I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s becoming increasingly less safe to eat industrial meat in this culture.

The Topps Meat Co. on Saturday expanded its recall of frozen hamburger patties to include 21.7 million pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria that sickened more than a dozen people in eight states.

The recall of products distributed to retail grocery stores and food service institutions in the United States was a drastic increase from the 332,000 pounds recalled Tuesday.

Though, it’s increasingly less safe to eat industrial anything….

A division of Dole Food Co said on Monday it was recalling some bagged salads sold in the United States and Canada because a sample at a Canadian grocery store was found to contain E. coli.

Dole Fresh Vegetables said it has not received any reports that anyone has become sick from eating the products. The recall covers “Dole Hearts Delight” salads sold with a “best if used by” date of September 19.

The 4th Annual Southwest Native American Film Festival will be held in Flagstaff, Arizona at the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Coconino Center for the Arts, October 5–6, 2007.

The film festival is a unique showcase of contemporary Native American video, film, and animation made by Indigenous filmmakers from throughout the Southwest. The fall festival this fall will also offer professional development opportunities through workshops for Indigenous filmmakers and youth.

The festival, presented in partnership by Indigenous Action Media, Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff Cultural Partners, Tacoho Productions, Native Movement and Outta Your Backpack Media, the festival seeks to provide an opportunity for audiences of all ages to further their understanding of Indigenous cultures today.

Screenings will be held at the Museum of Northern Arizona in the Branigar Hall and the Coconino Center for the Arts. Weekend festival passes that include admission to receptions with filmmakers can be purchased in advance for $18 ($14 for students) and general and student admission fees will be collected at the door. Passes can be purchased at Winter Sun Trading Co. the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Coconino Center for the Arts. Call 928/779-2300 for additional information or visit these festival partner websites for a schedule of events at www.indigenousaction.org, www.musnaz.org, and www.culturalpartners.org.

Date: October 6th 2007 (Saturday)
Location: Coconino Center for the Arts 300 N. Fort Valley Road in Flagstaff, AZ Schedule:
9:30 - 9:00 a.m. check-In
10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. workshop
Cost: $10 per person ($5 for students, free for Indigenous youth) Payable in advance or at the door.

Artist, musician, and friend of mine, Chris, painted me something based off a list I gave him of my favorite colors, words, images, and ideas. From that list, his process for determining which words he’ll use from the list is a pretty simple one. He read the list several times and focused on the words that appealed to him as an individual and as an artist. This is what those of us who study language mean when we speak of the impossibility of an author being absent from any piece of rhetoric, whether it be an essay, a poem, a news report, a song, or, even a painting.

Anyway, the words he drew out from my list are: the moon, ancient, sleeping (I love sleeping), and mountains. He also used my favorite colors, which I just labeled “earth tones, with purple in moderation.” The original sketch had a monkeywrench looming in the background, but Chris decided it would detract from the rest of the work (but it’s still there in spirit…in the title).

When I first saw it, I really liked it, though wasn’t sure if it resembled me. Then I thought about a line, one that I either heard, read, or wrote myself—I don’t remember, but it still sums up what is important to me—“we are just as much a part of our environment as our environment is a part of us.”

The sleeping figure, though I can’t grow a magnificent beard like that (and great beards should always be described as magnificent, I think), caught me off guard because even though I love sleeping, I don’t think such an illustration is very complimentary. But I think it captures how I feel right now. I feel in between destinations.

I just finished grad school and, during that chaotic time, I was thinking that a PhD. would be my obvious next step, but now I’m having second thoughts. I’m not sure I could sit though more lectures, thinking, reading, writing, and theorizing about the state of the world. I know it’s messed up and I’m tired of thinking and talking about it. I’m beginning to see my niche and I’m not sure more education will enhance that or not. Now that I’m not taking classes, I’m simply teaching them, I already realize and value the time I have to dedicate to myself and activist causes.

I’ve been talking to people and I’ve got some projects and collaborations on the horizon and I have realized that that is what I love. The column I write, the workshops I give for the MARS Project, the environmental work that I do….these are the things that are important to me and these are the things that I love. All I need to do is figure out a way to translate that passion and those activities to a living wage. I’m not saying a PhD. is out, it’s just that I’m not sure that’s what I want to do immediately…and this is for many reasons.

Activists, radicals, deep ecologists, writers, anarchists…all of us…are eventually confronted with having to negotiate the tension between ideology and a paycheck. It’s rough that the same system you seek to change is the same system that you are dependent on to live. I need a job that will fulfill both, but I know it’s ultimately up to me. If I work from 8 until 5 or 6 every day, that leaves 4 or 5 hours a day that I can use for my own projects. Maybe this is why I haven’t even thought of dating anybody during the last year. Any helpful suggestions would be appreciated. I know I’m not the only one that faces these issues.

Here is a little garden booty. This is most of what we’ve got a regular supply of. The egg-plant is thrown in the mix every now and then. So is an onion, when we need one. These habeneros are like little A-bombs, their so hot.

I’ve also been hanging out with these guys, who have been munching on this parsley for the past week. They’re chubbier every day. I’m glad someone is eating the parsley.

I’m in the process of rehashing many of my links. Some people stopped writing. I need to replace them with people who are.

One great blog I’ve recently been reading is called feminist allies. It’s a group blog with great discussions. Lately they’ve been jivin’ about men’s involvement in sexual violence and prevention.

The people of Burma are so inspiring right now.

Several thousand Burmese monks and other protesters have begun a new march in Rangoon despite a baton charge by police at the city’s holiest shrine.
Police charged the crowd outside the Shwedagon Pagoda as demonstrators met for a ninth day of marching and warning shots were fired at another site.

The new march seems to be heading towards the home of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Police and troops are surrounding key Buddhist sites around the city.

Despite the fact that I’ve never written about women and body hair, there has been a rush of comments from men, lately, who always seem to bring up the way they feel about this topic. I’ve dated women who don’t shave their body hair. I’ve dated women who do. It honestly doesn’t make a difference to me whatsoever. 

Men who are immediately turned off by women with body hair are always quick to make unsubstantiated claims about these women. They’re “dirty,” their “hippies,” their “dykes” are all common responses. Women who do not shave their body hair are exactly that: they are women who do not shave their body hair. A lot of men do not shave their body hair (remember when hairy chests were popular?…I’m waiting for that day to come back. Damn you Hasselhoff and Bon Jovi with your overkill!). We do not think these men are strange. 

There is an interesting history lesson regarding the socially constructed image of the “hairless woman,” one that made a refusal to shave perfectly justifiable in my mind. Long ago, in our culture, when it was nearly impossible for a woman to make a living without the support of a man (not that it’s a piece of cake now for many women), many women resorted to prostitution. The strongest market for prostitution was in younger girls. Therefore, when women got older—or rather, when they began to look older (ie body hair)—they weren’t as marketable. So these prostitutes, in an effort to remain independent, began to shave their body hair.  As the decades went by, the removal of body hair became an acceptable and widespread social construction. Now it’s expected.

Other cultures whose female members shave their body hair have other stories. This is ours.  Of course when a woman shaves her legs today, most likely she is not doing it for these reasons and I don’t want to be accused of calling women who shave their legs prostitutes, nor am I accusing the men who are specifically attracted to hairless female bodies of engaging in prostitution. I just think it is interesting and a history worth noting. 

Further, men (and women) who are grossed out by body hair, have learned to be grossed out by body hair and they can unlearn it just as easily. And where people learn things, it is because they are being taught. Our media reproduces the ideal body for women (and, of course men) as an archetype, from which there is little to no deviation.  When there is the slightest bit of deviation from this norm, when women with hairy legs are asked, as one man put it so eloquently in my comments, to “cover that shit up,” they are viewed as a threat. These women, who do not shave their legs are a threat to our world-views, our understanding and adherence to the way in which women “should” look.  As one theorist put it: “Perhaps it is because the division between masculine and feminine hair growth is physiologically arbitrary yet socially and psychologically rigid that any amount deviating from hairlessness is threatening. A woman never knows when she may have crossed the boundary” (p. 231). 

In a relationship between a prostitute and a man (which isn’t much of a “relationship” at all), the man is paying and is in control. Similarly in a patriarchal society, where beauty is understood through men’s eyes, women who do not shave are not only challenging the strictly defined gender roles and body image archetypes, but the entire power structure that creates them. 

And to me, that is very sexy.    

New York is rejecting millions of dollars in federal grants for abstinence-only sex education, the state health commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, announced yesterday. The decision puts New York in line with at least 10 other states that have decided to forgo the federal money in recent years.

New York has received roughly $3.5 million a year from the federal government for abstinence-only education since 1998.

That is a whole lotta cash that could be better, more effectively, spent on nearly anything else. Now it’s Arizona’s turn.

we just have to demand it.

A traditional Chinese cafe has opened up in Beijing’s Forbidden City, replacing a Starbucks coffee shop that was forced to shut after protests.

The new cafe will serve both coffee and traditional Chinese tea, China’s state media said.

The Starbucks outlet was forced to close in July, having long been accused of tarnishing the historical site.

Starbucks has been trying to weasel in on our downtown for years now. The newest Starbucks, on Milton, has huge 16-foot high windows….which would be very expensive to replace. Just sayin.’