Catalog Pollution 2

Photograph and text © 2007 by Julius Lester

As I wrote in my previous entry, I have started reducing the number of catalogs I get in the mail. As of this writing I have eliminated 58 catalogs from my life. This being the holiday season I would not be surprised if that number reaches a hundred and more, as I am receiving catalogs from companies I have never heard of.

Catalog pollution is a serious environmental issue. The New York Times of November 19 reported that 19 billion catalogs are mailed to American’s every year. The number of trees required to produce these catalogs is 53 million.

This process of trying to take control of the number of catalogs I get is an interesting one because I also have to decide which catalogs I want to continue receiving. For example, I had decided to discontinue the Williams-Sonoma catalog, but I couldn’t do it. I have been receiving their catalogs for 20 years at least, and I was surprised to feel that I would miss them. I enjoy looking at the many different utensils one can buy for the kitchen, and, occasionally I see something we actually need.

I cannot imagine that I would ever cancel the Levenger catalog. As a child when my parents went shopping in a store like Woolworth’s (a precursor to Wal-Mart), I always headed for the aisle where the office supplies were. I have no idea why, but I loved looking at the pencils, pens, erasers, paper clips, rubber bands, envelopes. And I still do. The Levenger catalog offers all these items as well as bookshelves, notebooks, desks, chairs and more, and each object is aesthetically pleasing.

I am not opposed to catalogs. Quite the opposite. I enjoy being able to shop without leaving the house. I enjoy finding an item I need that resolves a problem I didn’t know I had. I enjoy catalogs that make me dream about a day when I could perhaps afford a spectacularly beautiful and spectacularly expensive piece of jewelry for my wife.

However, there are also catalogs that awaken in me the feeling of coveting, the yearning to possess some object I can’t afford, have no need for, and if I bought it, would have no use for. I don’t like the feeling of having my emotions manipulated by the beautiful pictures and the descriptive adjectives of the copy.

So as I engage in this process of choosing which catalogs I want and which I don’t, I am learning which objects I need, which will bring me pleasure and enhance my life, and which arouse in me the ugliness of avarice, an all-consuming yearning for objects whose acquisition would do nothing more than satisfy my ego’s desire to make me feel like I am more important and better than everyone else.

I’ll keep you updated on how many catalogs I eventually keep from my mailbox and how many I choose to continue to receive.

And if any of you are battling catalog pollution, CatalogChoice is the name of the group. They came online on October 9, and since then more than 165,000 people have opted out of almost 1.7 million catalogs. There is no charge for getting your name removed from catalog mailing lists because the group is sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Ecology Center.

TODAY'S PHOTOGRAPH

This snake was dead when I photographed it, but the look in his eye makes me think this is how avarice looks.

Catalog Pollution

Text and photograph © 2007 by Julius Lester

Maybe I’m the only one, but I am starting to dread getting the mail every day. Not because of the bills but the catalogs! If the post office department ever started charging customers for how many pounds of mail they receive, I would be in debt within a week.

The first two catalogs I remember receiving were from Sharper Image and Victoria’s Secrets. This was back in the late 70’s or early 80’s. Both catalogs represented the beginning of consumer pornography. As a photographer I marvel at how the photographs in catalogs can make me want to buy things I really don’t want, not to mention, need. There is an entire field of photography devoted to photographing products, and there are an array of tricks product photographers, as they are known, use to make an object look not only desirable but irresistible. But capitalism as a system is built on persuading consumers to buy, and what we buy is almost secondary to the need of the system to keep us buying something. Remember how, after 9/11, President Bush exhorted us to go out and BUY!!

I am not opposed to catalogs, (though I do mourn the number of trees who give their lives for glossy photos). As someone who does not leave the house more than once or twice a week, catalogs are convenient, and I have purchased many things from them that I not only wanted but needed.

However, what makes me angry is the common practice of selling mailing lists. I bought my wife a present from the catalog of colonial reproductions sold at Monticello, the home of presidential slaveholder Thomas Jefferson. Lo and behold, now I am receiving catalogs from other places that sell colonial reproductions as well as catalogs from stores in the state of Virginia. My wife gave me a birthday present of fresh fruit from a company called Harry & David. Now I’m receiving catalogs from companies that are in any way food related.

Recently I reached a point of simply not wanting these unsolicited catalogs in my mailbox. If you are in a similar situation, I have a bit of information that may bring as much joy to your life as it is bringing to mine.

There is an organization called Catalog Choice. Click on the link and you’ll be taken to their website. Registration is free. Once registered you go to their very extensive database of catalogs, find the catalog you no longer wish to receive, click on it, type in the customer number from the catalog, if there is one, and that’s it. The organization takes care of the rest. They say it can take up to ten weeks to be removed from a catalog’s data base, and if you aren’t, you let Catalog Choice know.

Since Friday I have eliminated 30 catalogs from my life – Allergy Buyers Club, Art.com, Audio Editions, Betty’s Attic, Charles Tyrwhitt, Duluth Trading Co., First Street, Oriental Trading Company, Timepieces International, and What on Earth, among others. I’d never heard of any of these companies until their catalogs arrived in my mailbox.

Now I eagerly get the mail and rush to my computer, unwanted catalogs in hand. As odd as it may sound, I am looking forward to the day in the not too distant future when I go to the mailbox and there’re only bills awaiting me.

TODAY'S WORD

"Laissez-faire, noun, An economic doctrine which states that no act can be evil if it earns a profit."

Victor L. Cahn The Disrespectful Dictionary

TODAY'S PHOTOGRAPH

Mailboxes, Alabama, 1966

If You Read Only One Book This Year....

Text & photograph © 2007 by Julius Lester

If you read only one book this year, make it Alan Weisman's The World Without Us.

This is one of the best books I’ve read. It asks and answers the hypothetical question, what would happen if people suddenly disappeared from the earth? How would nature respond? Part of the book's brilliance is the quality of Weisman's writing, his extensive research, interviews, and his ability to describe in vivid detail what the world would be like without humans.

If we disappeared tomorrow, nature would reclaim our houses first. In New York City, the subway tunnels would flood almost immediately without people to operate the machinery that keeps the rivers out. And because humans would have disappeared from New York, cockroaches would also disappear.

Besides imagining the earth without us, Weisman also visits places where humans have left nature alone -- the one remaining virgin forest in Europe, the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. Because this area has not been lived in for more than 50 years, it has become a refuge for birds and creatures that might otherwise be extinct now. However, in anticipation of a reconciliation between the two countries and subsequent reunification, real estate developers already have their eyes on the DMZ.

Weisman does not rant about what is happening to the environment. He writes simply and gently, leaving it to the reader to rage or not. Weisman relies on being an engaging science writer, able to write about complex matters with a minimum of scientific language. In fact, Weisman tells a series of stories about our world, and he is such a good storyteller that the book reads easily.

It is also a book rich in insights and ideas because it is not only concerned with describing what a world free of humans would be like, the book is also concerned with how and why we have arrived at this place and time. Weisman writes about our “acquisitive instincts that can’t tell when to stop, until something we never intended to harm is fatally deprived of something it needs. We don’t actually have to shoot songbirds to remove them from the sky. Take away enough of their home or sustenance, and they fall dead on their own.” He presents a plausible explanation as to the disappearance of the Mayan civilization, and he also posits a startling answer about how we can avert ecological disaster in fifty years.

One sad fact: the one human creation that would survive for millions of years is the faces of the four presidents on Mount Rushmore. (Imagine aliens arriving on earth in a million years and coming upon Mount Rushmore. Undoubtedly they would posit that a race of giants once lived here.) Sadly, all the art, literature, music humans have created would not survive. Even more sadly, the waste from the world's nuclear power plants will not only survive, but given how ineptly the wastes are presently stored, the chances of these wastes seeping into the environment are almost inevitable, whether we're here or not.

If you read only one book this year, make it this one. It is science writing at its best. At one and the same time, it is a depressing, enchanting, engaging, and, oddly exhilarating book.

One quote from the book:

“Like our kin the chimpanzees, we’d always murdered one another over territory and mates. But with the rise of slavery, we were reduced to something new: an export crop.” p. 76

Nooses: Why Now?

Text © 2007 by Julius Lester

* At the high school in Jena, Louisiana, there is a tree called the White Tree. It is the tree under which only white students sat. This past September a black student decided to challenge tradition and sat beneath the tree. The next day three nooses were found hanging from limbs of the tree.

* At the high school in Litz, Pennsylvania, there is a section of the school parking lot known as “redneck row.” This is where white students who wear clothes with Confederate insignia and put Confederate flag decals on their vehicles park.

* At Columbia Teachers College, a black professor finds a noose hanging from the doorknob of her office.

* In Hempstead Village, Long Island, a noose is found in the locker room of the police department. Taped to the wall near the rope was a newspaper article about the new deputy police chief, who is black.

* In the yard of the Nassau County, Long Island Public Works department, a worker finds a noose hanging from a fence.

* In Valley Stream, Long Island, a noose was found hanging from the doorknob of a construction site at a shopping mall.

* There was also a noose found at a Home Depot in Passaic, New Jersey.

For black people a noose is a symbol of the domestic terrorism practiced against them from shortly after the Civil War to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Between 1882 and 1968, approximately 3446 black men and women were lynched. That figure represents only those lynchings for which there is a written record. There were lynchings which were never reported. Estimates of the number of lynchings before 1882 vary from 4,000 to 20,000. A Congressional investigation carried out in 1872 said that “as many as 2,000 blacks had killed or wounded in Louisiana alone since the close of the Civil War.” Of the lower 48 states, only four states never had a lynching – Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.

The origins of the word, lynching, are cloudy, but it is believed it comes from the Lynch family of Virginia who, during colonial times, were given permission by the Virginia legislature to hang criminals without due process of law because of the absence of courts in the area. After the Civil War southern whites began a campaign of terrorism against blacks to deny them the right to vote, to own property, and to live without fear.

I have been wondering why are we seeing this plethora of nooses aimed at blacks in both the north and the south. While talking with a friend recently, an avid supporter of Barak Obama, the answer to my question came to me: A black man is running a serious campaign to be President of the United States.

One of the oddities of the campaigns thus far is that the issue of Obama’s race has not come up. It is as if we are playing this game and pretending that his race is not a factor. The appearances of nooses in Louisiana, a state known for the brutality of its racism, and New York, a state proud of its liberalism, tells me that there are some who are not comfortable with the thought of having a Black president, and they have chosen to express their disquiet through the metaphor of the noose.

But, one could argue, no nooses have been directed at Obama personally or his campaign. But whites who make nooses don’t distinguish one black from another. We are all equally culpable.

These nooses make me fear that Obama’s life is in danger. White racism has gone underground and is emerging to express itself through the intimidating silence of the noose. It is only a short step from that silence to the loud report of a rifle.

TODAY'S QUOTE

"As citizens, we must prevent wrong doing because the world in which we all live, wrong doer, wrong sufferer, and spectator, is at stake; the City has been wronged. Our law codes, with their distinction between crimes where indictment is mandatory and transgressions that pertain only to the private affairs of individuals who may or may not want to sue, take this into account. We could almost define a crime as that transgression of the law that demands punishment regardless of the one who has been wronged; the wronged one may feel like forgiving and forgetting, and there may be no danger for others if it can be assumed that the wrong doer is altogether unlikely to do wrong again. Still, the law of the land permits no option because it is the community as a whole that has been violated."

Hannah Arendt

Comment: America has not reached a consensus that racism violates the community as
a whole.

My Address Book

Photograph and text © 2007 by Julius Lester

I transferred names last night from my old address book to a new one. But changing address books is more than the copying names, addresses, and phone numbers.

For one thing people have more than one phone number these days. My oldest son has four – home, 2 at work, and a cell number. Today’s address books also have spaces for a fax number, e-mail address, and web site. Transferring information from one book to another is more work than it used to be. You have to be very important to me to write down all that information plus your name, address, city, and 9-digit zip code.

Changing address books is also a time to evaluate what place people have in your lives. As you look at each name you think about the person, your relationship, how often you’ve been in touch with each other. Sometimes there is a small stab of pain when you come to the name of someone who died.

There is a twinge of regret when you decide not to transfer someone to the new address book. My reason for not transferring a name was the simple one of realizing that I had not been in touch with the person since putting their name in my address book.

However, I have kept every address book I’ve had throughout my adult life. It is a record of people who were important to me at one time, of people I loved but somehow we lost each other in the maelstrom of our lives, and of people who have died.

What I noticed last night was how the number of names has dwindled over the years. Even allowing for friends whose numbers I know, allowing for people whose numbers are in the phone book, and allowing for the number of people with whom I e-mail, there aren’t many names in my new address book.

I’m not sure what that means. Perhaps the dwindling number of names is one symptom of how I am entering old age. For me this is the time when I withdraw into myself without explanation or apology. This is the time of life I think I’ve always longed for, the time when I can be still. To be still means weeks pass and no one calls me, and I call no one. To be still means that months pass, and no one is invited to my house. My primary human contact is through e-mail, even with old friends who visit the area and want to see me. I have longed for such solitude all of my life, even in childhood.

An important part of possessing this solitude is having an address book I will seldom use.

WHAT I'M OUTRAGED ABOUT THIS WEEK

From a front page article in the New York Times, Thursday, October 11, 2007 on the number of Americans who do not have access to dental care.

"A child in Mississippi and another in Maryland died this year from infections caused by decayed teeth." p. 1

TODAY'S PHRASE

This phrase describes an "illness" we have all suffered from but did not know it had been put into words:

the hardly able fever
"I had so much to do I came down with the hardly able fever."

TODAY'S PHOTOGRAPH

Calla lily

Adjusting to Global Warming

Photograph and text © 2007 by Julius Lester

I am a rabid environmentalist. Whenever there’s an issue which involves cutting down trees to build houses, I’m on the side of the trees. So you can perhaps understand how depressed I am about global warming. I am already mourning what seems to be the almost certain extinction of polar bears.

However, I saw an article recently about the melting of the Arctic and the opening up of a Northwest sea passage from Europe and North America to Russia and Asia. And it occurred to me: where I see only the calamitous side of global warning, others see advantages. Those nations who will gain economically from global warning have no motivation to take measures to slow or stop it, if that is even possibly now.

The New York Times had an article recently about blueberry growers in Maine and Quebec. The export of blueberries, mainly frozen, is an important part of the Maine economy, especially since blueberries have been touted as powerful antioxidants. However, because of warming temperatures Quebec has ceased to have killing frosts into May and June, thus making the cultivation of blueberries there more viable. Already Quebec is rivaling Maine in blueberry production. In Vermont there is the fear that global warming will kill maple trees and maple syrup production will move to Ontario. (And with the maple trees will go the brilliant red leaves of maple trees this time of year, along with the rest of New England's vaunted fall foliage.) In a century or so, there will probably be banana plantations in Mississippi, and the apple trees grown in this part of New England will be peach trees.

The inconvenient truth is that global warming means change, and those who adapt to this fact the quickest will also find it easiest to live with the change.

Not being someone who changes easily, I will be dead by the time people will need to really adapt. Although given the predictions for the rise in the levels of oceans, Massachusetts is going to have a new shore line, one much closer to where I live now. That house I fantasize about buying on Cape Code? I might already be living in it.

TODAY'S WORD

I love finding words, in any language, that express something for which I did not know there was a word. Here is an English word I discovered recently which I really love!

Borborygmus (Bor-bor-'rig-muss)
It's a noun and it means "intestinal rumbling caused by moving gas."

I had no idea there was word for the noises your stomach makes.

TODAY'S PHOTOGRAPH

New York City, 1966.

At the time I took the photograph, I'm sure I paid no attention to the sign in the window which reads: "Is The Computer the Answer?" I had absolutely no idea what a computer was. I think the question the sign poses has been definitively answered. YES!!

African Orphans? The New Toys?

Text and photograph © 2007 by Julius Lester

I like Angelina Jolie. With her multicultural family she reminds me of the black American and expatriate entertainer, Josephine Baker, who eventually adopted twelve children from all over the world. However, quite unwittingly, it seems that Jolie has started a fad, and children from black Africa are becoming the new "in thing" for the well-to-do and celebrated.

Madonna adopted a black child from Africa. Now actress Mary-Louise Parker has adopted a black African child. Paris Hilton has announced she is going to Rwanda in November. "I want to visit more countries where poverty and children's issues are a big concern. I know there's a lot of good I can do just by getting involved and bringing attention to these issues."

This concern by white celebrities for the black children of Africa reminds me of the differing attitudes southern whites had of American blacks and Africans in my youth. I was 18 when the film “Boy on a Dolphin” starring Sophia Loren and Alan Ladd came out in 1957. I really wanted to see it, but in Nashville, Tennessee, and throughout the south, movie theaters were segregated. Blacks had to buy tickets at the window, then walk down the alley and enter a side door through which there were stairs to the balcony. I had never done that, and I wasn't about to start, not even to see the outlines of Sophia Loren's breasts in a wet shirt, which ads for the movie had focused on.

A friend of mine and I borrowed some robes from African students at the college we were attending. Wearing these robes and speaking in what we felt were African accents, we went to the movie theater, bought tickets at the window, walked in the front door and saw the movie. In the mind of white southerners of the time, blacks from Africa were acceptable; American blacks were not.

Why is it that poor black children from Africa are acceptable to white celebrities, but poor black children from America are not? There are thousands of black orphans in every major city across the country waiting for someone to adopt them. And if Paris Hilton is sincere about “bringing attention” to “poverty and children’s issues,” she does not have to leave Los Angeles.

Fifty years have passed since my friend and I were admitted to a segregated white movie theater because it was thought that we were Africans, not American blacks. It seems like African blacks are still more acceptable.

TODAY'S PHOTOGRAPH

Mississipi, 1966