Going To Ghana

Sunday Morning

2010-12-19T13:01:00.000Z

It's Sunday morning at my parents' house in Windsor, where I'm living until returning to Ghana next year February. It's early winter in Maine, you can see the sky through the skeleton branches of the maples and poplars in the front yard. The leaves have all fallen into a crunchy brown mass around the base of the trees. About half the yard is white under an inch of snow, and the wild turkeys are roaming around the neighborhood. My Dad has set up a kitchen computer, and I hang out here with a cup of coffee in the mornings. Mom is making pumpkin pie filling with the same white plastic food processor we've had since I was a kid.

I got home on Thursday after more than two years in West Africa, and all I can say is that I highly recommend the experience of going away for a really long time and then coming back. I'm still a little fatigued from the abrupt jump in time zones, sleep doesn't feel restful, but that feeling is receding. It hasn't quite been three days yet, and I'm still rebooting my physiology, although the readjustment has been smoother and much less disorienting than I'd expected.

I packed my things from Ghana into an old trunk yesterday. A lot of them are holiday gifts for family and friends (kente cloth), some I'll be taking back in February (leather sandals), but others are keepsakes from a part of my life that's now closed. My cutlass, funeral cloth, and notebooks are relics and memories, they stay in the trunk. I'm planning on going back, but in a different capacity, and the two years as a rural, isolated, agriculture volunteer are finished. The friends and relationships are still there, but it's never going to be like that again. That may be why coming home has been relatively easy, it's more of a bridge between two periods rather than beginning a new one here. It's an interlude rather than a chapter. Still, it's incredible to find things I'd forgotten about from my life in Portland before Peace Corps. Pulling on an old Rogue's Gallery shirt feels a lot like picking up my cutlass, like conjuring up another time.

I got off the plane from Accra in Washington, D.C. and the first thing I felt was the cold. I've been cold in Ghana; falling asleep without a sheet during harmattan season when it gets a little brisk at night, in a hotel room when an air conditioner goes crazy and you wake up with chattering teeth, and even the fever chills from malaria. All of these things are cold. But they're not like the clear, complete cold of winter air. That's an instantly recognizable sensation, as distinctive as the lush, closeness of tropical warmth that hits you like a wall when arriving in the tropics. I've missed the cold, and coming back to it was just as relieving and refreshing as I'd imagined and hoped. It was snowing in Washington when I was boarding the plane to Portland, and I pulled my old insulated EMS hoodie tighter, savoring the wind and snow and cold. I love the cold, although my parents' house is a classic Maine house, difficult to heat, and expensive, so we kind of don't. I find myself unironically pulling on my fugu, a kind of long cotton smock from northern Ghana and a gift from the Chiefs in my town, in the mornings. With a long-sleeve shirt and a pair of thick socks, I'm comfortable.

The plane from Washington flew in over South Portland, over the lighthouses and Casco Bay, and then over the marina and the SMCC campus. My family and Sarah met me at the airport, and we drove through Portland, through Stroudwater and then across the city to Washington Avenue passing the Back Bay. Maine is even more beautiful than I'd remembered, and considering how much I've thought about home at times, that's saying something. I was worried that my memories were embellished, and that I'd come back and feel unsatisfied. Not a problem. Do you know that kind of blue-grey winter light that colors everything in the morning and the later afternoon this time of year? Does not exist in West Africa. Not that it should, but I'm just saying. West Africa has its own kinds of local light.

I haven't talked to very many people yet, taking this whole return kind of slow, but so far the normalcy has been the strangest thing. So far, so far, no crazy disconcerting, disorienting, through-the-looking-glass strangeness. Just the occasional moment of lightheadedness, when everything seems a little bit surreal for a minute. I was talking to my Dad about it yesterday, and I feel like the normalcy of coming home is a product of adapting, slowly and incompletely, to Ghana. My life in Ghana does not seem strange after coming home to Maine, but rather its own normalcy that exists elsewhere. Maine does not seem unnatural after living in Ghana, but has its own normalcy that, for me, was just put on hold for a little while. I'm not sure how well this feeling comes across, but it's an incredibly comforting, relieving, and justifying sense. I didn't lose anything by going away.

The luxury of life in the U.S. is immediately apparent, but it's the little things that strike you, rather than the cars, buildings, and built environment (i.e. Ghana has one modern bridge, there are three in Augusta alone). My parents' house doesn't seem so incredible, although it's a nice house, but the fact that my Dad has filled it with photos seems amazing. Mom has pinned up all his rejected prints over a couch, and the idea that here an unplanned collage of irregular prints like that is unremarkable...there, moment of lightheadedness. We were out at Barnes and Noble in Augusta last night, and the parking lot full of cars didn't seem weird, but picking up a Kindle or a Nook e-reader? Or, and this is my favorite, thinking that I'd like to read a particular book, and then going over to shelf and finding that particular book. These are amazing things.

That Sunday morning feeling is starting to slip away, and we're headed over to L.L. Bean to get some boots (boots, for the snow), so it's time to go. I needed a few days to get into the rhythm of life here, but now I really am back and for a relatively short time. I'm split time-wise between Windsor and Portland, and traveling for a few weeks to Texas in January to see Hannah and family in Florida, but I hope to see you (whoever you may be). Figuring out the phones soon, but Internet/Gmail/Facebook are constantly available again, and that's nice too.

Take it easy

An Abrupt Change of Plans

2010-11-24T23:33:00.000Z

Hey, so here's how it is: An opportunity has come along, at the very end of my service, to pull together an agricultural program for Peace Corps focused on the cashew crop. It's a nice piece of work, and I'd really enjoy doing it. If all goes according to plan, and that's not 100% sure, I'll be flying home December 15 and returning to Ghana sometime in late February. I'll be working to pull together a program of agricultural skills, small-scale processing projects, and business skills for PCVs and farmers in cashew growing communities. I don't love the idea of being away for another year, but in all honesty it just sounded like too much fun to pass up. But, in the short term, I'm coming home, got the plane tickets and everything. December 16th I'll be back in Maine : )

Movies in West Africa, II

2010-10-30T06:44:00.001Z

I bought this one the other day. Haven't had a chance to watch it yet, they're VCDs not DVDs so I have to find someone with a local deck, but the guy who sold it to me either acted in the film or worked on the set "getting metal to build the cyborg."

...and

I should probably add that "Ninja" has become a sort of label here, a miscellaneous piece of media culture that people in Ghana have picked up. It still means what you think it means, the ads for Ninja Home Security have a picture of a guy dressed in a black face mask, but there's also a Ninja Coffee Whiskey, etc. I was at a festival one time where a banner proclaimed the upcoming "Ninja Coffee Whiskey Fiesta Party!"

The whole thing is pretty funny, but I don't mean to make fun, if that strange distinction makes any sense. When I was a kid I used to be into all of these American movies from the 1970's that randomly picked up the idea of a ninja from Japan and pretty much ran with it (see "American Ninja"). There's a James Bond film from the '80s (possibly "You Only Live Twice") where Bond and a gang of ninjas attack the enemy base. There's nothing different about how the word ninja, or any number of other random things like the idea of a killer cyborg, gets picked up in Ghana.

Ghanaian/Nigerian films have their own stock characters, they just aren't well known outside Anglophone West Africa. The most common one, and I'm genuinely not playing this for laughs, is the magical preacher who can supernaturally flash onto the screen (keep in mind budgets are low; you turn off the camera, he steps into the frame, you turn on the camera) and banish evil spirits or prevent something bad from happening. He's not necessarily a character in the film, more of a representation of the power of faith. Everyone understands the scene where a woman tormented by spirits or about to be attacked yells "Jesus!" and, shazam, magical preacher. It's understood in exactly the same way that if you see a red-eyed robot lurching toward the camera it's clearly evil, unstoppable and out to kill the main character.

I find Ghanaian movie culture hilarious, but speaking as a person who just bought a bootleg DVD of Predator 3 and has been known to scream "Get to the chopper!" at people taking too long to get into my car, not any sillier than my own. This is their golden age; when budgets are low, production equipment is accessible, demand for movies is high, and everyone is on a relatively equal playing field.

Togo, Benin, Onwards

2010-09-12T10:08:00.000Z

Hey,

So on the heels of our close-of-service conference, I'm going to Togo and Benin for a little while. The phone will be off but I'll hit Facebook with some details and photos when we get back. The end of this Peace Corps thing is bitter-sweet. My official close-of-service date is December 1st, and depending on money I'm hoping to travel for six weeks or so across West Africa to Cape Verde and then catch a flight back.

Later,

-Sam

BEHOLD

2010-09-02T12:17:00.000Z

THIS IS A MOVIE POSTER!

Good News, Everyone

2010-08-15T15:36:00.000Z

Ah yes, how long has it been since I started something with a Dr. Farnsworth from Futurama reference? My friend John came to visit for a few weeks in July and, among other things, partially resurrected my stock of pop culture references that had fallen into disuse. It was like long slumbering parts of my brain switching on again. Conversation, another perspective, agreement, disagreement. Our travels had their challenges (Ghana strikes again), were at times pretty hilarious, and captured the flavor of life here well. For those of you who know John, I would encourage you to ask him about the ants. I'm lucky to have people in my life who'll travel this damn far to hang out.

The good news in question is that while preparing the proposal I had posted about last time, Peace Corps unexpectedly offered me the funds directly through another program, so we're off the hook as far as fundraising goes. I had been pulling together kind of a photo essay to distribute as fundraising propoganda, and it's a decent summary of what we've accomplished in Asiri in the last couple years, so I'll post that later on, but we're cool on money, which is a relief. If you're still interested in contributing to a Peace Corps project here's the general link to the Peace Corps Partnership Program where volunteers solicit funds to implement various community projects. For a lot of reasons these seem like pretty dark times (yeah, I feel it over here too), but the only way out of this shit is through it, and so I'd encourage you to look at what PCVs are getting done out there in the world and recapture a little bit of optimism.

I've, unfortunately on recent reflection, become kind of a psychopath in my criticism of the international aid and development community, but if anything challenges that skepticism it's seeing the work that PCVs do in their towns. Lack of money is usually not the only issue for the projects we try and help tackle, but to quote a volunteer from the early days (in a book called the "Peace Corps Reader" published in '68 and reflecting on the first five years) "At a certain point you cannot create capital where none exists." I'm lucky to be able to score some USAID money, but there are plenty of volunteers who have to work harder for the cash to get things rolling. I have some insight into the difficulties they are facing, and reading about what they're doing is inspiring.

Asking For Help

2010-06-26T12:04:00.001Z

Hey y'all,

The Peace Corps has something called the Peace Corps Partnership Program which is basically a system where people back home can contribute money online to volunteer projects. I wanted to give you a heads up that in the next several weeks (hopefully) I'll have one up attempting to raise funds for a piece of cashew processing machinery for a project we're working on in my town. Once Peace Corps has given me the green light on the proposal I'll put up a more substantial explanation about the project and how it ties into the work that we're doing, but if you have the means to put aside a few bucks in preparation I'd really appreciate it. Everything is tax deductible and whatnot. The request won't be for a huge amount, probably around $900 US dollars, but my Ghana life is beginning to wind down (5 months, wow...) so time is a factor. I know things are tough at home right now, but if $20 or $40 (more, of course, = wonderful) is a possibility it would help tremendously. Also, if you're part of a church or workplace giving group that might want to sponsor a small agricultural project in Africa, mind sounding them out? Like I said, more details to come, but I wanted to put this on your radar. We've done a lot of "projects" but this one has a different feel, it's in the spirit of a gift, an impossibly inadequate gift for everything I'm grateful for about the last two years.

Oh, and it's USA vs. Ghana tonight at 6pm. My loyalties are not even close to divided. Go USA!

Pineapples!

2010-06-08T12:23:00.000Z

Every once in a while I have these strange realizations about my life in Asiri here. For example, I may be the first white pineapple farmer in this part of Africa, or at least the first in a while, like since the British pulled out of my market town sometime in the first half of the 20th century. I think I’m probably the only foreigner to have seen some aspects of the traditional culture that are unique to this town. My sister and I may have been the first foreigners to enter the sacred caves, and Hannah may have been the first white woman to take shots of Schnapps with the Chief Linguist (the speaker for the Chief) when we poured libations for the local Gods.

But anyway, about the pineapples. I’ve been reflecting a lot on the last couple years lately (always dangerous) in preparation for the Big Decision, which is whether or not to stay for a third year. The last few months were a difficult stretch, Peace Corps seems to be a series of ups and downs, but we’re shifting back into the farming season and it’s a reminder of a lot that I enjoy about living in Ghana. Including pineapples, since every pineapple you eat in Ghana is the best pineapple you’ve ever had in your life. This time of year they’re fresh off a local farm and cost less than a dollar. Let me be clear: in May and June I make a serious attempt to eat my weight in pineapples.

Pineapples are also one of my favorite crops to plant, since they’re ridiculously easy to cultivate and increase the total amount of deliciousness in the world (an important tonic in these dark times). You can plant them in two ways: either by planting the top part of the fruit or by cutting a section of the rooted part that produces the fruit and transplanting. In either case you just need to strip the bottom few leaves away to expose the roots and then stick it into a piece of fertile ground.

Unfortunately, I did not get to eat most of the pineapples I planted because of a phenomenon peculiar to these parts: marauding gangs of children, armed with slingshots all Dennis the Menace style, who roam the bush stealing pineapples. I am not good with small kids, and I have a lot of Mr. Wilson moments when it’s all I can do not to actually shake my fist in the air while yelling the local equivalent of “You damn kids!” However, I don’t really mind about the pineapples. It’s just so cute.

One of my projects this year is planting a moringa and pineapple garden on a piece of land in front of my house that is unsuitable for other food crops because of the sheep. Pineapple leaves have a sharp, serrated edge coated with some kind of irritant that hurts like a bitch if it cuts you, so animals usually don’t mess with them. As to why the sheep don’t eat the moringa, I can only say that the sheep in my town are particularly stupid, even for sheep. In theory you could also, by continually pruning the trees, use the moringa leaves as green manure for the pineapples, since pineapples won’t produce fruit if the land isn’t fertile enough. But I’m mostly just doing this because I like pineapples, and I want to try propogating moringa from cuttings as opposed to planting seeds.

That said, I’m not going to get the chance to eat these pineapples either. Once the pineapple stalks get big they produce fruit once a year, and if you plant the tops they usually take 2-3 years to get big enough to produce fruit. I’m planting the tops of the pineapples I eat, and trying to buy some of the larger cuttings, but either way I’ll be gone from Asiri by the time they produce (if I stay in Ghana for a third year it won’t be in this town). However, one of my semi-regrets is that I’ve pretty much been a straight agriculture volunteer here, everything we’ve done (or, more accurately, tried to do and hope will work out) has been about agricultural income. I haven’t done much with the young people other than smile a lot, try out my Twi and generally be a goofy guy in the neighborhood. So this is my small gift to the children of Asiri, a field of pineapples with nobody paying attention.

Inshallah

2010-04-13T12:40:00.000Z

One of the problems with living an isolated life is that over time it gets progressively harder to express yourself. There's an impossible amount of context to everything I'd like to say about living in Ghana, and so after a while I find myself, on those rare days when a functioning Internet connection presents itself, checking the news, firing off one or two emails, and then jumping back into the Ghana life. Which is an odd, exhausting, and occasionally gratifying life.

I was on a tro-tro (van crammed full of people) a few days ago, it was relatively cool and comfortable and I was talking on the phone with a Muslim friend about some ongoing projects in Asiri. We were expressing some mutual frustration about people not coming through for us, and the conversation closed with laughter and us both repeating the phrase "Inshallah" which means "by God's will" in, I guess, Arabic. All I know is that the Muslims say it all the time. The Christian Twi speakers have a phrase with similar meaning, "Nyame adom" meaning "by God's grace" and I suspect that most of the languages spoken here have some similar equivalent.

(my session was just interrupted by a man, for no apparent reason, replacing the functioning mouse with a broken one, running off, and while waiting for a new one talking to a man in his 50's who has returned to secondary school)

We were saying "Inshallah" to punctuate a discussion of why, after a significant degree of time, trouble and expense on both our parts, the Chiefs in my town have repeatedly failed to plant the seeds that they requested we bring (along with technical training in nursery construction and transplanting). In a nutshell, along with the moringa we are, in theory, planting some indigenous timber species in Asiri as another kind of natural resource management. I'm psyched about it, but I have to hang back and just play the facilitator or else it will become this thing that we're doing because the white guy insists on it. Instead, I'm rolling with their enthusiasm (for timber trees and particular species that are relatively quick to mature), and trying to hook up Ghanaians encouraging tree planting projects like these with the Chiefs in my town (who control the land and also have the power to organize people for communal work projects), and greasing the wheels here and there by paying for transportation, offering the odd reminder that we're running out of goddamn time to nurse the trees before the dry season sets, and other little background jobs.

But I can't step in and do the work. I can help, but they've got to organize themselves to get this going. And, Nyame adom, they will. Planting woodlots in one village isn't going to change the world, but this is a type of natural resource management Ghanaians could very easily do, the way people manage woodlots in Maine for sustainable timber, and so I think it's worthwhile to try and introduce this idea into my community. But it highlights the uncertainty of everything that we're doing here. The story of the timber project is the story of every project; a mix of legitimate achievements, true collaboration with my Ghanaian friends, and hope.

There will be few concrete achievements in my rearview mirror when I leave Ghana. Most of what I do is foster connections between Ghanaians, the people (usually in urban areas) who are introducing new ideas, crops, or techniques and the farmers in my very rural area. The market for moringa, the timber trees, some possible projects with the local cashew crop, none of these things will be "finished" or even "working" when I leave. Because I'm not staying long term these projects are "sustainable" to the extent that the interested people carry them out and meet markets or other incentives to keep doing them. These things are, for the most part, beyond my control. So I just pray (and I mean that word genuinely, a clue to how much Ghana and Ghanaians have changed me) that our work leads to some positive, material benefit for my friends and my people here, Inshallah, to match the benefit to me, and everything I've learned. In all honesty it's not a comfortable feeling.

So, next time a funny post about how we might start raising turkeys, a warning that I'll be hitting you all up for money in the next couple months for either turkeys or a piece of cashew processing machinery, and my pathetic attempts at dating Ghanaian women (even more comical than at home).

Over and out, and I miss you all.

Team Techiman

2009-11-25T09:43:00.000Z

During my first year of service I had the good fortune to be about five hours away from a group of volunteers, more or less clustered around the city of Techiman. Things at site are going relatively well, and I think I can see a way clear through my second year, but that's largely due to the help I've gotten from them, both with projects and also just with the unique frustrations of living as an isolated American in Ghana. When I needed to hang out I'd bounce over to Techiman and see them, talk shop, talk life, drink, and laugh. My friends were in their second year of service when I started, and over the last couple months they've been packing up and drifting out of Ghana, making their way home by various routes. So here's to you, Techiman-fuo! Good friends, good volunteers, good people.

Teri talking to her counterpart Peter about HIV/AIDS work at Holy Family Hospital in Techiman

Chris (Johnny Cash style), Matt, and Erik - Bib Day in Techiman Market

The inestimable Mr. Will Bishop, my nearest neighbor, now traveling in Morocco

At the pito bar on Bib Day, Techiman Market. Greg ("Farm Manager") is in the striped bibs.

Erik and Chris commissioned a self-portrait

Mash-Up

2009-11-02T06:34:00.001Z

So, today I biked down the road to Goka, a slightly larger town than Asiri with a much better market. The moringa project (which I haven't written about in months, but it's going well) has spilled over into some of the surrounding towns, and I'm in Goka pretty regularly to touch base with people there. I dropped in at the school to greet some of the teachers and students who I'm friendly with (that's the Junior Secondary School Form 3 class), and since their English master wasn't around I stayed to teach a reading comprehension class. The topic of the reading comprehension essay they were working through, straight off page 14 in their textbook: The history of communism. A sample dialogue from class:

SAM: "Okay, do you have any questions about the sentence that Kwabena just
read?"
KWAME: [raises hand] "Sir."
SAM: "Yes, Kwame?"
KWAME: [stands up] "Sir, what is 'class system'?"
SAM: [sighs] "Uh...okay...you know how the King of the Ashantis is very,
very rich, but some people are very poor..."

And that's my day, busting down the road through the bush to try and find some relevant way of explaining to African kids what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels ("two German friends" in my version) could possibly mean to them. Ghana, a complicated place that is essentially built out of random pieces of colonial geographic heritage, is a mash-up of African culture, growing economic integration with the developed world, and a lot of hopeful imitation of institutions and practices from the U.S. and Europe. The mix of information and focus here is sometimes bizarre.

Ghana Gucci

2009-10-20T11:30:00.000Z

Hey y'all,

Thanks for the phone calls, texts, emails, and Facebook messages on my birthday. I really appreciate it. It's somewhat hilarious to read my last blog post and then reflect on the last six weeks where...well...things were pretty rough. You know how in every war movie there's that one guy who breaks during the fighting and runs away, endangering the rest of the platoon. Yeah, it's probably a good thing I never joined the Army. Anyway, the one-year anniversary (which for my group was September 30th) is a milestone that sneaks up on you with a lot of thoughts of home, might-have-beens, and generally a sense of "what the fuck am I doing here?" But it's OK. On the lighter side, one very common way people carry extra baggage around Ghana is in these commonly available tote bags, the "Ghana Gucci" as we call them, which are all similarly wonderful. I have another with Winnie the Pooh.

Photo Link 2

2009-07-15T17:44:00.001Z

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91686&id=532984766&l=ccc2b73ec4

Well, that took 8 hours. Now I'm going to a bar.

Chilling Out In Kumasi, Posting Photos

2009-07-15T11:15:00.000Z

So I'm spending the day in Kumasi, ostensibly to get some work done organizing a beekeeping training, but really for a single, solitary purpose: upload photos. I want you all to appreciate that this is literally an all day job, even with the relatively reliable internet of the KSO. Flickr wants my Yahoo Account info, which I don't remember, and Photobucket is down for maintenance, so I think they're going to be on Facebook. However, it looks like Facebook has added an "outsiders" access feature, so I'll post the URL on the blog.

As my Peace Corps life in Ghana becomes less something I'm enduring and more something I'm enjoying, it feels more important to share. This blog seems have become a way of maintaining what Malcolm Gladwell called in The Tipping Point "loose ties" with all y'all that I really care about a lot, but am not going to see very often for a while. I get random updates of what's going on in your lives, either by email or Facebook or whatever, and I want to trade you some context as well, so that later when we meet back up we can strengthen that loose tie again and comfortably catch up over a few beers.

So here's the first batch, they're all from our Pre-Service Training October to December 2008. There's a second batch of more recent ones I'll try to get up this afternoon, but just in case here's the first batch.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91640&id=532984766&l=9ff65e8592

So We Saw Obama

2009-07-12T14:33:00.000Z

And it was awesome.

We knew Obama was going to be in Ghana for a couple of days, it's huge news here, but didn't know if there was going to be any chance to see him. On Thursday we got a last minute call that if we could hustle ourselves down to Accra (for most of us that is a trip of significant length and expense) there would be an opportunity to be in the audience for some "brief remarks" as he was boarding Air Force One to return to the States. I didn't really know what to expect, but since I was planning on doing a little traveling anyway I thought, "Hey, get to see the President? Yeah!"

So I jumped on a tro Friday morning and endured a bone crushing twelve hour day (it's the rainy season and the roads are destroyed) traveling down to the Eastern Region, stayed with some friends, and the next morning came into Accra with them. I haven't been in Accra since my first few days in Ghana, almost 9 months ago, and it's difficult to describe what a completely different world it is from the Ghana I know. Accra is a developing, cosmopolitan, capital city, and it's a real city of two million working, consuming, studying, dealing, teaching people. The diversity of the work people do, the things that are available, etc is more like being in a city in the U.S. than it is like being in the rest of Ghana. To a certain extent, that's a slight exaggeration.

Anyway, we congregated at the Peace Corps office and it was reunion central. Most of the 150 strong current volunteers serving in the country came down, including most of the 40 from my group. Keep in mind these are my brothers and sisters that I haven't seen, in some cases, in 7 months since I left training (I don't often travel away from my site). We made our way over to the U.S. Embassy, picked up more people, and got on buses for Kotoka International Airport where Obama would be speaking on the tarmac. The current group of Peace Corps trainees came down and we got a chance to mingle with our incoming friends who are still centralized in the training community rather than dispersed throughout the country at their sites.

We finally get into the grounds and get ushered into the crowd of U.S. Embassy, USAID, and Ghanaian VIPs that are in front of the podium. And then it starts to hit me that the podium is close, that he's going to be like 25 feet in front of me, for real. We stand around talking and whatnot for a couple hours, and then as it starts to get dark the car pulls up and Presidents Obama and John Atta Mills (Ghana's currently serving leader) walk down to the carpet and up to the dual microphone podiums. The history of the moment started to hit me earlier in the day, that this was an African American President speaking to Africans, in Africa, for the first time (he'd addressed Parliament earlier in the day, but this was a true public address).

It was way cooler than I had expected, being in the presence of this person that, honestly, I've invested a big part of my hopes for some kind of a more equitable, fairer, more honest world. And he was right there, looking exactly like all the photos from the campaign, but...there. And then he began to talk and gave not one but TWO shout-outs to the Peace Corps volunteers. One thing about Peace Corps is that we work pretty independently, and don't necessarily have as much contact with our supervisors as you might expect. Everyone needs a pat on the back from time to time when they're doing something difficult, and to get a couple genuine words of thanks and encouragement from Barack Obama...well, that means a lot. We went crazy, of course.

It was cool that evening, and the mics were working very well, and his short speech came across as clear as a bell. He really is an amazing speaker in person, I'd never caught him live on the campaign trail, not just in terms of timbre and delivery, but in giving the words a sense of honesty and genuine feeling. Cuts right through my cynicism every time.

It was a very brief, ten minutes or so, address, but it didn't need to be longer. He talked about coming to Ghana, about visiting the castles at Cape Coast where many of the Africans sold into slavery were held before being transported to the West. As I mentioned, he gave solid recognition to the Peace Corps, always important, and then he talked a bit generally about the relationship between Africa and the United States. It was good, he didn't patronize, and he didn't talk about "aid" of which I've grown increasingly skeptical. He talked about the strength and possibility of African democracy and the growth of true civil society and the stability and commerce that can bring. And he talked about America being a partner in that kind of development. He spoke directly to young people in Ghana and Africa, and about their responsibilities to build the public and private institutions that will allow Africans to develop Africa, and for her people to share in that growth.

It was the right message. And then he said that if they would take on those responsibilities, America would be there to help. I believe him, because I think that Americans, despite our endless missteps and tendency to shut out the rest of the world in service to our own desires, are fundamentally a compassionate, generous people who want to see others succeed. For me it got a little personal at that point because lately I've really been changing a lot in my relationship with Ghana, becoming much more accepting of aspects of the culture that have been difficult, and becoming more comfortable living and working here. That's another story in of itself, but suffice to say some of the work I'm doing is exciting enough that I am considering (considering, we'll see how it goes) extending my service for a period of time if a couple of my projects turn out to have legs. Long story short, some of the moringa work is taking on a regional as well as local focus, and another agroforestry project doing natural fertility work with another tree species is taking off.

I like Ghana, I like Ghanians. Some parts are frustrating as hell, and I miss home, that will never change, but...I don't know. I move very comfortably through this culture, which has for the most part welcomed me with open arms. It's mainly something I think about to sort of try the idea on for size rather than a decision I'm making now, I'll reassess in a year, but it seems like a possibility at least. So when Barack Obama shouts out to the Peace Corps and says America will be there, that hits a part of me that loves the work we're trying to do in my community (no guarantees of success, that goes for granted), and it's like...yeah. I think we will be, and maybe if I can help I'll be around a little longer than I originally thought.

Peace out my friends.

Hot Pepper Soup

2009-06-02T17:10:00.000Z

All right, so two things are apparent after six months at my site. First; my life here is in many respects best described as a hilarious cartoon. Second; I am an idiot, thus providing frequent comedy for said cartoon. With that introduction, please enjoy a brief, all too common, snippet of my life in Ghana.

I do a fair amount of labor here, certainly nothing like the amount done by the average Ghanaian, but more than I did back home. The farm is coming up quite well, but that has meant hoeing dirt into hills for the yam mounds, chopping weeds with my cutlass, and punching holes in the ground to transplant my trees. In addition, there are other types of work that I try to help out with when I see people doing them, like shelling ground nuts or corn kernels, the kinds of activities that are rough on the hands when you do them for a while. What I'm trying to say is that often I'll get finished and my hands will be pretty ripped up. They callous over time, but its amazing how many different places on your hands can get rubbed raw, thanks to my progressively growing collection of farm tools.

I eat dinner in the evenings with my counterpart's family, or sometimes with friends in my town. In my area, people typically eat either boiled yams (ampesie) or pounded yam dough (fufu) dipped in a flavorful stew for their meals. The flavor comes from vegetables, small meat, seasonings, and hot peppers. Lots of hot peppers.

So I get finished with the day's work, whatever that happens to be, exhausted from the sun and the work, and sit down gratefully to a bowl of fufu and stew. Tear off a piece of fufu, dip it into the soup, and hurriedly shove it into my mouth blinking back tears. Because people in Ghana eat with their hands, no cutlery, and as the peppers in the stew begin to work their magic on my ripped up fingers and palms I'll usually be silently yelling something along the lines of:

"Why must everything in this country involve me being in agonizing pain?"

A Miraculous Tree

2009-05-12T11:04:00.002Z

Hey,

So there's a new internet cafe in one of the market towns closest to me, and so far it's pretty chill. Hopefully this will herald a new age of connectivity. Given that the internets are humming this morning, it's probably about time to talk about what I actually do in Asiri with regards to Peace Corps projects.

It's really easy to shy away from writing about my projects here, because any description inevitably makes them sound tidy and well-defined. They're not. My role here, at least on paper, is to live in this rural Ghanaian community, identify groups of people interested in small scale income generation and "agroforestry" interventions, and support the development of these projects. That's a bloodless description, disregarding the shock of entering an entirely new culture, the emotional highs and lows, the scrambling for resources, the struggle to find interested people, and the hope that difficult projects will bear fruit and provide some lasting benefit. There's absolutely no guarantee of success, it is perfectly plausible to leave here after a couple years with very, very little that's tangible or material to show for your time.

That said, it's coming up on five months at my site and I actually do, surprisingly, have something to report, I've become Crop Introduction Guy for a multipurpose tree called Moringa oleifera. When I was talking to my Dad about it he used the word "catalyze" and that's probably the right one to use. This project started with a few conversations between me and my counterpart, sort of my main contact in Asiri, a very experienced cocoa and cashew farmer named Barnabas. I introduced him to the crop, we talked about its use (more on that below), and about different possibilities. He in turn started talking to the farmers and looking at these possibilities through the lens of their needs, mainly for a diversification of agricultural income, and we started holding meetings for interested folks. I continue to serve as a source for seeds, a resource on basic (very basic) planting information, and when our trees are mature on basic processing. It's three-way communication between the farmers who are planting it, me, and the local Ministry of Food and Agricultura (MOFA) extension agent who has helped a lot with integrating moringa into the existing system of agriculture (which I'm just learning).

The Wikipedia article I linked to above has a lot of decent information, but it somehow manages to miss the whole damn point. Moringa is, to use the technical term, fucking incredible. It's a fast growing tree that isn't too picky about soil because it drops a taproot several feet down to harvest nutrients and water from the subsoil, meaning you can plant it in otherwise marginal land. Although there are a wide variety of edible parts to the tree, and medicinal uses of the non-edible parts, the most dramatic benefit is that it accumulates very high amounts of vitamins, minerals, and proteins in the leaves. In addition to being a great fresh vegetable, the leaves can be dried to a powder that is 27% protein by weight, and it's both storable and transportable. The leaves and leaf powder deliver complete protein, all essential amino acids represented, as well as Calcium, Copper, Iron, Potassium, Magnesium, Selenium, Zinc, and Vitamins A, C, and E. It's everything you need to raise a healthy little kid growing on a tree, and by adding a soupspoon of the dried leaf powder to a child's portion of stew you're boosting tremendously their intake of the vitamins, minerals, and proteins and providing an important hedge against malnutrition.

But even here I'm falling into a sort of easy narrative: I learned about this great thing, we talked about it and decided to grow it in the community, now we all have this great thing. That's not even remotely close to how it developed. First of all, people are interested in growing moringa because it has potential as a cash crop, not as a source of expanded nutrition. And that's perfectly reasonable, that's what they told me from day one: "We need more ways to make money from farming." And they drove our approach to this project from a cash crop perspective; most Peace Corps work with moringa focuses on small plantings for individual families, but since we were trying to work at a larger scale our main challenge was finding a bulk supply of seeds, which we eventually sourced from another Peace Corps Volunteer's project in northeastern Ghana. And even telling it like this is ignoring all the background context to working with moringa in Ghana, the people who were lying to farmers and selling seeds at prices that were simply exploitative, taking advantage of people's desperation to increase their agricultural income (this resulted in one of my best stories from Ghana so far, my Hardy Boys-esque run-in with the guy my sister dubbed the "unscrupulous local official" who could have been a stock character from a boys' own adventure book).

And that reminds me that I'm ignoring the cast of characters. In addition to Barnabas, my counterpart, there's Augustan, one of the district's best farmers who planted a little moringa last year but was stymied by the high cost of seeds. Abraham is the MOFA agent who comes to our meetings and filters the basic planting information that we have through the lens of someone knowledgable about local agriculture. Then there's Techi, a real big dude who whales on the gon-gon, the traditional bell, to announce that yes, we're having a meeting tonight, Nana Badu, the traditional authority (he is one of the sub-chiefs in Asiri) in our part of town, who embodies the structure of this village community, Gladys, a really awesome farmer who helped me get set up planting pineapples on my farm...And so on and so on. They're doing the work, and they feel the consequences, both positive and negative. I'm just some guy who shows up, talks a little bit, and can help getting seeds.

Just a couple of weeks we found out that a company is opening up operations in our market town to buy moringa. This is huge, we have a buyer. Even huger, it's a Ghanaian company. Yet another word of explanation is necessary. One of the reasons Ghana doesn't get all it could from its agriculture is that the big cash crops are processed out of the country; cocoa in Europe and cashew in Asia. So all those value added steps of taking a bean and processing, packaging, and selling it don't directly benefit Ghanaians, they benefit other deserving people, but not Ghanaians. This company does its processing in Ghana's Western Region, and exports from Ghana to developed countries, potentially capturing more of the money domestically.

Moringa trees start producing leaves and seeds in the first year, but they really take about three years to mature. We're planting our moringa seeds now, and the first little green shoots have started to come up. The project isn't finished, because now that we're growing it, and now that we have a buyer, it's important for people to know how to process and eat moringa themselves, so that they can directly benefit from their trees and sell whatever they have in excess.

So that's my first project...anxiously uncertain...mindblowingly frustrating...but of all the things I do in Peace Corps this might be the best. Time's up, peace out.

Interlude: Malaria

2009-05-04T18:07:00.000Z

So I got malaria a week or so ago. In point of fact I don’t know whether there were any P. Falciparum or P. Vivax crawling around my red blood cells, but at the very least it was a bad fever with most of the telling symptoms. I think a lot of us who are interested in the role of science in development keep abreast of the various scientific and economic happenings in the struggle to control malaria, but those of us in the developed world usually have at best an abstract sense of what malaria is.

Malaria hurts.

It’s a cyclical fever, and that part isn’t pleasant, and the parasite can cause lasting damage to the liver, which is scary, and it can kill, particularly children, which is merciless, but it hurts. I can only self report anecdotally, and as a foreigner being exposed for the first time during adulthood, but I’ll always remember waking up with that pain in my muscles whilst shaking from the chills.

Luckily, and I’m much more aware now of just how luckily, as a member of the Peace Corps I have the right medications and someone to call to guide me through it. God Bless the Peace Corps Medical Officer, who is amazing, and Novartis Pharmaceuticals I say.

An Agricultural Life

2009-03-14T13:33:00.000Z

Hey all,

The dry season is fading into the rainy season, slowly, here in Brong-Ahofa. The rain pounds out a hell of a rhythm on the tin ceiling of my home, but the morning after the storm-when the dry, cracked ground has transformed into loose, black soil-is magic. The storms themselves are pretty magical as well, Africa does not mess around when it comes to lightning. You get proper lightning here, giant arcs of incandescent light like nothing I've ever seen before.

I wanted to let everyone know first of all that over the last month I've been able to clear some personal hurdles and my service in Ghana has become a lot more enjoyable. It's still hard, don't get me wrong, and I don't think about the whole two-year timeframe very much, it's too big to mentally swallow, but things are better than they've been. That's a combination of the projects beginning to take shape, learning more and integrating better into my Ghanaian home, and also really starting to love this part of Ghana. It's like anything else, sometimes it can be easier to care for a small, familiar region instead of a big, slightly abstract thing like a state or a country. I like Ghana, don't get me wrong, but I love Brong-Ahofa. It's beautiful, and it's beautiful in different ways in different places, from the huge rock faces outside of Techiman to the cashew and teak plantations in my, northwestern part of B-A.

I've said before that B-A is a largely agricultural region. Most of the people here are farmers, and even those with some other job tend to have farms that they work on the weekends. Since I have a growing interest in agriculture, farming has been the thing that allows me to talk to people, enter into their lives, learn from their experience, and share, in a small way, some things I've learned from Peace Corps. My formal Peace Corps projects are rolling, and I promise to write more about them in detail next time, but progress is slow, and you've got to find your own way to be here, your own work to do, every day, that lets you just be in this community long enough for those little bits of progress-a conversation with someone knowledgeable, a connection, discovering an interest in a particular project, etc.-sort of coalesce around you. It's not that it's passive, you have to very actively pursue these wisps of progress and sort of snatch them out of the air, but you've got to be there to catch them. And since this process is taking place on a long timeline, what are you going to do so that people know you, know who you are, and that you in some small way know them?

Different volunteers find different answers to that question. Some of my colleagues are working in clinics, others in schools, others doing a mixture of things. My answer has been to join in my community's agricultural life, to practice what we learned in Peace Corps training and more importantly learn from my Ghanaian hosts and my Ghanaian friends. I like that it makes Peace Corps more of an exchange. Yeah, I'm here to "help" but they're teaching me how to farm. Some days I go with friends to their farmland, and learn how to dig last year's yams out of the mounds with the hoe, how to tie next year's seed yams to bamboo racks so they won't be spoiled by moisture and insects lying on the ground, and how to use a machete to clear woody brush from fallow land in preparation for the coming season.

At my house I've fenced a small garden area where my compost pile is humming away producing black soil, and seed beds with three hundred leucaena tree seedlings are quietly growing under shade in preparation for transplantation sometime in April. More on that next time. I've got sturdy cassia siamea growing in bags to plant around my house for shade, although they won't reach sufficient height until long after I'm gone. Since most of the land around my house is unusable thanks to a rampaging herd of uncooperative sheep that destroy everything, I've also got some thorny acacia nilotica trees coming up beautifully, take that you ravenous bastards. I've also got some broad leafed albizia lebbek and delicate acacia mangium growing, for no better reason than that they're beautiful saplings and I want to see what they look like as they mature. I'm clearing the rest of the land in the garden area for vegetable seedlings once the rain comes in earnest at the end of March.

I also have a farm, albeit a very small one, out in the bush some distance from my house, as well as from the sheep. It's a beautiful place, under the shadow of a huge old mango tree that is heavy with fruit. The farmers tell me they'll ripen in mid-April, and I'm going to eat myself sick on them. This I have planned. Right now we're just clearing the brush from my small plot, in preparation for burning it to kill the weeds and some kind of small nematode worm that I'm told is resident in the soil. My friend Julius is farming a plot to one side, and my counterpart's son on another, and I'm going to learn from them how to plant the yams that are the staple crop of Brong-Ahofa, as well as some green vegetables and hot peppers to diversify my diet a little bit.

Alongside learning the basics of this agricultural work, I've also been traveling more within the region, visiting my Peace Corps neighbors to learn about their projects, get technical help, and attend a couple administrative meetings. It's good, there are very few volunteers in Brong-Ahofa, I don't have the most remote site in Ghana, but am among the most remote in terms of distance from cities and isolation from other volunteers. That said, there is a social network of people here, some of whom are from my training group and others who are new friends. Meeting them, seeing their communities, and becoming more familiar with the regional centers of Sunyanni and Techiman has made me more appreciative of this area.

OK, next time: details on what the hell I'm actually doing here, project wise. We are planting a new kind of fast-growing tree that has potential as a cash crop and as a source of balanced nutrition, pulling together a mushroom growing cooperative, and potentially getting some PC funding to help establish a computer center for the schools in Asiri and surrounding towns. It's cool. The people here are cool, the place is cool, the work is cool. It's still difficult as hell but right now things are going all right. Oh yeah, and I figured out the postal system, so send me your postal address and I'll write you a letter! Got a lot of time in the evenings while watching the lightning storms to write.

The Rest Of A Day In The Life Of...

2009-02-02T12:53:00.000Z

...man the infrastructure for internet is just collapsing around here. By the way, I'm getting online so much because I'm taking a sort of weekend off to travel to the Peace Corp's Kumasi sub office and restock on vital food, books, and pick up my mail.

Anyway, so lunch usually consists of ampassee (boiled yam slices dipped in a variety of soups prepared using palm oil, garden eggs, tomatoes, fish, okra, and a couple other staples), gari foto (gari is dried, lightly fermented cassava grits and gari foto is reconstituted gari fried up with canned fish a revolving cast of the same staples), or something a little more exotic like curried rice (although after making the curried rice there's nothing to do but add tomatoes, okra, onions, fish, etc.). I really enjoy the cooking, and attempting to make some Ghanaian dishes as well as Ghana-ified Western cooking. Things end up tasting pretty similar because, no matter how you slice it, there are basically only four or five ingredients available all the time here. Fruit is seasonal, and mango season is fast approaching, when we will eat mangos until we're sick. Pawpaw season is winding down, when I ate pawpaws until I was sick. Literally.

After lunch I generally take a couple hours and chill out, listen to my iPod, read, or whatever. That's partly because I need the rest, partly because it's just too damn hot to do anything (the town shuts down, changing from a sort of familiar bustling small town to something abandoned out of a zombie movie or a western). One of the really interesting things about Peace Corps is that your media spigot is turned down to a trickle, and the lack of regular access to books, music, news, etc. has changed my relationship to media. For example: Neil Young's "After the Goldrush" is not, in fact, typical '70s music that sounds exactly like every other folk LP from that time period, but a rich goldmine for repeated listening. Less sarcastically, last summer I hung out with my sister Hannah, and she would regularly bring up references to literature in our conversation that would elucidate exactly what we were discussing. I admired that, and wanted to emulate her. It's easier to do here, where the five books you've got on your shelf may need to last a couple months. So I read more slowly, especially in the afternoon, and more deeply. Tolstoy...my God, Tolstoy. I don't know that I've ever read books more relevant to my life than Tolstoy's.

--Brief digression: I met up with my friend Will in Sunyanni a few days ago. We are each other's closest neighbors out in very rural Brong-Ahofa, so we've been profitably trading books back in forth when we meet up at the local markets. Recently I passed him "War and Peace" (I also have his copy of "Anna Karenina" at home) and we were walking through Sunyanni on the way to get a beer talking about life in Peace Corps, missing friends, and about how the ending to Anna Karenina caught us off guard and the qualities of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, the protagonist of War and Peace. It was a wonderful moment.--

Patience usually hangs out inside during the afternoon, since it's usually a good bit cooler inside my room than outside, since we don't have any trees to give natural shade. It starts to cool down around four, and activity in Asiri begins to pick up again. People start walking around, you hear noise coming from the other houses. During this time of the day I usually go out and do a little bit of visiting. In Ghana, the way you show that other people are a valuable part of your life is to go visit them, not for any particular reason or with any particular design, you just show up. I'm not that good at it, it trips my internal wire for just about every ingrained bit of private, reticent New England culture. But I try. Right now there's just a few people I know well, but it's cool. After the heat is passed the garden also needs to be watered again, you can't water it during the full sun because the moisture just evaporates so quickly.

All of this generally takes me up until the early evening, when it mercifully cools down in earnest. For dinner I either eat with my friends Julius and Naomi, which is great, or my counterpart's family sends over a dish of what they are having. I feel awkward accepting it, there's another cultural tripwire about egalitarianism when it comes to meals, but they have assured me again, and again, that they don't mind pounding an extra portion of fufu (an amazingly unique way of eating starches, you cook them, and then pound them until they make a dense ball, then pinch off pieces and dip it into spicy soups). Ghanaians practice a culture of generosity when it comes to food, and in the end I'm glad to partake. It's helped me acclimate almost completely to Ghanaian food, and also makes sure that I eat at least one nutritionally balanced meal a day, which can get a little tricky here when you don't really know the right "pairings" (i.e. rice and beans, etc) for ingredients.

This account of my day is leaving out a lot; mainly a lot of impromptu conversations with my counterpart Mr. Barnabas when he comes over to use the office, with people who come by my house to visit me, with the neighborhood kids, etc. But if you spice everything I've written with those random daily interactions, there you go, that's my day.

After dinner it's dark, and I usually head inside to write in my journal, listen to my iPod, or most frequently listen to the BBC, which broadcasts an African news hour at 7pm and a global news hour at 8pm. Just puttering around the house, playing with the cat, occasionally doing any other work that needs doing, and thinking a lot about my projects in the community, which I'll try to talk about later. We've got a couple ideas rolling now, although there are a lot of uncertainties to deal with.

The reason I wanted to write out such a detailed description of my day is that this is what I do to keep myself in Asiri, mentally and physically, while in a sense waiting for bits and pieces of the projects to accrue. I don't mean to say that it's passive, but so much of my work here involves a random conversation with someone who is already test growing a new type of tree species, or learning that this community used to grow mushrooms commercially until the building collapsed in a storm, etc. So I do the gardening stuff, learn about how to farm, eat, talk to people, and gradually (or so it seems right now, cross your fingers) the projects begin to take shape. At least that's the way I'm thinking about it right now.

A Morning In The Life Of...

2009-01-31T19:06:00.000Z

I wake up at 5:30, usually a few minutes before the wristwatch that I leave on a table near my bed for this sole purpose starts to ring its alarm. It's still very dark outside, although the stars are no longer visible, and I wrap the two-yard that I use for a bedsheet around my shoulders to ward off the unexpected coolness of the air. It actually gets cold at night during this part of the dry season, the Harmattan season when dusty winds from the Sahara blow fine grit everywhere and although the days are hot there is almost no humidity. The heat doesn't stay in the air, and when the sun goes down it immediately starts to cool down. By morning it's mildly chilly, in a pleasant way, although Ghanaians think I'm insane for walking around shirtless in this weather. That's okay, I think they're crazy for wearing autumn parkas during the same.

I stumble outside, cursing as I almost trip over my kitten, Patience, who invariably hangs out by the door waiting to come inside in the morning. She's tired from hunting in the grass in front of my house during the night and wants to warm up from the chill. I wrap the two-yard a little tighter and unlock the door to my kitchen, a concrete room outside the house, turn on the propane stove and boil some water for terrible Nescafe instant coffee. Afterwards I stumble back into the house and sit down with Patience for an hour or so to read or think.

I generally do about an hour's worth of exercises after the sun comes up but before the heat sets in. My abdominals are in better shape than before I left, but it's too bad about losing that fifteen pounds of muscle from my chest and arms. I'm rocking a kind of muscular scarecrow look.

After exercising I usually suit up and head downtown to get some breakfast and say hello to some of my acquaintances in town. It's good to be visible, to walk around and try out my terrible Twi. It's about a ten minute walk from the Habitat for Humanity community to the lorry station in the town proper where I can get some coco (a hot, sugary porridge made from fermented corn) from my coco lady or some cosi (a bean dough fried in vegetable oil) from Cynthia the cosi lady and spicy rice from Medelliana. I walk back the way I came and stop into Akosua's store to get the one or two Cedis worth of odds and ends I generally need in order to cook for the day. Akosua is the mother of my neighbor Naomi, who is married to my friend Julius who is teaching me a little bit about how to farm yams.

After eating I grab a bucket bath and start working. I have some tree seedlings growing, as well as the start of a decent compost pile and some vetiver grass rows. Everything needs water during the Harmattan, and will twice a day until the rains come back in March or April. I do laundry if necessary, wash dishes, dig soil, update my notes about what I'm learning, anything to keep working. It gets real hot at about ten and will get progressively hotter until around 4pm. I try to work until around noon, and then start making lunch...

The Final Word On Mail

2009-01-31T18:35:00.000Z

Hi all,

Sorry for the long duration between postings. My site is in a very rural part of Ghana, and Internet availability is sparse at the best of times. And at the worst of times it's almost completely unavailable. There are two cafes within an hour of me, one at my market town of Sampa is having problems with their ISP and the other in a town called Berekum has unexpectedly closed.

I'm trying to check a month and a half's worth of email but did want to post a brief message about mail. I've got it straightened out, and it turns out the easiest thing for everybody is just to send mail (both packages and envelopes) to the Accra address:

Samuel Frankel
Peace Corps Volunteer
United States Peace Corps
P.O. Box 5796
Accra-North, Ghana

There is a fairly constant traffic between the Accra office and the Kumasi Sub Office where I have a mailbox and will generally be about once a month. I got a bunch of letters there today that I'm really, really looking forward to reading over a cup of coffee tomrrow morning. There isn't really any good local option for receiving mail in my area, although there are some post offices I can use to send mail so hopefully I can get some letters heading back to y'all.

Politics

2008-12-22T11:04:00.000Z

So, if you've heard about Ghana in the news lately (or a recent story in The Economist) it's most likely been due to the recent national elections. Ghana is being heavily scrutinized because it is (a) one of Africa's stable, multiparty democracies and (b) the last two national elections in Africa have been tragic. Kenya's descended into violence and Zimbabwe's the systematic repression of the opposition.

Ghana's political world is primarily divided between two major parties, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) which has been in power for the last 8 years, and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) which was in power for the eight years prior under Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings, who was both Ghana's last military ruler as well as it's first elected President. There are also a handfull of smaller parties, notably the Constitution People's Party (CPP) which plays a role sort of like the Green Party in the U.S. I don't have a firm grasp of what policy proposals the parties were offering, but my Ghanaian friend and language trainer who I used to talk politics with back in training was fed up with all of them for making unrealistic promises. And they can make some promises, because Ghana is developing a modest, newly discovered oil reserve that will give the next President some serious cash to play with, a few extra billion to fund some mixture of social programmes and development agendas.

Anecdotally, it looked to us like the NPP was going to walk away with this thing, but something seemed to happen in the last couple weeks before the election (on December 7th) and it got really, really close. The NDC was able to make up some of the ground that was lost on the basis of (I THINK, it is REALLY hard to discuss politics with people when you don't have much language in common) some kind of corruption or money management scandal. Ghana's constitution stipulates that the winning party must get 50% plus 1 of the available votes, and what ended up happening was that the CPP and other small parties like the Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) played a spoiler role and both the NPP and the NDC finished under 50% (with the NPP narrowly ahead).

The two major parties now proceed to a runoff election on December 28th. It's been real cool to be here during the election. It's a little bit more...spirited... than what happens in the states, but not all that different. We (Peace Corps) are being a little more cautious, so I won't be on the net much for the next couple weeks.

In closing...Allison could you please send me your email address? For some reason I can't find it....

Swearing-In

2008-12-19T12:27:00.000Z

I keep thinking that next time I'll really plan out the blog post ahead of time, really get what I want to say down on paper first, and then fine tune it when I get to the Internet cafe. But that ignores the reality of my access to the Internet here, which is fairly random.

So, it's been an eventful couple of weeks. First and foremost, our training ended, and with it our time in Kukuruntomi (the training community in the Eastern Region where we've been for the last three months). We were sworn in as full Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) by the American Ambassador to Ghana, Ambassador Teitlebaum, and met our new country director Mike Kaufman. I mean the word "sworn" literally, as the transition to full PCV involves an oath to the United States, specifically "to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic..." or something closely to that effect.

Swearing allegiance to a country is kind of a new experience for me. I mean, we've all said the Pledge of Allegiance a million times at school when we were kids, but it's just something that you say. I remember when I first went back to high schools to teach with the ScienceCorps, we were setting up our supplies and all of a sudden everyone was turning toward the crackling intercom and putting their hands over their hearts. It took me a minute to remember what was going on. Later on I developed a healthy skepticism toward the actions and intentions of the U.S. Government, as you do when you're young and involved in lefty politics, although for the most part I think I kept it above the sanity threshold.

I know a lot of my changing perspective on America reflects a sort of slow shift in my political assumptions over the last year, but being in Ghana has altered how I look at my country as well. I took the oath enthusiastically, because after a couple months here, getting to look at America from the outside, I am proud to say "Me firi America" when asked. Not that we do everything right, or that the last eight years haven't been a disaster. They have. And I'm not proud because of our badass military, although that certainly plays a large role in the stability of our country. I'm proud of our civil infrastructure, the way that we organize ourselves and our resources in a stable, relatively equitable way that allows for both tremendous opportunity and tremendous enjoyment of each day. The standard disclaimer applies: an endorsement of what we do well isn't saying there's no need for change. But I really miss being able to catch a bus, go downtown for a cup of coffee, and just live well in a way that isn't possible here.

Anyway, I'm running out of time again. I'm at site permanently now, and internet time is even scarcer. I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to sign on again, due to the elections in Ghana (and that deserves a real post) we can't travel much for the next few weeks.

I miss you all, and if I haven't replied to your email/facebook post/text message/etc. I haven't forgotten. I have a list.

Kayayoo

2008-12-03T12:29:00.000Z

One of the peculiarities of Twi, the language I'm learning, is that you indicate a small amount of anything (be it work, the size of a tomato, your ability to speak Twi) by adding "cackra" (small) or "cackra cackra" (small small) after the word. That translates pretty easily into English, so Ghanaian English contains innumerable references to "speaking small small Twi" or "Wait here small time" etc.

So, over the last couple weeks I've been doing some small small work (the whole introductory paragraph was just to explain that reference) helping one of our trainers put together a proposal. She is trying to address the problem of the "kayayoo" in Ghana. The kayayoo are young women who leave communities in economically distressed northern Ghana for urban areas in southern Ghana, where they work as porters moving heavy loads around by balancing them on their heads. It's very hard work, requiring an incredible amount of strength and balance, as I found out the day I tried to carry water back to my house on my head. As with mobile laborers everywhere, the kayayoo are heavily exploited for sex and money due to their lack of housing and social support in unfamiliar cities. At the same time, northern Ghana loses another chunk of it's school-aged youth, who are no longer the potentially educated workers that might contribute economically to the upper regions.

After making some suggestions on structure and organization for the proposal, and doing a touch of editing, I met one of the kayayoo in Kumasi last week. My counterpart from Asiri was helping me navigate the lorry station, and before I quite knew what was happening a girl was balancing my bag on her head and walking toward the next station (on the other side of town). She was in her late teens or early 20s, and had very distinctive tribal markings from Northern Ghana, although I don't know any details past that. When we got there they had a short argument about money, even I could tell she was asking quite a bit for moving a single bag, but in the context of what I'd learned from helping my trainer with the proposal it was hard to listen to my counterpart say "no" to her request. She walked away unhappy, and visibly sweating from the effort of carrying my bag in the hot sun.

Things, issues, and people do not say abstract here, they become real very fast. One could make some similar observations regarding different aspects of agriculture, environmental decay, etc. but that's another day.

This Is Really, Really Hard

2008-11-26T14:13:00.004Z

So, thanks to everyone who has posted notes of encouragement on the blog and on Facebook. I can't tell you how much I've appreciated it lately. I've felt like a bit of a fraud getting your votes of confidence though, since I've been struggling quite a bit during the last week.

I'm not going to lie, the site visit to Asiri was disappointing in some aspects, although I'm still hashing out which will be the real problems and which will be surmountable. First of all, I should say that Asiri is beautiful. The Habitat for Humanity community has planted cashew trees everywhere, mixed with stands of teak. Even as we approach the dry season (late November to early February) when there will be little rain, it's a green place...

...except for my house, which is actually a spare room (albeit a very nice room) in the local HFH office/building supply storage structure. In doing some kind of site work they cut down all the trees around it, which means it is hot as fuck with no natural shade during the day. For some reason they've also burned the ground around the place so it's situated in the middle of a sort of blackened wasteland with stumps of trees scattered around. HFH people show up pretty frequently to use the office or take things in and out of the storeroom, and the community definitely treats the building, very reasonably, as public space.

I'm also becoming increasingly worried about the role I'm expected to play in Asiri. I don't want to go into the details of how Habitat for Humanity works, but essentially these people need money to help pay for low cost/low interest mortgages. They don't need someone to show up and organize a reforestation project, a community nursery, or another community venture. What they need are realistic opportunities to make money, either in small income generating ventures or as employees of a larger concern. It's hard to overstate how ambiguous the effects of "development aid" are here. Facilities are built, function for a short time, and then are literally abandoned when funding stops or priorities change. I'll say it again in a different way: these people need access to markets (local, national, and in some instances international) and various kinds of training to establish viable businesses, not just charitable institutions. What I'm trying, badly, to say is that Peace Corps does a pretty good job of teaching environment volunteers how to organize community projects, but I don't think Asiri needs community projects, I think they need private enterprise. I don't intend for this to be the last word on the subject, just to say that it's not simple, and I'm not really sure how to proceed yet.

In a more general sense, I spent a lot of time over the last couple days just thinking "Can I do this for two years? Do I want to?" I don't have answers for either of those questions right now, and I don't think I'll find single answers either. I should make it clear that these are not problems with Asiri the community, whose people have been unfailingly generous and welcoming. It's a mix of concerns over whether I'll be able to support genuinely helpful projects here and about my own personal resiliency.

I'm not giving up yet, but a lot of the issues I'm dealing with here (from food to privacy to language to my job) are starting to pile up, and right now I don't have a good sense of how to start dealing with them.

So, it's hard. No one ever told me it would be easy, and I made the choice to come here. We'll see how this plays out.

Early Travels in Western Ghana

2008-11-16T13:51:00.000Z

I've been struggling with where to start to try and convey some small portion of my experiences in Ghana so far. And then it struck me that the best introduction might be some account of my first experiences traveling and exploring in Ghana outside the structured embrace that the Peace Corps provides during the first few weeks of training. I'd also like to talk about that trip (the "vision quest" where trainees independently visit a currently serving volunteer at their site for a few days) because my final placement has ended up being in the same area. On Wednesday I'll be returning to the same region, although a different town within it, to finally get a chance to see where I'll be living and working for the next two years.

We, a small group of trainees and currently serving volunteers, caught a tro-tro at the station in Accra, heading north to Kumasi, the regional capital of the Ashanti region and traditional seat of the Ashanti people. The tros are vans that, crammed full of people, are the backbone of Ghana's public transportation sector. They're hot, painful if you're in the fold-out jump seat over the wheel well, but once they get moving and the breeze starts coming in the windows they're heavenly. They're also cheap, and Peace Corps volunteers live like nearly everyone else in Ghana, hard-up for money and getting the squeeze from rapidly increasing transportation and food prices.

The market was urban Ghana in a nutshell. Lots of people, but relatively easy to find your way because if you ask any Ghanaian for help finding the right car they will go to great lengths to make sure you get there. People talk about this being the friendliest country in Africa, and there is some truth to that. The hawkers walk through the crowds, women wearing beautiful, colorful dresses of the local fabrics and carrying gigantic loads of food, items for sale, or water on their heads. Everywhere you hear the high pitched cry "Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiccce pure waaataah" and after a few minutes in the heat I flagged down a girl to buy a 500 mL plastic sachet of filtered water for 5 pesawas, about five cents. Water sachets are a big part of our lives here.

We got everyone onto the tro, and the heat melted away as we started to move. We traveled out of the Greater Accra region (Ghana is divided into ten regions that are the rough equivalent of states in the U.S.) into Ashanti, where some of our group left to continue heading northwards, and then westwards into Brong-Ahofa region. As we moved into Brong-Ahofa the climate and lanscape began to change from the lush, tropical humidity of Southern Ghana. Brong-Ahofa region forms a transitional belt between tropical southern Ghana and the dry, savannah conditions of northern Ghana. This is really two countries, a relatively urban, developing South and a much poorer, struggling North. The difference, at the root, is rainfall. Southern Ghana has two harvests, so small farmers (roughly 60% of Ghana's population) make that much more compared to their northern neighbors. Brong-Ahofa straddles that line.

Brong-Ahofa is beautiful. Everywhere we went there was a triple band of colors: bright blue sky, dark green forest, and red-orange soil. The village we stayed in was filled with big, shady teak and cashew trees, as well as a massive banyon in the center of town where funerals were conducted. The volunteer we were visiting had traveled with us from Accra, as he had been one of our trainers there. He works with a local Habitat for Humanity affiliate in his community. HFH works with the local farmers to improve housing conditions, and Will was working with interested members on income generating projects to help increase their incomes. Will also introduced us to "Ghanaian English," a slow, clipped diction that Peace Corps volunteers learn to speak. You have to learn it because although many people here speak English, they will not understand you if you speak "American" English. It's as much of a barrier as not understanding Twi, the other lingua franca among Ghana's more than SEVENTY spoken languages.

During the time we stayed at Will's site we took a trip to Sampa, his market town, to buy food and supplies for our stay. Sampa is literally on the border with the Ivory Coast, and in addition to the various market stalls there were a lot of soldiers from both Ghana and the United Nations in town as well. We can't travel to the Ivory Coast as Peace Corps volunteers, it blew up a decade or so back and hasn't settled back down yet. While in Sampa I was able to pick up a "two-yard" a piece of Ghanaian fabric that you can carry as a travel blanket, towel, headrest, curtain, sheet, or have made into a shirt. Comparisons to the place of the towel in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy are apropos.

During the day it's brutally hot here, but in Brong-Ahofa the heat doesn't stay in the air as humidity, so it's okay if you can find shade and it eases away in the evening as the sun goes down. We cooked food in the evenings and listened to iPods on a pair of tinny speakers that Omar, another trainee, had brought with him, and watched the lightning storms outside. Will was staying in a house that Habitat had constructed, and a small, comfortable concrete block house painted yellow that was a good size for him and his dog, Woro, who he had gotten in Ghana a while back. Will was doing a livestock project and a beekeeping project in his community, helping some interested people get started with supplies and training to keep goats (sort of on the Heifer International model of "passing one along") and keep bees, both of which represent modest but real wealth.

Well, I'm running out of Internet time so I'll have to wrap this up. A couple weeks after returning from the trip to Brong-Ahofa I found out that I'll be placed there, in another Habitat community, also working on income generating projects. Despite some concerns, I'm pretty happy about it, and it's a good fit for my interests and background. I'm going on a site visit in a few days, and will have a chance to see my house (yeah, I have a house now, go figure), get a feel from my community what they may be interested in doing, and generally meet and greet. I'll take a few pictures and post them when I get back.

Ghanaians Love Celine Dion

2008-11-13T13:40:00.000Z

Seriously. I never expected the soundtrack to my time in Ghana to be "My Heart Will Go On" (the theme from Titanic) but there you go. I was in an Internet cafe the other day when the proprietor started playing it and a bunch of young Ghanaian guys started singing along. Like a lot of my experiences here, it was both totally awesome and completely unexpected. Things like this happen a lot.

I've been trying to think of how best to describe my life in Ghana, and the hopelessness of taking on that task is immediately overwhelming. It's not just Ghana, it's Africa. It's not just Africa, it's the absence of everything familiar. And it's not just the absence of everything familiar, it's the replacement of all those familiar references with a panoply of colors, images, languages, and people.

Which is my way of saying "I'm working on it, give me some time to process."

Barack Obama

2008-11-10T12:50:00.000Z

We were in a small Catholic guesthouse in Wa, a city in the Upper West region of far northern Ghana, very nearly in Burkina Faso. We had asked all of our friends back home to call us when the results started coming in, and at around 3:00 a.m. our phones started blowing up with text messages and calls. We huddled in the dark in a small circle in the courtyard, a small group of environment trainees, yelling and giving each other high fives. I called my parents to celebrate the moment. In southern Ghana, the capital city of Accra went crazy. In Kenya, a national holiday was declared. Since then I have had so many conversations with Ghanaians about Barack Obama that I will hopefully write about in more detail later on. I've been realizing that part of what defines my experience in Africa is being here as Obama has been elected, and during his Presidency. What can I say, except that on January 20th President Barack Obama becomes my new boss!

A Long Delayed Post

2008-10-26T16:11:00.000Z

Hi everyone,

My apologies for the delay in posting. It looks like regular updates are going to have to wait until I get to my site in December. Long story short, we are in a training period right now and the Environment trainees, myself included, are in a very rural village that has no internet access, little phone reception, and transportation to larger towns is sparse. Combined with our language training, sector training, and the immensity of being transplanted all of sudden to West Africa, posting has been difficult.

Ghana is...amazing. I have a longer post I was able to write out on a borrowed computer that has some of my early impressions, will try to get that up soon.

I hope you're all well,

Sam

Bloggers, I Hardly Knew Ye

2008-09-20T01:32:00.000Z

I wish I could rhyme, in the hip hop sense of the word, so I could write a song in homage of all the blogs and various Internet authors, journalists, scientists, artists, and citizens whose mixture of ramblings makes up my morning. When I think of what I'm going to really miss, it's this scene: My day has just started, I'm sitting down at a computer with a piping hot cup of coffee, and checking the latest posts on [blog]. Thanks to the web, my days begin with a fresh dose of news, perspectives, new ideas, and celebrations of life's little things.

Utah Phillips (1935-2008)

2008-09-11T03:39:00.000Z

Utah Phillips died earlier this year. I was checking his Wikipedia page and instead of the familiar "May 15, 1935 - [blank]" there was a "May 23, 2008" filled in. I listened to a lot of Utah earlier in my life, when I held more radical ideas about politics and society than I do now, but after hearing of his passing I fired up "Fellow Workers" (one of the discs he recorded with Ani Difranco) and it remains fresh. More than a radical, Utah represented continuity with forgotten pieces of American history. He was sort of like a human version of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, providing a documentary link to interpretations of history and events that have fallen out of favor. You can agree or disagree with Utah's politics, and at this point I substantially disagree, but his recordings are powerful like Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle is powerful. Utah told the stories of American radicalism, from the perspective of the radicals, and connected those stories to contemporary struggles. However, using the word "radical" seems like misplaced emphasis. I think the best word to describe his music would be "history" and more specifically "the threads of history that connect us to the past."

This Is How We Gear Up, Gear Up

2008-09-01T03:09:00.000Z

In the process of pulling together the Peace Corps gear, I'll post another shot of the final pre-pack layout before leaving. Ironically the most difficult part of acquiring the necessary provisions has been deciding on "business casual" clothes. Shit, I haven't bought anything that doesn't say Carhartt, EMS, or Mountain Hardwear on the label for years. But you know who's there for me? That's right, L.L. Bean.

Once Again, Why I'm Voting Obama

2008-08-09T03:41:00.000Z

It probably doesn't come across, but I'm actually very critical of my support for Barack Obama. In fact, the longer the time I spend as "a supporter" the more I find to criticize in his policies. On the other hand, I also keep finding stuff I really, really like about his general approach to politics that makes me much more confidant in his ability to make good decisions as President. In the final analysis, I probably agree with 50-75% of his policies, but what really makes me enthusiastic is stuff like this: pushing back against what Paul Krugman accurately labeled the "know-nothingism" of the current Republican party. From Krugman's recent NYT Op-Ed:

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

I really, really wish Obama would run more advertisements highlighting this side of his political presentation:

Way to stay classy, Republicans

2008-08-03T19:29:00.000Z

I honestly wasn't convinced that the McCain campaign was trying to play the racial angle with the now infamous "juxtapose Barack Obama with two very white, female, and vapid celebrities" advertisement from last week, but after this latest web video I'm no longer sure. The web video entitled "Barack Obama Forgot Latin America" uses the premise that Obama's failure to mention a Latin American country in a list of countries during his speech in Berlin means...something? Here's the text, as printed on the McCain campaign website:

English Script For "Barack Obama Forgot Latin America" (WEB 1:00)

CHYRON: The World According To Barack Obama
BARACK OBAMA: Tonight I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen; a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.
CHYRON: But Entire Nations Were Forgotten!
BARACK OBAMA: France, Berlin, Hamburg, Britain, Kandahar, London, Rwanda, Iran, Bangladesh...
CHYRON: Where Was Latin America Left?
BARACK OBAMA: Karachi, Beijing, the former Soviet Union, Pakistan, Paris, Bali, Russia, Chad, Zimbabwe...
CHYRON: And Latinos?
BARACK OBAMA: Afghanistan, Somalia, Darfur, Belfast, South Africa, Madrid, Europe, Burma, Amman...
CHYRON: Maybe He Forget About Us?
JOHN MCCAIN: I'm John McCain and I approve this message.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't really understand racial dynamics in America. But I'm not sure how you can repeatedly use campaign materials that skirt the fringes of historical racial conflicts without knowing exactly what you're doing. If it's an isolated incident I can buy that pairing Obama (black man) with Paris Hilton (ditzy white woman) isn't so much about race as it is about directly insulting Obama's character and accomplishments. That isn't much better, of course, but it's allowable by the unwritten rules of national American politics in the present moment (I realize that at the state or local level things can get much uglier). You're generally allowed to say false and insulting things about your opponent's character, it's risky but done regularly, but generally not allowed to overtly exploit their race, ethnicity, parentage, etc.

It's possible to make a similar argument about this web video, that it could be run about any candidate who didn't mention a Latin American country in a speech, whether they were white or black. You have to essentially argue that it's pretty low, divisive politics, and the McCain campaign really should be ashamed, but that it's not racist per se. However, I think it's pretty difficult for the McCain campaign to say "It never crossed our minds that there were racial tensions that might be exploited by implying that the black candidate doesn't have Latino interests at heart" right after saying "It never crossed our minds that there were racial tensions that might be exploited by juxtaposing a black man and two coquettish white women." I'm trying really hard not to let my bias in favor of Barack Obama color my perception of what the McCain campaign is doing here, and it's possible that I'm seeing racism because I really, really want Obama to win. On the other hand, even taking my self doubt into account, it's starting to look like the McCain campaign is using a strategy of deliberately skirting the edges of racial and ethnic tension.

At this point I think you have to describe their strategy as, pardon my crudeness, "shitstorm politics." They're losing badly on the issues, but they're not losing badly on the dynamic of "familiar, older white guy politician who has been on the news for years" versus "unfamiliar, younger black guy politician who is relatively new to the public eye." In fact, the McCain campaign's success at working this dynamic is keeping this race alive, and distressingly close. The only way McCain can win this thing, and he very well might, is to start slinging bullshit, and try to stick enough of it to Obama that McCain looks like the better of two mostly unacceptable options.

At this point I would like to acknowledge my incredible naivety in thinking that with McCain and Obama winning the respective nominations we would actually get a policy debate during this election. In 2004 the election was almost entirely about your affiliation or opposition to Bush, and there was still more substantive debate than we've gotten so far. Thanks, McCain campaign.

Ideology

2008-08-01T02:42:00.000Z

It's kind of getting me down that lately my politics basically involves disagreeing with everyone. Taking this extended break in Oregon has left me with a fair amount of time to read and consider. As per usual, that's had the effect of putting me at even greater distance from any solid moorings of politics or ideology. It's not just in abstract, either. For example, I've been a fairly regular volunteer at the Obama campaign, and attended their big Division Street office potluck a few weeks ago. On the whole it was a fun event. However, one of the speakers, a former Governor, during her (pretty skillful) rallying speech, said something to the effect of (paraphrasing):

"We need to elect Democrats to every office, not just the Presidency. Oregon is going to get another Congressional representative after the next census, and we need to make sure the Secretary of State is a Democrat when they're drawing those Congressional districts."

And it was like, "Whoah!" I'm actually, as a rule, pretty much against gerrymandering, and such an outright appeal to partisan loyalty was a reminder that I'm in with the Obama campaign for my own reasons. Sure, I'm more comfortable with Democrats in charge, but mostly because I think they have less of a track record of outright hostility to science and the objective appraisal of the problems facing our country. Beyond supporting better policymakers, I don't have a hell of a lot of interest in the greater glory of the Democratic Party. I can understand the counterargument, that enabling the Democrats means lessening the death grip the Republicans currently hold on the emergency brake of this country's legislative system. But that's the thing, I actually don't think that conservatism as a governing philosophy is inherently flawed. Or rather, I think all governing philosophies are a mixed bag and conservatism is no exception.

I really think we should be arguing about policy, not about party. I've seen great policy ideas come from Democrats, Republicans, Greens, and Libertarians. However, I've also seen all of these groups display ideological blind spots that leave me aghast at the thought of putting them in charge without checks and balances. Fundamentally I consider myself an optimist because I think innovations in science and technology have put us on the cusp of a great future, but only if we get our shit together.

To my horror, I've become the mythical Independent Voter.

Chellie Pingree on Net Neutrality

2008-07-29T21:14:00.001Z

Well, it's good to see Chellie Pingree (the Democratic candidate for the Congressional District 1 race) posting a clear and articulate defense of net neutrality on the Turn Maine Blue political blog. What's more, it's great to see her speaking to these issues within the local political blogosphere. A short, accessible blog post (with links to references when appropriate) outlining why or why you do not support a policy or piece of legislation is a more accountable way of communicating with voters than a ten second sound clip on the television news. Also, if you've never heard of net neutrality, and most voters probably haven't, her post is a pretty good introduction of the fundamentals from a progressive perspective.

Thoughts On An Environmental Political Philosophy

2008-07-27T23:30:00.001Z

It is just possible that I should have studied political science or political philosophy in college, and I've often remarked that it's perhaps telling that a solid majority of my friends were political science majors. Although I don't often read popular political books, I picked up Andrew Sullivan's "The Conservative Soul" at the Portland Central Library a few days ago, and found it a compelling, valuable read. Conservative philosophy is relatively new to me. I was raised as a New England liberal, and despite my personal emphasis on reason, pragmatism, and environmentalism, East Coast style liberalism is where my political thinking begins. Just to be clear, I'm not denigrating those labels or the content of their thought, when it comes to politics they are my foundation.

Andrew Sullivan is perhaps the finest blogger of our time, using his blog The Daily Dish to hold a conversation about politics, literature, and the role of faith in one's life from his perspective as a British, conservative, Catholic, married, gay, and HIV positive man living in Washington, D.C. Listing adjectives is a poor way of describing a person, but with Sullivan it's the quickest way to express that by "conservative" I mean someone who is a conservative by temperament and political foundation rather than by ideology or religion, as is so often the case in our current political climate. Being a Dish reader is like having an ongoing conversation with an erudite, always interesting, sometimes infuriating companion whose friendship you treasure for the gift of those conversations.

I disagree with Sullivan on many, many issues, but at the same time his essay "Goodbye To All That: Why Obama Matters" was the first real evaluation I read of the person who has, as is fairly obvious, since then garnered my enthusiastic support. So I read Andrew's book, which is largely a response to the dominance of religious fundamentalism within American conservatism rather than an attempt to convince readers of the virtues of conservatism as such. However, there was a passage near the end that really spoke to me, and I think is a fair summary of Sullivan's conservatism:

"Politics, for a conservative, is a necessary activity, but it should never be an uplifting one. Americans in particular often balk at this. They like bold leadership, visionary rhetoric, and great challenges. But the success of America is that its constitution does not require these things in politics for the country to work or be successful. A president or senator or governor may be appreciated for his skills in the bully pulpit, but his real job is merely to enforce existing laws, fix emerging problems, and leave the sermonizing to the real pulpits and the creativity to the country's real leaders. The real leaders of a free society are not its politicians. They are its artists and laborers, scientists and teachers, bloggers and social workers, sportsmen and movie directors, day traders and research students, architects and farmers, waiters and comedians. The great strength of a free society is not its political leadership or its government, but its people and their daily encounters with one another and reality."

Like all statements that summarize a position, it's a problematic one. As an environmentalist and scientist, the one that immediately springs to mind is that our imperfect understanding of the world often creates challenges that do require bold leadership and vision (yep, another climate change reference). My primary criticism of Sullivan's conservatism is that it fails to account for the non-negotiable, objectively unsustainable organization of our society. But, despite my critiques, there's a lot there with which I substantially agree. I don't think it's a good idea to intentionally design a society using the tools of government programs. We're people, we're going to fuck it up. Or rather, I don't believe there is an ideal society, only changing values and responses to different challenges that always have unintended consequences, good or bad. So, in general, I support policies that provide the maximum amount of opportunity and flexibility, with a minimum of explicit direction.

I was originally thinking about this with regards to the concept of net neutrality, which essentially provides just that for the Internet, however it does so by, somewhat paradoxically, restricting the behavior of Internet service providers to give preference to some kinds of data traffic over others. Net neutrality is a good example of where I part company with conservatives and libertarians. I think that an objective appraisal of most situations will reveal some solid regulations that make the system more functional, more flexible and, here's that same complication again, more sustainable. What are those regulations? Well, that's where the argument comes in, and I think where Sullivan's idea of a sober, process-based politics overlaps with my own preferences, although I suspect we would have wildly different opinions on the best outcomes.

That said, I'm starting to understand why environmentalism wound up being a left-wing issue rather than one shared by all political orientations. Environmental conservation doesn't lend itself well to a political philosophy that desires to place as few strictures on human behavior as possible, when current patterns of human consumption degrade natural environments and (this is important) the total amount of human consumption is constantly increasing. Unfortunately, the conservative and libertarian response to that has mostly been to deny that there is a problem at all, which in my view has led to a glaring foolishness regarding the response to environmental issues from those communities. However, to spread the blame around more equitably, left-wing environmentalism is so often ideological, choosing a particular vision of a human relationships to nature and promoting that as the Platonic ideal that government policy should promote, failing to even acknowledge the possibility of disagreement. I should note that I make these criticisms as a left-ish environmentalist, so they are to a certain extent self-criticisms.

So what's the bottom line? Allow me to dramatically change the subject for a moment, a la a Henry Rollins routine. Today I biked out to the Oak Bottom Wildlife Refuge in Southeast Portland and walked around in the woods. It was restorative, especially when I took what looked to be a semi-intentional "trail" through a marshy area, full of tall grasses and the occasional fallen tree. Movement caught my eye, and all of a sudden I realized that jumping from blade of grass to blade of grass were tiny frogs of several different colors, so small and light that the thin fronds could support their weight. I photographed them for a little while, and turning around saw that fluffy, white catkins from the cottonwood trees (I think) were blowing on the breeze, looking for all the world like cotton snow. It was a sublime "encounter with reality" to use Sullivan's words.

I would like to find more political consensus between left and right that recognizes the value of the natural world. I tentatively think that a good start might be for environmentalists to focus more on policy positions that are goal-oriented rather than attempting to directly control economic processes. For example, let's talk biofuels. Yes, the whole ethanol thing is a wonderful notion that may one day be technologically feasible, but right now it's an ecological and humanitarian disaster. It's a very real example of how environmental concern can be wedded to a sort of ecotopian vision that, while wonderful, doesn't necessarily conform to the objective challenges we face. It's also an excellent example of the conservative critique that we don't know all the outcomes of our policies. While there's great potential for biofuels to be part of our energy solution, it's dependent on the development of technology that doesn't currently exist. By contrast, in my view the most effective solution would be a national low carbon fuel standard that says:

"Okay, transportation fuel has to have a lower net greenhouse gas emission. We're not going to provide subsidies to particular technologies, because who knows which one is objectively going to provide the most environmental benefit. We thought it was going to be ethanol, but that turned out to be a terrible idea. We're not going to direct the market, you just have to reach a progressively stricter standard. Peace out."

In my view, that kind of regulatory attitude toward environmental issues would have the advantage of being based on the best available science (we keep studying the issue and revising our benchmarks) while not attempting to direct what we don't know, namely which environmental technologies will do the best job of reaching objective standards. I'm musing without doing a good job of really diving into the evidence of whether market based environmental mechanisms really will turn the tide on these issues, but it's been fruitful musing.

Basho Would Understand

2008-07-24T19:49:00.000Z

I'm in "my" coffeeshop, Fine Grind on SE 39th and Lincoln. My back is aching enjoyably from lifting at Loprinzi's yesterday, there's great indie-rock on the stereo, and the lady sitting on the couch nearby is quietly harmonizing with the vocals. Things are great; We went to a video arcade last night and played Dance Dance Revolution, stomping and jumping to "Little Bitch" by The Specials, quite possibly the best song in the history of the universe. I have various concerns and a few worries, the state of the world remains troubling, but I've got enough money for another cup of coffee, and it's a nice moment during a nice afternoon.

Supporting Obama While Disagreeing With Him

2008-07-23T23:35:00.000Z

So, a little background. My friend Asher and I have had an ongoing and, at times, contentious debate via Facebook regarding my support for Barack Obama. Although I don't mean to pigeonhole either of our political views, it's probably fair to say that Asher is significantly to my Left when it comes to the American political spectrum as it is commonly discussed. He tends to support folks like Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader, and worked for the Kucinich campaign during the Presidential primary. He is also extremely critical of mainsteam political candidates from both parties. Now, I'm supporting Obama for a variety of reasons, but I also disagree with him on some things, namely his vote for the FISA compromise that included retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that provided illegal support for the "warrantless wiretapping" program. For a brief review, here's a couple post from Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, who I think does the best job of summarizing (a) why it matters and (b) what a lot of Obama supporters thought after he came out in support of the FISA compromise.

Asher recently asked me a very good question: (paraphrasing here) "If you say you're still supporting Barack Obama even after he lets you down on the FISA bill, how are you going to hold him accountable on that issue?" I was typing a reply on his Facebook wall, and when I hit the 1000 character limit I realized that it was probably a better idea to drum it into a blog post and send him the link. Because this story gets a little more complicated, it turns out that Asher was illegally wiretapped, he got hold of the list of people in Maine who had their telephone conversations tapped (in his case by Verizon*) and found his name right there. He has subsequently found out from the Maine Civil Liberties Union that the telecommunications immunity provision in the FISA compromise has, in fact, done what it was meant to do and removed his ability to bring legal action against AT&T. I should note that this is my current understanding of the situation, which I will correct if I'm wrong about any of the particulars.

So now I'm left to answer his question, when Obama's (and, of course, quite a few other Senators) support for telecom immunity means that the illegal wiretapping of someone I know, for what I strongly suspect is the crime of being active in left wing politics, goes essentially unpunished. Well, here goes. First and foremost, I'm supporting Obama for a number of reasons, ranging from appreciation for what his candidacy has done for the enfranchisement of young people and minorities to his specific policy positions (which I've read and, with some exceptions, substantially agree) to his "pragmatic realism" on foreign policy. This last is, I suspect, where Asher and I differ most fundamentally in our politics, but that's both a subject for another day and a place where honest people can disagree. I'm also aghast at the half-assed, lazy bullshit that McCain is proposing as domestic policy. That's not reflexive liberalism either, the McCain campaign's dishonesty regarding the fiscal irresponsibility of their proposals is just as responsible for my opposition to John McCain as is my support for Barack Obama. Even if I disagree strongly with Barack Obama on the FISA bill, it's one important issue among many, and I consistently agree with him on the vast majority.

But that gets to the core of Asher's question, given that I do generally agree with him, how do I register my disappointment regarding the FISA vote? It's a good question to consider because, in my experience, you're never going to agree with a politician 100%, and you probably shouldn't. I would argue that if you agree totally with any politician or political position you're likely not critically analyzing the substance of their views and positions. The converse is also true. Despite my strongly held opinions, I can name a few issues where I agree with John McCain, and even one or two where I agree with him and disagree with Obama (i.e. Federal mandates for percentages of ethanol in gasoline. McCain is against them, Obama is for them, I think they're a bad idea).

Asher did a little of the work and turned up one answer. Apparently there are a group of supporters using the "community" portion of the MyBarackObama.com campaign website to voice their opposition. I'll be looking into that, but, as Asher says, if we're by definition supporters then Obama can afford to ignore us. So here's the rest of my answer, in two parts. First of all, I'm going to continue supporting candidates who understand why telecommunications issues are important, from net neutrality to media consolidation to civil liberties in a digital age. That is reflected in my "slate" for the upcoming November in Maine, I'll be voting for Chellie Pingree for Congressional District 1 and Tom Allen for the U.S. Senate, both of whom (I believe) have specifically advocated their support for net neutrality and opposition to the telecom immunity portion of the FISA compromise. I've also supported (with a small financial contribution and some e-mail forwarding of his awesome XKCD-style appeal to the Internet for help) Sean Tevis, a guy running for State Representative in Kansas who is attempting to bring an understanding of these "digital age" issues like net neutrality to his State Government, which I think is a very, very worthy goal. So that's one thing, supporting other candidates at various levels of government who I think will provide leadership on issues like this one in the future. The second thing that I'm going to do is take more responsibility for supporting non-governmental groups who work on these issues, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

So that's my answer. It's imperfect, and not a completely satisfying one, but in a nutshell I can disagree with Obama on FISA because I support a balanced slate of politicians, some of whom are stronger than others on particular issues and also a vigorous community of interest and watchdog groups. It's very much a "checks and balances" answer, but I think that probably accurately reflects my philosophy of government and politics right now (subject to change, as always).

7-24-08: Some minor updates from the original post, namely a more tight summary paragraph.

*7-26-08: Asher clarifies that for some reason it was Verizon that did the wiretapping, although his carrier was AT&T

Our Lives In Portland, Oregon

2008-07-18T18:44:00.000Z

So I thought I'd post a couple of details to give you a sense of the lives my sister and I are leading here in Portland, Oregon:

• I'm in a coffee shop trying to wake up, and realizing that my single biggest expense is coffee and snacks that I buy to use wifi networks while blogging.

• I got a text message from Hannah this morning that reads: "Dude, I just found a giant trash bag of corn on the side of the road!"

• I got lost biking home from a friend's house last night and spent 45 minutes in a kind of Einsteinian space-time loop while listening to NOFX and the Shins.

• Hannah and I held the inaugural "Goat Night" where we (the children of vegetarians) attempted a goat meat saute while singing Frankel karaoke. Our version of "Sneakin' In" by the Coup must be heard to be believed.

• It takes herculean amounts of willpower to avoid buying books at Powell's, despite the fact that I have no way to get them home.

I Loves The Internets

2008-07-16T20:46:00.001Z

OK, from the geek mega-aggregator Boing Boing:

Sean Tevis is a geeky geek from Kansas who's fed up with his state rep, an anti-abortion, anti-evolution, pro-censorship, pro-surveillance, anti-gay incumbent. Tevis -- an unknown -- is polling within three points of his opponent, and is looking to raise some Internet dough to kick this guy's (extremely tight) ass, and to promote his cause, he's made a fantastic, XKCD-style toon called "It’s Like A Flamewar with a Forum Troll, but with an Eventual Winner." Specifically, he's looking to raise $8.34 from 3,000 people (no state rep in Kansas history has ever had more than 644 donors)

I'd have more qualms about donating money across electoral lines (I am not, nor have I ever been, even in the state of Kansas) if private interests didn't do that all the damn time in my home state.

Loving Portland, Oregon - From Loprinzi's Gym

2008-07-15T22:32:00.000Z

I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe what I love about Portland, Oregon, and I think the way to do that may be to share with you my greatest discovery here: Loprinzi’s Gym. I know it doesn’t exactly fit with the rest of my skinny white guy persona, but I really love going to the gym and lifting weights. My Dad used to go a lot when I was a kid, and we always had equipment in our basement. Neither of us are power lifters, but he gave me a real love of working out, even though I’m always going to be a pretty lightweight dude. No matter how many times I get busy and stop going to the gym regularly, I always come back to it and that feeling of ending a workout; calm, exhausted, and gratified.

So I get here, to Oregon, after three days on a train where there’s barely room to walk around, much less do anything strenuous. After locating the essentials (bus stops, a bicycle, groceries) I am on the lookout for a gym. Hitting my trusty Google Maps, it turns out there’s one called “Loprinzi’s” a quarter-mile away, just off Division Street, the nearest major arterial to my home in Southeast Hawthorne. The genius of Portland, Oregon seems to be that every neighborhood is served by a major street that has frequent buses and dozens of local businesses. More to the point, these businesses provide the essentials you need to live. They are grocery stores, hardware stores, barbershops, coffee houses, and in this case, gymnasiums. So I check out their website, see that they have a six-week membership deal that would be perfect for me, and bike over to check it out.

I walk in the door, take one look, and I am in love. Now, when I mentioned “gym” earlier in this post, you probably thought of somewhere like Planet Fitness or Bally Total Fitness, a big building (surrounded by a bigger parking lot) full of shiny, very new treadmills, steppers, and various resistance machines populated by rank after rank of bespandexed people. I don’t mean to put down the big gyms. Hell, I’m a member at Planet Fitness, and I’ve had some good workouts there. What they provide is anonymity, and for some people that sense of being anonymous makes working out more comfortable. But they are, for better or worse, separate from the rest of your life. Both physically, in that huge parking lots often relegate them to locations outside of the urban core, and mentally, in that they are places where you inhabit a bubble of personal space that is rarely breached. The best word I can think to describe them, and I genuinely don't mean this to be pejorative, is "impersonal."

But Loprinzi’s is different. It’s out of another time, when professional bodybuilders would be guys who, when they weren’t competing in the Mr. Universe or Mr. Olympia events, owned gyms that were the center of a workout culture. Loprinzi's has been run by the Loprinzi family of bodybuilders since 1948, and is currently owned by Bob Loprinzi. There are framed photographs all over the place of other famous bodybuilders who dropped by to work out. Guys like Bill Pearl, who wrote Getting Stronger, probably the best book of exercises for anyone who wants to get in shape, and who in his later years competed as one of the first vegetarian weightlifters. Man, Jack Lalane used to work out here!

The equipment at Loprinzi’s, like the photographs, shows its history. It’s old and incredibly well maintained, and gives you the impression that you might run into Rocky Balboa training up for the fight with Apollo Creed. There are old style “bicycle chain” resistance machines, upholstered wooden benches, and (among other, more modern weights) a set of the dumbbells with two round globes of iron that you may have seen in vintage "strongman" photos from the late 19th and early 20th century.

Speaking as someone who has worked out in a few different places, Loprinzi’s is by far the best I’ve ever been in. I find the older equipment to be a lot more fun to use, like you’re part of the history of American fitness, and also a hell of a lot more comfortable than the stuff at more commercial gyms. I suspect that Loprinzi’s has had a lot of equipment over the years, and simply kept the stuff that they liked and that keeps working well. Also, talk about sustainability! When you start doing curls with one of the oldest dumbbells you're lifting a lump of iron that has been in continuous use for more than sixty years.

Loprinzi’s is also a neighborhood gym in the best sense of the word “neighborhood.” All kinds of people, from tattooed hippies to young women to middle-aged power lifters come to share their commitment to good health and different goals of strength and fitness. Although I’m sure there are lots of people who are totally comfortable at Bally or 24-Hour Fitness, I’m personally a lot more comfortable in my neighborhood gym, where I feel like we’re all just folks who like to work out rather than worshippers at some temple of body image and self-esteem. On a more practical side, the next time I go in I’m planning on asking Bob Loprinzi about a good exercise for the upper back. That kind of positive interaction, from just saying hi when you walk in the door to asking for help on a training issue, is a big part of having a good workout.

(this image from a flickrset available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/theoregonian/436389622/in/photostream/)

So how does my awesome neighborhood gym help describe the Portland, Oregon experience? Because Loprinzi’s is just so damn great, every one of my workouts there is better. My enjoyment of going to Loprinzi’s translates into a more challenging, more satisfying session, and so the four or five hours a week I spend there are higher quality experiences than they would be if I were going to the local 24-Hour Fitness. And that’s Portland, Oregon in a nutshell. Because there are so many places like Loprinzi’s here, places with character, culture, and class, all the time you spend doing pretty mundane things, from getting groceries to hitting the gym, is just better. It’s about the places you enjoy going and the everyday relationships you form with the people there that translates into a higher overall quality of life.

Portland, Maine, my Portland, has a lot of that too. But Portland, Oregon has managed to make that part of it’s brand, and I think it’s something that we can learn from our big sister, and namesake, as our Portland continues to grow. So let’s keep building our city of neighborhoods, and although I’m not advocating that we copy everything about Portland, Oregon, it would be totally sweet if there were a gym like Loprinzi’s back home.

What the hell, John McCain?

2008-07-15T02:16:00.000Z

(cross-posted from my Nature Network blog)

I never thought I’d end up covering John McCain like this. I expected, after eight years of Bush, to be able to argue about genuine philosophical and policy differences, rather than going on about the most basic matters of competence. - Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings

Look, I’m not shy about talking politics, and even less shy about my support of Senator Barack Obama for the U.S. Presidency. However, I am stunned by the lack of honesty from the McCain campaign about the critical policy issues that are facing our country. The reason I’m posting election related material on this blog is that my strong criticism of the McCain campaign is based on a political identity that developed through my immersion in the practice and culture of the sciences. Being a scientist doesn’t make me support any particular political candidate or party, but it does make me demand that political claims be subjected to empirical analysis when appropriate, and not be demonstrably false on their face.

The McCain campaign recently claimed that they would balance the United States budget by 2013, the end of the next President’s first term. That is significant because, for many voters but particularly Conservatives and Independents, the fiscal state of the U.S. government is deeply worrying. It’s an important issue, and whichever candidate can successfully appeal to Independent voters will probably win the presidency. However, the McCain campaign went beyond mere political speechifying by providing the Washington Post with the specific details of their policy plan for doing so. The Post then fact-checked the plan and its numbers. The accompanying editorial flatly states their conclusions:

SEN. JOHN McCain says that President McCain would balance the federal budget by 2013. The plan is not credible.

Why is this a relevant issue for a blog ostensibly about science outside the specific professional context of the laboratory? Because what the McCain campaign is doing, in my opinion, is deepening an increasingly worrying trend in American public affairs: a complete disregard for objective analysis of political statements, in effect the process of political ”peer review.” I strongly suspect that the McCain campaign is perfectly aware that they have not provided a credible plan for balancing the U.S. budget. However, the point is not to propose defensible policy, it’s to give the appearance of proposing defensible policy, and grab a few headlines about budget balancing.

Not all political questions and not all issues are amenable to objective analysis, many of them come down to value judgments that depend on a myriad of ideological, cultural, and personal influences. However, part of the sorry state of U.S. politics right now is the (predominately Republican, it must be said, and they deserve to be held accountable) tactic of refusing to recognize the legitimacy of objective analysis for those issues that do involve specific claims whose veracity can be determined. This is why it has taken the United States until 2008 to effectively shift the debate over climate change from “is climate change real?” to “what are we prepared to do about climate change and how should we go about doing it?” Regardless of how we feel about the answer to the latter question, it’s an appropriate subject for political debate. The former question is not.

The McCain campaign is attempting to use this same cynical view of the political process, that there are no “facts” only public relations campaigns that win or lose independently of the veracity of their claims, to propose nonsensical solutions to our country’s problems and claim that they have credible plans.

Goodbye Portland

2008-07-10T00:37:00.000Z

"I grieve to leave my native land
and I grieve to leave my comrades all
my parents who I hold so dear
and that bonny, bonny lassie that I do so adore"

- Farewell Nova Scotia (Traditional)

It's been just over a week since I left Portland, and what can I possibly say except that I miss you all, I miss my home, and I miss the closeness of community that I will likely never feel so keenly again. With all that I miss, and all that I've forlornly left behind, it's also good to be away. Leaving throws into sharp relief everything that you love about a place, and lets you appreciate it from a fresh perspective, even as it inevitably begins to fade, never to be so vividly real again. One of the bittersweet parts of this summer vacation, and all my various travels, is that it's also a eulogy for my five years in Portland, Maine. I'll be back visiting, but at least for the short and the medium-term, my time as a resident of Portland is over. Even if I do move back at some point, and that could very well happen, I'll be older and the city will have naturally turned over many familiar faces and places.

I'm lucky though, I got to spend five years as a young man in a place that had a vibrancy and culture that I'll always treasure. My Portland, circa 2003-2008, filled with memories. My sister and I were at a free swap-meet my second day here in Portland, Oregon, and found an autobiographical comic book written by a woman who owned Portland, Maine several years before I did and left in 2001-2oo2. It's really interesting because she laments leaving a different community than the one I knew, and the turnover of different businesses and places that I remember from when I would visit Portland as a teenager (Zoots, anyone?) but never went frequently enough to develop a strong connection. By contrast, one of my most treasured possessions is my Casco Bay Books coffee mug; CBB will always be Portland to me.

There's a lot more that I want to write about leaving Portland, about leaving Maine, about leaving a beloved community, and to a certain extent about leaving my identity as a young man making a young man's mistakes. There's a lot more I want to write about the possibility of returning, taking a line from an Atmosphere song, "Leaving doesn't have to mean leave the love/roam if you must/but come home when you've seen enough." There's a lot more I want to write about being in Portland, Oregon, which is an incredibly rewarding, restful, and inspiring place. But hey, blog posts are supposed to be short, right?

Left The Laboratory - It's Past Tense Now

2008-07-08T01:50:00.000Z

(cross-posted from my Nature Network blog "Leaving The Laboratory")

So, this is interesting. For the first time in roughly four years, I am no longer directly engaged in the enterprise of scientific research. There are two things that immediately spring to mind:

1. It’s quite the shock to leave an activity that you were doing on a daily basis for four years and then abruptly stare never doing it again right in the face.

2. On the other hand, it’s also shocking how quickly you adjust. The laboratory already seems pretty distant, and I’ve only been gone a week. It’s like those people who leave/graduate and get a job outside of a research lab who say they’ll “always be available to run experiments if you need help, because they’ll really miss research.” Two weeks later, if you remind them that they worked in a laboratory they’ll give you a blank look and you can actually see them trying to recall when that happened.

The biggest immediate change in my relation to science is, ironically, having a lot more time to carefully review those aspects of it that I find interesting. I mean, I’m still working on finishing up my thesis, it’s not like that process ever ends on time, but not being in the laboratory running experiments, keeping up with research question-specific technical information, classes related to one’s degree, etc. frees up an incredible amount of time to engage with science in a different way.

For example, I’m really looking forward to reading some reports that the AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition sent along in their latest newletter. These reports, Climate Change and Human Rights: A Rough Guide (International Council on Human Rights) and Claiming the Millennium Development Goals: A Human Rights Approach (Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights) are of great personal interest, but I’d have never even dreamed of having time to read these with care and critical attention while in the midst of my graduate research. That in of itself points out one of my worries regarding the scientific community, but that’s a topic for another day.

2008-06-22T21:59:00.000Z

Oh, yeah.

A Very Metal Interlude: Blind Guardian

2008-06-19T23:55:00.000Z

I was saying goodbye to the commercial side of Portland today, buying a bunch of things I "need" for my upcoming travels from a collection of local businesses that I've come to appreciate. It comes off sounding a little mercantile, but I specifically wanted to drop some coin in town before leaving, a final gift to the commercial side of this city that has given me so much. The last thing I picked up was one of the very few physical CDs that I've bought recently, Blind Guardian's "Nightfall in Middle Earth" metal ode to Tolkien's Silmarillion. Not everything is available through (legal) online channels, and after striking out at Amazon, iTunes, and eMusic I found it at Bull Moose. This happens pretty frequently with metal and punk rock, since their distribution is patchy at best, and the various online music services generally have some pretty big holes in their catalogue. As always, it's totally ridiculous, totally over the top, and delightful in it's own way.

Yet Another Barack Obama Post

2008-06-19T17:49:00.001Z

Hey, it's what I'm interested in right now. And his response to recent Republican attempts to try and start beating him over the head with 9/11 was a beautiful thing (via Sullivan):

I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States. The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let’s talk about 9/11...

...And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. The case for war in Iraq was so thin that George Bush and John McCain had to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein, and make false promises that we’d be greeted as liberators. They misled the American people, and took us into a misguided war.

Hit back hard, and with real substance. On another note, I'm not sure how I feel about the whole opting-out of public financing thing. My personal reaction is that it's unfortunate, and it could and probably should count a little bit against him, but on the other hand he's clearly adapting his strategy to the absolutely amazing success of his online organizing and fundraising, which I don't think anyone could have predicted.

There's actually a pretty powerful resonance with Chellie Pingree's campaign for the CD1 Democratic nomination here in Maine recently. Pingree is a huge supporter of public financing for elections, and was the most recent past President and CEO of Common Cause, a campaign finance reform group. However, she's also a really good fundraiser, who pulled together a lot of bucks from a variety of corporate and institutional sources. The question became (paraphrasing an article in the Portland Phoenix here): Do you mind if she plays the current game really well while in the process of changing it? Ultimately, the answer from Maine voters was "no" and she won the race. Barack Obama is kicking ass with the set of rules that we have on the table right now, and although I'd like to see them changed he ultimately has to deal with the rules as they are, not as they may become.

Nature Network Posts

2008-06-19T17:31:00.001Z

In an effort to be productive on two fronts, and explore my science-related interests, I've put up two posts on my Nature Network blog regarding the tools that Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) and AAS have been rolling out to help science and technology minded folks get more involved in policy and the political process. If I were staying in the laboratory research field, and not gallivanting off to Africa, I think I'd probably start focusing my blogs toward the discussion of science communication tools, since their is a lot of exciting stuff going on as the sleeping giant of the research constituency realizes it has political power.

"Tools In Your Toolbox: Keeping Up With Science Policy News"

"Tools In Your Toolbox: Keeping Up With Science Policy News 2"

Hubris!

Organic Farming AND Genetic Engineering

2008-06-09T18:52:00.000Z

Excellent interview in U.S. News and World Report from two of the (currently) sparse chorus arguing for a realistic appraisal of best agriculture practices drawing on both organic farming and the emerging science of genetic engineering. Kicker quote:

What I've found is that when we talk to the organic farmers themselves, they are pretty intrigued by the possibilities. I think that's because they're experimentalists and understand the difficult hurdles all farmers face. I think they feel that there's been a lot of hype against genetic engineering. It's the people from the political organizations—and the urban dwellers—that tend to be the most actively against the idea.

The interview is with Pamela Ronald, a plant geneticist, and her husband Raoul Adamchak, an organic farmer. Pamela blogs at Tomorrows Table on the Nature Network. This is the conversation that I would like to see happen in the community of people concerned with environmental issues. We're facing some large environmental challenges in the coming decades, and I don't think we can address them without a levelheaded appraisal of real metrics related to farming such as crop yields, ability to farm marginal land, drout resistance, amounts of pesticides applied, etc. These metrics are not ideological, they are simply measurable in the finest traditions of science. We can integrate easily measurable metrics with more complex concepts, like the importance of local food systems, but we need to keep our ideologies flexible with regards to the tools at our disposal, which is where some applications of genetic engineering come into play.

Where Were You? - A Stream Of Consciousness

2008-06-04T23:03:00.000Z

Where were you when Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination?

Just so that the moment doesn't fade away entirely, I was at Brian Boru's with Harris, Jenna, Robin, and Patrick from the League, and Kahari from the national League office. We had been canvassing in preparation for the June primary, and people were thanking us for coming by their door and handing them a voter guide. We were talking about Obama, about race, and about working on environmental issues from a "green jobs" perspective. I was listening to them talk, Africa on my horizon, and just feeling so God damn proud that I'd helped build up this group of leaders, who would continue creating ripples of change throughout Maine. Talk about leaving on a high note, so much so that doubt creeps in about whether leaving is the right decision. But, at the very least, I'm leaving my city, my state, and my country in good hands. And if I eventually regret leaving, well, what better argument is there for coming back?

Barack Obama, man. All that talk about hope and change. All I can say is that, even given the challenges that face us, I reject any outlook that is not fundamentally optimistic. Which, I think, is why I spend my time the way I do, pushing back for people, for the beautiful complexity of life on this planet, and for a reasoned and rational understanding of the world.

I defend my thesis tomorrow, and make my little contribution to our understanding of global environmental health. I'm done teaching for the year. I leave Portland in less than a month. I have regrets, but they're the right regrets, and I'm proud of how I've spent my time.

A Very Metal Interlude

2008-05-29T02:12:00.000Z

So, first of all, thank you John Darnielle for taking the lead in posting thoughtful discussions of metal albums, on a blog with no ostensible connection to that genre, without any attempt to justify why they're enjoyable in their own way. I've been listening to a lot of my old music while packing up, and it's been a lot of fun browsing different tracks from my, if not huge, at least hugely varied music collection. I've wandered into my Bathory albums, and it's pretty astonishing the effect that albums like Hammerheart (1990) had on the entire subsequent world of heavy music. This YouTube video is appropriately ridiculous, but the track "Fathers to Sons" is a good example of their style.

Packing Up My Life

2008-05-25T15:21:00.000Z

It's Sunday morning-ish, I've had my coffee, and there's a lot I should be doing to wrap up this last semester and my graduate degree. However, I can't seem to break from the distraction that all of this, the scattered and jumbled little world of my apartment in Portland, needs to be packed up in a little more than a month. I don't own very much, but I do own enough to unfold, like a spring-loaded jack-in-the-box, into a comfortable little space with all my essential needs met. The packing is a little more dramatic this time because it's all going into storage for the next couple years. The physical stuff is the least problematic. I think what's stressing me out is the realization that all the little bits and pieces of life, all those passwords, memberships, and monthly bills, need to be written down, deactivated, and turned off before I leave. A more perfect example of modern angst could hardly be found.

This Is What Moves Me

2008-05-13T03:54:00.001Z

I think the biggest reason for finishing my thesis is that I want to be able to direct my own attention again. Sustained scholarship on a topic is great, I'll be able to take these skills and apply them toward whatever I do in the future, but its time to move into applications for a while. This video is a good example of what I've been thinking about, more or less since the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in February:

The League Blog

2008-05-13T01:41:00.001Z

Katie has cross-posted my "young people and idealism" riffing off Tom Friedman's column over at the Maine League of Young Voters blog. The League blog updates whenever one of our community writes something for it, so there are times when it can lag a bit between entries, but check it out. I've been impressed at the quality and breadth of the writing, and there's a real shortage of "cool community" blogs writing about Maine issues (like, for example, The Vigorous North).

New Nature Network Blog Post On Science Demographics

2008-05-11T21:23:00.000Z

I put up another post on my Nature Network blog, this one involves a question about the demographics of University science versus non-University science based on changing career paths for young scientists (who are much more likely to be female and non-caucasian than previous cohorts).

Thank You Internet

2008-05-10T03:15:00.001Z

h/t Jeff Rosenbaugh's Thought Box.

Policy Symbolism

2008-05-10T02:45:00.001Z

I just needed to take a short break from making the figures for my graduate thesis, and was reading some of the lefty blogs I've been using to keep track of the Democratic nomination process. I am, as you may expect, quite pleased about recent developments on that front. The only thing is that I wish the networks conducting exit polls after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries had included a question about the whole "Gas Tax Holiday" kerfuffle.

Now, this is highly anecdotal. My personal response, and that of many of my friends, to the recent fashion for direct financial assistance from the government that won't solve any problems and adds to our astronomical federal deficit (economic stimulus payment, I'm looking at you) has been along the lines of "That's the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard." Obviously I've been supporting Obama, but his dead-on response to the inane gas tax holiday was absolutely perfect, and I'd love to know if that caused any undecided voters to break his way. In of itself the gas tax holiday wasn't the biggest deal in the world; its a bad idea, but we enact plenty of bad legislative ideas. However, both the McCain and Clinton campaigns have both tried to make it a symbolic issue about their concern for working people. Personally, I don't really like symbolic legislation to begin with, but its even more grating when its insulting, essentially predicating that as a voter you're unable to weigh long term consequences versus short term benefits, and just plain dumb in addition to being symbolic. It would be encouraging if the electorate had responded negatively to such pandering, but as of now we can only speculate.

Young People, Idealism, and Learning

2008-05-04T16:49:00.001Z

Like almost everyone who writes frequently for a living, Tom Friedman's written persona comes across as a little fragmented, but he's been popping up on my radar a lot the last year or so saying some stuff that gets my head nodding. From today's NYT (and a "hat tip" to Lizardbox on Dailykos):

It is especially not trivial now, because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, “no one can touch us.

Hell. Yes. There's this cynical attitude that young people's idealism is simply inexperience, and that once we've learned a little bit about how challenging it is to [fill in the blank] we'll settle down. But that misses the whole point. Yes, idealism often shares space with inexperience, hell, idealism is practically sleeping on inexperience's couch and chipping in for the rent. But inexperience means that you're ready to learn. When young people are idealistic, learning may not be at the forefront of our minds, in my experience we usually place a higher value on action. But our inexperience means that if given the opportunity to act, we're going to learn. It's the nature of doing something unfamiliar, and that's the critical point. What our country needs, who our country needs, are people with a practical, pragmatic understanding of both how to get things accomplished and the necessity of accomplishing them.

There's no silver bullet for our problems with education, energy, or money, just to name a few. Yes, we need great Federal policy that sets a top-down agenda for addressing clearly defined issues, but that's not going to determine how best to teach science to kids who've grown up without ever seeing a tree. To do that you need to get a person, and it doesn't have to be a young person, who has learned some science, and loves science, into a classroom so they can try, fail, hang out, learn from better teachers, and eventually find the voice that will speak as well as they're able to the experiences of their students. You could fill in a hundred thousand other examples, from trying to organize a community to effect political change to starting a business installing solar panels. The critical point is that idealism isn't just about the action, it's about the effect of taking action on the individual, and the lessons that they learn. In order to grow the leaders who will have the skills that we need, skills of technical expertise, collaboration, and communication, we need to provide them the opportunities to learn. The idealism that Friedman is talking about is a signal that people, especially young people, are hungry for those opportunities.

Speechless

2008-04-29T20:09:00.001Z

I've been intentionally paying a little less attention to politics lately, at least the U.S. electoral kind. However, I did morbidly check out a USA Today piece on Bush's latest press conference, where he said that Congress "Let the American people down." I have strong feelings about politics, but it's rare that I'm rendered speechless, in that zen-like "Have I traveled to Bizarro world?" sense.

New Post on Scientists and Policymaking At Nature Blog

2008-04-26T21:18:00.001Z

I've just put up a post on my Nature Network blog "Leaving the Laboratory" about which I'm relatively pleased. It's in response to discovering an excellent tool offered by the group Scientists and Engineers for America to track science policy news and candidate positions, the Science Health and Related Policies (SHARP) network. Three links in one short paragraph, how's that for intertextuality?

Things I Have Fixed Today...

2008-04-26T16:33:00.000Z

1) My phone
2) The computer
3) The hard drive
4) The internet

...and it's prompting some interesting thoughts about my relationship with technology.

The Old Fashioned Way

2008-04-21T05:32:00.000Z

I'll admit it, part of Barack Obama's initial appeal to me was the idea that America could have a President who was more universally liked and respected than currently seems possible. That dream, at least as I originally dreamt it, seems to have passed away under a withering assault from idiotic "gotcha" political armaments. We, as a country, dragged this guy down. And we didn't do it through substantive questioning of what can admittedly be somewhat airy campaign slogans, but under the weight of flag lapel pins. I fear that what we've also dragged down is the possibility of reaching a broad, national consensus on issues like climate change, poverty, and the fiscal sustainability of our government, issues that we must confront.

Oddly enough, although I suppose it was bound to happen in the general election, the culprit seems to be the Democratic primary process. More specifically, a fair amount of the blame must be laid at the feet of Hillary Clinton, a woman who I respect and, in a weird way, actually like a great deal, in that odd affection one has for public figures who you've never met. Respect her though I may, it's a pretty nasty game as she has played it, and that's a damn shame.

It's a more complicated picture, of course. The Jeremiah Wright issue knocked my blinders off regarding not the existence but the extent to which our country has built racial caricatures, and relies on inane shorthand media narratives to substitute for anything remotely resembling thoughtful analysis. I hadn't realized how destructive mass media had become, and yes, network television I'm looking at you. I worry more now, about a general election where far, far too many people vote for John McCain because they're just more comfortable with a white, war-hero narrative, and however much they disagree with McCain on particular issues, it just doesn't work to vote for a black man who represents a more complicated story that includes race, a changing society, and a more rigorous examination of the problems we're facing in the world. In short, I guess I worry because the "everybody likes Obama" vibe that we seemed to have for a few months there, before McCain closed up the GOP nomination and Clinton started using the tactical nukes, has faded. And so, things are cloudy again, in doubt, without that euphoric clarity that we can really do it this time, and this is the guy. Lest this stray too far from pragmatism, let me say again that by "it" I mean "address the big ticket issues."

But, on the other hand, if the dream of unity fades, and the dream of unity always fades, there are compensations. Obama's responses to our shoddy, small political discourse, and I'm thinking of the Jeremiah Wright speech here, have given me something genuinely inspirational, and that's a word I don't use often. And if he's not going to get a free ride to popularity, then we're going to have to do this the old fashioned way. First, by winning the primary and the general election, in a long, hard slog. Second, by governing successfully, which means holding Obama accountable, and ensuring that we get what we paid for, a President who makes decisions based on pragmatic, critical reason that is informed by a thoughtful vision of a world that is not free of problems, but held less tightly in their grip. We've got to use the big ticket issues as benchmarks, not expecting them to be solved overnight, but expecting our President to use his reason to take the best steps forward, and critically evaluating those steps in a respectful national discussion.

Is this utopian? A bit, but then I suppose that's where the hope mixes with pragmatism. To paraphrase Saul Alinsky in Rules for Radicals, I'm asking for 100%, and if I only get 30% of what I'm asking for, well, I'm 30% up from nothing. At any rate, I typed this out for a couple of reasons. Mainly just to get some thoughts down so that they would stop banging around my head and let me get some work done. But also to flesh out something I've been thinking about for a little while now. I'll be hanging out in Ann Arbor with my sister this summer pre-Peace Corps, and uprooted from my normal political, scientific, and social engagements in Portland, I've been thinking about going to work for the Obama campaign in Michigan while I'm there. We'll see, but I kind of like the idea as a way to add a little structure to my six-weeks or so in Michigan, as well as work on something that's important to me. We'll see.

Why I Keep Giving Barack Obama's Campaign Money

2008-04-17T03:21:00.001Z

It struck me this evening, in the midst of possibly the stupidest and most insulting expression of American politics I've ever experienced (and yes I say that as someone who came of age during the Bush administration, those fuckers at least respected your intelligence enough to know they had to lie to you), that it's important not to lose sight of the moment we're in right now. There are some people who can tell you about their perspective and their experience in a way that enlarges your life, and gives you a little piece of genuine insight. And it strikes me, listening to him read Dreams from My Father this evening, that one of these people is poised to become President at a moment that seems so critical, and objectively is so critical.

Good Times at NBGSC 2008

2008-03-31T19:46:00.000Z

I have a new post up on my Nature Network blog about the value of attending small or regional science conferences, coming coincidentally after the most recent Northeast Biology Graduate Student Conference this last weekend at the University of New England in Biddeford. Although my own presentation was a little sub-standard due to an attack of the death flu on Friday, all in all it was a wonderful reminder about the amazing coolness of science, scientists, graduate students, nature, and the northeast U.S./Canadian maritimes bioregion. I met a couple other cool folks from Halifax, which has been sort of an honorary "Portland North" in my mind after our rambunctious good time at NBGSC 2007 there last winter. I didn't have the heart to tell my Halifaxian friends that their hometown beer was terrible, but I did recommend Portland's own Allagash White to fine reviews. My only regret is that we didn't have more time to hang out in Portland the way we hung out in Halifax, but sometimes the logistics just don't go your way. Major props to the conference organizers and institutional supporters at UNE, in particular Andy Dutras.

Going To Ghana

2008-03-27T21:19:00.000Z

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let all of you know that my formal invitation to join the Peace Corps came this afternoon, and I've accepted a position in the Agroforestry and Alternative Livelihood program in the West African nation of Ghana. This is exactly what I was hoping for, so much so that words fail me. The specifics of my work within the program will have to wait until I'm on the ground, but will involve some mixture of projects relating to environmental degradation, food security, sustainable resource management, local entrepreneurship, and conservation.

I'll most likely be based in a rural area between one and three days travel from the capital city of Accra. There are so many things about this assignment that seem, albeit from thousands of miles away, absolutely perfect. For example: "Volunteers live in the community to which they are assigned. You will be provided with some money to purchase a bicycle for commuting, and in some cases, you may have to bike long distances from your home to some project sites." Sweet. Other pithy phrases also set my heart aflutter: "If we are successful, people will have greater food security and natural resources will be conserved." Nicely understated, but that's a banner I'll fight under.

I don't know much about Ghana, but I'm already intrigued. One reason I'm headed there is that apparently they need programs to involve young people, since opportunities for formal secondary education are limited. Given my experiences teaching science and, to some degree, with The League and Cultivating Community, it seems like an excellent match. This is likely to be more rural than some other potential assignments, so my web-contact will probably be very limited, unfortunately. Also, and it's funny that this seems secondary to internet access, "You probably will not have running water or electricity."

Thank you all for sticking with me through this process, and listening to my ongoing angst. I'll be in Portland until July 1st, or thereabouts, and doing some summer traveling (with an ultimate destination of Ann Arbor, Michigan) until leaving for Ghana by way of D.C. on September 24th. Theoretically my service will last until November 26, 2010. Wow.

Thanks again, I treasure my friendship with all of you, the prospect of leaving reminds me of that.

Sam

In Praise of DailyKos

2008-03-27T14:43:00.000Z

Yes, I agree that Dailykos has more than a bit of a tendency toward the whole left-wing echo chamber effect. However, give them credit where it's due, they maintain a stable of very talented writers who use a mix of excellent narrative, personal reflection, and well-researched arguments to support their positions. Please note that their positions are occasionally, in my opinion, crazy, but that's not the point. They present consistent and cogent arguments that shape the opinions of millions of folks who visit their site, and while clearly biased toward the "liberal" end of the political spectrum they express their bias in a way that raises the level of the debate. No one should use DailyKos as their sole source of information, but what they provide is of high quality. To highlight what they do well, here's a post by Meteor Blades (one of their regular writers) discussing the history of gay marriage in Colorado. It's an interesting look at some of the background on the issue in that state, and is also a powerful reminder of why it matters.

Well said, sir.

Blog Balancing

2008-03-26T17:18:00.000Z

Well, I'll eventually get around to writing up Part 2 of the XO Laptops and Sustainable Design post. I got kind of derailed by deciding that I'd like to participate in the Nature Network, which is a much different kettle of fish than a purely personal blog. My NN blog is focused on moving science, and scientists, out of the laboratory and into the real, and I'm still struggling with how to utilize that space. Here's my dilemma, a huge part of why I love science is that it "Boing Boing-ifies" the world, meaning that studying and practicing science makes me realize what an incredible, dynamic, inscrutable, beautiful world we live in. So, it doesn't make sense to me to compartmentalize my NN blog postings to "just science," because science isn't "just science" to me. That said, I do think it's valuable for my NN blog to be more focused, because I am trying to explore a specific set of ideas there, namely how does someone translate their appreciation and scientific training into a broad effort to use those skills in the wider world. It's an uncertain balance, especially at the beginning.

I've got one post up there now that I'm happy with as a starting point, a sort of theme for how I'd like to develop that blog. It's about the developing linkage between science and technology (S&T), their use in remedying our world's most persistent problems, and "diplomacy" in the sense of the policies that bring S&T to bear on the aforesaid issues. Also, continuing my ongoing taxonomy of types of blog entries, it's a "referral to primary sources" post, linking to the video of a plenary lecture by Dr. Nina Federoff that I saw at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston back in February. On a more personal level, her talk is a great example of what I find really exciting about being a scientist, and about the capacity to take our training and apply it where people most need a helping hand. So, if that sounds at all interesting, check it out.

Mildly Incestuous

2008-03-13T00:30:00.001Z

Well, I'm creating an echo chamber of my own hubris. Here's my first post on the new Nature Network blog. I just want to say I'm well aware of the humor that is an emergent property of starting TWO blogs that no one is reading and linking back and forth between them. It's like Louis Black's comedy bit about a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks, but meta-Internet as well. But on the other hand, the reason I'm doing this recent blogging is two-fold, first to improve my writing (and the speed of my "polished" writing) and second to learn how to use the Internet as opposed to passively consuming its content. So far, it's not so much writing a blog post that is difficult, but writing one in a timely fashion that has been challenging. However, some improvement is already evident. And I'm starting to learn how to use Technorati, so on Specific Aim #2 (science grant writing joke) we're seeing some progress as well.

Nature Network Blogging

2008-03-11T22:27:00.000Z

Well, continuing my tradition of getting over-involved in my interests incredibly quickly, I've taken the opportunity to host an additional blog on the Nature Network. It is called "Leaving the Laboratory" and will focus on my thoughts coming to the end of my current scientific life and also on the science-related but not laboratory situated projects that I'm finding more and more interesting these days. Given that Nature is arguably the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, and the Nature Network one of the most visible science communities on the web, it seemed like one of those opportunities that I should probably take. We'll see how it goes, their blogging architecture needs some work and I'm a little concerned that the site is primarily going to be a boutique that only appeals to Nature Network members, but we'll see. I'll post links to anything substantial here.

Little Bits of Paper

2008-03-09T20:01:00.000Z

I've been cleaning off my desk and finding little bits of paper with random observations or notes written on them:

"Graduate student lexicon: 'I'm glad you asked that question' = 'I will kill you after this talk.'"

Yep, I was pretty much on target.

Quotable Quotes

2008-03-09T18:57:00.000Z

"Now, there's a certain truth in what she says. But it's what's called a "poetic truth." And it's the kind of poetic truth best conveyed late in the evening after six or eight drinks while pounding the bar. I wasn't in a bar. I was in my office. It was the middle of the day. And I was getting a headache."

P.J. O'Rourke on Ann Coulter from "I Agree With Me" by way of Andrew Sullivan

Earnest Humor

2008-03-05T03:15:00.000Z

So, in my ongoing series documenting the taxonomy of blog posts that I enjoy, how about the celebration of truly brilliant, topical humor? From Obsidian Wings:

"Obama is very likely to win whatever Clinton does; besides, it would be needlessly divisive. I am not writing this to say: "Nice reputation you've got there, Senator Clinton. Shame if something happened to it ..." I do not want this to happen, and I very much hope it doesn't."

Why is it funny? Because that's what most of us are thinking right now, we admire some or many aspects of Hillary Clinton's character and her accomplishments. We'd like her to bow out with dignity, but at the same time the blatant blackmailing of primary partisans has gotten old. And just on the TV news, "identity thieves are stealing identities in order to get free medical care" so maybe we should acknowledge that Hillary did at least try to come through on this issue.

The XO Laptop And Sustainable Design Part 1

2008-03-01T23:32:00.000Z

One of the talks I heard at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston last week was Nicholas Negroponte presenting the current state of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. OLPC is one of those paradigm-shifting ideas that seeks to upend our expectations of what can and can’t be done, in this case with regards to the education and connectivity of children in the developing world. I was fairly skeptical of the OLPC program at first, but Negroponte’s talk challenged my assumptions about the possibility of using Internet age technology in poor countries. After coming back from AAAS I was able to borrow one of the laptops (called the “XO”) from a friend and stayed up half the night enthusiastically tooling around its OS and various applications. My impression of the XO was a rugged, durable tool, with real potential to connect children to each other and to a wider world. However, I don’t think I’m going to convince anyone of that with a blog post, I think you have to see a demonstration of the operating system in order to appreciate what it has the potential to accomplish.

More information on that aspect of the XO and “Sugar” operating system is available at www.laptop.org (the OLPC website), or by watching some of Nicholas Negroponte’s presentations on Youtube.

However, the most common objection that I’ve heard from folks familiar with the concept has to do with what might be called the “waste stream” of the product. There is a real concern from folks sympathetic to the OLPC ideals that providing electronics to millions of children worldwide could have unintended consequences with regards to pollution, trash, etc. This is well worth considering. In this post I’d like to briefly review a few ideas relating to the “sustainability” of the XO and then in a follow-up (Part 2) comment on some properties of the XO as examples of sustainable design in electronics.

The first idea I’d like to introduce is a self-critical one: our concern about electronic waste doesn’t extend to refusing to buy ourselves laptops. Not that it should, in my opinion laptops make life substantively better using metrics of community, creativity, and connectivity. Accepting that assumption, the issue then shifts from “whither electronics” to “sustainable electronics.” That then becomes the question I’d like to consider in Part 2, how do we evaluate the XO, and laptops in general, according to their sustainability as physical objects? At this point, it may be useful to mention that “sustainability” can refer to things like energy use as well as more traditional measures of pollution (i.e. cadmium or mercury entering the environment from the disposal of batteries).

However, before moving into that discussion in earnest, I’d like to further explore our instinctive concern about e-waste in the developing world. I suspect, although I would suggest it gently, that some of our concern regarding OLPC and sustainability is less about harm done to the environment and more about our concern over inducting children from poor countries into modern, post-industrial society. That concern is real, and it is laudable, but we need to make sure we’re honest about what we’re discussing. Concerns about e-waste or energy use can be evaluated according to objective metrics of wattage, heavy metal pollution, etc. and that’s what I’m interested in following up on in Part 2. Concerns about the costs, benefits, positives, and negatives of post-industrial society are different questions, not to be placed off limits, but to be discussed clearly for what they are and not mixed into concerns over the sustainability of the XO as a physical object.

Thesis Vignette

2008-03-01T00:16:00.000Z

Another type of blog posting I really enjoy is when authors who usually write longer posts will occasionally break in with random observations of their ongoing world. For example, earlier today I was looking at a protein structure in Science and it turned into an outline of a girl. In that moment, I realized that I don't want to be in graduate school any more. Fire up the Mountain Goats CDs, stack the .pdf files, it's time to make this thesis happen.

Intertextuality and Prozac

2008-02-27T20:59:00.000Z

So, one of my favorite aspects of "blogging" is what a college writing professor once described as "intertextuality," the references between written work that create a sort of mini-universe of related thought. Obviously the Internet takes this to the extreme, where hyperlinks are one of the most useful parts of its architecture. I like the idea of multimedia intertextuality, where my blog can become a part of larger trends in thought and argument. So, although I have yet to really develop a cohesive theme for this blog, I thought I'd share a post from Megan McArdle's Asymmetrical Symmetry blog at The Atlantic.com where she nails, just absolutely nails, what I think is the rational case for medications like Prozac and whatnot in the face of a widespread cultural suspicion that it has some sort of dampening effect on the "real" self:

"Rather, I am disputing the notion that there is a true self, either au natural or chemically enhanced. Both the pre- and post-medication selves regard themselves as the "true" self, with, I think, roughly equally valid claims. For that matter, both Megan McArdle two hours ago and Megan McArdle now regard(ed) themselves as my "true" self, even though they are slightly different. People don't need to justify their decision to feel better by saying that the self that feels better is closer to some sort of platonic ideal of me-ness. It's enough simply to want to feel better. The best justification for medication is that the medicated self wants to keep being that way, while the unmedicated self wishes it were fundamentally otherwise."

Reason is just so awesome.

An Open Letter to the Obama Campaign Regarding Science Debate 2008

2008-02-26T03:57:00.000Z

I thought I’d start off my alleged blog by sharing an email I sent to the Barack Obama campaign a few days ago at the behest of the Science Debate 2008 organizers. I didn't originally write this with the intent of posting it here, so it's a bit rough.

Hello,

As a supporter (in Maine) I'd like to encourage you to confirm your attendance at the Science Debate 2008 in April in Pennsylvania. Just by confirming your attendance you will send a strong message to the scientific community (which includes not just scientists but people concerned with economic development, environmental health, and other issues that are based on a scientific foundation) your concern for the major challenges facing our society. I realize how busy this season is for your campaign, but I repeat: just by confirming your attendance you will "take the lead" over your Democratic and Republican competition for the presidency. This is an opportunity to get out in front on an iconic platform, a President who embraces the role of science in policy making, and make some real change happen by engaging the scientific community, a group who (it must be said) have had a tendency in the past to fail to engage politically. However, scientists as a community are becoming more politically aware, and the first candidate to confirm their Science Debate attendance is going to score MAJOR points with us. As a young scientist and a supporter, again I hope that you will confirm your attendance at Science Debate 2008.

Thanks, and we're all pulling for your campaign up here in Portland, Maine!

Sincerely,

Samuel E. Frankel
Graduate Student, Biology
Maine ScienceCorps Fellow
University of Southern Maine
Portland, Maine

I think it's important to emphasize that Science Debate 2008 is the result of an upwelling of enthusiasm from the science blogging community, specifically Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Intersection but quickly adopted by many others. As Sheril says in the video below, we're not pushing for this as another interest group that wants its concerns heard, but because the problems we need to address through science and technology are the common concern of all people. Although the scientific community has certainly felt this way for decades, it has historically not done a great job of conveying that to the broader public. I am greatly impressed at the rise of the scientific Web 2.0 community, and especially that our enthusiasm has taken on such a tangible expression.

More info at: www.sciencedebate2008.com