Utne Reader

Utne Reader is a digest of the new ideas and fresh perspectives percolating in arts, culture, politics, and spirituality.

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@supportrequests #85863347

[think-progress]

She used her moment to speak a truth that many in Hollywood are ignoring.

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Rural Gas Compressors Linked to Health Problems

In rural Minisink, NY, air contaminants from the Millennium Pipeline gas compressor now exceed what would be found even in a big city, says environmental health consultant David Brown. After dozens of Minisink residents found they were beset by similar ailments immediately after the compressor station was built in 2013, a two-month study of air contaminants and residents’ symptoms was conducted by Brown and his cohorts at Southwest Pennsylvania Environmental Health Project. The nonprofit group of public health experts, based in McMurray, PA, have been investigating a comparable pattern of symptoms near gas drilling sites in Pennsylvania and other states.

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“Dave [Maier] didn’t know that the riverbanks had been defoliated with Agent Orange to protect against Viet Cong attack, or that the herbicide had washed off the banks and into the river. But he did notice that the shoreline somehow looked wrong. There was too much sand, and the vegetation “just drooped.” Most trees looked like sticks, with nothing growing on them. “The river itself looked absolutely terrible. It looked like the color of coffee.” Some of his shipmates tried to fish in it, but they never caught anything.

“His first time in Vietnam, Dave stood on the deck of his ship and studied the river. He remembered reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring back in high school. He kept bees then and wanted to find out whether pesticides could hurt them. “I’m up there on the deck, and I’m looking at that river, and all this crap floating through it, it’s like a dead river, and not much vegetation along the sides. And I thought, if there ever was a silent spring, this is it."

“The Westchester County had no facilities for storing fresh water. Ships from the “blue water navy” were designed to desalinate ocean water for drinking and general use. Unable to do this in Vietnam, the ship simply pumped river water into its holding tank. This water, which looked so much like coffee from a distance, was the color of tea when it came out of the ship’s pipes and faucets. The men brushed their teeth with it, showered and shaved with it, did their laundry in it.”

Read more about the effects of Agent Orange exposure...

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If economic security and well-being through a good job, decent income, some savings in the bank, and a comfortable home represent important elements of the American Dream, then perhaps acquiring economic riches is even more of a good thing. After all, the goal of significant wealth has long been a part of the rags to riches story. We continue to celebrate the modern-day lottery winners who by good fortune find themselves in the millionaire circle. Likewise, a vast array of books and conference meetings abound each year with advice on how best to make your millions. Surely this must be the dream for many Americans.

Read more....

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Forsaken Handwritten Letters

When considering the environmental drawback and informational delay linked to snail mail, sentimentality has taken a backseat to practicality. Passing doodled notes in class is riskier than a sneaky text message. Mailing love letters is far slower than a Skype or email to appease distanced relationships. And casual how’s-it-going-letters have been replaced by phone calls and pretty much everything online.

Still, there’s something irreplaceable about the pleasantly surprising handwritten letter. But from 2007 to 2013 alone, there’s been a 21 percent decrease in letter volume.

Imagine Virginia Woolf’s horror today, when in the 1940s she already mourned the decline of letter-writing in her essay, The Humane Art: “News and gossip, the sticks and straws out of which the old letter writer made his nest, have been snatched away. The wireless and the telephone have intervened. The letter writer has nothing now to build with except what is most private.” Nothing seems quite as rousingly secretive as a personalized note sealed in an envelope, federal law even protecting its content from unwarranted eyes. “The letter writer… speaks not to the public at large but to the individual in private,” she wrote—a concept that resonates in the era of mega-phonic tweets and too-revealing status updates.

Statistics, however, show this old-school deed is quickly going out of practice. One in five children in the UK has never received a handwritten letter, and one in ten has never written a letter themselves. And in the US, 150 billion letters are mailed annually, which may seem impressive until it’s compared to the 250 billion emails and 4 billion social-media messages sent daily.

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Hi Tim,

I’m a middle-aged woman with an elderly mother and two older siblings. My brother is never around unless he needs something, and my sister lives much closer to Mom than I do. Mother’s Day is approaching and my brother will never show up or call, but I’ll be there and so will my sister, who never fails to turn every holiday into drama by berating Mom about all her past failings. Mom wasn’t perfect, but nor were we abused or neglected. Mom always cared for us and kept us safe, even when our father disappeared after I was born. Still, my sister constantly reminds her that she’s a disappointment and bad mother, sometimes directly but always passive-aggressively. When I defend my mother, my sister turns on me. I dislike my sister and I’ve come to terms with the fact that she’s just an unpleasant person I don’t want in my life. I don’t feel much differently about my brother. But I like Mom and want to make her happy; what can I do?

- Peacemaker

Hi Peacemaker,

Peacemaker may be an apt nickname but it is a thankless vocation. Some people might be so bitter and unpleasant that they are unable to get past their own feelings, and lashing out may be a lifestyle for them. They may be struggling with circumstances or an illness that affects their behavior. They may never appear to be happy and even offended by, and hell-bent on preventing anyone else’s happiness. Read more...

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Living Beauty

[Aldo] Leopold’s notion of beauty exceeds the conventional confinement of beauty or aesthetics to art or art history. If we think of beauty only as having to do with appearance or pleasure or art, we won’t understand the new philosophical territory on which Leopold planted the science of ecology. Leopold’s allegiance to the standards of careful observation led him to trust his direct experience of nature as evidence that there was something more at work in the world than either scientific or economic materialism could measure. When he invited his readers to enjoy the early spring sky dance of the woodcock or to sip a cup of coffee as field sparrows, robins, orioles, and wrens welcomed the new day, he was beckoning readers toward a way of experiencing the world that presupposed a sweeping metaphysical shift. And when he sat out after sunset next to the Rio Gavilan in northern Mexico, listening to the music in the river, he knew there was a grandeur and richness to wilderness that exceeded its usefulness and monetary value.

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A Good Night’s Sleep Is Hard to Find

Forget the recommended 7 to 8 hours of regular sleep. History has shown that inspiration and energy don’t come from the undisturbed hours we try to sandwich between bedtimes and alarms, but from their disruption.

Like animals and insects, humans originally slept in increments, with a few hours interrupting the “first sleep” and “second sleep,” wrote A. Roger Ekirch, historian and author of At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past. That time was filled with praying, thinking, writing, sex, and discussion—activities our ancestors were too tired to do right before their initial sleep, but in “night-waking” would feel recharged and inspired, eventually drifting back into a second sleep after having a moment of peaceful stimulation.

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Suspended Animation Is Within Our Grasp

The typical high-trauma patient enters the emergency room with less than a 7 percent chance of survival. Constraints of time are the biggest problem— doctors often have mere minutes to stop a patient’s bleeding and restart their heart while struggling against potentially fatal difficulties. However, a team of doctors at Pittsburgh’s UPMC Presbyterian Hospital have been granted permission to begin human trials on a procedure that could give doctors hours of much-needed extra time. After successful attempts on lab animals between 2002 and 2010, doctors are ready to bring “emergency preservation and resuscitation” to human patients.

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Antibiotic Resistance Found in Crows and Other Wildlife

One afternoon in the winter of 2012, Julie Ellis unfurled a long, white tarp under a stand of trees near Coes Pond in Worcester, Massachusetts, where hundreds of crows roost. Her mission: to collect as much bird poop as possible.

Back in the laboratory, Ellis’ colleagues combed through the feces. Testing its bacteria, they discovered something unusual—genes that make the crows resistant to antibiotics.

Drug-resistant infections are a fast-growing threat to human health, due largely to overuse of antibiotics in human medicine and livestock production, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 2 million people each year in the United States alone are sickened by infections resistant to drugs.

Now new research, including the crow poop study conducted in four states, provides evidence that antibiotic resistance has spread beyond hospitals and farms to wildlife.

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The Depletion of the Oglalla Aquifer

Julene Bair describes returning to her family’s farm in Western Kansas:

“This western Kansas land had belonged to the Carlsons, my mother’s side of the family. When I was sixteen, my parents traded their share in it for land elsewhere in the county. Like many other successful farmers, they built a new house in town. More than three decades had passed since then. Although I knew there wouldn’t be water in the creek here, I wanted to walk down its dry bed as I had in childhood, picking up every shiny piece of agate I saw, hoping to discover an arrowhead.“

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An Egg Donor’s Personal Story

“...[W]hen I got semiannual emails from the agency asking if I was still interested, I always clicked Yes. For as long as I can remember, I’ve never wanted children of my own, but I saw no reason why I couldn’t use the material my body had already made to help someone else’s dreams come true. When friends expressed their concern that egg donation might affect my fertility in the future, I wryly responded that I hoped they’d make a mess down there. But truthfully, I saw the act of egg donation as an almost-sacred duty that I’d be happy to take up, if someone thought my genetics would be ideal. I just didn’t think I’d actually be chosen.“

A woman discusses her experience as an egg donor, and the unexpected ways it changed her life.

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Since a very long time I’ve had a wooden guitar I’m singing for the Holy Trinity I mustn’t forget Saint Cecilia Who’s the mother of all musicians The fans have been impatient They’re asking where I’ve been Man, Beken, what are you doing to me this way? Ayayayayay… Where have you been, horseman Beken? Where have you been?

[salon]

Shearer is crucial to what remains of the show’s legendary dynamic, because of the sheer volume of what he does. Yes, Yeardley Smith, who voices Lisa, is a crucial component to the show, but Lisa is the only character that Smith performs. Julie Kavner voices Marge and her sisters, but Kavner’s vocals are limited exclusively to the Bouvier family. But Shearer (along with Hank Azaria) voices nearly the entire town — scores of characters over the past 26 years. Mr. Burns. Smithers. Principal Skinner. Dr. Hibbert. Kent Brockman. Ned Flanders. And many, many more. And because he’s been with the show since its beginnings, Shearer is more than the voice of these characters; he’s the creator of these characters, and he’s done a wonderful job of cultivating them, from cartoons to fleshed out protagonists.

He doesn’t just voice Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders, and other Springfield denizens — he brings them to life

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The Forgotten Perks of Reading Fiction

There are a number of invaluable benefits to allowing yourself to become fully arrested by a narrative, exchanging the day’s trivialities for an imaginary affair. Research suggests that your brain reacts to novels as if you are actually experiencing the events you read about—you really are living the story.

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Do Babies Dream?

“By the glow of my computer screen, as she slept in my lap, my daughter’s eyes were in motion. They darted back and forth under their lids, like the eyes of someone who is dreaming. ‘But she is dreaming,’ I thought a second later. ‘Of course she is.’”