Tag: Merlin Lee

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February 23, 2018- Weekly Studio Update

In printmaking this week, I started working on a monotype. I have never done this process before but it is the closest you can get to painting with a printmaking process since each print will look totally different from the one before it. The monotype process I’m using is a reductive monotype. A reductive monotype is the process where you take a process color (Cyan, Magenta, or Yellow), roll it out on a plate, and then remove the areas you do not want to show that color. You start with the lightest color (yellow) and move to the medium (magenta) and then on to the darkest (cyan) to get your initial design. If you are familiar with commercial printing this process is essentially the art version of it. The cool part about this process is after doing the original three layers you can then doing additional layers of the process colors to experiment with more color interaction and get the final results you want. Below are some images of my works in progress.

For my digital works I created a podcast “The World as it Is”. This podcast parodies the right wing talk radio while also educating listeners on the scary things going on in the world today. I hope to possibly expand on this project in the future since podcasts are more of a series, but we need to see how this one goes before I decide on that. If you want to listen to it, I have it on my website as well as embedded from sound cloud below.

In Graphic Design this week, I completed my children’s book cover. This project was cool because it required us to think about a demographic that we wouldn’t usually make work for and make things that aren’t usually cute, cuter. I am finished with this project and I am happy enough with the way it turned out, and might end up turning it into an actual book (if only there were 30 hours in a day).

Finally, for my personal work, I created a couple of drawings. One is just a nice octopus drawing and the other is a more political drawing of a hand gun following the numerous mass shootings entitled Baby Killer. This piece describes how most of us are feeling following these attacks where children are senselessly murdered at school. Hopefully, this piece can help change some minds.

Also, check out how I have been updating my website with some of my more recent work.

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Death Blindness

Benjamin Franklin once said, “…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” In the developed West, especially in the United States there is a large swath of people who don’t seem to understand this idiom. While the latter is one argument, the former has a significance on culture that is typically ignored. Death has become a taboo topic where people thing they are invincible and able to escape death. This mentality stems from fear, which leads to death being ignored and sanitized from the public eye to the extent that family members fear being around the deceased instead of taking an active role in the burial. This avoidance leads to people not allowing themselves the ability to mourn and experience grief. Sight is essential to the grieving process to create closure in the mind and allow the person to move on. Death is paramount to the human condition, and in the United States the culture has become sanitized of death, which does not allow people the ability to grieve and move on with their life.

The idea that death rituals in the United States have changed is not debated, through lobbying and the passage of laws the death rituals of the United States have been completely changed; however, the old ways are significantly healthier mentally. This classic death ritual, today known as a natural burial, can still be performed in some locations today but due to lobbying by the funeral industry, it is becoming few and far between. Caitlin Doughty, an alternative mortician and the premiere voice on alternative burial rituals, states, “The world used to be our burial ground. We buried bodies on farms, ranches, and in local churchyards––anywhere we wanted, really” (From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death 216). Historically, the family would prepare the deceased for viewing and then the burial took place in a private cemetery on private family property with the family or religious leader leading the burial followed by burial by the family. This direct role helped the family work through the grief that the death caused. They would hold visitations in the home and it would become a somber multi-day affair allowing the family the time they needed to grieve and the ability to have some time alone in a familiar environment to be with their loved one. In this role sight took a forefront because all of the extraneous details were removed and the family was allowed to be alone with their loved one, take care of them, and bury them once they were ready. 

Today, however, sight has taken a backseat and it prevents people from being able to grieve. Following the advent of the internet, there has been an surge of Laissez-faire direct cremations. In this system the family fills out an online form where they pay with a charge card, then the deceased is picked up from the hospital, home, or other place and transported to the crematorium where they undergo cremation, and finally the remains are shipped to the family through the postal service. The family never sees the deceased and plays no role in the ritual. While some families must do this due to financial reasons in areas where natural burials are not an option or not a known option, there are a significant number of people who choose this option because they fear death and want to act like it didn’t happen. The second is ultimately harmful for the family because they are unable to receive that closure that seeing their loved one allows. Caitlin Doughty goes so far as to make the comparison, “[this process is] the equivalent of grown adults, thinking babies come from storks” (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory 104). This process intentionally keeps the family in the dark about what is going on and happening to their loved one. Since they are just receiving a container filled with a powdery solid instead of actually seeing their loved on their mind begins wonder whether or not they are still alive and out in the world.

To further the harm of today’s death rituals, the lack of sight has caused death to become less experiential and more intellectual which makes death denial easier. A common psychological ail in the United States is death anxiety. Every year there crowds that flock to therapists over mental anguish that the underlying cause tends to be some form of death anxiety. In their study Mark Vahrmeyer and Simon Cassar set out to identify whether death denial was essential to being alive and discovered “by intellectualising the concept of death, it has the effect of introducing a shield between the experiential stance of the client and the therapist” (162). This conclusion means, in order to truly understand the problem of death denial and work through it the patient has to experience the death of a loved one which is not happening due to today’s cultural shift. By not being able to see their loved one and be able to go through the process of grief, it makes it next to impossible for them to face their fears and be helped by their therapist. It is through this sight that makes it possible for humans to experience death and grieve for their loved ones.

This denial of death due to the lack of sight leads to yet another set of ails. Following the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki the United States Government withheld information from the Japanese people about what really happened to their deceased, even going so far as to deny that the event happened. To further rub salt into the wound, following an atomic blast the deceased are typically vaporized. Barbara Marcón went so far as to say, “Victims could find neither acceptance nor support in society at large, because at this time the community of suffering was not strong enough, the cultural trauma had not yet emerged” (789). What she meant was that by hiding evidence and removing the crucial elements from jumpstarting the grieving process, the Japanese people were unable to grieve the loss of their loved ones and feel the grief they needed to move on. In addition this forced denial of death also contributes to the cultural ails in the United States today where people truly believe they are invincible and they will not die. By not being able to experience the death of someone else and being able to feel that grief something that should be an emotional experience is nothing more than a hypothetical logical experience, which are two completely different experiences. This changed experience leads to the death cultural ails in the United States.

Sight has the power to completely change a person’s mind and has the ability to jump start the grieving process. In their study entitled “The Effects of Print News Photographs of the Casualties of War,” Michael Pfau et al determined that war photography about the Iraq War had the power to trigger such strong responses that it lead the participants to become more strongly against the conflict (160). To the extent, “News stories of war casualties packaged as photograph plus caption elicited more negative affect—puzzlement, anger, and sadness—than those conveyed via text alone” (Pfau 160). These feelings elicited are good indicators that the individual is going through the grieving process. If simply the sight of photographs of deceased strangers has the ability to change an individual’s opinion on war and  jumpstart the grieving process for a complete stranger just think about how important this sight would be toward grieving loved ones.

Firsthand sight is also essential and allows for a more full experience of grief. Following the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11, Mayor Giuliani and his administration stopped any and all people from getting near the site and forbid the disbursement of unapproved photographs. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett stated, “To have been so close to the disaster and yet so insulated from it means that we too knew it from photographs rather than from direct experience of the ruin” (12). While photographs of the loss is better than nothing it is not the same as the actual experience of loss. While photographs have the power to jumpstart the grieving process, this kind of sight still keeps the experience a logical one instead of an emotional one by removing the person from the actual event. It is essential to experience the loss firsthand and see the loved one who was lost or else it can be easy to fall back into death denial. And this death denial doesn’t allow the person the ability to move on and come to terms with the death of their loved one.

The experiential nature of death is truly what makes grief happen and sight is the main factor. In their study Ciara McCabe et al took the same moisturizer and placed different labels in it about the richness of the cream (98). What they ended up finding was “word labels (‘Rich moisturizing cream’ vs ‘Basic cream’) could modulate subjective ratings of the pleasantness and richness of touch, and influenced the representation of tactile inputs in the orbitofrontal cortex,” (McCabe et al 105). This study shows that sight is able to influence the end belief of a situation. If it can change the thoughts on a moisturizing cream it can completely change the experience of grief from the loss of a loved one. By taking part in the death ritual of a loved one and seeing them, the brain is able to have the closure it needs to be able to work through the grief of that loss.

Following the loss of a loved one, social media is a complicated outlet to work through the grief due to sight. Social media can be a good place to work through loss and memorialize a loved one. Vani Kakar and Nanki Oberoi believe, “the major reason why people are increasingly using social media and internet blogs to voice their grief” is because “they are able to experience catharsis by simply expressing their grief on a virtual portal, without having to face the perceived lack of empathy of a fellow human” (373). Facebook, especially, includes a number of features to memorialize a loved one. Not only can a user create a personal memorial, but the memories feature can remind them about the good times they had with the deceased. In addition following a death the deceased’s Facebook page can become a public memorial to remember them. Since interpersonal communication has become more and more digital and lead to the loss of typical face to face communication, this feature set allows a wider group to be able to support those who lost a loved one and help them work through the loss. In addition it can allow those who have gone through a similar situation the ability to provide support to those who they don’t know. And, while this conclusion is valid, the overall argument is a bit more complicated. 

The internet can also be a horrible place to grieve. Kakar and Oberoi also state “the grieving often describe the grief journey to be a a long, seemingly endless one, which often leaves them devastated and frightened and at the same time lonely” (373). So, while the internet and social media can be a great way to memorialize the deceased and work through the loss, it can become a place to deny the death happened. The same feature set that makes the internet a great place to grieve can make it a place to deny death as a reality. Features like Facebook Memories can lead the mind into thinking that the deceased is still alive and still posting to social media and not aging. If photographs appear as memories in the context of a realtime news feed, the subconscious mind will think that the image is a realtime image. To build upon the Pfau article, if images of deceased strangers can jumpstart the grieving process and lead individuals to change their opinion on war, it can lead the mind into believing that a loved one is still alive. This conflicting sight can then lead to death denial and rounds back to all the ails caused by the modern death rituals making social media a complicated place to grieve through sight.

As well, it is possible to have too much sight and to take a death ritual to the extent that it becomes death denial. In the Torajan death practice described by Amanda Bennett in her article for National Geographic, “the departed—and their corpses—remain a part of the family.” In this practice deceased relatives can remain in the familial home for long periods of time before being placed in a familial tomb, where they are then occasionally taken out again for “ma’nene’” or second funerals (Bennett). In the mean time they are left in the house known as “to makula’” or sick person and treated like normal, even being given food (Bennett). One woman was even interviewed as saying, “I’m not sad, because she’s still with us,” while talking about her deceased mother. In this situation the sight in the death ritual becomes a way of denying that the death happened and acting like everyone lives forever. In this capacity the experience becomes one to act like the death didn’t happen and use sight as a means to deny that the death ever happened. 

Finally, the roll of sight in the grieving process doesn’t just end at burial, it can be an essential way of working through the grief. For some people photographs and home movies can be a great way to work through the loss, for others a memorial can be a great way, but for many artists, creating their works can be the way they work through it. One of such exhibits was Jennifer Palmer’s show Mapping Loss which was in the Barr Gallery at Indiana University Southeast. Her work typically focuses on creating maps of emotions or other higher order thinking. For this exhibit in particular she created maps that expressed her feelings of grief following the loss of her mother. The necessity of sight never leaves the grieving process, but it can take completely different forms following the burial to help each individual work through their loss.

In the developed West, the topic of death has become a major taboo, leading to major death denial and the though that death is escapable and eternal youth is attainable. This mentality stems from sanitizing death from the culture and sweeping death under the rug. This mentality leads to people being unable to grieve and feel the loss they are experiencing. Overall sight is essential to the grieving process create closure in the mind and allow the person to move on. Death is inescapable and is paramount to the human condition, everyone will experience it at some point. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Works Cited

Bennett, Amanda. “When Death Doesn’t Mean Goodbye.” National Geographic, National Geographic Partners, 11 Mar. 2016, www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/04/death-dying-grief-funeral-ceremony-corpse/.

Doughty, Caitlin. From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death. Norton, 2017.

– – –. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory. Norton, 2014.

Kakar, Vani and Nanki Oberoi. “Mourning with Social Media: Rewiring Grief.” Indian Journal of Positive Psychology, vol. 7, no. 3, Sept. 2016, pp. 371-375.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. “Kodak Moments, Flashbulb Memories: Reflections on 9/11.” TDR (1988-), vol. 47, no. 1, 2003, pp. 11–48.

Marcoń, Barbara. “Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Eye of the Camera.” Third Text, vol. 25, no. 6, Nov. 2011, pp. 787-797.

McCabe, Ciara, et al. “Cognitive Influences on the Affective Representation of Touch and the Sight of Touch in the Human Brain.” Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, vol. 3, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 97-108.

Palmer, Jennifer Laura. Mapping Loss. 23 Aug.–22 Sept. 2017, The Barr Gallery–Indiana University Southeast, New Albany.

Pfau, Michael, et al. “The Effects of Print News Photographs of the Casualties of War.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 83, no. 1, Spring 2006, pp. 150-168.

Vahrmeyer, Mark and Simon Cassar. “The Paradox of Finitude in the Context of Infinitude: Is Death Denial an Essential Aspect of Being in the World?.” Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, vol. 28, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 151-165.

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Dr. Azrael’s Medicine

The esteemed biologist Rachel Carson once wrote in her famous book Silent Spring, “A grim specter has crept upon us almost unnoticed, and this imagined tragedy may easily become a stark reality we all shall know” (3). In this quote Carson means chemical pesticides have become so widely used they will cause tragedy to sweep the entire country in an epidemic. She draws a parallel between the coming of the Angel of Death, Azrael, and the result from the usage of these substances on crops. This parallel shows the true result of the persistent organic polluters that our society has become enamored with and feel like are necessary for daily life. Carson was able to see the result of this path even back in the 1962 and received massive support until the end of the end of the stormy sixties when environmentalism fell out of fashion, but the problems didn’t go away.

Environmentalism is not a trend; it is a way of life. In the face of avaricious agricultural chemical conglomerates like Syngenta, today more than ever, environmentalists are needed. Throughout the United States, there are many different problem areas for environmental impact, but the primarily agricultural Dubois County is in trouble because of the rampant usage of atrazine as a chemical pesticide to grow corn even cheaper. Atrazine is responsible for creating a dangerous environment in the region for all living things-including ones that are not the intended targets. From humans to aquatic creatures, all the innocents are given a wrongful conviction and death sentence through this miscarriage of justice which should be overturned through an outright ban on atrazine and atrazine- containing products.

Atrazine is throwing away the food web. For instance, in their study, Tyrone B. Hayes et al. designed a study where selective breeding made the starting frogs male and while the control sample stayed male 10% of the Atrazine treated frogs became female even though they were determined to be genetically male (4612). This result is significant because it shows a correlation that Atrazine is an endocrine disrupter which will result in problems with the food web. In Ferdinand, Indiana, fishing is a somewhat common activity during the summer. Even as a young child, I remember my grandfather taking me out fishing. We were in the populous who would simply throw the fish back in, but others would actually eat them. I also remember how we were forced to move from lake to lake because the amount of fish in each lake continued to drop. The population drops in the lakes became such a problem we eventually had to join a membership only lake in order to catch anything. This drop was no coincidence. My grandfather had been fishing in the same spots for the better part of seventy years and the population drop was accompanied by one thing, the rampant spraying of atrazine on the area corn. Eventually, the problems began to be seen in unrelated species like squirrels and deer during the hunting season because of one small disruption in fish. The predators who would normally rely on a combination of woodland creatures and fish were forced to focus on forest animals. The pervasive spraying of Atrazine was to blame for the disruption in populations in the community. The fish were unable to reproduce at the levels they once were since the number of males dropped, which resulted in a massive drop in population. The death warrant that Syngenta signed for these animals directly led to the drop in the fish population causing a ripple effect through the other species of the area.

Atrazine is causing an epidemic of “failure to thrive” in the animal community. In their study, Jason R. Rohr and Krista McCoy explain how amphibians and fish have to divert energy from growth to detoxify atrazine from their system which causes a delay in growth (21). These effects were prevalent and I remember seeing them when I was fishing. Every lake that allows public fishing must have a sign stating the sizes of fish that are ok to keep and the sizes that must be thrown back in addition to numbers of fish allowed to take. Over time, my grandfather and I saw the sizes and numbers allowed to take decreased and the fish that we were catching seemed to be smaller and smaller every year. A quick look at the current state regulations for large mouth bass yields that Ferdinand State Forest requires the bass to be outside of 12 to 15 inches and Patoka Lake requires the bass to be larger than 15 inches which are some of the lowest size requirements in the state of Indiana for areas that don’t follow the state requirements (Indiana Department of Natural Resources). For a large mouth bass, these sizes are minuscule. Size limits are only enacted when the natural population is threatened in some way. The fact that these sizes are tiny implies that the fish in the area are not growing like they should. When an animal or human doesn’t grow like it should that is called “failure to thrive”. In a normal population, few animals should be “failure to thrive” but atrazine skews it lower because the animals must detox their bodies instead of growing. This result is exactly what is happening in Dubois county. The fish are shrinking and suffering from “failure to thrive” because of the unchecked atrazine use. This epidemic of “failure to thrive” is only happening because the farms want to make corn even more cheaply, so instead of doing what is best for everyone, agribusiness hands out death sentences like candy on Halloween.

Hurst, Mary Margaret. Boy and Grandfather. 1999. 35mm Photography.

This photograph shows that atrazine is figuratively killing the natural beauty in Dubois County through the coloration. In the background is a Ferdinand, Indiana, cornfield early in the growing season. From the sky that looks about to storm to the lack of any defined highlights the overall image has a grim coloration. The usage of a grainy film further exaggerates the grim coloration because the grain makes the picture looking more like a documentary picture rather than simply a family picture. A stormy sky is also a common motif used to exhibit impending doom. Since the artist purposely included a cloudy dark sky in the picture she had to be implying that the pesticides used in the background are going to hurt her grandson. Since there are no defined highlights, including in places they are expected like on the metal rings of the barrel, it also implies that darkness is washing over the town. This darkness is the unchecked epidemic of atrazine use. The grandmother that took this photograph saw the change over time in her home and created the image to document the loss of natural beauty. It was through her symbolic elements like grim coloration that she was able to catch the eye of the viewer to bring it in before finally driving the point home.

This photograph also shows the literal destruction caused by rampant atrazine usage in Dubois county. Between the roadway and the corn field there is a defined line of nothing. This line is caused by overspray from the farm equipment that sprays the atrazine on the corn. Instead of having an area that would be populated by wildflowers and other plants that would create a natural and beautiful barrier between the road and the field, there is a giant patch of nothing. The photographer also wanted to document that because of atrazine overspray there was severe erosion when it rains leading

to the formation of a small ditch. If this hillside was in a town that wasn’t agricultural then that small hill would be covered in wildflowers and other beautiful natural plants instead of empty soil. The picture also shows irregular patches of grass in the foreground of the image. While it may seem like a minute detail, it is gargantuan. These irregular patches of grass are caused by overspray from the atrazine used on the corn ending up on grass that is not atrazine resistant. The photographer wanted to document how the atrazine was being blown across the street and onto her lawn causing dead patches. Since she made sure to include small patches it drives home the point even more about atrazine killing off unintended parts of the environment in Dubois County. This idea directly shows how atrazine is hurting the environment in Dubois County since the places that aren’t meant to be destroyed are.

The inclusion of a grandfather and child in the photograph shows how atrazine affects everyone in Dubois County. A small child is a common motif for innocence and the elderly is a typical motif for a helplessness. By depicting two of the most vulnerable groups in society in the image the photographer is able to show how atrazine will eventually get to them. Atrazine will start out far away and not seem like it hurts them but it will eventually find them and bring them down too. The photographer wanted to make sure this idea was shown which is why she showed her husband and grandson. The two are also depicted as doing everyday yard work which shows how atrazine is going to hurt the population during their daily life. This depiction shows that atrazine is a silent killer of sorts. It is used and then builds up before finally causing the damaging effects. This idea means that while plants are affected quickly, humans will take more time to show the symptoms. This grandmother began to see these problems at the beginning of the atrazine epidemic which caused her to focus on bringing light through this photograph. The photo describes a situation where no one is safe in Dubois County from the atrazine exposure which is the main miscarriage of justice for the area.

Atrazine destroys the psyche of people. While this result may seem like an extreme reaction, the reality of the situation is consistent. According to Janet Raloff, “Atrazine’s ability to provoke hormonal perturbation in test animals is one of the more dramatic signs of its toxicity…The presence of too much estrogen or estrogen at the worn time can not only alter reproductive development but also can pose cancer risks” (19). This excerpt shows how Atrazine acts as an endocrine disrupter by affecting the female reproductive system in a similar way to “the pill” only with more risks. Around the time I was born, the effects of Atrazine runoff were just being discovered and my town had been finding high levels in the drinking water. My friend Xavier’s parents grappled with the inability to have children for a good portion of their marriage until he was born. He is their only natural-born child. They tried for several more years after he was born until they finally gave up and adopted his sister. The problem was that the couple was healthy and in the prime of their life, there was no medical reason why they shouldn’t have been able to have children. This narrative continued to become very common for the families where the mother had lived a good portion of her recent life in Ferdinand, like for Camilla a fourth-grade teacher or Norah a second-grade teacher. Atrazine induces a similar effect in women like “the pill” does, which makes it impossible for people to have their own children. In a predominantly Catholic community birth control is not only discouraged but having your own children is viewed as being a better Catholic. The populous of this town is being put down by their peers with many children because of callous disregard by the chemical companies that produce atrazine. These people are given a sentence to be viewed as less by their peers and have their psyche disrupted because they also don’t think they are being “good enough” Catholics. This thinking results in a group of people who are being destroyed mentally from all angles because of Syngenta’s dangerous environmental creation.

Atrazine is causing a death of development for humans. In the study designed by Hugo Ochoa-Acuña et al. which focused specifically on Indiana and included data specifically about Dubois County and it was determined while there is not a correlation between prenatal atrazine expose from drinking water and preterm delivery, there is a correlation between prenatal atrazine from drinking water and small gestational age (SGA) (1622-1623). SGA is “defined as birth weight below the 10th percentile for a given sex and gestational week” (Ochoa-Acuña et al. 1619). To put this data into perspective a control group had about 11% SGA, but if the fetus was in the third trimester during the growing season when atrazine concentrations are highest in the drinking water the medium and high exposure group skyrocketed by 19% and 17% from 14.3% and 13.1% respectively (Ochoa-Acuña et al. 1621). It is impossible for this significant increase to be coincidental. For example, my birthday is August second. This timeline means that I was in the final trimester from May until I was born. When I was born I was considered full term but I was underweight and they thought I may have to be life flighted to Riley Hospital in Indianapolis because of a heart condition that being underweight may magnify an in utero heart condition. To make a long story short, I popped out and was perfectly fine without a heart condition but there are many children who aren’t as lucky. These conditions are caused by the atrazine in the water supply because the fetus must detoxify the chemical instead of growing. These children are being given a sentence to live their entire life with a death of development because of the callous

disregard for taking into account the effects that atrazine will have on them. They will always be smaller than their peers who weren’t exposed to the chemical. It is through this result that the children in this area are having their development stunted and therefore killed. These children are one of the biggest innocents that are being hurt by this chemical unnecessarily.

Atrazine should be banned, today. Between 1992 and 2003, the two communities with watersheds that are at least partially contained in Dubois County of Holland and Winslow were sent notices for excessive concentrations of Atrazine in the filtered drinking water (Leer 3). These violations were prior to the re-registration of atrazine by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that limited the usage of the pesticide to only a handful of states and required the states like Indiana who still used the pesticide to bring the concentrations in drinking water under 3 parts per billion (Johnson and Whitfield 3). These sources show that the EPA is already attempting to limit the usage of this harmful chemical but the problems aren’t going to stop by simply limiting the usage; an outright ban should be enacted to prevent the future from being afflicted by the death and destruction caused by atrazine. Instead of allowing the future generations to also be hurt by this chemical pesticide we should just get rid of it because it’s not going to leave the water supply without that action being taken. The atrazine will simply stay in these communities in a high concentration and possibly spread to other major cities. Eagle Creek in Indianapolis is already requiring strict monitoring and Fort Wayne has been sent a notice of violation (Leer 3). The next cities could be Chicago or Louisville. Atrazine knows no boundary; if there is water, atrazine can and will spread there. This spreading is precisely why it should be banned because it will eventually affect everyone. It will start in the midwest but the currents and rivers will eventually take it to other larger cities and wreak havoc. Instead of allowing the death and destruction the only real option is a ban for this miscarriage of justice.

This usage wouldn’t be allowed on either coast. If the bulk of Manhattan or Hollywood or any other location in a state that borders an ocean were experiencing fish that are failing to thrive or massive reproductive issues then atrazine would be banned over night, but since these places are getting cheap corn no one cares about the rednecks that are producing it. Instead of having a Bono benefit concert we get hospital stays and the inability to grow, but we must be stronger in the Midwest because we are told to just accept our fate and live with it. The government or news would help if we were New York or Portland or even New Orleans, but since we are rednecks there isn’t a need to give help. The people in Dubois County and Indiana, in general would actually push the envelope to get help too, if there were in a place like Berkeley, California or Ithaca or Bethel, New York. The people in Dubois County, however, are kept ignorant on the problems because they are obedient and believe everything that the Republican puppet masters want them to believe. There are two ways to solve the problems in the area because of this thinking. The first would be the improbable epiphany that the populous would have to have. The second and more realistic one would be an outside force like the government acting to stomp out the fire of rampant atrazine spraying through a ban. These options are the only realistic ones because the companies only care about their bottom line instead of the death and destruction their products actually cause. This reason is precisely why atrazine should be banned because it would be banned these problems happened in a state with a coast.

Atrazine is the new DDT and should have the same fate. In a personal interview with a Customer Development Manager with 21 years experience at Winfield Solutions, LLC. which is a subsidiary of Land O’ Lakes, inc., Evan Wilson told me that, “Modern chemical pesticides are not DDT. Modern regulations are much better, and the chemicals that cause cancer don’t even make it to market. If you are really worried just wash it off.” In a quick look at the Winfield website I was able to immediately see atrazine is one of their products, and it comes in two forms Atrazine 4L and Atrazine 90DF (Winfield Solutions). The research is out there to dispute atrazine’s safety. The myth of washing off your foods has also been disputed because of how long it would take to get all the harmful chemicals off the foods. This interview began to turn into a propaganda statement about the benefits of pesticides without mentioning any of the risks. DDT at one time was also marketed as completely safe. Looking back on that fiasco that almost led to the extinction of our national Mascot, the Bald Eagle, the parallels are uncanny. The environmental disruption is happening again but the manufacturers don’t want the average person to know about it because it will hurt their bottom line. Once atrazine is finally condemned to the past, it will be viewed in the same light as DDT because of the grim effects and the fight agribusiness is putting up. If agribusiness cared they would stop the use, but it will take governmental action again to rewrite the miscarriage of justice again like it had to do with DDT.

You don’t need a perfect looking food. Again in a the conversation with Evan Wilson, he informed me that, “When you think of an apple you don’t think of a greenish thing with spots, you think of a bright red apple. Washington apples just don’t happen naturally. They require pesticides.” As nice as a pretty apple is to look at, I’m going to eat; if I wanted to stare at a nice apple I would buy wax fruit because at least then it won’t mold after a short amount of time. Perfect food is not worth the environmental devastation it causes. It is literally just going to be eaten, not put into the Museum of Modern Art or the

Louvre. Perfect corn does not digest any better than corn that has spots or bites. The thinking that requires every ear of corn to be perfect is superfluous and leading to mass devastation. The only way to change this thinking is to make atrazine infused perfect foods banned. This reason is precisely why atrazine should go the way of the dinosaurs through a ban.

Rampant atrazine spraying is a major factor in the destruction of the environment in Dubois County, Indiana. It is leading the region down a path toward devastation for unintended innocent species including aquatic animals and humans. These creatures are being given a miscarriage of justice today. So, are we going to follow the example Rachel Carson set back in the 1960s in her push for the ban on DDT, or are we going to allow agribusiness to continue to give communities a death sentence so they may create cheap corn produced using atrazine.Works Cited

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. 25th Anniversary ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Print. Hayes, Tyrone B., Vicky Khoury, Anne Narayan, Mariam Nazir, Andrew Park, Travis Brown,

Lillian Adame, Elton Chan, Daniel Buchholz, Theresa Stueve, Sherrie Gallipeau, and David B. Wake. “Atrazine Induces Complete Feminization And Chemical Castration In Male African Clawed Frogs (Xenopus Laevis).” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107.10 (2010): 4612-617. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.

Hurst, Mary Margaret. Boy and Grandfather. 1999. 35mm Photography.

Indiana Department of Natural Resources. “2012 Indiana Fishing Regulations.” Indiana Department of Natural Resources, 2012. PDF File.

Johnson, Bill and Fred Whitford. “Atrazine and Drinking Water: Understanding the Needs of Farmers and Citizens.” Purdue Extension, 2007. PDF File.

Leer, Steve. “Atrazine and Drinking Water: Understanding the Needs of Farmers and Citizens.” Purdue University, 2005. PDF File.

Ochoa-Acuña, Hugo, Jane Frankenberger, Leighanne Hahn, and Cristina Carbajo. “Drinking-

Water Herbicide Exposure in Indiana and Prevalence of Small-for-Gestational-Age and Preterm Delivery.” Environ Health Perspect Environmental Health Perspectives (2009): 1619-624. JSTOR. Web. 4 Dec. 2015.

Raloff, Janet. “Weed Killer in the Crosshairs: Concerns Prompt Reexamination of Atrazine’s

Safety.” Science News (2010): 18-21. JSTOR. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.

Rohr, Jason R., and Krista McCoy. “A Qualitative Meta-Analysis Reveals Consistent Effects Of

Atrazine On Freshwater Fish And Amphibians.” Environmental Health Perspectives 118.1 (2010): 20-32. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.

Winfield Solutions. “WinField – Product Detail.” WinField – Product Detail. WinField, 2015. Web. 1 Dec. 2015. .

Wilson, Evan. Personal Interview. 27 Nov. 2015.

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Canning

Canning can help make your produce last all year. My grandmother, who was a cafeteria lady at the local school, was an avid canner. In her basement, she had an entire wall of deep shelves that were shoved full of well organized canned products in the root cellar. During the growing season, my grandparents would eat the produce they were growing by starting with the what was picked first and then going toward the new pickings. Eventually, they would have so much produce, however, that my grandmother would take her mason jars and her pressure cooker and go to town with all of the fresh produce her husband had brought in. Following the pressure cooking, she would put reasonable expiration dates on the jars and take them down into the root cellar. Then, even in the dead of winter, their home grown produce could be enjoyed.

Preserving your own food can be a good way to make yourself partially or fully self-sufficient. Recipes can easily be found online for how to can your favorite food, but the basics are similar for most foods. When you use the pressure cooking method, you have to get above 240oF for a length of time, which depends on the food and typically ranges from 10 minutes to as much as 30 minutes. There are many things factored into this time limit but it’s best to follow it and adjust accordingly if the instructions differ at your altitude.

The time limit on canning comes from the amount of time required to kill off the bacteria that occurs naturally on fresh produce. In normal conditions these bacteria will just cause the food to spoil over time, but when the bacteria are heated to the boiling point of water (212oF) they form spores. These spores are then dormant until the seal is broken between the lid and jar by opening. Once you open it, these spores are released and ingested. These bacteria then can cause serious illnesses like botulism.

Canning can be a great way to preserve the foods your grow at home. Depending on the model you get, the pressure cooker may not be very expensive (under $100) and can be used for many years to come. The mason jars can also be bought new and reused inexpensively or purchased second hand and reused. Don’t feel weird about reusing old jars either because you will be completely sanitizing them when you can your foods anyway.

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To Spray or Not to Spray

Don’t it always seem to go

That you don’t know what you’ve got Till it’s gone

They paved paradise

And put up a parking lot (5-9).

When Joni Mitchell famously recorded these lyrics in “Big Yellow Taxi” for the first time 45 years ago, she couldn’t have imagined how impactful this song would become. She painted how once we destroy the environment there is no way to get it back, and then once it is gone we will finally miss it and wish we had protected it. Mitchell devised this call-to-action to bring attention to the harms of the most commonly used pesticide at the time, which was DDT, but her song has recently been reintroduced into popular culture through rerecording by various artists to call attention to the harms of the current most commonly used pesticide, which is Monsanto’s glyphosate or more commonly known as Roundup, and other modern chemical pesticides. Through vague diction and metaphor, Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” accurately depicts how chemical pesticides are destroying the environment and humanity by creating a toxic environment where nothing can thrive and disrupts the food web. A toxic environment destroys anything inside the environment, including humans, which murders genetic diversity and forges a ticking time bomb for a population collapse.

Mitchell acts like the environmental essentials are sexy, when they aren’t. One of Mitchell’s few inaccuracies on the ramifications of chemical pesticides is in between line 10 and 13,

They took all the trees

Put ’em in a tree museum

And they charged the people

A dollar and a half just to see ‘em.

When these lines are analyzed along with the lines 19 and 20, “hey farmer, farmer/ put away that DDT now,” it can be taken that Mitchell was trying to argue that someone will take essential parts of the environment and capitalize on them while the rest of it is destroyed by chemical pesticides. The problem with this idea is, the essential parts of the environment are just not sexy enough to be saved. Zoos, for example, are not filled with native animals. When I was at the zoo I was surrounded by people who were there to see creatures from somewhere else in the world, like lions from Africa, tigers from Asia, and bears from the Arctic. No one seemed troubled by the Kentucky native animals or the multitude of brown rats, which is commonly used in science, even though they are essential. They just kept walking by giving me crazy looks, like “why the hell does he care about that ugly little vermin.” Especially with the brown rat, most people have that animal to thank for the good life they can have and not be killed by daily products like shampoo. If the visitors really cared about these animals, then they would actually do more at home to protect them, but none of these native animals are exotic. Therefore the majority of Americans really don’t seem to care about them even if they do play a key role in their daily lives, which is at odds with Mitchell’s depiction.

Mitchell shows beneficial species are being slaughtered accurately. Throughout the entire song Mitchell consistently brings up “That you don’t know what you’ve got/’til it’s gone” (6-7). This idea is an exact conclusion. Experts for the World Wildlife Fund estimate the current extinction rate “to be between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate.” While pesticides are not the only cause of this rapid extinction of species, it is one of the major causes. Many of the species, like the frogs, are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. These frogs live in areas with insect problems and take care of the insects to limit the population and not throw off the food web. These species are being annihilated just so crops can be produced cheaper and with less labor or allow fairway-like lawns in the suburbs without any regard for what was living there before. This accurate description shows the loss of critical genetic diversity which is needed to move forward as a species and ecosystem that chemical pesticides causes.

Contrary to Joni Mitchell’s extrapolation, chemical pesticides aren’t causing birds to just fall out of the sky. Mitchell’s vague diction shows chemical pesticides are killing off necessary parts of the food chain, but not in the most accurate light. In “Big Yellow Taxi” Mitchell sings:

Hey farmer farmer

Put away that DDT now

Give me spots on my apples

But leave me the birds and the bees Please! (19-23)

The diction of, leave, put away, and spots intentionally leaves the portrayal of DDT’s affects vague to allow the listeners imagination to run wild. For example, someone could think that DDT is causing flocks of birds and swarms of bees to suddenly fall out of the sky when they are in the presence of

chemical pesticides. This depiction is not accurate since chemical pesticides don’t directly kill off anything except plants unless you are drowning something in a vat of it, but their build up in communities does cause mutations. These mutations in most situations do lead to a massive die off of at least one population. Then when that population is lost an important part of the food chain is lost for good, causing the rest of the community to fail to thrive. By intentionally leaving the effects vague, Mitchell is able to give off effect to get people interested, but chemical pesticide spraying has never caused the immediate death of animals.

Mitchell’s agreement about chemical pesticides effectively throw out genetic material like it is a baby in the bath water is spot on. The position that Mitchell argues about the loss of beneficial species in the metaphor between DDT (20) and “the birds and the bees” (22) is fairly accurate for today. “The birds and the bees” is a common metaphor for sexual reproduction and how genetic information is passes on in the process, so Mitchell means that she doesn’t want all the evolutionary improvements made to be thrown away. For example, Susan Milius describes a correlation that the study unearthed between the usage of the chemical pesticides glyphosate and atrazine and frogs becoming intersex in Avon, Conn. ponds (28). These frogs won’t be able to breed and continue on the species which effectively ends the genetic line and throws out generations worth of evolution. This example is important because it shows how these species are becoming endangered and their genetic improvements are being lost. While this example is fairly extreme it is a, sadly, not uncommon example of the loss of genetic diversity from chemical fertilizers, which Mitchell blatantly brings up in the song.

The domino effect is real and Mitchell accurately shows it will destroy the food web. Mitchell accurately shows this idea in lines 21 and 22 between the “Give me spots on my apples/ But leave me the birds and the bees.” This extrapolation means the animals which are being destroyed are essential for the continuation of the planet because everything in the food web is interconnected somehow. For example, changes to one species of frog will affect humans. Rick A. Relyea designed a study to see how Roundup disrupts the food web by causing developmental changes in various creatures (634). While these changes may not seem like a big deal, in reality they are a huge deal. In ecology energy transfer and food webs determine the essential workings of a community. When one part of the food web is disrupted, then the entire web is damaged. When the tadpoles in the study have developmental changes induced by the Roundup more of them survived the predator (Relyea 638). In the natural world, as opposed to the closed environment in the study, if the rate that the prey is killed decreases, then the population of the prey would increase. Eventually the population of the predator would continue to decrease, which would send ripples upwards through the rest of the web, while the population of the prey would continue to increase and eventually reach the carrying capacity, which is the maximum amount of a single species an ecosystem can support. This result would cause massive death among the community the food web is for since the population of the tadpoles would then crash since the ecosystem could no longer support their population size. The result would then be that the top of the population, which is usually man, would follow since their food sources decreased in population because of the changes in one group. This result would in turn result in very unrelated species feeling the effects because of one chemical being put into the ecosystem, causing others to not thrive as well which is what Mitchell alludes to.

Chemical pesticide usage is like playing Russian Roulette with all chambers loaded according to Mitchell which hits the nail on the head. Mitchell introduces her final theory on how chemical pesticides affect man in lines 29-32

Late last night

I heard the screen door slam And a big yellow taxi

Took away my old man

This excerpt shows that chemical pesticides will result in loved ones being taken away. Since they are taken away by a taxi, the song implies that loosing the loved one is completely preventable in the same way living by not playing Russian Roulette is possible. The old Russian guy in the corner named Agribusiness knows the dangers but continues to push the dangerous game of chance. In their article, Kathrine Rugbjerg et al. describe their study where they found a correlation between agricultural work, and by association chemical pesticide exposure, and the development of Parkinson’s Disease (431). From when my grandmother was in the nursing home for nine years, I remember that the residents with Parkinson’s Disease that the disease is a debilitating condition where the person gradually looses fine motor skills and memory, eventually to the point that they can’t get out of bed or even speak. These people basically loose their lives over the span of years, which is painful for not just the person, but also for their family, similar to a group of family members playing Russian Roulette together. Most

agricultural workers have no other option usually; they are overwhelmingly poor with no other options, and therefore they are forced into the game of chance by the old Russian guy in the corner. They are given a death sentence just so the average American can have cheap corn. They are forced into a gamble that they can’t win where the old Russian guy in the corner unbeknownst to the players loaded all the chambers. This situation is the reality of the game which is very similar to how Joni Mitchell portrays it.

Monsanto and other Agribusinesses accurately have the blood of entire communities on their hands according to Mitchell. The diction Mitchell uses in line 31, “big yellow taxi,” accurately depicts how agribusiness is to blame for the chemical pesticide related deaths in many communities. She intentionally left the description of the taxi vague, but she did choose to highlight the fact that taxi is yellow which is most common color of pesticide solutions. I grew up in a small agriculturally based town called Ferdinand, Indiana. I remember from a young age how the farm across from my grandparents house would start the year barren of life and then by the end of summer be completely full and green with life. Corn and soybeans were the most common crop. I also remember the giant tractors and other gargantuan machinery which went through the fields and mist the crops. The other farms around town would also spray at similar times of the year. Due to the wind this spraying would always result in the town smelling like the chemical pesticides which were used by the farms. The area was also deemed a neurological disorder and cancer cluster. The older folks who lived their entire lives in the town experienced soaring rates of these disorders. I remember when my grandmother was in the nursing home, the number of people her age there who had worked and lived on farms their whole lives. Many of these people had developed Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, and other serious disorders in addition to multiple cancers. When Mitchell references how the conglomerates who make these chemical pesticides are taking away these people’s lives she couldn’t have been more right.

According to Mitchell, the next generation is imprisoned by the chemical pesticides which is accurate. When Joni Mitchell choose to highlight a metaphor in lines 31-32 that, “a big yellow taxi/ come and took away my old man,” she was accurately bringing up that the children of agriculture workers are left alone with no one to help them. For example, R, Mesnage et al. in their article in the British Medical Journal made observations of one family who had 2 children develop birth defects after exposure to multiple pesticides while in utero and described the correlation which had been found between pesticide usage and Stratton-Parker Syndrome-like symptoms (359). While this study may be slightly statistically flawed since it only takes into account one family, it is relevant because the family has no history on either side of Stratton-Parker Syndrome-like symptoms even though it is incredibly rare (359). These children are forced to live the rest of their life in a prison of disability because there father worked in agriculture. The parents aren’t able to help and neither are the doctors because of the nature of these birth defects which result in the boys being excluded from “normal” society. This result goes to show how Mitchell was spot on when she argued that the children of agricultural workers are being imprisoned by disability since current medicine can’t help them which is the sad reality of our world for many agricultural families.

“Big Yellow Taxi” is as relevant as ever towards today’s society with the extensive usage of chemical pesticides like atrazine and glyphosate. Joni Mitchell was able to accurately describe how chemical pesticides are destroying the environment and humanity by creating a toxic environment where nothing can thrive and disrupts the food web through her usage of vague diction and metaphor. Environmental toxins destroy anything inside the environment, including humans, which murders genetic diversity and forges a ticking time bomb for a population collapse. What is better, in the words of Joni Mitchell “spots on my apples” or the extensive death of living things in the toxic environment including humans?

Works Cited

Mesnage, R., E. Clair, J. Spiroux De Vendomois, and G. E. Seralini. “Two Cases of Birth Defects

Overlapping Stratton-Parker Syndrome after Multiple Pesticide Exposure.” Occupational and Environmental Medicine 67.5 (2010): 359. JSTOR. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

Milius, Susan. “In Field or Backyard, Frogs Face Threats: Amphibians and Other Sensitive

Groups Encounter Chemicals across the Landscape.” Science News 178.6 (2010): 28-29. JSTOR. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

Mitchell, Joni. “Big Yellow Taxi.” Ladies of the Canyon. Warner Brothers: 1970. M4A.

Relyea, Rick A. “New Effects of Roundup on Amphibians: Predators Reduce Herbicide

Mortality; Herbicides Induce Antipredator Morphology.” Ecological Applications 22.2 (2012): 634-47. JSTOR. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

Rugbjerg, Kathrine, M. Anne Harris, Hui Shen, Stephen A. Marion, Joseph K. C. Tsui, and Kay

Teschke. “Pesticide Exposure and Risk of Parkinson’s Disease – a Population-based Case–control Study Evaluating the Potential for Recall Bias.” Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health 37.5 (2011): 427-36. JSTOR. Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

World Wildlife Fund. “How Many Species Are We Loosing?” WWF.org. World Wildlife Fund, 2015. http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/biodiversity/biodiversity/ Web. 31 Oct. 2015.

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Less is More: Lessons Learned

When Henry David Thoreau went to live on Walden Pond he famously wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (158). When Thoreau wrote this passage in the 1860s he was arguing that he didn’t want to become a zombie, just going through life doing what is expected and following what society was telling him to do. Thoreau decided instead to leave the city and move out into the middle of nowhere in order to pay attention to his everyday life for about two years.

Thoreau’s principle in the quote is an ever true lesson for the citizens of the United States today. We are taught from a young age to want the “McMansion” with the “McPool” in the “McBackyard” and the two “McMercedes-Benzes” in the driveway for our future suburban nuclear “McFamily.” We are taught to act like we are the one percent even though we are not. This lifestyle of living outside of our means

is destroying the American society by cannibalizing time, not allowing one to enjoy life, and pushing a “more is always better attitude.” This life is a problem because the average American has become a mindless zombie simply going through life but not actually living.

Photo by Author.

The picture “Concrete Jungle” shows how working over lunch is destroying time. The park looks like something out of a sci-fi movie once humans are gone. The lack of humans is further exaggerated through the overall dark tone making the park seem eerily empty and makes it feel like something bad happened there. The fact that the picture was taken from under an overpass looking onto an open empty field gives an uncomfortably feel by drawing a stark separation from the park and the buildings in the background which are assumed to be full of people. This grand openness is especially used to show an empty park during the mid-day break instead of being filled with people enjoying their lunch time. The image shows the culture of missed opportunities created by overworking, and the emptiness of life when people are overworking just so they can afford to follow.

When I spent the better part of an afternoon walking around in downtown Louisville and surrounding neighborhoods nearly everyone was murdering their time and throwing away the little bit of free time during they day they could enjoy. For instance, I arrived at Riverfront Park during the second half of the average lunch time (11:00 am-1:00 pm). The sky was bright and blue without a cloud in sight; the day was warm but comfortable. The park, however, was calm and nearly barren of other people. The park was still in the same way a graveyard is quiet any day other than Halloween. The park was empty in the same way a medieval village was empty after The Black Death. The plague of overwork created this graveyard at a time when the park could be teeming with people. This graveyard is similar to a one where a family member is buried and then never visited. This analogy is perfect because it shows how the murdering of time by workers downtown is very similar to a disease that disease in the medieval times decimated most of Europe and how after their time is murdered they do nothing to attempt and visit the little time they have left.

Just outside the park the employees downtown were addicted to making money and working like a junkie seeking a high. The people were in bustling office buildings working through their lunches instead of enjoying the natural resource available to them. Once I began to venture into downtown, the few people not in their office buildings were mostly running to their destination, like there was a fire behind them, and using their cellphone which might as well have been surgically implanted onto their hand or onto the side of their head since there was no possible way of removing it from them. These people ranged from those people in suits and ties getting into their Mercedes-Benzes to those people who were in obvious blue collar uniforms waiting at the bus stop. Every one of them was afflicted with the “Crackberry” addiction. This addiction was forcing them to work even outside of their office instead of enjoying the little downtime they had each day. The differences in backgrounds shows the importance of how anyone can be afflicted by overworking in order to present the facade of affluence. This addiction leads to work eating away at time and limiting life’s experiences.

All of these people downtown show troubling signs of overworking to death and being eaten alive by their debt. While studying Japanese, I picked up the word Karōshi, which means to literally overwork until you die. The majority of the downtown workforce was overworking just to pay their bills. The

mean annual wage in the United states during 2014 was a little over $47,000 which is slightly less than the list price of a straight-from-the-factory new Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan (Bureau of Labor Statistics) (Mercedes-Benz USA). This expensive car is unaffordable for a majority of Americans, yet the average American is told that they can afford it. Average American children are also told that they can afford to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to go to college, even though there is a tiny chance that they will be able to afford to pay it back. The cycle of debt is completely unsustainable, and eventually the bubble will burst. This debt does nothing but hurt those people who take it out. It digs them deeper and deeper into debt, and they are forced into a cycle of giving up more and more of their time until they die.

Photo by Author.

In the image “Flag, Industry, and Construction,” the object placement shows how movement to the American suburbs started the mindlessly murdering of time and started the attitude of more is always better. The interstate highway system, which is being reconstructed in the photo, was supposed to help speed up everyone’s life. All it really did was increase the commute time as people moved farther from work. This creation then led to the flight of middle class from the affordable housing near the inner city to the more expensive suburbs. Then, as evident by the projects in the background of the photo, the area was then razed, and a metaphorical prison was created to keep those people of lower economic classes stuck. The high concentration of churches in the middle ground and background also are symbolic of how instead of actually helping those people who are disenfranchised, they are preyed upon by people who don’t understand the problems. The societal divide was then further increased as the middleclass folks willing fought their way into the suburbs just to be able to emulate the rich. This divide then led to the spitting contest of who looked more successful even if it meant you had no time left to enjoy what you had.

Wanting the largest house in the neighborhood is an epidemic of masochism. The desire for the seven- bedroom house with ten bathrooms has become pervasive in society. This desire leads to people not only working longer hours so that they can actually afford the house, but they also have to work more just to take care of the house. In 1950, the average American home was just 983 square feet (Adler). In contrast, the average home size in 2013 was 2,598 square feet (Census Bureau). A 2,598 square foot house takes many more resources to maintain than a 983 square foot house, especially when the family in the larger house is smaller. The unused space is proverbially shooting yourself in the foot. This “McMansion” mindset results in mountains of wasted time just taking care of a low-quality status symbol. Time is wasted, so that neighbors intimidate each other, and everyone seems more successful. Society expects everyone strive for material success by amassing more and bigger “stuff” than your neighbor until we have become like a zombie striving for flesh.

Photo by Author.

The image “Flowers,” shows how the drive for success in American society is overly simplified and perverse in destroying the American way of life. When the photographer took the image he wanted the viewers to focus on the flowers in the foreground of the image and used the lens to blur out the rest of the image. This blur and focus is very metaphorical of how everyone strives for material success but they ignore success in other areas of their life including emotional success and happiness. They have become zombies wanting to appear successful and blindly do anything to achieve this illusion. Americans will also focus on one detail, like who has the largest “McMansion” in the neighborhood, but they won’t pay attention to other factors involved, like how that person and their spouse each work 60 hours a week. Instead of actually living their own life, this desire for more and more is creating a mass of mindless zombies who are only there to one-up the people who are around them.

The perverse American culture can be undermined through living tiny. While it would be perfect for everyone to live like Asians, Europeans, and New Yorkers by using public transit, this mode of transportation is depressingly unattainable right now in America; however, living in a tiny house is attainable. A tiny house, is a home which fulfills one’s needs but lacks the superfluous space of most dwellings. For example, most tiny houses are no larger than 100 to 300 square feet and are hand built on utility trailers for one person, a young couple, or family. These houses have also been built out of shipping containers or more traditional techniques. A tiny house is unique, and really determined by the individual and what they want or need, but the biggest point of a tiny house is to have what you need live deliberately. Everything in tiny house must serve some purpose, so mindless status symbols and miscellaneous “stuff” has no place. Once built, they are also unobtrusive and require minimal maintenance, which allows more time to enjoy life. This deliberate living will prevent zombiism since you have to be conscious of your surroundings. You will have time for the rest of your life to happen instead of cannibalizing it away for status.

In an ideal world we would all live in cities near our places of employment and use mass transit or walk to our destinations, but, until this dream becomes a viable reality our best bet is on living tiny and ensuring we live within our means. In the meantime, this unattainable drive for material success is destroying American by cannibalizing time and “making a more is always better” attitude acceptable. So shouldn’t we all listen to Thoreau’s lesson and pay attention to our lives, or are we just going to continue to be zombies?

Works Cited

Adler, Margot. “Behind the Ever-Expanding Dream House.” NPR.org 4 July, 2006. Web. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525283 6 Oct, 2015

Lee, Merlin. “Concrete Jungle.” 2015. JPEG file.

—. “Flag, Industry, and Construction.” 2015. JPEG file.

—. “Flowers.” 2015. JPEG file.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Public Domain: N.P., 1862. iBooks file.

United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. “May 2014 National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates United States.” Bls.gov 25 Mar, 2015. Web. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm(http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm) 6 Oct, 2015

United States Census Bureau. “Median and Average Square Feet of Floor Area in New Single-Family Houses Completed by Location.” Census.gov, N.P. PDF file. https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/medavgsqft.pdf(https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/pdf/medavgsqft.pdf) 6 Oct, 2015

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Garden For Victory!

I hope every American who possibly can will grow a victory garden this year.

–Franklin Delano Roosevelt 1 April 1944 Statement on Victory Gardens

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was talking about the system of growing some of your own food that was popularized during the world wars. These gardens popped up on private and public lands to alleviate resource strains in the United States food supply. Today in the face of avaricious agricultural conglomerates, we must have our own victory gardens to supplant the poisons they willfully put into our foods.

My grandfather prior to his passing always had a giant 30 by 100 foot garden in his backyard. It was so big, in fact, that you can see it in older satellite pictures of his town and in more recent pictures you can still see the outline of where the garden used to be. Growing up during the depression, he helped relatives who had a farm even though he lived in town. Even though he was sent overseas during WWII, he still did some work on growing plants when he was at home. Once the economy began to boom in the post-WWII era, he still had his own garden in his backyard in addition to working at an aluminum factory that was almost an hour away. And, he cultivated that same garden up until a few years before he passed.

While he was able to do that much (I blame the German work-ethic), even a small corner in your backyard is suitable. If you eat large amounts of tomatoes, peppers, or strawberries, consider growing a few plants of your own. Not only will it be much cheaper to buy a plant and grow it at home for several years than constantly purchasing new produce from the store, it will also be much healthier. There are charts online that show which plants should be put next to each other to get rid of pests without the use of any pesticides. You can also use compounds that are nontoxic or low-toxic like garlic or borax (yes the laundry powder). These plants can be grown completely organically with little to no extra effort except one extra trip to your nursery to get the plants.

Chickens can be incorporated for an organic symbiotic relationship. Chickens eat bugs, and chickens eat weeds. This benefit of your feathered friends will cause you less work and save you money because you won’t have to feed them as much or pull out the weeds and any pesticides you do use, won’t need to be applied as often or as heavily. Then, the chickens will fertilize your garden through their excrement. This benefit will require you to use less fertilizer, less often while not requiring any extra cleanup work. Finally, the chickens (as long as you have a few females) will produce eggs. The eggs are a benefit because not only do fresh eggs taste better but if you have a rooster you can keep the circle of life going by hatching more eggs. So really the chickens would become a part of your garden and only make your job a little easier.

Today is a great day to get started! Think about how you can make your own food at home instead of relying on the agricultural conglomerates who are just there to take your money. Work on your own victory garden today!