in which telehealth sends me to the emergency room and i wonder why. or, what's the deal with telehealth?

I used Telehealth for the first time this past week, Ontario's call centre for health questions. I thought it was a great service, but now that I've spoken to others about my experience, I'm confused. Is it true Telehealth sends everyone to Urgent Care or the Emergency Room?

USians, you may marvel at the beauty of universal public health care.

* * * *

It was the Monday after Canada Day, and I had been sick all weekend. My family doctor's office always has an on-call doctor or nurse-practitioner, but the office was closed. I had a feeling I should see a doctor, in case I needed antibiotics.

I Googled to find the number, and read this on the Telehealth website.

Call Telehealth for medical advice
Telehealth Ontario is a free, confidential service you can call to get health advice or information. A Registered Nurse will take your call 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

• Toll-free: 1-866-797-0000

• Toll-free TTY: 1-866-797-0007

Telehealth Ontario is only offered over the phone. Email advice is not available. 

How it works
When you call, a Registered Nurse will ask you to answer questions so they can assess your health problem and give you advice.
Telehealth Ontario nurses will not diagnose your illness or give you medicine. They will direct you to the most appropriate level of care or may put you in contact with a health professional who can advise you on your next steps.
The nurse will help you decide whether to: 

• handle a problem yourself

• visit your doctor or nurse practitioner

• go to a clinic

• contact a community service

• go to a hospital emergency room

Who can call
Anyone can call Telehealth Ontario to ask a health-related question. This service is: 

• confidential –  you may be asked to provide your health card number, but it is not required

• provided in both English and French, with translation support for some other languages

• free for all users

What you can ask
You can contact Telehealth Ontario when you have health-related questions or concerns about: 

• illness or injury that may need medical care

• illnesses that don’t go away or keep coming back

• food and healthy living

• teen health and issues

• depression, suicide or other mental health concerns

• medications and drug interactions

• breastfeeding

First a recorded announcement told me what was going to happen, and how to access emergency care. This part was kind of long; I wondered if most people would listen to that much information.

Then an intake person came on the line. She asked me a series of questions, then said I would speak to the registered nurse on duty. The wait would be about 20 minutes, and I could either stay on hold or she could call me back.

Fifteen minutes later, the nurse called. I told her what I was experiencing, and she asked me a series of questions.

When she was finished, she said, "Right now, when this call is finished, you should go the emergency room." I was so surprised, and asked if that was really necessary. "Yes. You must go. If you have a respiratory infection, while you wait to see a doctor, it will get worse. You can end up with bronchitis or pneumonia, and both are serious, especially if you already have respiratory issues. Will you go to the emergency room right away?"

The nurse also said I could use my inhaler (puffer) more often. I'm new to puffers and didn't realize that. But she wanted me to assure her that I would go to the emergency room.

Me: "If a nurse is telling me I should go, I guess I should."

Nurse: "Not just a nurse -- a panel of 12 doctors. A panel of 12 doctors created these interview questions, and based on your answers, you need to go to the emergency room."

I was highly skeptical, because I suspected I didn't have bronchitis. I didn't have either of the two classic symptoms, shortness of breath and chest pain. But the nurse was so insistent... so, despite my skepticism, I woke up Allan, and off we went.

There is an Urgent Care clinic in my area, and I knew that was more appropriate than the actual Emergency Room.

We waited three hours in UC. A doctor listened to my breathing, told me to use my puffer, and sent me home. The interaction with the doctor took 2-3 minutes.

I was annoyed at myself for going.

Allan and I talked about how you can't base your decision on an unknown outcome. If it turns out something is wrong, you're glad you went. If it turns out that you didn't need antibiotics or anything else, you feel stupid, like you should have known to stay home. Obviously you can't know the outcome until you go, so you have to go.

Two days later, I was still sick, plus I thought I might need a doctor's note for work. I called our health centre, made an appointment for the on-call nurse-practitioner, and was seen immediately. She listened to my breathing much more carefully than the UC doctor, and asked me more questions. She concurred -- wait it out. If there's no fever, green phlegm, chest pains, or shortness of breath, just use the puffer and wait it out.

When I told her that Telehealth told me to go to the ER, she said, "They tell a lot of people that. I think it's a liability issue."

Later in the week, I mentioned to a friend that Telehealth sent me to UC, she said the same thing: "That's what they do." We were with a group of people, and everyone seemed to agree that Telehealth recommends the ER or UC to cover themselves. What if they tell you to wait, and your condition worsens? What if you have a respiratory crisis, and it comes out that they told you to stay home and not worry?

Is this true? If so, what's the point of Telehealth? Actual question, not sarcasm.

Also, why didn't the Telehealth nurse ask if there was an UC facility near me? She only said ER. If I hadn't known the difference between UC and ER, I would have diverted ER care -- plus probably waited much longer, since I would be lower down on the triage scale in ER.

a must-read if you're responding to ignorance and bigotry about omar khadr's settlement

In case everyone hasn't seen this yet, written by someone named Ben Feral Selinger.

July 6

Okay, I'm fucking sick of the idiocy and done with writing a diatribe every single time a friend posts about how they're upset that Trudeau is giving a terrorist $10m. You people are.... wilfully ignorant and hypocritical. Here's why. (And I thoroughly suggest reading the entire post. If you know me, you know I'm neither stupid, nor an apologist. I am pure fucking science, and this post is such. Read it before making an ass of yourself by posting about how we just gave a terrorist money).

The story (the facts we know).

* Canadian born Khadr was taken to Afghanistan at age 9, by his father. We don't know if he wanted to go, and we don't know why they went. There has been zero evidence put forth to suggest the trip had anything to do with terrorism. Regardless, as he was only 9, he had no choice in the matter.

* Khadr, aged 15, was found in critical condition following a firefight. The mission debrief report filed by the US troops stated that a middle aged man threw a grenade, which killed one US soldier. The grenadier was shot in the head and confirmed killed.

* Khadr was taken to Guantanamo Bay prison. No charges were filed against him at that time.

* Several years later, formal charges were filed. These charges were technically not even charges of war crimes, as if they were true, Khadr would be considered an enemy combatant during a time of war, and thus everything he was accused of doing, was legal under rules of engagement. He was denied access to a lawyer at this point and no trial date was set. He was held in detention and tortured for nearly 10 years.

* Nearly a decade later, an addendum to the original mission debrief was submitted, which identified the grenadier as Khadr by name. The original report was not rescinded. No one knows who made the addendum. No US personnel present during the firefight confirms the addendum. (at least I've not been able to find any).

* A week later, Khadr is offered a plea deal. The terms of the deal were to admit guilt to all charges and serve a few more years in a Canadian prison, or refuse to admit guilt and be denied trial indefinitely. (the latter portion is not confirmed by the US government, but let's be realistic here...)

* Khadr takes the plea deal, is transferred to Canada.

* Khadr sues the Canadian government for their involvement in his illegal detention, torture, and lack of a trial.

All of the above is true as far as anyone knows. That is the official story, from both the Canadian and US governments. They have said straight out that Khadr would not be offered a trial unless he took the plea deal. Just let that sink in for a moment.

Now let me ask you a question.

As a Canadian, what do you stand for? Do you believe that you, as a Canadian, have the right to be presumed innocent, until proven guilty, as well as the right to a fair and quick trial? I know this is hard for many of you to consider without jumping to "oh, but he's a terrorist, so fuck him, he's a traitor and doesn't deserve anything", but we'll get to that in a minute. Seriously consider this. Do you believe you have, as a Canadian, the inalienable right to everything laid out in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

If you do, but still think Khadr does not, because he is a terrorist, let me ask you; "How do you know he is guilty?" There was no trial for 10 years, and he was only offered a trial on the condition that he plead guilty. How do we, as Canadians, determine guilt? Have you read and understood the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? It's entire purpose is precisely to ensure that what happened to Khadr, is not allowed to happen. Period.

Now I know many of you still can't get past the "but he's a traitor so he doesn't deserve a trial" even though neither you, nor me, nor the US or Canadian government were able to provide ANY evidence whatsoever, of his guilt (no evidence was submitted during his trial, presumably because none exists), but that doesn't matter. Let me explain the problem to you.

You are worried that terrorists are trying to take away your freedoms as a Canadian right? They're trying to force their way of life upon us and we as Canadians, won't stand for that right?

Do you see where I'm going here? Presuming Khadr's guilt, with no evidence and without trial, is precisely what the terrorists want to do to Canada. Isn't that your concern? Does it not strike you then, that by saying that Khadr doesn't deserve a fair trial because he is a terrorist, with absolutely no evidence, nor a trial to prove the charges, that you are doing precisely what you are worried the terrorists are trying to do do us? A presumption of guilt, no trial, a decade of detention and torture. Is that not EXACTLY what you are worried terrorists are trying to do to us?

At this point, I don't think any of us should even be concerned about Khadrs innocence or guilt. He is inconsequential at this point. The REAL concern for all Canadians, is that our government denied a Canadian citizen his inalienable rights, guaranteed to him under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They did EXACTLY what you are worried the terrorists are trying to do. If Khadr was guilty, a trial probably would have proven such, so why was he denied a trial?

For your information, the Canadian government did not simply offer up an apology and $10m for no reason. They were sued. Khadr filed a civil suit with the supreme court of Canada, and that court found in favour of Khadr, in that the Canadian government was in breach of Canadian and International law. Over half the money awarded will be going toward legal fees.

Think about it this way. Your government, was just successfully sued for war crimes. Crimes they committed not only against Khadr, but against the entire Canadian public. They assured us that we would all be given a fair trial, but now we know that is not true. They assured us that we will always be presumed innocent until proven guilty. We know that is not true. They took your money, money which could have been spent on building half a hospital or something, and spent it instead, on committing war crimes, and crimes directly against the Charter for which our country stands.

Now I don't know if Khadr is innocent or guilty and I don't know if that money will end up right back in the middle east, but before you get upset about that, I want you to consider this: Had the Canadian government offered Khadr a fair trial, regardless of his guilt, there would have been no civil suit and we'd have $10.5m more Canadian Pesos to spend on Moose shirts, or maple syrup flavoured hockey sticks.
All they had to do, was abide by our own legal doctrine, and this whole mess would have never happened.

In summation:

If you believe Khadr did not deserve a fair and quick trial, you are not Canadian. You do not stand for what Canada stands for. You are saying very clearly, that you don't care about evidence, treating people (who we presume are innocent until proven guilty) with basic decency, or your own or anyone else's right to a fair trial. You are, quite literally, openly supporting about half of Sharia law. You fuckwits.

Addendum: Hey guys. I had no intention of this post reaching such a wide audience. It was really just directed at my fellow redneck buddies (all very excellent folk but who I felt could benefit from the data). I've adjusted some of the language to suit a wider audience.

I appreciate the feedback (surprisingly generally positive), but bear in mind that with a post this widely shared, I cannot respond to the thousands of PM's flying at me. Feel free to re-share the post, or just copy/paste to your own feed to keep the conversation going. I absolutely do not need any personal attribution.

Thank you, Ben.

adventures in streaming: tubi, dick cavett, and the manster

The Roku streaming device gives you access to thousands of apps... most of which are completely useless.

That doesn't mean I don't love Roku. I do! But we use it almost exclusively to watch Netflix and the Red Sox, and to access downloaded files on the TV. We've also installed a few other apps, most of which we rarely or never touch: PBS, Democracy Now!, Google Play, National Film Board, a cooking channel or two. Sometimes I page through the available apps, install one, try it, then immediately remove it.

There are dozens of apps for movies and TV shows. Some are the streaming option you get when you already have a network or cable channel. Some have expensive monthly fees, others are expensive pay-per-view, and lots are free. If the description says "classic movies" read "public domain". Classic or contemporary, there may be one or two movies of interest, then a whole lot of filler.

One popular free movie app is Crackle, owned by Sony to stream their own content. I installed Crackle because it had one movie I wanted to see that I couldn't find anywhere else. We found the embedded advertising (which you can't skip) too intrusive, almost as bad as watching commercial television. I removed Crackle, but it wouldn't unsubscribe me, and I finally had to kill-file their emails. When I checked back recently, they no longer even have that one movie.

We recently had better luck with TubiTV. It's also free, and so far, the ads are only at the beginning, and it's not too annoying to wait through them (on mute, of course). So far Tubi has given us two gems.

One is the old Dick Cavett show. Cavett was known to be a thoughtful host who did lengthy, in-depth interviews, sometimes featuring one person for the entire show. He was also really into great music. There are performances by and/or interviews with Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and others, an impressive list.

From the movie "Janis: Little Girl Blue," an excellent biopic of Janis Joplin that I saw on Netflix, I learned about her connection with Cavett. I was once obsessed with all things Janis Joplin, and still love and admire her, so I was excited to see her appearances on The Dick Cavett Show available on Tubi.

There are also interviews with famous writers, comedians, actors, athletes, politicians -- a wide swath of interesting people. Check out this episode list, it's pretty amazing.

Tubi also has a "Cult Favorites" category, on which I found my favourite B movie of all time: The Manster. I'm not especially knowledgeable about B movies, but I watched a lot of old movies when I was a kid, the good with the bad. (This is in the dark ages when we watched whatever the networks and weird local stations aired.) I've seen The Day the Earth Stood Still, Night of the Living Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and all the other big B movies from that era, multiple times. My favourite is The Manster.

In The Manster, an American journalist goes to Japan to interview a scientist rumoured to be experimenting with youth serums. In his secret mountain laboratory, the scientist keeps various creatures locked in cages. (We later learn that one of the creatures used to be his wife.) Scientist secretly injects journalist, which causes a second head to grow out of his shoulder. The second head is evil and causes the transformed journalist to murder people.

After a manhunt, as the police close in on the two-headed journalist, the suspense builds to the shocking conclusion. With the manster standing behind a tree, we hear a giant tearing sound, like the world's biggest velcro strip being opened. Tearing, screaming, tearing, screaming... the monster rips apart from the man! Interestingly, both man and monster now have two arms and two legs. Police kill the murdering monster and the journalist is carried off on a stretcher.

There are also some riveting subplots, featuring the doctor and journalist drinking and carousing, the doctor's assistant falling in love with the journalist, and the journalist's wife trying to win him back from his new profligate life. The doctor's assistant ends up in a volcano, courtesy of the newly liberated monster.

I was so pleased to see The Manster on Tubi that we watched it straight through, something I haven't done since I was in my pre-teen years. It's a classic B movie combo of wild histrionics, meaningless cliches, giant plot holes, and bad lighting. But the real reason to watch are the awesome special effects. I swear you can see the strap that's holding the extra head on the actor's shoulder.

Before writing this post, I didn't even know The Manster was a famous B movie! I found it on many best-of lists. There's even an action figure.

happy strike-iversary!

The City of Mississauga has a community recognition program, through which community groups can have their banner fly at City Hall for a day. When the program was announced, I said to a few of my union sisters, "I know a flag I'd like to see there...". I was only joking -- but they took me seriously! This morning, to the astonishment of many, the beautiful pink CUPE 1989 banner is flying beside Mississauga City Hall!

This week marks one year since the members of CUPE Local 1989, Mississauga Library Workers, walked off their jobs and onto the picket lines. It was the first strike in our local's history and the first strike against the City of Mississauga.

I am a member and now the president of Local 1989. In the past year, I've been invited to speak on panels, in conferences and conventions, in rallies, meetings, and gatherings of labour activists. Our local was honoured at the CUPE Ontario convention, and featured in a conference called "Building Strong Locals," held in Halifax. Everybody wants to hear how we built a winning strike, and it's been my great honour to share my reflections.

I never get tired of talking about the gains we made, especially for our lowest-paid members, and about how the strike transformed lives. But except to my partner and a few others, I don't talk about how the strike and my union work effects me personally.

Leading the bargaining team, the strike, and our union has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. I love being a librarian, but even that is far outweighed by the satisfaction I find from my union work. Leading our team through bargaining and through the strike used -- and tested -- everything I had. It felt like all my experience, all my knowledge, and all my skills, from every thread of my life, had come together for this purpose. That was extremely exciting and energizing.

It also came at the right time in my life. I'm less volatile, more focused; I have a longer fuse, and a good deal more common sense. Dealing with the physical and mental limitations from my health issues was not always easy, but I'd rather struggle with getting enough rest at 55 than popping off in tirades at 25. (I did pop off once or twice in bargaining. Hey, I'm entitled to some fun!)

Our union continues to thrive. We're enforcing the terms of our collective agreement, protecting gains we have made, and always, always, always striving to engage our members. We're also identifying and developing future leaders, so the gains we've made don't unravel when the current team steps away.

I've made great friendships. Like my comrades from the War Resisters Support Campaign, these friends are from greatly diverse backgrounds and lives, linked by our belief and commitment to this work.

Tonight, members of CUPE 1989 will gather for our "strike-iversary," to reminisce about the experience and reflect on what we gained, how we've changed, and what lies ahead.

what i'm reading: the politics of the hardboiled detective novel

I love these old covers!

Last year, I blogged about a wonderful essay by Raymond Chandler called "The Simple Art of Murder", written in 1950. Reading that, I realized that I knew the work of both Chandler and Dashiell Hammett -- the originators of the hardboiled detective genre -- only through film adaptations. I hadn't read any of their novels. To remedy that, I borrowed several titles by each from the library.*  (I also plan to read some of the giants of the noir novel, having seen the classic film adaptations of their work: James M. Cain, James Ellroy, Jim Thompson.)

I read Hammett's Red Harvest and The Maltese Falcon, and Chandler's The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. If I didn't have so much other reading pressing on me, I would have read many more. I loved everything about these books.

The writing is simple but vivid and evocative. The characters are interesting and multi-dimensional. The twisting plots are full of surprises. And above all, the protagonists -- the detectives -- are the perfect anti-heroes.

In detective movies and TV shows, the character of the detective him- or herself is paramount. If I like the detective, I'll follow him anywhere. If the detective rubs me the wrong way, it's a no-go, no matter how good the writing or acting or plots might be. Philip Marlowe (Chandler) and Sam Spade (Hammett) are as good as they get. It didn't even bother me that as I read, I could only see Humphrey Bogart in these roles. The casting of those famous films was perfect; my mental image of Bogart, who I love, only added to the enjoyment.

In his seminal essay, Chandler describes his detectives like this.

But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.

If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in.

In an interesting bit of self-consciousness in The Big Sleep, Chandler has Marlowe describe his own role, and the hardboiled novel itself.

I'm not Sherlock Holmes or Philo Vance. I don't expect to go over ground the police have covered and pick up a broken pen point and build a case from it. If you think there is anybody in the detective business making a living doing that sort of thing, you don't know much about cops. 

I also loved the politics of these books. Of course hardboiled detective novels are not political per se, but Hammett's and Chandler's work have a clear, consistent political and social point of view. Spade and Marlowe are working class guys, and the reader sees everything through their working-class eyes.

In fact, class consciousness underpins everything in these novels. Throughout, there is a deep empathy for the working person, the underling, the regular Joe or Jane, and a consistent assumption that the odds are always stacked against them. Spade and Marlowe's work takes them into both dark underworlds and opulent mansions. They are equally themselves anywhere -- because they are men of integrity, without pretense -- but only the mansion will elicit scorn and contempt. The sad underworlds are more likely to evoke pity, and an understanding of why ordinary people may be driven to make bad decisions in an unjust world. Even in the criminal underworld, it's the little guy who takes the fall, while the rich and powerful do the damage and enjoy the good life.

There's a special place for the police in these novels, and it is not on a pedestal. Spade and Marlowe harbor a deep distrust of the police, and believe that in order to find justice, one must work outside the system, because the system is always corrupt.

In a world where the working class is always on the defensive, a man with a bit of power might just be tempted to overcompensate -- and we usually see police through this lens. Cops must be distrusted because they do the bidding of the ruling class. A good cop must prove himself to be one; he doesn't get the benefit of the doubt. Good cops are rare, but in this world, good men and women of any station are always rare.

Towards the end of The Big Sleep, a decent police captain explains:

I'm a copper. Just a plain ordinary copper. Reasonably honest. As honest as you could expect a man to be in a world where it's out of style. That's mainly why I asked you to come in this morning. I'd like you to believe that. Being a copper I like to see the law win. I'd like to see the flashy well-dressed muggs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom, alongside of the poor little slum-bred hard guys that got knocked over on their first caper and never had a break since. That's what I'd like. You and me both lived too long to think I'm likely to see it happen. Not in this town, not in any town half this size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful U.S.A. We just don't run our country that way.

The edition in our library.

Some might find these books sexist, as women are often portrayed as deceitful and dangerous, but that's not my reading. The women of Chandler and Hammett are not helpless ragdolls in need of rescue; they're not dependent on men for identity or status. They are free agents -- free to love, free to act on lust, to lie, to murder, but always free to make their own choices. The women of the hardboiled mystery are not be trusted -- just like the men. Both men and women do stupid things under the influence of love or lust, Marlowe and Spade included.

Men and women, working class or ruling class, guilty or innocent -- character traits cross all lines. There is honour and deceit on all sides. There is abuse of power everywhere. There is deep sorrow, and there is addiction. Indeed, I came to see alcohol almost as a character in these books.

At bottom, the hardboiled mystery, at least as practiced by the masters, is a study in power. The upper class, the criminals, the cops, the guards -- everyone is trying to get power, to use it, and to keep it. Only an honest man or woman cares more about doing the right thing than about power.

That's why class consciousness permeates everything: because the playing field is grossly tilted. The ruling class and their minions always have a giant head start. That's why the detective needs to stand up for the little guy. It's also why the detective hero must be wily and super-smart, why he needs to work outside the system, why he must often consider the means against the ends. He is a justice warrior amid an universal imbalance of power.

* Working in a library has greatly expanded my reading. More on that another day.

the great whole foods experiment of 2017

In our home, shopping at Whole Foods was once reserved for special dinners or used a stop-gap during an extremely busy week. Then slowly, over time, it became habit -- and a big one. For a long time now, we've had two regular shopping days each week, one at Loblaws and one at Whole Foods. Sometimes we end up at Whole Foods multiple times in one week.

This has been expensive, of course, but I felt it was worth spending more for better quality, and even more so for convenience. Because of Whole Foods' prepared food, we've been able to spend less time on food preparation, but still eat healthfully. Where prepared food in most supermarkets consists of rotisserie chicken and mayonnaisey pasta salads, Whole Foods carries an array of fresh, healthy, delicious -- expensive -- choices. Over time we relied on this more... and more.

I did determine that some prepared food was actually no more expensive than if I had made it myself: see my post about Roman tuna salad. Now I suspect that tuna salad is either a loss leader, or an outlier.

Several months ago, Whole Foods' prices shot up. A bag of groceries that once cost $65 now runs $95 or as much as $120. I rationalized it for a while, but even I, the Queen of Rationalization, can no longer ignore the obvious. But what do we do instead? What did we do before Whole Foods came to Mississauga...? The answer is: lots of different things that all involve more effort and less variety.

Hence the experiment. We won't shop at Whole Foods for one month, then we can decide if the money we don't spend is worth the effort we do spend. This also has an added benefit: the owner of Whole Foods is notoriously anti-union, so this is an opportunity to align my spending with my principles a bit more.

memories of bacon

Do you watch Aziz Ansari's show "Master of None"? I like it. It's not zany or wacky; it doesn't try so hard to be funny, which I find annoying in so many TV comedies. Parts of the show are funny, but parts are earnest, and interesting. It's not sappy, but it's not afraid to be a bit serious.

In the episode we just watched, we see Dev, the main character played by Ansari, as a child, encountering bacon for the first time. He's at the home of a friend, and when his mom calls, he innocently tells her that he's eating bacon. Mom reminds the young Dev that Muslims don't eat pork -- and informs him that bacon is pork.

Young Dev looks at the bacon, confused and a bit perturbed, deciding what to do. Then he opens wide and takes another bite. Back in the present, the episode involves Dev and his friend Navid eating pork and drinking alcohol -- but leading their parents to believe they are devout.

* * * *

If you grew up in Canada or the US, and you're not Jewish or Muslim or raised as a vegetarian, you have probably eaten bacon your whole life. But I can actually remember the first time I ever tasted the awesomeness that is bacon.

I was raised in the Reform Jewish tradition, and we didn't "keep kosher" (as it is called). But my parents grew up in kosher homes, and a bit of that cultural memory clung to our family. It is not unusual for Jewish people who are not kosher to not eat pork, and if they do, to not eat it in their own home. Even among the nonreligious and the most assimilated Jews, pork is often the last piece of Jewish culture to go. Pork is a bridge too far.

I was maybe 11 years old, in Miami, Florida with my father, for a union convention. This was a special treat, three days in a hotel with lots of excitement and confetti, and still young enough to want to spend time with my father. On one day, my father had some convention-related thing to do, and some of his union people took me for the day, or possibly just for the afternoon. I remember being confused because there were two people named Marion, and one was a man. (What's up with that?)

The bunch of adults took me out to lunch, and someone suggested a BLT. I didn't even know what that was! I wish I knew the name of the restaurant, because one of the adults said, "You've never had [name of restaurant]'s BLT? You haven't lived!" I wasn't sure if I was allowed to eat a BLT, but my curiosity and desire to try it outweighed any fear I may have had about being a bad Jew.

There should have been sound effects, a choir breaking out in song, when I bit into it. It was incredible. I'm guessing this was a really good sandwich, but also a product of its era -- a mound of iceberg lettuce, and probably white or rye toast. But oh. my. god. Bacon!

I did tell my parents that I tried this exotic food, and what the people said about not having lived. I thought they were being serious, which my parents found amusing. I did not get in trouble and did not feel guilty.

Only a few years later, as a teenager, BLTs would become a mainstay, as would cheeseburgers (also not kosher, as it mixes milk and meat). I quickly lost any compunction about eating pork -- sausage, bacon, and especially ribs. But this memory of bacon... it is peerless.

the right wing views us all like children - women need a cooling off period before choosing abortion, poor poeple need lessons in budget management,

people complain about the nanny state, which is thought to be liberal

thoughts on canada 150

It's Canada Day, this year dubbed Canada 150, with its own corporate brand and a carefully worded story of that number 150. We also have Canada 150+, which acknowledges that human cultures and societies have been living in what is now Canada for thousands of years.

I have mixed feelings about Canada Day.

First, I despise nationalism of all kinds, including the kind called patriotism. I used to make a distinction between the two (something I learned from my mother), but have come to feel that it is all the same: I am better than you because I live on this piece of land and you don't. In Canada, patriotism mostly translates into complacency, as if "we're much better than our neighbours to the south!" is good enough.

But more importantly, when it comes to Canada 150, are indigenous people. The very concept of Canada 150 excludes and erases the original inhabitants of this land. From an indigenous point of view, Canada 150 marks the beginning of colonialism, occupation, extermination.

This would be bad enough, if the horrors weren't still being lived right here, right now. A country that spends $500,000,000 celebrating itself should be able to bring clean water to everyone who lives here.* The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women issue should be wrapped up by now, a shameful piece of history, not an ongoing battle. Governments should be thanking indigenous leadership on the environmental front, and trying to reverse the damage done to indigenous land and water by extraction industries.

Most of my leftist comrades eschew Canada Day for this reason, and are disgusted by Canada 150.

I agree. And yet... I have another perspective, too.

I love Canada in many ways. I am grateful that I was able to come here and begin my life anew. I love that Canada was an early adopter of equal marriage, and now leads the way in the rights of transpeople. I love Canada's public health care (and wish there was a whole lot more of it). I love that women (mostly) have full control over our reproductive lives. I love the multiculturalism, and the strong reaction when that value is transgressed. Of course there is racism here -- which only means Canadians are human beings -- but the kind of virulence and violence seen every day in the US would never be tolerated here on a large scale.

The indigenous perspective is big news here -- emphasized in the mainstream media and acknowledged by the top level of government. Many countries all over the world refuse to even acknowledge a colonial or genocidal past. Words without action are meaningless, but no action can begin without that acknowledgement; while words alone are insufficient, they are still significant.

I have spent most of my life opposing state power, and there's plenty to work on here, on every front -- peace, environment, labour, health care, gender equity. None of it is good enough. But if we widen the lens to view Canada globally, it's one of the best places to live on the planet. There's a lot I would change and fix, but if we could magically give everyone on the planet the quality of life enjoyed by most Canadians, it would be a vast improvement. (Of course, the planet would collapse, because its resources would be instantly depleted. But we're only talking metaphor here.)

Canada is far from perfect -- and Canadians know that, acknowledge it, and strive for better. Which in turn is part of why I love it here.

Canada 150 doesn't mean a lot to me. But there's no way around it. I love Canada. That's why I'll never stop criticizing it.



* To be fair, most of that money went to repairing and renovating infrastructure that will should last well beyond the July 1, 2017 party. Perhaps that highlights the issue even more starkly!

what i'm reading: words on the move by john mcwhorter

John McWhorter is changing my mind about language. And that is no easy thing to do.

I'm a grammarphile. Word nerd, language junkie, spelling nut, stickler -- whatever you want to call it. I appreciate proper spelling and good grammar, and I cringe at all the bad grammar all around us. Apostrophe abuse drives me insane. Same for unnecessary quotation marks. Misspelled words on websites, signs, flyers, and official documents... don't get me started.

Yet I also part ways with some of my fellow grammar-lovers. I believe grammar is important for writing, but not necessarily for speech -- and certainly not for casual speech. I hate seeing knowledge of grammar used to shame or exclude, or worse, as an excuse to not listen. Wmtc comment guidelines warn readers not to correct another commenter's grammar or spelling.

Even further, I believe it's perfectly all right to relax certain writing rules for casual writing. It's not necessary, in my view, to use awkward phrasing in order to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition in a casual email. It's all right to use sentence fragments, or to start a sentence with but. I don't think the English language is being killed off by texting; in fact, I know it's not. And most importantly, I don't think I'm better or smarter than anyone else because I use apostrophes correctly and they don't. But those unnecessary apostrophes still drive me insane!

So perhaps I was pre-disposed to enjoy John Whorter's enlightening and entertaining book, Words on the Move: Why English Won't -- and Can't -- Sit Still (Like Literally). But I do think that anyone who enjoys thinking about language would like this book.

McWhorter's most important message is in the title: language is never still. The meanings of words always change. Meanings have always changed, they are changing now, and they will continue to change in the future.

It isn't that a certain curiosity cabinet of a few dozen words happened to have different meanings hundreds of years ago. Just about all words in any language have different meanings now than they did in the past. Some words' meanings hold on longer than others. Some few even hold on to the same meaning for thousands of years. However, it is they...that are the oddities.

The book presents some illustrations of every day objects such as bread, fruit, meat, and fuel, and the words that have been used to convey those meanings over centuries. Then, the author writes,

Picture this process happening across tens of thousands of words all the time. That is the essence of what words are, and why the dictionary can qualify only as a snapshot of how the film was situated on the grid at one particular point in time.

McWhorter, a professor of English and comparative literature, says this throughout the book, in many different, entertaining ways. One of his strengths is creating lovely little analogies to illustrate his meaning. He's also very adept at shooting holes in the corrections most beloved by correcters, by showing us how inconsistent we all are.

If there's an expression that drives you crazy because it's usually used "wrong," chances are, it meant your particular version of "correct" only for a period of time in between its other meanings and uses. Most likely, the meaning has changed and you need to update your personal lexicon. Whatever your favourite bugaboo -- decimate, irregardless, sink down, used to, literally -- McWhorter has a slew of examples to prove that your objections are inconsistent at best, and might even be ridiculous. Those of us who hate the overuse of literally to mean its opposite may be surprised at how many words now mean their opposite that we never bother to complain about -- because those words changed in a different time and bothered different people. And it's not just English. It's all languages, all the time. Change, change, change.

Some of McWhorter's ideas are controversial. He explains speech tics such as "like" and "you know," and why we shouldn't care about them. He maintains that slang, including shorthands we use online and in text messages, are as old as language itself, and don't hurt the language. He counsels us to embrace "the euphemism treadmill" -- from Colored to Negro to Black to African American -- and explains why cultures make these shifts.

Perhaps most controversially, McWhorter argues that Shakespeare should be cautiously and judiciously translated, to make the plays more accessible to contemporary audiences.

If you love Shakespeare as I do, let me elaborate before your blood pressure elevates. About 10 percent of the words Shakespeare used now mean something completely different than they did when he wrote them. If we read Shakespeare, we can use footnotes, but when we watch a play or film adaptation -- and the words were meant to be performed, after all -- we can often follow the action through context and prior knowledge, and we might get the gist of the language, but we miss a good deal of the meaning. We miss more than we think, something the author illustrates very well. McWhorter believes that Shakespearean scholars should tweak the language for greater understanding.

Yes, I have been one of those people, and have experienced resistance (and even dribbles of vitriol) in response. However, most of this resistance has been based on the idea that the difference between our language and Shakespeare's is only one of poetry, density, or elevation.

The reason Shakespeare's prose sounds so "poetic" is partly because it is. But it is also partly for the more mundane reasons that his language is not, to a larger extent than we might prefer to know, inaccessible to us without careful study on the page.

Many assume that the translation I refer to would have to be into slang. I suspect this is because it can be hard to perceive that the very meanings of even the most mundane of words have often changed so much -- if one thinks the difficulty of the language is merely a matter of "poetry," then it's easy to think that no translation in neutral current English could be at issue, and hence the notion of "Yo, whaddup, Calpurnia?" as a serious literary suggestion.

He gives a few elegant examples, which are "hardly a desecration" -- the language is still "challenging and even beautiful, especially since most of it is the original." I must agree. He explains that he's not suggesting the original plays be withdrawn and never read.

However a world where the usual experience of a Shakespeare play outside universities was in today's English would be one where, quite simply, more people were capable of truly understanding and enjoying the Bard's work rather than genuflecting to it. Seeing Shakespeare shouldn't be like eating your vegetables -- even tasty vegetables. Nor is it much more inspiring for us to treat Shakespeare as a kind of verbal wallpaper or scent that we sit back and allow to "wash over" us. . . . Shakespeare translated into today's English wouldn't be exactly Shakespeare, no. But given a choice between Shakespeare as an elite taste and Shakespeare engaged the way Russians engage Chekhov and Americans engage Scorsese films and "Arrested Development", some may judge Shakespeare that isn't always exactly what Shakespeare wrote as less than a tragedy.

Like the novel, theatre, and baseball, language is something people often claim is dying or already dead. But if no one ever writes or reads another novel, and the great game of baseball is never played again, we will still have language -- because we are human. And language will still be changing, because that's what it does.

"what kind of dog is that?" part 2: in which we learn more but feel like we know less

You may recall, we decided to have Diego's DNA examined to see what breed mix he is. Here's what the folks at DNA My Dog have determined.

Supposedly Diego is 37-74% German Shorthaired Pointer, 20-36% German Shepherd, and 1-9% Collie.

I just don't get it. Diego looks nothing like a German Shorthaired Pointer. Other than his prick ears, he looks and behaves nothing like a German Shepherd. He does somewhat resemble a Smooth-Coated Collie, but that's a very small percentage. No Border Collie, although he exhibits some classic Border Collie behaviour? No Staffordshire Terrier or American Pit Bull Terrier, even though we see the bully boy in his face? No Boxer, no Mastiff?

Here's Diego.

Now look at images of images of German Shorthaired Pointers. Really?

If you comb through dozens of images of German Shorthaired Pointers, you can find one or two pics where the colouring bears a slight resemblance. But certainly it is not the norm. Can a dog be up to 74% of one breed and have almost no physical resemblance to the so-called breed standard?

We did the DNA testing strictly for curiosity and fun, but now I'm seriously confused.

DNA My Dog also includes behavioural descriptions of the breeds, and common known health issues -- none of which fits Diego.

In case you are just tuning in, this truly was strictly for fun. Not only don't I care what breed my dog is, I find the entire concept of breeds ridiculous. With the exception of a few kinds of dog bred for specific work, most breeding is just eugenics. Breeding for arbitrary, human-created standards has ruined the health and lives of so many dogs. I would like to see a complete moratorium on breeding -- which would certainly cut down on the vast numbers of dogs that are homeless or euthanized each year.

in which we answer the burning question: "what kind of dog is that?"

At the beach! Diego's favourite place.

What kind of dog is that?

People ask this all the time. All our dogs have been rescues, but most had recognizable breed markers. We could answer "white Shepherd-Husky cross" or "Lab-Shepherd mix" or "Jack Russell-Fox Terrier cross".

Of course those dogs probably had many other breeds in the mix. When you think about it, unless a dog is actually the product of two purebreds, it's likely to be the product of dozens of different breeds. A mixed breed mates with another mixed breed, and their puppies mate with other mixed breeds, and so on. But people really want to hear two or three breeds! So I'd go with the obvious, and that answer would satisfy.

With Diego, I've never known how to answer. I've thought of making up a breed -- a Burnhamthorpe Terrier, for a street we live near, or a York Hound, for the Toronto North York animal shelter where we found him -- but I never seem to think quickly enough. Sometimes I say he's a Border Collie-Boxer mix. But mostly I say, "He's a mutt," or "He's a mix of many things. His own unique blend."

Because really, who cares? He's Diego!

With his beautiful sister Tala, so missed.

Well, now we're going to find out! We're going to put his drool to good use, and have it DNA-tested.

I first heard about DNA testing for dogs at the dog park -- a couple were having their rescued German Shepherd tested to see if he was actually a purebred. Yuck! But when we learned it was pretty affordable, we thought it would be fun to know what breeds might have left their pawprints on our Diego.

This morning we're taking a sample of his all-too-plentiful saliva and sending it off in the mail. I'll report back in about two weeks.

authors i keep wanting to read but don't

My book list is extremely long, so long that I don't call it a reading list or a to-read list, because I will never read even half the books on the List. It's more like books I would read. A list to narrow down the universe of books to a smaller universe of books to choose from.

Working in a library has increased the likelihood that I won't read even a majority of these books -- or decreased the percentage that I will read. Where I used to stick faithfully to my List, I now read lots of books not on the List -- books colleagues or customers talk about, and more often, books on display. Being a librarian has broadened my reading, which I love. It has made the List less a goal and more a general guide. This is fine.

Recently I noticed that certain authors appear on the List more than once, but remain unread. These are sometimes nonfiction titles that become hard to find. I'm clearly interested in the author's topics, but by the time I am ready to read the title, it's gone. I could find the book online, I'm sure, but I just move on to another title. There are many novelists on the List, too.

I don't delete anything from the List. It's a running list I've been keeping since 1985. That is either impressive or insane, depending on your point of view. I have a system for marking what I have read, and another marking for books I own but have not read. (There is much less of that in recent years, another result of librarianship.)

I have read so many books not on the List, and it bothers me that I didn't add them, but I can't change the method now. I could, but I can't. (In the library, we are told to "track our reading" in order to be better readers' advisors. I don't find this useful, so I don't do it. Please don't tell.)

I thought of this -- the authors that keep appearing but don't get read -- because I just started a book by John McWhorter, who teaches linguistics and writes about language. I noticed that many titles by McWhorter are on my List, and decided it was time to read one.

So. (I have just been reading about the word "so".) Here are authors who are on my List who I haven't read.

Frans de Waal
Carl Safina
Ann Douglas (this Ann Douglas)
Ann-Marie MacDonald (who I never heard of before coming to Canada)
Yxta Maya Murray
David Ebershoff
Trezza Azzopardi
Robert M. Sapolsky
Sally Denton
Kiran Desai
Ivan Doig
Edwidge Danticat
Mario Vargas Llosa
Siri Hustvedt
Margaret Laurence
Colm Toibin
Ted Conover
Helen Oyeyemi
Paul Greenberg
Barry Unsworth
Sarah Waters

This list does not represent all the authors on the List -- not even close. Only those I have never read who appear more than once.

what i'm reading: the new jim crow by michelle alexander

When I first heard the incarceration of African Americans in the United States referred to as a "new Jim Crow," I thought it must be hyperbole. So did Michelle Alexander, a fact she discloses in the introduction to her book. As Alexander researched the concept, the more she learned, the more she changed her mind. She changed my mind, too.

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Alexander builds an unassailable case that mass incarceration through the (so-called) War on Drugs is the third large-scale caste system that holds Black Americans in a second-class status. This is true even in a society that includes Oprah Winfrey, Clarence Thomas, and, of course, Barack Obama.

The first caste system was slavery. The second was the laws and customs of segregation, discrimination, and terror known as Jim Crow. The third and current system is mass incarceration. This includes rules governing local policing, key court rulings, the court system itself, the parole and probation system, and laws that discriminate against former inmates.

* * * *

The numbers are staggering. More African Americans are under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850. A greater percentage of African Americans are under correctional control now than black South Africans were during apartheid.

The US is 5% of the world population and has 25% of world's prisoners. Black and Latino Americans comprise one-quarter of the US population, but almost 60% of the prison population. African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of white Americans.

In terms of the War on Drugs, one might think these disparities could be explained by differences in rates of illegal activity. One would be wrong. The data shows that people of all colours use and sell illegal drugs at very similar rates. When there is a difference by skin colour, the numbers skew towards whites.

Thus, the very same year Human Rights Watch was reporting that African Americans were being arrested and imprisoned at unprecedented rates, government data revealed that blacks were no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes than whites and that white youth were actually the most likely of any racial or ethnic group to be guilty of illegal drug possession and sales.

The fact of incarceration alone is only one piece of the picture. Before incarceration, there is a series of court rulings that have gutted constitutional protections (especially the Fourth Amendment, the right to be free of unwarranted search and seizure), and make it impossible for citizens to argue racial bias in any criminal proceeding. There are draconian mandatory sentencing laws, which lead to the normalization of plea bargaining, in which people who have committed no crime plead guilty to some crime, in order to avoid a life sentence. There are huge financial incentives to municipalities to militarize their police forces, and to states for building -- and filling -- prisons.

After incarceration, the system prevents almost everyone who has been incarcerated from re-entering mainstream life. It is virtually impossible for anyone convicted of a felony to access housing, education loans, or jobs. In most states, formerly incarcerated people are stripped of voting rights and from jury rolls -- forever.

Former inmates, as Alexander writes, "will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits.” Right now, about 30% of African American men are automatically banned from jury duty -- for life.

There is a terrible circular logic to the system. As a former US attorney general explained:

Law enforcement officials often point to the racial composition of our prisons and jails as a justification for targeting racial minorities, but the empirical evidence actually suggested the opposite conclusion was warranted. The disproportionate imprisonment of people of color was, in part, a product of racial profiling -- not a justification for it.

In the years following the release of the New Jersey and Maryland data, dozens of other studies of racial profiling have been conducted. A brief sampling:

• In Volusia County, Florida, a reporter obtained 148 hours of video footage documenting more than 1,000 highway stops conducted by state troopers. Only 5 percent of the drivers on the road were African American or Latino, but more than 80 percent of the people stopped and searched were minorities.

• In Illinois, the state police initiated a drug interdiction program known as Operation Valkyrie that targeted Latino motorists. While Latinos comprised less than 8 percent of the Illinois population and took fewer than 3 percent of the personal vehicle trips in Illinois, they comprised approximately 30 percent of the motorists stopped by drug interdiction officers for discretionary offenses, such as failure to signal a lane change. [These discretionary offenses are often an excuse to search vehicles or to arrest people for "resisting".] Latinos, however, were significantly less likely than whites to have illegal contraband in their vehicles.

• A racial profiling study in Oakland, California, in 2001 showed that African Americans were approximately twice as likely as whites to be stopped, and three times as likely to be searched.

Pedestrian stops, too, have been the subject of study and controversy. The New York Police Department released statistics in February 2007 showing that during the prior year its officers stopped an astounding 508,540 people -- an average of 1,393 per day -- who were walking down the street, perhaps on their way to the subway, grocery store, or bus stop. Often the stops included searches for illegal drugs or guns -- searches that frequently required people to lie face down on the pavement or stand spreadeagled against a wall while police officers aggressively groped all over their bodies while bystanders watched or walked by. The vast majority of those stopped and searched were racial minorities, and more than half were African American. . . . . 

Although the NYPD attempted to justify the stops on the grounds that they were designed to get guns off the street, stops by the Street Crime Unit -- the group of officers who supposedly are specially trained to identify gun-toting thugs -- yielded a weapon in only 2.5 percent of all stops. . . .

Rather than reducing reliance on stop-and-frisk tactics following the Diallo shooting* and the release of this disturbing data, the NYPD dramatically increased its number of pedestrian stops and continued to stop and frisk African Americans at grossly disproportionate rates. The NYPD stopped five times more people in 2005 than in 2002 -- the overwhelming majority of whom were African American or Latino.

Perhaps the most surprising portion of The New Jim Crow is Alexander's history of the War on Drugs. The "tough on crime" stance that began under President Nixon and intensified under Presidents Reagan and Clinton was born when rates of drug use and crime were low.

Today nearly one-third of African American men are likely to spend time in prison. Once released, they live in a state of permanent second-class citizenship. Alexander builds a case that the War on Drugs was not a response to higher crime rates, but a deliberate plan to dismantle the gains of the civil rights movement. If this sounds unlikely, I highly recommend reading this book.

Alexander has clearly done exhaustive research, but she doesn't exhaust the reader with statistics. Although the numbers are extremely convincing, they are woven into a compelling, readable narrative. It's a disturbing book, as it should be, and an excellent one.




-----
* Amadou Diallo was an African immigrant living in New York City. In 1999, when stopped by the police and asked for identification, he reached for his wallet. Police later said they thought the wallet was a gun. The police shot 41 times. Diallo was 22 years old, and unarmed.

* The Wikipedia article about the Diallo murder contains this:

On March 13, 2015, Capital New York and other news organizations reported that 50 of the 15,000 IP addresses belonging to the NYPD were associated with edits, dating back to 2006, to English Wikipedia articles, including this article on the Amadou Diallo shooting. These IP addresses geolocate to NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. Detective Cheryl Crispin, a NYPD spokeswoman, said that "the matter is under internal review."

what i'm reading: leaving lucy pear

The year is 1917. A teenage girl from a wealthy family is pregnant, the result of rape -- by a man who her mother pushed her to pursue for marriage. Now the girl is being forced to surrender her baby to an orphanage. She has met the person who runs the orphanage, and she cannot bear the thought.

The girl devises a plan, a way she can leave her infant daughter to be found by a large family who will, she hopes, raise her as their own.

Ten years later, the lives of the woman who left the child and the woman who found the child intersect. But only one of them knows of their connection.

Leaving Lucy Pear by Anna Solomon begins with this tantalizing and emotionally charged premise, and as the story unfolds, it does not disappoint. Family secrets, desire, regrets, unintended consequences, and unfulfilled longing are set against a backdrop of Prohibition, labour justice, and classism.

In the larger world, Sacco and Vanzetti are scheduled for execution, despite global protests.* The political situation parallels our current world in many ways.

Through Solomon's clear and often piercing prose, we know what every character thinks and feels -- leading us to see the enormous chasm of perceptions, the impossibility of knowing another person's truth. The book is infused with empathy and compassion. It makes for a satisfying and compelling read.

* The Atlantic reproduces Felix Frankfurter's 1927 article about the case.

arun gupta's perfect takedown of food-as-cultural-appropriation

I read this on Facebook and absolutely love it. The author, Arun Gupta, understands and acknowledges cultural appropriation as a fact and a legitimate concern (as do I). But he also believes the "reactionary left" spreading lists of ethnic restaurants run by white people

...essentializes the notion of culture as rooted in the very soil of a place and not something that can travel or transcend boundaries. This hints at fascistic notions of blood and soil as what constitutes the nation.

It is reactionary because the creators of this are implying there are timeless practices, rooted in a people, land and culture, that constitute only appropriate form of food. They want to fix all cultures as fossils in a museum, not allowing for adaptation, changing tastes, social roles, or fashion. It reminds me of how the National Front fetishizes a notion of the pure French nation.

He's unpacked the food-as-cultural-appropriation concept perfectly. Please go read the whole post.

I would be interested to know what wmtc readers who vehemently disagreed with my earlier posts think of Gupta's ideas.

postscript: some clarifications and addenda to my recent post on cultural appropriation

Many people have been discussing my recent post about cultural appropriation on Facebook. I'm not surprised that many people disagree (that's why I wrote it, to put my countering opinion out there), but I have been surprised by how many progressive people do agree.

From the negative comments, I can see that I wasn't clear on a few important points.

1. The entire post refers to white, first-world people calling out other first-worlders with accusations of cultural appropriation -- not aboriginal people. I would not pass judgment or venture an opinion about a native person's judgment of appropriation of their own culture. I have no right to do so -- and I would not do so. I was referring what I see as a quite a large bandwagon, pointing self-righteous fingers at others -- by white people, and at white people.

2. The above might explain why I feel the words shaming and bullying are fair game. I wasn't suggesting that aboriginal people are bullying white people about appropriation. That would be absurd.

3. I do believe that on a personal, one-to-one level, we are all equals and must treat each other with mutual respect. I do not believe that membership in a historically marginalized group is a license to act disrespectfully. That's my belief, but it's not what the post is about.

4. My post was not in response to the Hal Niedzviecki controversy. I had been writing the post for a while. I have very little time to write, and I edit every post at least twice, so it can take quite a while for me to finish something and get it online.

5. The post was also not in response to me personally being taken to task for appropriation. The whole #fragilewhiteperson thing is not at issue here. Again, I was referring to white people criticizing other white people for what they have -- mistakenly, in my opinion -- labeled cultural appropriation.

6. Apparently some readers thought my post was in response to one comment I saw online. Believe me, I don't write 3,000 words about one random comment. I see this as a clear trend.

This postscript is meant for clarity only. It's not important to me whether readers agree with me or not. I just want to express myself clearly and stimulate discussion.