Dick, but as I listen to him, I read between the rows, so to speak.

There are fields of green for miles around; but we see no people. We pass Star Wars like pieces of huge farm equipment that have very specialized functions.  GPS is now used to plant the fields, eliminating the need for markers and human operators to distribute seeds. 

Monsanto produces about 90% of all GMO seeds, genetically modified to produce their own pesticides. These GMOs are designed to increase profits, not yields; Monsanto contractually locks in farmers who must buy their high-priced, patented seeds.  They sell more toxic chemicals to farmers, whose crops become increasingly herbicide-resistant; the topsoil, full of these chemicals, is eroding, and the water quality is dangerously declining. It is a vicious cycle.  Add to this, a litany of social problems including low pay, unsafe working conditions, and immigration concerns. The summer program for migrant school children that my daughter’s aunt teaches at in Mendota, Illinois, was cut back this year.  She is helping fewer kids for a shorter amount of time. 

My head is spinning, as Dick keeps driving and talking.

John Eckard, in his article “Small Farms: The Foundation for Long-Run Food Security, writes:

“We don’t need a lot of data, facts, or figures to understand what is happening to American agriculture; it’s just plain common sense.  In making agriculture more efficient, we have chosen industrial technologies and methods, which have resulted in fewer, larger farming operations, and now, in corporate control of agriculture.  In the process, we have lost both the security of our farms and the food security of our nation.“

Wendell Berry, farmer/writer/activist observed, “Eating is an agricultural act.” Writer/activist Michael Pollan, in his numerous books and speeches, notes that we must make the connection between eating and the way we grow our food.  Says Pollan, “When people are more conscious about their food choices, they can change the food chain. They can change what happens on the farm.”

As I return from the heartland, I take these words to heart. I hope for a revival of “real” farming, the kind that Dick and his family used to do. In the meantime, I am going to engage in a political act, and go eat some lunch.

Stepping in It

There is only one thing worse than stepping in dog shit.  Stepping in dog shit and not realizing it until you’ve smeared it all over your car carpet or on your living room rug.  If you’ve done this you know what I’m talking about.  Your nose twitches, and you wonder, hum what could that awful smell be?  Then you look down, and damn.

I thought I had a grasp on humanity.  But I don’t understand people. Why oh why can’t they pick up after their dogs?   How much time and energy does it take to carry a small blue/ brown/ green baggie, bend over for just a minute, scoop it up, and then toss it in the trash? 

One of my political heroes, Harvey Milk, famously proposed legislation when he first got elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, fining people for not picking up after their dogs.  In a television news clip, Harvey walks on a lawn carrying a “pooper scooper,” talking about getting his first law passed.  And then, being the consummate showman that he was, he takes a few steps backwards, into, yes, a pile of shit.

I want to make a citizens arrest almost on a daily basis.

On the cull de sac where I live, there are some people who let their dogs roam free range like happy chickens, without giving a second thought to the fact that the dog is going to most likely poop right there on the street. When they gotta go, they go. 

A study in the journal “Frontiers in Zoology,” found that dogs use the planet’s magnetic field to choose the direction in which they poop.  It’s always on a north-south axis, never east to west.  The scientists don’t understand why.

“It is still enigmatic why the dogs do align at all, whether they do it “consciously” (i.e., whether the magnetic field is sensorial perceived (the dogs “see”, “hear” or “smell” the compass direction or perceive it as a haptic stimulus) or whether its reception is controlled on the vegetative level (they “feel better/more comfortable or worse/less comfortable” in a certain direction).”

My frustration, however, is not misaligned. I do not feel better, as I try to dig poop out of the intricate ridges on the bottoms of my favorite running shoes.  I am never without a baggie. They line my jacket pockets.  When I walk my beloved Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Picasso, on the street, I end up picking up other dog’s shit, because well, I just can’t stand it.

Online there is a company called Poop911.com that provides dog poop scooping services in San Francisco and the East Bay for just $9.95 a week.  They haven’t expanded to Marin yet.  I mean really?  People have to hire someone to pick up their dog’s poop? Are you shitting me?