Barry Graham: Illusory Flowers in an Empty Sky
Pro-fluoridation group Healthy Kids, Healthy Portland’s bribing of minority organizations didn’t work. The attempt to put fluoride in Portland’s water was soundly defeated yesterday - for the fourth time.
I wonder if they’ll now try spending money on outreach and care rather than dogma and tokenism. Perhaps they could even try talking to people instead of trying to buy them.
Today is the final day of voting in the Portland special election that will decide whether fluoride is added to the city’s water.
Most U.S. cities already have fluoride in the water. Portland is the largest city that doesn’t. Portland residents have repeatedly voted against it. Recently, the city council decided to implement it anyway, but enough citizens signed a petition to call a special election.
Science is on the side of those who are pro-fluoridation; there is evidence that it can reduce cavities by 25 percent during a person’s lifetime, and there is scant evidence that it is hazardous to health. That question has not yet been resolved, but, if it were, and if I were convinced of both the benefits and the safety of fluoridation, I would still be inclined to vote No, and this is why:
As Willamette Week - which favors fluoridation - reported, Healthy Kids, Healthy Portland, the organization that is pushing for fluoridation, has paid $143,000 in bribe money to get minority organizations to endorse its campaign.
“Fluoride and dental health are really important to low-income communities and communities of color,” says Healthy Kids, Health Portland campaign manager Evyn Mitchell. “We are trying to provide capacity to the groups that will do the outreach.”
If that’s the case, then why did Mitchell’s organization have to buy support in those communities?
The argument goes that children in low-income families will benefit the most from fluoridation, because they have less access to dental care than the great and the good on the City Council who tried to make the decision for them.
This is not democracy. It is not social responsibility. It is not compassion. It is classism and racism. Instead of doing outreach, instead of talking to poor people and people of color and asking what they want and need, the great and good have decided that they know best. Instead of offering dental care, just put some fluoride in the water, and those who have no choice but to drink it might save $38 in dental bills in a lifetime.
To vote No on this issue is not just to vote against what some regard as contamination of some of the purest and cleanest municipal water in the nation - it is also a vote against arrogance and cultural imperialism. It is a vote for inclusion and care, and a vote against easy fixes.
Michael Musto, the paper’s gossip columnist, and Robert Sietsema, its restaurant reviewer, have left the paper, a week after the top editors resigned.
Last year, I suggested that Village Voice Media was in financial trouble. Its Phoenix paper has only a couple of professional journalists left on staff, and now its main paper, The Village Voice itself, has lost writers and editors in the latest purge. I wonder how long the company will continue to claim that, unlike other newspapers, it’s still profitable.
Do antidepressants hamper the creative process, or are they the answer to tortured artists’ prayers? Alex Preston recalls his experiences of Prozac and asks others how the drug affected their own work
I think that this article, while interesting, is limited in that it considers Prozac only in the context of its use as a treatment for depression. I’ve never been depressed, so can’t speak from experience of its efficacy there, but I find Prozac to be enormously helpful for post-traumatic stress disorder. The lowest standard dose - 20 milligrams a day - eliminates my symptoms almost entirely, and produces no side-effects at all.
I object to the article’s glib description of Prozac as “the crutch of choice for the worried well.” There are people who, without Prozac, are far from well. I am one of them.
The French magazine Marianne recently described Larry Fondation as “the Raymond Carver of Roman Noir.” I think the comparison flatters Carver.
Fondation’s new story collection, Martys and Holymen, was published this month. To coincide with that, I republished his earlier collection, Common Criminals, which was first published in 2003 and had been out of print for some years.
Daishin Stephenson reviewed A Trip to the Moon. For what I wrote about it a couple years ago, click here.
A Trip to the Moon, Georges Méliès’s masterpiece.
a bit of history. prior to turning his life over to film making, Méliès was a renowned stage magician. Méliès was inspired to make films after seeing Auguste and Louis Lumière’s invention, the Cinématographe, in 1895.
Méliès desired…
“Larry Fondation’s second book reads like a collaboration between Elmore Leonard, Dennis Cooper and Eminem.” - Metro Times (Detroit) Larry Fondation writes about what he knows best, the inner city with a twist. Raised in Dorchester, MA, where street fights and criminal acts were common occurrences, Fondation studied at Harvard University where the disparity between his history and his present stood out in sharp relief. He went on to become a community organizer in South Central Los Angeles and Compton, CA. The requirement for this job was not the degree in his hand but the fire in his belly. That fire burns in Common Criminals.
For the first time in history, we understand how isolation can ravage the body and brain. Now, what should we do about it?
This research is of urgent importance, but it surprises me not at all. I’m certain that every fear - with the possible exception of the fear of physical pain - is really a fear of loneliness, and that companionship is essential medicine. I wrote more about it here.
(from Traffic and Murder)
I think I was three years old
when my mother punched me in the face
so hard I rolled across the floor
and under a chair, and knocked
the chair over.
I don’t know
if that was the first time
she did it, or only
the first time
my memory held on to it.
She hated me, always.
She told me with her words,
her fists and her feet.
She was fat,
had a mouth full of brown teeth
and she smelled of piss,
sweat and cigarettes.
She has been dead for years,
turned to ashes
and given to the wind.
A wind blows this afternoon,
and it smells of grass and rain.
I make an offering of incense,
and I bow to her memory.
