Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 804

Having less fun in bed: 5 ways your sleep habits can sabotage your relationship

There are two big S’s we tend to associate with bedroom activities: Sleep and sex. For those with live-in partners, sex is a nice preamble to sleep, partly for physiological reasons. That may be because sex helps boost the production of oxytocin, the “bonding hormone,” and decreases the production of cortisol, the “stress hormone.” The combination leaves the body both relaxed and ready for bed. Unfortunately, what we do while under that sleep spell can pull our partners out from under theirs. And that can cause problems in an otherwise happy relationship.

We spoke with Bruce Corser, medical director of the Sleep Management Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, about some of the most common problems couples bring into his office. Read on to see what they are and how to avoid them.

1. You snore. Really loudly.

According to Corser, around 59% of people involved in a relationship say their sleeping partner snores. Twenty-three percent of couples say they sleep in separate beds because of it. And that's a huge bummer. Like sex, sleeping next to someone increases our levels of oxytocin and helps bring couples closer together. Others believe that co-sleeping helps couples become more communicative with one another. Still, nothing disrupts sleep quite like a human jet-engine blasting into your ear. And while we don’t want to point fingers, science says the majority of snorers tend to be men. Corser says that probably has something to do with the fact that estrogen can actually protect against snore-causing conditions like sleep apnea.

Most of us can tolerate some degree of snoring. According to Corser, the average snorer does so at around 40 decibels (or dB, the unit we use to measure noise). If you’re looking for a point of reference, normal talking measures around 60 dB, and a vacuum cleaner around 70 dB. But when the volume exceeds that level, problems tend to pop up. Corser told us he’s seen some patients snore at a level of 100 dB or higher. That’s roughly as loud as a chainsaw. And that presents problems beyond interrupted sleep. Snoring at that level can actually lead to hearing loss in both the snorer and his partner. So before you do any permanent damage, you might want to book an appointment at your local sleep clinic. Corser says the best predictor of whether someone will use a snore-reducing device is if they have a bed partner.

2. You’re a night owl.

Society tends to place people into categories, and the sleep scene is no different. If you’re an early riser, you’d probably be called a lark. If you tend to stay up past midnight, the bird metaphor for you is an owl. If you fall somewhere in the middle, you can call yourself a hummingbird. While different lifestyles lend themselves to different sleep schedules, there is another factor involved: genetics. A study conducted by geneticists from the University of Leicester found there are upward of 80 genes that can influence our sleep patterns. If you and your partner find yourselves on opposite schedules, someone’s going to have to make some changes. And since the idea of staying up late isn’t exactly conducive to the typical American work schedule, the bulk of that responsibility tends to fall on the owls.

Corser suggests those trying to get to bed early avoid bright lights, including screens like cell phones, tablets or television. “Bright light will delay the brain’s production of melatonin, the hormone that facilitates sleep, “says Corser. Those who can’t stay away from their cell before bed might think about downloading an app (yes, they actually exist) that helps filter out some of the more disruptive forms of light emitted by the screen.

3. You move… too much.

If you have a tendency to jerk around in your sleep, you may have been the recipient of lines like one a former bed partner used on me, which went something like, “Stop. Fucking. Moving.” Not exactly sweet nothings. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of getting comfortable. But other times, our movements are due to something a bit more clinical. Corser told us that around 4% of the American adult population has moderate to severe forms of restless leg syndrome. There’s also REM behavior disorder, which causes people to enact their (often violent) dreams while sleeping. Sometimes that means thrashing around. Sometimes that means falling out of bed. And sometimes, that means accidentally smacking your partner in the face. There’s also the issue of having to pee. If you find yourself getting up multiple times in the night to relieve yourself, you may want to snag the side of the bed with easiest access to the bathroom. (You also might want to limit your intake of fluids in the evening.) Nobody likes having to crawl over someone in the middle of the night, and no one likes being crawled over, either.

4. Your sleep routine sucks

“A lot of people do things that tend to sabotage their sleep,” Corser says. According to Corser, the ideal bedroom temperature falls somewhere between 65 and 69 degrees. You’ve probably heard the old stereotype “women run cold.” And while we’re not big on promoting generalizations, this one seems to ring true. Because men tend to be taller and a bit more muscular than women, they typically have a higher heat production than women. Of course, that can be remedied by throwing on—or taking off—an extra layer or two. In any case, both genders tend to benefit from sleeping in a cooler room.

One issue that tends to be a bit trickier to resolve revolves around pets. According to Corser, around 50% of dog owners like to sleep with their dog. The same is true for around 62% of cat owners. Like humans, animals have a tendency to make noise, move around and get up in the night. And that can be pretty disruptive. Of course, as a nation we seem to be pretty obsessed with our pets, which makes kicking them out of bed an unpopular option.

5. You’re an insomniac.

Hey ladies, if you thought periods were inconvenient, check this out: women are 1.4 more likely to suffer from insomnia than men. That means we typically have a harder time falling asleep, and staying asleep. And if you’re staying up all hours of the night, chances are you’re going to commit some of the sleepytime no-nos listed above, and that’s probably not going to bode well for your partner. Fortunately, Corser says insomnia is treatable. That’s a relief. Few things are more frustrating than hearing the gentle hums of a sleeping bed partner while you’re stuck watching the clock. Even sadder is watching what could have been an eight-hour night of sleep dwindle down to two hours of sleep, or worse, no sleep at all.

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Hollywood’s gender-swapping problem: It looks like progress for actresses — but women of color are still mostly shut out

Helen Mirren is the latest A-lister to benefit from the recent genderswap trend in Hollywood. In a recent interview with the BBC, the Oscar-winner explained that her newest role, playing a colonel in charge of a drone strike operation in Gavin Hood’s “Eye in the Sky,” was originally written for a man. “As opposed to saying ‘well, that’s men, that’s what men do in war’ … I think Gavin very astutely understood and realised putting a woman [into the role] just changed the discussion,” Mirren said. The 70-year-old further urged other actresses to go out for male parts: “You look at a scene, and it’s going to be all men around a table, and you think at least half of those could have been women.”

Gender-swapping has been long been touted as opening the doors for women’s representation in cinema. The role of Hildy Johnson, played by Rosalind Russell in Billy Wilder’s “His Girl Friday,” was originated by Pat O’Brien in “The Front Page,” the film on which the screwball classic was based. In recent years, films as diverse as “Our Brand Is Crisis,” “Salt,” “Secret in the Eyes,” and the all-female “Ghostbusters” reboot have all cast women in roles originally conceived for the opposite sex. Other films that have gotten on board the gender-swap train include “Dr. Strange” and the remake of “Road House,” with Ronda Rousey in the Patrick Swayze role.

But how wide is this door actually opening? When director David Gordon Green wanted to fill the role of a thick-skinned political consultant in Bolivia, he went with Sandra Bullock. “Salt,” a 2010 action film directed by Australian Phillip Noyce, starred Angelina Jolie. In remaking “The Secret in their Eyes,” the Argentine Oscar-winner about a detective determined to close an unsolved murder that occurred decades earlier, director Billy Ray enlisted Julia Roberts. Marvel’s “Doctor Strange” franchise starter cast noted chameleon and space alien Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One.  

Spot the pattern yet? In every single one of these cases, the role went to a white actress. Missing are names like Salma Hayek, Lucy Liu, Viola Davis, Kerry Washington, Penelope Cruz, Taraji P. Henson, or the myriad actresses of color who are still waiting to have roles rewritten and reimagined with them in the part. In many cases, these women are still waiting for Hollywood to imagine them in any part at all. Kerry Washington is TV royalty, currently appearing in HBO’s Anita Hill biopic “Confirmation” while starring in Shonda Rhimes’ megahit, “Scandal,” but on the big screen, she remains a near nonentity — it's been four years since her last high-profile vehicle, "Django Unchained." Where’s her gender-swapped action movie?

The science-fiction classic “Alien” was conceived with a disclaimer: Although its screenwriter, Dan O’Bannon, wrote all the roles as male by default, a note in O’Bannon’s original script mandated that this was open to interpretation. “The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women,” the screenplay stated. Thus, Sigourney Weaver would be cast as Ripley, despite the fact that the action heroine was conceived as a hero. In many ways, that switcheroo is part of what makes her such a great character: It adds a dynamic tension to what otherwise would be a generically male-dominated space. In James Cameron’s “Aliens” sequel, motherhood becomes a defining theme, a novel and striking choice for an action film.

Others have noted that playing with gender and even sexuality is of great benefit to writers and producers, aside from the obvious diversity component. When penning the pilot to “Shades of Blue,” the show’s executive producer, Adi Hasak, decided to make Lt. Matt Wozniak, played by Ray Liotta, bisexual. “[I] was writing a scene between him and Donnie Pomp, the two heavies, and it was, to be honest, a really fucking boring scene between two macho guys explaining things to each other,” he told The Wrap. “The characters had no vulnerability, especially the character of Wozniak. So he just leaned forward, and I had the two men share a kiss.”

These choices add dimension and depth to the characterization, allowing actors to do more than play stock types. In a 2013 sitdown with Net-a-Porter, Lucy Liu explained that she’s too often cast as “Dragon Lady” types. “I wish people wouldn't just see me as the Asian girl who beats everyone up, or the Asian girl with no emotion,” she argued. “People see Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock in a romantic comedy, but not me.” On CBS’s “Elementary,” Lucy Liu gets the rare chance to be the first Asian-American actress to play Dr. Watson from the classic series of detective novels.

So why are these opportunities so few and far between? On “Gotham,” Latina actress Michelle Veintimilla plays Firefly, who is a white man in the original Batman comic books. Otherwise, it’s actively difficult to think of a case of gender-swapping in which the role has gone to a woman of color. Charlize Theron, for instance, was recently cast in “The Gray Man,” a part originally intended for Brad Pitt. Theron plays a contract killer unaware that she has children, and as some have pointed out, that means the script will obviously have to be re-written. (If she gave birth to them, how is that possible?) Would producers be so accommodating for Angela Bassett or Jennifer Hudson?

Which brings us to the controversy around “Nina,” the Nina Simone biopic that has faced consistent backlash over casting Afro-Latina actress Zoe Saldana in what critics are calling blackface in order to portray a singer with much darker skin. When it comes to the representation of black women in cinema, gender and race aren’t swapped to accommodate them — it’s their specificity that is erased to accommodate the studio system, one driven by both the bottom line and insidious colorism. It’s still considered more “marketable” to cast someone who looks like Saldana, who looks like what producers “want,” than an actress who actually looks the part.

In an interview with InStyle last year, Saldana argued that “an artist is colorless [and] genderless,” but that misses the point. As Britt Julious argued in Pitchfork, Nina Simone’s hue is “as important as the sound of her voice.” Julious wrote, “History thus far has not been kind to women gifted with melanin, so the ones in the public eye who cut the deepest—most often the creators, so full of voice—ripple deep within us and shape the ways in which we navigate the world.” When black actresses can’t even get the roles that should be created and written for them, those that resonate deeply with their own experiences of navigating the world with a darker skin color, there’s little hope they’ll be given Brad Pitt’s spot in a movie anytime soon.

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Don’t write off Mississippi: Before you dismiss us as “a garbage state,” listen to the queer Southerners you’re leaving behind

There is an ineffable magic to the American South. Most Southerners understand this already; and will agree without further discussion. There are very few words one can accurately ascribe to the kind of magic unfolding in humid places carrying seven kinds of sweet smells on a sticky summer breeze; complicated places, thick with tragedy—and the resulting resilience. Evenings are alive and teeming; alight with swarms of stinging insects and cicadas screaming over the subtle symphonies of cricket song. In this wildness there is something timeless, something arcane. When I talk about where I was born and raised, my accent gets a little stronger with enthusiasm. I start sounding like I really am from Mississippi.

I’m a proud Mississippian. I’m an intersectional feminist. I’m also bisexual. The balance of these identities isn’t as perilous as public conception would suggest. When I first stutter-stepped out of the nest and made my way up North for film school, I already knew that I liked kissing girls. I had since I was little. It was a secret, but I knew who else back home carried the same secret. I knew how many of us there were.

When Gov. Phil Bryant recently passed anti-gay legislation disguised as “religious freedom” in Mississippi, I witnessed the following dynamic unfurl online again and again like overlapping waves: people in Northern states laughed and mocked the backwards, bigoted attitudes of the South as a whole, while my friends and family in Southern states simultaneously began to display the five stages of grief. While my Yankee friends jeered and joked about my home being full of anti-LGBTQ scumbags, I watched my queer community in Mississippi erupt and immolate with their disbelief, their rage, their tearful, terrified, heartache—and it’s this precise discrepancy that halted my own grief from progressing. I’m stuck at bargaining.

This kind of venomous public reaction is not an unfamiliar phenomenon, or even just limited to oblique expressions of misguided disappointment from Northerners on social media. Disney and Marvel threatened to boycott Georgia over anti-gay legislation. Paypal eliminated the creation of 400 jobs when they cancelled the construction of a new facility in North Carolina because of a law discriminating against transgender people. Last year, film industry implants in Louisiana threatened to flee with all their big Hollywood money because of anti-gay legislation. The efficacy of these actions is inarguably potent. Money talks. Capitalism is louder than compassion.

These controversies ignite similarly, sparking the same misinformed rhetoric from the peanut gallery living above the Mason-Dixon line. Endless versions of indignant outrage are parroted that condemn an entire Southern state as a monolith of hate and held accountable. No matter the shape it takes, however, these expressions of rage emanating from straight “allies” operate under a singularly misguided belief: that I do not exist. That there are not transgender men and women in North Carolina who would have benefited from a job at a company that protects them, despite state lawmakers hostile to their existence. All of this magnanimous outrage does not extend to the very group for which it surfaces—Southern queers. Instead, these powerful, “inclusive” entities threaten to pack their things and go; leaving us high and dry, and fighting alone.

Every time this exhausted reiteration of “let Mississippi and Alabama Darwinism themselves into non-existence” is recycled, it is hurtful to members of the LGBTQ community there, even if it’s being expressed on our behalf. It functions from a position of fallacy that we A) do not exist and B) if we do, only exist in insignificant numbers. While I would not say the environment at large in Southern states is safe for minorities, I will say this: Mississippi does not hold the patent on pain.

California has more active hate groups than any other state except Texas. California also executes prisoners at a rate that rivals Texas. Montana is a haven for anti-government white supremacist militias. New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for a travel ban to Mississippi, explaining: “Discrimination is not a New York value,” and yet only recently expanded through executive order protections for transgender New Yorkers. New York, with 44 SPLC-tracked hate groups, even has their very own Ku Klux Klan chapters. Three dozen Republican state legislators from Minnesota have sent letters of support to North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory over the state’s new anti-trans bill. Ted Cruz, potential presidential candidate, openly supports it. Anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced or are active across the country now.

Outside the South, this is common knowledge: Mississippi is poor. Mississippi is fat. Mississippi is illiterate, unemployed, bigoted, pro-life, white, racist, homophobic, transphobic, conservative, evangelical—everything bad associated with the South, Mississippi bears the brunt of it. These associations, in part, are grounded in fact: Mississippi is poor. Mississippi is fat. Mississippi is illiterate. Mississippi is unemployed (though not as much as the District of Columbia or Alaska). These pitfalls are not indicative of what we, as Mississippians, choose not to care about—instead, they indicate what results from years of conservative laws. This is what it looks like to watch a state wither and die on the vine. It’s what happens when lawmakers would rather strangle their citizens than allow inclusivity to bloom beside them. Mississippi is not stuck in the past; it’s the dystopian future Orwell warned us about, come to fruition. The same traits for which Mississippi gets unjustly lambasted are actually the consequences of long-term conservatism.

For example: Conservatives in power do not provide enough government assistance to alleviate the strains of poverty. Result: Mississippi is poor. Access to adequate healthcare for poor Mississippians is limited, and college is an unrealistic expectation. Next: Conservatives in power do not, in turn, provide healthcare for poor citizens. Result: Mississippi dies young. Mississippi has the shortest life span in the United States and the highest infant mortality rate. Next: Conservatives in power do not prioritize education. Result: Mississippi is illiterate. Another side effect of terminal conservatism, Mississippi has a miserable public education system. Mississippi suffers a “brain drain”—a mass exodus of the state’s young, onto better things. Next: Conservatives in power resist updating sexual education in public schools. Result: Mississippi has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the United States.

These ills are interconnected enough to form a feedback loop. Underprivileged citizens in Mississippi have not been granted access to the tools and resources necessary for change. Despite these systemic hostilities—Mississippi is not white. Never has been. It’s obviously not straight. While it may be enemy territory for queers—we are still here. Mississippi has the highest percentage of LGBTQ couples raising children than any other state. Thousands of gay Mississippians are ready to get married. Mississippi is, simply, home.

Sharon Stone has scrapped plans to film in Mississippi. There are now travel bans to Mississippi. And it’s not just Mississippi that suffers—the mayor of Los Angeles also called for a travel ban to North Carolina, a state currently getting hit hard in the form of multiple travel bans and lost concert revenue. That major companies are also turning away from Southern states over anti-LGBTQ legislation is cartoon-level laughable; after all, they only got what they paid for.

Rev. Laura Brekke, 30, a chaplain at Santa Clara University, grew up in Georgia and spent time living in North Carolina and Alabama. Of HB1523 she says, “I hate that Southern states have yet again allowed bigotry and fear to be the foundation for lawmaking. I hate that lawmakers in Southern States feel the need to police people’s intimate lives. […] As a bi woman, and a proud Southerner, it goes against the culture of hospitality and welcoming that I was taught growing up in the South.”

Manisha Campbell, 28, is an out lesbian living in Oxford, Mississippi. We grew up together. She says that while it is dangerous in certain areas for LGBTQ folks, most of them know which areas to avoid—places like McComb or Pontotoc. Manisha assures me that she’s in no immediate danger and “makes [herself] comfortable” everywhere she goes. When I asked what she thought about people outside the South reacting with ideas like this tweet calling Mississippi a "garbage state," or companies pulling their businesses, she answered: “Honestly, those people don’t think about how we feel.”

Southern queers are getting caught in the crosshairs of consequence. We are being affected by the liberal open-fire against legislation that already had us in its sights. When popular opinion is that the South is worthless and full of worthless people, it grants the homophobes a callous, if tangential, victory in public opinion. Adhering to this idea of the South as belonging to the bigots is ignorant. HB1523 does not reflect the entire population’s opinion; it reflects that of the hateful conservative elite who wrote it, and the ignorant voters who helped it squeak past.

It’s sinister entities like Gov. Phil Bryant and Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore who’re carrying on the grandstanding tradition of denying civil rights to others as it was done for centuries before them; white men who’ve lived in the South for generations and hoard power to uphold these so-called Southern values that the rest of the country mistakenly insist Southerners writ large represent.

In terms of the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation, a more accurate target to take down would be Mathew Staver, Kim Davis’s attorney. His conservative group Liberty Counsel planted lawyers from their organization into 50 states to help draft anti-LGBTQ legislation. It’s worked in 20 states so far. When lawsuits erupt around these laws, laws they helped create, Liberty Counsel then generously offers to represent the offended conservative party.

The wretched successes of Southern oppression are hinged entirely upon the complete and total elimination of minority voices, and every time a straight ally up North publicly blusters about destroying the whole of the South, the end result is congruent. Either way, I have been erased.

Compassion gets less viral traction: 95 Mississippi writers released a letter opposing HB1523. The Oxford Film Festival added a new LGBTQ category to protest. University of Mississippi’s Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter openly opposes the law. Several Mississippi state leaders, including mayors of Biloxi and Ocean Springs, have released statements siding against the law. On Tuesday, April 19, a public forum sponsored by several of the state’s top human rights advocacy groups will be held to discuss HB1523.

I feel so strongly about this that I came out of the closet to write about it. I came out on Facebook without even texting my Mama down in Texas the courtesy of warning shot first. When I reached out to my Southern friends and family, I felt fearless, determined, and adamant—because I knew. I knew that I could take a leap of faith and flourish. I trusted where I come from. I trusted the community that made me. I came out to everyone I know in Mississippi and my faith was rewarded; I was met with open arms. I watched my anger get swept up in a digital wave and carried away; shared by other queer people with mirrored experiences across North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia. I watched straight Southern allies fall in line, one by one, and I nearly wept with the sense of welcome I felt. This is Southern hospitality.

This is part of the magic; the resilience we understand as Southerners, without being able to articulate. If you knew the South like we know the South, you would know the warmth and the rage that exists side by side and somehow harmonize. You would know how we fight. You would know the pockets of ferocity that would send racists running for the hills. You would recognize anti-gay legislation for the death rattle that it is, and support the Mississippi businesses that speak out against hate. You would support the ACLU and other organizations as they challenge these laws in federal court. You would stand with us, not against us. To Northern allies: Please don’t give up on us yet. Please don’t let us be forgotten. Please don’t let them do this to us. Don’t leave Southern queers behind.There is an ineffable magic to the American South. Most Southerners understand this already; and will agree without further discussion. There are very few words one can accurately ascribe to the kind of magic unfolding in humid places carrying seven kinds of sweet smells on a sticky summer breeze; complicated places, thick with tragedy—and the resulting resilience. Evenings are alive and teeming; alight with swarms of stinging insects and cicadas screaming over the subtle symphonies of cricket song. In this wildness there is something timeless, something arcane. When I talk about where I was born and raised, my accent gets a little stronger with enthusiasm. I start sounding like I really am from Mississippi.

I’m a proud Mississippian. I’m an intersectional feminist. I’m also bisexual. The balance of these identities isn’t as perilous as public conception would suggest. When I first stutter-stepped out of the nest and made my way up North for film school, I already knew that I liked kissing girls. I had since I was little. It was a secret, but I knew who else back home carried the same secret. I knew how many of us there were.

When Gov. Phil Bryant recently passed anti-gay legislation disguised as “religious freedom” in Mississippi, I witnessed the following dynamic unfurl online again and again like overlapping waves: people in Northern states laughed and mocked the backwards, bigoted attitudes of the South as a whole, while my friends and family in Southern states simultaneously began to display the five stages of grief. While my Yankee friends jeered and joked about my home being full of anti-LGBTQ scumbags, I watched my queer community in Mississippi erupt and immolate with their disbelief, their rage, their tearful, terrified, heartache—and it’s this precise discrepancy that halted my own grief from progressing. I’m stuck at bargaining.

This kind of venomous public reaction is not an unfamiliar phenomenon, or even just limited to oblique expressions of misguided disappointment from Northerners on social media. Disney and Marvel threatened to boycott Georgia over anti-gay legislation. Paypal eliminated the creation of 400 jobs when they cancelled the construction of a new facility in North Carolina because of a law discriminating against transgender people. Last year, film industry implants in Louisiana threatened to flee with all their big Hollywood money because of anti-gay legislation. The efficacy of these actions is inarguably potent. Money talks. Capitalism is louder than compassion.

These controversies ignite similarly, sparking the same misinformed rhetoric from the peanut gallery living above the Mason-Dixon line. Endless versions of indignant outrage are parroted that condemn an entire Southern state as a monolith of hate and held accountable. No matter the shape it takes, however, these expressions of rage emanating from straight “allies” operate under a singularly misguided belief: that I do not exist. That there are not transgender men and women in North Carolina who would have benefited from a job at a company that protects them, despite state lawmakers hostile to their existence. All of this magnanimous outrage does not extend to the very group for which it surfaces—Southern queers. Instead, these powerful, “inclusive” entities threaten to pack their things and go; leaving us high and dry, and fighting alone.

Every time this exhausted reiteration of “let Mississippi and Alabama Darwinism themselves into non-existence” is recycled, it is hurtful to members of the LGBTQ community there, even if it’s being expressed on our behalf. It functions from a position of fallacy that we A) do not exist and B) if we do, only exist in insignificant numbers. While I would not say the environment at large in Southern states is safe for minorities, I will say this: Mississippi does not hold the patent on pain.

California has more active hate groups than any other state except Texas. California also executes prisoners at a rate that rivals Texas. Montana is a haven for anti-government white supremacist militias. New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo has called for a travel ban to Mississippi, explaining: “Discrimination is not a New York value,” and yet only recently expanded through executive order protections for transgender New Yorkers. New York, with 44 SPLC-tracked hate groups, even has their very own Ku Klux Klan chapters. Three dozen Republican state legislators from Minnesota have sent letters of support to North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory over the state’s new anti-trans bill. Ted Cruz, potential presidential candidate, openly supports it. Anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced or are active across the country now.

Outside the South, this is common knowledge: Mississippi is poor. Mississippi is fat. Mississippi is illiterate, unemployed, bigoted, pro-life, white, racist, homophobic, transphobic, conservative, evangelical—everything bad associated with the South, Mississippi bears the brunt of it. These associations, in part, are grounded in fact: Mississippi is poor. Mississippi is fat. Mississippi is illiterate. Mississippi is unemployed (though not as much as the District of Columbia or Alaska). These pitfalls are not indicative of what we, as Mississippians, choose not to care about—instead, they indicate what results from years of conservative laws. This is what it looks like to watch a state wither and die on the vine. It’s what happens when lawmakers would rather strangle their citizens than allow inclusivity to bloom beside them. Mississippi is not stuck in the past; it’s the dystopian future Orwell warned us about, come to fruition. The same traits for which Mississippi gets unjustly lambasted are actually the consequences of long-term conservatism.

For example: Conservatives in power do not provide enough government assistance to alleviate the strains of poverty. Result: Mississippi is poor. Access to adequate healthcare for poor Mississippians is limited, and college is an unrealistic expectation. Next: Conservatives in power do not, in turn, provide healthcare for poor citizens. Result: Mississippi dies young. Mississippi has the shortest life span in the United States and the highest infant mortality rate. Next: Conservatives in power do not prioritize education. Result: Mississippi is illiterate. Another side effect of terminal conservatism, Mississippi has a miserable public education system. Mississippi suffers a “brain drain”—a mass exodus of the state’s young, onto better things. Next: Conservatives in power resist updating sexual education in public schools. Result: Mississippi has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the United States.

These ills are interconnected enough to form a feedback loop. Underprivileged citizens in Mississippi have not been granted access to the tools and resources necessary for change. Despite these systemic hostilities—Mississippi is not white. Never has been. It’s obviously not straight. While it may be enemy territory for queers—we are still here. Mississippi has the highest percentage of LGBTQ couples raising children than any other state. Thousands of gay Mississippians are ready to get married. Mississippi is, simply, home.

Sharon Stone has scrapped plans to film in Mississippi. There are now travel bans to Mississippi. And it’s not just Mississippi that suffers—the mayor of Los Angeles also called for a travel ban to North Carolina, a state currently getting hit hard in the form of multiple travel bans and lost concert revenue. That major companies are also turning away from Southern states over anti-LGBTQ legislation is cartoon-level laughable; after all, they only got what they paid for.

Rev. Laura Brekke, 30, a chaplain at Santa Clara University, grew up in Georgia and spent time living in North Carolina and Alabama. Of HB1523 she says, “I hate that Southern states have yet again allowed bigotry and fear to be the foundation for lawmaking. I hate that lawmakers in Southern States feel the need to police people’s intimate lives. […] As a bi woman, and a proud Southerner, it goes against the culture of hospitality and welcoming that I was taught growing up in the South.”

Manisha Campbell, 28, is an out lesbian living in Oxford, Mississippi. We grew up together. She says that while it is dangerous in certain areas for LGBTQ folks, most of them know which areas to avoid—places like McComb or Pontotoc. Manisha assures me that she’s in no immediate danger and “makes [herself] comfortable” everywhere she goes. When I asked what she thought about people outside the South reacting with ideas like this tweet calling Mississippi a "garbage state," or companies pulling their businesses, she answered: “Honestly, those people don’t think about how we feel.”

Southern queers are getting caught in the crosshairs of consequence. We are being affected by the liberal open-fire against legislation that already had us in its sights. When popular opinion is that the South is worthless and full of worthless people, it grants the homophobes a callous, if tangential, victory in public opinion. Adhering to this idea of the South as belonging to the bigots is ignorant. HB1523 does not reflect the entire population’s opinion; it reflects that of the hateful conservative elite who wrote it, and the ignorant voters who helped it squeak past.

It’s sinister entities like Gov. Phil Bryant and Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore who’re carrying on the grandstanding tradition of denying civil rights to others as it was done for centuries before them; white men who’ve lived in the South for generations and hoard power to uphold these so-called Southern values that the rest of the country mistakenly insist Southerners writ large represent.

In terms of the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation, a more accurate target to take down would be Mathew Staver, Kim Davis’s attorney. His conservative group Liberty Counsel planted lawyers from their organization into 50 states to help draft anti-LGBTQ legislation. It’s worked in 20 states so far. When lawsuits erupt around these laws, laws they helped create, Liberty Counsel then generously offers to represent the offended conservative party.

The wretched successes of Southern oppression are hinged entirely upon the complete and total elimination of minority voices, and every time a straight ally up North publicly blusters about destroying the whole of the South, the end result is congruent. Either way, I have been erased.

Compassion gets less viral traction: 95 Mississippi writers released a letter opposing HB1523. The Oxford Film Festival added a new LGBTQ category to protest. University of Mississippi’s Chancellor Jeffrey Vitter openly opposes the law. Several Mississippi state leaders, including mayors of Biloxi and Ocean Springs, have released statements siding against the law. On Tuesday, April 19, a public forum sponsored by several of the state’s top human rights advocacy groups will be held to discuss HB1523.

I feel so strongly about this that I came out of the closet to write about it. I came out on Facebook without even texting my Mama down in Texas the courtesy of warning shot first. When I reached out to my Southern friends and family, I felt fearless, determined, and adamant—because I knew. I knew that I could take a leap of faith and flourish. I trusted where I come from. I trusted the community that made me. I came out to everyone I know in Mississippi and my faith was rewarded; I was met with open arms. I watched my anger get swept up in a digital wave and carried away; shared by other queer people with mirrored experiences across North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Georgia. I watched straight Southern allies fall in line, one by one, and I nearly wept with the sense of welcome I felt. This is Southern hospitality.

This is part of the magic; the resilience we understand as Southerners, without being able to articulate. If you knew the South like we know the South, you would know the warmth and the rage that exists side by side and somehow harmonize. You would know how we fight. You would know the pockets of ferocity that would send racists running for the hills. You would recognize anti-gay legislation for the death rattle that it is, and support the Mississippi businesses that speak out against hate. You would support the ACLU and other organizations as they challenge these laws in federal court. You would stand with us, not against us. To Northern allies: Please don’t give up on us yet. Please don’t let us be forgotten. Please don’t let them do this to us. Don’t leave Southern queers behind.

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“There’s not a rock station I’d ever, ever put on”: NPR’s Bob Boilen finds brilliance in podcasts instead

So many Baby Boomers never stretch out from their passion for the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s to find what else is cooking. NPR Music host Bob Boilen has maintained an enthusiasm for new sounds and passed it on in the show “All Songs Considered” and its live (and often crowded adjunct), the Tiny Desk Concerts.

Boilen’s stuffs his new book, “Your Song Changed My Life,” with conversations with musicians about their musical inspirations and influences. His selections are about what a frequent listener to public radio would expect – safe but also reasonably eclectic. Among them are Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, Philip Glass, Sturgill Simpson, Courtney Barnett, Smokey Robinson, Lucinda Williams and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

The book begins with an introduction about the impact The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” made on the young Boilen, who went on to work at record stores, fall for the music of Patti Smith, and become a musician and music journalist. He’s hardly the first to tell this kind of story, but the personal framing makes even hearing about the glories of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” sound fresh. The rest of the book is like that: There are few shocks, but a lot of intelligent discussion from someone whose commitment is entirely unfeigned.

Boilen spoke to us from the NPR offices in Washington. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

I think we probably assume when we come to a book like yours that musicians would fall for the kind of music that they end up making themselves—that a punk rocker would fall in love with the Clash or the Sex Pistols, for example. But what were some of the surprises you found?

Colin Meloy of the Decemberists picked Hüsker Dü. [Laughs] Like, make that connection. A couple more that were out-of-this-world crazy: Trey Anastasio picking "West Side Story" was like, really? Seriously? How is that possible? James Blake picking Sam Cooke.

I spent time interviewing each artist and talking about the song and their life and history, but then I would take the song and start to think and dig and wonder, "What's the connection? Where is James Blake connected to Sam Cooke?" And, actually, now I can't separate the two, because if you hear James Blake's little moan at the beginning of "Retrograde" and then you turn on a Sam Cooke record, you go, "Oh my god, of course!" He grew up on Cooke.

It's also hard to imagine anyone who loves music not responding to Sam Cooke's voice. He just had one of the greatest voices of all time.

You bet. But really, Blake's earlier stuff was more instrumental electronica. He didn't really have a "voice," and used Sam Cooke, a pretty obscure record called "Trouble Blues," not any of the hits, to help him find his own voice. That's kind of cool.

You're best known for your work on NPR, but you've also spent a lot of time in record stores. Do you still seek out good record stores and scholarly record store clerks?

The answer is not really, which is sad. I was at Rough Trade Records the other night in Brooklyn, but the truth is that I get as many records sent to me in a given day that probably came out in a year when I was a teenager. So going into a record store is overwhelming and I already am overwhelmed.

What I do miss, though — and walking into Rough Trade the other night when I was going to see Asaf Avidan, this amazing Israeli player who actually tells a story in my book about Leonard Cohen, made me realize how much — I miss holding a cover in my hands and choosing an album completely by the cover. I'm in a different world now, where things just get sent and I listen fairly blindly to music to be as objective as possible. I do miss that nice surprise of making the connection between the art chosen on the cover and the art recorded on the music. So it's a little sad.

You've got a real range of musicians in the book. What kind of a mix were you going for?

Every one of these artists—with the exception, I daresay, of Trey Anastasio—I was madly in love with. [Laughs] With Trey's music, I was a super admirer of his skill, his craft, his band's relationship with fans, which is something in the bigger scope of things I'm really in love with. I love when artists have a following and when the artist and fan following is like a community and not just like stars. I like the mutual benefit that both get from concerts, so I wanted to talk to him and then wound up falling in love with how he and their band make music and what inspires him.

Like I said, he picked a song from "West Side Story" of Leonard Bernstein's, and you couldn't think of anything more far apart, but he explained it to me. What was so cool is that he's really into the notion of improvisation and music theory, and they go hand-in-hand. I think of composition and improvisation as two different skills, but the way Trey words it is, "If you don't have the understanding of how music works, then you can't as a player drop the thinking side of your brain and just play. You're always trying to think of, 'Oh, what would go good here.' But if you've got it as part of your DNA, you're golden." And that's what he does and that's what's so cool about his band and the different projects he has.

You've brought in groups of all kinds for Tiny Desk concerts. What kind of bands work best in that setting?

We have a restriction. It's a weird one, but it's purposeful on my part. We don't amplify the voice into the room. It's in an office at NPR. It's where I work, it's literally my desk. People from NPR and their friends will come and watch a Tiny Desk concert, and we'll certainly mic the singer so that we record the singer's voice, but we don't amplify it into the room. There's no PA. So the rule is that the band can't play louder than the singer can sing, because they all have to hear each other. We don't use monitors or PAs. So maybe a punk band or a thrashing, loud band who's dependent on their volume for emotion might have a harder time making it work.

Then again, the Tiny Desk that went up today was the Serotones. They were actually fairly loud, but AJ Haynes has got a belting voice that you can tell has a gospel root to it and a garage rock root to it, so it worked. The other thing that works well is bands who actually listen to one another. You might think, "Well, of course they listen to one another," but the truth is a lot of young bands have only learned to play music when the volume is loud and when they have their own monitor mix in their ear or in front of them, and they don't listen to all the nuance. When they're at my desk, it's all about nuance. If they don't know how to play off one another when they're quiet, it can fall apart. We've had a 23-piece marching band here and we've had solo acts—a wide variety can work, but it's a listening skill set.

Have you ever had Gillian Welch and David Rawlings?

We did, but I actually missed the day they were here. They were at my office but I wasn't there at the time, which is unusual, I've missed a handful or two. But I love them, and they've got that skill for sure.

You begin the book with an essay about listening to the Beatles as a kid and the power of that music for you. Do you still go back to the Beatles more than any other band?

My day-to-day is mostly filled with listening to music I've never heard before, so I'd start there. On my weekends I pull out my vinyl for some comfort, and it wouldn't be terribly unusual for me to pull out the Beatles because I dearly, dearly still find them an inspirational band, which is kind of amazing after all these years. But I'm certainly not stuck in the past by any means, which is the unfortunate part of a lot of my generation—not only my generation but every generation—who falls in love in their teens and college days and doesn't go any further.

In some ways I feel a little sad for that, because this generation of music is every bit as good as any of my generation's music. The only difference is that hormonally we're not as susceptible to being bowled over when we're in our fifties and sixties as we might be when we're in our teens and twenties. I love the music that's happening today, but yeah, I do go back and listen.

What blows my mind still—and I have to say this may be true of my generation more than any other—is that the difference in change between a band's record in 1964, let's say "Meet the Beatles," and then "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" three-and-a-half years later. Think of what happened to that band and what happened to that music. You don't hear that sort of change too often in bands anymore. It's usually a slow progression. And also remember that bands in 1964 put out two albums every year usually and sometimes more, maybe even a soundtrack for a movie. The touring was not like, "Let's do a record and then two-and-a-half years later after the tour we'll go do another." It was record, record, record, just all the time. You couldn't not be on the airwaves.

Another thing that's changed immensely since the Boomer heyday is radio. When you started listening to radio it was mostly AM. In 2016 radio is better in some ways and worse in others. How does it seem to you?

It depends on what we're defining as radio anymore. If you think of it as terrestrial radio that comes out of a big stick in the ground, then I'd say with the exception of a handful of fortunate cities it's pretty depressing. I live in a city that doesn't have any radio that I listen to very often. There's some great jazz, but there's not a rock station I'd ever, ever put on. There are public radio stations and college radio stations, but I don't have any of that where I live, and haven't had it since Georgetown University shut down their radio station in 1979.

But if you think about radio as a voice and music coming out of any device, and not tying it to a stick in the ground, then in some ways radio is better than ever. So I guess it depends on the definition. There are brilliant podcasts out there. There are people playing music they're passionate about and not what they're told to play. You hear funny interviews with musicians. It just depends on how you want to define it. I'll say that if it's an audio medium I think of all of it as radio. You can put it under your pillow, or, you can be intimate with it, and I think it's sort of better than ever.So many Baby Boomers never stretch out from their passion for the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s to find what else is cooking. NPR Music host Bob Boilen has maintained an enthusiasm for new sounds and passed it on in the show “All Songs Considered” and its live (and often crowded adjunct), the Tiny Desk Concerts.

Boilen’s stuffs his new book, “Your Song Changed My Life,” with conversations with musicians about their musical inspirations and influences. His selections are about what a frequent listener to public radio would expect – safe but also reasonably eclectic. Among them are Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, Philip Glass, Sturgill Simpson, Courtney Barnett, Smokey Robinson, Lucinda Williams and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

The book begins with an introduction about the impact The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” made on the young Boilen, who went on to work at record stores, fall for the music of Patti Smith, and become a musician and music journalist. He’s hardly the first to tell this kind of story, but the personal framing makes even hearing about the glories of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” sound fresh. The rest of the book is like that: There are few shocks, but a lot of intelligent discussion from someone whose commitment is entirely unfeigned.

Boilen spoke to us from the NPR offices in Washington. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

I think we probably assume when we come to a book like yours that musicians would fall for the kind of music that they end up making themselves—that a punk rocker would fall in love with the Clash or the Sex Pistols, for example. But what were some of the surprises you found?

Colin Meloy of the Decemberists picked Hüsker Dü. [Laughs] Like, make that connection. A couple more that were out-of-this-world crazy: Trey Anastasio picking "West Side Story" was like, really? Seriously? How is that possible? James Blake picking Sam Cooke.

I spent time interviewing each artist and talking about the song and their life and history, but then I would take the song and start to think and dig and wonder, "What's the connection? Where is James Blake connected to Sam Cooke?" And, actually, now I can't separate the two, because if you hear James Blake's little moan at the beginning of "Retrograde" and then you turn on a Sam Cooke record, you go, "Oh my god, of course!" He grew up on Cooke.

It's also hard to imagine anyone who loves music not responding to Sam Cooke's voice. He just had one of the greatest voices of all time.

You bet. But really, Blake's earlier stuff was more instrumental electronica. He didn't really have a "voice," and used Sam Cooke, a pretty obscure record called "Trouble Blues," not any of the hits, to help him find his own voice. That's kind of cool.

You're best known for your work on NPR, but you've also spent a lot of time in record stores. Do you still seek out good record stores and scholarly record store clerks?

The answer is not really, which is sad. I was at Rough Trade Records the other night in Brooklyn, but the truth is that I get as many records sent to me in a given day that probably came out in a year when I was a teenager. So going into a record store is overwhelming and I already am overwhelmed.

What I do miss, though — and walking into Rough Trade the other night when I was going to see Asaf Avidan, this amazing Israeli player who actually tells a story in my book about Leonard Cohen, made me realize how much — I miss holding a cover in my hands and choosing an album completely by the cover. I'm in a different world now, where things just get sent and I listen fairly blindly to music to be as objective as possible. I do miss that nice surprise of making the connection between the art chosen on the cover and the art recorded on the music. So it's a little sad.

You've got a real range of musicians in the book. What kind of a mix were you going for?

Every one of these artists—with the exception, I daresay, of Trey Anastasio—I was madly in love with. [Laughs] With Trey's music, I was a super admirer of his skill, his craft, his band's relationship with fans, which is something in the bigger scope of things I'm really in love with. I love when artists have a following and when the artist and fan following is like a community and not just like stars. I like the mutual benefit that both get from concerts, so I wanted to talk to him and then wound up falling in love with how he and their band make music and what inspires him.

Like I said, he picked a song from "West Side Story" of Leonard Bernstein's, and you couldn't think of anything more far apart, but he explained it to me. What was so cool is that he's really into the notion of improvisation and music theory, and they go hand-in-hand. I think of composition and improvisation as two different skills, but the way Trey words it is, "If you don't have the understanding of how music works, then you can't as a player drop the thinking side of your brain and just play. You're always trying to think of, 'Oh, what would go good here.' But if you've got it as part of your DNA, you're golden." And that's what he does and that's what's so cool about his band and the different projects he has.

You've brought in groups of all kinds for Tiny Desk concerts. What kind of bands work best in that setting?

We have a restriction. It's a weird one, but it's purposeful on my part. We don't amplify the voice into the room. It's in an office at NPR. It's where I work, it's literally my desk. People from NPR and their friends will come and watch a Tiny Desk concert, and we'll certainly mic the singer so that we record the singer's voice, but we don't amplify it into the room. There's no PA. So the rule is that the band can't play louder than the singer can sing, because they all have to hear each other. We don't use monitors or PAs. So maybe a punk band or a thrashing, loud band who's dependent on their volume for emotion might have a harder time making it work.

Then again, the Tiny Desk that went up today was the Serotones. They were actually fairly loud, but AJ Haynes has got a belting voice that you can tell has a gospel root to it and a garage rock root to it, so it worked. The other thing that works well is bands who actually listen to one another. You might think, "Well, of course they listen to one another," but the truth is a lot of young bands have only learned to play music when the volume is loud and when they have their own monitor mix in their ear or in front of them, and they don't listen to all the nuance. When they're at my desk, it's all about nuance. If they don't know how to play off one another when they're quiet, it can fall apart. We've had a 23-piece marching band here and we've had solo acts—a wide variety can work, but it's a listening skill set.

Have you ever had Gillian Welch and David Rawlings?

We did, but I actually missed the day they were here. They were at my office but I wasn't there at the time, which is unusual, I've missed a handful or two. But I love them, and they've got that skill for sure.

You begin the book with an essay about listening to the Beatles as a kid and the power of that music for you. Do you still go back to the Beatles more than any other band?

My day-to-day is mostly filled with listening to music I've never heard before, so I'd start there. On my weekends I pull out my vinyl for some comfort, and it wouldn't be terribly unusual for me to pull out the Beatles because I dearly, dearly still find them an inspirational band, which is kind of amazing after all these years. But I'm certainly not stuck in the past by any means, which is the unfortunate part of a lot of my generation—not only my generation but every generation—who falls in love in their teens and college days and doesn't go any further.

In some ways I feel a little sad for that, because this generation of music is every bit as good as any of my generation's music. The only difference is that hormonally we're not as susceptible to being bowled over when we're in our fifties and sixties as we might be when we're in our teens and twenties. I love the music that's happening today, but yeah, I do go back and listen.

What blows my mind still—and I have to say this may be true of my generation more than any other—is that the difference in change between a band's record in 1964, let's say "Meet the Beatles," and then "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" three-and-a-half years later. Think of what happened to that band and what happened to that music. You don't hear that sort of change too often in bands anymore. It's usually a slow progression. And also remember that bands in 1964 put out two albums every year usually and sometimes more, maybe even a soundtrack for a movie. The touring was not like, "Let's do a record and then two-and-a-half years later after the tour we'll go do another." It was record, record, record, just all the time. You couldn't not be on the airwaves.

Another thing that's changed immensely since the Boomer heyday is radio. When you started listening to radio it was mostly AM. In 2016 radio is better in some ways and worse in others. How does it seem to you?

It depends on what we're defining as radio anymore. If you think of it as terrestrial radio that comes out of a big stick in the ground, then I'd say with the exception of a handful of fortunate cities it's pretty depressing. I live in a city that doesn't have any radio that I listen to very often. There's some great jazz, but there's not a rock station I'd ever, ever put on. There are public radio stations and college radio stations, but I don't have any of that where I live, and haven't had it since Georgetown University shut down their radio station in 1979.

But if you think about radio as a voice and music coming out of any device, and not tying it to a stick in the ground, then in some ways radio is better than ever. So I guess it depends on the definition. There are brilliant podcasts out there. There are people playing music they're passionate about and not what they're told to play. You hear funny interviews with musicians. It just depends on how you want to define it. I'll say that if it's an audio medium I think of all of it as radio. You can put it under your pillow, or, you can be intimate with it, and I think it's sort of better than ever.So many Baby Boomers never stretch out from their passion for the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s to find what else is cooking. NPR Music host Bob Boilen has maintained an enthusiasm for new sounds and passed it on in the show “All Songs Considered” and its live (and often crowded adjunct), the Tiny Desk Concerts.

Boilen’s stuffs his new book, “Your Song Changed My Life,” with conversations with musicians about their musical inspirations and influences. His selections are about what a frequent listener to public radio would expect – safe but also reasonably eclectic. Among them are Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, Philip Glass, Sturgill Simpson, Courtney Barnett, Smokey Robinson, Lucinda Williams and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

The book begins with an introduction about the impact The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” made on the young Boilen, who went on to work at record stores, fall for the music of Patti Smith, and become a musician and music journalist. He’s hardly the first to tell this kind of story, but the personal framing makes even hearing about the glories of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” sound fresh. The rest of the book is like that: There are few shocks, but a lot of intelligent discussion from someone whose commitment is entirely unfeigned.

Boilen spoke to us from the NPR offices in Washington. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

I think we probably assume when we come to a book like yours that musicians would fall for the kind of music that they end up making themselves—that a punk rocker would fall in love with the Clash or the Sex Pistols, for example. But what were some of the surprises you found?

Colin Meloy of the Decemberists picked Hüsker Dü. [Laughs] Like, make that connection. A couple more that were out-of-this-world crazy: Trey Anastasio picking "West Side Story" was like, really? Seriously? How is that possible? James Blake picking Sam Cooke.

I spent time interviewing each artist and talking about the song and their life and history, but then I would take the song and start to think and dig and wonder, "What's the connection? Where is James Blake connected to Sam Cooke?" And, actually, now I can't separate the two, because if you hear James Blake's little moan at the beginning of "Retrograde" and then you turn on a Sam Cooke record, you go, "Oh my god, of course!" He grew up on Cooke.

It's also hard to imagine anyone who loves music not responding to Sam Cooke's voice. He just had one of the greatest voices of all time.

You bet. But really, Blake's earlier stuff was more instrumental electronica. He didn't really have a "voice," and used Sam Cooke, a pretty obscure record called "Trouble Blues," not any of the hits, to help him find his own voice. That's kind of cool.

You're best known for your work on NPR, but you've also spent a lot of time in record stores. Do you still seek out good record stores and scholarly record store clerks?

The answer is not really, which is sad. I was at Rough Trade Records the other night in Brooklyn, but the truth is that I get as many records sent to me in a given day that probably came out in a year when I was a teenager. So going into a record store is overwhelming and I already am overwhelmed.

What I do miss, though — and walking into Rough Trade the other night when I was going to see Asaf Avidan, this amazing Israeli player who actually tells a story in my book about Leonard Cohen, made me realize how much — I miss holding a cover in my hands and choosing an album completely by the cover. I'm in a different world now, where things just get sent and I listen fairly blindly to music to be as objective as possible. I do miss that nice surprise of making the connection between the art chosen on the cover and the art recorded on the music. So it's a little sad.

You've got a real range of musicians in the book. What kind of a mix were you going for?

Every one of these artists—with the exception, I daresay, of Trey Anastasio—I was madly in love with. [Laughs] With Trey's music, I was a super admirer of his skill, his craft, his band's relationship with fans, which is something in the bigger scope of things I'm really in love with. I love when artists have a following and when the artist and fan following is like a community and not just like stars. I like the mutual benefit that both get from concerts, so I wanted to talk to him and then wound up falling in love with how he and their band make music and what inspires him.

Like I said, he picked a song from "West Side Story" of Leonard Bernstein's, and you couldn't think of anything more far apart, but he explained it to me. What was so cool is that he's really into the notion of improvisation and music theory, and they go hand-in-hand. I think of composition and improvisation as two different skills, but the way Trey words it is, "If you don't have the understanding of how music works, then you can't as a player drop the thinking side of your brain and just play. You're always trying to think of, 'Oh, what would go good here.' But if you've got it as part of your DNA, you're golden." And that's what he does and that's what's so cool about his band and the different projects he has.

You've brought in groups of all kinds for Tiny Desk concerts. What kind of bands work best in that setting?

We have a restriction. It's a weird one, but it's purposeful on my part. We don't amplify the voice into the room. It's in an office at NPR. It's where I work, it's literally my desk. People from NPR and their friends will come and watch a Tiny Desk concert, and we'll certainly mic the singer so that we record the singer's voice, but we don't amplify it into the room. There's no PA. So the rule is that the band can't play louder than the singer can sing, because they all have to hear each other. We don't use monitors or PAs. So maybe a punk band or a thrashing, loud band who's dependent on their volume for emotion might have a harder time making it work.

Then again, the Tiny Desk that went up today was the Serotones. They were actually fairly loud, but AJ Haynes has got a belting voice that you can tell has a gospel root to it and a garage rock root to it, so it worked. The other thing that works well is bands who actually listen to one another. You might think, "Well, of course they listen to one another," but the truth is a lot of young bands have only learned to play music when the volume is loud and when they have their own monitor mix in their ear or in front of them, and they don't listen to all the nuance. When they're at my desk, it's all about nuance. If they don't know how to play off one another when they're quiet, it can fall apart. We've had a 23-piece marching band here and we've had solo acts—a wide variety can work, but it's a listening skill set.

Have you ever had Gillian Welch and David Rawlings?

We did, but I actually missed the day they were here. They were at my office but I wasn't there at the time, which is unusual, I've missed a handful or two. But I love them, and they've got that skill for sure.

You begin the book with an essay about listening to the Beatles as a kid and the power of that music for you. Do you still go back to the Beatles more than any other band?

My day-to-day is mostly filled with listening to music I've never heard before, so I'd start there. On my weekends I pull out my vinyl for some comfort, and it wouldn't be terribly unusual for me to pull out the Beatles because I dearly, dearly still find them an inspirational band, which is kind of amazing after all these years. But I'm certainly not stuck in the past by any means, which is the unfortunate part of a lot of my generation—not only my generation but every generation—who falls in love in their teens and college days and doesn't go any further.

In some ways I feel a little sad for that, because this generation of music is every bit as good as any of my generation's music. The only difference is that hormonally we're not as susceptible to being bowled over when we're in our fifties and sixties as we might be when we're in our teens and twenties. I love the music that's happening today, but yeah, I do go back and listen.

What blows my mind still—and I have to say this may be true of my generation more than any other—is that the difference in change between a band's record in 1964, let's say "Meet the Beatles," and then "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" three-and-a-half years later. Think of what happened to that band and what happened to that music. You don't hear that sort of change too often in bands anymore. It's usually a slow progression. And also remember that bands in 1964 put out two albums every year usually and sometimes more, maybe even a soundtrack for a movie. The touring was not like, "Let's do a record and then two-and-a-half years later after the tour we'll go do another." It was record, record, record, just all the time. You couldn't not be on the airwaves.

Another thing that's changed immensely since the Boomer heyday is radio. When you started listening to radio it was mostly AM. In 2016 radio is better in some ways and worse in others. How does it seem to you?

It depends on what we're defining as radio anymore. If you think of it as terrestrial radio that comes out of a big stick in the ground, then I'd say with the exception of a handful of fortunate cities it's pretty depressing. I live in a city that doesn't have any radio that I listen to very often. There's some great jazz, but there's not a rock station I'd ever, ever put on. There are public radio stations and college radio stations, but I don't have any of that where I live, and haven't had it since Georgetown University shut down their radio station in 1979.

But if you think about radio as a voice and music coming out of any device, and not tying it to a stick in the ground, then in some ways radio is better than ever. So I guess it depends on the definition. There are brilliant podcasts out there. There are people playing music they're passionate about and not what they're told to play. You hear funny interviews with musicians. It just depends on how you want to define it. I'll say that if it's an audio medium I think of all of it as radio. You can put it under your pillow, or, you can be intimate with it, and I think it's sort of better than ever.

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Bernie Sanders gains in national polls as millions of supporters in two of the biggest states remain ineligible to vote for him

The last time NBC News and the Wall Street Journal polled the Democratic voters nationwide on their preferred presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a nine point lead over rival Bernie Sanders.

Since that last NBC/WSJ poll conducted March 3-6, Sanders suffered a Super Tuesday rout only to see his campaign take eight of the next nine contests. Now the latest national poll, released Monday and conducted April 10-14, finds Sanders with his highest standing yet and within two points of Clinton nationally -- 48 percent to Clinton's 50 percent.

The NBC/WSJ poll shows Clinton's support with women, black voters and even voters over the age of 65 slipping after more than half of the country has already voted in Democratic primaries and caucuses.

The NBC/WSJ poll is just the latest national poll to see Sanders' support surging in the final stages of the campaign even while his numbers in the key states he'd need to mount a comeback remain stubbornly steady. A Bloomberg Politics national poll out late last month found Democratic voters nationwide evenly split between Clinton and Sanders. As did a poll conducted by The Atlantic and the Public Religion Research Institute released last week.

Still, this isn't exactly great news for the Sanders campaign. As Sanders admitted to his supporters gathered in New York's Washington Square Park last week, “this is a tough race for us,” citing the state's closed primary system and its onerous requirement that voters seeking to change party affiliations in order to vote in the primary do so by October 2015, leaving many Independent voters without a voice in the state's primary. More than 3 million people — about 27 percent of New York voters — were registered outside the Republican and Democratic parties as of April, and are therefore ineligible to vote on Tuesday. And as the Washington Post pointed out, Sanders' win margins have been padded by his overwhelming support among Independent voters:

In Michigan, where Sanders won his greatest upset, Clinton beat him by 18 points among self-identified Democrats, according to exit polls. In Oklahoma, one of the few states that Clinton won in 2008’s primary but lost this year, she beat Sanders by nine points with Democrats. In Wisconsin, Sanders won overall by 13 points; he split the Democratic vote with Clinton 50-50.

In New York, whose closed primary tomorrow may serve as one of the most extreme examples of Sanders' advantage with Independents serving as a disadvantage, a last-minute law suit is expected to be filed Monday for an emergency declaratory judgment deeming millions of voters whose registration was switched from Democrat to unaffiliated, eligible to vote on Tuesday.

“This is our attempt to provide a means of recourse for those thousands of New York voters who find themselves in this very frustrating position, and to raise awareness about the need for a new level of accountability in the electoral process,” said Shyla Nelson, a spokesperson with Election Justice USA, which is filing the lawsuit in New York federal court on behalf of just some of the affected voters.

Some New York voters say they were registered as Independents without their knowledge or consent in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy as Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an emergency measure allowing New York residents to vote at any precinct via affidavit ballot.

“Apparently when I signed that affidavit my party affiliation was waived,” one New York voter who said she had been a registered Democrat since 2008 wrote on Reddit.

The situation in another big state yet to vote is looking only slightly better for Independent Sanders voters. A blockbuster new report found that up to half a million California voters may be blocked from voting in either the Republican or Democratic primary on June 7. While unlike Republicans, California Democrats do allow registered Independents, delineated as "no party preference" on the registration rolls, to vote in their primary, hundreds of thousands of California voters are unwittingly registered with the ultra right-wing American Independent Party.

A Los Angeles Times investigation found that "nearly 3-in-4 people did not realize they had joined the party." A bipartisan team of pollsters contacted a list of 500 AIP members, after filing a public records request, and determined that "fewer than 4% could correctly identify their own registration as a member of the American Independent Party."

The Times concluded that "a majority of (AIP) members have registered with the party in error." Unlike registering as "no party preference," voters registered as members of AIP can only participate in AIP's primary. The Party's platform is much closer to Donald Trump's vision for America than Sanders', as it opposes abortion rights and same-sex marriage and calls for building a fence along the entire United States border. The Times found that more than 50 percent of those polled said they wanted to leave AIP after being read parts of the party platform -- even a few Hollywood celebrities.

Luckily for Sanders, voters have until May 23 to change their party affiliation.

 The last time NBC News and the Wall Street Journal polled the Democratic voters nationwide on their preferred presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a nine point lead over rival Bernie Sanders.

Since that last NBC/WSJ poll conducted March 3-6, Sanders suffered a Super Tuesday rout only to see his campaign take eight of the next nine contests. Now the latest national poll, released Monday and conducted April 10-14, finds Sanders with his highest standing yet and within two points of Clinton nationally -- 48 percent to Clinton's 50 percent.

The NBC/WSJ poll shows Clinton's support with women, black voters and even voters over the age of 65 slipping after more than half of the country has already voted in Democratic primaries and caucuses.

The NBC/WSJ poll is just the latest national poll to see Sanders' support surging in the final stages of the campaign even while his numbers in the key states he'd need to mount a comeback remain stubbornly steady. A Bloomberg Politics national poll out late last month found Democratic voters nationwide evenly split between Clinton and Sanders. As did a poll conducted by The Atlantic and the Public Religion Research Institute released last week.

Still, this isn't exactly great news for the Sanders campaign. As Sanders admitted to his supporters gathered in New York's Washington Square Park last week, “this is a tough race for us,” citing the state's closed primary system and its onerous requirement that voters seeking to change party affiliations in order to vote in the primary do so by October 2015, leaving many Independent voters without a voice in the state's primary. More than 3 million people — about 27 percent of New York voters — were registered outside the Republican and Democratic parties as of April, and are therefore ineligible to vote on Tuesday. And as the Washington Post pointed out, Sanders' win margins have been padded by his overwhelming support among Independent voters:

In Michigan, where Sanders won his greatest upset, Clinton beat him by 18 points among self-identified Democrats, according to exit polls. In Oklahoma, one of the few states that Clinton won in 2008’s primary but lost this year, she beat Sanders by nine points with Democrats. In Wisconsin, Sanders won overall by 13 points; he split the Democratic vote with Clinton 50-50.

In New York, whose closed primary tomorrow may serve as one of the most extreme examples of Sanders' advantage with Independents serving as a disadvantage, a last-minute law suit is expected to be filed Monday for an emergency declaratory judgment deeming millions of voters whose registration was switched from Democrat to unaffiliated, eligible to vote on Tuesday.

“This is our attempt to provide a means of recourse for those thousands of New York voters who find themselves in this very frustrating position, and to raise awareness about the need for a new level of accountability in the electoral process,” said Shyla Nelson, a spokesperson with Election Justice USA, which is filing the lawsuit in New York federal court on behalf of just some of the affected voters.

Some New York voters say they were registered as Independents without their knowledge or consent in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy as Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an emergency measure allowing New York residents to vote at any precinct via affidavit ballot.

“Apparently when I signed that affidavit my party affiliation was waived,” one New York voter who said she had been a registered Democrat since 2008 wrote on Reddit.

The situation in another big state yet to vote is looking only slightly better for Independent Sanders voters. A blockbuster new report found that up to half a million California voters may be blocked from voting in either the Republican or Democratic primary on June 7. While unlike Republicans, California Democrats do allow registered Independents, delineated as "no party preference" on the registration rolls, to vote in their primary, hundreds of thousands of California voters are unwittingly registered with the ultra right-wing American Independent Party.

A Los Angeles Times investigation found that "nearly 3-in-4 people did not realize they had joined the party." A bipartisan team of pollsters contacted a list of 500 AIP members, after filing a public records request, and determined that "fewer than 4% could correctly identify their own registration as a member of the American Independent Party."

The Times concluded that "a majority of (AIP) members have registered with the party in error." Unlike registering as "no party preference," voters registered as members of AIP can only participate in AIP's primary. The Party's platform is much closer to Donald Trump's vision for America than Sanders', as it opposes abortion rights and same-sex marriage and calls for building a fence along the entire United States border. The Times found that more than 50 percent of those polled said they wanted to leave AIP after being read parts of the party platform -- even a few Hollywood celebrities.

Luckily for Sanders, voters have until May 23 to change their party affiliation.

 

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“Bernie Sanders wants higher cable bills”: Fox News “reports” on Sanders joining striking Verizon union workers with nonsensical right-wing smears

40,000 striking Verizon employees marched in the streets of New York on Monday wearing red shirts to mimic the corporation's famous cellular coverage map. And for a second time in the six day strike, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders joined union workers in a show of solidarity ahead of New York's primary election on Tuesday.

"We will not tolerate large profitable corporations sending jobs to low-wage countries....throwing American workers out of the streets," the Vermont senator told the workers gathered near the Verizon building in Manhattan. One of the galvanizing grievances of the striking Verizon employees concerns the company's decision to outsource call center jobs to Mexico and the Philippines.

"That is the kind of greed that is destroying the American middle class," Sanders told the striking Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) union members, referring to Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam's $18 million annual compensation while negotiations deadlock over union demands that Verizon halt its gutting of workers' health care and retirement benefits.



Reacting to Sanders' visit to the Verizon strike on Monday, Fox News' Heather Nauert flippantly claimed that, "Bernie Sanders wants higher cable bills":



Of course, Sanders's support for striking union workers means no such thing. Aside from the asinine assertion that workers fighting to keep their jobs will necessitate a rise in anyone's cable bill, as Sanders himself wrote in a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler last year, cable bills in America are already artificially inflated.

“As the telecommunications industry becomes increasingly concentrated, this lack of choice has resulted in huge price increases and often poor service for consumers,” Sanders wrote in a letter accusing big cable companies like Verizon of improperly using mega-mergers to charge consumers astronomical prices. “There are now de facto telecommunications monopolies throughout the United States.”

“Given the lack of incentive for companies to provide better quality service and competitive prices, it is no surprise that individuals rank cable and Internet providers last in customer satisfaction when compared to other companies in other industries.”

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Hillary’s hot sauce long con: If Clinton is pandering with this latest food revelation, it’s the most impressive suck-up ever

The difficult thing about interpreting Hillary Clinton is that she’s often so uncomfortable when she’s not talking policy, or so calculated when she is, that people tend to take every answer as an example of pandering. That’s the case with her latest revelation: That she carries hot sauce in her handbag. Coming just two months after the release of Beyoncé’s “Formation” single, with its much-quoted line about hot sauce, it seemed to some like an attempt to grab onto the African-American experience.

Given what the Philadelphia cheese-steak can do to politicians in the Northeast – branding them as outsiders if they order the wrong cheese on their sandwich – Clinton is smart to be careful here. But so far she’s getting mixed results for her statement on Power 105.1’s “The Breakfast Club.”

TMZ calls it a “a clear attempt to snag New York's black vote.”

And some on Twitter are not convinced:

https://twitter.com/DEVCNY/status/722...

or

https://twitter.com/AnthonyBLSmith/st...

So there are a couple of possibilities. One is that Hillary Clinton really does like hot sauce and carries it around with her so she can season her food. The other is that she’s been building an elaborate long con over hot sauce – because she’s been talking about it at least since 2008. A New York Times piece got at Clinton’s love of hot peppers, based on a “60 Minutes” interview:

“I eat a lot of hot peppers,” she told CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who had asked her how she maintains her stamina on the campaign trail. “I for some reason started doing that in 1992, and I swear by it. I think it keeps my metabolism revved up and keeps me healthy.”

Apparently she kept 100 bottles of hot sauce when she was in the White House. In 2012, she told Conde Nast Traveler about bringing red pepper and Tabasco on her trips as Secretary of State. And late last year, she and her staff talked about peppers and farm stands.

To Clinton doubters, perhaps this is all just something she’s been planning since Bill’s election. Could it be that Hillary has built an elaborate myth around herself as someone who is not as bland as she seems but is actually edgy, gutsy, and working so hard she needs to eat food that a lot of white Middle Americans consider too spicy so she can keep moving at high speed?

What remains amazing about Hillary Clinton is her ability to attract conspiracy theories: It was true in the 1990s, when her husband was president and she was accused of having killed Vince Foster. More recently, she’s become responsible for the attacks on Benghazi. The NRA thinks she’s been plotting to take people’s guns away.

Given what she’s been accused of in the past, charges of plotting over hot sauce seem mild by comparison. Some pundits are going to say that this doesn’t matter much, and that political observers should pay attention to policy and not what politicians eat. There's something to that.

But here’s another way of looking at it: If Hillary Clinton predicted the impact of Beyoncé in 1992, saw her own likelihood of running for president decades later, and began eating raw peppers and carrying little bottles around in her purse back then, she’s not really a panderer. She’s the candidate we want debating Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. She's the president who can deal with a Republican Congress. She’s the leader who can go head to head with Vladimir Putin. If you’re on the fence about Hillary Clinton, her calculating quality is what will make her an effective president. Given that politics is at least half theater, maybe the Democrats should nominate someone who's comfortable playing a role?
[jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2016/04/4.18.1..." image="http://media.salon.com/2016/04/Screen...] The difficult thing about interpreting Hillary Clinton is that she’s often so uncomfortable when she’s not talking policy, or so calculated when she is, that people tend to take every answer as an example of pandering. That’s the case with her latest revelation: That she carries hot sauce in her handbag. Coming just two months after the release of Beyoncé’s “Formation” single, with its much-quoted line about hot sauce, it seemed to some like an attempt to grab onto the African-American experience.

Given what the Philadelphia cheese-steak can do to politicians in the Northeast – branding them as outsiders if they order the wrong cheese on their sandwich – Clinton is smart to be careful here. But so far she’s getting mixed results for her statement on Power 105.1’s “The Breakfast Club.”

TMZ calls it a “a clear attempt to snag New York's black vote.”

And some on Twitter are not convinced:

https://twitter.com/DEVCNY/status/722...

or

https://twitter.com/AnthonyBLSmith/st...

So there are a couple of possibilities. One is that Hillary Clinton really does like hot sauce and carries it around with her so she can season her food. The other is that she’s been building an elaborate long con over hot sauce – because she’s been talking about it at least since 2008. A New York Times piece got at Clinton’s love of hot peppers, based on a “60 Minutes” interview:

“I eat a lot of hot peppers,” she told CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who had asked her how she maintains her stamina on the campaign trail. “I for some reason started doing that in 1992, and I swear by it. I think it keeps my metabolism revved up and keeps me healthy.”

Apparently she kept 100 bottles of hot sauce when she was in the White House. In 2012, she told Conde Nast Traveler about bringing red pepper and Tabasco on her trips as Secretary of State. And late last year, she and her staff talked about peppers and farm stands.

To Clinton doubters, perhaps this is all just something she’s been planning since Bill’s election. Could it be that Hillary has built an elaborate myth around herself as someone who is not as bland as she seems but is actually edgy, gutsy, and working so hard she needs to eat food that a lot of white Middle Americans consider too spicy so she can keep moving at high speed?

What remains amazing about Hillary Clinton is her ability to attract conspiracy theories: It was true in the 1990s, when her husband was president and she was accused of having killed Vince Foster. More recently, she’s become responsible for the attacks on Benghazi. The NRA thinks she’s been plotting to take people’s guns away.

Given what she’s been accused of in the past, charges of plotting over hot sauce seem mild by comparison. Some pundits are going to say that this doesn’t matter much, and that political observers should pay attention to policy and not what politicians eat. There's something to that.

But here’s another way of looking at it: If Hillary Clinton predicted the impact of Beyoncé in 1992, saw her own likelihood of running for president decades later, and began eating raw peppers and carrying little bottles around in her purse back then, she’s not really a panderer. She’s the candidate we want debating Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. She's the president who can deal with a Republican Congress. She’s the leader who can go head to head with Vladimir Putin. If you’re on the fence about Hillary Clinton, her calculating quality is what will make her an effective president. Given that politics is at least half theater, maybe the Democrats should nominate someone who's comfortable playing a role?
[jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2016/04/4.18.1..." image="http://media.salon.com/2016/04/Screen...] The difficult thing about interpreting Hillary Clinton is that she’s often so uncomfortable when she’s not talking policy, or so calculated when she is, that people tend to take every answer as an example of pandering. That’s the case with her latest revelation: That she carries hot sauce in her handbag. Coming just two months after the release of Beyoncé’s “Formation” single, with its much-quoted line about hot sauce, it seemed to some like an attempt to grab onto the African-American experience.

Given what the Philadelphia cheese-steak can do to politicians in the Northeast – branding them as outsiders if they order the wrong cheese on their sandwich – Clinton is smart to be careful here. But so far she’s getting mixed results for her statement on Power 105.1’s “The Breakfast Club.”

TMZ calls it a “a clear attempt to snag New York's black vote.”

And some on Twitter are not convinced:

https://twitter.com/DEVCNY/status/722...

or

https://twitter.com/AnthonyBLSmith/st...

So there are a couple of possibilities. One is that Hillary Clinton really does like hot sauce and carries it around with her so she can season her food. The other is that she’s been building an elaborate long con over hot sauce – because she’s been talking about it at least since 2008. A New York Times piece got at Clinton’s love of hot peppers, based on a “60 Minutes” interview:

“I eat a lot of hot peppers,” she told CBS News anchor Katie Couric, who had asked her how she maintains her stamina on the campaign trail. “I for some reason started doing that in 1992, and I swear by it. I think it keeps my metabolism revved up and keeps me healthy.”

Apparently she kept 100 bottles of hot sauce when she was in the White House. In 2012, she told Conde Nast Traveler about bringing red pepper and Tabasco on her trips as Secretary of State. And late last year, she and her staff talked about peppers and farm stands.

To Clinton doubters, perhaps this is all just something she’s been planning since Bill’s election. Could it be that Hillary has built an elaborate myth around herself as someone who is not as bland as she seems but is actually edgy, gutsy, and working so hard she needs to eat food that a lot of white Middle Americans consider too spicy so she can keep moving at high speed?

What remains amazing about Hillary Clinton is her ability to attract conspiracy theories: It was true in the 1990s, when her husband was president and she was accused of having killed Vince Foster. More recently, she’s become responsible for the attacks on Benghazi. The NRA thinks she’s been plotting to take people’s guns away.

Given what she’s been accused of in the past, charges of plotting over hot sauce seem mild by comparison. Some pundits are going to say that this doesn’t matter much, and that political observers should pay attention to policy and not what politicians eat. There's something to that.

But here’s another way of looking at it: If Hillary Clinton predicted the impact of Beyoncé in 1992, saw her own likelihood of running for president decades later, and began eating raw peppers and carrying little bottles around in her purse back then, she’s not really a panderer. She’s the candidate we want debating Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. She's the president who can deal with a Republican Congress. She’s the leader who can go head to head with Vladimir Putin. If you’re on the fence about Hillary Clinton, her calculating quality is what will make her an effective president. Given that politics is at least half theater, maybe the Democrats should nominate someone who's comfortable playing a role?
[jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2016/04/4.18.1..." image="http://media.salon.com/2016/04/Screen...]

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As students sit-in demanding Columbia University divest from fossil fuels, Bernie Sanders shows support

Several Columbia University students face threats of suspension after holding an ongoing, five-day sit-in protest outside of the president's office.

At least 35 students began occupying the school's Low Library on Thursday, April 14. The activists refuse to move until their university agrees to divest from the top 200 publicly traded fossil fuel corporations.

“I am sitting-in because I see climate justice as a human rights issue. It is immoral that Columbia actively profits from an industry that threatens the wellbeing of vulnerable communities around the world,” explained Nikita Perumal, an organizer with the group Columbia Divest for Climate Justice, or CDCJ.

"We've been campaigning for three-and-a-half years, and there is overwhelming student support for this," Perumal told Salon.

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders tweeted a statement of support for the protesters on Monday.

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/sta...

The Columbia protest coincides with another sit-in held by fossil fuel divestment activists at New York University.

On Thursday, 16 Columbia students spent the night outside of the office of university President Lee Bollinger. Several have since left. On Sunday, 30 students attempted to join the occupiers inside, but were denied entry.

The administration has locked down the building, preventing the activists from rotating out students.

"This is, to our knowledge, the first fossil fuel divestment occupation in which the building has been put on lock-down without chance of rotation," the group told Salon.

As of Monday, seven students still remain at the sit-in. The activists say they are willing to risk potential school sanctions or arrest.

[caption id="attachment_14471166" align="aligncenter" width="620"] Columbia students rally outside in support of the sit-in (Credit: Columbia Divest for Climate Justice)[/caption]

The university administration threatened to suspend the remaining seven students, according to an email Sunday Columbia Divest for Climate Justice posted on its website

“The risk that I am facing is minor in comparison to the danger that people are facing when they confront the fossil fuel industry and private interests around the globe," explained Iliana Salazar-Dodge, another organizer with the activist group.

"I am willing to take this stand because climate change is affecting so many people, especially communities of color, and it is hypocritical for Columbia to invest in companies that profit off of destruction and death."

Columbia Divest for Climate Justice says it has "had countless meetings" with Bollinger, the Board of Trustees and Columbia's subcommittee on socially responsible investing.

According to the activist group, Bollinger has privately admitted that divestment from fossil fuel companies would not hurt the university's more than $9 billion endowment. Publicly, however, the students say Bollinger has remained silent on the issue.

The university's Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing formerly rejected the group's divestment proposal and recommendation that Columbia create another committee devoted to university responses to climate change.

"Time has run out for the university to make this decision. As president and a trustee, Bollinger has the power to prioritize divestment, and we demand that he does so by standing against the destructive practices of the fossil fuel industry," Columbia Divest for Climate Justice told Salon.

"We are taking a stand for our futures, because Bollinger refuses to."

More than 20 student groups have issued endorsements of the sit-in protest, including the Student Governing Board, the Columbia College Student Council, the School of International and Public Affairs Environmental Coalition, the African Students Association, Jewish Voice for Peace and more.

Columbia Divest for Climate Justice has thoroughly engaged in student outreach, holding teach-ins and events in dormitories. The activist group has gathered more than 2,000 petition signatures in favor of divestment, and has 350 faculty endorsements.

Three-fourths of Columbia College students support divestment, the group says.

[caption id="attachment_14471168" align="aligncenter" width="620"] Inside the sit-in protest (Credit: Columbia Divest for Climate Justice)[/caption]

This is not Columbia Divest for Climate Justice's first act of civil disobedience. Activists have disrupted speeches by figures like BP's chief economist. They have also interrupted formal school ceremonies, and regularly hold rallies.

"We believe that it is immoral for Columbia to be profiting off of the destructive practices of the fossil fuel industry, when science shows that 80 percent of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground in order to prevent the climate chaos that would wreak havoc on vulnerable communities around the world," the group told Salon.

"Fossil fuel companies are morally bankrupt — some, like Exxon, have been directly tied to climate change denialism and the discrediting of climate scientists, while others contribute millions to policymakers to prevent meaningful action to be taken on climate change."

"Divestment is our way of applying pressure to revoke the social and political license of these companies, in order to fight for a safer and more just world for both current and future generations."

The Columbia activists are joined by an array of students at universities around the country who have held similar protests demanding that their schools divest from fossil fuel corporations.

Last week, four Divest Harvard students were arrested after holding a sit-in at the Boston Federal Reserve building.

Another 34 divestment activists were arrested in a sit-in at the University of Massachusetts.

Nor is this Columbia's first experience with a divestment campaign. In 2015, it became the first university to divest from prisons, after a similar campaign from student activists.

"Columbia itself has a legacy of civil disobedience and student activism," Columbia Divest for Climate Justice told Salon.

"As such, we find it highly hypocritical that Columbia can both celebrate this history of activism — accentuating it at admissions sessions and memorializing it in its archives — while also threatening the nine students currently occupying Low Library with a whole host of very serious disciplinary procedures."

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The real reason cocaine, heroin and marijuana are illegal has nothing to do with addiction

Looking out at the trail of devastation and death that the heroin epidemic has left in its wake, it’s hard to imagine that not long ago one could purchase the drug from a Sears catalogue. Heroin was created by German chemists during the late 1890s and marketed through Bayer, the company best known for selling aspirin. For decades, suburban housewives could peruse pages of flashy advertisements for Bayer Heroin, the cure for sore throats, coughs, headaches, diarrhea, stress and menopause. In fact, until recently the percentage of Americans using opium-derived medicine was higher at the turn of the 20th century than at any other time in history. The majority of illicit drugs we see today were once legal, popular and used for medicinal purposes. Cocaine made its debut in toothache drops marketed to children. Cannabis was recognized for its ability to relieve pain and nausea long before it became associated with youthful vagrancy. As the world grapples with the fallout from the War on Drugs—and heads towards UNGASS 2016, a possible opportunity to put things right—it’s important to know the history of these drugs and their journey from medicine to menace. We didn’t suddenly discover that they were far more addictive or dangerous than other medicines. In fact, the reasons that drugs like heroin, cocaine, marijuana and others are illegal today have far more to do with economics and cultural prejudice than with addiction. Heroin was the first to fall from pharmaceutical darling to a demonized, black-market street drug. Long used as a cure for aches and pains, it wasn’t until Chinese immigrants came to the United States to work on the railroads and mines that opium-based products such as heroin were perceived as dangerous. American settlers were not happy with the Chinese arrivals, who brought with them a cultural tradition of smoking opium for relaxation in the evenings. The settlers accused the Chinese of “taking our jobs,” and economic resentment morphed into rumors of Chinese men luring white women into opium dens and getting them addicted. Rumors turned to fear, which turned to hysteria, which politicians seized upon. In 1875 California passed the first anti-opium law, enforced by raids on Chinese opium dens. Other states soon followed. The first federal law regulating heroin was the Harrison Act of 1914, which eventually led to its criminalization. Cocaine was criminalized for similar reasons, only this time the backlash was directed against black Americans. After the Civil War, economic resentment simmered over the freed slaves gaining a foothold in the economy. White Southerners grumbled about black men “forgetting their place,” and fears spread about a drug some of them smoked, which was rumored to incite them to violence. In the early 1900s New Orleans became the first city to slap down laws against cocaine use and the trend quickly spread, dovetailing with efforts in Latin America to criminalize the coca leaf, an ingredient in cocaine, which was used for religious purposes among indigenous populations. Marijuana was next in the firing line. During the 1920s, tensions sprang up in the South over the influx of Mexican immigrants who worked for low wages. By the 1930s, the Great Depression had bred panic among people desperate for work and they directed their angst towards immigrants. The media began propagating stories about Mexicans and their mysterious drug, marijuana. The first national law criminalizing marijuana, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, passed thanks to a strong push from Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who referred to marijuana as “the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.” While such claims of marijuana inducing violence may sound ridiculous to those of us who know marijuana as a drug that does precisely the opposite, it goes to show that the criminalization of drugs has little to do with relative risk or danger. Instead, the main impetus for criminalization is fear over certain groups seen as an economic or cultural threat to established America. Recognizing this fact does not mean ignoring or minimizing the very real harm that drugs can cause. Most illicit drugs carry risks and serious potential for problematic use. But so does glue. So do gasoline, cough syrup, shoe polish, paint thinner, nail polish remover, cleaning fluids, spray paint, whipped cream cans, vanilla extract, mouthwash, nutmeg, prescription pills and countless other household items that are not only addictive, but potentially fatal if misused. Scientists have now demonstrated that illicit drugs are pharmacologically equivalent to any other medicines on the market. We could easily declare OxyContin or Adderall illegal tomorrow, demonize the drugs and the people who use them, and in a few decades no one would remember that those street pills were once marketed by pharmaceutical companies and prescribed by doctors. It was President Nixon who took these economic fears that had driven drug criminalization and turned them into masterful political opportunity. Elected shortly after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Nixon faced a large population of Americans who were fearful and angry about these reforms. A wily man, President Nixon knew that one of the best ways to gain political support was to turn the majority of voters against the minority using fear, false narrative, and the idea of moral or cultural inferiority. One of his first acts as president was to declare a War on Drugs despite the fact that drug use was not significantly worse than at any other time in history. John Ehrlichman, White House counsel to President Nixon, captured the rationale behind the War on Drugs in an interview with reporter Dan Baum: “The Nixon campaign in 1968 and the Nixon White House after that had two enemies: the antiwar Left and black people…We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” Witnessing the effectiveness of Nixon’s War on Drugs, other presidents in both political parties took up the mantle. Using an unparalleled influence over the media, President Reagan launched a period of mass hysteria over the drug du jour, which during the 1980s was crack cocaine. Although studies showed white and black people using crack cocaine at similar rates, the media painted crack users as a black, poor, and urban. In less than a decade the US implemented some of the most draconian anti-drug laws in the world, all aimed squarely at the “crack-fiends,” the mothers of “crack-babies,” and others who were deemed criminal and worthy only of prison. The trend continued with George Bush and later Bill Clinton, who signed an omnibus crime bill in 1994 that included mandatory minimum sentences and federal three-strikes laws. The US prison population swelled from 500,000 people behind bars in 1980 to 2.2 million by 2010—all with no change in the rates of crime or drug use. Such a hike was made possible by gutting social programs and reallocating the money towards law enforcement through a variety of incentivizing programs, including generous government grants, civil asset forfeitures, and donations of military equipment. Politicians benefited immensely, sweeping up votes with their “tough on crime” rhetoric and assurance that drug use was the result of moral bankruptcy. Scientists have now confirmed that there is no such thing as a “crack baby,” only babies who are undernourished due to poverty, and crack cocaine is no different than its powdered form—except that smoking any drug creates a faster, stronger high than snorting it. But science and fact have little hold in a system driven by fear. Despite some recent criminal justice reforms, today we still warehouse more prisoners than any country in the world, mostly for drugs. We still arrest 1.5 million people a year for marijuana, 90 percent just for possession. Law enforcement has become so addicted to drug grants and drug money that it is hard to imagine scaling back to the pre-Reagan days. And every time a new drug is introduced, whether it be bath salts, K2, or even vaping, the old impulse to criminalize first, investigate later, still reigns supreme. We have seen some bipartisan reforms lately and calls for treatment over incarceration. However these changes are hardly a cause to celebrate, not only because they barely scratch at the hide of the beast we have created, but also because we have not learned from our history. Today, as always, the decisions over whether to help or imprison people who use drugs has more to do with the perceived users than with the drugs themselves. Drugs were legal as long as white, suburban housewives were using them to treat menopause. It was not until drugs became seen as the vice of poor or immigrant minorities that we decided to tackle the issue with guns, tanks and prison bars. We cracked down, criminalized and demonized the drugs—and by extension, the people who used them. The calls for mercy and reform of today are happening at a time when drugs are once again perceived to be creeping into those suburban neighborhoods. Suddenly people in power have a family member with a pill addiction and white mothers across the land are weeping over the loss of their children. And while calls for treatment over incarceration may benefit all races (though not equally), by holding up stories of white straight-A students as reasons why we should go easy on drug addiction, we are using the same “deserving” vs. “undeserving” narrative that created the War on Drugs in the first place. Without addressing the root cause of drug criminalization, it will take very little to turn back the narrative towards fearing, blaming and locking up whatever new minority we decide we don’t like. Change will not be easy. All over the nation people are still insisting that the drug war is not about race. But acknowledging the true history of the drug war is not the same as declaring that people of color who use drugs are theonly people who matter. We can create a system to address the health consequences of addiction without leaving out or over-emphasizing any particular group, and we can do that while still acknowledging the true roots of racism in the drug war and taking steps to prevent history repeating itself. The first step is to admit that our current drug laws are not grounded in science and public health, but in racial and ethnic prejudices driven by economic and cultural fear. Science has long debunked the false narrative that illicit drugs are more addictive than medicines or common household items. We are starting to understand the social and environmental contexts that can make people more vulnerable to addiction. The second step is to “just say no” to the politics of hatred and fear. Anyone who doubts the political effectiveness of basing an entire political career on vitriol against other races or religions need look no further than our current presidential race. It will take strong efforts from both parties to fight back against a political strategy that is still effective today. Third, we need to caution against the hysteria that so often erupts every time a new drug appears of the scene. If criminalization comes up for discussion, we should place the burden of proof on the party who wants to criminalize. Science and fact, not political rhetoric, should be the basis for deciding how to address each new challenge appropriately. We have to do these things before we can even begin to undo the damage caused by mass incarceration, cartel violence and widespread addiction. Without acknowledging our history, we are doomed to repeat it.

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The 3 most environmentally damaging habits you might be able to change

Homo sapiens means "wise person." But considering our behaviors that are putting the Earth's ecosystems at risk, we haven't been very wise at all. Every single day, many of our personal choices and individual actions negatively impact the environment in myriad ways. From turning on a light switch to throwing away a plastic bottle to having a hamburger, even the most mundane actions have a cumulative negative effect on the Big Blue Marble—the home we share with countless other Earthlings. Think about that brand-new plastic bag you took home today from the store. That bag can take up to 1,000 years to fully decompose. And if it doesn't end up in a landfill, it could end up in the ocean and in the stomach of a fish, bird or dolphin—a fatal occurence that happens all the time. In China, a staggering 3 billion new plastic bags enter into circulation every single day. The Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive swirling collection of plastic trash in the North Pacific Ocean, is estimated to be anywhere from 270,000 square miles (about the size of Texas) to more than 5,800,000 square miles (up to 8 percent the size of the entire Pacific Ocean). With all the ways we affect the health of the planet, it’s hard to know exactly what changes might have the greatest impact. Plus, every person is different. Some people drive every day, while others are rarely behind the wheel. Some of us love to buy stuff; others tend to be minimalist. Taking into account these variations, here are three of the most environmentally damaging things you probably do that you might be able to change. If you’re truly interested in reducing your impact on the environment—and helping future generations of Earthlings have a better chance of surviving with the planet’s rapidly dwindling resources—these recommendations should be high on your to-do (or rather, not-do) list. 1. Eat less meat or stop eating meat. It’s difficult to overstate the massive negative impact the meat industry has on the environment. According to a staggering report published by the Worldwatch Institute, more than half of global greenhouse-gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture. It's no coincidence that the carbon footprint of the average meat eater is larger than that of a vegetarian by around 1.5 tons of CO2. Beef produces a total of 30kg of greenhouse gas (GHG) per kg of food, while carrots, potatoes and rice produce 0.42, 0.45 and 1.3 kg GHG per kg of food, respectively. No wonder the United Nations said a global shift toward eating less meat is necessary to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Keeping an animal alive is also resource intensive. Approximately 1,850 gallons of water are needed to produce a single pound of beef. Conversely, only 39 gallons are required to produce a pound of vegetables. The meat industry also maintains society’s dependence on fossil fuels. Approximately 25 kilocalories of fossil fuel energy is required to produce 1 kilocalorie of all meat-based protein. But only 2.2 kilocalories of fossil fuel input is needed to produce 1 kilocalorie of grain-based protein. The vast majority of us are meat-eaters. In the United States, only 3.2 percent of adults, or a little over 7 million people, follow a vegetarian-based diet. That leaves the rest—more than 97 percent—of Americans who include meat as a regular part of their diet. So is it crazy to think that people would ever stop eating meat? One of the arguments meat-eaters commonly make is that humans need meat, that it’s a necessary part of a healthy diet. But that’s simply not true. Nutritionist Julieanna Hever sets the record straight:

A popular misconception is that animal products are the best source of protein. One important reason this myth has been perpetuated is because the amino acids—the building blocks of protein—are assembled in a way in animal foods that more closely resembles what humans actually utilize. However, we now know that this is inconsequential. When you consume any protein, it is broken down via digestion into its separate amino acid constituents and is pooled in the blood for further use. When the body needs to construct a protein for an enzyme or to repair muscles tissue, it collects the necessary amino acids and strings them back together in the sequence appropriate for what it is currently creating. This occurs regardless whether you consume animal or plant protein.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Recommended Daily Allowance of proteinfor adult men and women is 0.7 grams for every kilogram (about 2 pounds) of body weight. So an average 130-pound female should be consuming 46 grams of protein per day. A 170-pound male needs 62 grams. Hever also points out that though we only need 10 percent of our caloric intake to be protein, we’re also generally eating too much protein, which is bad for our health:

Many people are consuming approximately 20 to 30 percent of their calories from protein, which equals 90 to 135 grams of protein on an 1,800-calorie diet (typical female intake) and 125 to 188 grams of protein on a 2,500-calorie diet (average male intake). This is equivalent to two to three times more than the USDA recommendations. Much of this excess protein comes from animal sources, which may be particularly damaging. Excess protein taxes the kidneys, contributes to gout, and is associated with an increased risk for many chronic diseases.

The U.S. addiction to meat is intense: Americans eat nearly four times as much meat as the global average. It may be tasty, but from a health standpoint, every last bloody morsel is unnecessary. “Whole plant foods, as provided in nature,” Hever says, “offer the ideal amount of protein necessary for growth, maintenance and functioning of metabolic processes.” Many of today’s top performing athletes would agree with her assessment. Take mixed martial artist Nick Diaz, one of the top UFC fighters, an elite class of athletes. Diaz is a raw vegan, and he recently upset featherweight champion Conor McGregor—a meat eater. In fact, the list of so-called ultimate fighters who are switching to a vegan diet strictly for performance reasons is growing. Eating vegetables over meat is healthier, leads to higher physical performance, is good for the planet and it’s also more ethical, as it avoids the killing of intelligent animals. In many ways, moving away from carnivorism toward veganism is a more evolved, more enlightened state of being. Cutting out meat one day a week could be a good way to start. “Going meatless once a week may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity,” notes the Meatless Mondaywebsite. “And going meatless once a week can also help reduce our carbon footprint and save precious resources like fossil fuels and fresh water.” If you’re still not convinced that taking meat off your menu—or at least reducing your consumption of it—is one of the most important things you can do for the planet’s health, maybe the man whose name is synonymous with genius might push you over the edge. Albert Einstein once said, “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” 2. Have fewer kids or no kids. This one is a no-brainer. Pretty much all of the anthropogenic, or human-caused environmental maladies the Earth is undergoing would be less intense if there were fewer people—in the end, it’s a numbers game. Climate change, species extinction, deforestation, ocean acidification, air pollution, spread of disease, destructive farming practices, pesticide overuse, resource depletion—the intensity of all these crises is directly tied to human overpopulation. Martin Luther King Jr., was aware of how problematic our species’ rapid multiplication is, calling overpopulation “the modern plague.” The United Nations warns: “Rapidly increasing population exacerbates existing problems, such as transnational crime, economic interdependency, climate change, the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and various other pandemics, and such social issues as gender equality, reproductive health, safe motherhood, human rights, emergency situations, and so much more.” Take water, the most important resource for carbon-based life after air. Though three-fourths of the planet is covered in water, less than 1 percent of it is readily accessible freshwater that is available for human use. But by 2025, when the population reaches 8.1 billion, more than half the world’s people will face water-based vulnerability as demand for available freshwater reaches 70 percent. And while it may feel like rain just appears out of the blue, the Earth is a closed-loop system. Thus water, at least for the foreseeable future, is a finite resource. Keeping the human population to an acceptable rate of growth isn’t just about helping the environment, it’s about helping humans survive. As Roger Bengston, a founding board member of World Population Balance, puts it, “The point of population stabilization is to reduce or minimize misery.” In 1992, 1,700 of the world's leading scientists, spanning 70 countries and including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued a global appeal to limit population growth. In their “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” they write:

Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth.

The warning was spearheaded by Nobel laureate Henry W. Kendall, former chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He described our precarious situation bluntly: “If we don't halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity, and will leave a ravaged world.” Getting the population growth rate to stop skyrocketing into an increasingly overcrowded future is no small task. Doing it through official governmental channels, as China did in the late '70s when it launched its one-child policy (which it recently upped to two children), opens up a Pandora’s box. Robert Engelman, president of the Worldwatch Institute, has a better idea: Put the decision in the hands of women. In his book State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity, he lays out a series of initiatives, including access to contraception, guaranteed secondary school education and the eradication of gender bias “from law, economic opportunity, health and culture,” which he argues will ensure a decline in the birthrate (with a goal of stopping short of 9 billion), solely based on a woman’s intention to have smaller families or even no children. “Unsustainable population growth can only be effectively and ethically addressed by empowering women to become pregnant only when they themselves choose to do so,” Engelman writes. Philip Njuguna, a pastor in Nairobi, Kenya, puts it more plainly: “When the family is small, whatever little they have they are able to share. There is peace.” That’s good advice, particularly in impoverished and populous countries where the sheer number of people puts an unrelenting pressure on limited resources. But that advice also applies to rich countries, whose citizens have much bigger carbon footprints. According to a 2009 Oregon State University study, "an extra child born to a woman in the United States ultimately increases her carbon legacy by an amount (9,441 metric tons) that is nearly seven times the analogous quantity for a woman in China (1,384 tons)." The study found that having one less child would yield a long-term environmental benefit. "The carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives—things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs," writes OSU science writer David Stauth about his colleagues' study. 3. Fly less or don't fly at all. In 2013, New York Times reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote an article whose title neatly summed up one of our worst environmental behaviors: "Your Biggest Carbon Sin May Be Air Travel." She writes:

For many people reading this, air travel is their most serious environmental sin. One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or to San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person. The average American generates about 19 tons of carbon dioxide a year; the average European, 10. So if you take five long flights a year, they may well account for three-quarters of the emissions you create.

If you you live in an urban center like New York City, where driving is minimal and the housing of choice is small apartments, flying is most likely the biggest contributor to your carbon footprint. In the large scheme of things, aviation is a fairly small industry, but it has a disproportionately big impact on the Earth's climate, accounting for somewhere between five and nine percent of the total impact human activity has on climate change. And its impact is going to grow, with air travel volume steadily increasing—and faster than fuel efficiency gains can compensate. Canadian environmental activist David Suzuki points out that, compared to other modes of transport like driving a car or taking a train, flying has a much greater climate impact per unit of distance traveled. He writes:

Since 1990, CO2 emissions from international aviation have increased 83 percent. The aviation industry is expanding rapidly in part due to regulatory and taxing policies that do not reflect the true environmental costs of flying. "Cheap" fares may turn out to be costly in terms of climate change. ...

A special characteristic of aircraft emissions is that most of them are produced at cruising altitudes high in the atmosphere. Scientific studies have shown that these high-altitude emissions have a more harmful climate impact because they trigger a series of chemical reactions and atmospheric effects that have a net warming effect. The IPCC, for example, has estimated that the climate impact of aircraft is two to four times greater than the effect of their carbon dioxide emissions alone.

Nearly a decade ago, New York Times writer John Tierney put the impact of flying in terms of recycling plastic bottles. “To offset the greenhouse impact of one passenger roundtrip flight between New York and London, you’d have to recycle roughly 40,000 plastic bottles” in coach (or up to 100,000 for business or first-class seats, adjusting for the additional space pricier seats take up). So if you’ve simply got to board a plane, sitting in coach is a much better environmental option. You can also purchase carbon offsets to reduce your air travel carbon footprint. What else can you do? Of course, there are many other things you can do, from not buying plastic water bottles to using cloth shopping bags to simply reducing the amount of stuff you buy. When it comes to consumption, the old adage “reduce, reuse, recycle” isn’t just a list—it’s a hierarchy. The most important thing you can do is reduce your consumption. If you have to consume, try to reuse something rather than buying it new. And if you have to buy it new, recycle it when you’re done. We can’t all be a part of vegetarian, one-child families who never fly. But if we can all try to get a little closer to that ideal, it’ll be better for everybody—for all Earthlings, not just Homo sapiens. Maybe then we can finally start living up to our name. Homo sapiens means "wise person." But considering our behaviors that are putting the Earth's ecosystems at risk, we haven't been very wise at all. Every single day, many of our personal choices and individual actions negatively impact the environment in myriad ways. From turning on a light switch to throwing away a plastic bottle to having a hamburger, even the most mundane actions have a cumulative negative effect on the Big Blue Marble—the home we share with countless other Earthlings. Think about that brand-new plastic bag you took home today from the store. That bag can take up to 1,000 years to fully decompose. And if it doesn't end up in a landfill, it could end up in the ocean and in the stomach of a fish, bird or dolphin—a fatal occurence that happens all the time. In China, a staggering 3 billion new plastic bags enter into circulation every single day. The Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive swirling collection of plastic trash in the North Pacific Ocean, is estimated to be anywhere from 270,000 square miles (about the size of Texas) to more than 5,800,000 square miles (up to 8 percent the size of the entire Pacific Ocean). With all the ways we affect the health of the planet, it’s hard to know exactly what changes might have the greatest impact. Plus, every person is different. Some people drive every day, while others are rarely behind the wheel. Some of us love to buy stuff; others tend to be minimalist. Taking into account these variations, here are three of the most environmentally damaging things you probably do that you might be able to change. If you’re truly interested in reducing your impact on the environment—and helping future generations of Earthlings have a better chance of surviving with the planet’s rapidly dwindling resources—these recommendations should be high on your to-do (or rather, not-do) list. 1. Eat less meat or stop eating meat. It’s difficult to overstate the massive negative impact the meat industry has on the environment. According to a staggering report published by the Worldwatch Institute, more than half of global greenhouse-gas emissions are caused by animal agriculture. It's no coincidence that the carbon footprint of the average meat eater is larger than that of a vegetarian by around 1.5 tons of CO2. Beef produces a total of 30kg of greenhouse gas (GHG) per kg of food, while carrots, potatoes and rice produce 0.42, 0.45 and 1.3 kg GHG per kg of food, respectively. No wonder the United Nations said a global shift toward eating less meat is necessary to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Keeping an animal alive is also resource intensive. Approximately 1,850 gallons of water are needed to produce a single pound of beef. Conversely, only 39 gallons are required to produce a pound of vegetables. The meat industry also maintains society’s dependence on fossil fuels. Approximately 25 kilocalories of fossil fuel energy is required to produce 1 kilocalorie of all meat-based protein. But only 2.2 kilocalories of fossil fuel input is needed to produce 1 kilocalorie of grain-based protein. The vast majority of us are meat-eaters. In the United States, only 3.2 percent of adults, or a little over 7 million people, follow a vegetarian-based diet. That leaves the rest—more than 97 percent—of Americans who include meat as a regular part of their diet. So is it crazy to think that people would ever stop eating meat? One of the arguments meat-eaters commonly make is that humans need meat, that it’s a necessary part of a healthy diet. But that’s simply not true. Nutritionist Julieanna Hever sets the record straight:

A popular misconception is that animal products are the best source of protein. One important reason this myth has been perpetuated is because the amino acids—the building blocks of protein—are assembled in a way in animal foods that more closely resembles what humans actually utilize. However, we now know that this is inconsequential. When you consume any protein, it is broken down via digestion into its separate amino acid constituents and is pooled in the blood for further use. When the body needs to construct a protein for an enzyme or to repair muscles tissue, it collects the necessary amino acids and strings them back together in the sequence appropriate for what it is currently creating. This occurs regardless whether you consume animal or plant protein.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Recommended Daily Allowance of proteinfor adult men and women is 0.7 grams for every kilogram (about 2 pounds) of body weight. So an average 130-pound female should be consuming 46 grams of protein per day. A 170-pound male needs 62 grams. Hever also points out that though we only need 10 percent of our caloric intake to be protein, we’re also generally eating too much protein, which is bad for our health:

Many people are consuming approximately 20 to 30 percent of their calories from protein, which equals 90 to 135 grams of protein on an 1,800-calorie diet (typical female intake) and 125 to 188 grams of protein on a 2,500-calorie diet (average male intake). This is equivalent to two to three times more than the USDA recommendations. Much of this excess protein comes from animal sources, which may be particularly damaging. Excess protein taxes the kidneys, contributes to gout, and is associated with an increased risk for many chronic diseases.

The U.S. addiction to meat is intense: Americans eat nearly four times as much meat as the global average. It may be tasty, but from a health standpoint, every last bloody morsel is unnecessary. “Whole plant foods, as provided in nature,” Hever says, “offer the ideal amount of protein necessary for growth, maintenance and functioning of metabolic processes.” Many of today’s top performing athletes would agree with her assessment. Take mixed martial artist Nick Diaz, one of the top UFC fighters, an elite class of athletes. Diaz is a raw vegan, and he recently upset featherweight champion Conor McGregor—a meat eater. In fact, the list of so-called ultimate fighters who are switching to a vegan diet strictly for performance reasons is growing. Eating vegetables over meat is healthier, leads to higher physical performance, is good for the planet and it’s also more ethical, as it avoids the killing of intelligent animals. In many ways, moving away from carnivorism toward veganism is a more evolved, more enlightened state of being. Cutting out meat one day a week could be a good way to start. “Going meatless once a week may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity,” notes the Meatless Mondaywebsite. “And going meatless once a week can also help reduce our carbon footprint and save precious resources like fossil fuels and fresh water.” If you’re still not convinced that taking meat off your menu—or at least reducing your consumption of it—is one of the most important things you can do for the planet’s health, maybe the man whose name is synonymous with genius might push you over the edge. Albert Einstein once said, “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” 2. Have fewer kids or no kids. This one is a no-brainer. Pretty much all of the anthropogenic, or human-caused environmental maladies the Earth is undergoing would be less intense if there were fewer people—in the end, it’s a numbers game. Climate change, species extinction, deforestation, ocean acidification, air pollution, spread of disease, destructive farming practices, pesticide overuse, resource depletion—the intensity of all these crises is directly tied to human overpopulation. Martin Luther King Jr., was aware of how problematic our species’ rapid multiplication is, calling overpopulation “the modern plague.” The United Nations warns: “Rapidly increasing population exacerbates existing problems, such as transnational crime, economic interdependency, climate change, the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and various other pandemics, and such social issues as gender equality, reproductive health, safe motherhood, human rights, emergency situations, and so much more.” Take water, the most important resource for carbon-based life after air. Though three-fourths of the planet is covered in water, less than 1 percent of it is readily accessible freshwater that is available for human use. But by 2025, when the population reaches 8.1 billion, more than half the world’s people will face water-based vulnerability as demand for available freshwater reaches 70 percent. And while it may feel like rain just appears out of the blue, the Earth is a closed-loop system. Thus water, at least for the foreseeable future, is a finite resource. Keeping the human population to an acceptable rate of growth isn’t just about helping the environment, it’s about helping humans survive. As Roger Bengston, a founding board member of World Population Balance, puts it, “The point of population stabilization is to reduce or minimize misery.” In 1992, 1,700 of the world's leading scientists, spanning 70 countries and including the majority of Nobel laureates in the sciences, issued a global appeal to limit population growth. In their “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” they write:

Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth.

The warning was spearheaded by Nobel laureate Henry W. Kendall, former chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He described our precarious situation bluntly: “If we don't halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity, and will leave a ravaged world.” Getting the population growth rate to stop skyrocketing into an increasingly overcrowded future is no small task. Doing it through official governmental channels, as China did in the late '70s when it launched its one-child policy (which it recently upped to two children), opens up a Pandora’s box. Robert Engelman, president of the Worldwatch Institute, has a better idea: Put the decision in the hands of women. In his book State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity, he lays out a series of initiatives, including access to contraception, guaranteed secondary school education and the eradication of gender bias “from law, economic opportunity, health and culture,” which he argues will ensure a decline in the birthrate (with a goal of stopping short of 9 billion), solely based on a woman’s intention to have smaller families or even no children. “Unsustainable population growth can only be effectively and ethically addressed by empowering women to become pregnant only when they themselves choose to do so,” Engelman writes. Philip Njuguna, a pastor in Nairobi, Kenya, puts it more plainly: “When the family is small, whatever little they have they are able to share. There is peace.” That’s good advice, particularly in impoverished and populous countries where the sheer number of people puts an unrelenting pressure on limited resources. But that advice also applies to rich countries, whose citizens have much bigger carbon footprints. According to a 2009 Oregon State University study, "an extra child born to a woman in the United States ultimately increases her carbon legacy by an amount (9,441 metric tons) that is nearly seven times the analogous quantity for a woman in China (1,384 tons)." The study found that having one less child would yield a long-term environmental benefit. "The carbon legacy and greenhouse gas impact of an extra child is almost 20 times more important than some of the other environmentally sensitive practices people might employ their entire lives—things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs," writes OSU science writer David Stauth about his colleagues' study. 3. Fly less or don't fly at all. In 2013, New York Times reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote an article whose title neatly summed up one of our worst environmental behaviors: "Your Biggest Carbon Sin May Be Air Travel." She writes:

For many people reading this, air travel is their most serious environmental sin. One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or to San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person. The average American generates about 19 tons of carbon dioxide a year; the average European, 10. So if you take five long flights a year, they may well account for three-quarters of the emissions you create.

If you you live in an urban center like New York City, where driving is minimal and the housing of choice is small apartments, flying is most likely the biggest contributor to your carbon footprint. In the large scheme of things, aviation is a fairly small industry, but it has a disproportionately big impact on the Earth's climate, accounting for somewhere between five and nine percent of the total impact human activity has on climate change. And its impact is going to grow, with air travel volume steadily increasing—and faster than fuel efficiency gains can compensate. Canadian environmental activist David Suzuki points out that, compared to other modes of transport like driving a car or taking a train, flying has a much greater climate impact per unit of distance traveled. He writes:

Since 1990, CO2 emissions from international aviation have increased 83 percent. The aviation industry is expanding rapidly in part due to regulatory and taxing policies that do not reflect the true environmental costs of flying. "Cheap" fares may turn out to be costly in terms of climate change. ...

A special characteristic of aircraft emissions is that most of them are produced at cruising altitudes high in the atmosphere. Scientific studies have shown that these high-altitude emissions have a more harmful climate impact because they trigger a series of chemical reactions and atmospheric effects that have a net warming effect. The IPCC, for example, has estimated that the climate impact of aircraft is two to four times greater than the effect of their carbon dioxide emissions alone.

Nearly a decade ago, New York Times writer John Tierney put the impact of flying in terms of recycling plastic bottles. “To offset the greenhouse impact of one passenger roundtrip flight between New York and London, you’d have to recycle roughly 40,000 plastic bottles” in coach (or up to 100,000 for business or first-class seats, adjusting for the additional space pricier seats take up). So if you’ve simply got to board a plane, sitting in coach is a much better environmental option. You can also purchase carbon offsets to reduce your air travel carbon footprint. What else can you do? Of course, there are many other things you can do, from not buying plastic water bottles to using cloth shopping bags to simply reducing the amount of stuff you buy. When it comes to consumption, the old adage “reduce, reuse, recycle” isn’t just a list—it’s a hierarchy. The most important thing you can do is reduce your consumption. If you have to consume, try to reuse something rather than buying it new. And if you have to buy it new, recycle it when you’re done. We can’t all be a part of vegetarian, one-child families who never fly. But if we can all try to get a little closer to that ideal, it’ll be better for everybody—for all Earthlings, not just Homo sapiens. Maybe then we can finally start living up to our name.

Continue Reading...