 | Stupid Is As Stupid DoesWhat if the Crown of Creation is a dunce cap? Chip studies the brain chauvinist menu, notes the limits of doing the math and invites us to rethink and re-feel our relationship to the rest of the living world.
by Chip Ward
The evidence of human intelligence has always been mixed. On the one hand, we have traveled to the moon. On the other hand, it took us a couple of hundred years to figure out we needed wheels on our luggage. We have created astonishing computers and the Internet that we use to look up Britney Spears' skirt. Some of us can do brain surgery, but most of us can't locate Iraq on a map and think H2O is a cable channel. And if humans express the epitome of intelligence, as opposed to, say, the intelligence of migrating birds or even underground networks of mushroom spores, then how do you explain that hundreds of years after the "Enlightenment" we are still slaughtering each other in serial warfare; that we poison our own bloodstreams with toxic pollution; and that we have so altered the climate that harbors our proud civilization that it may collapse around our ears? Our intelligence encompasses both Mozart and suicide bombers. Perhaps it's time to take a second look.
The brain chauvinist menu and the limits of doing the math
What is intelligence? No doubt most humans will answer, it's what I've got that animals don't have: language, reasoning, problem-solving skills, and the ability to make and use tools. After all, monkeys and parrots might learn a few words but they can't do crossword puzzles, and when was the last time you saw a dolphin on a pimped-out street bike?
The difference between our way of thinking and that of our fellow creatures is a key to how we treat them. We are brain chauvinists. We believe, for instance, that it is okay to consume without a second thought any brainless creature-oyster mistreatment is not on PETA's radar. For those with brains, the degree of intelligence that we acknowledge governs our relationship. We have no qualms about eating a stupid tuna, but we'll pay big bucks to swim with dolphins and want our tuna "dolphin-free." You can be jailed and shunned for torturing a cat or dog, but the routine and massive abuse of chickens in factory farms is largely ignored. Our attitude towards animals is basically "if you're smart, you're safe and if you're dumb, you're dead."
Our kind of intelligence is undeniable. Humans are very sharp when it comes to all those aspects of the world that are fixed, measurable, happen in a linear progression, and are predictable. That is how, after all, we put a man on the moon. The moon is pretty predictable - it doesn't take last minute vacations or sleep in. So if we are dealing with the mechanical realm of physics, our airplanes, dams, chemical finesse, and nuclear machines are wonders to behold.
What we are not good at are all those nonlinear phenomena with emergent behaviors, where, in other words, the whole tends to be greater than the sum of its parts but not predictably so-things like the climate, ecosystems, fetal development, immune systems, brain function, and crowd behavior. We are only beginning to understand the dynamics of our chaotic world-feedback loops, thresholds, and basins of attraction. We have a rather myopic view of scales, seeing well what is happening now and predicting what's right around the corner but missing the slow variables that can be more important in the long run. This is why we deplete soils, turn grasslands into deserts, and use up ancient aquifers and oil deposits in a geological instant.
Virgin births and cultural amnesiacs
Our intelligence is also tempered by the human condition. Although we can boast about the scientific prowess we express through our technology and medicine, we are easily distracted by emotional needs for validation, approval, and identity. Our persistent belief in religious doctrines has us accepting as true phenomena that contradict our otherwise proud powers of reasoning -how else do you explain virgin births and angels with gold plates? We compete as much as we compute, greed still drives us, and we can rationalize any destructive behavior. We are easily addicted and not easily satiated. There is reason to believe we have been traumatized by our recent history of global war, genocide, environmental dislocation, and fear.
Because we have short memories and a tendency towards denial, collectively we act like amnesiacs, as if every other past civilization or previous empire didn't also think it was smarter than all the others that had preceded it and, unlike them, was immune to failure. Consider that almost everything an intellectual in the sixteenth century knew for certain has since been proved wrong and almost everything we know for sure today will be radically revised a 100 years hence. Today's genius is tomorrow's fool.
Stink think, bee dancing, and the mushroom Internet
For a moment, then, let's concede the field to our non-human fellow creatures and redefine intelligence simply as the capacity to learn from experience and apply that learning to future challenges. Even moths can do that. Ohio State University entomologists implanted electrodes into the brains of sphinx moths. The researchers monitored the moths' nervous systems while presenting them with different odors-including sugar water, a favorite moth treat. They saw a dramatic restructuring of the neural networks that convert scent into a code that the rest of the brain can understand and concluded that, like humans, moths learn. Even the lowly slime mold can find the shortest route through a maze to get to nutritious food sources.
Learning involves pattern recognition and communication. We've all heard about the complicated messages dolphins, elephants, and prairie dogs can convey through their various vocalizations. But non-vocal communication is also common. Insects use pheromones to communicate a wide range of messages that are, like human messages, mostly about food and sex. Bees perch at the door of the hive and do a little dance that indicates to the other bees where the flowers are in relation to the sun. The fact that we humans cannot understand the languages non-humans speak doesn't mean their communication is absent or inferior to ours. If computers can communicate with nothing more than series of ones and zeroes, creatures that can emit endless variations of notes, clicks, and tones might be up to more than we suspect.
Mushroom visionary Paul Stamets argues that mycelium fungi function as the neurological network of the soil. Layering the ground with interwoven microbial mats that share information, mycelium fungi react to changes that threaten soil health by devising diverse enzymatic and chemical responses to the complex challenges they detect. We are not sure how they do this, but Stamets claims they are the sentient membrane of the earth, a biomolecular matrix in constant dialogue with the environment, responding to and governing the flow of essential nutrients. "I believe," he writes in "Mycelium Running," "mycelium operate at a level of complexity that exceeds our most advanced computers. I see mycelium as the Earth's natural Internet."
Drop for a moment our brain chauvinism, and it is clear that there is such a thing as non-centralized intelligence. Immune systems learn or you wouldn't make it through the next flu season. Microbes learn, too, or there wouldn't be a next flu season. An entire pharmaceutical infrastructure, peopled by the best human brains Big Pharma can pay, works constantly to outwit the viruses that would consume us and lately the antibiotics side is losing.
Lizard avoidance and the wisdom of the hive
Then there is "swarm intelligence." How is it that an individual ant cannot survive alone and is downright clueless about the big picture he is in, but an ant colony makes complicated decisions daily and can thrive for decades? How do the actions of individual ants, undirected by leaders, add up to the complex behaviors of the group?
Swarm intelligence depends on simple creatures following simple rules and acting on local information. Ants communicate by touch and smell. Patroller ants leave the colony and don't return until they find food. When they return they touch other ants. If the patrollers are successful, they return quickly and often. When the colony's forager ants are touched by enough patrollers in a short time, they leave the colony to harvest the food, following scent trails left by the patrollers. If, on the other hand, the patrollers encounter bad weather or a hungry lizard, they don't return, and they don't touch their fellow foragers who stay put. A variety of critical decisions about life in the ant colony are made in a similar way.
Bees also show how swarm intelligence works. When a hive becomes too large, about half the population splits off and clusters on a nearby tree branch. Scout bees search for a new home. When they find a likely location, they return and communicate to the other scouts via that tiny dance. The other scouts then visit the various locations that have been identified. At some point, enough scouts coalesce in a particular location that a kind of consensus is reached and then communicated to the cluster that it's time to move. Researchers have learned that the bees' method always picks the most ideal habitat to rebuild the hive.
Bee behavior could be characterized as unconscious democracy where diverse options are examined openly and choices made on the basis of the information as it freely emerges. Give humans a similar challenge of moving and reconstituting an entire community and long after the bees have resumed constructive relationships, we'd still be arguing, vying for power, dividing into factions, hiding our agendas, spreading rumors, suing each other, and speaking in tongues.
Swarm intelligence is also expressed by schools of fish, flocks of birds, and herds of caribou to confound predators. Again, coordination is based on individuals following simple rules and responding to local information and the cues of others in the group. These distributed behaviors become a whole that is greater than the sum of the individual parts. What we have learned about swarm intelligence is now being used by computer programmers to solve traffic problems, distribute goods, and route telephone calls. Google and Wikipedia use the principles of swarm intelligence to gather and select information. The anti-globalization protestors who challenged international capitalists in Seattle in 1999 used mobile communication to become "smart mobs," and the Pentagon is developing fleets of "swarmanoid" robots to find bombs planted by terrorists.
Perhaps the most profound example of such self-organizing intelligence is Gaia herself. The planet's various natural operating systems - its climate, oceans, biosphere, soils, minerals, and nutrients - are integrated into complex feedback loops that prompt constant adjustments to keep life viable. If Gaia is smart enough to keep life as a whole going, humans should worry; we are behaving collectively like a persistent rash on the planetary skin.
What if the crown of creation is a dunce cap?
The intelligence revealed in such self-organizing behaviors might give us second thoughts about the prevalent notion that we humans, the crown of creation, should second-guess the natural processes that we have re-engineered. For instance, we suppressed forest fires until the build-up of unburned fuels within forests guarantees that future wild fires will be catastrophic. We skewed whole ecosystems by eliminating the key role that predators played within them. We drained wetlands and dammed and channeled watersheds with mixed results.
As far as we know, of course, microbes and insects do not act with conscious intent, at least outside of Gary Larsen cartoons. But if conscious intent is the criteria for "learning," then we can't claim we understand the consciousness and intent of non-human creatures any better than they understand our consciousness. Your cat and you sit on opposite sides of a cognitive wall, you thinking 'he loves me' and him thinking... well, we don't know what he is thinking, though chances are it has more to do with food and amusement than filial affection. If you drop dead in your house tomorrow and remain undiscovered, chances are your loyal but hungry cat will eat your eyeballs by the end of the week. Our notion of what and how our pets think says more about how we project our own needs and notions on them and less about the nature of their consciousness or lack thereof.
No stupid survivors
Certainly, human learning often involves a motive, like wanting to learn French before you visit Paris, whereas brainless life forms may simply adapt to changing conditions through an algorithmic process linked to random mutations and the consequent improvements in viability that result from those changes. But why would the existence of an introspective motive be so important? Wouldn't it make more sense to define intelligence as the ability to solve problems related to survival? If a species' ability to remain viable-to fit its environmental conditions-is used as criteria for intelligence, then turtles were here long before us and are likely to be here when we leave. What's so smart about self-destructive behavior, no matter how sophisticated the motives?
Indigenous cultures living close enough to nature's processes to admire the unique characteristics of non-human species to thrive in the wild acknowledge and honor the intelligence of wild creatures. In America, for example, many indigenous cultures paid tribute in story and song to ravens and coyotes. Coyote is perceived as the clever trickster who always manages to face adversity, often of his own making, but comes back. And ravens share carcasses with wolves and bears without becoming lunch themselves-a tricky, teeth-defying act that humans admired.
Yeah, but can ravens do this! (Imagine here some kind of technological back-flip, cultural sleight-of-hand, or problem-solving cartwheel...) Well, no, ravens, like all creatures, have limits. But ravens are thriving on the detritus of our crisis - those troubling gas-guzzling cars we drive that are pushing our climate towards tipping points also leave behind lots of tasty roadkills. They are not at war for oil. They will not suffer the calamities of disruption when our fossil-fuel loaded infrastructure runs out of gas. When climate change forces us all to adapt quickly to survive, we may yet admire the ability of the raven and coyote to change habits and strategies to fit new circumstances.
I shop, therefore I am
Again, if we're so much smarter than non-human creatures, why do we engage in such self-destructive and confusing behaviors? The purpose of mycelium communication is to heal and cleanse, not to inundate the soil with spam e-mails. Elephants are not tricking each other into adjustable-rate mortgages. In one of my favorite movies, "Forrest Gump," Forrest answers those who question his own innate intelligence with a quote from his mother: "Stupid is as stupid does." If human intelligence isn't a means to survive, then maybe it's just the way evolution's eventual losers -humans - rationalize their self-destructive addictions to going faster and getting more stuff. But I refuse to believe that WalMart and NASCAR are what it is all about.
All I'm suggesting is a little humility. Creation's other beings have much to show us that we need to learn if we would only shut up, drop the mirror, and listen. When we recognize the self-organizing genius of nature, we realize that the natural world may not only be more complex than we thought, it may be more complex than we can think. Appreciating non-human intelligence might even be humbling and awesome enough to make us rethink our "crown of creation" attitudes and enjoy a new sense of kinship with the rest of life on the planet. That new attitude would be healthy for them and, in the long run, be better for us too.
We need the uniquely human intellectual skills we have acquired to survive. Clearly, far-reaching innovations in technology like alternative energy technologies and green designs are required to meet the challenges of global climate chaos. But new infrastructures alone will not heal the wounds we have inflicted on the earthly nest that holds us, nor will it get us over the ecological abyss we now face. We need to rethink and re-feel our relationship to the rest of the living world. To do that, we must wipe off that smirk and pay attention to the evidence of intelligence all around us. When we perceive and respect the self-organizing intelligence at work in the natural world, we try to dance with nature, not drive it. Now that's smart!
Chip Ward is a former public library administrator and grassroots activist. He recently signed an option with Emilio Estevez for a movie based on his essay on libraries and the homeless which was published last spring.
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 | The History (and maybe the future) of U.S. Health CareYour mail isn’t delivered in a biplane. Why hasn’t the vehicle for medical care changed since then? One area M.D. gives some fascinating background as to how this system came to be. Plus “Let the healthcare revolution begin: First shot fired right here in Salt Lake City”: Gahlinger offers his own innovative solution, Medicruiser clinics.
by Paul Gahlinger
The medical clinic, as we know it today, first appeared in 1907. Before then, doctors made house calls, and if people were severely ill, they were admitted to a hospital or sanatorium. Dr. William Mayo was a typical doctor in the rural town of Rochester, Minnesota. A few years earlier, both of his sons returned home from medical school to join their father's practice, and they had some new ideas, as sons often do. Joined by a friend, they set up a waiting room, hired a receptionist to greet patients and phone prescriptions to the pharmacy, and streamlined health care so that a nurse would take temperatures and blood pressures, give injections, and do other basic tasks, freeing the doctor to see many more patients.
By far the biggest innovation was the medical record. Before then, doctors had a personal relationship with patients that resembled that between clergy and their parishioners. They might jot a few notes in a journal or on index cards, but it was a private as a diary. The Mayo brothers developed a patient chart in which they all wrote notes. They shared with other doctors, as needed. It was a revolutionary way to do medicine-and led, eventually to the renowned institution still known as the Mayo Clinic.
A hundred years later, the American medical clinic is... pretty much the same. The typical clinic of today still uses paper charts, telephone contacts with the pharmacy, and a receptionist presiding over a room of coughing and sniffling patients, bored out of their minds and flipping through old magazines.
Let's put this into perspective. Three years before the Mayo boys started the clinic, another couple of brothers fired up the first functional airplane. In a century, aviation went from a flimsy open-cockpit airplane to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Aviation and medicine have a lot in common. Both services involve highly trained professionals and support staff, they can be dangerous if not done properly, and they are services that we pretty much take for granted as part of modern life.
So why is one in the space age and the other stuck in the horse and buggy era? It is no surprise to me that the Old Order Amish avoid air travel and limit their exposure to modern technology, but feel completely comfortable visiting medical clinics.
How about a price comparison? In 1907, a typical doctor visit cost about a day's wages. Today, a typical urgent care visit costs about $120, and a specialty clinic about twice that. In other words, about a day's wages (at least in some parts of the country). On the other hand, for the same money, you can fly across the country, and for a week's wages, can you can fly roundtrip to Europe, Asia, or South America. In 1907, traveling halfway around the world would have taken months and cost a year's wages. Air travel has become vastly cheaper and faster and safer, while improvements in the operation of the family medicine clinic have been minimal-and in some ways, care has become even worse. Why is that?
No commercial pilot nowadays relies on instruments of the 1920s-or even the 1980s. These days, cockpits in even small personal aircraft are equipped with instruments almost unimaginable just a decade ago, providing benefits such as real-time graphical weather downloads, terrain warnings, collision avoidance, cell phone service, even information on local restaurants and such at the airport. As a physician and pilot myself, I find it ironic that I have these wonderful high-tech features in my own small airplane, which are hardly essential for the sort of flying I do, while in the clinic, where I routinely diagnose life-threatening conditions, I still use the stethoscope given to me by my mother long ago as a graduation present.
Of course, plenty of new high-tech tools are also available for health clinics, and not necessarily all that expensive. But adopting new equipment is discouraged in many ways: the doctor usually doesn't get paid more, runs the risk of malpractice if the equipment is too innovative, and has to spend time learning how to use and maintain the new gear. It might be better for patient care, but there is often no payoff when it comes to the doctor's time and money.
The contrast came to me quite starkly a couple years ago when I had to fly to Singapore. I went online, found a convenient flight, bought my ticket and selected my seat and meal preferences, and paid by credit card. It took about five minutes. At the airport, I swiped my frequent flyer card (I could also have used my credit card) at the kiosk, and it printed out my boarding pass. My suitcase disappeared into a dark hole, not to be seen again until after I arrived in Singapore. I then walked through the security gate to the departure lounge and onto the airplane. It was seamless. In terms of human factors engineering, a "step" can be an interaction with a person, changing location, or filling out a form. Out of curiosity, I counted the number of such steps required for my flight to Singapore. It came to nine steps.
A year later, I came down with a lung infection while studying public health in a particularly destitute region of the Philippines. After I returned, I decided to see a lung specialist. It had been a while since I'd visited a clinic as a patient, and I was curious to see how this compared in human factors engineering terms.
First, it took navigating through layers of a telephone tree just to get the appointment, and the receptionist clearly had no clue when I tried to explain what I wanted. I showed up a half hour before my appointment. The receptionist handed me a clipboard with lengthy forms to complete. She made a photocopy of my driver's license and health insurance card. Then I had to sign a number of waivers for this and that, half of which I didn't really understand. A billing clerk then came out to explain which parts of my care would be covered by my insurance, which would not, and the required co-payment-she could not tell me about whether or not I had met the deductible-and advised that I would be billed, although she wasn't sure how much or for which parts, but added that I should receive reimbursement if I was overcharged. All of this required enough signatures to rival closing escrow for my house. (In the following months, I got nine letters from the clinic, the laboratory, and my insurance provider, all with invoices for hundreds of dollars, including some which stated at the top "This is not a bill" while containing demands for payment and warnings of referrals to collection agencies if I did not do so immediately.) The whole check-in process took about 45 minutes, and I was late for the appointment even though I'd arrived early.
I was finally ready to see the doctor. But first, I was shunted from one medical assistant to another-one to record my weight and blood pressure, another to take a urine sample, yet another to take a blood sample, and then a nurse who asked for more detailed information about my health complaint. Finally, after I was undressed and shivering slightly in the silly paper gown, the doctor arrived with a flourish-and evidently had no idea why I was there. I had already explained it all to the receptionist and again to the nurse, but there apparently was little communication among them. So I went through the whole thing again, more quickly because the doctor seemed impatient and clearly had little time for an extended story of how I came by this affliction. He jotted a few notes, said he wanted to see me again the following week after my blood test results came in, and disappeared out the door.
Out of curiosity, I counted the number of Human Factors steps. It came to 31. And that did not even include the additional steps needed for treatment, such as getting the medicine from the pharmacy, calling for the lab test results and paying the various bills, let alone dealing with all the following paperwork.
When it is easier to fly halfway around the world than to be seen at a medical clinic, we have a problem.
Most Americans are fed up with the problems of this country's medical system, and politicians are picking up the chant. The high cost of health insurance! The number of uninsured! The cost of medications! The lack of access in rural areas! On and on-pointing out shortcomings that everyone knows will be difficult and expensive to solve.
The real problem, in my opinion, is that our health care system has yet to enter the 21st century. Why do even the clinics of the University of Utah and Intermountain Healthcare -highly rated medical institutions-still depend largely on paper records? Why do we still have waiting rooms full of coughing and sniffling patients, spreading their germs to the point that if you enter a hospital you have a 20% chance of getting sick from something else? Why do we have medication errors that result in the deaths of as many as 100,000 people and about 1.5 million injuries per year, at a cost of $3.5 billion, with the majority of these errors due to simple miscommunication and bad handwriting? This sort of gross inefficiency and appalling lack of quality control would never be tolerated in any other industry.
How do those 100,000 medical deaths-just from medication errors, alone-compare to the hazards of aviation? In 2006, there were 910 million visits to physician offices. There were about 10 million commercial airline flights in the United States, carrying 744 million people. But in that year, there were just two airline accidents with a total of 50 deaths.
Clearly, our health care system is outrageously antiquated in comparison to aviation and other services. Why?
We need to look back to the Second World War for the explanation. When the United States entered the war in 1941 vast numbers of men entered military service, resulting in a shortage of workers. Factories became desperate for labor. They hired women and imported workers from Mexico, but it was not enough. The normal response to this sort of situation is an increase in wages as companies compete, especially for skilled employees. The Roosevelt administration was terrified of setting off a crippling inflationary wage spiral, and quickly enacted a law that prohibited any increase in wages. Factories instead turned to offering other benefits to lure workers: free education, free housing, and the most attractive of all, free health care.
After the war was over, the unions gave up the educational benefits (to some extent), and free housing (mostly barracks-type dwellings, anyway), but insisted on keeping the health care benefits. And that is why the U.S. is now the only country in the world that forces companies to provide health care for their employees. Not all companies-just those with over 15 employees that meet other criteria. The result is an absurd patchwork of health care benefits that covers only a portion of the population. And if you quit or lose your job, you also lose the health care that went with it.
In the standard marketplace, you have two parties: the buyer and the seller. Competition results in higher quality and lower prices. But our health care marketplace is not like that. With so-called health insurers paying for the care, we have three players: you (the customer), the health care provider (typically the doctor, clinic, or hospital, etc.), and the payer (health insurance provider). This is the same system that existed in the Soviet Union for other products like groceries-and it works about as well.
I was fortunate to experience the Soviet system before it disappeared. To buy food, you went to the store, waited in endless lines, then tried to find something worth buying on the near-empty shelves, then got a chit to take to the register for approval, back to the shelf (hoping the produce was still there), and finally made the purchase. The system was a disaster because the provider of the food wasn't paid by you but by the government, so they had no incentive to provide quality or quantity of food-they got paid the same regardless. There was no marketplace feedback, so the shelves were bare.
It is a similar situation here with health care-the doctor doesn't get paid by you, but by the insurer, and the pay is the same for good or bad quality. What is worse, the insurer does not pay for quality but by procedure. If you have back pain and the doctor spends an hour showing you how to get better and avoid pain in the future, she gets paid almost nothing. If she spends 10 minutes with you and writes a prescription for a painkiller, she gets paid more. If she spends only five minutes and gives you an injection, she gets paid much more. And if she does surgery on your back, she makes enough for a trip to Hawaii. It is inefficient and promotes poor quality, inappropriate and excessive procedures, and increasingly out-of-control costs. And no plan currently favored by any of the Presidential contenders makes any significant change in this system.
Now that we know the problem, what can we do about it?
The solution is to get away from the current way of paying for health care. With third-party payers, there is a major disincentive to change anything, since the payer does not benefit from the changes. For example, why don't health insurance companies provide nutritional counseling or free vaccines, which clearly result in greatly reduced illness and medical expenditures later in life? The answer is that the health insurer does not reap these benefits, since by then the patient may no longer be their customer. In other words, someone else will benefit from their outlay. The result is that health insurers provide little preventive care, even though providing such care is vastly more cost efficient than paying for the disease and disability later on.
The doctors and other providers also resist change. Why use an electronic medical record, which is complicated to learn, when you are used to simple paper charts? You get paid the same, so why bother? When some doctors wanted to do follow-up care with their patients by email, the insurance companies refused to pay for it. (It is a still a contentious issue.) And every innovation, no matter how minor, opens up possible charges of malpractice. The current system actively discourages change.
Health insurance: Why not like house and car insurance?
One irony that escapes just about all discussion of health insurance is that it is really not insurance. Rather, it is prepaid health care. When you buy insurance-whether for your house or car-you pay a small amount because you risk losing a large amount. Car insurance does not, for example, pay for oil changes or new windshield wipers. Those are expected maintenance. House insurance prevents the loss of your investment in your house should it burn down, but it does not pay for repainting the walls or repairing the furnace. But that is what we expect health "insurance" to do. Health insurers already have your money; every benefit they pay comes right out of their profit. So they try everything to put up barriers to care, such as requiring pre-approval -which is absurd when you are bleeding in the back of an ambulance.
If direct supplier-consumer market forces are brought back into play, there will be an incentive to make use of the Internet and advanced technology. It is amazing how efficient and quality-conscious providers become when they are forced to compete for customers. The American automobile industry is an obvious example. For much of the last century, it was notorious for turning out unsafe cars that fell apart within years. Just a few decades ago, even seatbelts were not available for most vehicles; they were an extra aftermarket installation. Then Honda and Toyota came along and captured huge portions of the market with much better cars. GM, Ford and Chrysler were forced to improve safety and quality in order to compete. As shown by a recent documentary film, GM produced a desirable electric car-and then killed it. Now they are scrambling to catch up to Toyota's Prius. The fact is, market forces work.
Don't expect politicians to bring much change. Because they are at the mercy of powerful lobbyists, we cannot depend on them to radically alter the system. Instead, the market will change the system. People will start traveling overseas for cheaper health care (see the article on medical tourism in CATALYST, August 2007). They will abandon overly expensive so-called health insurance plans and opt for other ways of paying for health care. Companies will rebel against outrageous health insurance costs by finding alternatives. Some companies are already weaseling out of costly health care by hiring workers part-time or as "independent contractors." Starbucks became such a dramatic business success by hiring only part-time baristas just under the minimum IRS criteria that would trigger a benefit package. (Starbucks, along with Wal-Mart and several other companies who prospered by avoiding paying benefits, are now providing health care-at least for a greater proportion of their employees.) Those companies who must provide these employee benefits will increasingly will rebel against outrageous health insurance costs by finding alternatives, such as the Health Savings Account (HSA), rewards for not using health services and countless other clever stratagems. All this would not be necessary if we had a government provider for basic care -like every other industrialized country.
But this is America, the cry goes up, and we don't want a Big Government socialized medical care system! In fact, we already do-just not a single one. We have Medicare (for seniors and the handicapped), Medicaid (for some of the poor), Veteran's Administration (for those who served in the armed forces), TRICARE (for families of those who serve in the armed forces), and other programs such as for inmates in jails and prisons-and, of course, free government health care for our politicians. All of these programs are run basically the same as the "socialized" government health care of Canada or other countries. A simple solution, in my opinion, would be to take the VA-which is relatively high-quality, inexpensive, and gets kudos for being a very efficient system-and open it to every resident of the United States. Haven't we all, in our own way, served this country?
Paul Gahlinger is a physician and author living in Salt Lake City.
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 | Grandparents for Clean AirHere’s an opportunity to speak for the future to Utah’s legislature.
by Vaughn Lovejoy
I am a relatively new grandfather; my oldest grandchild is six years old. His presence in my life has given me a direct and heartfelt connection to future generations.
I have lived here along the Wasatch Front since my early childhood. When I was six, orchards, pastures and small farms stretched through the valley from Brigham City to Nephi. They have all now been replaced by subdivisions and commercial developments. I remember Park City, Midway and Heber of my childhood before the explosion of condominium and timeshare developments filled the middle elevations of our critical watersheds along the Wasatch Range. I share these memories with many of you whose local childhoods reach back to the 1960s, 1950s, 1940s and beyond. What we were gifted from the past is very different from what we leave future generations.
I would like to reach across the different ways that we separate ourselves, so we can see that our similarities are much more fundamental than our differences. One way is by sharing the aspirations, hopes and dreams we have for our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. One primary hope is for them to have a healthy world where basic human needs will be available to all: clean water, healthy soils, clean and healthy air, a healthy watershed and landscape capable of supporting local gardens, farms, orchards, natural habitats and communities. These basic requirements for the community of life are rapidly disappearing from both our local landscapes and throughout the world.
To begin dealing with some of these growing public concerns at the state level, the Quality Growth Act was passed in 1999. It addresses three core issues:
Urban sprawl. Sprawl consumes thousands of acres of farmland, woodlands and wetlands. It requires government to spend millions of dollars to build new schools, streets, and water and sewer lines. This act gives incentives and offers support to local governments to put into place a long-term policy for promoting the orderly expansion of land use.
Housing and home ownership. Local government often has erected barriers to housing, such as low-density zoning requirements. This act eliminates these barriers through economic incentives.
Green space and agricultural preservation. The act includes a state funding mechanism, the LeRay McAllister Critical Land Conservation Fund, to preserve green space and agricultural lands. The fund is administered by the Utah Quality Growth Commission, and it makes grants or loans to Utah municipalities and counties, the state departments of agriculture and natural resources, and to nonprofit organizations to conserve or restore open and agricultural lands in Utah. In its eight-year history, the fund has spent almost $17 million to help preserve almost 75,000 acres. Those dollars have been matched by over $150 million in other funds.
The McAllister Fund is the only statewide fund for critical land conservation, but it must rely on the state legislature to appropriate funds every year. Year after year, it has received less than it needs to fund all the critical projects that apply for these funds.
I've been privileged to work with the Critical Lands Subcommittee for the last four years through my work at TreeUtah. The Critical Lands Subcommittee reviews all the applications for funding and recommends projects and funding levels to the Quality Growth Commission. During that time, the McAllister Fund has provided funding to purchase the plants and other materials for the 120-acre Audubon/Tree Utah restoration project along the Jordan River. Over the years, I have watched these committed committee members struggle with inadequate funding.
We need to get these open and agricultural lands protected soon, or we will lose our chance to do so. Future generations need us to act on their behalf now.
Vaughn Lovejoy is the ecological restoration coordinator for TreeUtah.
Calls to Action
Write your state legislator. To find out who your senator and representative is, go to: le.utah.gov/maps/ amap.html, type in your address and zip code. Let them know your opinion on appropriating $3 million this year to the LeRay McAllister Fund.
Check the TreeUtah website if you would like to help plant a woodland sanctuary for songbirds this spring; www.treeutah.org/restcalendar.htm
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 | RadioActive Interview: Jean HoustonJean Houston, ostensibly the mother of the human potential movement, talks about “jump time” and becoming aware that we are cosmic beings.
by Brandie Balken
Ours is an era of quantum change, the most radical deconstruction and reconstruction the world has seen. Life paths that contain and sustain us across the millennia are vanishing as we speak, like Gaia's species that are hourly becoming extinct. At the same time, we know that we are the ones who must go on.
Jean Houston, Ph.D., is a scholar, philosopher and researcher in human capacities. She is regarded as one of the principal founders of the Human Potential Movement. She is the author of several dozen books; including her most recent, "Jump Time." She is also the creator and principal instructor of the Mystery School and the School of Social Artistry, which explore the art of enhancing human capacities in the light of social complexity.
KRCL'S Brandie Balkan talked with Houston during a recent RadioActive.
- Troy Williams, producer, "RadioActive," on KRCL Radio, FM90.9
What is jump time?
Jump time means a time of enormous acceleration. Technically it goes back to evolutionary studies where you can actually see fossil deposits that seem to be the same over thousands of years until suddenly there is a jump to significant change. Now of course in the fossil record, this kind of exponential change will occur over thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of years. But with human history it's changing much faster-in the scope of our lifetime. We are literally in a time of whole systems transition.
RA: This embodies a sentiment that so many of us are feeling: We have to be ready for something.
JH: Yes. This is literally all over the world. I've worked in a hundred countries. Right now I'm working as a senior consultant to the United Nations in human development. And what we find-this sensibility that you speak of-is literally all over the world. Everybody feels on the verge of something, a singularity in history, a uniqueness. How do we make this new world that is trying to emerge?
RA: A lot of people are noticing an intense disparity around the world, and feeling like they personally need to do something about it. That's a unique thing that has happened to me, personally, over the past five years.
JH: One thing that Margaret Mead, the great anthropologist, told me on her deathbed (she lived with us the last six years of her life), "Jean, forget everything I've taught you about working with governments and bureaucracies." And I looked down at her and said, "Now you tell me!" And she said, "If we are going to grow and green our time, it's a question of people getting together in teaching-learning communities, just growing in body, mind and spirit. They do whatever it is that they can do to grow together, and from that depth and growth and understanding, they take on the social challenges wherever they are and make a better world".
The "zeit" is getting "geisty." Meaning the spirit of the time is this intensive jump time. Once you start going, people will join you, if you are also working together to deepen your consciousness, to extend your capacity of vision, for seeing, for thinking, for being out of the box, for understanding that you are not an encapsulated bag of skin dragging around a dreary little ego. You have many personas and skills within you. You are part of this larger story emerging in our time. And we are, as I believe, sourced in spirit. We are part of this incredible emergence that is our time and place.
RA: You describe the forces propelling us forward - the evolutionary pulse from the earth and the Universe.
JH: Well I think it's true. Whether it's 2012, or whatever it is, more and more history is happening faster and faster. And Earth herself, out of her incredible suffering, is almost demanding of us that we care for her. Earth is a very small village now. I had something to do with helping the astronauts remember what they saw when they came back. Coming back to the earth, Ed Mitchell, the sixth man on the moon, said, "Jean, you are asking the wrong question. It isn't what we saw on the moon that was important -it's what we saw coming back to Earth. There she was. We saw her through our little space capsule. This magnificent, beautiful blue and silver planet floating in the cosmic womb, and there was no war there, there was no difference in people. It was one great unified being." Ed said to me, "I felt such great nostalgia for what the world could be, that we had entered a time of sacred stewardship."
When we all saw those pictures of that world from outer space, it was like a time-release capsule was activated in our minds. We knew we were stewards and co-creators on this beautiful planet. That's the pulse. We are cosmic humans; that is, we are citizens in a universe larger than our aspiration and more complex than all of our dreams. And we are part of this extraordinary, incredible jump in our time in history. What we will do will make a difference in whether we grow or die.
RA: Really this is an opportunity to become partners in this creation - we can become creative agents. You mention the re-patterning of human nature.
JH: We are living in the golden age of mind and brain research. And this is joined to the harvest of so much of the genius of so many different cultures. Different cultures, often because of climate and geography, activate different potentials. For example, if you were living up in Tibet or the high Andes, you'd have the kind of consciousness that was given to meditation because of the clarity of the air. If you were living in a jungle in Africa or South America, your hearing is going to be very important, and thus leading to the whole drumming psychology.
Different cultures activate different potentials. I've spent a lifetime studying different potentials in many different cultures and then harvesting them so that people can do more, think more, be more. Most people, given education, can learn to think and to create and to become so much more than they ever thought they could be. We are living almost posthumous existences out of such a small aspect of what we are. But we can no longer afford to live that way-as half-light versions of ourselves. So what we are finding all over the world is people getting together to expand the use of their capacities, mentally, psychologically, spiritually, ethically - and become what we really can be. We have to grow into the possibility of a new humanity that is emerging to create a new sacred stewardship of the earth.
Learn more about Jean Houston at www.jeanhouston.org.
RadioActive airs weekdays Mon.-Fri. from noon to 1pm on KRCL 90.9 FM. Stream the entire interview at www.krcl.org.
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 | What's Wrong with Zero ToleranceAddressing addiction from the public health perspective. 10th in a series.
by Kim Hancey Duffy
This is Part II of an interview with Kevin McCauley, M.D., on understanding drug and alcohol addiction as a disease. Part I (December 2007) can be read at catalystmagazine.net
You've said that anxiety and depression can play a role in a person becoming addicted. But once the person is in the throes of addiction, what part does stress play then?
Stress causes relapse. Without good stress coping tools, the person will continue to relapse. Most of the research right now is focused on the stress caused by the drugs and the elevated stress hormones caused by drug use which change the dopamine system (the pleasure system) in the brain. But many addiction experts think that if that stress can be there with drug use, why can't it be there before drug use? We're learning so much about when people are traumatized, or what happens to the fetus when mothers are traumatized during pregnancy. We're learning a lot from people coming back from Iraq and the cohort of 9/11 first responders in New York City. Stress matters, and it changes the brain. Severe and chronic stress breaks the brain. And that's what addiction is. So an absolutely critical part of managing addiction is (a) getting the drugs out of the picture because they perpetuate this problem in the dopamine system and (b) getting the addict to create a bag of coping tricks. When they develop stress coping tools, the relapses start to peter out.
What happens in the brain during craving?
This is an area of intense study, which I'm simply translating; I'm not doing this research. New neuroimaging techniques, like functional magnetic resonance imagining (fMRI), actually produce a kind of movie of the brain's activity, seen in real time. In addicts' brains, during craving states, the midbrain lights up like a Christmas tree - far more than the average person who is just hungry. These are intensely active areas in the brain. But what's interesting during this, is that area in the frontal cortex - specifically the area which is necessary for assessing consequences - drops out. So not only do you get this activity in the survival midbrain, but you get this selective dropping out of very key areas in the judgment parts of the brain.
Why does that happen - does it just get elbowed out of the way by the limbic system?
I can speculate. When you look at it from an evolutionary psychology perspective, at this point the midbrain must do whatever it can. It thinks that this stress is an actual threat to existence. This is not about partying, it's about getting through the next 15 minutes alive, and it's on the unconscious level, too-a very old part of the brain. The frontal cortex is standing in the midbrain's way of getting what it needs, which is the drug. The midbrain has to secure survival and, as far as it's concerned, the frontal cortex (which is the person's morals, values, the things they find meaningful, their spiritual life) is a liability. So it shuts it off. That's a very scary state of being. And there's no doubt about it, the person in that craving state will mobilize whatever they need to get drugs - at great social cost, with criminal activity involved. But the real requirement for proving guilt in court is something called mens rea [guilty mind], which you have to prove to get a conviction. Well, what's interesting about these scans is that they show the areas that form intent are not on. That person is doing terrible things and should be dealt with, but they don't have the same level of intent as someone who actually planned out how they were going to come to your house and steal your tv.
Isn't that kind of like the "Twinkie defense"?
It's more sophisticated than the Twinkie defense, because that was sort of a legal trick. This actually has some science behind it. That's why a lot of people find it scary, because they fear it's going to be used to get off. It doesn't necessarily have to go that way. What this science gives us is a much deeper understanding of what happens when we make a choice. When we scan this person's brain - and we are coming to this point - we can see that they're just not at the same level of consciousness as a sociopathic criminal is.
Or a non-addicted person.
Right. That doesn't get them off; it diverts them into drug court. It says that this defendant has committed a crime, but rather than throwing them into prison, which will just make the problem worse, we can send them to treatment.
What has to happen to reduce the link between cravings and relapse? Cognitive behavior therapy?
Yes, that works. For instance one could say, "I'm having a craving now, but it doesn't mean I have to act on it." That's a major statement. Other things like being around people who no longer drink or use drugs. For young people, sometimes just changing their peer group helps them get sober. Get them in young person's Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), or send them to a therapeutic boarding school. What it takes is practicing this over and over again, so the person finally realizes, "Yes, I'm having a craving but there are things I can do about it. I can go to a meeting, call another alcoholic, or take this new medication that my doctor gave me to take the edge off." It's not one thing, but a bag of tricks. When the person gets practiced at this, they might get terrible cravings but not automatically cascade into relapse.
And if they do relapse, you don't punish them, but encourage them to brush themselves off and start over again?
Yes, but you want to find out what caused the relapse. Are they hanging around drug users? Are they still getting drug tested? A mechanism should go into place the minute that positive drug test comes in to get that person back on the horse and supervised. This is what we do with a diabetic. If I diagnose a diabetic and give them the tools, show them the insulin, and send them to the diabetic nurse to learn how to use it - then six months later they go into diabetic coma, I don't just say, "Try harder!" I find out what isn't working. That's the scrutiny diabetics get. If we were to give that same treatment to addicts, the problem could be taken care of.
Don't a lot of patients with diabetes and high blood pressure fall off their regimen?
Sure, and if you want to see truly revolting symptoms, spend a little time around a diabetic foot. This is medicine. Symptoms are not pleasant; patients are not at their best when they're sick. But we don't punish or categorize them based on whether they have pleasant symptoms or not. The person doesn't have a "diabetic personality." And if the patient says they're not going to follow the regimen, we don't just throw up our hands and say, "Oh well, that's the end of it." We work with them, and it's in the quality of the interaction that they eventually come around and realize they need to manage their disease.
We talked about 12-step meetings in the last interview. I have another question about their method. In the AA community, when an alcoholic relapses, they are warmly welcomed back with no judgment or stigma. What does that accomplish, and what if this were practiced in the public sphere?
What it does is maintain contact with the person at all costs. It would be nice if teenagers didn't have sex, but they do. So what are we going to do about it? A major tenet of public health is get the person to some kind of care. You may not be able to change their behavior right away, but you might be able to teach them one thing to lower their pregnancy or STD rate. At all costs, make sure it's easy for the patient to come into the clinic. The opposite tactic is zero tolerance. It would be nice if 767 captains didn't binge drink to the point of blacking out, but some do. If you want to have a zero tolerance program, fine, but unfortunately that makes things worse because the pilot who needs help isn't going to come in. However, if you create a policy that says, we know this happens, we don't like it. But please, come to us. We won't fire you, we'll get you treatment, we'll keep you with your job, your family, and the things that are meaningful.
So when a community says, "Keep coming back," and a person can come in and say, "I drank last night," and everyone remembers when that happened to them, so they say, "We know what that's like. Keep coming back" - then that person is much more likely to stay engaged.
My mom, who is an obstetrician, gave me this example: Suppose there's a 14-year-old woman/girl in the next room, dilated and ready to deliver a baby, and screaming her lungs out because she's scared. What are we going to do? Go in and say, "You shouldn't have gotten pregnant. What's the matter with you?" No, we go in there and help her, put our moral judgments aside for the time being to fix the problem at hand. That's the challenge we face - are we going to take the law enforcement approach, which is necessary for burglary or assault, or do we want to fix this problem? I think the public health attitude is more suited to addiction. It's a risk management mentality which is very different from the political angles like "Tough on Crime" or "Zero Tolerance." I understand that we don't want to give people mixed messages. But it doesn't work. I wish it did, but it doesn't. It makes things worse.
Dr. McCauley's website is addictiondoctor.com. Kim Hancey Duffy is a freelance writer in Salt Lake City, and is also a member of Salt Lake City Mayor's Coalition on Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs: slcpreventioncoalition.org.
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 | Transform U: Best Foot ForwardA wild eye for style can transform.
by Auretha Callison
Here's my job description: I assist people in their evolution towards authentic self-expression. That sounds pretty intense, but mostly it's helping them express their style and best colors-making them look sharp and amazing (focus on the zing). I create a style for people that others experience as "Wow! That's who you are! I see you."
I want to be seen as the truest, most beautiful version of the individual I am, and I want to help others to be seen in this same light. I strip away and unclutter to define and design a person's style consistent with their energy, interests and creativity.
Transformation is the critical inch of my business. I sort through with you what is working and trans the form of what is not working-the heavy, clunky, weird energy ...like the jacket that never felt quite right; it takes up valuable space in your life and irritates you with a consistent dull hum.
What is working adds energy right now. Presently ruby red and copper work for me. These colors transmit the truest signal of me to myself and the world around me. In my ruby-red knee-high patent leather superwoman sexpot footwear, I receive constant admiration, appreciation and offers to lick my boots. These boots stir the creativity and imagination of my community. I am stirring the pot when I wear them.
I feel powerful, comfortable, wealthy, tall and female when I wear these fabulous works of Franco Sarto.
Well worth $90, don't you think? I do. I step into the me that feels all these wonderful feelings instead of the childlike Iowan sensible creature that I know myself to be. I get to be mysterious and seductive-the naughty with the nice. The moment I take them off, I stretch my calves and come down to earth again.
I am transformed by the wearing of these boots.
For everyone, the critical question of transformation is "How do I want to feel?" Once we make the choice to feel the way we want to feel, fear often strikes. Can my honest Midwestern self also be powerful and sexy? What will others think of me? Hmm, that can be scary stuff. We can develop and express all the best parts of ourselves, and usually simultaneously. However quickly you want to transform is up to your comfort level.
No matter how overused, I love the imagery of the squirmy, juicy, inelegant caterpillar evolving into the fairy-footed, gossamer butterfly. It's the transformation from overly grounded to fluttery fabulousness in the miracle of a natural process.
Transformation isn't hard, but naturally it may be uncomfortable at points. A brilliant poet client of mine manifested an entire shoe collection in one hour and $300 at the Rack. She went from one pair of clogs to 13 pairs of glamour in one hour of choice and a commitment to see what would happen.
When I do my work, I feel elated to be a part of the process inside the cocoon. In this intimate and wondrous process, I am honored in the way a midwife is honored receiving a new being into the world. I witness miracles and the universe guiding us with every step.
Auretha Callison is an intuitive image stylist living in Salt Lake City. aurethacallison@yahoo.com
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 | Beauty and the FeastCompaniable eating to take the edge off: time for hors d’oeuvres.
by Judyth Hill
Mom was the high priestess of hors d'oeurves. Cocktail hour was sacred.
It started with lipstick. Icy melon, or coral kiss. A schmear, then blot.
It started with what was interestingly referred to in the '50s as a fresh face.
I loved all parts of this process. I thought it de rigueur before creating tempting morsels on Ritzes, to sit at your vanity and do your hair. Then, mouth slightly open, apply a light brush of dark navy color to upper lashes. She always used those cake mascaras, Lancôme, I think, and something about wetting the brush and leaning into the dressing table mirror looked so exciting to me.
I could hardly wait to grow up and stare interestedly at my own reflection, while carefully applying parfum to all my pulse points. I'm not sure people even know where their pulse points are anymore. But I do.
I know, I know, you're thinking: get to the point.
And I'm wondering why I can't get to appetizers without a quick visit to the dressing table and getting pretty. Then I understand. There's a certain kind of eating that is really about beauty.
It's not that noonhour roar in the stomach, which demands the immediate consumption of thick, steamy chowder or a huge juicy sandwich. Not the early morning yen for crisp and butter, accompanied by the darkest cup of coffee you can brew.
This is about edges. Assuaging just the edge of hunger, so that the day's end can be savored. So that you and your beloved, or whomsoever with you have chosen to share this delicate time between, quietly, sweetly, mark the edge and onset of evening.
To invite and celebrate coming together, settling into the refolding of yourselves back into each other's day. To acknowledge midpoint, a shift in tempo.
A beginning of another sort.
So, firstly, make time. Then select a lovely plate.
Mine is the one my mother always used. It's odd, the only one of its kind from a kitchen where everything came in sets of 12. It's a black plate with the raised images of a man and a woman talking. And a chicken between them.
Like I said, it's odd. And I haunt antique shops for those heavy Depression Glass condiment plates, and old single pieces of silver service. You get the idea.
At first, the building of your larder toward an instantly doable cocktail hour takes preparation. But once the habit is set, on any given evening, you can say, "Darling, let's have d'oeurves and talk," and in no time, you're curled up on the couch, with a small table at your knees, or on pillows, or your porch, or at the kitchen table, cleared, of course, of the day's detritus, and ready. Glass of wine, or cocktail, in hand, or a savory juice, seasoned and flaunting a stirstick of celery for fun, ice cubes companionably clinking.
Low prep and high returns on your appetizer menu suggest:
Olives. Good ones, picante green, or Kalamata, or stuffed with almonds or bleu cheese. Or black ones, large, with pits, so you eat them slowly, tasting thoughtfully their velvety meat. Sardines, if you like, or smoked oysters. A chunk of Jarlsburg cheese, thinly sliced and fanned out delicately.
And never underestimate the enlivening crisp and color of cool, fresh carrot spears, tiny dewy florets of broccoli and cauliflower, rings of bright green and red peppers. A bowl of balsamic, or ranch dressed to the nines with morsels of creamy Gorgonzola or feta.
A hardboiled egg, sliced and attended by a pungent dab of Dijon mustard can be just the right thing.
Your foods may be simple or complex. It's the gesture towards grace that counts.
Letting the world spin on, while you and your love commit togetherness over something delicious...
I always have tortilla chips on hand. Sharp cheddar cheese. And green onions. Sour cream.
I bet you do, too.
If you keep a can of some refried or black beans tucked back behind the cereals and pastas, you can make nachos as grand as you please. Or if you are happen to have leftover morsels of cooked chicken, sausage, ground beef or bison, or care to sauté some up with a smidgen of onion-have at it. Quelle largesse!
I do confess to microwave here. Layer for a good mix: Heap the chips in a deep dish, spoon some beans on top; sprinkle with onions (and maybe tiny bites of fresh jalapeño or serrano chiles), any meats or seafood you are adding, some small chunks of cream cheese, grate on your cheese and repeat on the second layer.
Microwave or bake just till melted. Sour cream, chopped fresh cilantro to taste, salsa on the side...
The aroma will make your mouth water, and those conversational juices flow.
Cocktail hour noshing needn't be fancy. Make sure that you keep crackers in your life. Salted nuts. Pickles, dill or sweet, whatever you love. Any leftover bit of meat or seafood can be cut into slender, tasty bites and served solo to allow for creative eating, with various dipping sauces, or arranged on toastpoints, with a scribble of mayo, a dab of chutney, or a tad of Sriracha.
But oh, it can indeed be fancy. A piping hot crabmeat dip, my favorite childhood treat from my mother's always resplendent larder, is actually only a few very storable ingredients away. And seems so luxe.
A block of Philly cream cheese, softened. A clove of garlic, crushed. Or garlic powder, in a pinch. Juice of fresh lemon to taste, a dash or so of Worcestershire sauce. A generous grind of fresh pepper, a few drops of Tabasco sauce. Gently fork in a can of drained crabmeat, adding the juices a bit at a time 'til just barely thinned enough for dip.
Should you decide to splurge, this can be made spectacularly with fresh crab.
You know Mom did.
Now that I think of it, this may also be prepared as a vegetarian dip, if you substitute finely diced peppers, juicy red onions, whatever else pleases your fancy.
Again, to bake or microwave till bubbly hot is the final step.
Now, want to really show off your ability to throw off the day and waltz into evening like Fred and Ginger, like Kelly and Caron?
Here are two of my favorite and scrumptiously aboveandbeyondthecallofbeauty hors d'oeurves.
The mushrooms will fill your kitchen with the most savory scents you can imagine, and the presence of Oysters Rockefeller on your table will catapult you into the appetizer hall of fame.
And they are all so easy. But let's never let on. These are for those moments when you want more than a pause. You want a showstopper...
Broiled Stuffed Mushrooms
12 servings
12 large mushrooms
3 T. butter, approximately
1 smaIl onion, chopped fine
1 c. fine soft bread crumbs
1 c. chopped, cooked chicken, ham, bacon or shrimp, OR 1/4 c. chopped unsalted nuts
2 T. cream, good red wine, or sherry (approximately)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Sweet marjoram, rosemary or oregano to taste
Preheat broiler. Remove and chop the mushroom stems.
In a skillet, heat 1 T. of the butter, add the onion and chopped mushroom stems and saute about 2 minutes.
Add the crumbs, the meat, shrimp or nuts, enough cream, sherry or wine to moisten the mixture and the seasonings.
Place the mushroom caps on a baking sheet and brush with the remaining butter, melted.
Broil, cup side down, in a pre-heated broiler about 2 minutes.
Invert and fill with the stuffing.
Brush with melted butter and broil about 3 minutes longer.
Oysters Rockefeller
6 servings
1/2 lb. spinach, washed well and drained
6 or 8 scallions
1/2 head lettuce
1/2 stalk celery
1/2 bunch of parsley
1 clove garlic
1 cup butter
1 1/2 c. fine bread crumbs
1 T. Worcestershire sauce
1 t. anchovy paste
1/2 t. salt
Few dashes of Tabasco sauce
2 T. absinthe or Pernod
36 oysters
Mince finely or grind together the spinach, scallions, lettuce, celery, parsley and garlic.
Heat the butter and mix in the greens, bread crumbs, Worcestershire sauce, anchovy paste, saIt, Tabasco and Pernod.
Refrigerate until ready to use.
Spoon the mixture onto 36 oysters on the half shell.
Set the oyster halves on a bed of rock salt and bake in a hot oven (450ºF.) until piping hot.
Serve immediately.
Imagine 700 words on hors d'oeurves and I've never even whispered about chewy baguettes of French bread or ciabatta, and a fully ripe brie.
Never said crisp apple, and a perfect Anjou pear.... Or a small jar of delectable, pungent pesto. A juicy Roma tomato.
These are obvious. I know you know. I just want you to remember.
As the sun makes its way west: sigh. Breathe and stretch and think, it's time to stop....
Now visit the fridge and shelves and set your ingredients together.
But first, oh first: Honor beauty. Yours, mine and the world's, and celebrate that wonderful dusky wind down into evening.
Look in the mirror.
Judyth Hill is a poet and former bakery owner. She has published six books of poetry and is the author of the internationally acclaimed poem, "Wage Peace." www.Rockmirth.com
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 | Open the Door With ResolveFour tips the books don’t give you on working with new year’s resolutions.
by Pat Matthews
Another New Year, another New Year's resolution. How well did your last year's resolution turn out? Statistics show that it is as rare as a red-nosed reindeer for a resolution to work itself out as originally intended. About 40% of all resolutions never come to pass, and the other 60% are fudged or modified by the maker.
We can blame all the excitement about New Year's resolutions on the Babylonians, the Romans and the Catholic Church. The Babylonians got us started by spending 11 days at the beginning of each year drinking out the old and dancing in the new. The Romans took it a step further by placing the likeness of their mythical two-faced god, Janus, at the beginning of their calendar. He represented resolution and forgiveness and was used symbolically during their New Year revelry as a guide to looking back over the last year and looking forward to a better year ahead. Later, the Catholic Church took a dim view of all this partying and even changed the date of the New Year to December 25, the date we still celebrate as Christmas. January 1 became the Feast Day of Christ's circumcision (a scene I, for one, have never seen depicted in a stained glass window).
Today our holiday hoopla starts at Halloween and runs through the final play of our favorite bowl game on January 1. We gather with family and friends to party, play and renew our spiritual convictions during this time of year. In the midst of all this fun and frolic, people aspire to begin the New Year with a clean slate. This commitment to change, for whatever reason, is commendable. With some new perspective, we may be able to increase our odds of success.
Avoid the pitfalls
Most of us have experienced the frustration of the New Year's resolution blues. The pattern goes like this: we set a goal, work at it a little bit, get annoyed for ever deciding to change something about ourselves, give up, feel guilty about it for a while, and then make some internal decision that we've changed enough. And we get on with life.
Many of you have read one or more of the thousands of books written to help you set goals, overcome obstacles, achieve success, and reap your new rewards. Here are some of the ideas represented:
• Be reasonable and realistic, aim low to avoid disappointing yourself.
• Make one resolution, not 10, so you can maintain focus.
• Write your goal down. One tradition states that for absolute success you must write your New Year's resolution on a piece of white paper, wrap it in an old kitchen towel and then burn it.
• Tell (only) supportive friends and family about your resolution so they can help you along the way.
• Keep a diary or notebook to record your success and keep track of setbacks.
• Visualize yourself achieving your goal.
• Encourage yourself about how well you are doing. Hang motivating pictures or notes on the refrigerator or bathroom mirror.
• Wait until spring, when the stress of the holidays is over, to act on your resolution.
• If all else fails, seek help from an expert. If you're serious, nothing can stop you.
These are all good, reasonable ideas, but there are three things I would add to set yourself up for a more successful outcome this year.
• Don't be afraid of
your emotional resistance
Being honest, objective, and looking at all sides of ourselves is not easy or fun, but it is a key component to success. Who are you, really? Are you a clear-cut decision maker? Maybe you're a little or a lot lazy? Do you get angry when someone suggests something new to you? Does dependency play a role in your relationships? Are you honest or is bending the truth just part of the fabric of your life? Get down and dirty with yourself. You can't change what you can't see, and trying to change an illusion of yourself into something else just leads to a different illusion. If you want to stop smoking or clear up your financial mess, you have to be honest enough to see the truth of who you are and compassionate enough to forgive your own mistakes. Use your emotions, both positive and negative, to propel you forward into being the person you want to be.
• Use stress
to fuel the change
If you're like most people, deadlines and stress often work with you instead of against you.
When the stakes are high enough, we often open up our mind to new thoughts and ways of being. When the pressure is off, it is difficult for some to get the brain-and the body-up and running.
I find that, in times of stress, people often find the solution to their problems while driving or taking a shower or simply staring out the window at the snow falling.
Stress motivates, but it's in the calm moments that the answers are found. Pay attention to your dreams, listen to your own intuition. You have been making split-second adjustments and thinking on your feet pretty much all of your life. You already know how to cause as well as adjust to change. The trick is to use these skills to help you change your eating habits or exercise more. Instead of working hard to get out of work, work smart by being honest with yourself. You can change those things that you honestly see. Making excuses is the lazy man's lie, and the lie diffuses the stress that can propel us into change.
• Give yourself the
New Year's gift of time
By all means use the first of the year as a date to mark the beginning of your change. You need to start somewhere. Just realize that change lives in its own time zone. It doesn't live here with us mere mortals, attached to a calendar or a clock. It's off the planet and happens when you and the change you are making come together and shine, making the path to success visible and viable. You cannot predict with accuracy the exact day and place that you will "get it" and stop doing whatever has been holding you back. But the time will come of its own accord when the behaviors of your life line up with the thing you are trying to achieve. So if your change doesn't walk in the door on January 1, you should make sure that you leave the door open.
Be healthy, be happy, be loved in the New Year.
Pat Matthews is a clairvoyant, meditation teacher and acupuncturist liing in the St. George area. She will give a talk on "Predicting Your Own New Year" at the Golden Braid on Jan. 24, and be available for readings at One World Cafe Jan. 26-27. findyourpath@gmail.com.
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 | Living In Interesting TimesSuzanne Wagner looks at politics, the economy and more for 2008.
by Suzanne Wagner
Astrologically speaking, 2008 holds the beginnings of a major change in consciousness with Pluto moving into Capricorn. But there’s a lot more going on in the cosmos that promises to make the coming year “interesting times”—perhaps a bit in the vein of the proverbial curse.
First, let’s look at the numerological significance of 2008.
To begin, add 2 + 0 + 0 + 8. You get a number 10. Ten is a major milestone for the massive changes the world wishes to accomplish this year. In the number system that I use, 10 indicates a year of power and radiance. So, no matter what, expect big changes and shifts in the coming year.
The number 10 is associated metaphorically with Alexander the Great. 2008 is going to be a year of expansion and power struggles as various economic groups vie for power, both negative and positive, in the world. As the world becomes more and more connected through computers and the Internet and global financial systems continue to mesh, big shifts that affect everyone can happen quite suddenly.
The number eight in 2008 shows the emotional process needed to accomplish this task. Unfortunately, the number eight is associated with grief and loss. Many will feel emotional despair and depression as certain patterns are exposed and need to be released in order to create positive change and movement. Some will experience moments of tremendous pain and suffering. This type of turmoil can emotionally affect us all. It can cause huge financial changes that do not seem positive at first, forcing us to reclaim our social and economic center and become more responsible for our country and strengthening the political issues arising at home.
We will begin to see that we need to become strong within like a yogi sitting on a mountaintop. We need to know ourselves first. Then, from that power and certainty, we can help others with our perspective and awareness. This new awareness will cause sweeping political changes as the people reclaim power and reprioritize government. Expect some heated political debates and a redistribution of power worldwide, changing how policies are dictated and how we are seen in the world.
A major shift of this nature would allow the feminine to rise, creating the distinct possibility that Hillary Clinton may win the presidency.
No matter what, the 10 will cause change in how we are seen and how others see our power influencing the world in 2008.
On a personal level, you should be honest with the intense emotions you may feel in 2008. Do not allow sadness to overwhelm you as the global situation creates upheaval. Find ways to express your true self powerfully in the world to create positive effects for your family and life. Keep your center and know that when you are present and clear, you can handle any situation that comes your way with honesty and love. Take some risks this year to change jobs or finally go for your dream.
The number 10 is like a big wave that you have been waiting for all your life as a surfer. You need to grab the moment when it happens and go for it. Otherwise the moment is lost and you do not know when it may come again.
January through March
Not surprisingly, between Pluto moving into Capricorn on January 27, Mars being retrograde until January 30, and Mercury going retrograde January 28 through February 19, things are going to feel bogged down in the mire and muck of the political and global situations. It may not feel like anything is actually moving until March.
Pluto moving into Capricorn catapults us into a new transformational cycle. Ultimately this is a good thing. Since Capricorn is an earth sign, it can take a while to make all the shifts manifest and ignite us into the new pattern. Pluto will be in Capricorn for 15 years until March 24, 2023!
Pluto in Capricorn catalyzes a new journey into consciousness. The United States was formed under a Pluto in Capricorn pattern. This aspect can cause revolutionary changes that bring about new structures and support humanity. In our time, the upcoming presidential election and politics will change and motivate us in new directions previously thought not possible.
You can see the pattern in the candidates now running for president: a woman Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton; Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister; Mitt Romney, a Mormon; Rudy Giuliani, a divorced man, and Barack Obama, the first African American to be a serious presidential contender.
As Pluto traversed through Sagittarius for the last 12 years, the world marketplace opened up, but the darker side of the digital world also emerged with reduced privacy and the growing problem of sexual predators on the Web. The energy of Capricorn needs to create controlled structures pointing toward new rules for our new global family.
The Mars retrograde makes everything feel sticky and immobile until the end of January. Mars is a bucketload of energy, but when it is retrograde all the energy bogs down and gets trapped. Just as the Mars energy opens up again, we get hit with a Mercury retrograde that makes February feel stuck again until the end of the month. It will be March before the energy seems to move forward comfortably.
For approximately the next two years, Saturn is in Virgo. This planetary energy has always catapulted China’s systems and governments into transformation and movement, and the coming year is no exception. China hosts the Olympics on August 8, 2008 at 8:08 p.m. China sees the number eight as highly fortuitous, and they are going to make this their coming-out party. Expect huge things for the Olympics as China bursts onto the world stage with a new mixture of communism and capitalism. You will be witnessing a new power coming onto the world stage with a perspective different from the old Maoist way of thinking.
Saturn in Virgo is also highly beneficial to women in politics, so keep an eye on Hillary Clinton for this election. Saturn reorganizes work practices and industry. When Saturn has been in Virgo before there was a surge in quality control and consumer rights, creating more consistent approaches to manufacturing and production. We see those changes now in the “lead toy” problem from China and the attention to rogue viruses in schools and our food supplies. Victor Hugo said, “Habit is the nursery of errors.” This is not about doing the same old things but improving the pattern.
Housing prices and the stock market
Needless to say, the housing market is on a downward slide. Expect it to hit bottom in approximately August 2009 and to swing to another high point in March 2011.
Uranus, Pluto and Saturn will be moving through some complex interactions in a combination that has coincided with stock market crashes historically. Also, in 2009 Pluto and the North Node will conjoin in Capricorn. The combined effect of these astrological patterns bodes ill for the overall economy, of which the housing industry is a major part.
The “war on terror”
With all this astrological momentum for change, it is not surprising that we may finally be getting a step up on the so-called war on terror. The cause of this is actually the people who are finally sick of all the killing of innocents in the Middle East. There will be a shift in humanity’s temperament around all this craziness. As Pluto leaves Sagittarius, we move out of the chaos, disruption and drama associated with that sign.
Capricorn in Pluto will announce new rules of behavior and conduct that the world will begin to agree upon. Terror will lose its effectiveness.
Many Iraqis who left their country for exile in Syria have now run out of money and are being forced to return to their chaotic country. They must get their country back on line to prosper. People, finally tired of all the suffering, will make new peace negotiations begin to stick.
April through September
I expect a bad hurricane season in the Gulf Coast area, especially Alabama and parts of Florida. This will affect the economy of an already depressed area and force housing and building code changes over the next seven years that can help minimize destruction in these areas. Buildings, regardless of their age, will have to meet more stringent requirements to be insured. This will be highly beneficial over time, but in the short run very expensive.
A new and growing movement related to green housing projects will help the United States break free of dependency on Middle East oil over a period of about five years. The project will be launched by the next president inspiring all Americans to do their part to become more independent from foreign products, bringing money back into the U.S.
Renewed enthusiasm and energy will accompany the Presidential election campaign in 2008. Changes that will promote hospitality and global support are anticipated.
Financial situations are not going to feel great. The economy will be slower. People will be more cautious with money. But a little curbing of the credit cards never hurt anyone. We will feel the need to reprioritize and discover how much we really need, compared to what we think we need.
Jupiter going retrograde May 9, 2008, coupled with a Mercury retrograde May 26, creates a feeling of lack and things not completely going your way. You may feel contracted around money until September 9 when Jupiter finally goes direct. So play it safe; don’t overextend during that time. Expect miscommunications around money and try not to push your mate over finances during this period.
Mercury retrograde comes around again from September 24 through October 15, placing strains on the Internet and in all communication systems. The guides are telling me that we will have some solar flares at that time, compounding the already chaotic Mercury pattern. Satellites will misbehave, which may affect some of the Olympics programming from China. Some programs may have to be rebroadcast.
Pluto will move temporarily back into Sagittarius from June 15 through November 27. But the Pluto-Capricorn pattern will have begun a shift that cannot be stopped even though Pluto in Sagittarius might create a few last ditch chaotic events in the Middle East. I do not expect these to have a great global effect, as everyone is ready for the new pattern.
All in all, this will be a wonderfully transformational year with healthy shifts and changes beginning to make their way through the past chaos to form a new foundation of stability and balance. Expect a lot of work ahead but there is a newfound desire and drive to become more independent and self-reliant. Government will shift, and we will implement new patterns that can allow and spur growth into a new direction that benefits all.
We’ll revisit these predictions in December 2008 and see how we fared.
Suzanne Wagner is the author of numerous books and CDs on the tarot. She lives in Salt Lake City....Read More >> |
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