Here I am again, back where I began.

Try as I may I can't get away from you.
And all of these roads lead me to roam, bring me back home.
Here I am again, right where I began.

-Caedmon's Call


I won't be posting here for more than a week. I had hoped to get a big post up about Michael Pollan before I left but I don't think it's going to happen.

Tomorrow I will be participating in a Christian Peacemaker Team action at the U.S./Mexican border. We are going to pray, paint the fence with crosses for people who have died, and be "present" with God. I'm looking forward to it.

After that I am heading up to Tucson for a house warming party, to pick up supplies for the Migrant Resource Center, and to prepare for next week. On Monday I start a seven day, seventy-five mile trip from the Mexican town of Sasabe back up to Tucson. Walking. About 50 people are coming together to participate in the Migrant Trail. We'll walk between ten and twenty miles every day, mostly in the early morning, and hide from the sun all afternoon long.

The point is not to actually experience the life of a migrant, but to remind people that this is a trip that thousands of people start every single day.

I'm excited for everything but the blisters.

I hope to have pictures of it to post when I get back.

What say you, and all your friends, meet all of my friends in the alley tonight?

A week ago today a team of hit men and enforcers from a drug cartel here in Mexico attacked a police armory in Cananea, a city in Sonora about 50 miles from Agua Prieta. After overwhelming (and killing) some of the officers on duty, the group left the armory with an unspecified amount of stolen weaponry and fled the city. On the way out of town they encountered and murdered four more police officers. They were chased, and eventually cornered, at a ranch in Sonora by members of the Mexican police and the Mexican military. All told, 22 people died.

There are many things that I could say about this event. It is clearly a tragic loss of human life. It is quite shocking that it took place in the state of Sonora. Violence like this is, unfortunately, not unheard of and in some cases quite common. States like Sinaloa and cities like Tijuana might as well be in Iraq. But Sonora has never really seen all out war between the drug cartels and the police. It is just one more sign that the long history of drug violence in Mexico is spiraling out of control.

On Friday a rumor was circulating the borderlands that another team of cartel members was headed to the town of Naco, Sonora. Naco is the next town over from Agua Prieta, a little pueblo that doesn't even have a gas station but does have an incredible amount of drug smuggling. The response to that rumor in Agua Prieta was, understandably, widespread panic. Schools were closed, the border was shut down temporarily, and people stayed off the streets well into the night.

All of this has left me feeling deeply unsettled.

In the midst of this violence my thoughts have been primarily selfish. I have thought little of the families that lost loved ones, or of the places in Mexico (and around the world) where violence like this is so common. Instead I have spent a great deal of time dwelling on a feeling that I have been unable to shake, a voice in the back of my head that refuses to go away. Even in Tucson, away from the border and doing more "normal things," I could not take my mind off the killings. And all of this navel gazing has left me chasing tangents through my mind, searching for the thought that might pull all of these strands together. I remembered my pothead high school friends and our ignorance about the true cost of getting stoned. I thought about the war on drugs and the morality of allowing legal drug use. I thought about the violence that profitable smuggling has unleashed. I thought about friends who are addicts, and all of my time spent in Skid Row. And I thought about the cost of securing our borders from drugs, in money and in human life.

I spent almost a week wandering in the cloudiness of my thoughts before dawn finally broke. The thing that has made me so deeply unsettled by these killings is not the loss of human life, although that is clearly tragic. What was so unsettling, and what continues to trouble me, was how quickly and easily my relationship to violence changed when I was confronted with the possibility that I might not be safe. Let me explain.

Since I have been in Agua Prieta, many people have been killed. The police chief, a reporter, a migrant, and an untold number of lesser "thugs," have all fallen victim to the violence that is laced into the fabric of the borderlands. In spite of these murders, I have never felt truly afraid. A man was beaten to death in a remote place that I visit every single week, but I do not hesitate to continue my trips there. I have almost no fear that I might meet the same fate.

This sense of security is a luxury afforded to me by my secret love of violence. I know in my heart of hearts that it will keep me safe. In the past I have justified my sense of security by saying that I am safe because I stay away from trouble. And it's true, I do stay away from trouble. I don't smuggle drugs, or spend time with people who do. But there is another, greater truth that I have protectecd myself from. I am convinced that I will be safe because I believe that violence has the power to protect me. I believe that, as a U.S. citizen, I can cross the border and be protected. I can depend upon the literally thousands of U.S. government employees running around in the desert to keep the "bad people" from me. I can trust their guns.

When I am in the desert, or in Agua Prieta for that matter, I can trust my whiteness to keep violence at bay. I know that killing me is bad for business. Kill a Mexican? Happens all the time. Kill a white kid doing humanitarian work? Doesn't look good for you. Whether it is the Mexicans or the Americans, I know that the threat of violence from the government keeps me safe.

So I complain about all of the Border Patrol agents here, not because I want just anyone to be able to walk into the U.S. anytime they want to, but because I hate the migrant deaths. I complain about all the guns on the border, not because I love the drug smuggling, but because sometimes those guns are used to kill innocent people. But when it comes down to it, I love my own safety, and the violence that protects it, more than I love the lives of other people.

And I trust violence more than I trust God. When it came down to my own safety, I gave up my belief that God is powerful, and I worshipped violence instead. "Thank God," I thought, "for all of those men with guns."

Violence is my golden calf. Is it yours?

Double-Double (Animal Style), Fries, and A Chocolate Shake

I'm in Tucson right now to drop off one of our volunteers at the airport. I'm staying for the weekend because:

A) Saves the Day is playing a show here tomorrow, my first show since last summer's The Format/Anathallo tour. Saves is one of my top ten favorite bands ever. Here's a classic from Through Being Cool, "Shoulder to the Wheel."



and

B) In-N-Out Burger opened a restaurant in Tucson. Apparently the line is over an hour long. I'm going right now, and bringing a book.

Mmmm. It's been far too long.

PG-13 Blogging: Some Mild Sexual Content

"Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol plays on MTV Mexico in the background of the restaurant.

Friend: Ugh. Why do people like this song?

Me: Sabe. (Spanish for "who knows?")

Friend: It's on all of the time.

Me: Yeah, I just don't get it. It's not even catchy. Just...long and boring.

Friend: I have a theory about this actually, but it's very Freudian.

Me: Freudian?

Friend: Yeah, I developed it after Death Cab's "Transatlanticism" became really popular.

Me: I like that album. And I really like that song.

Friend: Me too, but it's very Freudian.

Me: Ok, explain.

Friend: People like things that are very repetitive and then climax.

Me: Hahahahahahaha

"It sounds prettier in Spanish"

Spanish is really the only language that I've ever tried to learn. I suppose that I learned a little bit of German over the years, and a passable amount of Lugandan considering how many people around me could speak English, but Spanish is the language that has been with me for more than a decade. And I'm finally becoming pretty decent at it.

I am still far from fluent, but I have gotten to the point that I can understand, more or less, more than 90% of what is said to me. More importantly, I can joke around with people and figure out what's supposed to be funny when people are joking around with me.

And I can finally appreciate what a fun and beautiful language that it is. I find myself so intrigued and entertained by the way different words translate, the phrases that I have learned, and the rhythm of speaking in a tongue that flows much more smoothly than the one I grew up with.

Here's a little Spanish lesson for you.

Try this one: "taco de ojo," (ta-ko deh o-ho)which, translated literally, means "eye taco." In the U.S. we would use the expression "eye candy." An "eye taco." I love it.

ex: Who him? Nah, no brains, he's just an eye taco.

Or how about my new favorite verb, "enchilarse?" Enchilarse means, literally, "to chile one's self."

ex: Waiter, please bring me some hot sauce, I'd like to chili myself.

It's a very intimate language as well. For example, if you want to say "my son" in Spanish the exact translation is "mi hijo," (me e-ho) but the version that everyone uses in Agua Prieta is the shortened "mijo" (me-ho). My favorite part is that it can be used for people who are not your children. Lots of people call me mijo, and I call lots of little kids mijo/mija.

ex: Did you hurt yourself mijo?

My favorite linguistic moments in Spanish usually have to do with God, though. Take the word pastor for example. In Spanish, "pastor" (paz-stor) is exactly the same as it is in English(albeit with a different pronunciation), but unlike in English its literal meaning is "shepard." So Pastor Glenn is literally Shepard Glenn. I think that's so cool.

Another really great one is the verb "amor." In English, love gets used for everything (my car, my sister, my vacation), but in Spanish "amor" is only possible between people or with God.

And then there is the concept of Grace. In Spanish, asking God to forgive you means saying "perdoname," literally, pardon me. Think about what we use pardon for in English. And the word for mercy, "misericordia," literally has the root of the word misery in it. Perfect.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Will Never Taste As Sweet to Me Again

So this is a little hat tip to something that I've been obsessing over lately and even discussing with some of my friends (hello Evangelical Environmental Network!). While working down here on the border I have become (even more) fascinated by the interconnectedness of our world. I have spent so much time this year thinking about the ways in which migration, economics, agriculture, the environment, etc. are all linked to one another. And this great article, written by Michael Pollan, talks about just that.

To try and cut down on the length of this post (and therefore increase your likelihood of reading it) I'm going to do this in two parts. I'm pasting the article below for your reading pleasure (it can also be found right here in a more legal setting). A few days from now (give or take) I'm going to be writing a little follow-up piece with some further thoughts and a few more links to make this conversation more interesting.

By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published: April 22, 2007
The New York Times Magazine

A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person's wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?

Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.

As a rule, processed foods are more "energy dense" than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them "junk." Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.

This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world's food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.

That's because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

A public-health researcher from Mars might legitimately wonder why a nation faced with what its surgeon general has called "an epidemic" of obesity would at the same time be in the business of subsidizing the production of high-fructose corn syrup. But such is the perversity of the farm bill: the nation's agricultural policies operate at cross-purposes with its public-health objectives. And the subsidies are only part of the problem. The farm bill helps determine what sort of food your children will have for lunch in school tomorrow. The school-lunch program began at a time when the public-health problem of America's children was undernourishment, so feeding surplus agricultural commodities to kids seemed like a win-win strategy. Today the problem is overnutrition, but a school lunch lady trying to prepare healthful fresh food is apt to get dinged by U.S.D.A. inspectors for failing to serve enough calories; if she dishes up a lunch that includes chicken nuggets and Tater Tots, however, the inspector smiles and the reimbursements flow. The farm bill essentially treats our children as a human Disposall for all the unhealthful calories that the farm bill has encouraged American farmers to overproduce.

To speak of the farm bill's influence on the American food system does not begin to describe its full impact — on the environment, on global poverty, even on immigration. By making it possible for American farmers to sell their crops abroad for considerably less than it costs to grow them, the farm bill helps determine the price of corn in Mexico and the price of cotton in Nigeria and therefore whether farmers in those places will survive or be forced off the land, to migrate to the cities — or to the United States. The flow of immigrants north from Mexico since Nafta is inextricably linked to the flow of American corn in the opposite direction, a flood of subsidized grain that the Mexican government estimates has thrown two million Mexican farmers and other agricultural workers off the land since the mid-90s. (More recently, the ethanol boom has led to a spike in corn prices that has left that country reeling from soaring tortilla prices; linking its corn economy to ours has been an unalloyed disaster for Mexico's eaters as well as its farmers.) You can't fully comprehend the pressures driving immigration without comprehending what U.S. agricultural policy is doing to rural agriculture in Mexico.

And though we don't ordinarily think of the farm bill in these terms, few pieces of legislation have as profound an impact on the American landscape and environment. Americans may tell themselves they don't have a national land-use policy, that the market by and large decides what happens on private property in America, but that's not exactly true. The smorgasbord of incentives and disincentives built into the farm bill helps decide what happens on nearly half of the private land in America: whether it will be farmed or left wild, whether it will be managed to maximize productivity (and therefore doused with chemicals) or to promote environmental stewardship. The health of the American soil, the purity of its water, the biodiversity and the very look of its landscape owe in no small part to impenetrable titles, programs and formulae buried deep in the farm bill.

Given all this, you would think the farm-bill debate would engage the nation's political passions every five years, but that hasn't been the case. If the quintennial antidrama of the "farm bill debate" holds true to form this year, a handful of farm-state legislators will thrash out the mind-numbing details behind closed doors, with virtually nobody else, either in Congress or in the media, paying much attention. Why? Because most of us assume that, true to its name, the farm bill is about "farming," an increasingly quaint activity that involves no one we know and in which few of us think we have a stake. This leaves our own representatives free to ignore the farm bill, to treat it as a parochial piece of legislation affecting a handful of their Midwestern colleagues. Since we aren't paying attention, they pay no political price for trading, or even selling, their farm-bill votes. The fact that the bill is deeply encrusted with incomprehensible jargon and prehensile programs dating back to the 1930s makes it almost impossible for the average legislator to understand the bill should he or she try to, much less the average citizen. It's doubtful this is an accident.

But there are signs this year will be different. The public-health community has come to recognize it can't hope to address obesity and diabetes without addressing the farm bill. The environmental community recognizes that as long as we have a farm bill that promotes chemical and feedlot agriculture, clean water will remain a pipe dream. The development community has woken up to the fact that global poverty can't be fought without confronting the ways the farm bill depresses world crop prices. They got a boost from a 2004 ruling by the World Trade Organization that U.S. cotton subsidies are illegal; most observers think that challenges to similar subsidies for corn, soy, wheat or rice would also prevail.

And then there are the eaters, people like you and me, increasingly concerned, if not restive, about the quality of the food on offer in America. A grass-roots social movement is gathering around food issues today, and while it is still somewhat inchoate, the manifestations are everywhere: in local efforts to get vending machines out of the schools and to improve school lunch; in local campaigns to fight feedlots and to force food companies to better the lives of animals in agriculture; in the spectacular growth of the market for organic food and the revival of local food systems. In great and growing numbers, people are voting with their forks for a different sort of food system. But as powerful as the food consumer is — it was that consumer, after all, who built a $15 billion organic-food industry and more than doubled the number of farmer's markets in the last few years — voting with our forks can advance reform only so far. It can't, for example, change the fact that the system is rigged to make the most unhealthful calories in the marketplace the only ones the poor can afford. To change that, people will have to vote with their votes as well — which is to say, they will have to wade into the muddy political waters of agricultural policy.

Doing so starts with the recognition that the "farm bill" is a misnomer; in truth, it is a food bill and so needs to be rewritten with the interests of eaters placed first. Yes, there are eaters who think it in their interest that food just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the quality. But there are many more who recognize the real cost of artificially cheap food — to their health, to the land, to the animals, to the public purse. At a minimum, these eaters want a bill that aligns agricultural policy with our public-health and environmental values, one with incentives to produce food cleanly, sustainably and humanely. Eaters want a bill that makes the most healthful calories in the supermarket competitive with the least healthful ones. Eaters want a bill that feeds schoolchildren fresh food from local farms rather than processed surplus commodities from far away. Enlightened eaters also recognize their dependence on farmers, which is why they would support a bill that guarantees the people who raise our food not subsidies but fair prices. Why? Because they prefer to live in a country that can still produce its own food and doesn't hurt the world's farmers by dumping its surplus crops on their markets.

The devil is in the details, no doubt. Simply eliminating support for farmers won't solve these problems; overproduction has afflicted agriculture since long before modern subsidies. It will take some imaginative policy making to figure out how to encourage farmers to focus on taking care of the land rather than all-out production, on growing real food for eaters rather than industrial raw materials for food processors and on rebuilding local food economies, which the current farm bill hobbles. But the guiding principle behind an eater's farm bill could not be more straightforward: it's one that changes the rules of the game so as to promote the quality of our food (and farming) over and above its quantity.

Such changes are radical only by the standards of past farm bills, which have faithfully reflected the priorities of the agribusiness interests that wrote them. One of these years, the eaters of America are going to demand a place at the table, and we will have the political debate over food policy we need and deserve. This could prove to be that year: the year when the farm bill became a food bill, and the eaters at last had their say.


Michael Pollan, a contributing writer, is the Knight professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent book is "The Omnivore's Dilemma."

(In the photo: Michael Pollan in all his glory)

Despierta Mama, Despierta

It's Mother's Day here in Mexico. Quite a celebration, let me tell you. Last night the jovenes group from the church (jovenes being high school to twentysomethings) set out to do a little late night serenading in the streets of Agua Prieta. Armed with two busted up guitars, some hand written lyrics sheets, a list of Mexican Mamas, and a few flashlights, three cars set out to wake up all the women of the church with off key singing and the promise of group hugs. 3:30 in the morning later I finally made it to bed, surprised by how quickly I have adjusted to a post college life (well before 2:00 a.m., my former bedtime, I was way past still wanting to be awake). I managed to confuse some of my Mexican (and American) friends yet again last night by being both very detached socially and also willing to sing quite loudly. A sure sign that it's time for a nap.

I have been really fortunate this year to take part in a whole mess of Mexican customs that I didn't understand or know anything about prior to arriving at the border. A lot of people have been very gracious by opening up their homes to me and letting me share a small part of their lives with them. This was one of those times.

I thought about calling my own mother to wake her up for some singing, but in the end decided that muffled and incomprehensible noises at two in the morning might not be the most compelling way to tell her how much I appreciate her. But there's always next year.

From my gmail inbox...

A link to this video:



And a suggestion:

"Now think in terms of Jesus"

One of my favorite short films set to music (yes, I made that genre up myself) from one of my favorite orchestra/post-rock/post-genres/unbelievable bands.

Glosoli by Sigur Ros. Thanks Jo.

New York City for the win.

From the Times:

Recalling a movement that challenged United States policy in Central America in the 1980s, several religious congregations in New York and other cities will announce a campaign Wednesday to provide sanctuary to illegal immigrants who face deportation.

As of Tuesday, the organizers of what is being called the New Sanctuary Movement said that five churches in New York City had already offered assistance to two families — one from China and one from Haiti — and would provide them with shelter if the federal government moved to enforce the deportation orders filed against them.

“We’re launching now because we’re fed up with detentions, deportations and raids,” said the Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper, the senior minister of Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village. “We felt it was not morally possible to remain silent.”

Death season.

Yesterday I was digging around my comptuer for pictures of the Migrant Resource Center when I found this map. It's a map of migrant deaths from the year 2003. Sorry that the graphic is so small. If you click on the map you should be able to see a full size image.

Sometimes I worry that my posts here are too negative (edit: especially recently), or that there are too many negative posts and not enough of the positive. There's so much hope down here, but it's a lot harder to share over the internet.

That being said, we're now entering the "death season" (hence the title of the post). Heat, more than anything else down here, kills. It was a colder than normal winter, I'm praying that the summer stays cool as well.

Police Brutality Is Like Soooo 1990's.

Video from the May 1st migrant march in Los Angeles. When will the LAPD ever learn that there are always cameras in the City of Angels?



I guess it's a good thing that Rage Against the Machine are back.

This post is for Rachel.

The Gospel, as brought to you by the New York Times.

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