Category Archives: Current Affairs

“Have You Given Up Bottled Water?” Um, No. Why Not? (See Below.)

Between 1990 and 1997 . . . annual U.S. bottled water sales jumped from $115 million to $4 billion, thanks largely to public concern about obesity and water contamination.”

Note: Bottled water: going UP; Soda: going DOWN; the Twain Are About to Meet. This is a big deal, and I like it.
Obesity & contamination. An uphill slog against the former, and deepening concern about the latter; that’s me.

It’s also reporter John Lingan, summarizing many gallons of industry data. And while the trend he pointed to has had bumps, its overall growth is undeniable:

“Bottled water is poised to overtake soda as America’s foremost commercial drink within the next year. Americans drank 10.9 billion gallons of it in 2014, a 7.3 percent increase over 2013. ”

Lingan’s report was recently confirmed in “The Decline of Big Soda,” in the New York Times.

And you know what? I think this shift is a GOOD thing.

Take Up Obama’s Burden

No more the White Man’s Burden,
That phrase won’t fly today.
It has to be re-packaged
If we’re to make it play.

Let’s speak of “the Imperative,”
And “nation-building” too,
A bow to Nine-Eleven
Should help to push it through.

Be sure to mention brand-new schools,
Young girls who shed the veil;
The sacred war for “hearts and minds’ —
How could we let that fail?

Annals of Homophobia: Don’t Cry For Kim, Rowan County

In all his public, to-the-country statements repeatedly (& honestly) trashed the right wing Catholic political agenda, and the bishops’ alliance with them. If I was scoring all this, it would go: 20 for Francis’s good stuff, 1 (so far) for bad. In sports or politics, that would be a landslide or a rout. And in Vegas, betting on the pope saying progressive things while in the USA would have been a very big, loud winner.

Compare: the Davis meeting was held in private, with no papal aides or Davis’s lawyer; it lasted only a few minutes; the pope’s reported pleasantries were boilerplate; and when asked later, he did not seem well-briefed on her case.

Further, the fact of the meeting was embargoed until the pope was safely back in Rome. And late on September 30, the Vatican was still declining to comment on it, sounding embarrassed and blindsided. Some ballyhoo.

Of course, homophobic crusaders like Davis’s “Liberty Counsel” and the “Alliance Defending Freedom” were ecstatic at the news leak, and insisted that it showed that Francis was on board with their campaigns. They can’t be stopped for grabbing this patronizing shred of recognition.

The “Savvy” “Apolitical” Pope & Dingbat “Experts”

Sure, both Merton & Day were devout Catholics. And neither were very “hip” (tho both had been Bohemians in their younger days.) But they were also blatant RADICALS. Social, political, economic radicals, and activists too –Merton practically invented his kind of monastic activism, and Dorothy Day got arrested numerous times for civil disobedience against the arms race, for farm workers unions, civil rights etc.

Safe, innocuous middle-of-the-roaders??? I don’t frackin think so; and what kind of “Catholic intellectual” in 2015 could say such blatantly ignorant stuff in public??
Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. Not safe. innocuous, middle-of-the-road Catholics.
To be sure, lots of Americans today don’t know who either Merton or Day were; we live in an age of overwhelming ignorance.

But when the curious begin to find out, they will not find themselves being pushed toward the reactionary, anti-sex-obsessed, pro-war, plutocracy-loving, women-oppressing, pedophile protecting version of Catholic “religion” dominant among the current crop of U.S. Bishops.

A Continuing Quaker Thumbprint on Japanese (& World) History

She had done teaching and library work when, in 1946, she was selected to be an American tutor to crown prince Akihito of the Japanese imperial family; one of the stated requirements for the position was that the tutor be “a Christian, but not a fanatic.” When Vining quotes this description later, one can see the sly grin; she spent nearly four years in this assignment. . . . Why her? A scholar says: “the religious denomination of the new tutor was, in fact, one of the major factors that led to the imperial household’s decision to hire Vining. According to Maeda Yōichi, son of Maeda Tamon and the crown prince’s French tutor, a Quaker woman was considered most ideal because Quakers are pacifistic but not self-righteous or preachy.” (Well, maybe not ALL of them.)