A Little Diddy (About Jack and Diane)



The land of opportunity, the melting pot that sits waiting to be filled – America’s marketing pitch. America is the land of the new. Seeking new frontiers, entrepreneurial industriousness, inventions. There’s something of the fighting spirit in newness, always up for a challenge, never backing down. And the proverbial underdog that pants on the floor (in front of the stove, just to keep my metaphor going), overcoming the obstacles we all know he will.
Maybe the flame got too high. Maybe we left the stove on as we rushed out the door to begin our day already stamped with banality. When things get overcooked, they get tough, sticky, mired in their own juices, and even a little pathetic. They lose their flavor, and jilted intentions fall victim to condiments. Bar-b-que sauce, ketchup, soysauce, A-1...smoothed and smothered over the inedibles. The caserole is passed off as dinner, but its hesitant onlookers know something’s amiss. But we eat it anyway, in the spirit of trying something new, knowing all the while that what we’ve been served is a poor imitation of what we deserve.
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Whiteness Studies?


The past few months I've been reading a lot to do with "whiteness studies," and, at first, I was somewhat excited about the possibilities I saw in this line of inquiry - at least, I found the intersection of whiteness and blackness in terms of consumerism really interesting - and it seemed a refreshing take on things. In particular, I came across a quote that struck me: "making whiteness visible works 'to dislodge them/us from the position of power'" - which would seem to be a valuable, provocative, and productive interrogation of white identity. And another question I came across - "what makes you think I'm white?" as a challenge to the universality of whiteness - brings into question the whole social constructedness of race.
Apparently, "whiteness studies" is a field that used to be subsumed under "ethnic studies," but over the past decade or so has now claimed its own separate identity. So does anyone else see this shift in status as somewhat contradictory and disturbing - an expression of its popularity with uncomfortable implications?
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Stories from Tungurahua...

Volcano Tungurahua in the Ecuadorian Andes has been active since 1999, but over the last couple of months it has really come to life - affecting the lives of thousands in the region. Following is an email from University of South Florida anthropologist, Dr Linda Whiteford, who has been working in the region with those affected by eruptions that occurred in July. While there are many news stories on the current eruptions, there are really very few details about the enormity of the events. This email offers a unique view of someone there on the ground.

Quito Saturday 19th August

The volcano, Tungurahua, erupted violently this week with devastating pyroclastic flows, lava flows, and emissions of various size tephra that included volcanic bombs, pumice pellets, and huge quantities of ash that covered an extensive area of the country. A state of emergency was called.

We went into the field on Monday and worked around the volcano all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning to see the effects of the July 14th eruption. That earlier event had created all sorts of problems for many small communities - however less than twenty fours hours after our visit they were all gone. We had planned doing interviews in Banos on Wednesday (Banos sits at the base of the volcano) but were called by the vulcanologists at the volcano observatory and told to leave immediately. The volcano had been rumbling all morning (and continued for the next 16 hours or so) and the explosions rattled windows as far as 20 kilometers away. We took their advice and evacuated to the observatory where we watched some more very violent eruptions. Probably the most frightening was seeing the pyroclastic flows cascade down the mountain destroying the villages we had been in the day before, and all the time hoping that the residents had heeded the warning to get out. All of that, of course, is the subject of further research.

The eruptions continued all that afternoon and evening, and into the next day destroying the lives of many. The impacts can be seen everywhere; agriculture throughout a wide area has been damaged extensively, roads are gone, a river blocked by pyroclastic flows, electricity is out in some areas and we know that four villages no longer exist. Thousands have been evacuated and several people are dead with many others missing.

On Thursday, we found everything covered in ash and had serious problems getting around. Anyway, we managed to conduct interviews with some evacuees in the shelters and heard some terrifying stories. We eventually got out of the area riding in trucks, farm vehicles and walking; we were covered in ash. Yesterday we arrived back in Quito, safe and sound, where we were debriefed by the National Civil Defense. We should be home tomorrow...

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shit man...

death by jello seems highly unlikely.

and i a’m sitting here

watching the sun shine through the rain drops.

trying to get some work done.

but not really interested.

and lacking motivation.

later maybe.

my mind is elsewhere.

with a girl.

of course it is.

that is my life.

also thoughts of the other night.

when i can'’t remember anything after my second drink.

with colleagues too.

shit.

and what am i really here for?

questions like this continue to swirl about

in my mind.

where is that pull? that special thing?

why do i feel so empty here?

like nothing really is for me.

like i am here only to wander.

only to do random stuff.

how long has it been this way?

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World AIDS Day Coverage...

I thought I would post a bit from Reuters that offers further links to coverage of the 16th anual International Conference on AIDS. After five months of research looking at how AIDS is affecting populations in Southern Africa, this is especially refreshing for me, as it presents a major call for a shift in how the problem should be approached.

AIDS focus shifts to women and prevention

Reuters - Mon Aug 14, 3:23 PM ET

TORONTO - Researchers, activists and major funders have agreed to a shift in the fight against AIDS to focus on prevention and especially helping women protect themselves. With big pharmaceutical companies making their HIV drugs available cheaply to developing nations and with generic drugs available, speakers at the 16th International Conference on AIDS agreed the focus needs to move to preventing new infections.

Off the Wires

News Stories


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On Shopping


What is it about shopping that makes people feel better? Buying new clothes, new gadgets...for the more comfortable, new cars and new houses. We, of course, are inundated with advertising all the time - on every possible surface or screen, on every object we own we will find the strategically placed and designed company trademark, and we even find advertising on ourselves as we become walking advertisements for our favorite stores. So now that we are so far removed from recognizing that buying something is an act independent of our mental health, have our brains become corporatized as well? Has retail therapy bought out all the room in our conscience? What would it take, then, to de-shop ourselves?
We all confer power on the things we own. There are those that we endow with independent life, that win the prized spot in the living room, those that travel with us through life, and those that stay boxed away somewhere for future trips down memory lane. We all take up more space than our body allots, as we are all sums of our material possessions; our identities derive from its accessories.
So perhaps having our own cache of enchanted objects saves us from corporate takeover; perhaps those early twentieth century advertisers, in conceiving our current consumer climate, also provided us with a loophole. It is when we stop having a relationship with the things we consume that we suffer, thus the success of retail therapy.
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Facts and Fictions


THURSDAY, June 29 (HealthDay News) -- "Alcohol abuse by minors results in almost 3,200 deaths a year -- four times more than deaths due to all illegal drug use combined, a new study finds.

"Underage drinking also costs the United States $62 billion each year, the researchers found.

"Despite these numbers, policymakers remain focused on the impact and prevention of drug use in minors, rather than alcohol, the study's authors said. The budget for anti-drug use by America's youth is nearly 25 times that of public funds earmarked for the prevention of alcohol use.

"'Alcohol-related traffic crashes, violence, teen pregnancies, STDs, burns, drownings, alcohol poisoning, property damage and other risks take a human and economic toll that's much greater than illegal drugs. Yet, we spend so much more on youth drug abuse,' study author Ted Miller, director of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE), said in a prepared statement.

"Miller's team at the PIRE Public Services Research Institute in Calverton, Md., found that a large number of minors are drinking great quantities of alcohol. In fact, the study showed that underage youth consume at least 16 percent of all alcohol sold in the United States, a number the researchers called conservative.

"The costs of underage drinking come from a variety of sources, with expenses linked to traffic accidents alone totaling roughly $13.7 billion per year.

"'Drinks in bars, drinks in cars, drinks stolen form Mom's liquor cabinet: The average harm from a kid's illegal drink is $3," said Miller. "That's far more than the 85-cent price tag those drinks carry. It dwarfs the 10 cents in taxes we collect or the 40 cents in profit the alcohol industry reaps,' he said.

"Miller said poor legal enforcement is a major factor in the underage drinking epidemic, and that stricter regulations and inspections of institutions where alcohol is sold would cut the amount of alcohol getting into minors' hands. Improvements in identification and age-verification, driving curfews, zero-tolerance laws and regulations placing liability on parents who allow underage drinking in their home would also help control the problem, he said.

"The study is published in the July issue of Journal of Studies on Alcohol."
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