November 2008 Archives

By now I'm sure everyone has heard of Walmart employee Jdimytai Damour who was crushed to death early Friday morning by a stampede of crazed shoppers. One does not even know what to say about such a senseless death.

Mob psychology aside, this appalling event is indicative of a much larger problem in this country. Thousands of people lined up all over the nation to buy things they don't need during a time of economic crisis. The corporate consumerist ethos has trickled down and made us sick with greed. A man is dead because people wanted $50 off a tv! And stores set up this mayhem by advertising "extremely limited quantities" and "special prices from 5-8am". The Long Island Walmart where Mr. Damour was killed was reportedly reopened by 1pm on the same day and again filled with shoppers. Not even a day to mourn? If folks weren't already boycotting Walmart, this seems like an excellent time to start.  

We must get it through our heads that no amount of "stuff" will lead to fulfillment. If anything good can come out of this economic downturn, I would hope that it would be people realizing that they can make due with less. If anything good can come out of Mr. Damour's death, I hope it will be a wake-up call to slow down and have compassion for one other.

Performance artist/activist Reverend Billy is doing some excellent work in this area. I urge folks to check out his documentary What Would Jesus Buy?. It seems especially timely this holiday season.

In the last couple of weeks, there have been quite a few articles documenting the reaction New Yorkers have had to the proposed plastic bag fee. I thought it would be interesting to sit with these differing points of views. I have pulled out just the quotes from the different newspaper articles I ran across since Bloomberg made his announcement.

Here are the negative reactions:

“Come on. This is a joke, right?” asked John Sanchez, a 40-year-old porter from Prospect Heights. “Six cents a bag? It’s ridiculous.”

“We walk from the subway and do our shopping, picking up four, five, six plastic bags along the way,” said George Ganthier, a retired Prospect Heights resident. “At six cents a bag, it would really add up. And remember, we’re already paying taxes on the stuff we buy!”

Plus, added Claudia Corwin, president of the board of directors at the Concord Village apartment complex in Downtown, “Brooklynites already recycle the plastic bags.” “We use them over and over and then throw our garbage in them rather than buying garbage bags,” she said.

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/45/31_45_gk_shopping_bags.html

At the 2000 N.Y. Deli on Second Avenue at 103rd Street in East Harlem, the owner, Sammy Ali, 30, said his customers would balk at paying for plastic. “No way,” Mr. Ali said on Thursday. “They ask us for plastic bags for free as it is. When we say no, they curse us out. They demand a bag for a 25-cent bag of chips.”

http://momandpopnyc.blogspot.com/2008/11/nickled-and-dimed.html

As the 30-year-old mother of two walked out of ShopRite in New Dorp earlier today with a cart full of bright yellow plastic bags, she put in her two cents about Mayor Michael Bloomberg's busted-budget proposal. "It's horrible," she said, loading her groceries into her minivan. "It's a horrible thing to do." Ms. Morgan said the city was capitalizing on the one thing New Yorkers relied on most -- convenience. She added that getting her 2-year-old and 4-year-old daughters out of the house and to the grocery store took enough energy that she doubted she could remember to bring her own bags.

But Bill Fani, the owner of the Met Foodmarket on Hylan Boulevard in Grasmere, said not only is the city long overdue for an educational component, but he said it would be unfair for the city to ask shoppers to pay for bags before investing money into an educational campaign. "I think it's just another tax the city is putting on people who really can't afford it," he said. "Try to educate the people of Staten Island about how plastic bags are hurting the environment. Then, if that fails, you say you did your best and it's time for everybody to pay."

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/11/staten_island_weighs_in_on_blo.html

“It’s stupid – it doesn’t make sense,” said Arshi Syed, a Fresh Meadows resident who shops at Waldbaums on Francis Lewis Boulevard. As she struggled to load her car with eight heaving grocery bags, she admitted she has been thinking of switching to recyclable cloth bags. “The thing is, we live in an apartment and plastic bags are more convenient. I don’t think this is fair,” she said.

Filomena Gamez often stops at Key Food in Forest Hills on her way home from work and said she is doubtful she will remember to carry reusable bags with her each time. She hopes the plastic bag fee will prove helpful to the environment but questions the City’s timing. “I don’t think it’s fair to continue adding new fees while we’re in a recession,” Gamez said. “I can’t imagine having to pay six cents for a plastic bag when groceries are already as expensive as they are – a gallon of milk is almost $4! And most of the time, one plastic bag isn’t sturdy enough to hold a lot of groceries, so they double bag it, and now we’re up to 12 cents. It’s ridiculous.”

http://www.queenstribune.com/news/1226592267.html

Janice Thomas, 47, a nanny in Brooklyn, said she used them to wrap items for her care packages to relatives in Granada. “You fold the stuff up and put them in the bag for shipping,” she said.

But customers like Bernadette Ojeda, 37, a mother of six, said charging 6 cents was “not right.” “It doesn’t make sense to have to carry an empty bag around,” she said of the idea of bringing her own bag. “That’s what the plastic bag is for.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/nyregion/18plastic.html

"Bloomberg is a piece of work," Clemelda Gipson, 39, said outside a D'Agostino grocery store in Chelsea. "Food is expensive and now we have to pay for the bags, too? They should try to come up with ideas and solutions and not just more taxes."

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/06/2008-11-06_if_i_had_a_nickel_for_every_bag_sez_mayo.html

Here are the positive reactions:

And that can’t happen soon enough for Joe Holtz, the general coordinator at the Park Slope Food Co-op, which banned plastic bags and now requires its 15,000 members to bring their own bags, buy a reusable bag for 99 cents or use one of the leftover cardboard boxes that are left near the checkout counter. “If you really want to be serious about getting rid of plastic bags, the fee needs to be higher,” he said. “Unlike the Co-op, which is a members-only group, the mayor can’t just ban plastic bags, so the only choice he has is to discourage their use through a fee or tax. “Six cents, 12 cents, 18 cents and then 25 cents — eventually, you have a virtual ban on the bags,” said Holtz.

“I wouldn’t mind paying [the fee] as long as the mayor takes all the money and puts it into the schools,” said Marianne Tober of Brooklyn Heights.

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/45/31_45_gk_shopping_bags.html

But that's exactly why William Harrigan of South Beach thought it was a good idea. "Maybe we need to do things like that, to make people think twice about what they're doing," he said, toting his groceries in a green cloth bag that he brought from home. "I'm for anything that deals with helping the environment. If you can, you try to make a mental note to bring them."

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/11/staten_island_weighs_in_on_blo.html

“I’ve heard the same law working well in so many other countries and I’m pretty surprised it hasn’t been implemented here yet,” said Penny Anna Makras, who shops at Key Food on Newtown Avenue in Astoria. “I support Bloomberg’s efforts. It’s better for the environment and if I don’t want to pay the fee then I’ll bring a reusable bag. If the law passes, I’ll remember to pack my bag – I don’t want to give away any more of my money.”

http://www.queenstribune.com/news/1226592267.html

On rainy days at Luna Deli, a bodega in East Harlem, some customers demand plastic bags even without a purchase. “They ask for bags to cover their shoes,” said David Cortes, a store clerk who said he sometimes charges 5 cents per bag in such cases because “the store pays for those bags — they’re not a gift.” Mr. Cortes said he had a front-row seat to the waste: Customers ask for bags even for cigarettes, and to wrap beer cans “so the police don’t see them drinking.” “It just creates more trash,” said the clerk, who said he agreed with the proposal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/nyregion/18plastic.html

"I think it's a good idea. There is way too much plastic being used at the grocery stores anyways," said actress Denise Lute. "We need to be eco-conscious. If I'm charged a nickel it'll make me take my own bag."

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/11/06/2008-11-06_if_i_had_a_nickel_for_every_bag_sez_mayo.html

And here the New York Times tried to capture the complexities of the issue:

Steven Thrasher usually carries two reusable cloth bags for any impromptu shopping. At the Ikea store in Brooklyn the other day, he gladly forked over $1.18 for two of the store’s big blue bags, made of durable plastic for repeated use. But even an environmentally aware New Yorker like Mr. Thrasher cannot shake himself loose of the everyday disposable plastic bag... (continued: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/nyregion/18plastic.html)

I'm not sure whether book trailers really do much to help sales, but they're a fun concept, and some of them can be great. Here's one promoting Andrew Zuckerman's new photography book, "Wisdom." It's a collection of sage advice -- interviews and portraits of 50 luminaries over the age of 65.

Respect for elders is something our culture is notoriously low on. But not all elders necessarily have great advice -- just try asking your racist granny about Obama.  So what do you think -- are the sound bites here worth taking to heart?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BB41MLgoWk&hl=en&fs=1]

Against my better judgment I watched the Sarah Palin turkey farm interview. I will not post a link on here because it is gruesome. If you want to watch it, feel free to find it on your own on Youtube.

Basically it consists of Palin doing her political duty by “pardoning” a Thanksgiving turkey from getting killed at a farm. She hurriedly reads a speech from a folded piece of paper about why this one turkey will be pardoned. I know the President does this, too, and I found this whole show ridiculous enough. Just wait, it gets worse.

I could feel myself starting to get annoyed at the whole thing from the beginning of the program. Not to mention wondering why is this woman still in the public spotlight? but just at the total hypocrisy of the situation. Then, after the speech was over, Palin agreed to do an interview outside. In the background of the interview, there are turkeys being slaughtered one by one, in plain view of the camera. A man carries them in, flapping and struggling, and places them in a funnel upside down where I imagine their heads are cut off, because the struggling stops. There’s a big trough of blood underneath the funnels. I don’t even know what Palin’s interview was about; I wasn’t listening. I was watching the scene in horror, trying not to be nauseas.

Did the camera guy not notice? How did Palin not hear the squawking behind her? Did they know? Was there some motive behind this? On Countdown at least, the image of the slaughter in the background was semi-blurred out to spare some gore, but I think the lack of clarity made me mentally visualize the worst, and I felt sick to my stomach.

“I don’t think I can eat meat anymore,” I told my friends that night, completely serious.

“Don’t let Sarah Palin ruin meat for you!” they said.

Did Sarah Palin ruin meat for me? I’m not sure, but I’m faced with a disgust for meat I’ve never felt as strongly before in my life. I’m trying to break it down piece by piece to be rational about this before I make an impulse decision to go vegetarian (and risk being a “poser” as my vegetarian sister warned). There are two separate issues here:

1) The awful facts of the process of the animals being killed (which I’ve conveniently avoided awareness of for all these years).

2) The Sarah Palin Ick-Factor

I want to make sure I’ve got this worked out in my head, because this is a big decision, and one I want to be fully aware of. At it stands, I think if I eat turkey on Thursday I will see Sarah Palin’s head on the bird. Thankfully the dinner I’m going to will not actually HAVE a turkey (Chinese Thanksgiving with the boyfriend’s family). But what about the rest of my diet?

Am I feeling this way because meat has now come to represent (in my mind) the conservative agenda? Do I really care about the animals? Or am I just being squeamish?

“Please, I grew up in a third world country,” said my decidedly meat-eating Chinese boyfriend. “When we wanted chicken, we brought it into our kitchen and killed it right there.” Yeah. I grew up on Long Island. We didn’t do that. If I was put in the situation, I don't think I'd be able to kill an animal myself. Does that mean I shouldn't be eating meat?

When I was a kid I saw the movie “Chicken Run” and I couldn’t eat chicken for a month (and that was just an animated movie. I mean it was claymation for crying out loud). My mom got sick of it and put a piece of chicken on my plate one night with a piece of paper attached to it that said, “Help me!” My mom has a sick sense of humor. I never ate pork growing up so “Babe” didn’t get to me, though I believe if we did eat pork in my house I would have had to give that up, too. I’m a sucker for anthropomorphising (not just because that's a Scrabble winner).

Maybe someone needs to put a Beanie Baby turkey with duct tape over its mouth in my freezer for me to snap out of this. Or maybe it really is just time for me to fully commit to being a vegetarian. Regardless, this will be my first turkey-less Thanksgiving. The amount of sleep I’m going to lose over this: none.

I went to the dentist recently, and on my way out I was given a plastic bag to carry very few tiny items (toothbrush, small tube of toothpaste, the usual dental schwag). This was unfortunate, of course, but hardly unusual. What made it truly noxious was the message printed on the bag:

[caption id="attachment_2020" align="alignnone" width="510" caption="from the Orwell school of environmentalism"][/caption]

I would have declined the bag, of course, except that I couldn't pass up the chance to share this particular instance of thoughtlessness. The jokes, I'm sure, can write themselves.