Two Takes on Global Warming--Commercial Vs. Public Service Announcement

The broadcasting class that I am taking at the City College of San Francisco requires that I consume and evaluate news of different mediums every week. Last week's theme was the commercial. The following ad is from the League of Conservation Voters and promotes an idea rather than a product:



A refreshing view on the neverending 2008 presidential eleciton? Perhaps. Both the sound ("It Ain't Easy Being Green") and the images (photographs of candidates from the past year slowly turning green) work well to carry the overall message. The ad only fails in that it doesn't provide any real solution--just food for thought. It functions better as a PSA than as a commercial.


Speaking of--this week we are focusing one was the public service announcement. I got this one on global warming at www.hulu.com:

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This PSA relies on two things: the celebrity status of actor Kiefer Sutherland, and the appropriate urgency of his aptly named show, "24." He appeals to viewers as an everyman, saying that we must all monitor our "carbon footprint," and mentions enough scientific-sounding jargon to make the announcement seem legitimate. He almost had me until he referenced his own network as a valid resource for global warming information. At that point the PSA became less public, and more corporate.

Given this choice, I'd say the first ad appealed to me more as a young working woman. The information was better delivered through a variety of mediums, rather than relying solely on the popularity of an actor on a specific, conservative network. Thumbs up to the League of Conservation Voters.

anniversaries of sorts

The sunset was godly tonight.

Our house was quiet all evening. It was my night to cook, and for the first time in weeks I had the entire kitchen to myself. My brain was as full as the sky. There is an imperceptible calm that covers the world every night, and yet we are rarely paying enough attention to even notice.

It is October. Octobers are always red to me, pomegranate season. I've lived in San Francisco exactly a year this week. Two years ago this week I moved to Spain. Three years ago this week I broke up with my college boyfriend. Four years ago this week I was in love for the first time. Five years ago...five years ago, Santa Barbara was covered in smoke and fire and I felt guilty for thinking the sunset was prettier after all the smog had cleared.

How calculable is change?

Is it something that politicians can actually bring? Is the change we seek the same as the change we need? Do we notice good change as much as bad?

I try to. When the workmen finish on our block, I notice the smooth, slick asphalt. When a student at our school finally understands the difference between "he" and "she," we point it out. When the office staff adopted compost and recycling, we put up green and blue reminders all over the walls. When my blood sugar is normal, I give myself a golf clap.

When we have a new, progressive president, I'll stop holding my breath for health care reform, an economy with potential, and a set of ideals that might just be that--ideas.

Rosh Hashana

I got lost on the K MUNI tonight. I was on my way to meet Shauna for a Rosh Hashana service at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park, and the sun was just a wink on the horizon. A number of synapses were misfiring in my brain like fireworks. I was listening to Joan the Policewoman sing about failed relationships and thinking about a Brooklyn boy for whom I've developed an uncanny affection. Then a telemarketer called just as I was arriving at West Portal station, and for the irony of it was I actually wanted to answer her questions, but there was no reception in the tunnel. And then suddenly I was at Forest Hill station, by the Laguna Hospital, and it was dark, and I was late, and I wondered again why I had left the house.

I was thirty minutes late for the service, which we had found on Craigslist, and were drawn primarily because we didn't have to register for it ahead of time (as is the case for most High Holy Day services), and was advertised as "experimental and friendly." Those two adjectives can be quite the wild cards in this city. And yet it was a relief to know that the New Year was entirely capable of starting without me. Religion, particularly Judaism, has always left an almost backward impression on me--that is, the less I technically practice, or the less orthodox my prayer, the more I am struck by the sheer grandiosity of the universe.

And there's nowhere more unorthodox than a half-full room at the San Francisco County Fair Building in late September, sliding glass door open just enough to muffle the sounds of cars whipping by on Lincoln Avenue. The man on my right had a full beard, fuller than Moses', and he repeated every gesture the rabbi made, gesture for gesture. As with many Reform and/or post-Reform services, most of the songs were a series of voices competing for rhythm and pitch. And then something really spectacular happened: we sang the Sh'ma.

The Sh'ma is the most important prayer in Judaism because it carries its most basic truth: that there is one god. The prayer must be sung while standing, and most Jews bend their heads and bow at regular intervals. It is easy to remember, even for us non-Hebrew-speakers who grew up reading the transliterations, because it is only about four or five words. Now, I consider myself an agnostic at best, and even then, I'm not the best agnostic. The very fact that I don't believe 100% in one god cancels out my identification as a Jew in many circles, but that's another story. What happened tonight had less to do with my belief (or lack thereof) in any kind of god, and more to do with the sheer will to believe that filled that crappy little room.

What was different was the way the congregation sang the prayer. Instead of singing it as a whole phrase, or singing each word quietly in a full breath, we all sang each word fully, loudly, in a bizarre kind of harmony that wasn't melodic so much as absolutely willed.

shema


yisrael


adonai


eloheynu


adonai


echad

Each note was so full, it was if an entire season was blossoming within it.

The curtains whipped at the open slider doors, and the man next to me bobbed his head on his full belly. And I was glad to be there, glad to have gotten lost on the K line, glad to be an experimental and friendly Jew.

Cords and Wires

My life is full of cords and wires.

Lying in bed, the first one I see is the the tubing that goes from insulin pump to abdomen. People are always startled to hear that I sleep with a little pager-like device stuck to my body. True, it is at times inconvenient when I turn over and my pump slides off the bed, and yet it I'm used to it.

Then there are the recreational wires. I (cough) use an iPod way more than I probably should. i have also started the obnoxious habit of failing to capitalize my "i"s. Growing up in the age of radio technology-turned-portable-everything, I can't fall alseep without listening to something. It started back in junior high, when I would just leave my radio on the windowsill tuned in to 100.5 FM, waking up to used car ads and Dr. Drew's "Loveline." Then there was the audio books phase, which also propelled me through the Walkman phase, longer than most, and later on to the Discman ("skip-free") era. In college, there were the carefully-selected mix cds from boyfriends and roommates. There was always a startling difference between the "sleep" cd and the "running / rocking out" cd. And these days...well, my inner nerd has emerged triumphant with the blossoming of podcasts. The highlight of every Monday is downloading the latest "This American Life," "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," "Sound Opinions," "Dawn and Drew Show," "PRI: Selected Shorts," and many more my inner geek is not yet comfortable enough to reveal.

So far both of these cords are both physically close to my body and represent a psychological or otherwise physiological dependency (a bit of a hyperbole for the iPod, but definitely true for my iPump). Even more recent is my very first laptop, adquired this summer through an amazing discount. Never before have I been able to type a story or respond to an email in bed. Genius. I don't trust myself quite enough to take my darling Wangari Maathai (aptly named, I hope) beyond the corner coffee shop. I have taken her to Progressive Grounds down the street, trotting carefully with her tucked away in an inherited computer-carrying case, bringing along yet more cords.

Maybe this is the generation of robots. Maybe the Flight of the Conchords are singing prophesies. Maybe the goal of technology is to get all of us non-programmed beings into some state of wire-and-cord obsession, so much so that our knowledge of small nuts and bolts is greater than that of our own selves. Maybe our intellectual strength is really no more potent than our ability to run a solid battery.

The extent to which I use technology on a daily basis really struck me a few days ago, when I was walking uphill home and felt three hand-size lumps in my pockets, all of which make sounds that indicate different things, all of which I use every day, all of which I could survive successfully without. I pulled them out of my pockets while waiting for the bus and stared my full palms for a moment: cell phone, iPod, insulin pump. Each of them store so much information that I consider vital--medical dosages, emergency numbers, that one dance playlist I spent two hours fine-tuning. Suddenly my phone began vibrating, and I grabbed my pump, accidentally turning up the volume to Ira Glass on my ears.

Wires and cords. They're taking over.

Evening*

You already said you

Waited on an ocean for me

Cupped a sonata to your ear

While I let it

Slip away trust me it can’t

Slither too far because when

I run out the end of the dock

You’re still standing on the sand

Somehow stars play chess at night

But honestly it’s just the reflection

Off your glasses when you drive

Me home the car idles

An uneasy guard dog you

Hand me music as it spills out

Your right ventricle you appear one

-sided now and your voice is tinny

How exactly did you prepare

The turkey? Do you still shuffle

Cards in the bathroom line

Do you still use the bathroom

With my toothbrush staring

Starry-toothed into your glasses,

Which I spot from the end of the dock.


* after Frank O’Hara’s “Morning”

jackinthebox[1]*

Sometimes I need to take my brain off the record player & listen to it skip because every now & then

You pop up you jackinthebox with a trombone

It would be nice if a little jazz every now & then

Could cure this internal beatbox but it’s more than your things I miss it’s the smell of your deodorant on your neck & that pause between conversations when we’ve talked ourselves into the record player it’s right then that you are intimately in you and

I am intimately in me every now & then

Your face gives me pause because it carries more than dimples & glasses they have always shone back other countries & other languages & other everythings where you & I could go together

I’d like to love you the way Frank loves Vincent but I was always more an impressionist than an abstract & the impression of your jackinthebox on the sill

Makes me dizzy sometimes & sometimes that pause

Returns to the back of my neck & you’ve arrived

In time to slow my brain down to a crawl.

[1] After Frank O’Hara’s “Poem: Ά la recherché d’Gertrude Stein”

* published in Catalyst, spring 2006

Yolanda Says I Can Write Whatever I Want

There is peanut butter on my t-shirt

Of Shakespearean insults.

Yolanda says I can write whatever I want.

So I want to say that Vicente Fox

is an appropriate name for a shivering Chihuahua.

A Shakespearean Chihuahua licks

peanut butter out of an egg cup.

I worry why my six speed bicycle

has an imaginary seventh gear,

one I wish could double as a transmogrifier

and turn me into the dog wiggling across

the table from me. Then it wouldn’t matter

that I smell like peanut butter and acrylic,

and that no matter how many times I braid my hair,

it slides out, wild and unruly, like

a shrew that Shakespeare once tamed.

In Memoriam

Mt. Shroud (Pantoums for Sarah Bishop)

I.

I saw her last on an album cover

Her life a recipe for Mexican hot chocolate

Pinned up in her best friend’s coffee shop

I found her smile lying face up in the street

Her life a recipe for Mexican hot chocolate

She jumped a train from Portland to San Francisco

I found her smile lying face up in the street

Sometimes she appears in dreams, smiling

She jumped a train from Portland to San Francisco

When she fell I was in the Emergency Room

Sometimes she appears in dreams, smiling

My father later said, “Your body knew.”

When she fell I was in the Emergency Room

Pinned up in her best friend’s coffee shop

My father later said, “Your body knew”

I saw her last on an album cover.

II.

In our family there are many cousins but few girls

I remember admiring her unshaven legs

Every mountain I see smirks like she used to

I thought of her while climbing Cloud’s Rest

I remember admiring her unshaven legs

When she slipped on my waterski

I thought of her while climbing Cloud’s Rest

The Oregon fog has become her shroud

When she slipped on my waterski

Some family law was observed

The Oregon fog has become her shroud

I picture her kneeling in my grandparents’ garden

Some family law was observed

Every mountain I see smirks like she used to

I picture her kneeling in my grandparents’ garden

In our family there are many cousins but few girls

Family

Adulthood*

Sunday, eleven a.m.

Aunt Cissy flirts

with the fridge.

She fingers a chilled

Corona, offers it

to the doily in front of me.

“Your father tells me,”

--she smiles, reapplies lipstick—

“you can have these now.”

* published in Spectrum, spring 2006

Sri Lanka

Still Life

Somewhere far away a wave

has flicked over cities offhand,

like her father playing cards.

Survivors peer out of the tv

with hollow cheeks.

In drier climates,

her classmates drive tanks,

salute a caricature,

because everybody knows that

all liberty is ransom.

Huevos

Huevos*

There are times when you want

to squeeze the world in an egg cup.

Wouldn’t that be perfect?

You move aside the salt and pepper

and prepare to drain the Atlantic.

It’s not so big.

The sky is grand but the clouds

rein in the sun, shell over yolk.

You can roll the world in your hands,

all color coordinated continents

and chocolate dipped mountains.

You want it to be smooth,

but it crumbles.

You want it to be round,

but it slides across the table:

spilt milk.

The world jiggles, pops, sizzles,

burns, grooves, tingles, aches, longs,

oozes—

messy, perhaps,

but more beautiful this way.

Eggs are better scrambled anyway.




* published in the League of American Poet’s A Treasury of American Poetry II (2005)