Rise and Shine!

They say art imitates life, but this is just too much... Yes, this is how I wake up pretty much every morning - well maybe there are no baseball bats. You see, the problem is that our cats are all on diets these days. Tippy, Pumpkin and Gabriel are all getting on a bit (not that I would ever dare to say that to them!), and now that their primary hobbies include napping, moving to find some better sun, and then curling up in said sun for more napping, Eliza and I have had to put all three gentlemen on "slimming" diets.

They eat twice a day, at 8am and 8pm - not counting the food they steal from our Golden Retriever Willow, who is still enough of a puppy that her dish is always full (oh how the injustice of that burns our cats sense of superiority!). As far as I can tell, getting fed early has become the one great mission in life for all three of them. This isn't such a big deal in the evening - I can pretty much resist the icy stares, the indignant meows and even Tippy's patented "dozer" protest, which consists of headbutting things off the kitchen table until we feed him. Yes indeed, I can meet the cold stares with indifferent resolve (most of the time, anyway) - but the mornings are a completely different story!

The cats begin their nightly campaign about 90 minutes before meal time. So they start to get warmed up around 6:30pm for dinner - and 6:30am or earlier for breakfast. Now 6:30am is when I am typically trying to soak up the last few minutes of precious sleep before my workday begins. You'd think they would respect that. But do they care that I work late most nights and need all the rest I can get?

Nope.

I could go into detail about the elaborate (nay, diabolical)plans they hatch to wake me up every morning, but I think the video above pretty much covers it - with one important difference - - - the lucky human in the video only has ONE cat to cope with - I have THREE of them, acting in concert!

This morning was particularly bad.

It is now 8:40pm, and there they are - standing at my feet staring at me greedily, implacably. They know perfectly well that they have already been fed, but here they are looking at me with eyes that say, "But we're soooo hungry! If we die of starvation, it's on your head, McEmrys!" And now Gabriel, my Siamese cat, who is strong in the ways of the Force, is trying to fix me with his cold blue eyes..."Be in my eyes", he purrs, "Be in my eyes...."


But I will be strong. I will. I really will.....

Eating Dirt

My daughter Zoe is a graceful and quickly growing girl of almost ten. Although not afraid to get good and dirty on occasion, she increasingly prefers to feel clean and to look good – often by carefully accessorizing with as many feathers and sparkles as possible.

But it was not always so.

When she was a very little girl (as opposed to the burgeoning ‘tween’ I see sprouting up before my eyes), Zoe liked to eat dirt. Not just boring old everyday backyard dirt all by itself, mind you – but rather dirt as a condiment – a soft dusting like brown powdered sugar coating the smooth round pebbles she couldn’t get enough of. Zoe would hunt for these perfect stones or mummified pieces of wood with all the care of a truffle hunter.

They had to be just so.

Once she found a good one – into her mouth it would go like a forbidden treasure. And forbidden they were, as (without any particularly convincing rationale) her mother and I would make her spit them out whenever we caught her and then shoo her into the house to rinse out her mouth.

Zoe got pretty good at hiding the dirty pebbles in her mouth, and could even hold full conversations without giving herself away. But there was always one sure giveaway - a faint dirt-ring around her otherwise secretive mouth. That, combined with a somewhat furtive cast to her eyes would almost always result in an exchange like this:

“Zoe, do you have a rock in your mouth?”
“No.”
“Really? You are sure there’s nothing in there?”
“Nope.”
“Open your mouth.”
“Noooo!”
“Come on, Zoe – open up.”

And so on.
I’m sure this kind of exchange is all-too familiar to some of you out there.

The reason I am writing about this today is because I have always cherished these memories. To this day, there is something in me that associates dirt-eating with something innocent and mysterious – something incomprehensible to adults yet packed with hidden secrets and inscrutable meanings. It reminds me of my daughter, and fills me with love.

(And honey, if you are reading this I hope it isn’t too embarrassing!)
But this week, dirt-eating came back to me in a much darker way, reminding me of all the blessings in my life that make dirt-eating something I think about with warmth and a vague sense of nostalgic yearning.

Jonathan Katz, of the Associated Press, recently filed a story with the unbearably grim headline, “Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt.” His story unearths (forgive my gallows humor there) some of the human costs of skyrocketing global food prices on the poor – who now, as always, make up the majority of the human race. You can read his article in full here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-01-29-haiti-dirt_N.htm

Katz points out that because of a lethal combination of factors – from rising fuel costs to the surge in converting land and crops formerly used for food production to feed the sizzling bio-fuel market – food prices have risen almost 37% globally in the past year and over 40% in Haiti, which is already one of the poorest nations in the world.

So poor Haitians have begun eating dirt.

It’s not just a matter of scattered and especially poverty-stricken people squatting desperately in the dirt, eating compulsively just to feed their endlessly empty stomachs – no – this is a much deeper and more enduring phenomena – so deep and so enduring that a whole industry (such as it is) is growing up around it!

Call it the Dirt-Cookie Industry.
The cookies are made of a more-or-less digestible dirt from the center of the island, which is hauled to markets in many of Haiti’s slums and shanty-towns, where it is mixed with vegetable shortening and salt before being left out to bake in the sun. The cookies are a relative bargain, at about 5 cents each, which is still a significant sum in a country where over 80% of the population lives on less than $2USD per day.

Women bake the cookies on rooftops and then head out into the crowded streets with baskets full of the only kind of meal many of their customers may eat in a week.

And so it goes…

In a world full of appalling news, this one has hit me harder than most. I just can’t get past the contrast between memories of my little girl with an innocent dirt-ring around her mouth – and the brutal, devastating and oh-so guilty dirt-rings that our collective addiction to consumption has consigned so many other little girls to – little girls who may never live to grow up, go to school, fall in love or any of the other things that we can so easily take for granted.

I do believe that we are responsible here. Call it what you will: rising oil prices, fluctuating global markets – whatever. Call it what you will. It still boils down to our endless “First World” appetites. The price of oil rises as we suck it from the Earth to power our empty-bellied cars. But rather than cut our consumption we try to instead increase fuel production, converting food resources into fuel resources. This, combined with our oil-addiction, predictably drives up food prices all over the world – and voila! – the Haitian Dirt-Cookie Industry is born!

Now I know that many of us try hard to live responsibly, even when it is hard. That’s a good thing, and not to be sniffed at. I know we will do more and more and more as we move into the future – but I hope we will begin to do so with an ever-greater sense of urgency because this story, like all stories, reminds me that we are not trying to engage in a struggle to solve abstract problems or “issues” – but to save lives – real living breathing loving lives that hang in the balance right now.

In this regard we are indeed fortunate to live in the time and place that we do. The problems facing our world are complex and multi-faceted, with countless variables to contend with. But how fortunate we are to be born into the one society in the history of the world that has such unprecedented power to affect all those variables and to influence so many outcomes in so many ways!!!

This fills me with hope.

I want to live in a world where if people eat dirt, it is for the same kinds of innocently inscrutable reasons my daughter did so long ago, and not because they will die without it.

I feel grateful and blessed to be right where I am in our society, and not only because of all the privilege I was born with, but because I know I – We – have the power and freedom (and responsibility) to leverage that privilege to transform our lives and our world into one where the idea of a Dirt-Cookie Industry is simply laughable.

“He has considerable advantage over athletes without prosthetic limbs.”

These words, by sports-scientist Gert-Peter Brueggemann, refer to South African runner Oscar Pistorius, who has been doing his level best to qualify for the next summer Olympics, despite the fact that he has no natural legs below his knees.

Pistorius was born without the fibula in his lower legs and with other serious defects in his feet, which led to a double amputation. He now uses special carbon-fiber “Cheetah” legs, which are shaped like the letter “J” – mimicking the speedy feline namesake.

In the last couple years, the young South African has literally leapt onto the big stage of international track and field, where his times make him a serious contender for the Olympic Games.

But wait, there’s a hitch. A big one.

The International Association of Athletics (IAAF) has just ruled that Pistorius will not be allowed to compete in the Olympics no matter how well he runs – because his prosthetic limbs are deemed to give him an unfair advantage over his able-bodied competitors.

Believe me, I do understand all the scientific arguments used to exclude Pistorius. His cheetah legs are brilliantly designed and engineered, built for running in a way that ordinary human legs are not. Sure – I get it.

But I think there is a good deal here that Pistorius’ (presumably) able-bodied judges and critics do not understand about what it is like to live with disability. As someone who lives every day with disability (while certainly not in the same ballpark as Oscar’s), I think I can say with some confidence that nobody who has not experienced the life-long challenges of disability can possibly understand what many of us face every day – things that go far beyond the mechanics of how we get from place to place.

Let me give you a personal example. As some of you may know, I am almost completely paralyzed from the right knee down and partially paralyzed from the left knee down, with spotty paralysis elsewhere in my lower body. This is all the result of a bad bike accident I had as a teenager. Ever since then I have had to wear a variety of hard plastic braces on my right foot to stabilize and protect it. I really can’t do much without them.

Most of the time, my condition puts me at something of a disadvantage in sports. I fence, play tennis, soccer and bike mostly, all sports that are movement and leg intensive. But in soccer, my brace, despite slowing me down and making me somewhat less maneuverable – also gives me certain advantages.

The brace is made of a hard plastic, molded to the back of my calf and the bottom of my foot. So when I kick a soccer ball the right way, my kick is supported and strengthened by the plastic rigidity of the brace inside my shoe. So I can kick with surprising power. But I rarely do this, really boot it – because my foot is paralyzed, and the harder I kick, the harder it is to control the ball – which is already very difficult. Imagine kicking a ball and feeling nothing in your foot or lower leg! So yes, I do have a mechanical strength advantage – but it is an advantage tempered and offset by other very real challenges.

Another advantage I have is also strength-related. In soccer there can be a lot of contact. Lots of scrabbling and jostling for the ball. Accidentally (or sometimes not) kicking an opponent or being kicked is a very regular occurrence – all part of the game. But when someone winds up and gives me a good hard kick to the right leg – their foot will more likely than not connect to the hard plastic shell I wear! The player will often end up holding their bruised toes and grimacing while I go on about my merry way, feeling nothing. Of course the reason I feel nothing is not only because of the brace, but because of my paralysis – which makes me less maneuverable and more prone to injuries (which take way longer to heal than they do for many of my competitors due to lack of circulation). The brace also forces me to work much harder than my opponents because I have to push against the brace with every step – there is only resistance for me, no free movement, nothing easy.

So – I clearly have some mechanical advantages. Should I be kicked out of my local rec. league? Should I join a league for people “like me?”

Once again, I understand that my situation and Pistorius’ is like apples and organs in many ways, and I do not presume to speak for whatever challenges he may face every day, out of public view. But I am quite sure that he has them, whether he wants to share them with his critics or not. Not that they would change their views one whit. Probably his candor would simply leave Oscar feeling humiliated and full of the sense of bitter futility that many people with disabilities report as part of their regular diet.

Should this way of “leveling the playing field” not be extended to its logical conclusions? If people are concerned about Pistorius’ mechanical advantages, then it seems only fair to remove other kinds of advantage as well. What about the level of training and support that American athletes often have compared to athletes from the developing world? In terms of diet, training and financial and material support, don’t American athletes have a ferocious advantage over their fellow-athletes from the Ivory Coast or Haiti, for example?

I recently took my daughter to watch the US Women’s Soccer team play against the Ukrainian National team. It was super fun for both of us, of course, and we were fascinated to see that every single member of the US team were wearing special contact lenses (donated and designed by Nike, I believe) which mitigated all the various effects of the sun! Surely this would have to fall into the category of a serious mechanical and financial advantage.

What is it that makes an amputee’s prosthetic limbs a more serious “advantage” than many of the other advantages that some athletes always seem to have over others!?


It seems likely that Pistorius’ cheetah legs do give him mechanical advantages in some ways, but the road he has to travel, and has had to travel for his whole life are far beyond what most athletes can comprehend. Tireless will, courage, strength and resilience are characteristic of all people who excel in life the way Oscar does – but he has to do it in a society where he must not only overcome his own physical challenges, but the challenges of a profoundly “able-ist” culture.

The human body is glorified everywhere in our culture, but most profoundly at the Olympic Games - and Pistorius has been found wanting. The greater glory and reward must of course go to those who represent the perfection of the human body – not the pursuit of perfection despite the perfectly beautiful and ordinary shortcomings of the human body.

No, that is a completely different category – the Paralympics. Of course Paralympians are every bit as gifted and driven as their Olympian counterparts, and the level of competition is every bit as intense (check out the wonderful documentary “Murderball” for just one example of this). So Pistorius should be content with that right? He should be happy and proud to compete against “his own kind”, not against the best of the best – which sometimes (gasp!) includes people without disabilities!

He wants to run against the best of the best, like every runner does. Seems pretty reasonable to me. And besides, the Paralympics, despite plenty of lip service, needed a lawsuit to force the Olympic Committee to even begin to support the travel and training of Paralympians in the most minimal ways compared to their fellow Olympians. When was the last time you turned on ESPN and saw live coverage and the Paralympics?

Meanwhile, able-bodied athletes are dropping like flies in doping scandal after doping scandal – but many more are not dropping at all, and continue their careers scot free. Other than putting an asterix next to their names in the record books, how has any of this affected Barry Bonds or Mark McGuire? How many millions of their dollars have they had to return to the innocent wallets of the fans?

Congress has been listening with great interest and moral outrage to the findings of the most recent report about doping in baseball, but are any athletes actually being punished, aside from a somewhat tricky PR mess for their handlers to try and rescue them from? Many of these players, in baseball and other sports can continue to cash their immense paychecks and play their games – but Oscar Pistorius is ruled ineligible to compete at all!

Are they afraid that if they allow him to compete, athletes will begin amputating their own limbs to catch up to his competitive advantage? If they are willing to take illegal performance-enhancing drugs that destroy their bodies and their psyches – surely losing a limb would be a small price to pay for victory! Yet I have not heard anything about anyone buying a do-it-yourself amputation kit on the internet. Nobody wants to trade places with Oscar Pistorius. They just want to keep him out of the Olympics.

I would find it all laughable if I were not so offended.

I say let him run. And if he wins – then fine, go ahead and put an asterix next to his name. But let Oscar Pistorius run. Let all of us run.

That's the Way the Ball Bounces

Hello Sports fans,

On January 8th, your favorite neighborhood UU soccer team played in its first Denver Championship game. Although a couple of our Chicago teams had also made it to the finals, no UUNITED team had ever brought home the (imaginary) trophy - a pattern fated to continue for at least another season.

Yes, we lost. 8-7 in a hard-fought match that we could have (perhaps should have) won had the ball bounced this way instead of that way. We were even cheered on by our very own pep band! John Hubert (music director at First Universalist) and our friend Kevin Lowery kept us pumped with trombone and bugle pep-versions of such favorites as "Spirit of Life."

But alas, it was not to be...

Still, we finished in second place, and were rewarded with the dubious honor of being promoted to the first division, where we will likely be playing against a whole new level of competition. So far though, being in the upper division has been pretty nice. We are undefeated after one glorious match - that our opponents didn't show up for (literally)!

So instead of a formal match, our team divided up and had a good tough intra-squad scrimmage for an hour, which definately beats trying to practice on our usual field, which (as I look at it from my office window) is covered in ice, snow and lots and lots of goose poop.

On a related note to all you loyal fans out there - my sources inform me that our UUNITED Pep band is putting together a much more ambitious song list for this season, including many of the hits that made high school pep rallies so...er...unforgettable. So watch the Unigram for our season schedule - be there or be square.

Aaron

UUNITED Wins, One Step Closer to Glory!

"UUNITED."
"Championship."

These are two words I never expected to see in the same sentance, but now, after a gutsy victory in the playoffs last night - we are on the brink.

We were all relishing the prospect of a rematch against our arch-rivals, "More Cowbell", who beat us 9-8 in a excellent down to the wire match last time we faced them. They scored the go-ahead to beat us with only seconds left on the clock - and we have been waiting for another shot at them ever since.

Cowbell is a fun team to play against: our two teams are evenly matched, and their players are competitive but fun, good people. Still, they finished the regular season in first place, while we dropped to fourth. But we knew we could take 'em.

The game was just as we left off last time - VERY closely fought. The first half was a defensive standoff, with neither team able to crack the opposing defense. We finally scored toward the end of the first half, on a brilliant goal by Jen (assisted, as we are so accustomed to, by Morten). But a one goal lead on a team as good as Cowbell is not enough, and sure enough, they equalized just a few minutes later. After that, the game sped up and so did the scoring. Our passing was patient and crisp, our defense resilient and our offense on target - sooo fun!

But every time we would pull ahead, they would come right back with a goal of their own. It wasn't until the final ten minutes or so that we pulled ahead for good, ultimately winning 5-3. It was a great game. Our win is all the sweeter because not only did we get avenge our earlier loss against Cowbell, but now, having beaten the #1 team - we are advancing to the Championship Match for the first time!! It's all been part of a pretty exciting learning curve for us - last season, we finished dead last in our league (although we all had fun doing it!!), and now - here we are...

We will play for Championship glory (such as it is) on January 8th, so send us plenty of good vibes. We will have a cheering section there (which has steadily grown through the season), so if you have some free time and want to come out to support the team, email me and I can give you time/directions.

Go UUNITED!!

UUNITED Soccer Team Begins Playoff Run

That's right, UU sports fans, our soccer team is poised for an epic run deep into the Division C Coed Recreational Indoor Soccer record books! Although we are left in 3rd place at the end of the regular season, we can still climb higher by playing well in the playoffs. It will not be an easy task, as we will have to overcome such storied franchises as "Nice Marmot", "Structurally Damaged" and "We Practice at the Pub!"

I can't say for sure whether we will win or lose, sports fans, but I can promise you this - 1) we will play hard, and 2) we will continue our noble tradition of looking really, really good in our spiffy blue uniforms!

Our first playoff game is tomorrow night at 8:40MST - wish us luck.

UUA Worker Justice Handbook

Howdy, all,

My new Worker Justice Handbook for congregations has just been published by the Unitarian Universalist Association. You can find it by going to the Leaders Library at the main UUA website: http://www.uua.org/leaders/leaderslibrary/index.php, choosing Social Justice as the topic, and then scrolling down the page to the Handbooks. The direct link is: http://www.uua.org/documents/mcemrysaaron/power_union.pdf.

Please share this broadly. This resource certainly does not contain all the answers, but I do hope it can help point congregations in the right direction.

Peace to you, Aaron