If you haven’t read her amazingly beautiful book, Red, you should check it out. But if you’re thinking about leaving the Southwest, I would suggest not reading it.

Here is a great excerpt. I wish I wrote this.

“I write to make peace with the things I cannot control. I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white. I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue. I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things differently perhaps the world will change. I write to honor beauty. I write to correspond with my friends. I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure. I write against power and for democracy. I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams. I write in solitude born out of community. I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that keep me complacent. I write to remember. I write to forget. I write to the music that opens my heart. I write to quell the pain. I write to migrating birds with the hubris of language. I write as a form of translation. I write with the patience of melancholy in winter. I write because it allows me to confront that which I do not know. I write as an act of faith. I write as an act of slowness. I write to record what I love in the face of loss. I write because it makes me less fearful of death. I write as an exercise in pure joy. I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt. I write out of my anger and into my passion. I write from the stillness of night anticipating—always anticipating. I write to listen. I write out of silence. I write to soothe the voices shouting inside me, outside me, all around. I write I write because of the humor of our condition as humans. I write because I believe in words. I write because I do not believe in words. I write because it is a dance with paradox. I write because you can play on the page like a child left alone in the sand. I write because it belongs to the force of the moon: high tide, low tide. I write because it is the way I talk long walks. I write as a bow to wilderness. I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness. I write because as a child I spoke a different language. I write with a knife carving each word through the generosity of trees. I write as ritual. I write because I am not employable. I write out of my inconsistencies. I write because then I do not have to speak. I write with the colors of memory. I write as a witness to what I have seen. I write as a witness to what I imagine. I write by grace and grit. I write out of indigestion. I write when I am starving. I write when I am full. I write to the dead. I write out of the body. I write to put food on the table. I write on the other side of procrastination. I write for the children we never had. I write for the love of ideas. I write for the surprise of a beautiful sentence. I write with the belief of alchemists. I write knowing I will always fail. I write knowing words always fall short. I write knowing I can be killed by my own words, stabbed by syntax, crucified by both understanding and misunderstanding. I write out of ignorance. I write by accident. I write past the embarrassment of exposure. I keep writing and suddenly, I am overcome by the sheer indulgence, the madness, the meaninglessness, the ridiculousness of this list. I trust nothing, especially myself, and slide headfirst into the familiar abyss of doubt and humiliation and threaten to push the delete button on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it to shreds—and then realize, it doesn’t matter, words are always a gamble, words are splinters of cut glass. I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient we are. I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love.”

Flagstaff: As you probably know, our local independent bookstore, Aradia Books, is closing.

Aradia, Flagstaff’s oldest bookstore, has served the local
community for 28 years. As Flagstaff’s last full-service
independent bookstore, we carry books by local authors and are
committed to representing Flagstaff’s racial, ethnic, sexual, and
political minorities. We promote cooperation rather than
competition.

Well, corporate competition has moved in and, again, has helped to destroy the local flavor. I’m so tired of this.

Did you know that just thirty years ago, the busy Milton area (fast food, target, chase, barnes and nobles, starbucks….etc.) used to be horse corals? Every year, as corporate chains move in and local businesses move out, our unique little town looks more and more like any other city in the country. Does anyone know what ever happened to the “Unchain Flagstaff” hoopla of a few years ago?

Last year, we lost our only independent record store and the only independently run movie theater. Now, Rambo 4 runs on multiple screens at Harkins and the Darfur documentary isn’t even coming here. Anyway….

For the next couple weeks, Aradia is in need of volunteers to pack up books and help with general cleaning/clearing out. If you can help, just show up Monday-Saturday 10:30am-5:00pm through the end of April.

I don’t know much about the case, but Smith’s book, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide was one of the most powerful books I read while in graduate school. I read it for my “sex, politics, and reproduction” class during my first semester. I later wrote a paper regarding the atrocious boarding school experience and presented it at a Women’s Studies symposium. Her book was my central inspiration for that paper.

Hugo Schwyzer, who teaches history and gender studies at Pasadena City College, recently blogged about Andrea Smith’s denial of tenure from the University of Michigan.

It’s a strange case. Smith had been given a joint appointment in American Studies and Women’s Studies at the Ann Arbor campus; ’twas the latter department that nixed her promotion while the former supported her tenure cause. She’s also the director of the campus Native American Studies Center. Few of us are privy to the details of her file, and the Women’s Studies department at Michigan has not commented on why it has denied Smith tenure. But to those of us familiar with Smith’s published work, the decision is inexplicable. Her book Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide is a master-work of both advocacy and feminist scholarship, and is used in women’s studies courses across the country. (It’s on the short list of books I’m considering rotating in to my women’s history syllabus).

At research universities, the proven ability to publish is a critical part of getting tenure. So many assistant professors struggle to get anything notable into print; Smith has already done so by producing a text that is not just interesting but fundamentally ground-breaking. She’s got another book coming up: Native Americans and the Christian Right which is available for pre-order.

Read the rest and then scoot on over to brownfemipower, here and here.

The other day, I read a bumper sticker that said, “question their answers.” Frankly, I can’t think of a better slogan to accompany a good honest interrogation of the green “revolution” we’re apparently having. While this post is not one on how the media has cheapened and co-opted the meaning behind the word, “revolution,” it is, similarly, one about deception and the reinforcement of dominant power structures.

A friend of mine was appalled by recent claims by the global warming skeptics that this green frenzy was simply cooked up by politicians and CEO’s to make money while at the same time, fear mongering. It is a disgusting thought, but I can’t blame the skeptics for thinking this. Not one bit.

It’s everywhere—completely unchecked and out of control.

Last month provided many “green” gift ideas for xmas. Apparently Pittsburgh rang in the new year with an eco friendly dropping ball. The Daily Green: “The Consumer’s Guide to the Green Revolution”, however, provides information on everything from green cuizines to tips on taking “green vacations” to information on how to win a $250,000 “eco-makeover”—where you can “green your car, green your home, green your life.”

The New Air Jordan basketball shoes are made from recycled “sustainable” material. The first “Green” sports shoe. Nevermind the fact that the shoes still come from exploited countries thousands of miles away and require the design and construction of new machines in order to be constructed. Sustainable indeed.

The “Green” revolution is bullshit. For anyone paying attention, it quickly became a marketing strategy, used by politicians to claim moral superiority and used by corporations to reinforce false virtues of capitalism by promoting consumption to save the planet. Yoink! It’s a classic bate and switch, the ol’ buff and bluff, the ol’…well, you get the point.

I recently read Derrick Jensen’s new graphic novel that pokes fun at Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth. The truth of course is even more inconvenient. Remember all those tips provided at the end of the film—such as replacing lightbulbs, installing low-flow shower heads, recycling, and keeping your tires inflated—that were touted as individual things everyone can do to save the planet? Lets go through them…

1. Replacing one regular light bulb with a compact fluorescent saves 150 pounds of carbon dioxide per year. If everyone in the U.S. does this, 400 million tons of carbon dioxide would be saved.

2. You’ll save one pound of carbon dioxide for every mile you don’t drive
(Which of course means you put out one pound for every mile you do). Considering that motorists in the U.S. drive about 2.3 trillion miles, if we cut that in half we save about 575 million tons of CO2

3. Recycle: you can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide per year by recycling just half of your household waste
(Which means, of course, that you still dump 2,400 pounds for the other half). If every American household did this, 125 million tons of CO2 would be saved.

4. Keeping your tires inflated properly can improve gas mileage by more than 3%. Every gallon of gasoline saved keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
(Which means that every gallon burned… )

5. You can install a low flow showerhead to save 350 pounds of CO2 per year and wash your clothes in cold or warm water to save 500 pounds per year. If both of these are implemented, 105 million tons will be saved.

6. Roughly another 105 million tons of CO2 would be saved if people adjusted their thermostat an average of 2 degrees down in the winter and up and in the summer.

7. Plant a tree: one will absorb one ton of CO2 during its lifetime
(Or we could just stop cutting them down). Again, if everybody in the U.S. did this, roughly seven million tons of CO2 will be saved.

Go ahead and add up the numbers; the math is pretty easy (and I was an English major!). If all these individual cut-backs were implemented, about 1.5 billion tons of CO2 would be saved! Relish in this utopia—this land of make believe. Thanks Al!

There is just one problem. Total carbon emissions for the U.S. are 7.1 billion tons per year. All these hokey individual contributions, which appeared in Al Gore’s list at the end of An Inconvienent Truth, would decrease emissions by a little over 20 percent—and lets be real with this culture, it won’t happen.

But for the sake of argument, lets pretend every American does implement these strategies and emissions are cut by 21%. There are still two major kickers:
A) the general scientific consensus holds that at least half (that would be 50%…) of our emissions need to be cut before any meaningful transformation may occur.
B) Considering, of course, that the total carbon emissions for the U.S. increase roughly two percent every year, the fact that we’ve all been swindled by corporate sponsored “green” propaganda” should be horribly clear.

It is the job of marketers to get you to associate products and brand names with the kind of positive emotions and feelings we’re all seeking. We all want to help the environment, but we won’t buy our way out of this one.

Sure, ride your bike, recycle, use energy efficient light bulbs, install low-flow shower-heads, be slightly hotter in the summer and slightly colder in the winter, and keep those tires properly inflated. But do it because you want to live a good moral life, not because you think you’re saving the planet. Because you’re not.

This excerpt is from R.D. Laing’s The Politics of Experience:

“Love and violence, properly speaking, are polar opposites. Love lets the other be, but with affection and concern. Violence attempts to constrain the other’s freedom, to force him to act in the way we desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other’s own existence or destiny.

We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.”

I moved a bunch of furniture around the English Department a week before my position started there. That’s why they couldn’t pay me money; instead, I was paid with 40 bucks worth of bookstore credit.

I wanted The Omnivore’s Dilemma, but for some reason it’s not available. I was able to get Erich Fromm’s The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, which I’ve wanted to read for a while (how about that for a title though?).

Anyone out there have any good suggestions? I’d even be up for something fun, like a graphic novel maybe, or something with zombies in it.

I’ve always had a problem with people referring to earth as “mother.” Here is two good descriptions as to why:

Consider the words of an Exxon senior vice-president describing the aftermath of the Valdez accident: “Water in the [Prince William] Sound replaces itself every 20 days. The Sound flushes itself out every 20 days. Mother Nature cleans up and does quite a cleaning job.” The view that “mom will pick up after us” seems plausible because it is women rather than men, who do the vast majority of housework, cleaning, laundry, and tidying….The idea of Mother Earth is problematic, and likely to hinder our responsibility for solving our environmental problems. (Winter & Koger 78. The Psychology of Environmental Problems)

The Earth is not our mother. There is no warm, nurturing, anthropomorphized earth that will take care of us if only we treat her nicely. The complex, emotion-laden, conflict-laden, quasi-sexualized, quasi-dependent mother relationship….is not an effective metaphor for environmental action…It is not an effective political organizing tool: if the earth is really our mother, then we are children, and cannot be held truly accountable for our actions. (Seager 219. Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms with the Global Environmental Crisis)