Daily Office:
Friday, 3 September 2010
¶ Sarah Idzik’s pieces at The Awl about adoption — Sarah herself was born in Korea prior to adoption by an American family living outside of Pittsburgh — is shaping up to be a must-read report on a fact of life that most Americans would prefer to overlook: assimilation into our society doesn’t just happen all by itself. And adoptees are often left with the uncomfortable recognition that no one is to blame for their sense of displacement.
Maybe it’s the idealism of American society that causes us to harbor the implicit belief that adoptees have been assimilated so thoroughly that they won’t have identity issues twenty years or more down the line. And many adoptees don’t feel that their situation is that complex—and others don’t register any complexity until, say, a fellow adoptee comes around asking a bunch of questions.
The phenomenon of assimilation contributed to Barry choosing the term “domesticated†as the best way to describe the Korean-American adoptee experience, though he recognizes how bad it sounds. “I can’t muster any hostility towards my parents, the adoption system, America, or anyone else,” he said. “Everyone’s intentions were altruistic, and I really can’t complain about the outcome. It’s just so frustrating.†He acknowledged that compared to the struggles of other ethnic and racial groups in the U.S., the less clearly defined problems of adoptees may seem “minor or superficial,†but even this doubt seems to be the consequence of the blueprint-less nature of the adoptee experience. There are no recent historical precedents with which to compare or validate an individual’s feelings.
In many foreign countries, including South Korea, adoption—even domestic adoption—is very rarely discussed because of the shame attributed to the act. In cultures that place high value on family bloodlines, adoption is frequently hidden and kept secret. In the U.S., it’s often the opposite. Currently we try to embrace nontraditional families so fully that adoptees become “invisible†in an entirely different way. The impulse to strenuously treat everyone equally can sometimes leave no room for actual discussion.
¶ The superb Toni Bentley writes about the first great American ballet, set to music by Tchaikovsky that was not intended for the stage: George Balanchine’s Serenade. (Wall Street Journal; via  Arts Journal)
In this single early work, remarkably, Balanchine made a dance that would become the Rosetta Stone for a new kind of dancer, the American classical dancer. He brought a kind of democracy into the hierarchical land of ballet classicism, lifting it from its dusty 19th-century splendor, and created, simultaneously, an aristocracy for American dancers who had none. But he had plenty, having been a subject, as a child in St. Petersburg, of the last Czar in Russian history. And he was willing to impart his Imperial heritage. In “Serenade” all the female dancers are dressed identically. They are all women—one woman, finding her place among others and her place alone. As a young dancer for Balanchine, I was among them.
As the heavy gold curtain rises at the start of “Serenade,” 17 girl dancers in long, pale-blue gowns are arranged in two adjoining diamonds, tethered estrogen. We do not move, grip gravity, feet parallel, pointe shoes suctioned together side by side, head tilted to the right. The right arm is lifted to the side in a soft diagonal, palm facing outward, fingers extending separately, upwardly, shielding as if from some lunar light. This is the first diagonal in “Serenade,” a ballet brimming with that merging line: This is female terrain.
¶ At The Baseline Scenario, Peter Boone and Simon Johnson discuss the Irish debt crisis that is looming rather horribly at the moment. Their account of the bailout of Irish banks reminds us that the United States is not the only developed nation in which powerful people are overseeing the transfer of public wealth into private pockets — or, as here, converting private debts into public liabilities.
Ireland had more prudent choices. It could have cut the budget deficit while also acknowledging insolvency and requiring creditors to share some of the burdens. But a strong lobby of real estate developers, the investors who bought banks’ bonds and politicians with links to the failed developments (and their bankers) prefer that taxpayers rather than creditors pay. The European Central Bank, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund share some responsibility; they advocate these unlikely programs in order that European and global banks, which provided the funds to the Irish banks, do not suffer losses from such bad lending decisions.
The Irish government plan is – with good reason – highly unpopular, but the coalition of interests in its favor seems strong enough to ensure that it will proceed, at least until it either succeeds and growth recovers, or ends in complete failure with default of banks or the nation itself.
Under the current program, we estimate each Irish family of four will be liable for 200,000 euros in public debt by 2015. There are only 73,000 children born into the country each year, and these children will be paying off debts for decades to come – as well as needing to accept much greater austerity than has already been implemented. There is no doubt that social welfare systems, health care and education spending will decline sharply.
¶ Peter Smith reconsiders the “nitrite scare” — and notes, in passing, that many “nitrite-free” foods are still loaded with naturally-occurring nitrites. (Good)
At least, they’re willing to pay for the illusion of “nitrate-free.†So when you pick up a few links of organic hot dogs or a pound of natural, uncured bacon for the Labor Day festivities, chances are the meat label will emphasize “no nitrates or nitrites.†But all that means is that no nitrate salts have been added. The idea that there are no nitrates at all is simply not true.
To replace the pure chemical nitrites of old, many organic meat producers have been substituting celery juice or a powdered extract. Celery is one of many leafy green vegetables with naturally occurring nitrates—about 1,103 parts per million in the fresh plant—so these labeling claims (while technically correct) can seem misleading. It’s just another instance of the organic food industry accidentally replicating what it set out to oppose. Earlier this year, Cook’s Illustrated tested different types of bacon and found that two brands of “nitrate-free†bacon had significantly more nitrites than their conventional counterpart. “If you want to avoid these compounds,” they wrote, “you’ll have to avoid bacon—and any other processed meats containing celery juice—altogether.â€
It’s all part of lasting legacy of the nitrite scare, which came to a head in 1978 when Paul Newberne, an MIT researcher began poring over thousands of slides documenting the effects of nitrite-rich diets in rats. According to The Washington Post (in a excellent piece called “The Day Bacon Was Declared Poison†that isn’t online), Newberne didn’t find much initially, but after carefully reviewing the data, he dropped his bombshell: Nitrites cause cancer. The Food and Drug Administration’s proposed a ban. The ban failed. The Nation said represented a “new era in which science abdicates its primary responsibility to protect the health of the public in favor of deregulation.†And from then on, meat producers went on processing meats in much the same way they have for 3,000 years.
¶ Dustin Kurtz is a very nice guy (we’ve met!), but he has the damnedest time trying to articulate his dislike of that big book that everybody’s talking about. But not to worry: this is only the first part of “Two McNally Jackson Booksellers Argue About Jonathan Franzen’s ‘Freedom’.”
Dustin: With Franzen it comes out in a flat omniscient third that just sort of smears everyone and everything with his clunky segue phrasing.
Sam: I was re-reading some last night, and the first line of every chapter (saving the Patty chapters, but probably even those) could be: “Did you hear?”
Dustin: But I don’t even dislike that about him.
Sam: You do dislike something. I still have no idea what it is.
Dustin: He’s very good at the floating narrator who also gives us hints of the attitudes, if not as much the voice, of many characters in quick succession.
Sam: Free indirect discourse! My English degree is worth something. He’s very, very good at that.
Dustin: Easy with that second very. He’s okay.
Sam: I’m still trying to figure what you don’t like!
Dustin: The writing. So, the book.
¶ It’s possible that we like Uwe Buse’s account of Munich Re, the world’s largest re-insurer, because it sparkles with action-movie flash. (Spiegel Online; via Real Clear World)
The databases include information about disasters that have already taken place as well as those that are just beginning or could occur in the future. They include data on every earthquake and every trembling of the earth’s crust, on the height of ocean waves, air and water temperatures, and on the direction and speed of currents. Reports on glacier melting rates in the Himalayas and snowfall in the Arctic and Antarctic are also documented. New knowledge from the fields of nanotechnology, waste incineration, oil production, shipbuilding, reproduction and transplantation medicine is entered into Munich Re’s computers. The databases also contain studies by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Chinese Health Ministry and tumor centers in Bavaria, as well as new information on piracy off the coast of Somalia, fluctuations in the European power grid and the worrisome eating habits of the Arab middle class in the Persian Gulf States.
An endless supply of data, probably unparalleled in its breadth and depth, flows from every continent to a cluster of buildings on the edge of the English Garden in Munich. An encyclopedia of life, its dangers, its injustices, its coincidences, is being assembled there. There is probably no other place on Earth where the risks of the modern world are being studied more intensively and comprehensively than at the headquarters of Munich Re, the world’s risk center.
Munich Re insures insurance companies. It takes on risks that are too big for insurance giants like Germany’s Allianz or Gothaer. Together with its subsidiaries, the company employs about 47,000 people on all continents, and more than a quarter of the world’s population, or about 2 billion people, are indirectly insured through the company. The decisions these people make, the accidents they have, the circumstances of their birth and death, all of this information is transmitted to Munich, where data mining methods are used to examine the information, analyze it and constantly link it to other circumstances. The goal is to find patterns within chaos and probabilities in the improbable.
How great is the risk that a freighter accident in Germany’s Midland Canal will cause a power outage in Italy? What might it cost to insure the entire supply chain of an international automobile manufacturer, a total of 4,000 companies scattered across all continents, against every conceivable delivery problem, from strikes to volcanic eruptions? These are the sorts of questions researchers at Munich Re address. Their task is to assess the risks as accurately as possible, because the level of risk determines how often a loss can occur, and the frequency of losses, or claims, determines the amount of the premium. For instance, if a given house is at risk of being flooded by a river once a year, the insurance premium will correspond to the value of the house.
¶ The Rumpus has been running a series of personal essays in which writers reflect on the porousness of life and art. We’re particularly taken by the latest entry, Nº 19, in which Edward Schwarzschild muses richly, and never quite as creepily as he might (part of the thrill of the piece, really), on the ways in which his early middle age has touched upon that of fellow writer Nick Flynn.
Elisa and I have been together for five years and we have a fourteen-month-old son, and though we want nothing more than to be good partners and good parents, we sometimes fail. Failing, of course, is to be expected. We simply need, as Beckett says, to fail better. But even that can feel elusive.
The other night we fought and I walked alone to this office in the dark. My plan was to sleep on the office couch and hope the morning would bring some clarity.
A copy of Nick Flynn’s The Ticking Is the Bomb is in my backpack. Reading Nick Flynn has helped me through moments like this before. Crossing paths with him hasn’t hurt, either. I suppose this essay is my way of trying to thank him. I like to believe he’ll understand.
¶ Sheril Kirshenbaum’s initially dismaying account of sexual harrassment at Duke University goes on, thank goodness, to remind us that the struggle for gender equality and the dismantling of male patriarchy are top priorities. (The Intersection)
If women have increased social power (both politically and economically) they would be better able to resist male sexual coercion due to stronger networks of social support. At the same time this increased social power would be expected to help create a change in male culture that would influence how young men interact with women when trying to gain sexual access. While specific policies that protect women from coercion and exploitation remain important, what we’re ultimately after is social change. While we work on promoting gender parity both politically and economically we should also follow the example of our baboon cousins and model the way that men should interact with women. This means that more men should take issues of women’s rights seriously so that younger men who look up to them will follow in turn.
This is the moral of the story with Dr. Leda and her own case of sexual coercion. Students, both male and female, were outraged by her story and pelted her department with e-mails and phone calls insisting that she be granted tenure. I’m pleased to say that the department was sufficiently embarrassed by the incident to conduct a review of her mid-tenure application only to find that she was not at fault for the criticisms contained in their report. However, as for the would-be swan who thought that his power in the department offered him impunity to engage in sexual blackmail, he remains a senior member of the Duke faculty. At this point in our history such abuses remain possible, but how much longer depends on each generation’s decision whether or not sexual coercion should be a thing of the past.
¶ Clothes on Film (via MetaFilter)
¶ “Don’t Forget to Smile When You Serve Cold Drinks.” (via The Rumpus)
The next edition of The Daily Office will appear on Tuesday, 7 September 2010.