Author: stevekuusisto

By Andrea Scarpino

Los Angeles

My father was a microbiologist who worked on water disinfection among other things, and who was raised by a butcher father who owned a grocery store. Having watched his father at work, and knowing the intricacies of viruses and bacteria, my father was—shall we say—a bit hypochondriac where food safety was concerned. If something smelled even a little bit funny, it was thrown away immediately. When he brought home fruits and vegetables from the grocery store, he soaked it in the sink through multiple water changes.

Growing up, I watched my father at work and in his home, and developed related interests in the environment and our food. I try, in the words of Michael Pollan, to Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That is, to eat whole foods, not food “products” with funny ingredients like “cheddar cheese flavoring.” I purchase as many organics as I can afford, and have read many more PETA brochures than I care to recall. I haven’t eaten meat knowingly in about fifteen years, in part because of the treatment animals receive in the American food system. So when I went to see the documentary Food, Inc. this weekend, I didn’t expect to learn much new about the American food industry. Mostly, I wanted the film to have a good turnout so that its release would spread to cities beyond Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York.

But learn I did. About chickens that are forced to grow so quickly through hormones and a diet they would never eat in the wild that their leg bones can’t support their weight. About farmers who are being put out of business from lawsuits having to do with possible patent infringement on genetically modified seeds (yes, I wrote “patent infringement” and “seeds” in the same sentence. Seeds—once the purview of nature—are now patented by big industries). About meat industry workers (mostly People of Color) who suffer from terrible work environments, uncountable work-related illnesses, and low wages. About how food industry executives have basically written our food laws with their best interests at heart, not in the interest of food safety, quality or health.

And about the people who are doing what they can to buck the system, farmers who continue to reuse their seeds despite the best attempts of seed manufacturers to thwart them, farmers who are raising their cattle on grass (their natural food) instead of grain as a way to keep them healthy, prevent E. Coli, and treat them humanely. About mothers of children who have died from food poisoning who continue to battle through the American justice system to get better food safety laws passed.

Food, Inc. may raise more questions than it answers about American food safety and production, but the questions it raises are immeasurably important. Access to safe and healthy food is a basic human right, and therefore, should be at the top of every conversation about social justice, the ethical treatment of animals and the people who tend and butcher them, and the care and protection of our earth. Just in the time between seeing Food, Inc. and sitting down to write this review, Cnn.com reported a new E. Coli outbreak in Nestle cookie dough that has sickened 65 people. These food-borne illness outbreaks are the result of our broken food system, and this just shouldn’t be happening.

So please, go see Food, Inc. I promise you, it’s worth it.

Andrea Scarpino is the west coast Bureau Chief of POTB

You can visit her at: www.andreascarpino.com

Over this long holiday weekend TV Landers have been treated to the network’s coverage of tea party assemblies, gatherings which represent both whacko libertarianism as well as the last groan of the GOP’s digestive tract. There are various groups behind the tea party movement and I won’t link to them here but you can do a simple Google search and discover that they love to clothe themselves in patriotism and reactionary rhetoric about social programs and “big government” and yes, should you want to hold a tea party they will even outfit you with talking points so you too can be a “ditto head”.  

Mostly the tea party crowd hates the idea of medical insurance and they believe that existing programs like medicare are vast Federal fraud factories bilking the honest citizenry out of their honest dough. Ergo, without proof they argue passionately that Big Brother is at hand and that President Obama’s health care plans will rob the already exhausted tax payer of his or her right to live free and die without the help of his or her government. Buried in the sophistry is the idea that existing health care insurance is good and those who don’t have health care coverage are “those people” who can’t pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and to hell with them. I think the tea party movement would be more accurately represented if we called it the tea party at the gates of Hell movement. They could even have a logo with Cerberus the three headed dog  who would be depicted drinking from a little cup.

Their vision of America is driven by a terrible hostility both for taxation and for government programs that help people. They do not call for an end to military spending or entitlements for the wealthy and for corporations. You will find no outrage on their web sites about the wholesale disappearance of American manufacturing jobs to China. The tea parties are not about the middle classes at all.

Their plan such as it is would be to have the whole country look like California.

S.K.

Denis Diderot once famously said: “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Certainly these words ring true when we see the theocratic tyranny in Iran. But as we look to the 4th of July we in the U.S.A. would be well advised to demand more from our guarantees of freedom.

Lost in all the news of Michael Jackson’s demise Americans likely missed the fact that the Supreme Court ruled this past week in an important age discrimination case and handed down a 5-4 decision that will make it harder (if not impossible) for older workers to prove they were treated unfairly by their employers. 

The case involved Jack Gross, a 53-year-old man who claimed he was discriminated against and who in turn was demoted solely because of age and then was replaced by a younger female worker. The Supreme Court ruled that Iowa-based FBL Financial Services Inc., did not have to prove that they did not discriminate against Mr. Gross–a finding that sets a terrible precedent for civil rights plaintiffs. Essentially Clarence Thomas (who was the fifth vote and who wrote the decision) has erased the burden of defense for employers.

While we watch videos of Michael Jackson’s last rehearsal and hear over and over again about his troubled life and mysterious death it seems that the arbitrary and discriminatory hubris of the conservative majority on the nation’s highest court has once again been ignored by contemporary journalism–whatever that is?

The specter of a corporate defendant that does not have to defend itself against injustice is chilling and its hard to say who is the king and who is the priest but I’ll say that FBL Financial Services Inc. is wearing its crown and Clarence Thomas surely keeps in his office the proper towels and cruets.

S.K.    

You can visit my online NPR commentary about seeing colors after years at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106037590

SK

I am currently teaching a summer course at The University of Iowa on veterans with disabilities and their portrayal in film and literature. Because I grew up blind in the late 50’s and 60’s and because I attended college and graduate school in the years before the ADA, I have a fair understanding of what its like to feel like the only person with a disability in the room. I also remember the pain of having to be a self-advocate for the right to be in that room. Being a pwd is no picnic and let’s face it: coming home with a disability in mid-life is enormously difficult even after the ADA.

My own university has failed to install accessible restrooms in important academic buildings that it has frequently renovated since the ADA went into effect. The fight for access isn’t over by any means. If you’re a veteran with a disability who uses a wheelchair you will find the University of Iowa’s student union and its English-Philosophy Building–two major facilities on this campus–to be entirely inaccessible if you want to go to the bathroom. Not long ago I received a patronizing note from an administrator who told me that in the case of the student union there was an accessible restroom on the second floor of the building. But of course this isn’t true. People with motorized wheelchairs can’t get into the room.

I remain a blogger in large part because I believe in the power of the internet as a resource delivery system. I have received the following resource announcement and wish to pass it along. As the wounded service men and women of the U.S. transition back to civilian life they need all the resources they can get. They also need accessible facilities at the nation’s colleges and universities. 

National Resource Directory
The National Resource Directory (NRD) is an online resource for wounded, ill and injured Service Members, Veterans, their families and those who support them. The NRD provides information on, and access to, medical and non–medical services and resources across the country which will help them reach their personal and professional goals as they successfully transition from recovery to community living. The NRD is an online partnership of the Department of Defense, Department of Labor and Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as numerous Veteran service and benefit organizations; non–profit community–based and faith–based organizations; academic institutions, professional associations and philanthropic organizations.

S.K.

The hour glass in my occiput is dropping sand. I must write quickly. I brought the python home in a bag. Did your mother really worship F.D.R.’s chauffeur? I wish I had a ladder like that. They say 1939 was the greatest year for movies. I think its still coming. My neighbor who never leaves his house is making a movie about the stones in his shoes. I’m almost done. Herman Melville was wrong about the nature of war. He said all wars are boyish and are fought by boys. Boys are kidnapped into wars. And old Daddy Warbucks promises to let them out of the jar.

S.K. 

Well there it is, that old dress code again. In discrimination 101 the first thing you learn is that if you really have an irrational and wholly ungovernable dislike for a human being and accordingly you want to get rid of them lickety split you just trot out the old “D.C.” 

The following excerpt comes to us via The Inclusion Daily Express:

Employee With Prosthetic Arm Says Abercrombie & Fitch Humiliated Her
(BBC News)

June 24, 2009

LONDON, ENGLAND– [Excerpt] A woman claims clothing firm Abercrombie & Fitch made her work in the stockroom because her prosthetic arm did not fit the shop’s image.

Riam Dean told an employment tribunal she felt “diminished” and “humiliated” by the incident at its Savile Row store in central London.

The 22-year-old law student is suing for disability discrimination and seeking up to £20,000 in damages.

Miss Dean, who was born with her left forearm missing and wears a prosthetic arm, said she was granted special permission to wear a cardigan to cover the join in her arm.

But she told the tribunal she was later removed from the shop floor and made to work in the stockroom because the cardigan did not adhere to the strict dress code.

Entire article:
Disabled woman sues clothes store
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8116231.stm

**

As a disability advocate of a certain stripe I must say I particularly like the phrase “She was granted special permission to wear a cardigan to cover the join in her arm.”

In case you are curious: a few months ago the store in question hired half nude male models to advertise its grand opening. I wonder if “special permission” was granted for the boys to cover the join in their respective nether regions?

I expect that the feckless and shallow management of London’s new Abercrombie would on that occasion have enjoyed full frontal nudity but they knew this would be against the law.   

Well yes. And its also against the law to make people with disabilities “cover up” and its also against the law to demote them because of their physical differences. Yes, even on Savile Row.  

For more on this story visit the following sites:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1192674/I-banished-stockroom-says-disabled-shop-girl-suing-Abercrombie–Fitch-discrimination.html

http://zeldalily.com/index.php/category/riam-dean/

http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Riam+Dean

http://en.wordpress.com/tag/riam-dean/

S.K.

The film crew is silent for once. There’s no joking about hair loss or what their chewing gum tastes like. Thor (yes his name is Thor) from Schenectady (yes) wipes the Zeiss with an old undershirt. We’ll have to get this right. There’s only enough film for one take.

Strangelove takes his slow, simian walk to the director’s chair. He waves his one good hand with its soiled glove–waves for silence but the place is already silent and one poor soul from the sound crew thinks Strangelove’s gesture is a signal to talk and he says that he can hear a whole city block with his new “Ultra Ears” spy gizmo that he recently purchased in Tacoma and Strangelove shoots the man with one of those iddy biddy guns that prostitutes favor.   

My job is simple. In this scene I’m the pre-pathologized blind guy who can’t find his way out of his own living room and who is nothing more than a fly on the windshield of life. I do lots of groping and falling. Light the wrong end of a filter cigarette. I wear a food stained tee shirt and I’m several days unshaven.

Our film is being produced by the Defective People Industry which bankrolls “B roll” film footage of people with disabilities for later distribution to “Law and Order” and “CSI” and the tabloid news shows–even the reality shows. People with disabilities are perfect criminals in TV-Land and when they’re not bad guys they serve as reminders of what sub-existentialism will be like for you and you and you.

Sub-existentialism is not yet on Wikipedia but it will be soon. I, Stephen Kuusisto have invented it. Unlike Sartre’s existential world of no exit nausea at the cruel and crude meaningless of ruined civilization, sub-existentialism has no “on board” consciousness of any kind. Its Golem time. Its life inside a tree. Its like being a stone but without any poetry. The sub-existentialist is a mineral blank in a partially mobile body. Its possible that only your eyeballs still move. But really, you’re perfect. You look good Darling.    

In turn Strangelove has a good attitude. He’s “overcome” his disability with a superior work ethic and he has learned how to inspire others by attending meetings at “Toastmasters” and by reading the collected works of Leo Buscaglia.

The point is that people with disabilities need to be everywhere presented as lumber and in turn, the Defective People Industry requires a reliable cadre of “the disabled” who can give a great spiel about “overcoming” their “condition”–overcoming it with the help of the DPI of course.

The DPI represents the charity model of disability and no one can argue with the vastness of its size. Oh its big alright.

Poor Strangelove, still Victorian, caught in the Jekyll and Hyde dichotomy of the good versus bad disabled person and playing “it” for all its worth.

Of course  I’m just the B roll blind guy who stubs his Winston out in a lamp. The DPI and the “Law and Order” crowd wouldn’t have it any other way.

And surely I’m bitter until I overcome my personal flesh.

S.K.    

Kind friends have written to check my sanity. Bill points out that his Labrador has an affection for cat feces–a matter that is presumably tied to the olfactory predilections of canines. My pal “Bibliochef” points out the sheer improbability of the word “fud” but I swear that’s what we were smelling yesterday and I further swear that that’s the word for the hindmost netherpart of a rabbit. I am of course a fool. But to further split the point, fools can be sane. Shakespeare’s fools are invariably the sanest people on stage. So in truth I must declare (as if we were in a court of law) that I knew full well what I was doing when I proclaimed I would follow my dogs nose wherever it may point. The thing is: fools can and “do” take vacations. Again if you look to Shakespeare you’ll notice that the fools never get run through with poisoned swords or undergo a serious splitting from nave to chaps. Nope. Your true fool knows when to get the heck out of Dunsinane.

Accordingly I let Nira nose her nose this morning and I kept to the upright, stolid, Lutheran posture that my Finnish grandmother would have approved. When Nira checked out the jetsam and flotsam of the roadside I thought of Cotton Mather. I thought of Duns Scotus. I kept a fierce detachment. I held my nose aloft like the late William F. Buckley interrogating a Liberal. I was just another dog walker moving slowly among the red winged blackbirds and the yellow finches.

If I had a moralistic streak I would say something about the wisdom of letting fuds hide in the buds. But the fool in me knows better. Life is life wherever you find it.

S.K.

Yesterday I announced I’d follow my dog’s lead and drop to the ground or lean in close to know more fully the whirligig of doggy nasturtiums and nosegays. Clearly I’m having a vague and occupational dementia–the kind of thing that happens when its very hot. The Iowa sun has mastered my wits. And the dog is just a dog. She does not know I’m officially crazy.

This morning Nira the yellow Labrador plunged her head and shoulders into a wall of brush that grows along a stone wall in my back yard. It was early and there was dew on the grass and drops of water fell from the disturbed leaves of the bushes. Nira’s whole body was in lockstep with her nose, her broad back trembled and the long leash whipped back and forth in my hand, all the motion driven in accord with the dog’s nostrils. There is not a word in the English language for attenuated motion driven by a dog’s nostrils. I imagine the Swedes have a word for this, something like “hundt-flenken” and I’ll have to look it up at some point. If the Swedes have such a word it will likely prove to be ancient. All the important words are ancient.

So NIra was really in there and “working it” as they say at the gymnasium. Her nose was alive and wide open like the soul of a Sufi dancer. She was receiving news of something bosky and yet plangent–a thing both rich and low, a thing dark and yet still capable of flight. I could feel the intelligence of Nira’s nose deep in my hands. “The thing” behind the wall of sylvan camouflage was alive and breathing. Its exhalations were going straight into the dog. The dog was zithing like a wire. “God Almighty,” I thought. “Now I’m going to have to go down on all fours and scent this trapped but living fragrance for myself.”

Its not so easy to muscle your way into the shrubs alongside a quivering dog but I did it. I was suddenly at the heart of a Mexican stand off under the folds and spills of the elderberry and lilac bushes. I knew I had to be fast. Dogs don’t think twice about scenting living things. This wasn’t a formal affair with multiple forks and knives: I had to plunge and sniff. I was aware that my ass was sticking out of the leaves. My brain was oddly fast and slow. I was simultaneously throwing my blind, naked face into the dank unknown while worrying that the neighbors might see my “plumber’s crack” pointing from a wall of greenery. I tried for just a second to concentrate on my shorts. Were they up? Yes they were up. No plumber’s crack. The only thing my neighbors could see (supposing they were positioned in accord) would be my khaki shorts shining like a bleached sail far away on the sea.

I had to go faster. Forget my shorts. Nira was snuffling like a torn accordion. The thing was right in front of me. I inhaled and tried to ignore the scratching sounds. The thing was at the wall. It smelled like a wet haystack. It smelled like a moldy rug. It smelled like leaves in a dead fountain. That’s when it began to dawn on me. Yes friend, the dawning was starting to happen. It was moving from my nose to the richly folded and tiny nautilus of my brain’s odor center. The odor brain knew what was going on but the cross circuits from the scent district to the conning tower were out of shape. Yes the dawning was taking too long. Wet haystack, clogged aqueduct–what “was” that scrabbling thing?  All the important words are ancient.

It so happens I know the Old English word for “the thing” that Nira and I were smelling. You can look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary if you wish. The word is out of use these days.

Yes my friend we, man and dog were smelling a “fud” –a rabbit’s rectum.

Getting out of the bushes was harder than getting in. Nira didn’t help. She was undergoing some kind of transfiguration and I left her to it.

I staggered to my feet. My Neanderthal Man’s nose was getting reacquainted with the post-modern language center. 

I owe it all to my dog.

I shall take thought for this canine-centric exercise anon.

S.K.