Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 193

How America’s morning pot of joe became “coffee for one”

(Credit: Salon/Ilana Lidagoster)

Coffee is usually the first sip of the morning. It is the beverage that opens the eyes to a new day and prepares our nervous system for whatever the forces throw our way. Brewing coffee in coffee pots from humble metal to decorative ceramic has been around for a very long time. Over the years this basic design evolved into the percolator and electric percolator, which worked fine for a family or group having their coffee at the same time. Other methods were also embraced by those who had the time and the inclination to go gourmet. The elegant but slow French press, the very leisurely drip method, the unhurried pour over. The sometimes near theatrical preparation was an integral part of the process. Whatever the choice, a special grind of coffee was needed for each different brewing technique. In any case, preparing the cof­fee was going to take time. No quick fix there. Preparing the morning brew using these low-concept methods would take a big chunk out of the morning.

What was behind the desire for a fresh-brewed single serve? When did cof­fee drinkers realize that they could hope for, and get, great-tasting coffee one cup at a time, really fast? Sure, there was instant, and the quality of that seemed to be improving, but would it ever be possible to have a quick fresh-brewed cup of coffee before heading out the door in the morning?

You’re drinking what with breakfast?

Coffee wasn’t always in the spotlight on the beverage stage. Coffee con­sumption in the Unites States peaked around 1945, with folks drinking about forty-six gallons per person.

But another beverage was starting to become a lot more popular starting at around that time. (No, not beer. Beer, along with ale, was the popular drink for breakfast or anytime in the eighteenth century.1) Soda. The real beverage love of people’s lives was soda.

While consumption of coffee had been flat for years, after 1962 there was a marked decline in coffee drinking. In 1962, about 75 percent of adults in the United States drank coffee. By 1988, just 50 percent were coffee drinkers. Not only were there fewer coffee drinkers, those cof­fee drinkers were drinking fewer cups of coffee. In 1962, coffee drinkers were quaffing around three cups a day. By 1980, the amount of coffee being imbibed per day was slightly more than two cups and by 1991, that amount fell to less than two cups per day. And the people who were drink­ing the coffee were those in an older generation. Where were the people in their twenties? An older population with little interest in coffee drinking and a younger generation that didn’t care so much for coffee didn’t bode well for the longevity of coffee as a permanent part of the food and bev­erage habits of consumers. What were the younger people drinking? Yes. Soda. As coffee consumption fell, soda consumption rose, and at a very bubbly and steady pace.

Coffee was getting seriously displaced by the cold, carbonated way to get caffeine, even in the morning. It was faster, it was more conve­nient, and it was just a lot . . . more . . . cool. At least that’s what the soda makers wanted folks to take away from their “Coke in the Morn­ing” ad campaign back in the 1980s and more recently with a variation on that theme. Having your morning caffeine via a refreshing, cold, and easy-to-carry soda was very appealing to a lot of consumers. They didn’t have to wait in line to fill a flimsy Styrofoam cup with what was likely over-brewed coffee in the convenience store, and, if they were having breakfast at home, they didn’t have to bother with measuring the cof­fee and waiting around while it brewed, and waiting some more while it cooled enough to drink. Why not just open the refrigerator and grab a soda with a decent amount of caffeine and bring along another one for the road? Or two.

Add to that Pepsi’s “Pepsi A.M.” campaign. Pepsi A.M. had 28 percent more caffeine than regular Pepsi but still about 75 percent less than the amount of caffeine in coffee. Then, sometime in the 1990s a few test mar­kets got the chance to try Pepsi Kona and Pepsi Cappuccino.

Not enough? Then, how about Coca-Cola BlāK, a coffee-flavored cola? This coffee-ish soda was available for a short time in 2006. Coca- Cola likely was trying to interest the gourmet coffee lover with this very seductive-looking beverage bottle and its advertising campaign. After about two years the product was discontinued.5 Another coffee and soda combination was Café-Cola, produced in the 1990s.

It is evident that while soda was king, coffee was still an influence that soft drink manufacturers wanted to exploit. And for a lot of people, a cold caffeinated beverage with maybe a caffeine infusion was just what they wanted. They would rather have a cold soda than a cup of probably not-so-fresh-coffee. Plus, maybe they just didn’t like the taste of coffee. Maybe this was because the coffee they were exposed to was just bad coffee. And there was that time thing, again. Who had time to wait around for a pot of coffee to brew? Why not just have an ice-cold Coke? If you needed more caffeine, just have another, and maybe another. Plus, for a lot of workers on fluctuating work schedules, the first meal of the day often just went better with a cold soda.

In 1985, Jolt Cola promised all of the sugar and twice the caffeine.7 (There is a Facebook page dedicated to bringing it back.)8 All you had to do was open the refrigerator, grab it, drink it, and go. Or drink it on the go. This was a lot less cumbersome than making coffee in the morn­ing, especially considering that probably half the pot would be poured down the drain anyway since there was so little time to drink more than one hastily prepared cup. Soda consumption was going up, while coffee consumption was going down. You can be sure that coffee organizations took notice.

Of course, there was instant coffee, but even with that you had to wait for the water to boil and then stir it and wait some more for the coffee to cool down so you could drink it. And then if you wanted a second cup, you’d have to do it all over again.

So, enticing people to come back to or to start drinking coffee in the morning, never mind at other times, was going to take some effort, imag­ination, and forethought. Consumers would have to start being persuaded that, hey, maybe they should rethink their love affair with soda, which was ongoing for generations.

Part of the pullback to coffee was due to a gradual evolution on the one hand, but also to a few more revolutionary events. And they all seemed to have happened around the same time.

Revolution #1: Mr. Coffee (1972)

Its name is now synonymous with electric drip coffeemakers, but back in 1972 when it was first introduced for home use, Mr. Coffee was a brand-new idea in the world of making fresh coffee at home. Here was a machine that in one compartment you just had to fill with water and in another compartment place a filter laden with ground coffee, plug it in, turn it on, and wait, but with a wait that was a lot shorter than with other brewing methods. Plus, you didn’t have to watch over it to make sure it didn’t boil over or burn. It was all automatic. You could get on with whatever else you needed to do and the coffee would practically make itself.

Mr. Coffee was a resounding success, selling more than a million units in two years and was hailed as a revolutionary food preparation device. And it was.

Revolution #2: The birth of coffeehouse culture in the United States

McNulty’s—1895

This establishment goes back a long time before specialty coffee became a phenomenon. Since the early twentieth century, this landmark for coffee and tea lovers has been offering the best of coffees and teas in Manhattan’s West Village. True, there is only the one store (the store first opened not far from its current location)—but what a coffee (and tea) emporium, singu­lar in every respect. Here, coffee lovers have come to know the best coffee available and have come to expect nothing less. Folks outside the New York area can order online, and McNulty’s continues to get a high ranking and not just due to nostalgia. It is a favorite with tourists, as well. A step inside reveals the heady smells of so many gourmet coffees—it is hard to choose the one or ones you want to try.

McNulty’s has been around for a very long time and may be in just one small location, but they are further proof that people will seek out fine coffees once they are awakened to the pleasures this perfect beverage offers. These coffee lovers learned that settling for mediocre coffee is not an option.

There really cannot be too many gourmet coffeehouses. Even though other coffee emporiums have opened nearby it only enhances what McNulty’s has to offer. There is no such thing, it seems, as too many choices of where to find the perfect cup of coffee.

Peet’s Coffee

Peet’s Coffee is the brainchild of Holland-born Alfred Peet, who knew pretty much everything there was to know about coffee. He came to the United States after World War II and was flabbergasted at the swill that Americans referred to as coffee. Seeing it as his mission to set things right, he opened his first store in 1966 in Berkeley, California. His method was a forerunner of the gourmet preparation of coffee. He prepared his coffee in small batches using fresh beans that were dark roasted. The result was a cup of coffee that opened the eyes, taste buds, and souls of coffee drinkers. So this is what coffee was supposed to taste like!

Three years later, Peet’s Coffee & Tea was renowned as a popular place for coffee lovers to gather. The area became known as the Gourmet Ghetto where coffee lovers and foodies (although the term didn’t exist at the time) could meet up and take it all in, in the form of rich, deep coffee, exciting new foods, and stimulating conversation. This was a new era for coffee entrepreneurs.

Peet’s coffee devotees were known as “Peetniks.” Today there are close to 250 Peet’s stores in seven states and Washington, DC, and Peet’s is now part of JAB Holdings (more about JAB later).

Starbucks

Founded on the idea that people wanted great coffee, Starbucks began as a single store in the historic district of Pike’s Place in Seattle, Washing­ton, in 1971 and has grown into many different things to many different people. They were at the forefront of getting consumers interested in, and educated about, really good coffee. The seeds for expansion from a single store to a worldwide phenomenon began in 1982 when Howard Schultz came onboard. Later, a trip to espresso bars in the Italian city of Piazza del Duomo—seeing firsthand the serious coffee culture with animated patrons relaxing and conversing—convinced Schultz that the coffeehouse ethos could be done and would do well in the United States.10 (And now Howard Schultz is taking the idea back to Italy with those Starbucks Roasteries.)

Over the years, Starbucks has offered beverages of varying sophisti­cation and uniqueness, and customers have been eager to try not only delicious, gourmet coffees, but also to explore the different variations on the coffee theme that Starbucks offered. So, with the growing popular­ity and availability of the fine coffees that Starbucks served, an increasing number of coffee drinkers and coffee converts were becoming aware that the coffee that they drank didn’t have to be predictable or dull. Coffee held many possibilities for an adventure in caffeine imbibing.

Now with more than twenty-two thousand stores worldwide and more than thirty blends and premium single-origin coffees, Starbucks is firmly entrenched as a part of the coffee culture.

Revolution #3: The coffee bag — making one cup of coffee at a time

This might be a bit of a stretch, but think about it. It was in the 1980s that coffee drinkers started to wake up to the idea that they could have a cup of fresh-brewed—not a variation of instant—coffee and get on with their day faster. Now, this is more about being able to make a single cup of coffee at home. It would not be of the same quality as the coffee served in gour­met coffeehouse, but it would be fresher tasting than instant coffee. When opening a box of single-serve coffee bags, such as Maxwell House Singles, you would be met with the agreeable scent of fresh-enough coffee.

Folgers and Maxwell House introduced coffee singles, which were like oversized tea bags filled with coffee that, when placed in a cup with hot water, would steep and brew into a cup of coffee. This method followed the principle of the tea bag, and the coffee brewed fairly quickly right in the mug, but something was missing. While you could, in theory, brew your coffee in a cup á la tea bag, some thought there remained a bit of an aftertaste. It was coffee. It was pretty fast. And it was fresh brewed. But it wasn’t . . . great.

Coffee singles are still readily available and are convenient, for sure. There is a variation on this, a paper-filter-placed-over-a-cup method known as Japanese Pour Over Coffee, which is more of a drip method not unlike the cone filter pour-over that can be used with a pot or a single cup.

Cone filters produced by companies like Melitta offered the option of making drip coffee one cup at a time, but this was not always convenient and it did not save much time. If you needed to get going and out of the house, standing around waiting for the beverage to drip through the filter into your mug or cup took too long. If you had the wrong type of coffee grinds, the cone filter paper would either get clogged or the liquid that filtered down into your cup became too weak. And unless you were using a clear mug so you could see what was going on, the coffee could overflow onto the counter.

One thing is clear: once the option for making one cup at a time started to appear, the thirst for a better cup-at-a-time grew. And the need for con­tinuously improving the results naturally followed. Coffee drinkers were starting to really like the idea of having their morning java fast and fresh brewed.

Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch: “You’ve gotta have your radar up and your ears wide open”

Stuart Murdoch (Credit: David Boni/Matador)

When Belle and Sebastian first emerged in the latter half of  the ’90s, they regularly issued EPs in addition to studio albums. These mini-records — including 1997’s “Dog on Wheels,” “Lazy Line Painter Jane” and ” 3.. 6.. 9 Seconds of Light” — were as meticulous as any full-length, less stopgap releases than fully formed mini-records that worked best separately.

Twenty years later, the Scottish band is bringing things full circle (in a sense) with a self-produced three-part EP series, “How to Solve Our Human Problems.” (Part one arrived on Dec. 8, while the other two are in stores on Jan. 19 and Feb. 16, respectively.) Recorded in the band’s hometown of Glasgow, Scotland, the EPs find the troupe stretching out, often in delightful ways.

The first EP encompasses burbling synth-rock (“The Girl Doesn’t Get It”), dapper retro-disco (“Sweet Dew Lee”) and a song dominated by insistent drum rhythms (“We Were Beautiful”). The second EP, meanwhile, boasts the lovely single “I’ll Be Your Pilot” — a bossa nova-kissed song highlighted by a keening oboe — and the quirky, synth-zapped ’70s rock strut “Cornflakes,” as well as the soul-inspired “Same Star.”

In the hands of other bands, these detours would sound forced or messy. Belle and Sebastian, however, tie these disparate approaches together with their usual combination of earnest lyrics and meticulous sonic detailing.

A few weeks ago, Murdoch checked in with Salon. Go on to the next page to hear about what went into the creation of the series of EPs, including being open to the kind of magic that unfolds in the studio.

What was the impetus for you to do a series of EPs?

We always try to shake it up. We really wanted to get back in the studio at home. And this time we didn’t set it up; we just kind of went into the studio ourselves in Glasgow and started recording the tracks one by one, instead of building up to an LP. We thought it would be more appropriate to put it out in a different way — a more casual way.

We enjoyed going to California or Atlanta to make records, but this time we thought, “Yeah, this is more appropriate, this is more fun.” It pushed the music in different directions.

I was going to ask: Doing the EPs yourself, did it spur your songwriting in different directions? How?

As far as songwriting goes, it’s usually about where you’re at, what you want to talk about, how you’re feeling. A lot of song ideas really [are] just moaning about things that you don’t have and you’d like to have. [Laughs.] I’m just getting it out there on vinyl.

Being able to get into the studio quickly, just around the corner from where we live . . .  For instance, the next single, “I’ll Be Your Pilot,” it appeared just at the time we started, so that was the first song we recorded. It was nice to get that fresh. And I didn’t really know the shape of it — I didn’t know where the instrumentation was going to go. We never rehearsed it; we just sort of went into the studio and jammed it. Actually, it took a lot longer than it probably should have done just for that reason. [Laughs.] But it’s good to jam it a little bit and not be so prepared.

I like that song especially. I read that it’s about your relationship with your son, and references “The Little Prince.”

I didn’t force it out. My wife, she [would] sometimes tease me, “So when are you going to write a song about me?” [Laughs.] And I said, “Well, I don’t know — I can’t really schedule these things. They just come along.” When the kids were born she was like, “All right — when are you going to write a song about the kids?” [Laughs.] What happens is, your mind changes when you have kids, more so than when you get married. It’s a real game-changer.

I’ve talked to other songwriters who have mentioned that becoming parents completely changed their worldview and perspective, which is so interesting from a creative standpoint.

It’s radical, in a sense. It makes you feel a little bit like what you’d imagine a benevolent god would feel like. You are God to this little baby. [Laughs.] That’s what it feels like.

It can be overwhelming — but amazing.

Luckily, we’ve not been completely overwhelmed. The first time you get pooped on is a little bit underwhelming.

That’ll bring you right back down to earth.

Yeah. [Laughs.]

“I’ll Be Your Pilot” is next to “Cornflakes,” which is such a fun song. That’s what I like about listening to the EPs: Each song is a little different, and you don’t know what’s around the corner next. As a listener, that’s very invigorating.

I think that’s a case in point. That’s [guitarist/vocalist] Stevie [Jackson]’s song. He’s a little bit like a hurricane when he goes in the studio; everything has to be fast and everything has to be shooting straight from the head. I think he got a chance this time to do just that. When you take away a producer and take away a big studio, suddenly you get much closer to the band. This can be a good thing, because you want to feel the personalities, you want to feel the individuals. “Cornflakes” is 100 percent Stevie. The words — I haven’t figured out what’s going on with the words. In a sense, it’s his scattershot mind. He did well with that one.

What other songs stand out to you as ones that you felt turned out really well or are particularly proud of?

“We Were Beautiful,” that was hard to pin down. It came from a different direction. All I could really hear was that drum beat, which is that kind of drum-and-bass style. It’s gratifying when you get in with the other guys in the band, maybe you’re just around the computer, “Can you just give it a simple drum beat and build it up from there?” It’s coming from a different place. Once everybody starts coloring things in, and the chorus comes in, it turns into something. It’s fun not knowing where you’re going when doing things for the first time.

Did doing this series of EPs show you any new sides to one another?

We had just finished a band meeting . . .  We have lots of meetings. [Laughs.] My wife’s always asking, “What are you meeting about today?” We’re working; we’re always planning. We were talking about new ideas and what we might do next. The further along you go, you go in confident. It feels like you could do pretty much anything musically with this group of people. You could turn your mind to an opera if you wanted to. You could turn your mind to a stage, theater show if you wanted to. It’s a sort of confidence that goes from a creative team.

I’ve been getting back in . . .  producing ourselves and even working from little studios, but coming up with a record that is fresh. Even the fidelity is reasonable. I think it maybe stands up with some of our other recent records — I hope. That gives you confidence that we can do it ourselves.

It’s true. And after you’ve worked with a producer for a while, and then you go back and do it yourself, you’re like, “Can we still do this? Are we too reliant on a producer?” You don’t know.

[Laughs.] Totally — I know! Sometimes you feel you’re under a spell, some sort of voodoo or something. There’s lots of unspoken magic that goes into records. But the actual process is pretty straightforward. You’ve just gotta go for it.

You’ve gotta leave yourself open to it, the magic happening.

Exactly. That’s nice — I like that concept. You’ve gotta have your radar up and your ears wide open.

The National Rifle Association’s first year as Trump propagandists

(Credit: gabriel12 via Shutterstock)

Standing before a raucous crowd of supporters in April 2015 during the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting, the group’s longtime leader Wayne LaPierre snarled into the microphone, “Eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough!”

One and a half years later, LaPierre got his wish as an aging white man again captured the presidency.

In a promotional video published by the NRA on January 3, three weeks before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, LaPierre stood before a shadowy backdrop at the NRA studios, looked into the camera, and said, “We are Donald Trump’s strongest, most unflinching ally. The powerful partner he needs to get things done on behalf of American freedom. Join our ranks. Donate to our cause. And together, we will truly make America great again.”

Though Trump had already won the election by that time, LaPierre still adopted a defiant and apocalyptic tone fitting of the NRA’s siege mentality; he castigated the press, called out conservative groups for abandoning Trump after he bragged on tape about sexually assaulting women, and warned viewers of enemies at every turn.

During the presidential campaign, the NRA had broken its own spending records in Trump’s support and now it was time for the organization to try to cash in. In the video, LaPierre claimed that Trump was “the most openly pro-Second Amendment presidential candidate in history” — glazing over the fact that Trump previously supported several gun safety measures that would normally be disqualifying violations of NRA orthodoxy.

Despite Trump’s past stances, the NRA and Trump were the perfect political match. The then-president-elect and the country’s foremost gun group shared an affinity for culture war rhetoric, driven by white racial grievances, retrograde views of women, and anti-immigrant, anti-free press, and pro-authoritarian sentiments. They also shared a penchant for spreading division through fearmongering and peddling conspiracy theories.

On Inauguration Day, the NRA flipped a switch, pivoting from a group that often raised the spectre of violent insurrection against a presidential administration it didn’t like to a group that now raises the spectre of violence against critics of a presidential administration it loves.

Trump’s rise coincided with a radical change in tone from the NRA’s expanded media operations

In its efforts to back the president’s every move during his first year, the NRA turned to its media outlet NRATV, the gun group’s primary messaging mechanism. The NRA has had its own media operation for 13 years. Launched in 2004, it was originally known as NRA News, and largely revolved around a weekday three-hour program inspired by talk radio called Cam & Company. In October 2016, the outlet was rebranded and expanded as NRATV, a 24-hour online stream of expanded live programming and pre-recorded segments.

The personalities brought on to fill the airtime were decidedly Trumpian.

The NRA hired Texas-based conservative radio host Grant Stinchfield to anchor the most prominent addition to the lineup, an eponymous news show providing hourly live updates in the morning and early afternoon. Stinchfield soon echoed Trump’s bellicosity, comparing a Jewish political opponent to a Nazi Gestapo member,  that North Korea drop a nuclear bomb on California, and claiming that former President Barack Obama carried out an intentional plan to “inflict harm on America.” Another new hire was conservative commentator Bill Whittle, who had spent the previous year appearing on an “alt-right” web series to promote discredited theories about race and intelligence and to make racist claims, such as suggesting African-Americans are slaves of the Democratic Party, trading their supposed willingness to engage in voter fraud for welfare. NRATV also greatly expanded the role of NRA News’ Chuck Holton, who would go on to claim on NRATV that Black Lives Matter was poised to commit mass rape and murder against whites.

This new stable of personalities has cemented the media output of the self-proclaimed “oldest civil rights organization” as leading source of divisiveness in America.

The NRA’s war on the right to protest the government

Hand-in-hand with the hateful commentary on NRATV is a pattern of attacks on basic freedoms and rights in service of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies. One of these instances was an outrageous attack on those who use their First Amendment rights of speech and assembly to speak out against Trump.

Narrated by conservative radio host Dana Loesch, an NRATV commentator who was elevated to serve as the NRA’s national spokesperson in February, the one-minute spot depicted a dark version of America that is clearly at odds with reality. Using footage of isolated incidents of property damage and police confrontations, Loesch tarred the largely peaceful resistance movement as a violent force destroying America and delivered a line that was criticized as an incitement to violence against Trump critics: “The only way we stop this, the only way we save our country and our freedom, is to fight this violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth.” The message was clear: Stop complaining about Trump in the public square or face the wrath of the nation’s premier firearm group.

The Washington Post reported that the spot had angered gun owners with its extremism, although the video found a fan in conspiracy theorist and Sandy Hook truther Alex Jones, who praised the NRA’s “more hardcore” direction. In response to criticism, Loesch and Stinchfield said the group would never apologize.

The controversy seems to have only emboldened the NRA’s attacks on Trump critics, with follow-up videos employing similarly incendiary language to attack those who use their First Amendment right to protest the president, including one that claimed opponents of Trump will “perish in the political flames of their own fires.”

Tellingly, when deadly violence was actually unleashed on peaceful protesters — after a man who admired Hitler drove his car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, VA, injuring 19 people and killing activist Heather Heyer — NRATV was conspicuously silent.

NRA takes its attacks on the press to authoritarian heights

For years, the NRA has regarded the media as a participant in a conspiracy by elites to attack gun ownership. While that has continued during the Trump administration, NRATV also began to advance the narrative that critical reporting on the president is oppositional to American values and — bizarrely enough — incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.

Authoritarian claims about the role of the press since the launch of NRATV include:

positioning reporting on Trump’s admission of sexaul assault as part of “the mainstream media’s assault against freedom and the Constitution”;
claiming it’s “anti-patriotic” and part of a plot to “destroy our republic” to critically report on the Trump administration;
saying it was “anti-American” for media to report on Trump’s inflammatory comments on North Korea; and
wildly attacking specific outlets, including telling The New York Times that “we’re coming for you,” and claiming The Washington Post has a “role in the organized anarchy of the violent left.”

NRATV gaslights the public with pro-Trump propaganda

NRATV personalities have also been willing to serve as Baghdad Bobs for Trump by relaying patently false accounts of real world events. Among the lowlights:

purporting to offer a “direct quote” of what former FBI Director James Comey said about Trump and obstruction of justice during his testimony before Congress, but instead offering a fabricated quote that absolved Trump of wrongdoing;
advocating for the confirmation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions by telling an alternate history of a racially charged prosecution Sessions spearheaded in the 1980s; and
tarring the Women’s March as violent by playing footage of a completely different protest where some participants broke windows.

What does the NRA have to show thus far as a result of these messaging techniques?

The obvious question is: What has the NRA’s divisiveness on steroids in 2017 achieved for the gun group’s agenda? The answer is thankfully little — at least thus far.

With Republican control of the White House and Congress, it is expected that the NRA agenda would move forward to some extent; but there is no way it is moving fast enough presently for the NRA to be satisfied. The group’s number one legislative priority, a bill to force states to recognize concealed carry permits issued by all other states, has not been made law. It took until December for the NRA to convince Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) to hold a House vote on the bill — it passed, but with less support than a version of the legislation voted on in 2011. The measure has also lost support in the Senate, where the bill would need 60 votes, with several former backers saying they wouldn’t vote for the bill again. Hearings for the NRA’s second biggest priority, a bill which would deregulate firearm silencers, were canceled following the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) in June and the bill was then shelved by Ryan following the October Las Vegas massacre.

Despite the lack of accomplishments in this first year, it’s important to always remember how intertwined much of Congress is with the gun lobby, making the advancement of NRA legislation a constant threat while anti-gun safety members hold a majority.

The speed with which the NRA could advance its agenda also depends on the outcomes of future elections. Thus far, the NRA has been inept in its electoral activities in the era of Trump. In November, statewide elections in Virginia, the NRA-endorsed candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general all lost. The NRA was also unsuccessful in its attempt to make reported child predator Roy Moore the junior U.S. Senator for Alabama.

While the NRA failed to secure several victories it surely thought it would achieve in its first year serving as a de facto media arm for the Trump White House, its luck could change in a moment’s notice. 2018’s nationwide elections are on the horizon — and the NRA’s divisive messaging operations require continued vigilance.

Protests in Iran continue, despite crackdown warnings and social media restrictions

Iranian protesters chant slogans at a rally in Tehran, Iran, Dec. 30, 2017. (Credit: AP/Ebrahim Noroozi)

For the fourth consecutive day anti-government protests erupted across Iran, in defiance of explicit warnings from the authorities. The protests mark the most significant display of social unrest since the widespread 2009 pro-reform protests, according to multiple news reports.

The protests began on Thursday, at first pertaining to economic grievances “but have since taken on a political dimension, with unprecedented calls for the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to step down,” The Guardian reported.

Protesters have ripped down pictures of Khamenei, in what have been called the largest demonstrations in the country since the disputed election of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in 2009.

In his first comments since the demonstrations began, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani expressed support for Iranians having the right to protest, but condemned any violent activities.

“The government will show no tolerance for those who damage public properties, violate public order and create unrest in the society,” Rouhani said, Reuters reported. An Iranian, who requested anonymity said that he “saw a few young men being arrested and put into police van. They don’t let anyone assemble.”

At least 200 demonstrators were arrested in Tehran on Saturday, while those arrested in the provinces still remains unclear. Protests outside the capital were much larger, and two protesters were killed, The Guardian reported.

 

Several social media videos showed riot police clashing with protesters, and that police in Tehran had used a water cannon on protesters, Reuters reported. Iranian newspapers also called for the authorities to “listen” to their people.

A number of morning papers in Tehran demand authorities to “listen” to their people: “May God Wakes the Officials Up,” and, “A Warning for Everyone”, the biggest headlines on frontpages. #iranprotest pic.twitter.com/jyNF3JpH6V

— Omid Memarian (@Omid_M) December 30, 2017

Today in #Rasht, chanting “Death to the Dictator!” For those asking if movement is dying down, appears it’s gaining momentum in numbers and in cities. There has been, however, a slowdown in sending videos as Telegram & Instagram are blocked in certain areas. #iranprotests pic.twitter.com/zNVbnOLBcQ

— Lisa Daftari (@LisaDaftari) December 31, 2017

#Shahindasht protest & clashes #IranProtests #تطاهرات_سراسری pic.twitter.com/44cs1ZcS8u

— Farnaz Fassihi (@farnazfassihi) December 31, 2017

Social media sites such as Instagram and the messaging app Telegram were “restricted” in the name of maintaining security, CNN reported.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, tweeted on Sunday morning that Iranian authorities have blocked access to the messaging app “for the majority of Iranians.”

Iranian authorities are blocking access to Telegram for the majority of Iranians after our public refusal to shut down https://t.co/9E4kXZYcP9 and other peacefully protesting channels.

— Pavel Durov (@durov) December 31, 2017

President Donald Trump weighed in on Saturday and opportunistically supported the protests, and warned that the “world is watching,” as Salon previously reported.

Big protests in Iran. The people are finally getting wise as to how their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism. Looks like they will not take it any longer. The USA is watching very closely for human rights violations!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017

On Sunday morning Trump tweeted about the protests again in a provocative manner and said the people of Iran were “wise” because “their money and wealth is being stolen and squandered on terrorism.”

The Trump administration has escalated U.S. tensions with Iran as the president has repeatedly slammed the Obama-era nuclear deal. Recently, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley also condemned Iran’s alleged involvement in the war in Yemen, though she shielded U.S. complicity in the Saudi-backed air campaign.

Trump is also faced two major decisions regarding whether or not to keep the nuclear deal in tact in mid-January.

Iran, the Number One State of Sponsored Terror with numerous violations of Human Rights occurring on an hourly basis, has now closed down the Internet so that peaceful demonstrators cannot communicate. Not good!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2017

Mike Pence’s vacation neighbors trolled him with ‘Make America Gay Again’ sign

Mike Pence (Credit: Gett/Joe Raedle)

Mike Pence is vacationing in Aspen this week for the holiday, and neighbors reportedly used it as an opportunity to silently protest.

According to a report in the Aspen Times, Pence’s neighbors posted a rainbow banner saying “Make America Gay Again” at the end of his driveway. Sheriff Deputy Michael Buglione told The Aspen Times that Pence’s vacation neighbors posted the banner after he arrived on Tuesday. A reporter and editor at the Aspen Times tweeted about it, mentioning that the neighbors later offered the secret service agents food.

Neighbors across from the home near Aspen where Vice President Mike Pence is staying hung this banner yesterday. The neighbors later offered Secret Service agents hot chili and corn muffins to ward off the chill, according to a source. pic.twitter.com/10jcHovqEa — Jason Auslander (@JasonAuslander) December 29, 2017

 

Awesome: #Aspen neighbors let @mike_pence know their feelings with “Make America Gay Again” banner outside where VP is staying. https://t.co/fh4xJwgpvU via @JasonAuslander pic.twitter.com/5j5Zd0ArHF — David Krause (@DavidKrause) December 29, 2017

This isn’t the first time the LGBT community has shown up at unexpected places to show their disapproval of Pence. Last December, his neighbors in Washington reportedly flew gay pride flags in protest. Prior to when Pence moved into the Naval Observatory after the inauguration, nearly 200 people protested with a dance party through the neighborhood where he was renting a house. In May, students walked out during his commencement speech at Notre Dame.

Pence has a history of blocking LGBT rights. As a congressman, he opposed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which prohibited workers from being fired on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Pence also voted against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act. As the Governor of Indiana, he signed a bill that would incarcerate same-sex couples who applied for marriage licenses.

Stop excluding people with disabilities from science

(Credit: Getty/Brendan Smialowski)

As a kid, I loved to spend all day playing in dirt, digging holes at the beach, and adding pebbles to my rock collection. I turned that curiosity into a career in geoscience; now, I’m a full-time nerd, working on a PhD in marine geology. My field work involves hiking into caves, finding large stalagmites, and carrying them back out. Back in the lab, I saw them open and drill out powders to analyze their chemical ratios. I have really taken my childhood rock collection to the next level.

But almost two years ago, during the first year of my PhD, I started having pain in my muscles and joints that went from annoying to life-altering in the span of a few months. My body has seriously bad timing – graduate school is hard enough on its own, but now even walking up stairs or cutting vegetables is painful and exhausting. Frustratingly, I still don’t have a diagnosis. Now I am a cave scientist and geochemist with a chronic pain condition, which means that I have to choose between putting myself into painful fieldwork situations or missing out on those experiences completely.

There is a third option, which sounds the best (in theory, at least): I can change how I work so that I can still participate fully in research and learning opportunities. But this is a challenge that is bigger than just me: it involves a field-wide rethink of how we work to accommodate people who need different conditions than what’s standard to thrive. Teachers, university administrators, and professional societies need to consider ways to make natural science more accessible and welcoming for people with physical disabilities – not just because we need everyone’s talent, but because it is the right thing to do.

There are 75 percent fewer people with disabilities working in STEM fields than in the general population. There are lots of potential reasons for the deficit, many of which vary based on the type of disability being discussed. But one challenge I am familiar with is specific to natural sciences: access to outdoor spaces. Although there have been some efforts to make public spaces more physically accessible, by adding ramps or automatic doors, the results tend to be disappointing. As an example, there is a state park in Massachusetts (where I am from) with more than 400 acres of land . . . and the only wheelchair-accessible path is a 0.25 mile-long strip near the parking lot. Young children with mobility limitations can’t dig holes if they can’t even get to the beach.

In addition to those early experiences, so pivotal to my own path, institutional policies and a lack of accommodations can keep talented people out of geoscience, or make the path harder than it should be. A recent study found that almost 90 percent of survey respondents thought that field experience should be a requirement for undergraduate geology majors. My goal is to be a professor of geoscience, but there is no guarantee that I will be able to lead field trips with steep hikes into caves or even spend an hour on my feet to teach a lecture.

On the other hand, there is a lot I will be able to teach my future students. This year, I learned to code in Python and do high-resolution image analysis, which allows me to participate in cutting-edge research. I agree that you can learn a lot from lying on a rock with a magnifying glass, looking at the texture and types of minerals, but there are a lot of other skills that are just as important. Struggling with my pain condition has helped me realize that there are so many ways to be a good natural scientist, and many of them don’t involve carrying a 50-pound backpack out of a cave. I don’t need to be a field geologist to succeed, but I do need my future colleagues to understand that my contributions are just as valid as theirs.

Challenges and stereotypes shouldn’t keep me (and others like me) from realizing my goals. As the effects of climate change become more pressing, we need all hands on deck to find solutions and understand complex climate processes better. The next decade will be full of job opportunities in geosciences – almost half of current geoscientists are approaching retirement.

Because of the range of different needs that people with disabilities have, from American Sign Language interpretation to extended time on exams, full access might seem like an insurmountable challenge. But what about the huge range of different skills and ideas that we bring? It certainly seems like a worthy investment to me.

It’s also totally possible to do: take the International Association for Geoscience Diversity (IAGD). The organization leads field trips where participants work in small teams, with scouts who can bring back rock samples if it is too challenging to reach the site, sign language interpreters to provide full access to lectures, and textured maps for people with low vision.

Institutional policy changes don’t have to be huge to be impactful for people with disabilities, and they often end up helping everyone. For example, faculty at Bowdoin College just voted to switch to 10 minutes between classes (instead of five) to give all students more time to get across campus and reduce late arrival to class. This small change is particularly welcome for students with limited mobility like Daisy Wislar, the president of the DisAbled Students Association at Bowdoin (and a friend of mine). She and other members of the group have been pushing for the time increase for two years.

Teachers and hikers alike can learn from these efforts to decrease barriers for people with physical disabilities. Next time you are at a park, ask yourself, “How would someone using crutches access this space?” If you are designing a field trip, build in extra time and touch base with all your students about their accessibility needs, even if you don’t think anyone needs it.

Most importantly, involve people with disabilities in initiatives and programs from the very beginning; in other words, ask us what we need, compensate us for our hard work, and recognize our contributions. These principles apply to other diversity initiatives, too, which are equally important (geoscience has the lowest racial and ethnic diversity of all STEM fields).

I am convinced that it is possible to make natural science open to all dirt-curious kids with policy changes and decreased stigma. I want to be known for my teaching and paleoclimate research, but I need a chance to make those impacts.

A (scientific) defense of the Brussels sprout

(Credit: Shutterstock)

Brussels sprouts, like their European namesake, divide opinion. Some people embrace the flavor and familiarity of the small green vegetable. To others, they are an object of derision and disgust.

Whatever you think of them, millions of sprouts will be sold, cooked, and either eaten or pushed to the side of the plate over the coming weeks. And they have been part of our diet for centuries. Culinary mythology suggests they were first seen for sale in the markets of Belgium in the 1200s, but their ancestors date back to Roman times.

In many countries, Brussels sprouts are now as traditional as turkey at Christmas, with both appearing in festive records from the 16th century and becoming commonly consumed from the 18th century onwards.

Sadly another (particularly British) tradition at Christmas time is to boil sprouts until they are soft, soggy and sulfurous. This unfortunate introduction to overcooked sprouts in childhood may have traumatized generations and given the sprout a much undeserved reputation.

The problem has not been the sprout itself, but the the cooking method. So surely even the most ardent shunner of sprouts should now be able to rediscover and celebrate this nutritious and versatile vegetable.

Versatile

Brussels sprouts are buds that grow out the side of long stemmed cabbages, like baubles decorating a size zero Christmas tree. You could roast a whole stalk of sprouts for an impressive dinner table centre piece.

They are ideal shredded raw into winter salads or sliced and added to seasonal stir fries. They combine very well with garlic as well as bacon, and roast well too. Leftovers can be mixed with mashed potatoes to make bubble and squeak.

Boiling is actually the least nutritious way to cook Brussels sprouts, as several of the key nutrients they contain are water soluble and get lost in the cooking water.

Nutritious

So what nutritional value do Brussels sprouts boast? For a start, they are extremely low in calories, with around 34 kcal in an 80g portion. They are also virtually fat free and low in salt and sugar.

Sprouts are high in fibre, and one portion contains enough vitamins A, C and K to meet a typical adult’s daily requirements, as well as a quarter of their required vitamin E and folic acid.

They also benefit from decent amounts of B vitamins and minerals including calcium, phosphorus, potassium and manganese.

Brussels sprouts are full of healthy compounds called “glucosinolates”. These contain sulphur and are responsible for the mustard and pepper flavour in raw sprouts – and the rotten egg smell when they are overboiled.

Glucosinolates are broken down in the body into “isothiocyanates” that help activate cancer-fighting enzymes in the body. Brussels sprouts have been shown to contain higher levels of glucosinolates than broccoli and cauliflower.

The fibre present in Brussels sprouts has also been linked to a reduced risk of colon cancer, possibly by increasing the frequency of bowel movements and speeding up the time taken for food to travel through the digestive system.

Yet another beneficial phytochemical in Brussels sprouts is lutein. This is a carotenoid responsible for the yellow colour of overcooked sprouts and which helps protect plants from the harmful effects of too much sunlight.

Remarkably, lutein from the human diet is transported to the eye where it helps reduce the risk of light-induced oxidative damage that could lead to loss of sight through age-related macula degeneration.

Sprouting with goodness

And Brussels sprouts are not just for Christmas. Like the majority of the cabbage family, they grow well in countries like the UK and the Netherlands and are in season for around half the year (from October to March). They are an economical vegetable to buy and will have low food miles if grown in the country where they are consumed.

Advances by talented vegetable breeders and growers have created a wealth of new sprout varieties. There are smaller, sweeter button sprouts, and red versions. One recent innovation was a hybrid between sprouts and kale, which produces a sprout with an open flower-like shape and a sweeter, nutty flavour.

Traditional, supremely healthy, tasty and good for the environment, Brussels sprouts are one of Mother Nature’s wonderful gifts to the table. It’s time to lift them from their humble status, celebrate their goodness and appreciate them for the super food they really are.

Trevor George, Lecturer in Nutrition and Dietetics, King’s College London

New Year’s Eve party in Berlin will have ‘safe zone’ for possible sexual assault victims

(Credit: dwph/Shutterstock)

Berlin is taking preemptive measures to combat sexual harassment and assault this New Year’s Eve. As partygoers gather at the iconic Brandenburg Gate, they will have access to a designated safe zone where victims can speak to psychologists if they’re assaulted or harassed, according to the Washington Post.  

This initiative comes in the middle of a global movement raising awareness about sexual assault and harassment, and two years after Cologne’s New Year’s Eve celebration where hundreds of women were reportedly assaulted and/or robbed. According to leaked documents that a German publication published in 2016, more than 1,200 women were sexually assaulted on New Year’s Eve in various cities across the country. 

“[Assaulted women] can stay here and calm down or speak to someone trained to offer psychological support,” Anja Marx, the spokeswoman of Berlin’s New Year’s Eve celebration, said to the Washington Post.

The safe zone will be staffed by the German Red Cross, according to BBC, which says the events from Cologne “heightened tensions in the country over the large influx of refugees and migrants.”

According to the Washington Post report, fewer sexual assault cases were reported last year after thousands of police were added to patrol the streets.

Reportedly, there are opponents of the move though. The chairman of Germany’s police union, Rainer Wendt, rebuked the move to create a safe zone, according to the German newspaper The Berliner Zeitung.  

“It says that there are zones of security and zones of insecurity,” he said, and that it could lead to “the end of equal rights, free movement and self-determination.” 

Brandenburg Gate is known as Berlin’s “party mile” and is an open-air party that stretches from Brandenburg Gate to the Victory Column. According to the Guardian, a similar initiative was put in place at Munich’s Oktoberfest, and it was a success. 

Best essays of 2017: A borderline intimate education

(Credit: Salon/Ilana LIdagoster)

Not long ago, I was a college freshman sitting on the cold tile floor of the English building, pretending to read “Pride and Prejudice,” and not long ago, Professor Fuller walked across those same cold tiles, into an empty classroom and into my life. It was the first day of our writing workshop, a required course for all students. He introduced himself briefly: Mid-thirties. MFA from a prestigious school. Book published the previous spring. He used “whom” when he spoke and told us to buy a pocket dictionary because our cell phones would disturb “what John Gardner called the vivid and continuous dream.” Going over the syllabus, he told us class was canceled for a week that semester for his book tour. His eyes were glazed with subtle contentment when he told us — he was a writer, a published writer.

He was the first writer I ever met. I graduated from high school with plaques and cords and what I thought was a good idea of what the next four years would look like. I declared a major in English and enrolled in the most collegiate sounding courses my university offered — philosophy, political science, Latin. I knew I wanted to write, but I also knew that writing is supposed to be a side effect of living, and I wasn’t doing much living. At 18, I had avoided alcohol, drugs and anything else that might be a risk or might lead to one. The most intimate I’d ever been with someone was when my prom date put his hands on my hips when we posed for pictures, and that alone had been enough to make my palms damp. After Fuller’s class that first day, I was more optimistic than I’d ever been about my writing. He was a real writer, and he could show me how to be a real writer, too.

I read and reread the stories he assigned. I let it slip that I was taking Latin, because I knew that he had minored in it. I asked for his help with declensions that I could recite perfectly. I bought a pocket dictionary and even started using it.

A few weeks into the semester, the English department put out a cart of free books in the hallway near Fuller’s office — the professors’ reject pile, mostly obscure critical theory dissertations from the ’60s and ’70s written by authors with heavily voweled last names. I began to walk away with one of the dusty slabs when he came out of his office.

“Read this,” he said, handing me a stiff paperback. “It’s better than anything on that cart.”

The cover was a black-and-white photograph of a woman. Sunglasses covered most of her face, blocking out any distinguishable quality she had. It was easy to see myself. White woman? Check. Throw on a pair of sunglasses and I was her, I thought. Maybe he had thought the same thing, I told myself. Maybe he had thought it the moment I walked into his class on the first day and had been waiting for the right time to give me the book.

It was “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” by Joan Didion. I had never heard of her or read a collection of essays before, and I had no idea what the title meant, so I headed to the library to find out. As I hurried across campus, the October air was alive and the dead leaves moved in broken circles at my feet.

A rough beast’s hour had come round at last.

* * *

That night, I got an email:

I’d start with the last essay. –JF

I lingered on those last two letters. They were more personal than his first name. They were something only someone who knew him could decipher. They contained a relationship, a past shared between sender and receiver. I grabbed the book and turned to the last essay:

It’s easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.

I finished the collection the next day, and after our next class he gave me Didion’s “The White Album.” When I finished that, he gave me a short story by Chekhov. Next came Cheever, Carver, Calvino. Graham Greene. Denis Johnson. Karl Ove Knausgaard. I fell more in awe with each new title. I felt lucky that I found someone who had already sifted through so many pages, dog-eared the ones worth reading and was willing to share his findings with me. We’d discuss the stories during his office hours until there was a line of other students waiting their turn. After a few weeks, he asked if I could start coming one hour before our class instead of during his scheduled office hours so we wouldn’t be interrupted. Meanwhile, the emails steadily became more frequent and longer.

It was the beginning of something — I just couldn’t tell what it was. Everything prior to meeting Fuller felt trivial, boring, childish. I didn’t tell anyone about our arrangement. He existed only in emails and in my mind, the only two places where I could give him room to grow.

Within a few weeks, the topics of our conversations, both in person and over email, broadened. In addition to stories and poems, Fuller started sending music. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert. The Velvet Underground, the Pogues, the Strokes. He’d write me about the first time he heard them — where he was, who he was. When he went on his book tour, he sent a picture of the Chicago skyline. When he needed feedback, he sent sections of the novel he was working on. When he wanted to learn about trees, we showed each other interesting leaves we found outside, squinting at their veins and edges, locating their names in the heavy leaf anthology I took out from the library. When he wanted a plant for his office, he asked for help picking a type. A few times, when the night sky was particularly clear, he’d email me urgently, insisting that I go outside and look at the moon.

There were always postscripts in his emails. There was always something else to say, an implicit promise that the conversation would be continued. That his interest didn’t waver was a continual surprise to me. I felt increasingly indebted to him; his time was valuable and he, for some reason, was giving it to me. By November he asked if I’d be willing to walk around campus with him rather than sit in his office. Walking helps with writing, he said.

We meandered all over campus, down past the gym and football field, along narrow, winding bicycle paths. When the temperature dropped, he wore a peacoat and wrapped his neck with a pale blue scarf. On the days I knew I’d see him, I’d wear knee-length skirts and sheer tights, trying my best to look older and scholarly, but I always just ended up looking cold, my knees glowing red beneath the thin netting.

Still, it felt good to walk with him. His steady pace was metronomic. He was about half a head taller than me, but we somehow walked in sync, hands burrowed in our pockets, looking straight ahead. There’s something comforting about moving through the same space with another person, like two people listening to the same song from one set of headphones. In an email, he described something he had observed about me when we walked:

When you find something interesting, you squint your eyes and look straight ahead, considering what you just heard. You purse your lips, and it looks like everything might come out at once if you were to open them. After a moment, you look up at me, your eyes wide and bright with wonder.

He said we should walk because it helps with writing, but I began to wonder if it was so we wouldn’t be overheard. He would talk to me about a dream he had or his relationship with his parents or his ex-girlfriends. He never mentioned his wife. Their wedding picture, next to the picture of their two kids, sat on his desk back in his office.

Occasionally, we would cross paths with a student he knew. The student would say hello, look at me and continue on their way. I never worried about running into someone I knew because I didn’t know anyone on campus. There were some familiar faces from classes, but by the end of my first semester I had made no friends. I was too busy writing emails. My memories from that holiday season are quotes from his emails, words on a screen. Thanksgiving: He was thankful to have met me. Christmas: Listen to “The Fairytale of New York.” New Years: He met a few amazing people this year, one being his daughter, who was born last spring, and another being me.

My nineteenth birthday fell a few weeks into the winter recess. Fuller was teaching a class in Manhattan then and wanted to go to the Met for my birthday. His class was over by 10 a.m. and he could meet me at Penn Station, he offered around Christmas. I wanted to say yes, wanted the anonymity that only the city could offer, wanted to be missing from my regular life, belonging only to him for a few hours, but knew I couldn’t. I told him it wasn’t a good time. Not now, but not never.

Instead, he sent a copy of Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities,” one of his favorites, to my house around New Years. On the title page, he wrote small, careful letters for me to read the book slowly, so that I reached the last page on my birthday. One day, newly 19, I sat in bed and read the last page:

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

Give them space. For months now, I had become Tantalus, starving, stranded, everything I wanted close but out of reach. It was tortuous. My face broke out, worse than it ever had. I stopped participating in my classes, so stressed that I would say the wrong thing that I just said nothing at all. My older sister Margaret called me out a few times for minimizing my internet screen whenever someone walked by my room, which made me even more panicky. I couldn’t bring myself to see how deep in the inferno I was or even think about getting out.

I had a Smith Corona typewriter that belonged to my grandmother who died before I was born. When I told Fuller this, he asked if I would write him something on it, so after he sent “Invisible Cities” I typed him a thank you note. I tried to make it thoughtful but as innocuous as possible, but still, there was something about being able to hold the letter that made it feel incriminating. I was reading Fitzgerald’s letters at the time and found a quote from a letter he wrote to his daughter Scottie, urging her to improve her reading choices. In the note, I thanked him for the book, and quoting Fitzgerald, thanked him for helping me make the right reading choices. He emailed me from the train into the city where he read the letter, saying that he would keep the letter in his coat pocket the whole day.

When the spring semester started, we fell back into the same pattern. We picked a new day and time to meet and walk. The cold was relentless. One day in February, he asked me to come to his office early. He had a surprise. Two coffees, two doughnuts, two chairs in front of the computer screen. He showed me the film “The Third Man,” which had come up during one of our talks and was also his favorite movie. I was able to feel his eyes on me as I watched. I don’t remember anything from the film, except for the closing image. The female lead walks down a street lined with tall leafless trees on both sides, while the male lead leans against the side of his car in the foreground, watching the woman become smaller and smaller, disappearing into the vanishing point at the center of the frame. Fuller loved that shot, and so did I. Maybe it was the womanly way she walked, maybe it was knowing how she felt, that feeling of being observed by someone whom you wanted to be observed by, bonded together in a fleeting moment.

A few days later, Fuller told me about a recent morning he spent in a nature preserve nearby and suggested we go together. After spring break, I told him, trying to buy some more time. After a winter of record-breaking low temperatures and snowfalls and wind chills, I grew more and more uneasy when everything began to thaw.

Things fall apart.

It fell apart; I fell apart.

It was spring break and I was sitting at a table in my town’s library studying for next week’s midterms with my sister Kelly when I checked my email. There was a notification in a small font at the bottom of the page: “Open in 1 other location.” I clicked it, and it took me to a page with an IP address. I copy-and-pasted into Google, and a pixelated image of a small house with a bluish-gray roof appeared.

It was my house. Someone was reading my emails.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Margaret had broken into my account and read my exchanges with Fuller. She had brought it — whatever “it” was — to my parents. Across from me, Kelly’s eyes widened. She began texting feverishly. Then she looked up but avoided eye contact.

“We’re going home,” she said.

I didn’t ask why, didn’t play dumb. I gathered my notebook and American Lit anthology and walked to the car. The low afternoon sun was stunning as we rolled down a long stretch of road in silence, no stop signs or traffic lights, just the pavement and a 50-miles-per-hour speed limit. It felt like we had been slingshotted, the string of hair salons, restaurants and dog groomers blurring into a single motion. It was a road made for stretching your arm out the window, allowing the air to tug at your fingers. I tried to remember the last time I had done that but couldn’t. I leaned my head against the warm glass of the window, closed my eyes, and enjoyed the road for a moment longer.

* * *

My parents asked questions I couldn’t answer. They were the same questions that had been in my mind for a while now, questions I couldn’t bring myself to voice, let alone answer. The worst part was not knowing what to call it — I still don’t know. I never thought of it as being a romantic relationship, never considered it dating. I never called him by his first name. It was always Professor Fuller. There was nothing wrong with this, I told my parents, my voice wearing thinner each second.

But it was pointless. They could see where this was headed. They had read the emails. They had read when he said I looked like a young Natalie Wood. When he told me he was going through a rough time before this year and that meeting me somehow helped him. Someone had run a plumber’s snake down my throat, pulled out every terrible thing inside me and put it on display for everyone to see.

It didn’t take long for my mom to convince me to go to the school. “Even if he just goes away, you have to make sure he doesn’t do this to anyone else,” she said.

I kept thinking, Do what? What exactly had he done? Could anyone tell me what had happened?

Lying in bed that night, I heard her printing out our emails to bring to the school. I listened as the printer pitilessly spat out page after page of my infatuation, my humiliation. Cold awake, I forced my lids shut.

There was a moment I kept returning to. It happened toward the end, on one of the walks. His alma mater had asked him to participate in a mentoring program. Interested students would email him, introduce themselves, and he would pick one to give literary career guidance via email and video chat. There were two students interested: a boy and a girl. He chose the girl.

He was telling me about something that came up during his discourse with her, something about mentoring, something that made him think of me. He paused and looked at me.

“Not that I think of this as mentoring,” he said quickly.

I don’t remember what came after that. I don’t remember what he was talking about with the girl or why it had reminded him of me, but I remember that line, that throwaway, that glimpse into what this was in his mind, not mentoring, the closest thing I have to an answer. When I go back to that moment, I grab myself by the shoulders and shake them violently. Ask him. What does he mean? What does he think this is?

And every time I watch myself keep walking with him, so good at silencing the version of myself who asks the hard questions.

* * *

“Was it ever . . . physical?” the woman asked.

She said it like she had just thought of the question, but we both knew that wasn’t true. This question was the purpose of the meeting. This question meant the difference between slapping a wrist and cutting off the whole hand.

“No,” I said after a moment.

It was close enough to the truth. There was never any significant intimacy. An occasional brush of shoulders when we walked. A momentary hand on my back. Always just enough to send a jolt of adrenaline through me. Once he held my coat open as I slipped my arms into the holes. Another time he leaned in and gently wedged his headphones into my ears.

“I’m not looking to get him fired,” I said. “I just want to end communication.”

I was surprised by how composed and businesslike I sounded to myself. My answers came mechanically. I was working off a script I had never seen, playing a role I had never auditioned for. The woman was using a script too, and her lines were full of important-sounding words. Legal words. Mandated words. Title IX words.

I could hear the call she would make to him after I left: She won’t be coming to see you today.

And I could hear the silent confusion on the other end, the destruction of a world perfectly constructed.

I was informed that he had a meeting with the Title IX coordinator and the head of his department. That was the end of it. I dropped my writing minor. I cried through an art history exam. I cut holes into my acne until my face throbbed. He was everywhere. In my bookcase were books that he’d recommended. In my iPod were songs he’d told me to listen to. In my closet were outfits I thought he’d like. In my head were stories and movies and anecdotes and advice I had thoughtlessly sucked in, not once considering how I felt about it all.

I had sleepwalked through my first year of college.

Any tall, dark-haired, white man on campus would send me in the opposite direction. I could always tell when it was him, though. His walk gave him away every time, the steady pacing which now seems eerie to me, like a shark moving behind glass.

The inevitable intersection happened a week after the Title IX meeting, ten minutes before my American Lit class. The door to the room, which was just down the hall from Fuller’s office, was locked, so I had to wait outside. I considered waiting in a nearby bathroom, but seeing as there was a group of students forming in the hallway, I decided to wait, toughen up, not be so ridiculous.

It was laughable, how quickly he had appeared.

He walked up and talked to two classmates who were standing next to me, a casual conversation that flowed so easily. Meanwhile, I was trying to gain control over whatever inside me had just dropped and shattered. So what are you taking this semester? Shards everywhere. And what class is this? Watch your step. Oh, you’re taking my fiction class next semester? Beyond repair.

I finally walked down the hallway and hid around the bend. Tears clouded my eyes but for the first time in months I was able to see myself clearly: I was alone, had no friends on campus, no one to turn to, nowhere to go, and was stuck with what had caused it all, what I was most desperate to escape from — myself.

* * *

It’s easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.

Years somehow slipped by. I saw him occasionally after that year, but it stopped bothering me as much. He was promoted. For the rest of my time at the university I worked on the campus magazine, where I found a home among big-hearted, bitter misfits my own age.

For a while, I kept writing for revenge. I’d imagine Fuller hearing about all the things I accomplished, all the things I did without his help. This got me nowhere. I was writing for him, not for me. I also wasted a lot of time questioning if I could be a writer without his help and if being a writer was what I really wanted to do. I’ve stopped asking these questions.

But where his influence ends and I begin is something I’m still figuring out. Is “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” the greatest book ever written? No. Is Calvino boring sometimes? Yes. Does walking help the writing process? Probably, but not when wearing tights in 20-degree weather. I wish I hated everything he showed me, that I could lump my poor judgment with poor taste. I wish I hated “Do You Remember the Mountain Bed” and Denis Johnson and the Velvet Underground. I wish I didn’t wish “Fairytale of New York” was the only Christmas song ever written. I try to enjoy these things despite my earliest memory of them, try to scrub them clean of that initial read or listen.

Sometimes I get lucky, like I did on this one December day. The magazine staff would get to pick the music for an hour on the campus radio station each week, and that day someone suggested we play a Christmas song. A good Christmas song. A friend of mine immediately started swinging his arms and bellowing wrong lyrics: “They’ve got cars big as balls . . .” We cued the song. The brassy voices pounded against the walls of the decrepit sound booth. We all flinched when we heard a forgotten curse word, violating our agreement with the station. Then we laughed. Too late. Oh well. Make it louder.

I can still hear it, buried in the space between each note, the sound of a song being rewritten.

Evangelical Christianity is facing a political crisis

(Credit: iStockphoto/sjlocke)

Ok, evangelicals do have a brand problem—but they also have a major product problem.

Bible-believing born-again Christians, aka evangelicals, have had a brand problem since Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority sold the born-again movement to the Republican party in exchange for political power a generation ago, forging the religious right.

The Republican party has been using Christianity’s good name to cover bad deeds ever since, all the while tapping evangelical media empires and churches as communications and organizing platforms to bring ordinary believers along with the merger. Having become true-believers themselves, Evangelical leaders have offered themselves up as trusted messengers for this New-and-Improved political gospel project.

And it has worked.

Born-again Christians haven’t given up their core beliefs: that the Bible is the literally perfect word of God, Jesus died for their sins, and folks who don’t accept this gift will burn forever in Hell. Rather, most white evangelicals (and a number of blacks and Hispanics) have appended parts of the Republican policy agenda and the underlying conceptual framework to this list. Religious beliefs and political beliefs have become, for many evangelicals, indistinguishable objects of devotion, beyond question. Political tribe and religious tribe now have the same boundaries.

When I outlined evangelicalism’s brand problem in early 2016, few of us had any idea how bad it could get. Now the world associates the term Evangelical with the Trump election—over 80 percent of evangelicals gave him their vote—and with the candidacy of theocrat, Roy Moore, who despite credible allegations that he pursued and pawed young teens while an assistant district attorney, received comparable support from white Alabama evangelicals.

In the aftermath of Moore’s campaign and (merciful) defeat, the minority of Evangelical Christians who found him horrifying are doing some public soul searching—well, except not really. Many recognize only the brand problem and are, more than anything, simply scrambling to get away from the term evangelical itself. “After Trump and Moore, some evangelicals are finding their own label too toxic to use,” reports the Washington Post.  “The term feels irreversibly tainted,” agrees evangelical author Jen Hatmaker.

Jemar Tisby is president of a faith-based media company catering to black evangelicals, but he says that “It’s counterproductive to identify as evangelical. . . . What’s happened with evangelicalism is, it has become so conflated with Republican politics, that you can’t tell where Christianity ends and partisanship begins.”

At Wheaton College, my old alma mater, the executive director of the Billy Graham Center, Ed Stetzer, said, “I don’t want ‘evangelical’ to mean people who supported candidates with significant and credible accusations against them. If evangelical means that, it has serious ramifications for the work of Christians and churches.”

At Princeton University, the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship renamed itself Princeton Christian Fellowship to get away from the negative associations. But is evangelicalism tainting Christianity itself as a brand? Five years ago, Campus Crusade for Christ–which spends over $500,000,000 annually to recruit and retain evangelical college students–changed its name to the less transparent “Cru.” Mark Galli, editor-in-chief at Christianity Today, wrote of the Moore race, “There is already one loser: Christian faith…No one will believe a word we say, perhaps for a generation. Christianity’s integrity is severely tarnished.”

What even thoughtful evangelical leaders like Galli fail to recognize is that people shouldn’t believe a word they say—not about politics, not about morality, and not even about theology at this point. The problem isn’t skin deep. Their brand problem is a function of their product problem, and as Emmett Price at Gordon-Cornwell Theological Seminary put it, “Ditching a term is simply ditching a term.” Abandoning the term evangelical is the most superficial fix conceivable.

Real soul searching would mean asking what it is about the evangelical worldview that has made evangelical leaders and ordinary Bible-believers susceptible to courtship by authoritarian, bigoted, sexist, tribal, anti-intellectual greedmongers who dangle the carrot of theocracy. But few evangelical leaders are asking this question because that would mean revisiting the peculiar status they grant to the Bible itself. And that is off-limits.

When one treats the Bible as the literally perfect and complete word of God—which most Christian scholars don’t but most evangelicals do—it isn’t hard to find support for every item in the ugly list that now darkens the evangelical brand. The Bible contains some really bad ideas.  The opposite is also true, mind you. It also contains support for compassion, love, generosity, inclusion, and humility—and many other virtues that humanity values widely across both secular and religious wisdom traditions. The Bible is morally inchoate. It documents and sanctifies humanity’s moral infancy; and idolizing the book binds believers to the worldview of the Iron Age, leaving them susceptible to justifying all manner of misbehaviors in the name of god.

That is precisely what the Republican operatives of the religious right have done; and as evangelical leaders got sucked into the merger of biblical theology and conservative dogma, that is precisely what they have done; and as they have spread this infectious product to the followers who trust them, that is precisely what they have done too. At the bottom of this shit-flow sequence sit children born into households of true believers who isolated them in homeschooling and church schools, then send them to institutions like Bob Jones or Liberty University or Wheaton so that, identity cemented, they can carry forward the project unquestioned.

So, evangelicals have three enormous and interrelated problems with their product at this point. One is that their whole enterprise is built on an indefensible view of the Bible. This has facilitated the merger of biblical Christianity with Republican dogmas and will leave believers vulnerable to this kind of exploitation until the theology itself is fixed.

The second problem is that millions of Christians have now been so thoroughly indoctrinated into Bible-sanctified Republican ideology that it could take a generation to move them away from the beliefs and priorities that elected Donald Trump and nearly elected Roy Moore. It took a generation to bind them into this tangled web and there is no reason to think that journeying free will be easier.

The third problem is that this whole state of affairs has been a profound violation of trust. People trust religious leaders to be honest and moral, and when that is gone little influence remains. Young people who see through the mess are leaving evangelicalism and Christianity. They are losing faith in faith itself.

This much is clear. Simply swapping in the term Christian for the term evangelical will only damage Christianity’s brand at large, which evangelicals have already done—with help, of course, from the Catholic hierarchy. As a former evangelical Christian, now a spiritual non-theist, I don’t necessarily think of that as a bad thing, but Christians should. Some reformers are attempting real change from within evangelicalism. Tony Campolo, Rachel Held Evans, Rob Bell and John Pavlovitz, to cite a few are fighting hard to save the soul of a faith they cherish. But a path to broad reformation remains unclear.