herein lies a metaphor about which i am excited

Sometime soon, if/when I'm able to fully wrap my head around the wonderfulness that was the wedding I attended last Saturday in Asheville, NC, I will write something here about that. For now I will say that this is one of those couples whose coupledom and marriage are so incredibly right that you can't help but believe that the world is and will be a better place for it. Seriously.

For now, I have some thoughts bubbling over about all this sudden talk about the overlap between food shortages and biofuel production, so I'm going to share the spillage (what else is a blog, anyway, but a drainage ditch for the brain?).

For starters, some basic assumptions on my part:

• Food shortages = bad.
• Cleaner transportation = good. (Using less transportation, not to mention buying less crap that we don't need - and therefore not needing it shipped around the world to us = even better.)

With these (arguably not-at-all) "sudden" food shortages making headlines, there seem to be conferences and press releases and petitions and crisis meetings about biofuel production popping up all over the place. And I wondered why, if the problem is food shortages, everyone was talking about biofuel. As usual, Oxfam gave me a good place to start. Seems that many countries whose land is conducive to growing biofuel crops - things like corn, sugarcane, and oil palm - would be more than happy to supply this lucrative new market, and the sooner the better. So they're doing things like pushing poor farmers off their land and, oh, cutting down ancient rainforests to clear land for quick cultivation.

Ironic, huh?

OK, so...

• Doing bad things in the name of good things = bad.
• Potentially good things leading to other, larger problems = bad.

But I can't just accept that these issues automatically make biofuels bad. What about, say, cows? Having grown up in the heart of the U.S. cornbelt, where almost none of the corn goes to feed people (other than by way of a cow's digestive system), I know a little about feed grain and beef consumption. The figures vary, but no one can argue that it takes far, far more grain to feed a cow (or pig, chicken, etc.) that will eventually feed a person than it does to just feed a person.

Moreover, that person most likely lives in the Global North (aka "First World," aka The West), where our meat consumption pretty much just serves the purpose of giving us heart disease and making us fat. Who wins on that one, other than industrial beef producers and giant agrochemical companies?

I guess I'm asking why biofuels - a product that could go a fair way toward helping us mitigate the peak oil crisis, which seems like it has to be a good idea - seem to be the main target in this debate over food shortages. Oxfam's analysis seems solid on every count, but why don't they have another paper right next to it urging world vegetarianism? And a corollary campaign to convert the land now used for cattle grazing and feed cultivation into biofuel production? Can someone point me to evidence that biofuels are really the worst culprit here? (I mean it, leave comments! Tell me!)

This is not, of course, to say that it's all about finding The One Cause - be it biofuels or meat consumption or whatever else - and pretending that everything else is therefore OK. There are clearly some big problems with biofuel production, and as Oxfam itself says, there is also great potential. And there are definite problems with beef and other meat consumption (along with its great potential for... triple bypass surgery?). If I'm sure of anything, it's that neither biofuels nor cattle feed nor any one thing is really The Problem. We just hate to admit that there might not be a simple solution (once we've been forced to admit that there's a problem at all).

• Oversimplifying complicated issues = bad.

Update: Clearly the UN reads my blog.

continuing down the npr path...

I heard these commentaries on NPR nearly a few weeks ago and both really stuck in my head. They are not easy to hear, particularly for those of us who feel pretty secure on the moral high ground from which we have always looked with revulsion at this war. But they are so important.

It seems that finally a lot of people in this country are coming around to the belief that this war was a pretty (horrifically awfully) bad idea, but it's also true that most of us aren't really affected by it in our daily lives (at least not in ways that we really feel right now - I'm fairly certain that my generation and those after us will pay very dearly for the incredible fiscal and diplomatic irresponsibility happening now). So we concentrate on other things, especially as the economy goes rapidly down the toilet.

Many of us would probably argue that we are paying attention, really we are! I listen to NPR on my way to work every day! I voted for the Democrats last time around (not that they've gotten us anywhere closer to ending this mess in a perceivable way, much to what should be our and Nancy Pelosi's shame)!

But are we really? Does we really know what's going on or does it pass through through our brains as a blur of bombs-violence-bloodshed-Baghdad-green zone-Fallujah that seems not to differ anymore, day to day? These commentators urge that not only must we listen more, but that maybe this war will end only when most of us are forced to do far more than just pay attention.

Listening is an important and necessary starting place. And, really, a pretty pathetically small thing to ask of ourselves.

true beauty

If anyone needed another reason to love Shakira (or - perish the thought! - learn of her existence, in which case I suggest you go out and buy her MTV Unplugged album right now, unless you really hate the thought listening to Spanish pop rock music, in which case read on...), check out her NPR interview today. Yes, really. Listen to the audio file too.

A caring, human superstar... how surprising and refreshing.

open letter. or, i'm not so much angry as disappointed

Let me get this straight:

Say, just hypothetically, that you're a grad student at a small progressive institution in, oh, say, southern Vermont focusing on international education and development. Your graduate school is part of a larger organization encompassing a high school summer abroad program, college semester study abroad programs, and an international development programs office. (Though, to be fair, it probably seems to grad students sometimes like the grad school is really what the organization is about, intense-experience-on-an-insular-campus as it is.)

The organization as a whole has had its ups and downs over the years and is finally taking a step back to try to really ensure its long-term fiscal stability, so it takes a hard look at budgets around the organization and makes some tough choices. Some of those choices involve cutting back the grad programs and eliminating several faculty positions.

Undoubtedly (at least to me), it wasn't easy for those in power here to reach the conclusion that several of their peers should lose their jobs. This is, after all, a small campus and the people making the decisions aren't some phantom uncaring omnipotent beings in far-away corner offices. But the reality is that the grad school doesn't make anywhere near the money it needs to sustain itself, and in fact WOULDN'T EXIST AT ALL were it not for the other divisions of the organization (*ahem*... the study abroad programs) making a profit.

(Not to mention the people in those other divisions living relatively peacefully with the fact that any profit they bring in goes to prop up the grad school rather than being reinvested in their own work. Nope. Won't mention that.)

So, like the good activist hippie you are (why else would you be at this particular grad school in the first place?) (and I say that with generally great affection for and identification with the activist hippies of the world), you decide to protest the decision to reduce grad school size and eliminate the faculty positions. You get together with fellow angry folk and decide to put up hand-painted banners all over campus with angry slogans aimed at disparaging not only the decision but the people and process that resulted in the decision. In order to really make your point, you decide to put up a whole lot of these banners during the week of a grad school open house during which current and potential applicants visit campus as they consider attending school here.

OK... all of that is pretty clear. And I'm sure that the angry activism comes from a place of care and concern about the future of the program and the people who have taught and mentored students through that program over the years. I really do think that speaks well of the program as well as the passion and energy of the people it attracts.

The part I'm having trouble with is where you think it's logical to protest the cutting of underenrolled grad programs by pointedly criticizing the institution to potential future grad students.

Where I'm from they call that shooting yourself in the foot. With a fairly large gun.

And frankly, given that you are attending a graduate institution whose curriculum is based on intercultural understanding and productive dialogue, your approach to this issue (at least, the really visible part of the approach) seems altogether pretty unimpressive to those of us who work our asses off to keep things functioning in the one part of the organization whose finances aren't regularly in the red.

You're welcome (just hypothetically, of course).

reminder

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Revolution in Jesusland blows my mind. (And since I just returned from a trip to Jesusland, aka my hometown, for my second weekend trip there in the last three weeks, it's that much more important for me to remember to leave my assumptions at the door... or better yet, packed away deep in the scary corner of the basement where I'll forget them when I move...)

The most recent post, from last Friday, begins as follows:

"Wednesday night, I caught the first day of the Social Justice Revival at Vineyard Columbus, which continues through tonight... Close to 100 churches participated, led jointly by Jim Wallis' Sojourners and pastor Rich Nathan’s Columbus Vineyard church. Jim Wallis is an evangelical lefty progressive with a background in radical politics. Rich Nathan is an evangelical conservative who voted for Bush. The event is a tipping point in the decay of 20th century political categories."

Now, read that last sentence and just try to convince me that that's not one of the more intriguing sentences you've seen in a long time. Yes, this involves reading about a whole lot of people going to a really, really big church. It'll be OK. Just watch out, you might find out they're not so different from you or me. Next thing you know you might actually find yourself wanting to talk to them. And then where would we be?