Dry Bones Dance

The love of your life - now on sale

Someone called me a liar this week and said I don't exist. Some guy in the online dating world decided, after a few initially normal e-mails, that I am not real and sent me a nasty e-mail to say so. The obvious conclusion to draw from this is that some people are crazy, and it's a good thing I didn't give this guy my phone number when he asked for it.

His deep-rooted personal issues notwithstanding, I do wonder about this whole process. Something about choosing people out of an online catalog rubs me the wrong way. Maybe that's why so many profiles sound like they were written by used car salesmen. We're all putting forth the best versions of ourselves, and some are putting forth someone else entirely. My profile is probably more honest than most, but still - it's not ME, just what I choose to reveal.

Making mental lists of what you are looking for in a partner pre-dates Match.com, but several of my friends have fallen in love with people who didn't fit that list. I wonder how it affects how we see each other to check boxes requesting certain income levels and body type and hobbies, plug that into a search engine, and then peruse the results - as if we can special order a significant other made to our specifications. It feels like one more step in commodifying ourselves and each other sometimes.

Either that, or I think WAY too much, and I should just say that I'm living life to the fullest while searching for that special someone while believing that honesty and communication are the keys to a good relationship - or just add a photo with more cleavage.

Ode to being Unaware, Sequel to the Sequel

Sheila said:

I am addicted to documentaries. I use them in my classroom all the time. My students often leave my classroom disturbed, or so they tell me.

This summer we've viewed documentaries about genocide, global warming, and one called, Invisible Children. We write expository essays about the issues, take our carbon footprints online, and we raise money for IC, etc.

I agree that the lefties use fear much like the right wingers do, and I don't like feeling guilty anymore than anyone else.

Your post makes me question my own practice and wonder what better ways there are to educate my students about global issues that impact us all. How can I inform them (without disturbing them) and then give them opportunities to act from a more global awareness/perspective?

Most likely, Sheila is asking a rhetorical question, but I think it is a good one, so I’ll answer it. I’ll preface this by saying, that based on your description of your teaching on you blog, I think you are probably a damn good teacher, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt. Bear in mind that this is my pedagogy unfettered by things like 37 kids in a classroom, budget cuts, and No Child Left Behind.

First, reality is disturbing sometimes, and I don’t know how you can teach about genocide and have that be an entirely comfortable experience. However, I think there are ways that you can teach about difficult things without overwhelming people. So, for what it’s worth, here are my principles for teaching about social change without inducing free-floating guilt:

Ode to Being Unaware: The Sequel

T here were several comments on my last post that were thought-provoking, so I decided to write “Ode to being Unaware, The Sequel”

Mike said: I think I had the great privilege of meeting Annemie Bosch, wife of the late great South African missiologist David Bosch, in Rwanda in May. She told us of a conversation she and David had, where he said to her that their job was to be the "pebble in the shoe of the church." I love that.

As a swarm of people purporting to be the manifestation of Jesus on earth, we can't pretend these things aren't happening. We're dropping the ball and we need to be told. We--the collective we--are the solution. But as individuals, disconnected from each other and a sense of purpose, it's hopeless.

At one point in my life, I was all about reforming the evangelical church and waking it up to social justice. Now, however, I feel I’ve been walked on quite enough by all things religious, so I have no interest in being a pebble in anybody’s shoe.

Ode to being unaware

I have decided that I watch too many documentaries. I recently saw this one. The recap of the film is that Monsanto is taking over the world’s food supply, genetically modified seeds are wiping out indigenous varieties of plants and ruining small farmers, and cotton farmers in India are committing suicide. Through their incestuous relationship with the Dept. of Agriculture, Monsanto has gamed the legal and political system to suppress the real truth about the effects of their seeds and biotechnology, punish whistleblowers, and patent food. So much of the food in the U.S. is genetically modified that it’s practically impossible to avoid in any grocery store. The end.

I saw this with my friend Jen, and rather than inspiring us to action, it mostly inspired us to want to drink heavily.

For a religious – and shorter – video that has the same effect, there’s this video about eight dollar hot dogs.

I’ve been trying to figure out what bugs me about this kind of thing, and it’s that lefties and right-wing fundies frequently have WAY too much in common. Here’s a little rhetoric compare and contrast:

Observations on online dating, part whatever

In consultation with a couple of friends, I rejoined the online dating world tonight. (Writing a profile is stressful, and I needed moral support.)

- My intro line is "Eco-geek wants to hug more than a tree." I'm a little bit proud of that. I think it's clever. Certainly, it's better than the ubiquitous "looking for that special someone."

- My theory with posting photos is that it's all about setting the bar low. This being L.A., a number of people have professional head shots. I think this is a bad strategy, because you generally look better in the headshot than you do in real life, thus setting yourself up to be a disappointment. My photo is me with no makeup and my hair pulled back after yoga, thus setting the stage for me to look better than expected. We'll see how it works.

- If I could do a keyword search on profiles, I would eliminate every guy who says he "lives life to the fullest" or "sees the glass as half-full." Sometimes the glass really IS empty and pretending that it isn't does not rectify the situation. In the online world, everyone's an optimist. I'm thinking of saying that I'm daily expecting the coming apocalypse just to make myself stand out.

- Judging by the various profiles, (which are just as misspelled as they were a year ago) there are disturbing deficiencies in the U.S. educational system. If Mrs. Haddad, my seventh grade English teacher, saw the grammar in some of these profiles, she would be rolling over in her grave - unless she isn't dead yet. She seemed old when I was 12, but everyone over 35 seemed old at that age, so maybe she's still going strong - although for her sake, I hope she's moved away from her beehive hairdo in the intervening two decades.

- Why do 80% of the men in my age group want a younger woman? Most women will readily date a man a few years older, but very few men, it seems, are willing to date a woman even two or three years older. Is it a power thing, a looks thing, or a looking for a younger set of ovaries for childbearing purposes thing? Feel free to leave theories in the comments.

Stairways and Superheroes

Here's where I start a post because I promised myself that I would start writing regularly again, and hope that I find something to say before I'm done....

An unexpected side effect of the happy pills has been extremely vivid and involved dreams almost every night. I didn't see this documented anywhere as something other people experience, but since it's more entertaining than negative, they don't feel the need to put it on the list. In my most recent dream, I was climbing a long, winding staircase, covered with thick ice, into the windy night. I was alone and surrounded by mountains, somewhere very remote. It was very dark and very cold, and the staircase went so far up into the sky that I couldn't see where it ended.

Suddenly, I was a superhero. I know this because I could fly, even though I didn't have a special costume or a cape. There was a whole group of us, kind of like the Justice League, except we were in some kind of suburb and all wore normal clothes. There were two superhero factions - the good guys and the bad guys - with me being one of the good guys, of course.

Book Recommendation: No God but God

If you are like me, you don't know a lot about Islam. (Hell, if you are like our current administration, you don't know a lot about Islam.) I've been reading No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan to somewhat rectify my ignorance.

It's not exactly summertime beach reading, but for an academic covering a very substantial subject, he writes very understandably. He covers how Islam developed from a guy who said some stuff about what God was up to into a full-fledged religion, which I found fascinating. A lot of theological decisions and ecclesiastical structures were shaped by a much by prevailing politics and culture, personal power struggles, and inter-personal dysfunction as they were by anyone's opinions about God - even if they are later enshrined as the will of the Divine.

Calling all Trader Joe's shoppers...

Those of you who live in the vicinity of a Trader Joe's have probably bought at least one bottle of Two Buck Chuck. For those of you who don't shop Trader Joe's, Two Buck Chuck refers to Charles Shaw wine, which can be purchased exclusively at Trader Joe's stores for just $1.99. It's not exactly high-end Napa Valley, but it's better than you think, and at $2 a bottle, how can you go wrong?

It turns out that Ol' Chuck may cost a bit more than you think: (HT: Acts of Hope)

Farm worker who died connected to "Two-Buck Chuck."

We told you about the tragic death of 17-year-old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez who died while laboring in a Stockton area vineyard in 100 plus degree heat. According to a Wednesday AP story, the San Joaquin County Coroner has officially confirmed that Maria died of heat stroke. Maria had been working 8 hours in the blistering heat without shade or sufficient water. The closest water supply was a 10 minute walk away.

According to worker charges filed with Cal OSHA, the land owner where Maria suffered heat stroke continues to utilize labor contractors that don't abide by the law. And Friday, a month after Maria's passing, another charge was filed for lack of water and shade at one of the company's locations.

I took the blue pill

You may have noticed that I haven’t written much in the past few months. There are a number of reasons for that, but after 4 ½ years of blogging, I was mostly just writing because I felt obligated. I think I needed to stop for a while until I actually wanted to write again. I needed to miss it. Also, I spent most of the past six months so depressed that I spent most of my non-working hours curled up on my couch watching TV and feeling that I should probably shower more often.

You may not remember this post, but I do. Sometimes I feel like my life is one long process of getting over myself.

Seven things about me

I"m not generally very meme-y, but apparently I have lost the will to blog, unless someone tells me to and gives me a topic. Since Amba tagged me, I will respond (except for # 5 because I just can't be bothered.)

Here are the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. Present an image of martial discord from whatever period or situation you’d like.

1. In the first Presidential election in which I was old enough to vote, I voted for George H.W. Bush, and was a Republican until I was 26. For a couple of years there, it is possible I was the only pacifist Republican in the U.S. At least, there's not usually a lot of overlap between those two groups. While I was never a very good fit in that particular party, I still have a certain amount of sympathy for small-government conservatives because the government - sometimes it really sucks.