Are You An Environmental Racist?

(PHOTO: Angela Waye)

Think about it: The disappearance of the wild and its wildlife is often attributed to too many people. Who do you think “those people” are? Do they look like you, talk like you, share your values? If they don’t, who are “those people?”

At the root of American environmentalism are the values of a white, aristocratic class that extolled eugenics, elevated Nordic culture and feared the dilution of that culture, according to Jedehiah Purdy in a New Yorker article, “Environmentalism’s Racist History.”

The creation of America’s national parks and forests by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot were guided by a vision to preserve in the wild nature’s aristocratic qualities, “the moose, the mountain goat, and the redwood tree,” writes Purdy. Roosevelt also engaged John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, “who felt fraternity with four-legged ‘animal people’ and even plants, [but] was at best ambivalent about human brotherhood.”

Purdy: “For each of these environmentalist icons, the meaning of nature and wilderness was constrained, even produced, by an idea of civilization. Muir’s nature was a pristine refuge from the city. Madison Grant’s nature [ a Roosevelt fellow traveler better known for his views on eugenics ] was the last redoubt of nobility in a leveling and hybridizing democracy. They went to the woods to escape aspects of humanity. They created and preserved versions of the wild that promised to exclude the human qualities they despised.”

Recognize anybody you might know? Most likely not. But put another way, how many environmentalists would agree that their environmental values of protecting the wild in the wilderness is in some sense better than those in cultures that clear rain forests, hunt whales, and kill animals for their fins, ivory or gall bladders? If those perpetrators’ skin color is different from yours, some might call you — loosely speaking-- a racist. (racism: a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human racial groups determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to dominate others or that a particular group is inferior to others.)

I say “loosely” because the term these days gets thrown around in heated arguments and polemics. If you spend time saving the whales and ignoring immigration reform, will you be called a racist? If you say, saving African elephants is my issue, not voting rights, will you be called a racist? What happens when a Black Lives Matter activist takes the microphone away from Denis Hayes ala Bernie Sanders when he wants to talk about climate change?

Have environmentalists been racists? I’ve listened to a card-carrying green complain about the people who don’t speak English coming down to the shore at low tide and stripping it bare of the sea weed and limpets. There are California Sierra Club members who have had a hard time dealing with immigration. Good friends deride Canadians for clogging up the local Trader Joes and Costco. The subtext here isn’t hard to figure out (Southeast Asians, Mexicans, Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese) but I’m not sure the speakers felt superior as much as beleagued by a foreign “otherness” that seemed beyond their control.

I’m also not sure how exclusive our cultural value of protecting wild creatures in the wilderness is but much of this country’s wildernesses, parks and environmental laws are the result of environmentalists who are white, educated and not poor. The membership and leadership of environmental organizations are almost exclusively white. The causes, however, are not about protecting wildlife and wild places from other races but from businesses that threaten their destruction. To prevail in those causes like climate change and Arctic drilling and species protection and recovery, the environmental movement needs to expand its constituent base.

To do that requires more than trying to diversify the complexion of their boards and staffs and printing more brochures in other languages. It will required understanding why a phrase like “people of color” rings hollow (the redoubtable Hazel Wolf said, I’m white, that’s all the colors) and why asking the families of Mexican farm workers to take part in a weeding and planting restoration day makes no sense. Show some respect: People who don’t have the economic luxury of being able to save the polar bears don’t need to be educated about polar bears and climate change. And, it’s important to remember when working in a community on environmental justice issues that the organizers get to go home; the community living with the toxic crap is at home.

The strength of the environmental movement is based on the values of protecting wild things in the wilderness and those are the values of its white, educated and not poor members. OK, that’s not necessarily the values of most of the world or non-white cultures in this country. Saving the whales or the polar bear or ancient forests isn’t the environment for the people environmentalists want to reach. The environment for these folks is health and safety: safe water, safe food, safe streets, safe parks.

Are you ready to write the new environmental manifesto that clearly expresses how we protect the wild and the wilderness by protecting and restoring the health and safety of our communities?

The need to do that if the environmental movement is to grow and move forward has been recognized by folks like Scott Miller of Resource Media: “Many organizations, like Resource Media, with their roots firmly in environmental advocacy, now understand that a greener world is part of something much bigger. We have long contended people have a right to clean air, clean water and places to experience nature. Now we are intentional about saying that list includes rights to adequate health care, safety, equity, economic well being and... human dignity.“

Take a moment to read Jedehiah Purdy’s article, and let me know what you think.

--Mike Sato

Old Japanese Pitcher Throws No-Hitter

Hisashi Iwakuma (Associated Press)

Japanese-born Hisashi Iwakuma pitched a no-hitter on Wednesday in Seattle. At 34 years old, Iwakuma is the oldest pitcher since Randy Johnson threw a non-hitter in 2004. That’s according to Tim Booth, the Associated Press sports writer.

I cheered and cheer for Iwakuma and the Seattle Mariners. My friend Michi who was at the game doing play-by-play for Japan TV wrote, “Although I was there for work, I almost cried.”

Did it matter that Hisashi Iwakuma (name notwithstanding) needed to be identified as Japanese-born by the sportswriter? When Mariner pitcher Felix Hernandez pitched his perfect game no-hitter (a much more difficult achievement in facing the minimum 27 batters in a game), Seattle Times sportswriter Larry Stone  didn’t think it necessary to identify Felix by his ethnicity or by his age.

Maybe the presence of Japanese-born major league players is still mezurashi (uniquely interesting) to sportswriters and followers of the game but, as Tim Booth points out, Iwakuma joins fellow Japanese-born pitcher Hideo Nomo in the no-hitter ranks and, as we in Seattle know as we cheered for Ichiro, we didn’t need to identify him as Japanese-born.

Age of ball players reaching some level of achievement seems to be newsworthy, however. When athletes who are very young excel, they are lauded for their discipline and maturity. Older players who perform well, say, an Ichiro or the recently honored pitcher Jamie Moyer, are looked upon as rare examples of physical prowess and endurance. Baseball’s a young man’s game and Iwakuma at 34 is relatively old. Einstein published his theory of general relativity when he was 35.

Since in the Northwest we’re still grappling with how to talk about race and ethnicity, especially after the Bernie Sanders affair last weekend, it’s good that the sport reporting references to Iwakuma’s ethnicity and age stir no controversy.

It did bring to mind, however, my getting a haircut years back at a three-chair men’s barber shop on Roosevelt Avenue in Seattle where the barber (the one with the sharp instruments cutting my hair) got into a discussion with some of the clients about the Mariners playing exhibition games in Japan. “Won’t be much of a contest,” he said. “Those Japanese players just don’t play the same caliber of ball that we do in the States.” To which I demurred, saying that there were players who could play in our major leagues. He countered by going down the Mariner lineup, starting with Edgar Martinez, and worked to even out my sideburns. As he proceeded with the lineup to Jay Buhner, the sideburns kept getting adjusted side to side shorter and shorter until I called a halt and got out of the chair.

I’ve thought about that haircut and the ethnic stereotypes held by that barber when I watched and cheered Ichiro and Kaz and most recently Iwakuma. And I thought about the racial stereotyping that kept blacks like Lloyd McClendon out of managerial positions until recent years. (The end of the haircut story: My next stop was Super Cuts where I asked the cutter to even out my sideburns. I started explaining why they were uneven and she said, “Oh, no, we never discuss politics here,” and I shut up.)

So, does it matter that Iwakuma is Japanese-born? Nope. Anyone who can pitch like Kuma and Felix I want on my team. When they get older and can’t pitch like they do today, that’s another ballgame.

--Mike Sato

Failing Science, Eating Salamanders, and Seahawk Fever vs. Avian Flu

We’re not going to change the world, for the better we hope, if we don’t use best available science. And let’s not consider endangered species as delicacies for fat cat palates. And, oh, go ‘Hawks but wash your hands.

Nope, nobody’s going to change the world for the better as long as there’s this big difference between how scientists and citizens see science and society. A Pew Research Center poll finds scientists highly esteemed by citizens but that scientists and citizens hold differing views on genetically modified foods, pesticide use, nuclear power, evolution, overpopulation, childhood vaccinations, and human-causes of global warming. According to almost all scientist polled, there’s a problem: people don’t know what they’re talking about.

On the food front, add to the plight of the white rhino, the wolf and the elephant, the rare Chinese giant salamander. The BBC reports that that senior security officials ate a critically endangered giant salamander, also considered a

delicacy, at a lavish banquet. The salamander, which can grow to nearly six feet, was allegedly feasted on in the southern city of Shenzhen. Photographers taking pictures of the attendees were reportedly beaten by police.

Seahawk fever reaches its peak on Super Bowl Sunday and backyard poultry growers around Agnew on the Olympic Peninsula can rest easy that their flocks tested negative for the spreading avian flu virus. There are several subtypes infecting commercial and wild bird populations, including the subtype A(H7N9) which

has infected two people in British Columbia. The virus passes from bird-to-bird much easier than to humans and human-to-human transmittal doesn’t happen easily. Call the health department if you find dead birds. Meanwhile, go ‘Hawks.

--Mike Sato

The 12th Man On MLK Day

Hard to sit down and compose a Martin Luther King Day blog after watching the end of Sunday’s Seattle Seahawk game. The 12th Man/Woman in houses up and down the neighborhood street yelled himself/herself hoarse. I hope they yell as hard for justice on Monday but race, civil rights, equal opportunity, domestic abuse, gender equality aren’t as simple as a football game, regardless of how much some people might think of sports as a metaphor for life.

The football league is sponsoring 30-second public service announcements featuring football players who are shown having a hard time talking about domestic violence and sexual assault. I’m not sure who those messages are addressed to. I don’t have any difficulty talking about domestic violence and sexual abuse: I can look directly into a camera and say unequivocally that domestic violence and sexual assault are wrong and that anyone who behaves that way or condones that behavior is a creep, period.

Can we do the same for race and gender? Look directly into the camera and say, unequivocally, that discrimination in employment, housing, policing, health care, education is wrong? That it doesn’t matter what you might think or feel, but anyone who behaves that way or condone that kind of behavior is a creep, period?

Is “creep” too mild? What would you call them?

Yes, I know: behavior like that is against the law. But laws are sand, custom is rock. Unless custom changes, the creeps continue to behave, well, like creeps. As long as someone feels like they have power over another, they will not stand as equals and the opportunity to be a creep continues.

If all you want to do is educate, make more 30-second public service annoucements? I think it’s better to start right now by calling out the creeps, as hard and dangerous as it is, and to talk and keep talking about equal justice for all. Louder. We might even change some behavior and that would make Dr. King happy.

Ready to yell for justice, 12th Man, 12th Woman?

--Mike Sato

Last Minute Shopping Thoughts

If the 25th is your big day, then you really ought to be done with the shopping. Here’s to hoping you stayed within a reasonable budget in giving gifts that, well, mean something. I think affordable and meaningful over the years has become more and more difficult to achieve.

The little ones are the easiest, despite what expectations might be drilled into their heads by television advertising or other kids at school. The older they get, the harder it gets to match taste, budget and expectation. As for adults, the style nowadays is to eschew ‘things’ in favor of ‘experiences’ but one needs to be pretty brave to gift an evening of candles and amateur massage in lieu of a spa afternoon at the Chrysalis.

The gifts I am giving this year fall within my comfort level of used and new books I know well enough to give and items like guides and language aids that might enable an experience to be had. I’ve always admired people who are able to pick out the perfect piece of clothing, jewelry or pottery as gifts. Maybe the affordable part of gift giving is sacrificed for the meaningful; in any case I can’t be critical of something I can’t do.

By the end of Christmas day we will each have opened our gifts and I hope most are meaningful either because of what the giver meant or what the gift means in itself. I hope we will not be surrounded by different but simply more things. Too many things— stuff-- crowd our lives. I don’t mean gifts have to be jaw-dropping experiences or hand crafted; they can be things off the shelf but let them be imbued with a story that give them meaning: “I got that blue casserole dish for you only after knocking down two old ladies and snatching the last one off the shelf!”

Thinking about the equation of things-- where they are made, who makes them, who sells them, who buys them— I know that my part is in the buying end. When I buy, someone gets a wage, fair or unfair; someone gets a return on investment, fair or obscene.  If I think about it too much, I start drawing all kinds of un-Christmas-like conclusions and family members remind me to get with the spirit of the season.

OK. That spirit for me isn’t with Charles Dickens and the old chestnut, A Christmas Carol, but with Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, and one of the parts I like best is about presents, things, gifts, stuff:

"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles's pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why." 

"Go on to the Useless Presents." 

"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by a mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any color I please, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknel, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."

It’s a great piece of writing that is my touchstone for Christmas. Read the whole piece here, A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

Or, listen to the poet himself. Dylan Thomas, 1952: A Child's Christmas in Wales, A Story - Recorded at Steinway Hall, NY 

Merry Christmas.

--Mike Sato

What Does It Mean To Be Hawaiian?

Laksa at Panya Bistro

The best part of thinking about what it meant to be Canadian was to be in Montreal during St-Jean Baptist Day eating hand-pulled Nouilles de Lan zhou in a large bowl, spicy, surrounded by people speaking Chinese.

Over the last couple of weeks, the best part of thinking about what it means to be Hawaiian was to be in Honolulu eating the laksa at Panya Bistro and the Belly Bowl ramen at Lucky Belly restaurant and driving my mother to hula lessons at the Alama Sisters’ hula studio.

My great-grandparents and grandparent emigrated to Hawaii from Japan, which makes me Japanese. But people who live in Hawaii are Hawaiian, like I guess I’m a Washingtonian when I’m living here along the Salish Sea. Sometimes my being Hawaiian when I’m Japanese gets confusing, especially when Polynesians in Hawaii speak for their native Hawaiian sovereignty.

Representatives of the U.S. Department of the Interior the last few weeks were holding public listening sessions with native Hawaiians on all the islands about if and how the federal government should approach recognition of native rights and claims. They listened and heard a long list of grievances from people who spoke of the injustice suffered from the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and the subsequent annexation of the islands by the U.S. government in 1898. According to news accounts, passions ran high and any proposed recognition with government-to-government relations similar to Native American tribal relations would be rejected. Restoration of the Hawaiian Kingdom seemed to be the rallying cry.

True, unlike Native American treaty tribes, no treaties were signed ceding land and rights in supposed exchange for federal protection. Land was taken when the monarchy was overthrown and land became private and federal when the islands were annexed. Who are the legitimate heirs to the land unjustly seized and what would restoration of a sovereign Hawaiian government look like in the 50th state of the union?

Ironies in Hawaii abound. Native American culture hasn’t penetrated Northwest living except for place names and maybe the ambiance of Ivar’s Salmon House and the opportunistic faux-Salish logo motifs. Whereas in Hawaii, you can fly to and fro on Hawaiian Airlines, get your electricity from Hawaiian Electric, watch Mormons dance and sing at the Polynesian Cultural Center and imagine yourself at a broadcast of “Hawaii Calls” from the Moana Hotel (the First Lady of Waikiki), if you didn’t want to join the other tourists at the “Pink Lady,” the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.

But there’s also too much of the faux-”A-looow-ha” and ugly his-and-her matching prints, badly mixed mai tais, rip-off coral jewelry; you know, the tourist stuff. But hula continues to be very popular, as is Hawaiian music, and my mother, as fully Japanese and as Hawaiian as when I’m in Hawaii, still goes to Saturday hula lessons taught by Puanani Alama (sister Leilani recently passed away) and Miss Yamauchi (Makaleka). Not far away at Yama’s Fish Market, you can get more good Hawaiian laulau, kalua pig, poki, poi, lomi lomi salmon and haupia than you can eat. And go deep into Hawaiian Art Deco, currently the major exhibit at the Honolulu Art Museum, or get lost in the Hawaiian and Polynesian exhibits at the Bishop Museum, or listen to the Royal Hawaiian Band on Fridays in the park for free....

If we are what we eat, then in Hawaii I was Hawaiian, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Mexican, Chinese. Didn’t get to Italian or Filipino this time.  On the Fourth of July, the flags were unfurled, the editorials written, the fireworks shot off. I made a bowl of baked beans, roasted some hot dogs and mixed up a potato salad for the family. I guess we were Americans that day.

Which brings me back to the bowls of noodles. To the laksa, the traditional Singaporean/Malaysian/Chinese dish made any number of ways with noodles, egg, shrimp, fish cake, beef strips, bean sprouts in a broth of beef stock, coconut milk, curry, fish sauce. "Noodle dishes are important in all cultures," Alice, the co-owner, says in a news interview, calling the food at Panya “comfort food.”

Belly Bowl at Lucky Belly

And the artisan ramen at Lucky Belly goes somewhere beyond all cultures. The Belly Bowl features in its broth belly bacon and sausage with bean sprouts, soft egg, wakame (seaweed), sesame seeds, green onion and ginger. Oh, and the noodles.

Next time we have something hard to talk about, we start with a bowl of noodles.

--Mike Sato

On The Subject of Herring

Pacific herring roe (Herring School)

There’s a new website from Herring School that will tell you almost everything you need to know about Pacific herring. Well, almost everything.

Pacific Herring Past, Present and Future will show you why herring is important in the ecosystem, in culture, in the economy— and how climate, harvest and habitat determine the species’ future.

“Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) is a small, but hugely important fish to the ecology and the cultures of the Pacific coast.  Fish, sea mammals, and birds rely on this fish and its eggs for food. For thousands of years, this once abundant fish has been central to the social, cultural, and economic relations of coastal indigenous communities.”

Atlantic herring are found in the historical record going back 3,000 years. Called “forage fish” by some, females lay masses of herring eggs on kelp and sea grasses in the nearshore and males fertilize the eggs en mass often turning the water white. Different stocks of herring spawn at different times of the year in customary areas.

Nature’s fecundity ensures that enough eggs and fry survive to provide what must seem like an inexhaustible supply of fish for birds, larger fish, marine mammals, humans— and further reproduction. A Pacific herring can live for 19 years.

Being around in abundance for as long as they have, herring have provided every coastal culture with something to eat. My wife worked as a reporter covering the monthly meeting of the Poulsbo Chamber of Commerce at Viking House and how the luncheon smorgasbord was festooned with many varieties of pickled and preserved herring.

Special foods marks the Japanese New Year’s Day meal and one acquired a taste for (or at least tolerated) herring roe, kazunoko, symbolizing fertility for the coming year. More recently available and more palatable is the prevalence of herring eggs on seaweed, komochi kombu.

Then there’s kippered herring (split, gutted and cold smoked) and bloaters (whole gutted and cold smoked) and buckling herring (whole, gutter apart and hot smoked. (Wikipedia/herring/food)

There’s Filipino dried herring, Swedish herring soup, and Tilingit herring eggs collected on hemlock boughs during the spawn and boiled and eaten plain or in herring salad. Nigel Slater gets fancy with Swedish matjes (soused herring) and Jamie Oliver cooks herring linguine.

I’d gone salmon fishing once, cutting perfect plugs from frozen salmon but managing to catch nothing. I went home and, not wanting to waste the bait, fried it and ate it.

Like the orca whale, we’re at the top of the food chain supposedly eating down to the bottom. But I learned that herring, too, feeds down,  growing up feeding on plankton like copepods, tiny crustaceans swimming the world’s oceans. And I learned that ocean acidification dissolves crustacean shells. No herring food, no herring, pickled or otherwise; no herring roe, no fertility, no fecundity.

--Mike Sato

Puzzling Over Saving the Earth

Help me puzzle out where we are heading on this annual celebration of Earth Day.

It hasn’t helped to have read Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction earlier this month. From a scientific point of view, it looks pretty clear that continuing as we are on our highway of carbon emissions, we are driving to an end much of life as we know it.

I try not to despair since much of my job is to inform people about saving the land, waters and critters. I’d like to get up and believe every day is Earth Day or at least to believe, as reporter Gary Chittim at KING5 tweeted this morning, “On Earth Day; the movement toward a healthier earth keeps rolling along through the mud of skepticism by finding traction in common sense.”

That’s good, if it were true and helps you get up in the morning. But for many people common sense would say the earth is still the center of the universe and, if asked to choose between the accounts of the beginning of the universe given by Carl Sagan and Neal DeGrasse Tyson and Genesis, would say they didn’t know or opt for the Good Book’s version. [Poll: Big Bang a big question for most American]

Common sense, based on keen observation and experience, is smart. Common sense, based on custom and prejudice, is ignorant.

If global warming and ocean acidification aren’t real to you this Earth Day, how can you take seriously the 101 ways to save our planet?

Two-and-a-half years ago I lost my job and our household’s monthly gasoline bills dropped since I was not driving up and down the freeways. The car we drive now is almost twice as fuel efficient as the one before and, I am fascinated by the dashboard feature that measures my fuel efficiency in real time while driving. That’s the same fascination I have when I encounter those radar-activated traffic displays on city streets telling you how fast you are going. Drive steady; whoa, slow down...

I’m also hooked on taking my daily blood pressure, imagining the the fragrances on the tropical breeze, the rustling of the coconut fronds while the cuff constricts and slowly releases. What have I been eating, I wonder, when the reading is higher; what are you upset about? Whoa, slow down, take some deep breaths; try the reading again...

My ongoing skepticism on Earth Day and every day is that we are told to do things to reverse the bad things with no appreciable result we can see. Picking up litter or dog doo isn’t going to save the planet. The only results we learn about are the negative effects of increased carbon in the atmosphere and in our waters.

Gasoline prices in Puget Sound are now hitting the oil companies’ springtime bargain of $4 a gallon. [Whatcom County gas prices closing in on $4 a gallon] However, for many there is no connection between the miles driven and the boom in Salish Sea oil and fuel transport by tanker, train and pipeline— and the steady increase of carbon in our air and waters. [Surging oil traffic puts region at risk]

What’s the feedback mechanism in real time that will allow us to see how modifying our everyday actions will affect the health of the planet? What will shows us in real time how our everyday actions relate to larger issues and actions, the same way driving for fuel efficiency and speed limits can tell us about oil exports, climate change and public safety, the way taking one’s blood pressure and weight can tell us about medication, diet and exercise?

Unless we get to that point on Earth Day and every day, science will always lose to custom and prejudice. Unless we can show that we and our world are irrevocably connected, we and the world lose.

But sometimes the feedback mechanism is as simple as hearing once what you will always recall: Bill Frank, Jr. is said to have pointed to the overhead lights in a meeting room and said, “You know what I see in those lights? Dead salmon.” Since I heard that, I always think about salmon when turning off lights not in use.

And, as a palliative to The Sixth Extinction, I read the last chapter of Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table where he describes several incarnations of a carbon atom through the webs of space, time and life. The elements, thank goodness, are eternal.

--Mike Sato

12th Man et al: When Was The Last Time You Cheered?

PHOTO: TDdaily.com

The last time a lot of folks in Washington state cheered was two weekends ago and the next time they expect to cheer will be when the Super Bowl is played this Sunday.

Since then, I watched rugby being played on television with the sound off last weekend and, not knowing much about the game’s rules, was amazed at the players’ prowess but had no idea what to cheer about. On Sunday, I watched the Grammy Awards with the sound on and heard a lot of cheering but just couldn’t figure out what the cheering was about.

In high school, I cheered. We had pep rallies and cheer leaders. We cheered at football games. We were led in cheers extolling the offense to go down the field and the defense to hold that line, and in cheers appreciating the wounded warrior taken from the field of action. We cheered as one voice spontaneously when a runner broke loose or when a long pass connected.

We were really “old school” back then — no trash talk allowed, no belittling the ones you beat. Sort of like a golden rule of competing: play the way you want to be played against— play clean, win clean, don’t make it personal.

More recently, I recall chanting “Yes We Can” and “Four More Years.” The last time I recall really letting out a hearty cheer was on Election Night 2012 and before that Election Night 2008. But I know winning elections is one thing, an important thing, but only the start of governing. I think there is a rule of campaigning that says winning at all cost will not lead to good governance.

Over the years I’ve chanted “LBJ, How Many Boys Have You Killed Today” and “Hell No We Won’t Go.” I’ve cheered when my horse won at the track. I cheered when I saw Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. But I’ve never chanted “USA.”

I’ve joined in cheering performers at music events and plays. I’ve never cheered boxers beating each other up or professional wrestlers throwing each other out of the ring.

Maybe it’s all a matter of taste but in all cases I can understand the seductive power of joining in to cheer, whether it be for the Seahawks or for Daft Punk or your favorite rugby team: it’s being a part of the shared power of the many, the willing suspension of the individual to the voice of the whole.

With sports and music, one can forget, at least for awhile, that it’s bread and circuses, not real life as we know our everyday life. While we are cheering as one voice, we can forget these are multi-million dollar industries selling products and experiences. Nobody cheers for Boeing or Microsoft or Amazon. But it’s entertainment and, as long as nobody gets hurt, it remains entertainment.

But what we cheer for in our real lives isn’t entertainment. When we cheer the victor and demean the loser, we sully the contest. When we cheer the performance, winners and losers, we elevate the contest. What we cheer for and how we cheer, I think, makes a big difference in how we see our world.

So, when was the last time you cheered?

--Mike Sato

MLK Day and the Way to Win

We’re celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day again this year and I’m happy that Scott Miller, who runs the environmental communications consultant group Resource Media, addressed the issue of real diversity in the environmental movement in a thoughtful blog last week, Changing with the times.

Scott addresses the issue directly: "...[A]t the end of the day, even after genuine efforts and incremental changes in course and composition, the ‘mainstream’ environmental movement remains far too white, too old, too wealthy. This has plenty of moral implications. It is also not the way to win.”

His company, Scott says, is working on “new communications initiatives that eschew the common wisdom that a sharp strategy aligns only with a sharp policy goal. Instead, we are exploring content strategies that are focused on getting key audiences to talk with each other about shared values. It takes time, but that’s the thing about moving away from short-term, transactional relationships.”

He asks: “How do we become aware of blind spots when we can’t see them? How can we make sure our workplace and professional culture are truly welcoming for people from diverse backgrounds, present living conditions and lifestyles? How do we integrate their perspective and expertise into our approaches, and evolve the way we do the business of social change? How do ensure that people who join us from different perspectives and life experiences are heard, not just seen? How do we come to reflect the America of today and tomorrow not the environmental movement of the past?”

These are good questions and, for many years, I’ve sat on boards and in board and staff meetings where the same kind of concerns, maybe not so well articulated, have been posed, discussed, debated but seldom resolved.

The questions usually took the form of, “How can we get more people of color to sit on our board” or “How can we get more minorities to take part in our education/restoration events?” or “Why aren’t there any applicants from (ethnic group) applying for this job?”

The problem with asking those questions is that it’s looking through the wrong end of the telescope. We want “them” to join “our” group, to engage in “our” agenda.

When you work in the field doing conservation outreach, you get some cultural sensitivity training. Latinos don’t volunteer for Saturday restoration work parties weeding and planting as readily as Microsoft or Amazon dads and moms looking for a family activity. In fact, as an organizer, if you don’t learn that you first have to learn the culture before developing the strategy, you’ll screw up the same way this nation has screwed up in the world— Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya...

But we usually don’t take or have that kind of time. A long time ago I asked a Latino organizer if he’d help me take my group’s message to the people he worked with. “That’s not the way it works,” he said. “First, you come to my house and then I come to your house. We get to know each other, then we can talk.”

I honestly didn’t have the time or the inclination. My group’s priorities were saving Puget Sound; his group’s priorities were farm worker rights. I’m sure we could have spent the time getting to know each other’s priorities, maybe even finding common ground. But neither of us had the resources or the time to take that time.

Saving the whales, the rain forest, the ozone layer are campaigns resting on specific cultural values not shared by all ethnicities or socio-economic levels. For those campaigns, I’ve advocated “skimming the cream,” in other words, go get the segments —white, monied, educated— who share those cultural values. That doesn’t mean you don’t care about Pacific Islanders whose main concerns are about access to health services; your organizing life’s just too short, that’s all.

Even if the environmental agenda remains the way it’s been framed these last 40 years since Earth Day, there will be more diversity in the movement by virtue of there being more affluent and educated non-white people to engage in the environmental agenda. It would be great if this new blood were to push the movement to focus more attention on achieving environmental justice for at-risk ethnic and/or lower economic populations.

Whether this is “the way to win,” so to speak, I don’t know.

But what Scott Miller is spurring with his questions and calling for discussion is a much more radical view of where the environmental movement might go: that of a new organizing model based on developing shared community goals of conservation, education, public health, public safety, housing, labor, commerce... Groups adopting these “new”goals or parts of these goals would have good reason to have boards and staffs that credibly reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

These goals might not even be “environmental” as we know them today and what’s exciting is how the culture— as well as the complexion-- of what we today know as the “environmental movement” might well change.

One other way of thinking about this kind of rethinking is to think of how the goals of the vast array of community groups working for good and for change can be unified under general goals and principles. I’ve always liked David Domke’s suggestion that reframing our individual group goals in terms of responsibility, legacy and opportunity would go a long way to show the commonality of our efforts.

Would that be “the way to win?”

The devil’s always in the details and it takes time and resources to do the hard thinking and hard talking. But it’s a heck of a lot more exciting than the old, familiar slog.

But before we run off and jump into this conversation, I’ll finish with what a tribal member who came to two meetings of the board of an environmental group said after resigning. “Your friends like to talk,” he said to me.

And for all of us, that’s something to keep in mind on this journey.

--Mike Sato

Other Voices: The Dope Diaries

Three marijuana retail stores will be permitted in San Juan County, one each on Orcas, San Juan and Lopez islands, under regulations proposed Sept. 4 by the Washington State Liquor Control Board to implement Initiative 502, which legalizes marijuana production, processing and retailing. The Islands Weekly
Dear Mom and Dad,

You’re probably surprised getting a letter from me and wonder what in the world could be important enough for me to write to you and you’re right, there is something that’s important. My friend Jimmy, you know him—he was the one in the third grade who made those noises with his hand in his armpit which made us kids laugh and want to be like Jimmy. Well, we were doing some heavy talking and, well, maybe it’s best to start from the beginning. You’ve probably heard about how everyone’s going to be able to buy marijuana and not worry about the cops any more, haven’t you? Well, that’s going to change a lot of things and change some of the ways Jimmy is making his living so we’ve been talking about going into business together. We were sitting around and, uh, well, maybe it was Jimmy or maybe it was me who thought that, no, maybe it was me, yeah because I was the one who said we knew a lot of people and where were they going to get their dope and who could they trust. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if it was my idea or Jimmy’s. Not really, I guess. But maybe it was his idea first. Anyway, the idea was we could go into business together and sell marijuana, totally legal now, because Jimmy knew all the ins and outs of the business and we knew a lot of guys, really a lot of guys, who would buy from us. I mean there’s the guy who works on your truck, dad, and the guy who cuts your hair, mom, and the nice lady at the Fred Meyer who always asks about grandma, I mean you’d be surprised to know how many customers we’d have.  This isn’t any back room type of store we’re thinking about. We’re thinking more like those espresso places with dark wood and comfy chairs and clean bathrooms where people come to meet friends, smoke some, take a stash home for their family or friends. And racks and shelves of munchies—chips and candies and nuts— this is where I get really excited because this is the part I really know a lot about., like the best kind of bean dip to go with the Tostitos and even the kind  of organic cashews and celery the coop kind of people buy. I know because I watched this one lady at a party talk on and on about the organic vegetable section at Whole Foods while she had a drop of avocado dip on the front of her blouse and I wondered how long it had been there and how long during the party it would be there but she was gone when I came back to check or maybe she was in the bathroom or somewhere else. Now Jimmy may know a lot more about whether the pot shipment is as good as he’s been told by his supplier and a lot more about the right kind of handguns to use (don’t worry, mom, I don’t touch that stuff) but when it comes to the munchies, I’m the man. I haven’t told Jimmy but I’m telling you that I’ve been working on an idea that is a killer. You know those hot dog warmers you see in movie theaters and the 7-11, the kind where the hot dog is speared on to a spindle that goes around and around like a ferris wheel? If you’re like me, you’ve probably watched those hot dogs go around and around. Well, imagine if every time they go around the hot dogs get dipped in soft cheese and when you get one of these hot dogs it’s warm and covered with warm soft cheese. That would be awesome, something to die for, don’t you think? I still have to figure out how to get the hot dogs dipped into the cheese every time it comes around but something like this would make our store famous. People who weren’t even buying marijuana would come to watch the hot dogs go around and around being dipped into cheese, sort of like how people watch that salt water toffee being pulled by the machine at the store. You know the one I’m talking about, don’t you? Well, now you’re probably really wondering why I am writing this letter. It’s because Jimmy and I are going to be partners but we need to have some money to apply for one of the licenses to open a store and show we could start a business. Of course, it would be a loan and I’d pay you back as soon as the store started making some money, which I think would be pretty quick. I know you’ve been concerned about me and my future and I thought this would be a good opportunity to show you that I do think about my future. I think my opening a store to legally selling marijuana would have some personal benefits to our entire family because the stuff is medicinal and I’m sure you and dad will need it some day and you can be sure that I’ll give you a big discount. Also, our store would be a lot safer place for little sis to get her stash, much safer than the way she now deals with that Jose or Hue or whomever she hangs out with after middle school. And, finally, at my age, it would be time to move out of your basement and you could rent it out and make some money which would be like not having loaned me the money at all. This would be a good deal all around, don’t you think?

Your dear son, Johnny.

Acts of God, Acts of Man

The massive landslide on Whidbey Island’s Ledgewood Beach neighborhood is national news. The story continues; the area is still unstable.

Thanks to Dan McShane for pointing me to geologist Hugh Shipman and his Gravel Beach blog where Hugh talks about Ledgewood Beach.

A number of places in Puget Sound are similarly unstable when the sand and gravels and clay left by retreating glaciers get saturated by heavy rains and surface water drainage. I’ve lost count how many times the Amtrak line has been shut down this winter north of Seattle because of landslides covering the tracks. But disrupted train schedules are only an inconvenience; losing one’s home and property is a true hardship.

High bluffs erode into the Salish Sea and their materials accrete to build our beaches. it’s the nature of the landscape. In Isaiah 40:4 and Handel’s Messiah, “every mountain and hill shall be made low...”

God gets credit for hurricanes, superstorms, earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, landslides... A simple legal distinction is that an “act of God” is an event outside of human control.

An Exxon Valdez oil spill, a Deepwater Horizon blowout, a Chernobyl meltdown are clearly “acts of Man.”

Things get a bit more complicated with an event like the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown after the earthquake: clearly initiated by an “act of God” but screwed up by “acts of Man’s” failure to site, engineer and build the reactor and respond to the crisis.

Those “acts of God” like Katrina, Sandy and Fukushima are terrible and devastating; their aftermaths and the alleviation or prolonging of suffering become the province of the “acts of Man.”

No lives were lost at Ledgewood Beach but property was lost. I assume that the houses that remain threatened by the slide were approved to be built by the county government and, in being approved, makes all of us — the government — a part of dealing with the aftermath of this disaster.

Public and private relief efforts, loss claims and lawsuits usually follow “acts of God” and will continue as long as in our “acts of Man” we are allowed to build and rebuild on terrain that will be swept away by landslides or waters.

Respect those “acts of God;” we can get smarter in our “acts of Man.”

--Mike Sato

They Eat Horses, Don’t They?

When I lived in Portland, Oregon, in the ‘60s, I bought horse meat at what I am trying to recall was called “The Horse Meat Market” downtown near the “The Buttermilk Corner.”

I hadn’t thought about that all these years— until last week’s breaking news that horse meat was found in European countries in what was had been thought to be mixtures of beef and pork. And —is nothing sacred?-- found in Ikea meatballs.

One can’t necessarily vouch for the veracity of anything recalled about the ‘60s but I do recall buying a “round steak,” absolutely red, with absolutely no fat. At the Horse Meat Market. I cooked it and ate it. As my father used to ask me: do you do things because you want to save money or because you want to go back a hundred years? I think I bought horse meat because it was cheap and because — if I were going to eat red meat — I heard it was good for me.

I still try to save money and I still try to eat wisely but I haven’t seen horse meat on the butcher racks since the ‘60s. Why not?

According to Eric Niler, writing on “Why Are Americans Squeamish About Horse Meat?”, “Mongolians love it. So do Bulgarians, Swiss, Belgians and French. But Americans -- no way. Eating horse meat is a culinary taboo that started early in our nation's history and continues today. Food experts say it's a distaste that is part emotional and part economic: we love our horses and even if we didn't, we're a wealthy country that can afford to eat choicer cuts of meat.”

Is it hard to think about eating or to actually eat Mr. Ed, Black Beauty, Silver, Trigger...? I’m sure some people have the same problem with Bugs, Daffy, Donald, Porky and Bambi.

Back to horse meat: According to Wikipedia, Mexico was or is the second largest producer of horse meat in the world.

There is a thriving horse meat business in Quebec, and horse meat found in Vancouver, B.C., was described by a Time Magazine reviewer as “sweet, rich, superlean, oddly soft meat, closer to beef than venison."

In Japan, order it as basashi, thinly sliced raw pieces dipped in soy sauce with ginger and onions.

And in England, Alex Renton in The Guardian blogs on “How Britain got a taste for horsemeat”:

“Restaurants and pubs up and down the country are serving up horse steaks. So where should you go for yours? Could horse catch on? It is half the price of beef and undeniably delicious. I went to a steak tasting at Edinburgh's L'Escargot Bleu bistro at the height of the scandal. Chef and patron Fred Berkmillar had packed in 12 Scottish foodies, cooks and meat suppliers and gave us rump steaks to try. One was the best 30-day-aged Orkney beef, the other Comtois horse, farmed in the Dordogne.

“You could have confused the horse with beef, but its steak – juicy, tender, just slightly gamey – won the fry-off by 12 votes to none. And we were all the better for it: horse has lots of  iron, little fat and lots of omega-3. It is healthier than beef, so long as you're not eating an old steeplechaser laced with phenylbutazone. It is not true, by the way, that "bute" is one of those horse painkillers with recreational possibilities.”

I was going to go on about d-o-g but Joe Spike my d-o-g sitting next to me is growling so I’ll stop with horse.

-- Mike Sato

Discussing “Dark Ecology”

Two weeks ago in Salish Sea News and Weather, I encouraged folks to read Paul Kingsnorth’s essay in Orion Magazine, “Dark Ecology: Searching for Truth in a post-green world.”  It’s long but pretty provocative; it merits some discussion.

Like Bill McKibbon in The End of Nature, Kingsnorth laments our taming of Nature, the defanging of the self-willed Other that conservationist once sought to live in balance with, and replacing this Other with a utility system providing us with goods and services. The first 20 years of the modern environmental movement-- from the first Earth Day to the first Rio Summit in 1992-- were glory days, according to Kingsnorth. The next 20 years, exemplified at the second Rio Conference by non-governmental groups struggling and failing to find a common direction when facing major habitat losses, climate change and world economic downturns, Kingsnorth judges as steps toward the end of our natural world, thanks to our industrial-technological society.

“Progress” is an illusion; the new environmental technocrats, those he calls neo-environmentalists, will not save nature through technological solutions.

Kingsnorth: “If you think you can magic us out of the progress trap with new ideas or new technologies, you are wasting your time. If you think that the usual “campaigning” behavior is going to work today where it didn’t work yesterday, you will be wasting your time. If you think the machine can be reformed, tamed, or defanged, you will be wasting your time. If you draw up a great big plan for a better world based on science and rational argument, you will be wasting your time. If you try to live in the past, you will be wasting your time. If you romanticize hunting and gathering or send bombs to computer store owners, you will be wasting your time....”

Kingsnorth puts forth five things he can think he could do honestly in the post-green world he sees. Briefly: 1. Withdraw from the world; 2. Preserve non-human life; 3. Get your hands dirty; 4. Insist that nature has a value beyond utility; 5. Build refuges

Kingsnorth: “These are the things that make sense to me right now when I think about what is coming and what I can do, still, with some joy and determination. If you don’t feel despair, in times like these, you are not fully alive. But there has to be something beyond despair too; or rather, something that accompanies it, like a companion on the road. This is my approach, right now. It is, I suppose, the development of a personal philosophy for a dark time: a dark ecology. None of it is going to save the world—but then there is no saving the world, and the ones who say there is are the ones you need to save it from....”

In discussing this “dark ecology,” one reader wrote to me: “I taught an 8-week course on climate change a couple of years ago for the local Catholic Church, through their social justice program.  The Catholic Archdiocese developed the curriculum, amazingly (those Jesuits are awesome). That course taught me just as much as the students who took it.  I came away angry, depressed and then finally resigned to what I believe to be our fate - that the human race is going to become extinct in the next few hundred years, and we will take out most of the rest of the world's biodiversity along with us.  Already, according to EO Wilson, we've eradicated almost 50% of the world's flora and fauna. That doesn't stop me from doing my best to make it be different, but I see all around me the unsustainability of this human-dominated world now. It just changed the way I see things utterly.  There's no way this kind of life can continue.  No way.  First it pissed me off totally, but now, most of the time, I am set free.  I think Gloria Steinem said that, actually:  "The truth shall set you free, but first you're gonna be really pissed off."

I guess I, too, am pissed off if I’m honest about the arc of the last 40 years. I didn’t focus on the environment until the mid-80s having started out in activism against the war machine and organizing around land use and energy politics. What do we have to show for much of the time and effort spent trying to build a constituency that balances humans and wilderness in land use, energy and environment? Too often it is the sad shrug of, “It would have been worse if nothing had been done.” True, but that’s not going to bring back untamed wilderness, Nature as the self-willed Other, I’ve seen lost over and over the last 40 years.  The only times when we notice Nature as the self-willed Other is when the earth quakes, the rivers flood and the seas rise over the shores. And we talk then of engineering and technological measures to keep Nature in her place. Sure, there’s a resilience in Nature because Nature is blindly fecund and will fill every niche when diversity declines. But damn it, I like whales and rockfish and auklets more than cockroaches and jellyfish— and I know what’s called “nature” will be different for my grandkids. It already is from what it was 40 years ago.

I won’t withdraw. I still get too much of an adrenal charge organizing around an issue and mobilizing people for socially redeeming causes. The days when it’s hard to get going are days when it’s clear we too often win a campaign but fail to sustain a culture of change. That’s a hard truth to face: that we need to build the kinds of communities that sustain the broad range of changes that we work towards in health, in food, in energy, in land use, in conservation, in art, in matters of the spirit.

That takes time and effort and that may well be as Kingsnorth concludes a waste of time. I don’t think so, at least I hope not. I think it’s a matter of survival, not saving the world. I’d add “compassion” to Kingsnorth’s “things to do” list:   I will preserve human and non-human life. I will get my hands dirty. I will insist that nature has a value beyond utility. And I will build, if I can, or at least protect, a refuge, a wild place for the self-willed Other.

I’ve had a say here. I invite you to read Kingsnorth’s piece and share what you think.

--Mike Sato

Some Things Settled: Thanksgiving Turkey, Black Friday

First of all, the standoff between my granddaughter and the turkey was called a draw before Thanksgiving Day.

The turkey that did lose was a 22-pounder brined externally by channeling Molly Stevens, two days before Thursday and left to season in the refrigerator. Two hours to room temperature, four-and-a-half hours at 350-degrees after an initial singe at 450, then an hour’s rest before deboning and carving deli style— all in all, a pretty good eating bird. The only leftover by the weekend was a small portion of turkey soup.

So it’s settled: It is possible to have a simple, tasty turkey...

Despite what Mark Bittman claims is an annual culinary disaster:

“At the hands of all but the most experienced, careful or lucky cooks, the more than 700 million pounds of turkey we’ll buy this week will wind up with breast meat that’s cottony-dry and leg meat that is underdone, tough, stringy or all three. And although a friend of mine claims that this is how people like it — “it’s exactly how our grandmothers did it, and it’s what we grew up with,” he says — I believe this explains why we waste an estimated $282 million worth of turkey each year, enough to feed each food-insecure American with 11 servings.” All Hail the Sweet Potato  

Before going on to extol the virtues of the sweet potato, Bittman concedes: “Thanksgiving is a celebratory feast that has little to do with the harvest or the brilliance of the food but rather family and memories and, usually, obligations.”

His contention that we don’t get together to eat good food on Thanksgiving but are basically celebrating a tradition made me rethink all the messages I got encouraging me to take part in Black Friday and those I got dissing Black Friday.

“It’s a family tradition,” a Black Friday shopper said in one news account.

So that settles it for me about Black Friday.

It’s not one of my family traditions like eating turkey on Thanksgiving. I’d give a polite ‘no thank you’ to an offer to join in a tofukey meal or to join you on Black Friday--- but if tofukey or Black Friday are part of your traditions, go to it. I simply suggest we be polite in going about our traditions. After all, customs are the rocks upon which our societies are erected, but there’s little gained by throwing them at each other.

--Mike Sato