Slop

To the people on (and sometimes off) the internet who advocate for cooking a big batch of legumes every Sunday and eating that for lunch and dinner the whole week:

Yes, if we're being technical, this is probably the cheapest way to get down your necessary caloric intake using whole, nutritious foods. It is probably quite manageable in terms of time and effort. Your great-grandmother, whom Michael Pollan asks you to emulate, either did this or would have done so if she'd had a freezer. More power to you if this is something you enjoy doing, but what if - and we all have our vices - what if you like food? What if the same lentil slop - even if it's one of the better-seasoned, less piously bland lentil slops - is not something you want to eat ten times in a row?

So it's not that it couldn't be done logistically. The proponents of legume-slop seem to think they're arguing against those who believe a from-scratch meal on a weeknight is impossible, which maybe they are, in which case fine, point taken, possible. And I grant that everything changes when there are kids. (Children, if I understand correctly, suck up so much time and money that one is left with no option but trough-of-beans.*) But for some of us, a big batch of legume-slop sounds like giving up on life. The kind of martyrdom where someone is like, that's it, no new clothes or cosmetics! no meals out!, and this is not because they're actually penniless, or nobly non-wasteful, they're just depressed.

And that's how it seems to go with a lot of the 'simple living' advice. No, our happiness shouldn't depend on material things, on being spoiled modern Westerners who would at the very least like a different vegetable on top of Tuesday's pasta than Monday's. But unhappiness (clinical or mundane) can often express itself as an indifference to stuff, and a kind of forced indifference to stuff can feel kind of gloomy. Stuff is fun! And I'm defining "stuff" broadly to include things like a drink out even if the very same beverage (cocktail, coffee, whatever) would cost less with supermarket ingredients, or the use of primping items (lipstick, mascara, hair product) above and beyond what's needed for hygiene.

And with that, I've given myself an excuse to dissertate tomorrow from the coffee shop (or beer-ice-cream parlor) in town.

*There was a family with seven children - seven! - getting into a van just now in the Whole Foods parking lot. Siblings, it seemed. An impressive grocery bill, I'd imagine.

Brands of nonsense

Black Friday. You wouldn't join a stampede for a flat-screen TV, right? If you're reading this, if you're someone I know on-blog or in-life or both, it's a fair bet, and I think Charles Murray might have something to say about this. Personally, I spent the day doing a mix of laundry, test-writing, and parallel-parking-practice (getting there, but my three-point turns are exquisite). No malls.

Yes, Black Friday is gross. It evidently sucks for retail workers (see also: the Walmart picket line), and makes for some unfortunate visuals - this is the season of thankfulness (one that started early, with Sandy), and look, all these fools who can't just be happy with what they've already got. Even if the horde is buying gifts - you know, giving - it looks awfully greedy. And isn't the problem the American consumer's sense of entitlement? It's not like we even need any of this crap. After all, as the great storm showed, we're all slaves to our refrigerators.

But what's also meh - and yes, I'm repeating myself - is anti-Black-Friday smug indignation. Before you stare down your nose at the hordes, figure out what it is, exactly, that bothers you. If it's the unnecessary danger, the minimum-wage workers called in for nonsense on the one day a year all Americans are meant to spend with their families, fair enough. If it's consumer debt, I don't know, maybe remember that some of this is stuff people would buy anyway, but now they're doing so on sale? But if you shudder at all the materialism, while not minding a good sale one bit if it's on the higher-end stuff that interests you, that's something else. A flat-screen TV does nothing for me, but when that special Berlin nail polish was going for $9 a bottle, I was all over it. When I stumbled upon a sample sale in Chelsea Market featuring the best (and US-made, if you're into that) underwear brand, it's entirely possible that I took advantage. I can be smug about not having stomped on anyone in pursuit of my own brand(s) of nonsense, but that's about it.

Why you should buy those lattes

Every so often, the NYT discovers that the sky is blue, the earth is round, and if you spend $3 on coffee every day, 3x365 amounts to a bigger number than the multiplication-challenged would have thought. Small purchases add up. Motoko Rich is the latest to bring this fact to our attention:

According to a new survey, half of all American workers buy coffee regularly during work hours, spending more than $20 a week on java, or about $1,000 a year. (Workers 18 to 34 years old spend about twice as much, on average, as workers over 45.) Two-thirds of workers buy lunch instead of bringing something from home, and spend an average of $37 a week. That translates into nearly $2,000 a year — the price of a new piece of furniture or a vacation.

This is no longer an issue in my own life, as I live where there are no stores at all, and the biking necessary to make it to a coffee shop means that I can buy as many $4 mochas as I want and that's still at most a mocha a month. But, readers who live where the coffee shop tempts, you have my permission, no, encouragement to go forth. Ask yourselves:

-Is coffee harmful? I know we-as-a-society are in the mindset of telling smokers how much they'd save if they quit, but this is meant to be a way to convince them to quit for health reasons, not because they've been rendered destitute, or because we think they'd actually prefer whatever it was they could buy with the money they've saved to the cigarettes they're now not buying. But this approach can't just be lifted up and applied to safe and possibly even beneficial forms of consumption. With coffee, the presumed alternative is making coffee at home, not giving it up altogether.

-Is coffee wasteful? It's wasteful to drink coffee in the same way that it's wasteful to own more than the necessary clothes and shoes, to live in a larger-than-necessary home, drive a larger-than-necessary (or, in some cases, any) car, to own 99% of our electronics. It is wasteful to wear any makeup or jewelry, as one can perfectly well stay warm and decent without. It is wasteful to put herbs on food, when the stuff's edible and nutritious without the added garnish/flavor. By all means, make coffee at home, or get the "to stay" cup, or use a thermos. But, worst-case-scenario, a paper cup every workday is, as sins go, not one to hold up as the pinnacle of Western decadence. And no, it is not a uniquely 21st-century-American thing to consume more than is absolutely necessary to survive. That sometimes-tasty sludge known as Turkish coffee? It wasn't invented at the Hummus Place on St. Marks.

-Are coffee shops evil establishments we wish to use our collective power as consumers to put out of business? Opinion's no doubt divided on Starbucks, and those of us who've worked as in barista-worked at the charming independents know how not-charming that can be. But are these really the kind of businesses we feel compelled to shut down? Don't they provide more good than bad? Conviviality? Atmosphere? Change of scenery for the beleaguered 15th-year grad student? Yes, restaurants can claim that food, unlike coffee, is a necessity. But if it's a choice between spending $4 on a home-cooked meal and $3 on coffee, or $30 at the restaurant and 40 cents on coffee at home...

-Would you really prefer the $2,000 purchase to the many $3 ones? It's hard to picture that a $2,000 piece of furniture would be a goal a nomadic 20-something latte consumer is going to hold out for. And vacations... are nice and everything, but less romantic if you have a job that requires travel (air travel especially, ugh), and often end up sucking up massive amounts of money so quickly that you end up learning more than you needed to about urban Italian supermarkets, after getting massively ripped off on dinner upon arriving late and famished the first night. Or so I've heard. With the coffee, you know what you're getting, and the small increase in happiness over that many days (small happinesses add up!) could well be greater than what a vacation or an expensive dining room table might provide. The better question is, do you or do you not have those $2,000 to spare, but even then, eliminating something else (walking down streets with Sephoras on them, for example) can mean keeping the cappuccino if it means that much to you. And why shouldn't it?

-Do you really want to be this smug? For the love of all that's compostable, congratulations to those who make a big batch of lentils every Sunday night and eat that all week, who save money and livestock in the process, and who are invariably incapable of making anything in the precious slow-cooker without leaving comments about it online in a patronizing tone. Some of us do not share your infinite tolerance for monotony and/or legumes.

Teacup violins

I think the NYT heard me claim that I wasn't going to read any more of its lifestyle articles beginning Jan. 1, and decided to do whatever the newspaper equivalent is of when tobacco companies increase the dose of nicotine to keep addicts from abandoning ship. They are providing these bloggable delights that I mustmustmust read and respond to. Resolutions, alas. I have until the 31st.

First, there is the couple that decided to turn its wedding into a celebration of every trendy do-gooder variant of smug. My mind, it explodes. They hate stuff! They sell t-shirts! Sample quote: "During the reception, Mr. Friedlander asked his guests to please recycle their cups, 'because we’re really in a serious situation with climate change.'" Those writing novels set in present-day yuppie NY milieus are now kicking themselves because they did not come up with this line. It's also a "Styles Style" first, in that the journalist actually lets on what she thinks of the people she's covering.

Next, the paper actually asked readers to provide their thoughts on issues at the intersection of dog breeds and Manhattan real estate. Maybe readers would have opinions on this? Maybe! Opinions such as:

-It's imprisonment to have a dog in any apartment of any size, any breed.
-Dogs experience "horror and humiliation" if forced to defecate on cement.
-It's dog abuse to have dogs without 300 acres for them to roam on.
-It's wrong to ask which breed goes best in an apartment, because rescue! (Never mind that there are breed-specific rescues.)
-It's wrong to ask which breed goes best in an apartment, because there are so many wonderful pit bulls in NY shelters.
-Dog breeds are like races, and to make distinctions among them is racist.
-If you have a preference re: dog breed, you should instead get a cat.

My own take is that, while I still don't understand the logistics of initially housebreaking a dog in a high-rise (everything we read explained that you need to scoop your puppy up and outside quickly in that initially stage, which we did, and now she's housebroken), I'm not sure how living outside the city would be better for a dog. Yes, it's a problem to leave a dog alone all day in an apartment, but are dogs left alone all day in a house or yard so much happier? The yard solves the "bathroom" question, but doesn't mean there are other dogs to play with, or that there's anything much to do, or that the owner's around.

If anything, suburban owners probably feel that because their dogs get enough "outside" time, they don't need specific exercise or socialization. Dogs in the city can go to dog runs, meet lots of dogs and people, have quick and easy access to emergency (and routine) vets, dog sitters/walkers/day care/grooming, etc. And yes, I'm aware that actually owning/leasing/something a car would make the suburbs more manageable, and if all goes according to plan, soon, but the convenience of city life seems like a good thing for dogs as well as for people. I know that the muck through which I walk Bisou is meant to be "good for dogs," but I kind of think she'd prefer things in the city, with better access to croissants and Uniqlo. Or am I projecting?

Finally, there's the requisite cue-the-tiny-violins discussion of privilege. What, in this "Occupy" age, should rich parents tell their kids? This from, of course, the parenting blog. And just as every post with the word "dog" in it leads to scolding about rescues, here it's a predictable enough response about how rich people should really be giving to charity, as if there's some reason to believe that the rich people in question are not already doing so.

The official WWPD assessment: It would seem the answer depends on the age of the kid, etc., but that what would need to be explained is that "rich" means two separate things. One is intangible, cultural, educational, etc. privilege, which is there for rich kids virtually whichever choices their parents make, simply by virtue of raising kids in wealthy surroundings. The other is the question of whether the child is wealthy, as in whether the child has much of the freedom that comes from having money to spend. For adults, one big perk of having lots of money is, it can be spent on this, that, the other. A child from a super-rich home, with a minimal allowance or (in less quaint terms) no credit card might have all the cultural privilege, but doesn't have the independence that comes from actually, personally, having access to money.

Of course how much money a family has available matters, but among the population not experiencing genuine need, it doesn't matter as much as one might think. There are plenty of kids with the "wrong" jeans because their well-off parents don't want to be buying $100 jeans for their kids (b/c of the values that promotes, b/c it seems like a waste, etc.), and plenty of kids in the "right" ones as a result of their parents' sacrifices with that particular goal in mind. (Growing up, the kid in my class who had the toughest time of it, clothing-wise, was from a very wealthy family, and her parents no doubt spent gobs on her clothes, but made her wear those little-girl smocked dresses when everyone else was wearing flannel in emulation of Kurt Cobain. What "privilege" that must have been for her.)

And, unless a family is so rich, and is 100% confident about passing along that wealth to the kids, it would seem that there's a danger in passing along an idea of noblesse oblige, "we" are so very very lucky, let's give thanks, blah blah, when the kid could perfectly well grow up and not have these advantages, and needing to do such radical things as clean his own bathroom and check what things cost at the supermarket. Nothing will change the fact that a kid grew up rich, but any number of things can happen later in life. I mean, when a kid from a wealthy home gets a typical teenager job, this is in part to "build character" and to make him less of an ass to food-service workers in the future, but it's also giving him life skills should he need to be at the mercy of bosses in not-glamorous situations in the future. Social mobility isn't the well-oiled machine it ought to be, but it's not entirely non-existent, and cuts both ways.

So I suppose I don't think it's being refreshingly honest to tell a child how rich "he" is, when the relevant fact is how rich his parents are. Which is still a very relevant fact in terms of his life experience, but which isn't the same as his being rich.

Polar opposites for the holidays

Maybe it's that I saw the "Human Fund" episode of "Seinfeld" in my formative years, but I've never fully understood the idea of giving someone a charitable donation as a gift. I mean, of asking for that as a gift, sure, why not? But of providing one unsolicited?

Nicholas Kristof wants you to feel guilty, not for buying yourself crap you don't need, but for buying stuff for your grandmother that maybe she didn't want. Because the elderly of course are all wealthy, and at any rate deserve no gratuitous fun in their lives, you should really be "buying" your grandmother a donation to an anti-sex-trafficking charity.

If I had to guess, he chose this hook because it's less likely to bring up a defensive 'but what about the economy?' that it would have elicited had he directed this at, say, trips to Sephora, or the Apple store. Tell people to give up the material things in life that give them pleasure, and they're not going to be pleased. Also in his defense, there's a case to be made for keeping most gift-giving to cards and the like, and letting people choose what they want and buy it for themselves.

But still, I'm not convinced that "a donation has been made in your name" is the answer. It seems so much more problematic than just, you know, donating to a cause you believe in without the "gift" framework. What if it's a charity the recipient doesn't agree with, which could be true for so many things that wouldn't necessarily seem controversial? What if maybe you don't want a gift that makes it seem as though the giver thinks of you primarily as someone who suffers from a given ailment, or is a member of a particular marginalized group? What if it unintentionally (or intentionally) sends a message that you think the "recipient" is a rich brat who already has more than he could possibly use, and that you yourself are, unlike the recipient, a Good Person? While your gift may help the needy, it has also ruined your relationship with the recipient. I mean, perhaps curing malaria is more important than whether two first-world inhabitants play nice, but if the point of gifts is to cement relationships, why complicate things?

Is the idea that people give more if it's incorporated into not just "the holiday season" but also gift-giving specifically? If so, is my objection to this unfounded, because it's fundamentally an objection to the behavior of those who need to do good ostentatiously (and if possible while making others feel bad) in order to do good, and not coming from a sense that good isn't, ultimately, done? Because this behavior may lead to good things happening far away, but brings about unpleasantness closer by. You can get givers who really are so rich that no "thing" exists that they'd be happy to receive but that would have found too frivolous to get for themselves, who cluelessly assume that everyone else in their lives is in the same boat. A sort of "we must remember how lucky we are" that fails to take into account the sharply varied degrees of privilege that "we" contains.

********

On the other end of the spectrum, the now-quasi-notorious Vogue gift guide. The suggestions (aside from many seeming oddly more appropriate for a rap video circa 15 years ago than for a socialite in 2011, which is neither here nor there) are exactly the kind of things one might receive and think, how unfortunate that a sum worth how many weeks' worth of groceries is sitting in my apartment in the form of a clutch that looks like ornithological roadkill. And, as cited elsewhere, the Chanel towel (and, evidently, cotton pad) seem to serve no purpose other than to provide a convenient example for "stuff people who can't burn through their money quick enough would buy."

But it seems unlikely that someone would be angry to receive a Chanel towel. It could always be sold on ebay, the proceeds donated to the charity of your or Kristof's choice. The dead-bird purses, though, I think you'd be stuck with.

I read the newspaper comments so you don't have to

-A woman who doesn't live in Park Slope, doesn't even live in NY or CA wakes at 3:30am, panicked, asking herself, "Am I green enough?'" Amazing.

Like I said, like I know others have said, like I wish more would say, the so-very-now ideal of buying only pure/clean/local/seasonal/sustainable/organic is a modern-day version of the expectation that surfaces require dusting. It's about giving women busy-work. If all the truly offensive crap were removed from the shelves, if lotions didn't need to be checked for parabens, if broccoli didn't have to be checked for place of origin (but also be sure to feed your family lots of fresh produce! no canned/frozen! remember that cans have BPA!) what would women do?

Oh, and because I do love online-newspaper comments, I will note that one commenter to the Mommy Insomnia story wins smug-of-the-year.

-Because I can't stay away from newspaper comments (even my dissertation is in part on the 19th C version thereof), dear Roger Cohen commenters: Wow, you [OK, there are more, but I'm tiring of the exercise] really are dreamers, you who ask why no one-state solution. If only everyone in the world were as tolerant and wonderful as you!

What you're missing, however, is that the problem isn't that there's so much hate in the region, or that The Jews are such a stubborn bunch. It's not because for all eternity, The Jews and The Arabs have been mortal enemies, and these two swarthiest of peoples fail to behave like Scandinavians and make nice. It's not that such a state couldn't function. It's that there's an awfully strong ethical case to be made for there to be a Jewish state in Palestine. There's not a particularly strong case to be made for it having any particular borders. And there's also, at this point, one heck of a case for there being a Palestinian state as well. I, from the relative comfort of the NJ woods, want there to keep on being a Jewish state, not because I think Israeli Jews should be spared the horror that would be living alongside an Other, not because I think both peoples are simply incapable of getting along, but because I find the case for Jewish national self-determination convincing.

The world beyond the apartment

-Princeton, NJ, seems to contain a university of some sort. I had seen it before, and assumed it was still there, but today was my first time on it since moving here. So, to whom it may concern, I have finally been to and gotten books from the legendary Harvey Fierstein Library. To preempt the 'OMG how could you have only just now done this?', there are some fairly mundane but crucial reasons why it took me until October to begin exploring a library that has, if not everything, a ton. Still writing up research I'd done in Paris, still reading/rereading books I have out from NYU and have here, still reading/rereading books from Gallica/Google Books, still with more than enough text to keep me occupied without so much as leaving the apartment. Trips to the great outside - beyond the apartment, that is - have been mostly about Bisou eliminating or, if further afield, about procuring wet and dry feed for the three of us. But ooh, stacks! I may have to get out more often.

-Today, at a bakery in town, the cashier (and, I suspect, proprietor) asked me if I wanted a bag. I said I did if it would be a plastic bag - a not outrageous suggestion, given that the bread I'd just gotten sliced was in one. I could have used the same type of small plastic bag for the pastry, since I needed to put it in my backpack - along with library books and whatever else - to get it back by bike. "We only have paper bags," she replied, showing me a large-ish paper shopping bag far too large for my order, and in this tone that was so clearly intended to make an eco-point. (I have a witness!) Meanwhile, my only reason for demanding this most gauche of industrial conveniences was that I'd gotten there without a car.

-Unrelated to life amongst the preppy intellectuals, a small suggestion to improve discourse: Can we please stop referring to journalists and other mainstream sorts who criticize the current Israeli government as "brave," "courageous," or any such synonym? Not that I disapprove of all or most of their criticisms - there's a good bit there to criticize - but if even yours Zionistically and truly is saying this, maybe it's not so out-there at this point to say that the Israeli right is bad news. Maybe those who criticize Netanyahu are not risking their reputations and livelihoods.