Who Would Find You?

Death.

Last year I wrote this post about Joyce Carol Vincent, an English woman found dead in her apartment years after her death surrounded by all the normal trappings of life, including yet to be given Christmas gifts. Last week, a Michigan woman, Pia Farrenkopf was found in the back passenger seat of her car, which was parked in her own garage, after more than six years.

While the circumstances surrounding these two incidents differ, the striking thing about these stories is the amount of time that passed before anyone raised an alarm or came looking for them. In truth, in both instances there were people that came to check, doors were knocked on, mail was delivered, and neighbors continued to come and go. In the case of Pia, one of her neighbors continued to mow her lawn for years, apparently thinking she was out of town.

Stories like this cut to the bone of my internalized fears. I question the kind of society we have built if people, presumably functioning, employed people with families and connections of some kind to the world can die in their own homes without anyone noticing or caring. I think that cases such as these highlight our increasing isolation, typically obscured by the false connections of social media but present and growing nonetheless. I wonder about the state of the modern neighborhood that a death can go unnoticed. I also think that it says something profound about what really drives our culture that both women were ultimately found by bill collectors.

What is the strength of your connections? Who are the people in your life in danger of becoming lost souls? Who will be the one to find you?

How To Start Your Day

Wake.

I am not a particularly good sleeper. Though not an insomniac, I do not sleep easily or very much and am prone to nightmares and fitful sleep. Perhaps because of this, I often wake in a soft and vulnerable state, feeling the stresses and obligations of life press upon me. In order to shake myself loose from this and face my day I turn to morning ritual. Far better than half an hour of extra sleep is rising early to take time for myself to build a fire, have a cup of coffee outside with the birds, and stretch. The way I begin my day has everything to do with how I proceed through the rest of it. Taking time for yourself first thing in the morning is a reminder of your own importance and it allows you to gather your thoughts and plan a course of action. It is not selfish to take this time. Self care is what allows us to provide for others and give them what they need. 

A list of things to do to reinvent your morning:

Do Yoga

Meditate

Drink a cup of tea

Read

Eat breakfast

Make a list

Take a walk

Sit quietly

Play music, sing a song

Take a bath, not a shower

For more ways to transform your morning:

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-11639/5-life-changing-ways-to-start-your-day.html

Image:

http://therumpus.net/2009/01/morning-coffee-18/

On Being A Gentleman

Gallantry.

The companion list, for men that want to be gentlemen in the modern age.

1) Call. A text is not the same. A phone call shows that you care and that the other person has value.

2) Open the door. Really. This small act of deference and others like it (pulling out a chair, offering a coat) will never go out of style.

3) Keep it to yourself. The guys do not need to know the details of your date, so keep it to yourself and allow her to retain her dignity, especially if you intend to keep her around.

4) Own a suit. Job interviews, weddings, and funerals still happen and a good suit lasts for years. Sometimes it is just important to look the part. Be prepared.

5) Pick up a check. Not all of them, but some, and especially in the beginning. It will set you apart and establish you as having generosity.

6) Listen. Most women want to be acknowledged by their companions, so listen and respond so that she feels important and intelligent.

7) Lend a hand. To the older woman hauling groceries to her door, the guy that has a flat tire, or the neighbor that needs the snow cleared from their walkway. Small acts of kindness are the mark of a true gentleman. 

8) Avoid discussing money and purchases. Verbal one-upmanship and boasting never impress the way they are intended to and only produce resentment in your listeners. Be cautious about money discussions and sensitive to others' situations. 

9) Know your limits. Stop drinking before you pick a fight, start an argument, become boorish, or have to be escorted home by your date. Everyone else will remember the incident far better and longer than you will. It's just not worth it.

Photograph:

http://malgeo.blogspot.com/2013/01/winters-styles-for-gentlemen-in-1867.html

Knock Out

Game.

There is a quiet roar beginning over what is being called the "teen knockout game" wherein a group of teens randomly assaults a complete stranger with the intent of knocking them unconscious. My interest in this is less in discussing teen violence or the pack mentality that drives it, but in the mainstream medias willingness to diminish their actions by calling it a game. That our young people are unable to tell the difference between games and criminal violence is certainly a problem, but when the rest of society struggles with that same distinction, it's indicative of something larger and more deeply ingrained. Are we, as a while, losing the ability to distinguish between play, imagination, fantasy, and reality? Have movies and video games so closely blended with our daily realities that we are no longer sure what is, in fact, a game? In considering this question I think about the many US service people who daily fight wars, remotely, with drones and joystick technology and then return to their suburban lives. I think about fight clubs, the violence of football and hockey, and the ways in which we celebrate the champions of these violent form of recreation. I wonder about boredom in our youth, and the obvious cry for stimulation that is calling a random attack on a stranger a game. I think about stories like The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones that place children in positions of power and reward them for their violence. I think about my own youth, filled with capture the flag and kick the can, and think about a time when dodge ball was considered too violent for the school grounds. Perhaps today is a good day to reevaluate our pastimes, recreation, and personal media choices. What do they say about ourselves and what we consider to play? What message do your choices send to those around you about violence and its role as an entertainer?

Photograph:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/teen-knockout-game-continues-harm-innocent-people-article-1.1521185

The Lost Ones

Hikikomori.

There are over 100,000 Hikikomori, or young recluses estimated to be living in Japan. Coined in the early 2000's, Hikikomori refers to someone, especially a young person who retreats from society and social interaction, rarely leaving the house and not working productively for at least six months, sometimes years.  Their lives are largely lived online and in their parents houses.  Rather than a mental illness or phobia, it is thought that the Hikikomori suffer from a maladjustment to modernity, there is some relevance to generational attributes of laziness and entitlement, but also some kind of hard wiring gone awry in terms of reality and the online world.    It is a growing and world-wide phenomenon and something that we should take notice of as technology continues to evolve faster than ourselves.

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://towakudai.blogs.com/my_weblog/2009/08/sayonara-zetsubo-sensei-aversion-and-hikikomori-at-anime-edit-part-1.html

Life on Easy Street

Unplug.

It is remarkable what a few days away from traffic and deadlines, and cell phones, and the internet can do to calm ones mind and bring things back into perspective.  Fresh air, warm summer lake water, and dinners cooked over an open fire go a long way towards reminding us just how simple things can be and just how good the good life really is.  So much of our stress, discomforts, and drama is manufactured by modern life, Facebook, the constant chirping of the phone, errands, that we forget that these modern trappings are voluntary and largely unnecessary.  I think we forget too to make sure that they are serving a higher purpose in our lives, and if they are not, we forget that we can let them go.  The world does not come crashing down if we do not check our email and all those other things that we are told are so important.  These modern gadgets used to be called conveniences, and we were promised they would save us time, make life more efficient so that we would have more time for the good life.  In my experience these things only consume more and more of my time, pulling me away from the people and experiences that make me truly happy.  In my experience the good life does not come in packaging or with bells and whistles, it comes in summer evenings, with people you care for, far from the crush and noise of the daily grind.  

It is time.  Go outside. Ignore your phone.  Soak up the sun.  Happy summer.

Photograph courtesy of:

http://coloradocreates.com/scapes-at-studio-12-gallery/dianna-fritzler_the-good-life/

Post Service

Mail.

This week, in spite of it being the 21st century, in spite of email and Twitter and Facebook and Skype, in spite of the US Postal Service raising rates and closing offices, I received a real, honest to god letter.  It was all the things a good letter should be, handwritten, on multiple sheets of paper, not just some printed-off picture of someones family or worse, a formal newsletter to friends and family detailing vacations, fifth grade graduations, and recent major purchases.  This was a letter to me, written for me, about the kinds of things people only used to take the time to write about when we lived in an era of taking time to do things.  It was a wonderful and important reminder to do just that, take time.  Intention and deliberateness are often pushed to the wayside in our contemporary rush towards innovation and development.  In the last decade in particular I feel we have put stock in all things new, without really considering the value of some of the things we have replaced.  I feel the loss of letters and worry about trading them in for the false connections and faker y of social media. Perhaps today is a good day to be old fashioned, walk, read a book, write a letter, cook a meal.  Slow down.

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://boyerwrites.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/love-letters-from-carl/old-letters/

Have a Seat

Table.

While much time and attention is being paid to the obesity and diabetes epidemics, the nutritional content or lack thereof of American meals, and our sedentary lifestyles, an important piece of the puzzle remains largely swept under the rug.  As a culture, we are not taking time to share our meals together at an actual table.  According to surveys published by the Journal of American Medicine less than fifty percent of Americans eat a sit down meal at home on a regular basis.  Instead we eat in our cars, standing up, in front of the television, or simply not at all.  When we do sit down to a regular meal it is riddled with interruptions and iPhone. The era of the Donna Reed dinner is entirely over.  Walk into most homes today and find the dining room table either covered under a mountain of papers and laptops or missing entirely.    

The reality is that sitting down to regular meals cooked at home increases the nutritional content of your diet, decreases the cost of food, improves digestion, encourages communication, and provides regular quality time with family.  Meals are where we talk, laugh, plan, and listen to one another.  The importance of sharing a meal is historically ubiquitous and cross cultural, it is how we honor important events and people and the touch point for family life.  Skimp on television, miss out on your twitter feed, forget to update your status, but make room for making meals and eating them as well.  Not all the vestiges of by-gone eras should be cast assunder.  

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.merakoh.com/2009/06/23/part-ii-the-kiddush-brunch-viriginia-and-david/

References/Resources:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/26/172897660/family-dinner-treasured-tradition-or-bygone-ideal

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500165_162-6086647.html

Outside In

Porch.

I love to take a neighborhood walk.  I think it is good for the body and soul and goes a long way towards building a sense of place, community, and the need to care for both.  I am, however, increasingly concerned about the lack of children in the street and out in yards, really the lack of any people at all.  I walk for miles through neighborhoods with carefully crafted and beautifully maintained gardens, miles of lawn, and thousands of dollars of outdoor furniture; I never see a soul.  I am alone in walking, alone in enjoying the fresh evening air, and apparently alone in believing that children are better off for being sent to play outside. This saddens and concerns me, but more than anything it leaves me confused.  Why bother with the nice house, the fancy yard, and the expensive barbecue if  you will not use or enjoy it?  Have we crossed so far into our consumer and electronics driven culture that even our verandas have become little more than status symbols?

Take a walk.  Take a meal outside.  Take a break from modernity and sit on your very own front porch.

Photograph of Mark Twain Porch Sitting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porch_sitting

Show Me Your Belly

Tattoo.

One of the most amazing things about the annual belly dance festival Tribal Fest is the body art.  The dancers at this event, if you were to line them up, would constitute one of the most amazing living works of art in the world.  It certainly stands as the most epic display of body art, tattoos, piercings, henna, and adornments that I have ever seen.  I think that this speaks to the role of individuation, personal expression, and the body as art in belly dance culture.  That everyone is accepted and celebrated at this event is part of what makes it special.  Dancers that may seem unusual or outside the norm in their daily lives are suddenly a part of the flock at Tribal Fest.  And this is important.  Having a place to authentically be oneself is a rare and precious thing in the modern western world, it promotes positive self esteem and empowerment, and provides dancers with a sense of acceptance and legitimacy that they can carry with them into the rest of their lives.

Dance on my inked boys and girls, dance on. 

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/belly%20tattoo

Boston Public

Digital.

The first public library in the United States was founded in Boston in 1636.  In 2010 a push by universities, arts and literary organizations, public bodies, and private foundations resulted in the formation of a free, public digital library.  An ongoing project, the public digital library hopes to serve as an open-source network for the collecting and curating of media. It serves as single point access to collections throughout the United States and makes accessible images, sounds, and cultural items otherwise lost to the general public. What a wonderful thing.

To Visit the Digital Public Library:

http://dp.la/

Photograph Courtesy of:

http://www.thedungeons.com/hamburg/en/explore-the-dungeon/old-library-of-hamburg.aspx

Joyce Carol Vincent

Lost.

In 2006 Joyce Carol Vincent was found dead in her London flat.  The cause of death was not determined due to the advanced state of decomposition of her body.  Joyce was 38 years old when she died.  Her body had lain undisturbed in her flat for nearly three years.  The story of Joyce, what there is to know and tell has been documented in the film Dreams of a Life.  

Joyce was not a shut-in, had no history of mental illness of drug abuse, and had three living sisters.  She was widely described as beautiful , vibrant, and successful.  By all accounts from those that knew her, it is as though the Joyce they knew simply slipped away; they seemed unable to reconcile the woman in the flat with the person they had known.  Contrary to the image of a recluse she was found surrounded by freshly wrapped Christmas presents; there must have been people in her life.

While there is something morbidly compelling about the unresolved cause of her death and the grim tableau of how she was found, the more disturbing element of this story is the three year wait before her discovery.  Where were family, friends, and coworkers?  Where were the neighbors or the mailman? Where, even, were the bill collectors? In the end, it took even the landlords three years to come and clear her out for unpaid rent.  

I think that the we learn more about ourselves in Joyce's story than we learn about her.  When she died in 2003 we were pre-Facebook and post nuclear-family.  2003 was right in the transition point between the constant connections of the social media age and the isolation and lack of community of the end of the 20th Century.  Three years? How can this be? It is not hard for me to imagine friends of mine disappearing and not being noticed for three or four months.  The free spirits, wanderers, or troubled souls, but three years? There is no one I know or have ever known that was in any way functional that could disappear from all things for three years and not have someone ring the bell.  

What are we to think of this?   Is Joyce some kind of social canary warning us of the dangers of our modernity? Is it an isolated case; one sad woman's quiet decline?  Is it possible that we have reached a place where people can live out their lives with no real connections?  How acceptable is distance between family members?  How important is the building of community? How long do you want to wait before someone finds you? 

This terrifies me.  Joyce's story tapped into some deeply rooted fears about mortality and loneliness.  I think that we all have these fears.  It's why we bother to call up old friends, love and lose and love again, and hassle our way through the holidays to spend time with family; so that when things go awry, someone is there to help us.  Somewhere along the line either Joyce stopped bothering, or everyone else did.  Probably a little of both.  I think a consequence of contemporary culture may be the devaluing of substantive connections with other people.  I think that we are all not so far away from being Joyce as we might like to believe.

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

References/Works Cited:

Dreams of a Life:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/144079/dreams-of-a-life

Photo:

http://images.popmatters.com/misc_art/f/film-dreamslife-splsh.jpg

Heavy Oil

Pipeline.

The Sierra Club was founded in 1892 and is the oldest grassroots environmental organization in the United States.  Founded by John Muir, the mission the Sierra Club is to "do something for wildness and make the mountains glad."  the Sierra Club has a reputation for being accessible to people from all points of view and walks of life and are typically considered mainstream in their methodology, preferring education, resource sharing, and lobbying over protest or contention.  The club was essential to the formation of the National Parks Service, the inclusion of the Grand Teton area as a National Park, the addition of over 45,000 acres of wilderness to the Olympics National Park, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

This week, for the first time in its 120 year history, The Sierra Club participated in a direct action protest involving civil disobedience   48 prominent environmentalists, including the executive director of the Sierra Club were arrested after blocking the main gate of the White House in an effort to draw attention to their concerns regarding the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.  Proposed pipeline would transport oil from the tar pits of Canada to the Gulf Coast of the United States.   

This is not a typical pipeline debate.  This is not about habitat destruction or road-less areas or even the push away from fossil fuels.  This is a simple mass balance problem. Tar sand oil produces significantly higher emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases than other forms of crude oil.  The proposed pipeline would create a dependence on this dirty kind of oil that would be the equivalent of adding over 6 million cars to the road.  In an era of fuel economy and climate change such a step, taken largely to protect national security interests and our own, obviously outdated way of life clearly runs counter to our long term well-being.

It speaks volumes that after over a century an organization that has worked so hard to mainstream itself and distance itself from the radical left in order to gain widespread support and credibility has chosen to use such bold tactics.  These are not hippies or tree huggers, these are business people, political thinkers, policy makers, and scientists; and they know that once the pipeline is built, we will use it.

We have a unique opportunity to fix an environmental problem before we create it.  Do something.

To email President Barack Obama:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city

"Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains." 
- John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, (1938), page 235.

References/Links:

The Sierra Clubs Website:

http://www.sierraclub.org/

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/13/171943410/dozens-including-sierra-club-director-arrested-at-white-house-keystone-protest

http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/favorite_quotations.aspx

http://priceofoil.org/2013/01/17/petroleum-coke-the-coal-hiding-in-the-tar-sands/

Photo of John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt riding in Yosemite 1903:

http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/media_detail/260/

Gag Order

unacceptable.

I want to talk about torture and I don’t want to talk about torture. I am at a loss to understand how any group of people can possibly endorse, legalize, or justify the brutal and vivid mistreatment of anyone, regardless of perceived threat or political climate. Let me be clear, I am not entering into a discussion or debate regarding this issue. I am not entertaining the possibility of sleep deprivation, the withholding of food, temperature extremes, stress positions or water boarding being acceptable behavior. Ever. There are no grey areas. There are no excuses. Every one of us knows cruelty when we see it. We are taught as children that violence is neither a solution to conflict nor a means to our desired ends. It is unacceptable for us to forget or fail to heed this lesson as adults.

Our detainees, prisoners, whatever we are calling them are people. They have souls. And they are in our care. We can make no real progress towards the formation of a peaceful, compassionate, and sustainable society while we, through our complacency and silence, endorse torture. We have to stop this, and we have to stop it now.

Write to a member of congress, the president, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, let them know that Americans believe in compassionate justice, that this is not how we choose to be represented in the world.

For a Congressional Directory:
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

To Email Barack Obama:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/

I tried to find an email address or contact information for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, but couldn’t. Go Figure.

Photograph Courtesy of :
http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/gallery_images/0812/0000/0258/washday_005_mid.jpg

A Walk In The Woods

saunterer.

A long weekend and the beginning of summer do a lot to remind us to go outside, breath the fresh air, listen to the birds, stretch our legs, and experience wildness. I think it’s important, amid the beer, fireworks, weenie roasts, and recreational vehicles that mark the American camping experience, to make sure that we do just that, stretch our legs and experience wildness. It’s not often anymore that the majority of us find ourselves away from the crush of noise, information, and development that comes with “civilized society”, and I think our distance from the wild plays a key role in our health and well-being, and our decision making as a people. Distancing ourselves from the wild is part of why we are able to devalue the environment, and that devaluation reveals itself in our politics, policies, and way of life. It allows us to waste resources, diminish habitat, allow entire species to go extinct, and engineer our bodies and our food.

I feel at my most engaged in the environment when walking through it. A walk in the wilderness does more to ease my mind, body, and soul than almost anything else. And it reminds me, in a tangible and profound way, that I am connected to this place, this world, this land, that it sustains me. Thoreau, in his 1862 essay, Walking, had this to say about the value of a walk in the woods, “I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la sainte terre" — to the holy land… They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering.”

We can make no progress in the improvement of our daily lives, in the fostering of health, community, sustainability, or peace, until we acknowledge and embrace our connection to the wilderness. Take a first step, take a walk.

To read the full text of Thoreau’s Walking:
http://thoreau.eserver.org/walking.html

To Read Emerson’s Nature:
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/emerson/nature-emerson-a.html#Chapter%20I

Photo courtesy of:
http://dinabloomphoto.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/edith.jpg

A Portrait of the Artist

chameleon.

The art of self portraiture has a long and varied history. It's practice is well documented primarily as a technical tool and lesser form of realism from early Chinese history before it was revitalized by the likes of Van Gogh and Frida Kahlo. Samuel Fosso, the Cameroon-born photographer, takes it a step further. Fosso creates portraits of other, often famous, people from the context of his own self portrait. To put it another way, he takes pictures of other people by taking pictures of himself. He presents himself as Nelson Mandela, Malcom X, Angela Davis. It's uncanny. A beautiful manipulation. His art takes on renewed potency when viewed in light of the current socioeconomic situation. A lot of people, by choice or not, are scrutinizing themselves and looking for a way to be reinvented as someone altogether new. Fosso's work presents us with a tangible representation of this metamorphosis and begs the question, who might you become?

sources:

http://thedreamhunter.blogspot.com/
www.cccb.org

New York Times

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out

apathy.

This week, the Nielsen media-trackers announced that the average American now watches an all-time high of 151 hours of television a month. Five hours a day. This number is up from last year, when we only watched 145 hours of television a month. This number, of course, does not include movies, anything on-line, video phones, or the eight hours a day most of us spend in front of a computer at work. This number, as frightening as it is, does not tell us the more important piece of information, total screen time. But if you work a desk job and watch your five hours a day of tv, you're already spending more than half your day, and ultimately your life, staring into a screen. As something of an understatement, we need to consider the connections between our 25% rate of obesity nationwide, the rising occurrence of diabetes, and the estimated 10 percent of the population suffering from depression at any given moment and how much screen time we get. But more than anything, we need to get up. Stand up, walk around, do your dishes, some tai chi, taxes, whatever. Life is short, participate.


References:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/TV/02/24/us.video.nielsen/index.html?iref=newssearch
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1926814/Depression-Statistics-in-US-Households
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/tv-usage-grows.html

If a Tree Falls

lcd.

Barack and Michelle Obama entering the inaugural ball on January 20, 2009. What strikes me about this image is that everyone in the audience is viewing the moment via their cell phones and cameras. Not just the press corps, but the attendees, everyone.

This is a phenomenon that I struggle with. Which is more important, participating in the moment, or documenting it? This was an easier question when our technology was still cumbersome and unfamiliar (picture the annoying Dad carrying an eight pound video recorder through an entire family vacation). But now, it's not as easy to draw a line between participation and documentation.

Which is more important, experiencing the moment fully, or being able to share it almost instantaneously with your family, friends, or blog followers? Is the experience somehow enhanced by being able to share it in nearly real time? Is the experience somehow diminished if it's not recorded? That seems to be the modern consensus if the picture above carries any significance. But then, there was a press corps present, a member of which took the picture, so the moment above was, in fact, being recorded. What's astounding is how many people felt the need to record it themselves.

I worry that we are entering an era in which our identities are somehow so tied to other people, that we will all become trees in the forest, afraid that our experiences, our lives, ourselves, will be lost, or perhaps not exist at all, if no one is around to witness it.