aah! i just accidentally flicked two large hunks of spoiled gorgonzola cheese, about the size of my palm (can gorgonzola be spoiled? this one was) onto my chest!!

adventures in food

I think that my blog has lost whatever small bit of momentum it once had, because I'm really not doing any great work, or even good work, or even mediocre work really. While I've been keeping the sadness and uselessness that comes with that at bay fairly succesfully in my actual life, it seems presumptous and silly to continue to presume in my online life that the title of this blog is remotely relevant. i mean i want to be doing the great work, but this seems like more than a hiatus. i mean i just don't know where to begin, and i seem to be falling to the trap of not doing it at all.

Simultaneously, I've been getting really increasingly sucked in to all this sustainable food policy business and it seems kind of silly to me that I presume I can make a career of it, or have some impact on other people's foodways, when it's pretty much an uphill struggle for myself even.
I just ofund this amazing report put out by the Food Trust and Philadelphia Health Management Corporation out of Philly that talks about the relationship between acces to supermarkets and health. I've been thinking a lot about this lately and how I've generally been interested in food market, even before I foudn this whole area of sustianable food etc. Some really interesting research I would like to do at some point (maybe a masters thesis if i go to tufts?) would be to study different immigrant/ethnic groups and their food markets and how that relates to their health. My friend and I were discussing this the other day- why it seems like Asian immigrant groups have been so much more successful at integrating an abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables into their ethnic markets. Any ideas?

So I may start another blog based on my attempts at integrating more sustainability/health/local-ness into my own diet......

i don't understand how it's possible that i have absolutely nothing to do at work, and thus, more free hours at a computer than anyone could possibly need, and yet i still can't accomplish much at all of what i want to. i constantly have thigns i want to post on this blog, but i always forget them, as i posted previously.

i recently found a bunch of cool sites where you can make your own wiki or other easy-to-make webpage. one of them is called


but i've barely gotten the chance to put on there. i mean literally ONE LINK! but i hve lots of ideas. i wonder if i can still have the crappy website that i made on the cornell server. i haven't even tried to look at it in months.

and i signed up for this free class from "barnes and noble university" don't laugh which is about making websites. it started last week and i'm already behind. i'm not buying the book- if it turns out that i can't do it without the book, then i'll just be a delinquent student. apparently my boss did the same thing with an astronomy class last "semester." now she's taking italian with the other woman who works in my office.

anyway, i just find all this frustrating because i feel like i'd be a more fulfilled person if i could have a cool and real presence on the internet and oh, i don't know. is that silly?

maybe one day i'll remember the actual things i wanted to post.

tommy bruce takes on GWB

Who would have expected the public face of Cornell, Tommy Bruce, VP for Communications and Media Relations, to lay the smack down (ok, that is a little too 1998 but it seemed fitting) on GWB via his "terrorist" detainment policies.

Background:
Jose Bove, a French farmer and alter-globalization activist was scheduled to speak this afternoon at Cornell ILR's Global Unions Conference in NYC, and then again at a student organization sponsored event on Monday, but was detained yesterday at JFK airport and then sent back to France. The story seems to vary but has to do with him not reporting past prosecutions for "moral crimes" in his application to enter the United States without a visa as part of the visa-waiver program. However, Kate Bronfenbrenner, ILR researcher extraordinnaire and organizer of the Global Unions Conference, was indirectly quoted in Newsday saying that he had a visa. Regardless of the details of the incident, the staffs of both Senator Clinton and Rep. Hinchey (D-NY) seemingly came to his aid in investigating the matter at Cornell's request. And Tommy Bruce, often at odds with Cornell's activist groups, for his insistence on refusing to back down on issues in which he thinks Cornell may look bad, said, "When researchers and scholars are denied first-hand experience and world experiences about the issues at hand of this conference, then we all lose."

So basically Bruce stood by Bove and his GMO-crop burning, McDonalds'-window-bashing self at the expense of making Cornell sound subversive. Maybe Bush-'n-crew will accuse Mr. Bruce or even Cornell's brand spankin new president, Dr. David Skorton, of University of Iowa, of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. mwahahaha.

I'm pretty bummed that I can't go to the conference anyway, especially since I'm right hear and it sounds amazing, but I'd have to take time off of work, where I literally sit here and do NOTHING. An inside source tells me that Cornell is attempting to bring him back to the states another time, but they (and I) doubt it will work. He seems to be resigned not to even attempt to set foot in this country until George Washington Bridge is out of office.

"For the moment, I'm not going to ask to come to the United States. . . . While
Mr. Bush is in the White House, I am not going to ask to come back," he said.
"They don't want any discussion that can affect all the things going on with
globalization. They don't want people coming from outside to discuss it."

I hope I get to see him some time though. Somehow, I hadn't actually heard of him until the talk about him coming to Cornell and the conference sparked me to google him, but he's pretty fucking cool. If I go to the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, where I was recently accepted into the Masters program in the Dep't of Agriculture, Food and Environment, maybe we could try to bring him as a speaker.

Newsday reports "Last November, Bove was sentenced to four months in prison for destroying a field of genetically modified corn planted by an American seed company in southern France in July 2004. "

Somehow Newsday got a much better scoop on the story than any of the other papers or wires. maybe the local connections.

maybe our friend gustavo esteva would be detained too. maybe that makes me a criminal cuz i spent a week at his house....ahahaha. long live SIT.

ETA: I just found out: According to Wikipedia, "in an interview with TV channel Canal Plus, Bove stated that the wave of attacks against French synagogues then underway was being either arranged or fabricated by Mossad (the Israeli secret service). 'Who profits from the crime?' Bove asked. 'The Israeli government and its secret services have an interest in creating a certain psychosis, in making believe that there is a climate of antisemitism in France, in order to distract attention from what they are doing.'"

ok, so maybe I don't want to have this guy's babies. but he's still pretty cool. and Tommy Bruce still defended his coming to my alma mater. and that makes me happy :)

if these are truly the "best years of my life," i might as well kill myself. is it true?

i feel like it's been ages since i've posted. much has happened, nothing noteworthy of course, just lots of musing and spending time at/near lincoln center being highly involved in "cultural arts." i hope to post related pictures shortly.

just fucking pissed at myself...who am i becoming? i sit here reading all about my options for "new york restaurant week" and am stunned to find out how successful the coca-cola boycott has become, including a number of high-brow colleges in my own city. i have become involved in nothing. not even as an observer as i once was. it's all about the daily grind, the creature comforts, the netflix, not yet the going-to-the-gym, but probably one day soon that too. i think i'm overly concerned about money and my future. it seems like every decision i make has to do with one or both of the two. and i still feel like i can never catch up- there's always more and i'm always missing out on so much. it also seems like all i ever do is clean my room and it never seems to be clean for more than 5 minutes. goddamn it.

wow, it's munich all over again. can't they figure out how many people were killed before they alert the newswires or the families? well, this is almost as bad. one guy survived whereas NOONE survived munich.
the movie was amazing, however. if only the mossad could hunt down and assassinate the corporates in control of the mine, too...

more jews

omg, i feel like i could write a thesis on this stuff- there is so much back and forth, so many articles and blog posts, and comments, and critiques, and critiques of critiques- i feel myself pulled to engage in it, even though it bothers me that so many wonderful (and less wonderful) people are wasting their time on it, when there are so many more important issues that jews need to be talking about. maybe i should have been around in the 60's-80's, when we weren't so goddamn concerned about ourselves. just let it lie!

but yet i feel drawn to comment!

and i should be working on my grad school applications and other more pressing, immediate issues. time to get my act together again. or do i want it together, anyway?

well, i'll work on a longer, thesis-like post about this (like the transit strike post which hopefully someone read [somone, if you're out there, please raise your hand :( ]), but in case i don't post until later,

happy new year to all, may it be filled with peace, health and happiness. i'll be partyin it up with darya and diana and maybe some other folks, but first tonight- fondue!

so i'm procrastinating with my grad school (MPH) applications, because i'm a bum and because i fucked up enough already so that my recommendations are going to be a bit later than i had hoped so my evil subconscious figures i might as well wait to finish the rest of it anyway. which is idiotic. but now i'm having second thoughts- i don't know, there are so many other things i'm interested in- and i just spent a fun filled day of looking up cool people and their organizations and thinking about cool non-profits i could start and building bridges between issues and people and organizations in my head (what i ALWAYS do that NEVER accomplishes anything) and now public health looks so, well....narrow. you know? but then i remind myself that i can always be involved with other things as a citizen, a lay person, but i'm just afraid that i won't really do it then. i'll just fall into the trapping of boring bourgeousie comfortable life that i'm falling into now, and that will be it. i haven't even gotten that involved in the co-op for god's sake.

in other news, yay- i found out that my friend eli might be going to public health too! (although he's a year younger than me, and i don;t think he's applying straight out of undergrad. is he?)

transit strike

well, i've spent the last 5 days worrying about whether there's going to be a transit strike, planning for such an event and listening to my boss (who lives 3 blocks from work) and others complain about how these people make plenty of money and have no right to strike, given that they don't seem to be exploited. and you know what?
they almost had me convinced.


but now the strike actually came, as i couldn't believe it actually would, until i went to bed last night thinking that it might actually be a reality. not 100% sure of what i was going to do, i ended up having a pretty easy time of it, ditching my plan of takign the LIRR to jamaica and back to penn and then catchign the special shuttle run by my hospital from 34th to 68th. instead, my roommate, who works for the parks department, got me a ride with her in a parks car that someone drove from prospect park up to their offices at 106th and central park, and then i just had to walk down from 96th st. it actually worked out really well for all of us- i got the ride, and i made the fourth person in their car, which allowed us to take the brooklyn battery tunnel into manhattan and we flew right through the tunnel and up the fdr; otherwise they would have to have gone through queens and up and around on the triboro, which supposedly had mad traffic. my worst tzuris was the fact that I picked this day, of all days, to forget my ipod headhones at home. we should all be so lucky for the duration of the strike.

i'm still a little bit torn, given that this incredibly powerful union is causing all of this trouble for workers who make a lot more money than many new yorkers, these being those also likely hardest hit by the strike (i.e. those payed by the day or the hour, not salaried). while i don't agree with bloomberg's bullshit claims that their actions are "morally reprehensible," i do wonder if they couldn't have just settled for binding arbitration.
i wish i was more knowledgable and understanding of the details of the issues, though, because i don't even know that much about things like arbitration, how they work, how things would have turned out for the MTA and our train conductors if that had been chosen as an acceptable solution.

The concerns I've been hearing are echoed in the comments posted on the transit workers union's blog, where many angry "anonymous" folks have been venting. However, a number of strikers and supporters have responded, also in the comments, raising good points like:

A question to all who condemn the strike should be: would you take this
job, at their pay and conditions?

And:

how about when you go to work, is there anybody taking a piss a few feet from you or maybe some pervert playing with himself. how about your bosses do they write you up for wearing scarves in the winter time or maybe take you off the job because your top button on your shirt is not buttoned?

Some of these same issues are raised today in a NYTimes article, in which Dr. Marian Swerdlow, an author and former train conductor says:

"The working conditions are more physically onerous, the treatment by managers
more disrespectful, and the abuse from the public more hurtful, than any other
group of public workers in the city experiences."

Also from the Times article, Dr. Snyder, an associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University in Newark:

"Transit workers, because of the schedules they work and the conditions they
work in, are often in industrial environments that most New Yorkers have left
behind a long time ago," said . The idea that a motorman has to scramble to
find a place to urinate on a busy day is not something most of us face on the
job."

The article's premise is that the TWU has both unique motives and power, because of the nature of the jobs and the power they have to fuck up the city without destroying it. While I agree with the anonymous commenter from the TWU blog who questioned whether critiques of the strike would fill their shoes for a day of working in the tunnels, I don't know if the extent of Swerdlow's remark can really be proven. While en masse, they may have to deal with some of the harshest least sightly things, I'm sure there are plenty of other government workers in equally bad conditions, with equally bad treatment. [Please correct me if I'm wrong.]

Much to my suprise, the Daily News' Juan Gonzalez has pointed out that this strike had been planned in impeccable detail, and was ready to go forward last week. The additional days only bought Touissaint more time to organize the strike and perhaps some slight bit of positive publicity, making him seem like more of a flexible guy. [Except I don't really buy Gonzalez's argument on that last point; I think the union seems even more unreasonable now, becasue the 4 days led to a better offer by the MTA, which they rejected, looking perhaps less flexible than ever.]

The intervening days since Thursday, did, however give Touissant and the TWU the ability to recruit support from other unions into their cause, although I think it would be totally absurd if any other unions including Metro-North or LIRR struck in "solidarity." Yes, I feel morally reprehensible for putting the word solidarity in quotations, and maybe it's my newly-salaried, rapidly-bourgouisifying-ass talking, but I don't see what that would accomplish. The strike obviously can't go on forever, although things will get REALLY fucking interesting if it lasts through Christmas or longer, and I don't see what additional striking workers will do except mess up everyone's lives, and cost both the city, the union and the workers lots of money. In the words of the fictitious (read: obscure West Wing reference coming) Dalton Millgate, "Screw the fruit loops, Sam."

But I was really in denial about all of this actually happening, and thus am surprised that it was really so well orchestrated by Touissant. I keep feeling surprised that they actually seem to be happy, that they are inflicting all of this on the city. While, it's not worthy of the extensive fines, it is very annoying, and the fines are still there for the union, and I don't see why they should be cheering, beyond being an example of the mob mentality. I didn't understand before how the city gets all of those workers to pay the steep fines, but then I felt very dumb when someone explained to me very simply that the union pays and then takes it out of their paychecks. which brings me to my next point- my unease with the fact that the board of the union gets decide on this strike for the thousands of members, some of whom may have practical or ideological objection to the strike. so, i've heard vague bits and pieces on websites, message boards and by word of mouth, about the ability of individuals to show up for work and strikebreak. having subscribed to the TWU's email list for updates a few weeks back, this evening i received a message from them (apparently the email list is supposed to only be for union members) with the following attached flyer:

"A message to any TWU Local 100 Member who is thinking of crossing the picket line from your 34,000 striking brothers and sisters: Think before you act. Is it worth it to lose your Union soul? Is it worth it to make 34,000 life-long enemies? Is it worth it to stab your co-workers in the back? In your heart, you know the answer is NO. Don't Do It."

(certain parts of which were written in huge, scary big block bold letters of at least font size 45.)

I will continue to ponder what I think of that. Meanwhile, more info available at Gothamist.
Good night from one of the Upper East Side, where I'm camping out at a friend's.

i just found this on a west wing message board in a message someone wrote a while back:

" After all, if not for Leo, Jed is a Dartmouth professor emeritus who used to be a politician, Sam is a frustrated lawyer, Toby's never won a political campaign, C.J.'s is a self-hating corporate spokeswoman, Charlie's followed his mother into a D.C. police cemetery, Donna's wondering why the cute Minority Leader of the Wisconsin House of Representatives has never noticed her, the nice blond on his staff, and Josh is a Congressman from Connecticut, 118th out of 200-odd Democrats in seniority, with no chance ever at a Committee Chairmanship, and has probably spent the last 7 years asking failed Presidential nominee Hoynes, "Why didn't you listen to me?""

uh, so sad. RIP John Spencer 1946-2005

brooklyn jews

yes, brooklyn jews is a new organization trying to bring more unaffiliateds into the fold in brooklyn, one of the organizations hostingthe dec 24 jewltide celebration in park slope. which you should come to. b/c i'll be there.

but for the purposes of this post:

i'm sitting in the central branch of the brooklyn public library reading a 1996 village voice article about queer/yiddish culture that i found while googling alicia svigals, the klezmatics former violinist, in an effort to try to find out more about her partner ellen and their children. [she's sort of an idol of mine since even before i had a klezmer violin lesson in her apartment when i was in high school.] i just heard her perform in the second floor meeting room of said public library- a highly disorganized chanukah klezmer concert with adrienne cooper, the unarguable foremost female yiddish vocalist at least in the US of A. meanwhile, two men with black kippot and beards sit across from me at this table doing some project on a dell computer while arguing in hebrew.

all of this i find very ironic- you know, the friction between the real jews of brooklyn, the jews that brooklynites of other ethnicities picture when they hear the word "jew," and the new jews of brooklyn, the ones looking for cheap rent in droves, the ones hosting or attending the aforementioned jewltide party at a club in park slope.

[Edit: I just finished the article and it's fucking amazing. you have to read it. it also reminds me of why i'm obessed with tony kushner and portnoy's complaint.]

i always have all these little thoughts and anecdotes as the day goes by that i want to post but by the time i get a round to it (i still have never gotten a "round tuit" although my old violin teacher had one on a bulletin board) i forget.

but for now-

so, i just checked my recent direct deposit into my savings account online, and i noticed it was lower than usual, so i checked my paycheck on the hr system: they've started deducting some extra NYC tax since i moved to brooklyn (i don't even remember telling them i had moved) of $30+ :( boo :( i wonder what that goes towards...

hmmm...

i just discovered that with the "company" discount, a new apple ibook is LESS than two-weeks salary (after taxes!)!

p.s. much more about my actual life and thoughts coming soon (i have at least 3 unposted drafts sitting around here on blogger.)

NOW check it out.

"they preach that i should save the world; they pray that i won't do a better job of it"

it's the 50th anniversary of the village voice!
too bad it was just sold to New Times Media.
apparently the print edition that i picked up this afternoon, full of clippings from the paper that was the last 50 years, beat the online edition which comes out tomorrow.

bullshit, i know. but somehow i feel that's somewhat appropriate or metaphorical, a representation of what the voice really is. as i sat skimming through the issue on the subway home from work about an hour ago, i wondered what had not changed in new york in the past 50 years besides the subway and the voice.

p.s. if you can name who's lyric i quoted in the title of this entry (without googlecheating), i'll get you a spare keepsake copy of the special 50th anniversary edition of the voice.

i keep wasting time at work. i need to stop looking up random things online so i can finish looking up a few patients' phone numbers and then go home and unpack so that maybe later i can spend some time looking up random things online.

oy vey

there's this african-american nurse where i work who constantly says things like "oy vey" and calls me "bubeleh." it's bizzare.

there's actually more to that story, but not now.
my life has gone to insane shit. and i mean insane.

so the move was postponed yet again this weekend, because the apt wasn't ready on sunday when it was supposed to. saturday consisted of me frantically trying to pack and figure out if i was buying a bed or not and move other large furniture around my house. however this only got crazier b/c the day went from- yes, i'm moving to: becca saw the apt and it's still a mess so no i'm not moving yet to: nicole spoke to the landlady who assured her it would be ready by sunday, so nicole is insisting on moving on sunday and in order to share the movers with her i have to move to. but then i was like, fuck this, i'm not moving tomorrow so she agreed to just bring a mattress and sleep there this week and she'd move the rest of her stuff next week.

needless to say, i got there on sunday jsut to check out the place and nicole came a little later but it was clearly in no condition to be slept in so she didn't stay in the end. it's a huge mess and they still have things left to do like painting and installing radiators, filling in a hole in the wall in my room, some painting and staining of doors, putting in the kitchen sink, and A LOT of clean up.

but wait. it gets MUY better. during those several days of craziness, every time i spoke to becca, she was more and more mad at nicole and complaining that nicole was treating her unfairly and violating her, that nicole never listens to her and just yells at her on the phone and she's having serious doubts about livign with nicole at all. i tried to reassure her that everything would be ok (on sat night) and then didn't speak to her again until last night (monday) when she called me.

she called me to tell me that she can't live with nicole and she's pulling out of the lease and getting a subletter before we even move in.
meanwhile, i had been having major doubts about moving for weeks, bc i'm still not sure i want to commit to living in ny for a full year. and i had discussed this with becca. but i assumed that i couldn't actually pull out of the lease a) because it would be incredibly unfair and b) b/c the lease says NO SUBLETS ARE ALLOWED!.

i told becca this- she claimed she hadn't read the part of the lease that said no sublets allowed. she's still insisting that she do this, and it was an incredibly hellish night, one of my worst ever although, i did eventually get to sleep.
i literally almost pulled my hair out. if there was some way i could get out of this, i would. i really would. somehow she's getting out of this, but i'm not allowed to?

i don't understand how anyone could do this, and it's just an unbareably confusing and upsetting thing. i'm so mad yet i keep crying uncontrollably.

MEANWHILE, i had a research meeting at work last week where the Dr. in charge of my study announced (to everyone's surprise) that he wants to end the study immediately and move on to the rest of data collection/analysis and writing the papers. nobody really knew what was going on and my boss said she'd speak to him (he's sort of scatterbrained and she does all the detail work) and see what the hell he was talking about and get back to me. so she just got back to me and said that he wants us to stop recruiting new patients (which is currently the majority of my job) at the end of this week and focus solely on data collection for the existing patients which he thinks is going to take a really long time.

neither my boss nor i quite know what that means yet, but it's going to be a big change for me.

sorry there was no humour in this post. ugh, i don't know what to do, and my life is a huge mess! help!

[murder?], she blogged

"we can save democracy
with the wealth only freedom can bring"

-rosie

shanah tova; the year ahead...

shanah tovah to you all! as this past tuesday and wednesday were the jewish holiday of rosh hashanah, which celebrates the beginning of the jewish year it seems that the past few weeks have included a lot of thinking about the future, especially the coming year and where i want to end up by next rosh hashanah. this has all happened sort of surreptitiously, though, interspersed between a lot that's been going on in my life. all of this is the same reason that i haven't gotten to post in several weeks; - an apartment search, a found apartment, a lease signing despite many doubts about the commitment-to-NY entailed by the signing of said lease, and a bunch of other stuff.

i took a few pictures at the 9.24 anti-war march in DC which i hope to post soon, as well as some of the numerous pictures i took of my niece while she and her parents visited for the holidays this week. but now i should get back to work and save the blog posting for my own time.

tomorrow morning i'm auditioning to be on jeopardy (keep on laughing; you're absolutely right) and the very vague and likely not actually happening plan is to move into the new place in brooklyn on sunday.

more to come.

but in the meantime, i'm still on all these listservs from cornell and elsewhere that i need to get off of, but i'm reluctant to do so. after seeing this website earlier today, i had an idea that instead of trying to continue to cull all of the interesting articles i receive and forward them on to individuals who might be interested, i could post them on this blog and comment :) i don't know why it's taken me this long to figure that out. as i sit and wonder how everyone else gets so much fodder for their blogs.

so here's the first one, taken from an email:


Happy Birthday Desmond Tutu!

From Wikipedia.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Desmond Mpilo Tutu (born October 7, 1931) is a South African cleric and
activist who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of
apartheid. Tutu was the first black South African Anglican Archbishop of
Cape Town, South Africa, and primate of the Church of the Province of
Southern Africa. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the
land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we
had the Bible and they had the land."

"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them."

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of
the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you
say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

"I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of
our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were
hungry, Jesus didn't say, "Now is that political or social?" He said, "I
feed you." Because the good news to a hungry person is bread."

"We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot
for sinners. His standards are quite low."

"Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity."

"A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons."

"For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are
trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we
are humans, too."

"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the
table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of
rights."

"Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a
favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor,
and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious
systems."


http://www.afrol.com/articles/13584
http://www.afrol.com/articles/11404
http://iafrica.com/news/sa/820912.htm
http://www.whosoever.org/v2i4/perry.html