The right tool for the job

I've been feeling a little skittish about the blog lately, which is unusual for me. I normally blog out of a need to organize my thoughts in print (virtual print, I guess), and because I love sharing interesting bits of information. I've got a few larger ideas mulling about but I am having difficulty getting them to speak....we'll see if the March break can alleviate the malaise.

In the meantime, here's a snappy little piece about the cultural, historical and technological differences between ballpoint pens and fountain pens. I don't know about you but when I am writing (and I still love the sensation of putting pen to paper, despite this blog) I need a good pen. Not necessarily an expensive pen, but one that writes with ease and discharges a relatively equal amount of ink. I hate that blotchy, clotted writing that's the product of a Bic gone bad. I would much prefer a good sharp pencil to a lousy pen.

But then again, the story goes that in the 1960's, NASA spent millions of dollars engineering a pen that would write upside down in space. Apparently the Russians took pencils. Go figure.

The real disturbia

Check out this story on the 500% increase in prison construction in the USA. Apparently the new economic stimulus bill contains $800 million in funds for more jails, but cuts the money allotted for schools. And it turns out many of these prisons are housing children - some of whom are tried without lawyers. Freaky.

Not a very good year, I'd say.

This photo of a sherriff in Cleveland was recently named photo of the year for 2008. He is checking a foreclosed house to make sure the owners have left.

The insignificant cosmic overlap

I don't know if you read that long post below (about literature), but I checked to see which book Yann Martel sent Harper this week and here's what he had posted:

It turns out Barack Obama is a reader, a big reader. And the books he has read and cherished have not only been practical texts that someone interested in governance would likely favour. No, he also likes poetry, fiction, philosophy: the Bible, Shakespeare’s tragedies, Melville, Toni Morrison, Doris Lessing, the poets Elizabeth Alexander and Derek Walcott, the philosophers Reinhold Niebuhr and St. Augustine, and many more. They’ve formed his oratory, his thinking, his very being. He’s a man-built-by-words and he has impressed the whole world.

I would sincerely recommend that you read Gilead before you meet President Obama on February 19th. For two people who are meeting for the first time, there’s nothing like talking about a book that both have read to create a common ground and a sense of intimacy, of knowing the other in a small but important way. After all, to like the same book implies a similar emotional response to it, a shared recognition of the world reflected in it. This is assuming, of course, that you like the book.

Apparently Martel and I read that same article in the New York Times and reached similar conclusions - that Obama's worldview and eloquence owe a lot to his literary heritage. Of course, this coincidence has me creeped out and thrilleded all at the same time.

Have you seen the movie "Waking Life?" There's this one scene where two characters are talking about how similar intellectual events in history seemed to happen simultaneously on opposite sides of the world. In a time before airplanes and email. This makes me wonder if that could still be possible, and I hope that it is. I don't know if that's where the 'collective unconscious' might come from, but if sure is interesting to think about!

Did somebody say breakfast?

Apparently a campaign is afoot to appoint an official "White House Farmer." I think this is a splendid idea, especially after listening to the first two parts of Gwynne Dyer's "Climate Wars" series on CBC Radio. Ahh, Ideas, what would I do without thee?

Dyer says some frightening and enlightening things about how our changing climate will affect food supplies and political stability around the world. His explanation of climate change denial is pretty interesting, too.

In any case, North Americans are out of touch with their food supply, and any of these worthy nominees would improve the current situation. Here's the bio of Alice Waters:

Alice Waters was born on April 28,1944, in Chatham, New Jersey. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967 with a degree in French Cultural Studies, and trained at the Montessori School in London before spending a seminal year traveling in France. Alice opened Chez Panisse in 1971, serving a single fixed-price menu that changes daily. The set menu format remains at the heart of Alice's philosophy of serving only the highest quality products, only when they are in season. Over the course of three decades, Chez Panisse has developed a network of mostly local farmers and ranchers whose dedication to sustainable agriculture assures Chez Panisse a steady supply of pure and fresh ingredients. Alice is a strong advocate for farmer's markets and for sound and sustainable agriculture. In 1996, in celebration of the restaurant's twenty-fifth anniversary, she created the Chez Panisse Foundation to help underwrite cultural and educational programs such as the one at the Edible Schoolyard that demonstrate the transformative power of growing, cooking, and sharing food.

Food is one of life's greatest joys, in addition to being a key part of national and global security. It's also one of humanity's foremost needs, and no amount of wishful thinking will create peace and progress if people go hungry.