Across the Great Divide

The American Diet: Wings and a Prayer.

In Bicycle Diaries, David Byrne's folding bicycle ramble through world music, culture and urban design, Byrne agrees with Jared Diamond's claim that

people develop cultural affinities for certain foods, ways of getting around, clothes and habits of being that become so ingrained that they will, in his telling, persist in maintaining their habits even to the point of driving themselves and sometimes their whole civilization to extinction. He gives a lot of historical evidence — for example an eleventh-century Norse settlement in Greenland where the settlers persisted in farming cattle, as impractical as it was there. The cuisine or habits of the local Inuit were never adopted or adapted — their diet and ways were just not culturally acceptable — and eventually the settlers all died. This was not a quick settlement, either — it lasted for over four hundred years — long enough for them to convince themselves that they were doing okay.

Diet may not be what kills America, but it's in the running. 

The New York Times reports that chicken wings are commanding a higher price per pound than skinless, boneless chicken breasts, prompting restaurants and bars to switch to "boneless chicken wings." The movement is not because, in the words of Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler Buffalo wings are "fat on fat on fat on sugar on fat and salt" and the ersatz wings are marginally more healthy.

The recession is the cause of the price flip-flop.

Restaurants, normally big buyers of breast meat, slashed orders as millions of people cut back on eating out, and breast prices slumped. But demand for wings has remained strong, partly because people perceived them as a cheap luxury.

A serving of 12 Buffalo Wild Wings Chicken Wings contains 600 calories and provides 62% of your daily recommended fat intake, 120% of cholesterol and 150% of sodium! Adding the Blazin'\u2122 Sauce gives 30 more calories and bumps up the grams of fat by 20%. A serving (8) of their boneless wings has 500 calories, one-fourth the fat and no sodium — but also less of that fat and salt-lover's flavor.

While most restaurants are still coy about the nutritional content of their offerings, there are abundant online tools that unmask the cheap and dangerous menu items. The Livestrong.com site linked above is pretty good. It suggests better alternatives and allows you to track what you've eaten.

I like my info with a little more attitude. The Men's Health Eat This, Not That site fills that bill. For example, its assessment of the 2,010-calorie Cold Stone Creamery PB&C Shake Gotta Have It size, the Worst Drink in America 2009:

The PB&C is intended to denote peanut butter and chocolate, but the more accurate translation might be potbellies and cardiovascular disease. After all, this one drink does pack more calories than a dozen ice cream sandwiches and more saturated fat than nearly 20 large orders of McDonald's French fries.

I attended a marathon training camp years ago, where one of the Pike's Peak runners said he trained on that many calories per day. Today, nutritionists estimate sweetened beverages now account for almost 25 percent of daily calories in young adults in America, including things like the Worst Holiday Coffee Drink:

Between the candies and the casseroles, we already have plenty of temptations to deal with during the holidays. We certainly don't need Starbucks' surreptitious sugar overload thrown into the mix. The name implies indulgence, sure, but the fact that this cup holds more sugar than 9 Krispy Kreme doughnuts is pretty appalling. Settle for a candy cane in your coffee or find a different drink.

Well, That Was a Morning Wasted...

From Hal Davis:

Congress ... in 1924 enacted the Johnson-Reed bill that limited European immigration to just over 150,000 per year with nationality quotas based on the origins of the U.S. population, which heavily favored western and northern Europe, especially Britain. The act required entry visas, with photographs -- another facet of control -- and largely excluded Asians. It exempted most of the western hemisphere so that Mexico could continue supplying western farmers with cheap labor.

— Allan J. Lichtman, WHITE PROTESTANT NATION: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement

From MinnPost, a story on Minnesota's "best and brightest" video bloggers includes Melinda Jacobs, whose other stabs at sincerity, authenticity and attention-grabbing included promoting herself as a flirting expert. She got her start in March after devoting:

two years studying the economics and technology of the industry before jumping into the digital era to do long-form celebrity interviews.
 

Even though she hopes to eventually make a living with online video, she refuses to put ads or product placements into her pieces if she doesn't believe in them.

The Craig Show, also featured, does product placement right, with a Taylor guitar slipped into his golf instruction video. (Maybe he's only hilarious if you play golf.)

And in this, via The Daily Glean,  Michele Bachmann proves herself a much better Autotune singer than Sarah Palin.

Books in the Strangest Places.

Larry McMurtry has some competition.

Don't let the TV promo clips at the start put you off this. It's a sweet book story and love story [via News Cut].

The Presidential Race in Rhyme Has Finally Outlived its Time.

I'd rather not be this unkind,
But Trillin put me in this bind.
I heard him, just, on NPR —
His iambs stretched a smidge too far.

Though some reviews have praised the man,
They surely could do better than
Poor imitations so bereft
Of supple meter, rhyme and heft.

From Anchor Books to Zondervan
Book publishing's run out its span,
So why consign a single tree
To reproduce such minstrelsy
As this? It's hackneyed, drear and trite,
And Trillin barely can recite.
His verse rolls weakly off his tongue —
Not rapped, nor slammed nor even sung.

Jon Stewart tittered at this drivel.
Would Northrup Frye have been so civil?
New Yorker,  Nation, what are those?
Just places where they still spell prose
Complete with vowels and don't use thumbs
To type whatever nonsense comes.

So where's the market that demands
(In dollars, yen or Kruggerands)
Such arch flirtation with cliche
That no one's asked for anyway?

I can't pronounce myself a fan.
His deadpan humor lacks the pan.

Creative Creative Destruction.

The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers, goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates.
— Joseph Schumpeter, Creative destruction

Sunday afternoon, like many other Borders Books sometime customers, I received an emailed sale coupon. After this desperately discounted Christmas retailing season, 40% off everything didn't seem like much of a deal. Since they were a closing a store, shouldn't the bargains be even greater?

It didn't matter, since the fine print noted the store they were closing was in Sacramento. Turns out this was not an invitation to jump on a plane or click through to the website.

It was just a mistake by another company circling the drain as its entire industry restructures into oblivion.

If moving from browsing dusty and incomplete local stores to zipping through seemingly limitless virtual storehouses was the extent of the change to the book business, I'd still be saddened, but could appreciate the trade offs of more titles for less immediacy, of lower cost for a different shopping experience.

Thirty-odd years ago, I had a small business selling used books out of the house via the national network of sellers that subscribed to Antiquarian Bookman. The weekly publication listed books customers were seeking. Shops and independent book scouts like me scoured the fine print for titles we had for sale. We'd scribble our price on a post card along with a shorthand description of the edition and its condition. Weeks later, we might make a sale, which we would package and send to the retailer.

Today, that process is nearly instantaneous and includes not just the book specialists who know what they are selling, but amateurs who just want to clean out their shelves.

I'm not sure winding the book business down to zero is precisely what Schumpeter had in mind when he said:

But in capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture [what counts is] the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization (the largest-scale unit of control for instance) – competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives. This kind of competition is as much more effective than the other as a bombardment is in comparison with forcing a door...

As the bombardment continues in the distance, you can hear authors rhapsodizing about Kindle.

"This is the future of book reading. It will be everywhere," says Michael Lewis. And maybe he's right; the e-book reader (really a personal Amazon purchase kiosk) might be everywhere. 

But what about the books?

As David Streitfeld wrote, more is changing than the way of buying books or what what physical form they take. Creative destruction is moving upstream to the publishers and closer to the creators. It's getting harder to make money from the original creative product.

Streitfeld finds online dozens of copies of a newly published paperback he's seeking available for as little as one cent, plus shipping.

How much do I want to pay, and where do I want that money to go? To my local community via a bookstore? To the publisher? To the author?

In theory, I want to support all of these fine folks. In practice, I decide to save a buck.

He buys a hardcover edition for 25 cents.

Jon Pareles describes how the process has evolved in pop music, where the destruction of local record stores is only the tip of a melting ice berg. Songs and entire albums are being produced with licensing, not listeners, in mind, because that's where the revenue is.

Selling recordings to consumers as inexpensive artworks to be appreciated for their own sake is a much-diminished enterprise now that free copies multiply across the Web.

While people still love music enough to track it down, collect it, argue over it and judge their Facebook friends by it, many see no reason to pay for it. The emerging practical solution is to let music sell something else: a concert, a T-shirt, Web-site pop-up ads or a brand.

Gillian Welch described it, too.

Everything is free now,
That's what they say.
Everything I ever done,
Gotta give it away.
Someone hit the big score.
They figured it out,
That we're gonna do it anyway,
Even if doesn't pay.

But writing a book for free is still a very different decision than recording a song or putting up this post — even a thousand more in a year. Investigating a corrupt administration involves a different commitment than opining about someone else's reporting.

This lament is not new, and for now the amazing access we have to a still-unfolding proliferation of content makes it seem consumers have made the better bargain. The creators can play or be destroyed.

But perhaps we, too, are being creatively destroyed, little by little.

Consuming an entire book may soon seem as archaic as sitting still for the recitation of an epic poem or memorizing the catechism.

Or discovering a creative artist who is not yet a capitalist.

Two Bits for Kersten: Learning from Liberals.

I wish I had a nickel for every college student I know who's been assigned to read "Nickel and Dimed," by journalist Barbara Ehrenreich. The book recounts Ehrenreich's two years working undercover at low-wage jobs such as waitress, hotel maid and Wal-Mart salesperson.
– Katherine Kersten

Never mind that granting Kersten's wish might fatten her wallet by a buck or two at most. She hurdles right over one of her favorite themes — college professors who fill impressionable minds with liberal orthodoxies, because you know a teacher would never expect a student to question what they read — to an even more favorite point — that taking personal responsibility is what separates the elite from the chaff.

And she's read a book that proves it. Adam Shepard started from nothing except youth, a private school education and $25 to amass an apartment, a junker truck and some money in the bank after ten months. Eight months after that, he's doing national media interviews for his book — Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream.

Is this a great country, or what?

I wish I had a million dollars for every college student I know who's been able to land in a strange city, immediately encounter danger and depravity, find a bed in a homeless shelter within a few hours and be able to stay there for two months, self-publish a book just over a year later and be interviewed on the Today Show even before the HarperCollins edition has been released.

Dude, it happens.

"I expected to find a lot of old, bearded men with whiskey on their breath in the shelter," said Shepard in an interview. "I was amazed at the number of young, healthy guys who just couldn't keep their hands on a dollar."

I'm not going to jump on Shepard for being young, full of himself and a bit naive. Who hasn't been there? Plenty of other commentators have pointed out his experiment benefited from advantages he doesn't want to acknowledge — health, language skills, hunkiness, Catholic college education, lack of child support obligations and secret back-pocket credit card bailout plan. He also apparently bailed on an apartment lease he'd signed and went home when his mother needed his help.

So maybe his experiment didn't go on long enough. And maybe the house bought by one his co-laborers will end up in foreclosure. But Shepard did something most people in his situation wouldn't have attempted and drew what lessons he could.

There’s a lot to be said about the current welfare state. Is the government doing enough to help our working poor? I say there are many good programs. The programs I used really helped me get back on my feet.

His plucky stories about positive attitude, managing money and self-discipline do embody positive principles of success. Kersten, however, wants to leave us with Shepard's "Too many of those on the bottom see themselves as victims."

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, "22 percent of homeless mothers had taken to the streets to avoid domestic abuse; 16 percent of single adults suffered from severe mental illness; those addicted to drugs and alcohol ranged between a third and two-thirds."

Meanwhile, here at home, through July, the number of families in Hennepin County shelters was up 25 percent from the same period last year,  and welfare program administrators see similar patterns.

For state officials, one of the surprises of the past decade was uncovering the health, mental health, domestic violence and other serious problems facing many families on assistance, [assistant commissioner at the Minnesota Department of Human Services Chuck] Johnson said. Some of those parents are now receiving specialized services and training.

"Ten years ago, I wouldn't have known the depth of the challenges people faced," Johnson said. "And we didn't foresee the shift in [racial] composition of the caseload. ... We're still learning ... and responding."

Maybe Kersten should do her own research. The reality is that opportunity in America is not a simple binary choice between unlimited possibility and total victimhood and dysfunction. It's a complex, shifting continuum.

Shepard at least gave it a look, and when he isn't being smug, he seems to have learned something from challenging the liberal book he read in college.

Play Reading and Book Arts Festival This Week.

Enough politics. I'm making this an arts week.

Tuesday night, I'm headed to the Playwrights' Center for the reading of a new play, One Man Show, by Japanese playwright Yutaka Kuramochi.

Short notice, I know, but the reading is 11/11 at 7pm at the Playwrights' Center's Waring Jones Theatre, 2301 Franklin Avenue East, Minneapolis. RSVP to 612-332-7481 x10.

Blogging has cut into my writing in on paper, but I'm still a sucker for artist books and handmade journals. If you haven't sampled the pleasures of this medium, there's no better time than this weekend.

The seventh annual Book Arts Festival runs for two days at Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA):

Saturday, November 18, 10 am to 5 pm

Sunday, November 19, 12 pm to 5 pm

The event is dedicated to the promotion and sale of artists' work and an appreciation of the book as an embodiment of artistic expression. More than 40 artists will be displaying and selling their handmade books, journals, paper, prints and gifts. If you want to give something special this holiday, you'll find memorable works here.

Here's a sample of a couple journals I picked up at previous sales. One, made from Bingo ephemera and finer papers, cost me $22. The other leather bound beauty is almost too nice to write in, but if you were to fill it with love letters for someone, I guarantee it would be worth the price (which I've erased from memory.)

MCBA is at Open Book:

1011 Washington Ave S, Suite 100
Minneapolis, MN 55415
Phone: 612.215.2520

My Three Incriminating Books.

An arrest in Minnesota today pulled back the curtain on anarchist plans for the Republican National Convention here in September, federal authorities said.

Prompted by a hatred of conservatism and Republican leaders who have hamstrung the nation's economy, a 59-year-old man hatched detailed plans to disrupt the convention here in September,  according to local law enforcement who found threatening messages in the man's backpack during a routine traffic stop for failure to yield to a luxury vehicle.

More charges await the man, who authorities say has been frustrated by a lack of public good will, no reduction in greenhouse gases and what he perceived as the conservative ruination of the United States.

He is believed to be part of larger anarchist ring, said officials who did not wish to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about convention security measures.

Among the evidence were three incriminating books found in a search of the suspect's house: Bicycles Locked to Poles, believed to be a how-to manual for massive civil disobedience; Letters to Wendy's, a cryptic, vaguely threatening set of messages purportedly written to the hamburger chain on customer satisfaction cards; and something of the suspect's own making that, officials confessed, hardly qualified as book at all —  a fan-like object bound with electrical wiring that made references to the London Subway Bombings: We are All Brazilian Electricians.

—  "Three Books Provide Chilling Clue to Anarchist's Intentions"

By now you may have heard about the man who brought a shotgun into a Knoxville Unitarian church and murdered two strangers. After firing three rounds, he was overpowered by several unarmed church members. The church may have been targeted because the suspect's ex-wife once attended, and because it was a visible champion of liberal causes.

There are aspects of the narrative that invite speculation: "semiautomatic weapon" (it only held three shells); "shortened barrel" (he sawed it off, apparently in anticipation of the assault);  angered by "liberal philosophies and issues pertaining to gays," though his troubles seemed related to the economy and his inability to find a job.

Easiest to jump on were the reports of books by three right-wing fulminators seized from his house: The O'Reilly Factor, by loudmouth Bill O'Reilly; Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, by radio attack dog Michael Savage; and Let Freedom Ring, by patriotic choir boy Sean Hannity.

No doubt the poison spewed by these entertainers helped warp an already troubled mind looking for confirmation that he wasn't responsible for his own troubles. And no doubt the authors are figuring out how to back away from his crime while maintaining the franchise.

Then I thought about the books in my house, and how they might be used to establish my guilt.

What would three books say about you?

Getting There is Also Being There.

Now that I'm committed to driving the speed limit, a round trip to Door County, Wisconsin — which has great country-road biking — is just about the right length for listening to an entire book on CD.

Only one problem. The novel we found available at the library was overwritten, the main character was most unsympathetic and self-centered, and there were entirely too many romance-novel adorations of strong, muscular withers.

But since I was already doing one unfavorite thing — driving to get from point A to point B —  I challenged myself to find ways to enjoy the experience. Based on this trip and an earlier one, I've come to this realization: I'd rather listen to a bad book than ponderous one.

*****
The Metropolitan Council, which sets transit policy for the Twin Cities, has announced a fare increase to help cover increased fuel costs. To State Senator John Marty, that's exactly the wrong approach when the public should be encouraged to take buses and light rail.

He proposes dropping the fare to increase ridership and stimulate demand for new routes and greater frequency.

The Met Council is being timid when it should be visionary, says Marty.

*****
Bill Lindeke of Twin City Sidewalks is now contributing to Twin Cities Streets for People, which compiles links to stories about "people-centered mobility" and welcomes reader contributions about local placemaking, biking, walking and urban living. Let's hope he brings the site more of his visual approach to city appreciation.

Here's a link to a story in the Park Bugle that profiles two St. Anthony Park bike commuters. Advice from one:

Start slowly. Don’t assume that you can start out commuting both ways, five days a week, blizzard or shine. Don’t tell yourself when you start that you’re going to do the whole thing at full speed every single day. Try taking the bus to work (with your bike on the front rack), then riding home. Do practice commutes so you know how long it takes and whether you’ll need a change of clothes or a shower when you get there. Don’t expect a quick and easy transition. After a lifetime of getting in a car every morning, it was hard for me to make this change, so go easy on yourself and work up to your goal gradually. A slow start is better than a quick burnout. But most of all, enjoy it! There is so much to see when you’re riding your bicycle.

I've been planning to add profiles as a regular feature here  to show the diversity of riders and to demystify commuting a bit.

In fact, if you're a cycling commuter willing to submit to a Q&A about your ride, you can download this questionnaire  and send it to me. Look for the first profile in a day or so.

*****
Speaking of Twin City Sidewalks, Bill posted an empty sign awhile back and quizzed readers about its location. This one will be easy to ID for at least one blogger I know, but for others, its stainless steel blankness raises the question — who will step in to fill this void?

The Book of Forgetting.

I left behind the book I was reading in Colorado. It was a big book, a desultory one. It did not seem to matter if I picked it up again a month later when I was scheduled to return.

After all, Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, about a book dealer who tries to recover his lost memory by rediscovering the pulpy literature of his youth, was subtitled: The Book of Forgetting.

I remember when the book came out, deciding not to buy it. Though I was intrigued by its inclusion of colored illustrations from vintage books and magazines and have enjoyed Eco's essays, I also remembered about eight inches of his novels residing on a shelf, unread.

But on an impulse, I picked up the paperback edition in Grand Junction from a three for the price of two sale table last fall, and began reading it in March.

Last week, I noticed a copy of the hardcover edition next to The Name of the Rose. Today, I walked up some stairs lined with more shelves, and there on one step, was another copy.

I now own three copies of the book I once decided not to buy. It was that first decision, not subsequent ones, that I recalled each time I saw the book thereafter.

Owning three copies of The Book of Forgetting gives me a pleasure I will not bother to explain.