Monthly Archives: September 2012

Family, Humor, Politics, Third Phase, US History

Seeing Ourselves Through the Eyes of Others

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Lugnasa                                                       Garlic Planting Moon

Just read a very interesting couple of threads on Quora about how persons from other cultures view US culture.   What’s most interesting  to me is the reveal achieved by others, showing us aspects of our common life, aspects we pay little attention to (the most likely reservoir of culture, BTW), for example:

American culture and society is a naturally high-trust society.

…religious diversity here has made me realize how many south american customs are rooted in catholicism,

and on this set of questions on another thread:  What parts of American culture are not easily understood by foreigners?  The list below is a composite from individual answers in this thread:

The view of American peculiarities depends on the cultural origin of the respondent.

What is generally found peculiar:

  • Permissive gun laws
  • Lawsuits
  • Euphemisms
  • Individualism
  • Resistance to the metric system
  • Fashion: chiefly ugly footwear

What Asians find more peculiar:

  • Less filial piety – disrespect for the elderly
  • “Cutting off” children upon adulthood
  • Manners: Small talk, sarcasm, showing off, pitching
  • Protecting individual rights to an extreme
  • Blurry social hierarchy
  • The notion that you can be happy without success
  • “Going Dutch” and tipping in restaurants
  • Drinking ice water year-round
  • Overmedication

What Europeans find more notable:

  • Manners: Exclamative language and loudness, enthusiasm, friendliness, liberal use of humour
  • Moral contradictions
  • Social injustice: healthcare, unemployment payments
  • Politics: Tolerance for lobbying, the Right Wing, the election system
  • Psychological traits: high trust, self-deprecation, diversity, openness
  • A culture of meetings
  • Sports
  • Subtitles instead of dubbing
  • Restaurants: boxing leftovers, waiting in line

Note: This list is to be treated as merely an index of motifs found in the answers below and does not attempt to construct a stereotype. Each item here should be read in context with the rationale of the individual answers where it is found

More on this later.

 

Family, Travel

Far Flung Family

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Lugnasa                                                 Garlic Planting Moon

Brother Mark has touched down in Riyadh, capitol of Saudi Arabia, for another year of bringing the joys of English to Arab nationals.  It’s a challenging working environment, but he got through last year, so I’m sure he can do this one, too.  It takes a certain kind of person to be outside their birth culture and thrive.  Mark’s done it for 20 + years and so has Mary (sister).

I spoke with both of them today via Skype, a near miracle as far as I’m concerned.  Their premium service, which I just repurchased, allows Mark, Mary, and me to be on a visual call at the same time:  Riyadh–Singapore–Minnesota.  We did it several times last year and it amazed me every time.  (BTW:  Woollies who read this.  We could use my subscription to loop in Paul and Jimmy, too)

 

 

Commentary on the news, Memories, Politics, US History

Labor Day

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Lugnasa                                                                 Garlic Planting Moon

The current awareness of the 1% and the 99% is due to the Occupy movement last year.  It is a useful division to recall on Labor Day.  Why?  Labor Day is a holiday that reaches out to the 99% of us that do not have inherited wealth, do not have elevators in our garages or fixed wing sail boats at our (non-existent) waterside property.

It puts a day on the calendar when we remember the value of labor unions, those democratically controlled voices of the 99% in organized industries and businesses.  Why are labor unions important?  In a contest of power between the 1% and the 99% who normally wins?  Yes.  If you don’t have money, you have to have people to have power.

(“Every cook should learn to govern – Lenin”)

Now, power is not necessary as long as you want other people to set your wage structures, to decide if you deserve health care insurance, to have the opportunity to fire you based on their whim.  If, however, you want a voice on these matters that directly effect you and your family then you need an organization that answers to you, not to the bosses.

Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s my hometown supplied workers to General Motors factories in nearby Anderson, Indiana.  Thanks to the UAW families headed by persons who did not graduate from high school had incomes sufficient to own homes, boats and take vacations.  They had health insurance adequate to remove health care from their list of worries.  They had grievance committees and union representatives who would stand with you in case of a dispute with a foreman.

Those days are gone, have been gone for a long while, but I remember them well because I grew up in those times.  The Mcjobs that many of the same people have to settle for provide minimal wages, few benefits and no protections.  We have seen the hollowing out of the middle class and especially the working class jobs, jobs where college was not a requirement.  Where hard work and honesty could result in a decent life.  Those jobs have become vanishingly few.

Who, General Motors, will buy your cars?  Who, Best Buy, will shop in your stores?  Who, Kitchen Aid, will buy your appliances?  Who will buy homes?  It is a sad and ironic truth that as capitalism pushes harder and harder for more productivity per worker, gains achieved often through robots and computer aided manufacturing processes, it loses the customers who drive America’s consumer economy.

If you’re an anti-union person, and many are, ask yourself whether you want a voice at work or not.  If you don’t, maintain your position.

Weather +Climate

Seasonal Change

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Lugnasa                                                              Garlic Planting Moon

Senescence is on my mind.  No, not in the OMG I’m 65 and I’m senescensing before my very eyes sense, but in the leaves have begun to fall, crops have matured, the angle of the sun has changed dramatically and we’ve lost just over 2 hours of daylight since June 22nd sense.

Even though the temperature changes over the last decade or so point to a lengthening of fall here in Minnesota, it comes nonetheless.  Vegetable plants, annuals for the most part, or at least treated as annuals, have a growing season.  As a plant nears the end of its growing season, the vegetable gained over the season matures.  The potato plumps up and hardens its skin.  The garlic gains a strong outer cover and firms up its cloves.  The peppers turn red or grow large.  Leeks grow fat and white.  Then, the plant begins to die.

Some people prefer summer and the heat, the swimming pool and barbecue, driving around with the top down, dining outdoors, going up to the cabin.  Others love spring with its joyous burst of vitality after winter cold.  As for me, I prefer the fall.  Growing darker.  Cooler.  The garden wound down.  A time for turning inward, focusing on the inner and the inside work.

With Mabon, the Fall Equinox, we celebrate the second harvest and with Samhain, Summer’s End, we mark the harvest season’s close.  After Samhain comes my favorite period of the year, Holiseason.  It begins with Thanksgiving and ends on Epiphany in the new year.

Leading up to it trees change their colors, leaves fall, mums and asters and clematis and monkshod bloom.  Bird migrate and the sky takes on that clarity, that blue clarity, a northern sky promising chill nights and warmish days.  Great hiking and biking weather.

Tomorrow is Labor Day the unofficial beginning of fall and the official beginning of school.  Have a good holiday.

Poetry

Natural Piety

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Lugnasa                                                          Garlic Planting Moon

My Heart Leaps Up
by William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Third Phase, Writing

Meaning

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Lugnasa                                                         Full Garlic Moon

It may, in the end, come down to this.  How much does writing mean?  Does it mean enough to draw me away from other things I love?  This question has a lot of baggage.

First of all, I’ve had my chance.  22 years of chances, supported by a beautiful and gracious wife.  Nothing’s happened in the publishing end of my work.  It’s not that I haven’t tried; but, it’s also not like the manuscripts have flown out as, like homing pigeons, they came back to roost.  They always came back home.

None of the manuscripts, six in all counting Missing, and not counting the four I have substantially underway, but unfinished, have gotten that second and third and fourth revision.  No, I’ve succumbed to a real temptation.  Finish a draft and then chase after the next idea in a tight red skirt that comes along.  With Missing I’m trying to rectify that.

I’ve given up. Third piece of luggage.  Maybe the heaviest of all. I let the fear rise up and overwhelm me.  And, I just quit writing.  No writing, no failure.  Right?  Wrong.  There’ve been sine waves of passion, followed by fear and troughs of melancholy, anxiety.  Unlike Rembrandt, a real artistic hero, I’ve let life stop me.  No, wait.  That’s not true.  I’ve let me stop me.

Age has crept up  on me.  When I started this turn away from the ministry, it was 1991.  Now it’s 2012.  A different century.  Hell, a different millennia.  In the intervening years the hourglass has inverted.  I wasn’t young in 1991.  I’m a lot more not younger now.  The question here is, do I dare commit myself, my life and my time, again, with death no longer a distant call?

There is more, here, too.  The Indian’s see life in four phases:  student, householder, hermit, ascetic.  As soon as your children have your first male grandchild, it is time to pull back from work and to focus on religious life, first as a hermit, still at home, later, leaving home and connections to begin living life as a wandering religious.

The question this raises for me is this:  Does the third phase (I’m not an Indian, so I’m throwing out the whole ascetic idea.  Wouldn’t last long in a Minnesota winter anyhow.) really, that is appropriately, suggest a turn away from striving and a turn toward the spiritual?  In other words, is a commitment like the one I’m thinking of reviving come simply at the wrong time?  Worse, could it impede a journey I need to take?

Gonna let all this percolate, as Kate likes to say.  Look for the other side tomorrow. or later tonight.

 

General

More Fun with Soil and Plants

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Lugnasa                                                                Garlic Planting Moon

New garlic varieties for planting arrive this next week.  Combined with the biggest bulbs from this year’s crop they’ll plump up our crop for next year.  To assist them I tossed two and a half bags of composted manure into the bed where they will sleep over the winter months.  I also cut down the potato vines, preparing the tubers below to harden before I harvest them two weeks or so from now.

Kate’s playing with graph paper and the calculator, determining how much compost we’ll need for the new vegetable beds we’re planning for along the sidewalk next spring.  We haven’t decided whether we’ll rock, landscaping stone or wood to create the raised beds.  All this work needs to be done before September 27th because I will not be able to lift over 30 pounds for a month after my hernia surgery.