"Lagoons" filled with pig excrement, decomposed body parts and other waste in Veracruz, Mexico

Government officials in Mexico suspect Smithfield Ham industrial hog processing facility as the petri dish that grew the latest swine flu



Dead pigs at Granjas Carroll laid out to be eaten by birds.

"Some people started getting ill in February and an eight-month-old baby died. After that another baby died on March 21st. Suddenly most of the village got ill. It was weekend and the tiny clinic here was closed. The state health authorities then did send doctors and nurses to look after us, and give us medication. About 60% of the village were ill and we asked them what it was and they said it was a severe and atypical cold. We talked about influenza and they said that was impossible, that influenza had been eradicated from Mexico."
Resident of La Gloria, Veracruz, Mexico, speaking on condition of anonymity.
(Reported in the UK Guardian, Monday, April 27)

In early April, a Washington State based company called Veratect, which monitors disease outbreaks around the world, reported an unusually high number of people becoming ill with flu like symptoms in the town of La Gloria. At least one sample taken from a resident has tested positve for swine flu. Two children in La Gloria have died so far.

The Mexican government has reported findings linking the Granjas Carroll plant, which is located twelve miles away from La Gloria and is owned by Smithfield Ham, to the virus. According to the Mexico City based newspaper La Jornada, the virus could have been spread by the "clouds of flies that come out of the hog barns, and the waste lagoons into which the Mexican-US company spews tons of excrement," although according to the Guardian, it is so far only known to be spread by direct contact with animals and humans infected with the disease and not by flies.

Smithfield was fined over ten years ago for having repeatedly violated EPA pollution regulations by dumping pig feces and other wastes into the Pagan River in Virginia, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay.

Smithfield issued a press release today stating that there have been no cases among either its livestock or its employees of "North American Influenza," citing a WHO study calling it "inaccurate" to call the virus "swine flu," since it is a combination of pig, avian and human viruses.
posted by Lisa  # 2:55 PM | Perma Link
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In the last installment I said that Jesus reminds me of Socrates, and it was in part just a way to tranzish to my next entry. If you have not figured this out I am involving you in my schoolwork for my master's program. I graduated from college twenty-one years ago, and while I did okay, grade-wise, I always felt as if I had not put as much effort in as I could have and did not learn as much as I wanted to. Since I work at a HUGE library, I decided to make IT my grad school for a long time. It's great - I read tons of books about psychoanalysis, religion, addiction, everything Augusten Burroughs has ever written, labor-management relations, everything Camille Paglia has written. For a long time my favorite genre was what I call "true therapy." Some people love true crime, but for me, I can't get enough of reading case studies by psychotherapists, and in particular those of a depth psychological or psychoanalytic orientation. Irving Yalom is my favorite, but I love to read Freud, Melanie Klein, Winnicott, Harold Searles, Joyce MacDougal, and a few years ago I read, for months on end, book after book of therapist-treating-incest-survivor case studies.. The frustrating thing about reading these heavy books is that they invariably refer to those Great Books that all educated people were supposed to have read until sometime in the 1970s & 1980s when I was growing up. So, for the past two years I have been doing some catch-up going through an actual master's program that has me reading Greek plays, Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, etc.

I have learned that I still have a huge aversion to writing papers of any kind. It makes me so anxious I feel like throwing up. I procrastinate. I taught myself how to make a music video last weekend on iMovies, for example. I hate the idea of being alone, staring at that piece of paper, trying to decide, as sands slip through the hourglass, whether it would be a good idea to reread the book (hint: it never hurts to reread the book). I hate the idea of trying to come up with something intelligent to say about somebody else's work. Who cares what I think? Why is it necessary to analyze everything all to bits?I feel so pretentious. But I think that's partly due to bad habits I picked up in college. I went to a pretentious school and wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to fit in academically. In the process I learned how to write a completely useless, dishonest, contorted paper. No wonder I hate it so much.


I am just realizing that I probably would be doing better in my current program if I had gone in straight from high school, where I had loved learning and discussing books. One of my biggest problems in school and in life is that, whenever I am working on a sustained project that does not come to fruition all at once, I panic that whatever part of it that I am working on at the moment is the Wrong One. All that does is keep me from devoting my attention to that particular component, because half my brain is anxiously focused on the amount of time I have left to finish and worrying that maybe I am looking for a needle in a haystack. I start to doubt that whatever book I am writing about that has been cherished and revered for centuries and has changed the face of history, actually has anything of any value to say to me. Maybe I should change my paper topic, write on a different book altogether, work on an assignment for a different class for awhile, clean all this shit up that's lying around, take a nap, exercise. I usually rebel and do something that is instantly gratifying. Unfortunately, next to surfing the internet, the thing I turn to most often is food."Maybe I'm just wasting my time. I think I'll go see what's in the refrigerator for the fourteenth time." In some ways I have not changed at all since I was nineteen. But I am more humble, more willing to accept that I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box and that I often do things more slowly than others and need to seek help. I'm taking Ancient Greek, and it is incredibly difficult. It is painful for me to acknowledge this, but I am probably the worst student in the class. I spend hours and hours trying to figure this stuff out, and invariably, when my turn comes to read my translation there is always something wrong with it. I may be the slowest student, but I did hang in there, whereas a few people have dropped out along the way. It is interesting, and I do not at all regret taking it. After I went on sabbatical from playing music, I made myself be quiet inside, and asked myself what I would regret not having done if I were to die tomorrow, and I realized that it was reading these books, and studying Ancient Greek.

So, this weekend I have to write a paper on the Meno, one of Plato's dialogues. When I said in my last post that Jesus reminds me of Socrates, I was only partly using it as an abrupt transition. Both men were unconventional and said and did things that people found annoying at best, dangerous at worst. Both had a small group of devoted followers, some of whom lived to write accounts of their teachings. Both were tried under strange circumstances and charged with ill defined crimes. Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth, making the weaker argument the stronger (?) and worshipping gods other than the ones the city worshipped (he attributed any orginal ideas or wisdom of his to his daimon, a sort of personal deity or deva. People didn't like that). Both were tried, neither one put up much of fight, and both were put to death, Socrates by government sponsored self-poisoning and Jesus by torture and crucifixion. While Socrates never claimed to be God, and Jesus by several witnesses' accounts did, it is hard to determine whether Socrates believed in any sort of deity or not. Another similarity is that neither of them wrote anything down, and so everything we know about them both is from other peoples' accounts. Jesus' life was recorded by a number of witnesses, while Socrates' life was recorded primarily by Plato, although Aristophanes mentions him and Xenophon wrote his own account of the trial of Socrates.
posted by Lisa  # 6:39 PM | Perma Link
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Okay, so maybe I'm feeling a little overdramatic and a touch grandiose. Hopefully nobody finds this offensive (because if you do, there's more coming and you should probably go back to Susan Boyle and/or lolcats) It's just that, as inevitably happens, my paper writing anguish has now intensified. I have left behind Stage 1 "Book Report on Peter Rabbit" distress and have moved on to full-on "take this cup away from me" dread. All alone, looking down the barrel of some deadline, wishing there were a way out but knowing that there is no turning back now.

"Gethsemane" from Jesus Christ Superstar. This is one of those rare songs whose music tells the story just as much as its lyrics. And the Jesus in this scene is so alone. I am so glad that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Co. had the courage and artistic integrity to let him go there. At one point he screams at God, "Watch me die," and the music kicks into this tragic, epic, relentless death march as photos of famous paintings and sculptures depicting the crucifixion flash up on the screen, one after the other, mercilessly.

I've mentioned on this blog before that this Jesus is my Jesus, and I was gratified to read on YouTube that there are plenty of others who feel the same way. Most, if not all of the Biblical scenes in Jesus Christ Superstar are from the Gospel of John, which I've got on the brain. I'm supposed to have an oral exam on it on Sunday. I had forgotten how beautiful it is. It's so passionate and poetic. This semester we read the Gospels of Matthew and John. I went into it assuming I would like Matthew the best. As my gf says, "Matthew has got all of Jesus' greatest hits" - the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, plus it's definitely the book in the Bible that best proves that while God may be a Republican, Jesus is definitely a Democrat. It's the one where he tells the rich man who wants to follow him but can't part with his stuff that it's harder to for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

At the same time I thought I would not like John because instead of preaching about compassion and taking care of the poor and less fortunate, in the Gospel of John, Jesus and all of the other 'main' characters are obsessed with his identity and supposed divinity. The Gospel of John is where the phrase "born again" comes from. which is the Protestant equivalent of that which Protestants are baffled by in Catholicism. Protestants do not have a pope, relics, transubstantiation, or rosary beads, but are instead fixated primarily on being "saved." Getting saved is something that happens to both nonbelievers living in non-Christian countries and to atheists, but more often it happens to people brought up in the church. Instead of going to the Vatican and buying a souvenir that has been blessed by the Pope, a saved, born again Christian has to be able to point to a specific, often emotional, conversion experience that has occurred at a particular point in time. The day you are saved is the most important day of your life. Once you are saved, you become a completely different person. You have "accepted Jesus Christ" into your heart, as your Personal Lord and Savior, and once you have "Got Jesus," as a bumper sticker currently in circulation puts it, you now have to get as many people saved as you can, because without salvation they are going to hell to suffer the worst torment possible for eternity. There are no 'mortal sins' in Protestantism. There is no semi-saved state. You are either saved or not saved, and it makes no difference if you are Pol Pot or Lenny Bruce - both are currently burning in hell, and only because (we assume) they were not Saved. Being saved is the orgasm, it is the Super Bowl. It is the reason that Evangelical churches tend to be devoid of architectural majesty, mystery and musical sublimity, because what matters is not the way in which any project is carried out. All that matters is that there is a final product, and the most important product is salvation and making sure that as many people as possible get saved before they die or before Jesus returns, whichever comes first. It's why we have Interstates and strip malls, and why we elected George W. Bush President twice. It's the reason why so many Protestant Christians are so sanguine about the idea that the world might end because of global warming, since The World does not matter and was going to be destroyed at some point anyway. It is the ultimate victory of function over form.



John 3:16 is the e=mc2 of evangelical Protestantism. It is the focal point of the Bible, sucking up into itself anything that looks like it might taste good, be beautiful, intriguing, outrageous, or humorous.

This is the Good News.
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

And this is the Bad News:

18He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

19And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.


The part that scares me is where it says "he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." I've always read that and thought how sick it is to go on about how much God loves you, when if you don't love him back, he's unfortunately going to have to stick you in hell forever to roast in unbearable torment. What if you just don't have that faith? You can't just fake it.


But, looking at it again--and I am pretty sure I am not reading this in some kind of gay, French, San Francisco-style liberal way-- it says "he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." Maybe that's it. That's the condemnation. NOT believing. And if you think that sounds like heresy, just look at the next verse, which pretty much confirms what I just said, "And this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil."

That's hell. Missing the Love Boat. Maybe that is so wonderful that just to stay your same old, shallow, resentful, bitter self feels like eternal, Old School Hell by contrast. What if the mode of life that so many of us experience as 'normal' is actually what has been Hell all along?

It's funny, but Jesus kind of reminds me a little bit of Socrates....
posted by Lisa  # 2:04 PM | Perma Link
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I LOVE this song from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, "A Book Report on Peter Rabbit." The Peanuts kids all have to write a school book report on the story of Peter Rabbit, and each one goes about it in a different maladaptive way, completely in character - Charlie Brown has existential angst, Lucy tries to beat the system by just counting all the vegetables in the garden to meet her minimum word count, Linus tries to be deep, and Schroeder goes off on a tangent about Robin Hood. I have done ALL of these things every time I have to write something for school. OH GOD! What was I thinking!!! I hate this. Next time I tell somebody I want to go back to school, could you do me a favor and, maybe not shoot me, but just lock me in a room somewhere until the urge passes?



This little video makes me feel like I have company. I have concluded that it's the loneliness that I can't stand. I want to do anything but sit with my book and try to squeeze out some idea that is going to suck, anyway. And then I will have spent hours and hours that I'll never get back, working on something that is half-assed and lame, and will be embarrassing and humiliating to turn in. I love Charlie Brown's cri de coeur at the end. It's like something out of a Rossini opera, climaxing with his aria of agony, "How do they expect us to write a book report...of any quality....in just two days...?" as the other characters are finishing the ends of their own reports, also in song. I love this particular cartoon version, which has Charlie Brown singing woefully, all the while standing in the kitchen making himself a peanut butter sandwich, which he eats in front of the TV as he sings his big aria at the end. Charlie Brown, I feel your pain.
posted by Lisa  # 1:40 PM | Perma Link
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The Gospel of John starts with the statement, "In the beginning was the Word..." John goes on to say, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." John intends to make clear that by "the Word" he means not only the promised Messiah, but also the man, Jesus. But why in particular does he choose to call him the "word"? Why does John not start instead by saying something like, "In the Beginning was the Son. And the Son was with God, and the Son was God"?



This narrative of Jesus' life thus starts off not in a particular place and time, i.e. "Judea, year One, A.D" but instead in a timeless "beginning." This beginning is intentionally disorienting, in the way that stories that begin "Once upon a Time" are intentionaly disorienting, inviting the mind to open to its visionary, poetic language.

For a reader familiar with the Torah, "in the beginning" brings to mind the account in Genesis of the creation of the earth. To the extent that John is writing for those very readers, he undoubtedly intends for them to make that connection to Genesis, and if we go back to John and "the Word," could it not be that John means for us to notice that in Genesis God creates the world through words: "Let there be light." Might then the "light" in Genesis similarly redirect us back to the Light in John, which he describes as "the true light," but who, he says "was in the world" and who "made the world," and yet, "the world knew him not."




When John says that Jesus "made the world" is this necessarily a reference to the "Beginning" of Genesis and the original creation of the universe? I wonder if, looking ahead to Chapter Three where Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be "born again," perhaps John means something other than literal creation when he says Jesus "made the world." The phrase that John uses in Chapter 1 is "panta di'autou egeneto," which means "everthing came to be from him." The verb he uses, "egeneto," is a form of "gignomai," which means "comes to be." This verb is closely related to "gennaw," which means "to beget," and it is a form of this word that Jesus uses when he tells Nicodemus that he must be born again. So, just as Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born again, is it not possible that when John 1 refers to the Word as having "made the world" he means it in a sense that is closer to "giving birth" to the world rather than "making" it in the sense in which an artisan makes something. The Greek verb that means "to make" in that sense is "poiein," and John does use this verb in this same chapter, but it is in reference to the miracles that Jesus does or "makes." So he creates miracles and he creates the world, but not in the same respect. The world comes forth from him like a child and not like an object that he builds. And he gives birth to the world through the Word. It might be, then that the "creation" in John 1 is a spiritual rebirth of the world like the one Jesus tells Nicodemus he must undergo.

Why, though, in both Genesis and John, does the "word" command so much power? It is true that certain words can have great power, for example, "Will you marry me?" or "He's the culprit" or "Off with your head," and indeed throughout this Gospel words are used to give testimony, betray, deny, and condemn. But those words have no inherent power. They require a second person, a listener, to take some action as the result of having heard them. By contrast, God's words "Let there be light" actually bring the light into the world, by themselves. It is not as if God commands someone to do it for him. But why does Genesis not say simply that "God created light." What is the significance of having God speak light into being? To whom is he speaking?

Labels: In the Beginning

posted by Lisa  # 9:37 AM | Perma Link
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