Cornel West, Love, Justice ... and Me

Well, okay. I didn't actually even shake his hand, much less get to talk with him one-on-one. But I got to hear Cornel West speak at my university today, and I was both moved and impressed.

Impressed: because he's got such an stirring delivery. If I tried to riff on the whole scale of emotion and power that he uses, I'd come across as a screeching, bombastic pedant. (Heck, I'm still trying to get comfy with wielding a microphone when I lecture!) But he's got the voice and presence to pull off the sort of oratory that's otherwise reserved for legendary preachers.

Moved: because he's not just way smarter than me, and he's not just a brilliant showman. He calls us to tend to our own spiritual maturity while committing ourselves to rooting out oppression. He takes Socrates' injunction that "the unexamined life is not worth living," mixes it with the blues, and inspires you to recommit to a better self and a better world. Actually, the better self is the bridge to that better world.

I'm not going to try to summarize all that West said. (He was giving the keynote at a conference on a founder of progressive Islam, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a Sudanese visionary executed by his government for his beliefs, whom West grouped with Gandhi, King, and Mandela.) Instead, I'll just share a few of the lines that I found most inspiring, yet pithy enough that I got them on paper - no small thing, because the ideas were flowing so furiously.

Indifference is the one trait that makes the very angels weep. It's the very essence of inhumanity.

Optimism deodorizes the catastrophic. Hope allows us to confront the catastrophic.

These weren't just eloquent yet empty phrases. While celebrating Obama's upcoming inauguration, West called on "Brother Barack" to serve hope, not optimism. To speak out against the carnage in Gaza. To explain why he chose Rick Warren in apparent contempt of his LGBT supporters.

This, however, is the thought I've promised myself to repeat every day until it becomes part of my blood and bones:

Justice is what love looks like in public.

Imagine what the world might look like if that became everyone's mantra. Imagine how different our history would be. How radiant our future.

Of course this is way out of season, but I swear it's posted in a spirit of hope, not optimism. (The flower is a Climbing Peace Rose from early September 2008.)

Boob Radar

Photo by Flickr user Dave Pearson, used under a Creative Commons license.

One reason I've been quiet the past couple of days is that I've been squandering loads time on the phone arguing about a rejected medical claim. As I mentioned briefly last summer, I had a mysterious little blob turn up on a mammogram in spring 2007. I got lots more mammograms plus a total of three MRIs at half-year intervals. Insurance won't cover the last MRI unless they get more documentation from the doctors. Right now, I owe $3200 unless (until!! let's think positively) my insurer steps up and covers the exam.

I know, I know. I'm very lucky to even have an insurance company to wrangle with.

The MRI really was medically necessary. It's better than a mammogram in evaluating "dense breast tissue." I would like to say that I've got these fabulous dense, firm, perky hooters and that's why the MRI was needed. But in fact, this says nothing about my hawtness; dense tissue is linked with "youth" and in the universe of mammograms, I'm just a babe - chronologically, that is.

The MRI really did provide superior information in my case. It showed that my blob was regular in shape and that it wasn't growing, both of which suggested it wasn't malign. The last time I had an MRI in June, it showed that the blob had in fact disappeared. (Most likely, the blob was some kind of inflammatory process in a cyst. Yes, I realize I was lucky.) A biopsy might have provided the same information, but biopsies can be pretty painful, and the blob was small enough that it would have been hard to locate.

So, both medically and psychologically, the MRI accomplished what a mammogram couldn't. I've stopped worrying about the blob. I feel a whole lot less alienated from my body.

But. The MRI costs roughly ten times more than a mammogram, which is why insurance demands justification.

Let's dream a moment. What if we had an imaging technology that offered the sensitivity of an MRI at the cost of a mammogram but without the radiation exposure? That's just what researchers at the University of Bristol hope to develop. They've come up with a new approach to boob-a-vision. And it's based on ... radar.

Professor Alan Preece and Dr Ian Craddock from the University of Bristol have been working for a number of years to develop a breast-imaging device which uses radio waves and therefore has no radiation risk unlike conventional mammograms.

The team began developing and researching a prototype around five years ago ... [Dr. Craddock says:] "This new imaging technique works by transmitting radio waves of a very low energy and detecting reflected signals, it then uses these signals to make a 3D image of the breast. This is basically the same as any radar system, such as the radars used for air traffic control at our airports." ...

Mike Shere, Associate Specialist Breast Clinician at NBT [North Bristol NHS Trust], added: ... "It takes less time to operate than a mammogram approximately six minutes for both breasts compared with 30-45 minutes for an MRI, and like an MRI it provides a very detailed 3D digital image.

"Women love it as they compare it to a mammogram and find the whole experience much more comfortable."

The radar breast imaging system is built using transmitters and receivers arranged around a ceramic cup, which the breast sits in. These transmitters view the breast from several different angles. ...

Professor Preece from the University's Medical Physics, said ... "Using this engineering knowledge we built the machine using ground penetrating radar, a similar technique to land mine detection to take four hundred quarter of a second pictures of the breast to form a 3D image.

"Women do not feel any sensation and it equates to the same type of radiation exposure as speaking into a mobile phone at arms length which makes it much safer."

More testing remains to be done. The next round of studies will focus on young women (us of the dense, perky breasts!) and look at whether boob radar is as sensitive as other methods. But the researchers are optimistic about both the scientific and the economic utility of this technology. They think it can be produced cheaply on a mass scale.

Wouldn't it be cool if radio imaging replaced mammograms? I already discussed the cost and precision factors. Negligible radiation exposure would be a huge point in its favor, too. I know that the medical establishment always reassures us that the risk from mammograms is minimal. But as someone who's now been exposed at a very young age to several mammograms per year with lots of extra views taken, I'm uneasy. We were told that CT scans were safe, too, but recent research seems to indicate considerably greater risks than originally claimed, especially where kids are concerned.

I don't suppose the inventors will pay me any heed, but I vote for the name "boob radar" for this new technology. Both words are palindromes. What's not to love?

Antidote to McCain's Toxic Campaign

I've always liked Donna Brazile's plainspoken, no-bullshit manner. I've known she's a smart strategist and analyst. I had no idea she could be this inspirational. These words of hers - her refusal to go to the back of the bus - moved me almost as much as Barack Obama's speech last March on race in America.

This is the perfect antidote to the hatefulness of the McCain-Palin campaign this past week:

Waking Dreams of the Perfect Breast Cancer Prevention Drug

Photo of a lilac-breasted roller by Flickr users Arno & Louise, used under a Creative Commons license. If you came here for a lovely photo of black-and-white breasts set off by orange Sungold tomatoes, too bad; I got annoyed at too many late-night hits from visitors seeking boobie pictures, which is not what Kittywampus is about, and so I took down the original breast photo. However, this fella's lilac breast is quite gorgeous in its own right.

So the other night I woke up in the wee hours and started thinking about breast cancer and how to prevent it. Now, the obvious rational approach is right living, on the individual side, and a much cleaner environment, when it comes to collective strategies. On the first score, I eat my veggies and I'm no lush (though also not the teetotaler that the latest study suggests all women should be). As for tidying up the environment? Unlikely in my lifetime, especially when it comes to those persistent estrogen-like plastic and pesticide compounds that are a likely driver of rising breast cancer rates.

But the great thing about half-delirious insomniac thoughts at 4 a.m. is that you don't have to be rational. And so I started fantasizing about an ideal drug to prevent breast cancer. Clearly, Tamoxifen and its cousins that induce menopause-from-hell symptoms don't come close to fitting the bill; they're harsh enough that they're only used in women at high risk. But if you only intervene after cancer is diagnosed, the current slash/burn/poison approach leaves women maimed, debilitated, and in constant fear of recurrence.

My vision was a substance that every woman could take, at least once she was pretty sure she was done with childbearing and thus wouldn't be using her breasts to feed anyone. It goes without saying that the ideal drug would be free of side effects. (I know, I know, but it was 4 a.m., so humor me.)

You'd want a drug that would stop mutations in their tracks before the rogue cells had a chance to replicate. And you'd need to deliver it to the location where those mutations are most likely to arise: the milk factory. Since virtually all breast cancers start either in the milk-transporting ducts or the milk-producing lobules, that's where you'd want to intervene. (I'm not discounting a third variant, inflammatory breast cancer, but that seems like a biologically different beast.)

You'd want a substance that would penetrate through the first layers of cells and selectively knock out any abnormal ones. Maybe it would induce apotosis; maybe it would stop such cells from reproducing; maybe it would just smother the bad guys. Whatever its mechanism, the key thing is that it would travel straight to the ducts and lobules and then act locally rather than systemically.

As anyone who's nursed a child knows, the milk factory has an amazing capacity to ramp up and, well, expand. And this is where such a drug could satisfy the prerogatives of vanity as well as health: If it acts locally by permeating the ducts and lobules, why couldn't it simultaneously cause them to inflate prettily? I'm not talking about mimicking the porn-star silicon look. I'm just suggesting that this ideal drug could cause a little bit of non-milk fluid to be retained. You'd get a little of the size and perkiness that pregnancy produces - but now without a belly eclipsing the boobs.

The great thing about this two-in-one function is that the drug would sell itself. Its developers would be reap wealth and good karma. Women would stick religiously to the dosage schedule.

The only downside? Plastic surgeons would be hanging around soup kitchens.

Marriage, Equal Protection, and the Limits of "Tolerance"

The purpose of this post is mostly to do what my students did yesterday in class: to give a loud cheer for the California Supreme Court's ruling that same-sex unions can't be treated as legally second class. Yay!!

I was just about as heartened by the students' reaction as by the ruling itself. Through discussions with them, I know that a good 80% of them don't have a problem with gay marriage. When opposition drops that low - in Ohio, for goodness sake, no bastion of liberalism - it's a hopeful sign for the future. They will outlive the older generations who still think the sun ought to revolve around the earth.

The rest of my students still have issues with homosexuality, ranging between aesthetic disgust and religious qualms - but they're aware enough of their minority status that they're slow to voice their feelings, and I notice a change in this even over the past five years. That 10 to 20% probably felt alienated by the cheering. They'll have to get used to it. Homophobia is moribund. It's already a social embarrassment in their generation, much like overt racism is in mine. And they know it.

But if you push hard, you still discover limits to "tolerance" even in the ostensibly pro-inclusion supermajority. For instance, some students still say that they don't understand why gay people (and here they really mean gay men) "have to flaunt it." As if a once-a-year gay pride event with men in nothing but lederhosen weren't totally offset by the heterosexual spectacle on the streets and in the bars of this college town every weekend - and remember, the weekend starts on Thursday night, and on Wednesday in fine weather. The women's clothes barely keep them from getting arrested - and the displays of heterosexuality are, well, blatant! Shocking! You see boys and girls together and golly, they flaunt it!

Another gripe a few of my straight students expressed was "why do 'they' have to be so angry at heterosexuals - aren't they doing the same thing as the anti-gay people?" Well, sure, it's exactly the same - if the gay haters feel they can't hold hands in public or be open about their sexuality at work or adopt children or walk down the street without fear. Even otherwise well-meaning young people may still have a hard time seeing how oppression creates asymmetries that make anger mean something totally different among oppressed people.

Despite the limits of "tolerance," I still think the California ruling shows how far this sea change has come and how irresistible it will be in the future. It's of course wonderful news for the couples who will now have a real choice about how to organize their lives. It's also a delicious irony in that six of the seven judges on the court are Republican appointees. More power to them for embracing the law and fairness rather than caving to political pressure.

While I'm no legal expert, two things popped out at me from Glenn Greenwald's analysis that portend well for the future. First, the court specifically left open the possibility that California could comply with its state constitution by essentially establishing civil unions for all couples, gay and straight, and leaving "marriage" to the churches. This is a solution that I've favored for years, having seen how successful it's been in European countries. First, the distinction draws a clear, bright line between church and state, which benefits both in the end. Second, with that distinction already in place, European governments have had a fairly easy time implementing same-sex unions. Of course, they don't have organized wingnut opposition - groups like the Concerned Women of America strike them as almost a joke - though some of them, like Spain, did face the Catholic Church. But keeping church marriage distinct allows religions to have their own sphere of influence without dictating public policy.

Second, while the court emphasized that its ruling was based on the state constitution and not on the federal one, its rationale - equal protection under the law - illumniates the path that I think this country will ultimately have to take, whether we keep marriage under state control or redefine it as civil unions for all. The Fourteenth Amendment can and should be interpreted to protect everyone, no matter who they love. Obviously, our current SCOTUS tilts too far right to even consider this; it's no longer the same crew who gave us Lawrence v. Texas. But "equal protection" ought to mean exactly that, and this ought to be glaringly obvious to all of us, legal experts or not.

Dr. Rüppel clematis from my garden.

Those Bloomin' Taxes

I should be working on my tax return, but dang it, I haven't filed away any paperwork since last June, so I first have to sort through a foot-tall pile of paper. True to form, I'm procrastinating. Which is just how I got into this pickle in the first place.

One of the other annoyances of tax season is how it coincides with planting season. This morning I said to heck with the taxes and planted some sweet pea seeds. Then I came inside and read about a nifty proposal that would give tax breaks for gardening! Well, not necessarily for planting sweet peas (they're poisonous) but for growing food in our yards, similar to the Victory Gardens in WWI, except this time with a little tax incentive.

Writing in Alternet, Roger Doiron says:

I am proposing that home growers finally catch a break. Not from bugs, weather, or clunky garden shoes, but from taxes. It's not as silly an idea as it may sound. We give tax breaks to people to encourage them to put hybrid cars in their garages and solar panels on their roofs, so why not offer incentives for solar-powered, healthy food production in their backyard? ...

More home gardens would offer us victory not only over rising food and health care costs, but also foreign oil dependency and climate change. Researcher estimate that locally-grown foods use up to 17 times less climate-warming, fossil fuels than foods from away. And when it comes to local foods, it doesn’t get any “localer” than one’s own yard.

Doiron would have the government waive taxes on gardening supplies and - more significantly - offer an income tax deduction for a kitchen garden (or for rental of a community garden plot) similar to the break for a home office, based on square footage.

This is such a cool and clever idea. It won't save the earth all on its own. But as the price of oil climbs ever higher, it might help ease the transition to the more local world that we'll all be forced to inhabit in the future. Less lofty - but no less important - more people might discover the pleasures of perfectly fresh vegetables: tender-crisp baby lettuce, sun-warmed tomatoes, sweet buttery purple-podded beans.

By that way, that sweet feline pansy pictured above, taunting those of you who are still digging out from winter? It survived from last fall, along with most of its companions, under layers of snow and discouragement. And since it's a pansy, it's edible - though this particular specimen probably has too much dirt-and-oil grime from the street in front of my house.