Bill Kauffman returns with his essay “Bye, Bye Miss American Empire,” in the latest issue of Orion Magazine. As he has done in the past, Kauffman makes a rather human plea for secession, arguing that the United States has grown too large for its own good, and we have suffered because of it. A few interesting bits:

“The left-right thing has got to go,” declares Ian Baldwin, cofounder of Chelsea Green Publishing and publisher of Vermont Commons. “We’re decentralists and we are up against a monster.”

What might replace left and right, liberal and conservative, as useful political bipolarities? Globalist and localist, perhaps, or placeless versus placeist. Baldwin argues that “peak oil and climate change are linked and irreversible events that will within a generation change how human beings live. The world economy will relocalize.” He dismisses homeland security as “fatherland security”—for “homeland,” with its Nazi-Soviet echoes, has never been what Americans call their country. What we need, says Baldwin, is “homestead security”: sustainable agriculture, small shops, a revival of craftsmanship, local citizenship, communal spirit. The vision is one of self-government. Independence from the empire but interdependence at the grassroots. Neighborliness. The other American Dream.

…

Decentralizing power would have the additional virtue of localizing those coalition-splitters known as “social issues.” Case in point: When one of the southern delegates at the Burlington convention calls abortion a heinous crime, I sit back to watch the fireworks. They are doused in the fresh waters of federalism. There is general agreement on a mind-your-own-damn-business principle. If Marin County wants to serve joints with school lunches and Tupelo, Mississippi, wants the Ten Commandments in the classroom, well, that’s up to the people of Marin and Tupelo. Ain’t none of my business. Yours, either.

…

Trust local people. That, really, is the soul of the case for secession. Bringing it all back home, as a small-town Minnesota boy who took the name Bob Dylan once wrote. For home is where secession must be rooted. Ideology of any sort is not so much a dead end as it is a road without end that carries the enthusiast far from any place resembling home. It unmoors him, it leaves her without anchorage, quick to blame societal ills on outsiders, on dark alien forces. I know: we live in the seventh year of the bloody and imperial Bush Octennium. If Dick Cheney isn’t a dark alien force I don’t know what is. But a healthy secessionist movement must be founded in love: love of a particular place, its people (of all ethnicities and colors), its culture, its language and books and music and baseball teams and, yes, its beer and flowers and punk rock clubs.

Posted on 29 June 2007

I’ve come to learn that when the weather forecast calls for a 30% chance of scattered thunderstorms, that really means there’s a 100% chance that I will rode home in the rain. As I pulled out of the loading dock at the office, I looked over my shoulder, to the west, and noticed the dark clouds gathering on the horizon. Plenty of time, I thought, and I headed east along the river. Things still looked good as I passed through Panther Hollow, though I noticed the clouds were beginning to creep over the edge of the valley. Climbing up Neville Avenue, the rain began to fall, just sprinkles at first. Then, at the traffic light at 5th, looking west, I saw lightning. The storm was here.

Suddenly, it was pouring. Within a few blocks, along Ellsworth, pouring rain turned to sheets of water, pushed around by a strong westerly wind. Then, a few blocks later, hail. Pea-sized chunks, nothing that hurt, but hail nonetheless. At the corner of Negley and Centre, all hell broke loose. Thanks to the high rise apartment buildings, the wind whipped hear and there, carrying sheets of rain with it. Water cascaded in a sheet from the visor of my helmet. Waiting at the traffic light, the wind threatened to push me over. A heavy stream of water on the road rolled over my foot. Thank heavens I bought the Pelican laptop case, or else I would be writing a rather sizable check to my employer to replace my computer. The only bright spot was I had quite tail wind. Passing through the intersection of Negley and Penn, I crossed a river of rain water, complete with white caps.

Did I mention that during the course of all this, lightning was flashing, quite clearly, all around?

Once home, I stood on the back porch, dripping wet, toweling off my bike. I was still dripping wet. As I walked, water squirted from my shoes. I like to think that I’ve ridden in some pretty terrible conditions over the years, but I’m quite sure this ride takes the prize.

Posted on 28 June 2007

Reason‘s Ronald Bailey examines the push for more bio-fuels and decides perhaps it’s not such a great idea. On the surface, using corn as a fuel product seems to be a good idea, but Bailey does a fine dissecting why this is not, in fact, the case. As you might expect, a libertarian like Bailey begins with the market–due to increased demand from non-food sources (i.e. the ethanol industry), the price of corn has increased. This, in turn, has caused the price of meat to increase, as most major meat producers use corn as a primary source of feed (we’ll come to back this a minute). The increased demand for corn has also caused many farms to scale back other crop production, thus also raising the price of that produce due to a scaled back supply.

As we increase the amount of corn used for fuel production, many people will feel the squeeze.

Another way to look at it is that it takes 450 pounds of corn to make enough ethanol to fill a 25-gallon gas tank. Four hundred and fifty pounds of corn supplies enough calories to feed a person for one year. The USDA projects that in 2010 the ethanol industry will consume 2.6 billion bushels of corn. A bushel weighs 56 pounds, so a quick calculation yields the result that 2.6 billion bushels of corn could supply enough calories to feed nearly 325 million people for a year.

Keep in mind, too, that currently, ethanol production is rather inefficient, meaning producers use quite a bit of energy to produce far less ethanol. Corn (and its by-products) as human fuel is far more fuel efficient.

Back to cows.

But why focus blame on gas-guzzling SUVs? After all, one-third of the world’s grain is now fed to animals to produce meat. If we’re really worried about the world’s poor, shouldn’t we give up not only SUVs, but brisket, bacon and breasts too? The amount of grain that actually goes into producing a pound of meat is controversial. However, the non-profit consortium of 37 scientific societies, the Council on Agricultural Science and Technology estimates that it takes around 3 kilograms of grains to produce 1 kilogram of meat. In 1999, CAST calculated that “an annual rate of growth in cereal production between 1.1 and 1.4 percent, i.e., a lower rate than in recent decades, should meet needs for both food grains and the feed grains required to meet the [world’s] projected per capita demand for meat, milk, and eggs.” When all is said and done meat is still food. Biofuels will now compete with meat production for grain supplies.

Cows are remarkably efficient animals, able to turn grass into protein (if we were only so lucky). Yet most beef ranchers, in an effort to get bigger steers in less time, fill them full of grain (primarily corn). Ironically, grass-fed beef is considered a luxury item (though thanks to a growing number of small, often organic, ranchers, this is changing). But, of course, Bailey is correct–meat is still food, as we haven’t figured out a way to toss sirloin into our gas tanks. But, when a more efficient way of producing by all accounts better meat exists, why do we choose another alternative?

Posted on 23 June 2007

Todd, at Clever Cycles, examines the Catholic Church’s recent document on the automobile, “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road.” I left a rather long comment on the post, but I thought I may add to that a bit in this space. Tood is unabashedly anti-car, and like many like-minded folks, sees the car as a root-of-all-evil object–if we only didn’t have cars, the world would be a far greater place. Now, first, let me say that while I am not anti-car, I think that, yes, we might be a bit better off if most of us spent a little less time in a shiny metal box going hither and yon. But, at the end of the day, that is only a drop in the bucket, and sin will find another way to subvert our lives. Todd quotes Ivan Illich’s Energy and Equity in his post, and Illich (while not being anti-car) argues that our tools (i.e. the car) have a usual limit of power–even the most below average car (think Yugo) is still vastly more powerful than it needs to be. This point is well-taken, but Illich was also keenly aware that, for instance, our dependence on the automobile was merely a sympton of a larger disease, not simply a disease unto itself.

And, again, here lies the problem with many of the anti-car crowd–assigning blame. Championing a single cause above all others causes us to become myopic (or, to use another cliché, we have a hammer, so all the world’s a nail). Yes, let’s drive less. Let’s live in neighborhoods where we can walk or bike to work, walk to the store, walk to playground with our kids. And let’s realize that simply not driving or owning a car isn’t the singular solution to our problems. There are deeper problems afoot.

Posted on 20 June 2007

Here we go again. I couldn’t resist organizing another ride for BikeFest. The route is here, though it will subject to a change or two after the recce. It is a combination of several rides from Oscar Swan’s book (specifically Wildwood and SR228). It’s about half as hilly as the Iron City Populaire, with the return leg being mostly flat or downhill (save for the zoo hill at the finish). Start and finish will be at Tazzo d’Oro (if I learned one thing with the Iron City Populaire, it was keep the finish close to your house so you don’t have to add another 7 miles to the day to get home), with the ride beginning at 8:30AM. I’ll be skipping the time limit and any checkpoints during the ride–I didn’t really do anything to enforce it, and there’s no need to confusion anyone. More details will be available here.

Posted on 20 June 2007

Fine weather around the ‘burgh this weekend.

Saturday, after tackling the task of trimming the too-large hedgerow next to our house, I spun out on the Surly in search of dirt roads north of the city. The goal was to recce Old Mill Road between Fox Chapel Road and Route 910. Being who I am, my proposed “easy” way of getting involved far too much climbing (including the long grind up to Dorseyville from Sharpsburg and a steep pitch or two on Fox Chapel Road). Old Mill was, however, a perfect downhill roller coaster on a combination of old asphalt and gravel. Having not thought through the return trip from 910, I turned around and enjoyed the dirt (and the hills) again. It’s really an odd, amazing stretch of road in the middle of such an affluent area. Perfectly ridable on 28mm tyres (and 25s would have probably survived).

Today the family, along with several friends, took the trip to Coopers Rock for a day of bouldering. The highlight was Sebastien during his first real bit of roped climbing up a 15 foot slab, with me hip belaying at the top. He made it about 3/4 of the way up, and had a blast. He was so excited that he wore his climbing shoes for the hike out.

Posted on 10 June 2007

Last night was our first CSA pick-up at Mildreds’ Daughters’ Farm. We upped our subscription to a full share this year, and even this early in the season, we filled a box with produce. The haul included:

• Several heads of lettuce, and several bags of salad greens
• Asparagus
• Sugar snap peas
• Chard
• Cilantro
• Scallions and garlic scallions
• Other various greens

Again, not bad. I’m looking forward to the rest of the year.

Posted on 8 June 2007

Ross Douthat makes a fine point about religion, specifically Christianity, in America:

If Christianity in America meant the Christianity of Benedict XVI – or even the Christianity of C.S. Lewis, for that matter – I bet that about 15 percent of the country would be practicing believers. But you don’t get Benedict or even Lewis from most pulpits; you get socially-conservative Emersonianism in Red America and socially-liberal Emersonianism in Blue America. This wouldn’t fly in the European cultural context, but maybe there’s a form of organized religion that would – its theology just hasn’t been invented yet.

Previously he points out that in general, American theology is becoming more and more deistic in its leanings, despite its emphasis on elements of the culture wars. While politically conservative pastors rail against abortion, they promote a theology of materialism that does not question the fruits of liberal economic system. At the same time, there is a shift among many evangelicals to leave the culture wars and embrace so-called liberal causes such as the environment or poverty. (It should be noted this shift is accompanied by a bellief that these things should be handled, at least in part, by the federal government. One must look harder to see an emphasis on personal responses to these issues.) As Ross points out, Pope Benedict or C.S. Lewis (or even Francis Schaeffer) preach a totalitarian system of theology–absolutely no area of life should go without inspection, and, more often than not, this means that we should be questioning all elements of our American culture.

Posted on 7 June 2007

Rod Dreher, in discussing director Judd Apatow’s subversive comedy 40 Year Old Virgin, examines one of the powerful changes that parenthood precipitates–the loss of irony. First, Dreher quotes Apatow:

“My way of dealing with the world has always been to make fun of it and observe it but not take part in it,” Apatow told me when we first met in the fall of 2005. “That’s how I became a writer. But when you have kids, suddenly you have to be part of things. It leads almost to a breakdown because your whole defense mechanism is now really destructive.”

And Dreher concurs:

There’s something about becoming a father or mother for the first time that annihilates ironic detachment. In fact, if you do remain ironically detached — cool, in other words — as a parent, something is wrong with you. I think about how snotty and cruel (but funny) my own writing used to be before I had kids, and I just shake my head. It’s fatally easy to make fun of everything when you don’t have a stake in it.

And I do, too. It’s not that you are suddenly out to change the world (though perhaps you should), but you do care a little more about things that you may have laughed at or brushed off in the past. The little things begin to matter.

Posted on 31 May 2007

A year or two ago, I posted about a Grant Peterson essay on the commitment required of commuting by bicycle. Dahon, the bike manufacturing who printed the piece, has re-published the essay, titled “What They Don’t Tell You About Bike Commuting. I’m glad it has re-appeared. It should be required reading for anyone who gets around via bicycle.

Posted on 25 May 2007