Years ago, I lived
and worked in Madrid, Spain. I have fond memories of
that time, especially of the Spaniards, a gregarious and sentimental people. Like the Europeans, I spent lots of time in cafes
and bars. I remember a conversation with a young Spanish intellectual in which he remarked, “You Americans have a problem
with the body.” He was a thoughtful and intelligent guy, not the rabid sort of anti-Americanist one sometimes finds
in European cafes, whose train of logic starts with hatred of America
and works backwards producing the appropriate premises. I thought it was a curious thing to say, but in the many years since
our conversation, I have realized what he meant.
A good example of our
collective problem with the body is the furor over mothers nursing babies in public. I don’t know what can be more natural
and wholesome than breastfeeding a baby, but not everyone agrees. On October 13, Emily Gillette, 27, was on a flight out of
Burlington, Vermont. She
was in a window seat discreetly nursing her baby next to her husband, who was in the aisle seat providing her a measure of
privacy. A flight attendant approached Mrs. Gillette, and ordered her to cover up saying, “You are offending me.”
Mrs. Gillette refused to cover her child, and she and her family were booted off the flight. As a result, protests by nursing
mothers were held in more than 30 airports around the country.
Years ago in North Africa, I saw Arab women nursing babies in broad daylight, on buses, and in outdoor markets. They
exhibited no apparent self-consciousness. I saw one Berber woman with breasts the size of pillows nursing a baby on a crowded
bus while she chatted with an old man lazily smoking a clay pipe. I had always been taught that Arabs were puritanical and
sexually repressed. But breastfeeding had nothing to do with sex for them; it was a natural process like eating or sleeping
and they saw no reason for shame over bodily functions.
For Americans though, breasts
equal sex -and sex is a problem. The problem with the body, as evinced in toilet jokes, jokes about body functions, and ramblings
of potty-mouthed radio talk show hosts and the millions addicted to porn. Wilhelm Reich called it “the emotional plague.”
Hollywood, in particular, has blurred the line between sensuality
and infantile sexuality. Not surprising then, that ours is a sexually licentious and -at the same time- a puritanical society.
Maybe we would do well to heed the advice of a young nursing mother who carried a sign at a recent airport protest: “Breasts-
they aren’t just for selling cars anymore.”
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Every
year at this time, Christmas tree lots sprout up along the sides of highways with signs like the following: Christmas Trees 12 dollars. All trees in“a” lot. If you
don’t know any better, you think 12 bucks is a good price. So you go in to buy your $12 tree. But once inside you find
subdivided areas which are lettered: lot A, lot B, lot C, etc. Of course the $12 trees in “lot A” are pathetic,
lopsided and/or usually about three feet tall. And naturally, Christmas trees in the other “lots” are of better
quality and priced three times higher. But since you are already there…
I get
tired of seeing this scam year after year. Imagine a grocery store with a sign outside “All T-bone steaks in ‘a’
case $1 each.” And when you go in, you find they are all gristle and bone with expired freshness dates- not even fit
for dogs. But you are already in the store, so you do your shopping. What’s wrong with this picture? The glib, ambiguous
use of words to obfuscate clear meaning may not be a violation of the letter of the law, but it is nevertheless a deceptive
and unethical business practice which should be stopped.
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The Merrimack Valley is a haven for municipal trash
incinerators. The Covanta incinerator off route 495 in Haverhill
has a capacity of some 1650 tons of trash a day. North Andover’s Wheelabrator incinerator-just
a couple of miles downwind on route 125- can burn 1500 tons a day. Between these two incinerators, that’s a staggering
1.15 million tons of trash burned annually. And trash doesn’t just vaporize
after incineration. About 30% is left behind as ash. That’s about 345,000 tons
of concentrated toxic ash to be landfilled in our community- a legacy for our children’s children. Not to mention mercury
emissions. No wonder Rhode Island banned incinerators in
1992. Even the Philippines banned incinerators.
Too dirty and unhealthy for the Philippines,
incinerators are apparently all right for us. The trash industry has indeed found a welcoming home in the Merrimack Valley.
December 2006