#29. Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity
About eight years ago, give or take, I was laid off from my job. I was laid off from that job due to the fact that I was extremely sick in the worst throes of schizophrenia. Three months before I was laid off, my wife, Erin, had a stroke, so the layoff--and the loss of health insurance--couldn't have come at a worse time. AND, our landlord was selling our house, so we were forced to move. It was not a good time.
And, I looked for worked, and I panicked, and we prayed, I went to networking events, and I applied to ten jobs a day. And this went on for eighteen months. It was the depths of poverty. Erin managed to get a part-time job, after being a stay-at-home mom, but even the part-time jobs I applied for, like bank teller or restaurant staff, wouldn't hire me.
So, we went on SNAP benefits.
I bring this up now because, as you may have heard, at the beginning of November, most SNAP benefits will cease due to the government shutdown. Say what you want about who you want about the shutdown, my feelings about SNAP are summed up by Herman Melville:
“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.”
I have seen so many people saying "if they just worked" or "if they just got a BETTER job" or "if they just had food storage" or "if they just had a garden to grow their own food." And all of these are things that, as Melville said, the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed say about people who are poor.
I was watching a young woman on Instagram talk about how upset she was, as a faithful member of her church, when other members would get up and say "When I did my missionary service I saw so much poverty, and I realize how blessed I am to have my house/car/clothes/college education/etc." Because people who are living in Bolivia and Ghana and Delhi are not less deserving of blessings--God doesn't bless people according to their country of origin. Those things are great, and privileges, but the American upper-middle-class is not more righteous to the degree that they deserve their clean water and warm home and good healthcare more than the people in impoverished countries.
The other major period of my unemployment was during the Great Recession, which happened while I was finished grad school, and I had to leave student house in the spring of 2009 with no job, no prospects, and to be a burden on my parents. (Jane Austen reference.)
And whenever I think about the Great Recession, I think of the movie The Big Short, which shows how corrupt and awful the banks were who ruined so many lives, retirements, and housing opportunities. And, at the end of the movie, Mark Baum--based on a real stock investor--said that while the bankers were the corrupt ones:
"I have a feeling in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people."
And, well, here's where we are.
So, I urge you to donate to your food banks, and do it today, because lines are already forming. Furloughed government workers haven't been paid in a month, and starting next week SNAP will be cut off.
Donate money if you can--I don't know the statistics where you live, but the Utah Food Bank, where I live, says that for every $1 you donate they can make it stretch to $7.43. This is not to say food donations aren't welcome, but what they need is money.
Here is the link to Feeding America, from which you can find the food banks for your location, wherever you are.
I'm sorry this isn't my usual light-hearted newsletter fare, but this has got me sick.
On to some more cheerful news:
Bits and Bobs from the News:
#1. The bearded vulture--also called the quebrantahuesos, or bonebreaker--is from Spain, and while researchers were investigating their cliffside habitats, for completely unrelated reasons, they found that these vultures were collecting human artifacts. This is a shoe that has been lining the nest of a bearded vulture, dating back 600 years! In fact, among the items they found, such as crossbow bolts, slingshots, and leather clothing, they found 25 shoes!
Vultures like human shoes! The article in Scientific American makes it sound like the vultures are more interested in curating their little cliffside museums, rather than, you know, carrying human feet up there and eating the flesh and leaving the shoe alone. But, you know, birds are weird.
#2. If you've been reading this newsletter for a long time, you'll know that I frequently bang the drum about lost ancient American cultures. (Not LOST lost, like weirdness, but the fact that North America had a huge population with large cities, but we don't really realize it because they built out of earth and wood instead of the stone that cultures like the Ancestral Puebloans, Aztecs, and Mayans used.
But Cahokia: it was really cool. You've probably heard of them as the Mound Builders, and this picture is one of their remaining terraced palaces that has been preserved.
Anyway, they're in the news because they've released some research on a thing called the Mitchell Log, which was a 60 foot tall log--not a tree (well, previously a tree, but cut down, transported, and then erected in the city square). It was chopped down in 1124 CE, and was transported, probably on the river, some 100 miles to Cahokia.
(Cahokia was, at its peak in the 1100s, much bigger than London would have been at the same time. It is located just across the river from present-day St. Louis.)
#3. I mentioned the movie The Big Short above. There's a quote in the movie, attributed to Mark Twain, that says "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." One of the things I like so much about science is how scientists are never so ardently sure of their facts than the snake oil peddlers are about theirs.
Real science knows that there are theories, there is a scientific consensus, and when new evidence comes to overturn the scientific consensus, it changes. Because we're always learning new things! And that's exciting! It's not a reason to say "See, this scientist was wrong, so I'm not gonna vaccinate my kids." It's the opposite: we're getting incrementally better all the time.
Case in point: the scientific consensus for a LONG time was that life on Earth began 1.6 billion years ago. But a group of scientists, led by French Moroccan geochemist Abderrazak El Albani, is now saying that life on Earth started 2 billion years ago. That's like, almost a 30% increase in life's lifespan, which, I think we all can agree, is pretty significant. Is it guaranteed? No! Are scientists still arguing about it? Yes! But that's what makes science so great!
#4. Kids go trick-or-treating every Halloween, but we don't do a lot of "tricking" anymore. But, there was a time--a rather lengthy amount of time--when the tricking part of Halloween was so dangerous that not only were laws made against the holiday (not against "witchcraft" or "Satanism" or something, but pranking) but local governments also encouraged people to use violence to defend themselves.
From Arlington Heights, Illinois, 1902: “Most everybody enjoys a joke or fun to a proper degree on suitable occasions; but when property is damaged or destroyed it is time to call a halt. We would advise the public to load their muskets or cannon with rock, salt or bird shot and when trespassers invade your premises at unseemly hours upon mischief bent, pepper them good and proper so they will be effectually cured and have no further taste for such tricks.”
And, to be fair, the kids were doing things like greasing trolley rails on steep hills so the trolleys wouldn't be able to stop. So, you know, kids are the worst.
Distractions and Diversions
Cinefix, which is, in my opinion, the best movie criticism YouTube channel, put out their video of The Scariest Movie Moments of All Time. What I like so much about them is that they draw from a WIDE and DEEP set of movies. They break things down into categories, and explain it in the way that makes you really convinced they know what they're talking about. Anyway, it's like 30 minutes long, but watch it for Halloween.
Binging with Babish has always been a favorite cooking channel of mine, and in this episode--a little something sweet to accompany the scary movies above. He takes the simple chocolate chip cookie, and then tries everything, every this-or-that variation, until he lands on the very best iteration of the cookie.
I'm two things: 1) a fan of Hank Green's frank and honest science communication, and 2) very afraid of AI. This is twenty minutes of him digging into many of the very basic (and some advanced) worries that people have about this new technology.
Anyway, donate to your food bank.
