Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Step Away from my Cuppa, Now!

It’s not enough that I’m underemployed, facing an old age in the poor house and that I so messed up my hair highlights that my tresses now look as blotchy as my future. Now they’re telling me that drinking hot tea over a long period can cause “an eightfold increased risk of cancer of the oesophagus.”

My attitude towards food-dooms is to ignore them. Years after I did not switch from butter to margarine, I was right in place when everyone was told to switch back. I never contributed to that pile of discarded egg yokes. I’m old enough to notice the cycles: sometimes one’s very survival is tied to consuming (or not consuming) chocolate, coffee, carbs, calories and cow.

But don’t mess with my tea. Step back from those bags. I was raised in a house of tea-with-lemon-and-sugar drinkers and that is, in fact, probably my primary, if not only, valuable inheritance from that quarter. I never tasted coffee until my fabulous freshman (sic) college roommate Abby brewed me a mug in the corner of our dorm room. I persisted with my tea-with-lemon-and-sugar habit through 14 years in Israel where instant coffee was the ubiquitous art.

Then I moved to Britain where you probably suspect I found acceptance. But actually, tea-with-lemon is not the British idea of a good time. It’s a splash of the milk that is fundamental. (And which, in the context of this study, brings down the temperature of the liquid.)

I am a tea snob and cannot abide the weak American brands that seem only to color the water. My friends from the UK keep me supplied with that basic working-class brew PG Tips or, when they really want to indulge me, with the luxury Yorkshire Gold (thanks Sue and Nancy). When I used to regularly make it over to London – before traveling became quite an impossibility – I brought along the fold-up suitcase I could pack into the bottom of my wheelie in order to fill it, for the return trip, with thousands of quality tea bags.

So imagine my distress when I awoke to headlines of throat cancer, just as I was sipping my morning leaves. I feel like many coffee addicts – my cells remain in a state of freaky dehydration until I have a cuppa or three. And as someone who doesn’t drink water – it makes me sick, upsets my stomach – tea is my day and night refreshment.

However, my life is saved. I don’t drink it super-hot. By the time I’ve left it to brew and returned to add my sweetener and my lemon, it is no longer, I’m convinced, in the danger zone of degrees. In fact, I store up my brewed tea and keep a constant pot-full in the fridge as cold tea works for me as well as hot.

The study was carried out in northern Iran where hot, black tea is the basic life liquid. They examined the drinking habits of 300 throat cancer sufferers and 571 people with no throat cancer. 

But hold on a minute. Should we be saying to our tea: I don’t want another seep out of you? Is it the tea or is it the heat?

According to ABC news, Professor Reza Malekzadeh, the author of the study, “said evidence in his study showed it's not the chemicals in the tea that matters. ‘It doesn't seem to be that,’ he said. ‘Especially this specific type of cancer -- the so called squamous cell cancer.’"

In fact, previous studies in other Iranian regions showed, “Esophageal cancer numbers rose in regions where people preferred their tea very hot, and dropped where tea was served at a cooler temperature.”

So here we go again. No, it’s not the tea, necessarily; it’s just that the esophagus rebels against being doused with burning liquids. Duh.

Someone should probably let the right-wingers know what’s going on. I’ve just heard that: “Critics of President Barack Obama's stimulus plan took to the streets in St. Louis to protest his stimulus package and symbolically toss tea into the Mississippi River.”

For a full eight-minute video report (not particularly riveting) on the findings, check out the clip below.

“Fired Over a Tuna Sandwich, and Fighting Back”

I simply can’t get this story from yesterday out of my mind. And it becomes more and more imbedded in that part of my brain that produces fury as I live life in these wretched times.

Let me sum up this New York Times blogged report by Jennifer 8. Lee, which you can access in full here, and definitely should: "Fired Over a Tuna Sandwich, and Fighting Back."

Here’s the story, in my own words. Ralph Reese, 57, of Queens, NY, has been working for two years at $11.50/hour at Whole Foods, also known as Whole Paycheck to those who can’t afford a single stick of their whole-grain organic asparagus dog chew or even one tub of their intestinal-cleansing probiotically-modified soy faux-pudding.

Working at the deli counter, it was the end of the day. Reese put aside one tuna sandwich from the 30 he was supposed to trash as per Whole Foods policy. His supervisor saw it on the counter and Reese explained that he wanted to eat it but the supervisor tossed it. Two days later, the man was thrown out for “misconduct.” He fought it in court, because the charge meant he couldn’t get unemployment benefits, and in the end Reese won.

But that’s not the kicker, not yet. Here’s one fact to keep in mind. A company’s unemployment insurance rates go up as more of their ex-employees get benefits.

“Elizabeth A. Shollenberger, director of government benefits and consumer law for Queens Legal Services, said that in the last six months her office had seen an uptick of cases like Mr. Reese’s, in which unemployment claims were being challenged… “A lot more people are getting fired for very minor reasons,” said Ms. Shollenberger, who represented Mr. Reese.

“What we are seeing is that they are firing people for ‘misconduct’ when what they are really doing is downsizing and it’s an attempt to not pay benefits,” she said.

Last year, she said, her office was seeing three or four such cases a week. Now she estimated that they are seeing 15 to 20 cases a week, 80 percent of which she says have merit. (Nationwide, employees win in two-thirds of the cases.)”

Raise your hand if you find yourself shocked that the over-priced, full-of-airs-and-graces less-than-supermarket is yet another sleazy enterprise. No, I didn’t think so.

Happy 130th Birthday Albert Einstein – you cad!

There’s Einstein the scientist and Einstein the dodgy lover and Einstein the peacenik and Einstein the violin player. It’s a lot for me to deal with in the early morning of his 130th birthday – although I certainly can’t skip the first two identities! By the way, I’m basing this piece on my review for EdgeBoston.com of the History Channel’s recent show “Einstein - The Real Story of the Man Behind the Theory,” which follows the suspenseful race to prove Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

It took fifteen years of dramatic competition to substantiate the outsider scientist’s Theory, initially concocted as he rode a bus. He had imagined that the bus was zooming at the speed of light, changing the time on a clock he passed. He theorized that space and time so are intimately connected that they could be conceived of as a four-dimensional arrangement he called space/time. This was not only considered radical in the scientific world – it was seen as outlandish.

The chaos of Einstein’s life and times – from war, weather, poverty and an extramarital relationship with his cousin (who later became his second wife) – did not modulate his persistence, nor that of competing teams of photographers on whom he was dependent for proof of his Theory. They dragged bulky equipment to distant destinations in their attempts to grab the substantiating shots of curving light that only a full eclipse of the sun could provide.

 

Living in Berlin as World War I exploded around him, Einstein was so grossed-out by his colleagues’ work in inventing weapons of mass destruction, that for the first time he became politically active. It would be the start of his lifelong commitment to peace.

There was little peace in his domestic life, though, as he and his wife Mileva Marić, whom he met when they were both science students, underwent jealousies and separations (she was stuck with the two kids in Zurich while Einstein hobnobbed with other scientists in Berlin). At one point Einstein attempted to get Mileva Marić to sign a contract saying she’d bring him his meals, but would pledge not to talk to him unless he addressed her and not to expect intimacy. Apparently he was “getting” more than enough from his cousin.

Instead, they ended up with a signed agreement that she would give him a divorce if he promised to turn over the money from the Nobel Prize he was (prematurely) anticipating that year. (Historians disagree about whether he ever did turn over the cash to his ex-wife and children when he eventually won it.) What is indisputable is that, on winning it, he became the first superstar celebrity mathematician.

In Jail! Madoff (yay) & al-Zeidi (boo)

Bernard Madoff and Muntadhar al-Zeidi both hit the news today, both on their way to prison. Madoff, 70, is one of many gazillionaire criminals whose crimes are only being revealed because of the economic collapse. Collectively these folks used to be called “the ruling class” and now Madoff’s fellow fat cats (he was Chair of Nasdaq, in case you forgot) are mostly known as “the recipients of bailout money.”

These people get to skim off the cream of the world, while serving as examples of the crap management of anti-union organizations, best known for their horrid service or toxic widgets. The top management of these greedy banks, of these car manufacturers turning out ridiculous tank-like cars and of these financial investment teams who understand less than I do about how the “market” works – all of them should be called to account and sent to bunk with Madoff. Click here to see what that bunk looks like and to read what his day inside will be like.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, 30, is an Iraqi journalist who got a three year sentence for losing his temper and throwing his shoe at Bush during a press conference. Bush was bragging about all his wonderful achievements in Iraq and al-Zeidi couldn’t help thinking about the uncounted numbers of Iraq dead, wounded and displaced. He probably flashed on the dodgy electricity, water and communication systems left unfixed despite the billions funneled to Halliburton et al for “reconstruction.” Showing the sole of your shoe is a rude gesture meant to insult its target – and the whole world cheered.

The family of al-Zeidi demonstrated after the sentencing today, even though three years is the minimum sentence for assault. The irony is that war criminals are riding the ranch, while this journalist is being incarcerated. Muntadhar al-Zeidi said it best today: "It was an act of throwing a shoe, not a rocket," he told the court. "It was meant as an insult to the occupation."

The shoe action was a political gesture that spoke to people around the world. Demonstrators collected mountains of old shoes to toss at likely targets, not the least at the White House before Bush left it. Even as recently as last month, AP reported, “a German student threw a shoe at Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao during a speech at Britain's Cambridge University.”

Muntadhar al-Zeidi’s deed entered the cartoon language and online games proliferated. If you want to see the 10 top games according to one expert, click here. Sock & Awe, the number one game, has recorded nearly 90 million hits to Bush’s face by players’ shoes. But that’s not enough for me. I want to view that face via bars.

International Women’s Day In These Hard Times

Waking up morning after morning to the worsening news is debilitating for those of us who lack inherited wealth or a strong line in running Ponzi schemes. So as I think about discussing the impoverishment of women during this crisis for my annual piece on International Women’s Day (IWD), I stop to remember that today’s activists come from a long line of kick-ass women. Let’s start with my boiled-down version of the history of IWD.

    “In February, 1909, following a march for labor rights by many thousands of women workers the year before, the Socialist Party of America declared International Women’s Day (IWD) in the United States. The next year, at the Second International, in Copenhagen, women from 11 countries adopted the Day in the hopes of furthering women’s suffrage.

In 1911, over a million women and men marked the Day around the world, but only a week later the crime known as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire took the lives of over 140 women in the rag trade – mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants – and the struggle against sweatshop conditions became forever associated with IWD.

Russian women imprinted their own radicalism on IWD in 1917 when their strike for “bread and peace” over the death of two million Russian soldiers led to the abdication of the Czar and governmental embrace of women’s voting rights.

Soon the UN adopted International Women’s Day and in 1975, in recognition of the second wave of feminism, held a global International Women’s Year. This meant that, just like the men, we could gather from around the world, compromise bitterly after difficult debate over the inclusion of lesbians and gays, make resolutions that no one is entirely happy with and be unable to get our governments to put any resources into meeting the goals, anyway. Wow, finally we won a seat at the table of world-level frustration.”

So International Women’s Day started with labor rights and now, again, we’re facing economic pressures and unemployment levels equal to any in living memory. When the economy takes a slap in the face, women feel it like a kick to the solar plexus. Women of color, women with disabilities and women over the age of 50 were facing challenges getting good jobs before capitalism ran amuck.

It’s a funny country, this US of A. Unparalleled wealth and power has nefariously been used to bring down the world. If you think we are suffering – and we are – imagine what’s happening globally. If banks are crashing in Britain and Iceland, what are women going through in the poor countries where women own very little property, are involved in only marginal or self-employment and are operating without a social or healthcare safety net.

American women have started out this financial plunge at a disadvantage vis-à-vis our men. We are paid less than men for the same work. We are often providing unpaid care for family dependents. If we have children, looking after them may well have severely impacted our work life. And now the worry about our threatened future.

I personally know too many women who are stressing out big-time during this unprecedented collapse of the country’s systems. I have one friend who sits and watches day after day as colleagues are individually called into the manager’s office to be laid off, while security people disable their computers and pack up and remove their belongings while they are in his office.

I have several friends a year or two away from retirement after 30 or 40 years of devotion to their work. They’ve avoided debt, while saving and planning for the last third of their lives. Their savings are being flushed down the sinkholes of these corporate burglars. The future is daunting too. According to the Center for American Progress, “Elderly women are far more likely to be poor than elderly men. Thirteen percent of women over 75 years old are poor compared to 6 percent of men.” People of all ages are slipping from the middle and working classes into poverty.

Sure, this situation is unquestionably walloping both men and women – but as the Center for American Progress points out, “the gap in poverty rates between men and women is wider in America than anywhere else in the Western world.”

We’re all hoping things will get turned around, but in his International Women’s Day statement, “International Labour Office Director-General Juan Somavia said that in times of economic upheaval, women often experience the negative consequences more rapidly and are slower to enjoy the benefits of recovery.”

Our President knows that work is at the heart of peoples’ lives and has promoted investment in “shovel-ready” jobs (women make up just a sliver of construction workers, engineers and contractors.) I hope he will listen to the women reminding Obama that women need employment too. Women everywhere are hoping Obama will disprove Emma Goldman’s (photo at left) claim that “If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.”

I’m scared for myself and those around me and I’m depressed by a sense of impotence. But I’m not so down that I’m going to stop fighting for justice. In honor of IWD, here’s a quote from the late Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop: “If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.”

"Closed Zone"

Gaza is truly a “Closed Zone,” with devastating consequences for those struggling to recover from a destructive and tragic assault.

Yoni Goodman is the Animation Director of “Waltz with Bashir,” the film about the war on Lebanon in the early 1980s which won six Israeli Academy Awards (Ophir) and was nominated for an Oscar. Goodman has now produced this 90 second animation on movement restrictions in Gaza for Gisha, an Israeli not-for-profit organization “whose goal is to protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians, especially Gaza residents.”

Thanks to my friend Eleanor for the link.