Anger and the mediocrity of the ruling class

I’ve begun reading W. Somerset Maugham’s The Summing Up, part autobiography, blended with Maugham’s philosophical observations on life, as well as reflections on religion, morality, and the human condition.

Today, I couldn’t help recalling the passage I read the other night, considering all the hoopla about the special election to our south, in Massachusetts. Written in 1938, Maugham’s observation still rings true, given our usual choice of tweedle dum, or tweedle dee, come election time.

I have known in various countries a good many politicians who have attained high office. I have continued to be puzzled by what seemed to me the mediocrity of their minds. I have found them ill-informed upon the ordinary affairs of life, and I have not often discovered in them either subtlety of intellect or liveliness of imagination.

I keep hearing reports that the voters are “angry.” Angry, angry, angry! What are they so angry about? Maybe these voters need to do some work on themselves and figure out why they’re so pissed, instead of thinking that Scott Brown will be their Mr. Smith.

I’ve given up believing that elections and the politicians that they inflict upon us matter much anymore. I’d much rather focus my energies on the people that matter to me, pursuits that bring me pleasure—like reading and writing—and trying to minimize stress and strife in my own life, which politics inevitably increases. Oh, and stay as far away as I can from angry voters intent on inflicting their ideological anger on me.

This is not a food blog

The world of weight loss is fraught with advice on how to shed excess pounds. Some of it works. Established methods, like Weight Watchers, seems to work for many Americans. My mom is a lifetime member and is as trim at 71 as she has ever been. A close friend of Mary and me just lost 69 pounds utilizing the Weight Watchers program.

For others, all the advice in the world seems to do little, or nothing to move them from the world of weight gain and fretting, to loss and then, the hard part, maintenance. The reasons for this, I think are fairly complex. One person's weight loss success story is another one's recipe for disaster. That's why everyone has to find something that works for them.

Sometimes I think the answer lies less in denying ourselves food than finding a way to enjoy good food, in smaller amounts. Michael Pollan touches on this in his books, most notably, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. Notice that "eater's" is in the title.

For both Mary and me, we're less about cutting foods from our diet than eating smaller portions, giving exercise a prominent place in our lives, and enjoying food in a way that we haven't before. Good food is good fun. Locally grown foods, particularly plant-based have found their way into our diets in many new combinations, and methods of preparation.

One of my favorite sandwiches is a Reuben. Not a new food, and certainly not a low calorie one, or low fat by any stretch of the imagination. Corned Beef is a fatty meat. Swiss cheese isn't too bad as cheeses go, and sauerkraut might be one of the healthiest toppings you could add to any sandwich. Russian dressing isn't going to make it onto any top ten lists for diet condiments.


Not only do I like Reubens, I love french fries with it. That means that a meal with a Reuben can be loaded with calories and wouldn't be something that weight conscious folks would keep around, right?

Actually, I enjoy a Reuben fairly regularly. I still like french fries, although Mary and I have tended to make our own oven fries, courtesy of a recipe from one of the Moosewood cookbooks.

This weekend, we added a new twist to our Reuben and fries routine. Mary went to the farmers' market in Brunswick and at my insistence, picked up turnips from our friends at Six River Farm, in Bowdoinham.

As a German, I have an affinity for root veggies--carrots, turnips, rutabaga--all of them are wonderful to me.

Several weeks back, we sliced up some white turnips, drizzled them with olive oil and baked them in the oven. They were a wonderful accompaniment to pork chops. Amazingly sweet, and a lot less calories than traditional potatoes.

Well this week, we used regular turnips (not as sweet as the white turnips, we thought) and sliced them like french fries and did the olive oil and baking routine (with a dash of sea salt).

What an awesome alternative to traditional french fried potatoes, and a new accompaniment to the Reuben sandwich.

I enjoyed a nice Belgian dark ale with my meal.

This might not work for everyone looking to lose weight, or maintain a 52 pound weight drop, but it's working for Mary and me.

Calorie count:

Reuben sandwich 425 calories 44 grams of fat
Turnip fries 250 calories 20.5 grams of fat
Belgian dark ale 155 calories

Failed resolutions

New Years Eve and it's hard to believe, another Zodiac's gone around
While you drank yourself high on hoping, and watched the ceiling spin from the ground

Counting down from ten it's time, to make your annual prayer
Secret Santa in the sky, when will I get my share

Then you tell yourself, what you want to hear
Cause you have to believe, this will be my year
[From Semisonic’s “This Will Be My Year,” from the album, Feeling Strangely Fine]


Planet Fitness has been running a special in January where new members can join for $1. This promotion intersects perfectly with the New Year’s resolution mindset that characterizes the crowd making a few feel good changes early in 2010. Most of these will be gone by the wayside come the first of February, casualties of their noble intentions that didn’t count the costs associated, or understand what it takes to be successful.

How do I know this? Because New Year’s resolutions are the crutches that I used to try to prop up my own pathetic attempts to make changes each and every roll over of the calendar, or as Dan Wilson of Semisonic sang, “another Zodiac's gone around.”

I’ve been a regular at Planet Fitness since the first of November. To be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to moving my fitness activities indoors in late October, but the days were shortening, and I knew my cycling was coming to a close for 2009. With resignation, I reluctantly began searching for a gym to continue the level of physical activity I knew I would need to engage in if I wanted to stay fit, and keep my newfound slimness intact.

The word on the street was that the Auburn PF location was a good one, and for the past 10 weeks, I’ve been working out like clockwork, three times each week. Given the demands of life and work, I knew early mornings would be best for me, although I did experiment with some other options, like lunchtimes, and mid-afternoons.

Since the Auburn location opens at 5:00 a.m., Monday through Friday, that’s the time I shoot for as I’ve become locked into showing up each Tuesday and Thursday, and am able to get in an hour of cardio and an hour of weights. Then, Sunday morning, I’m there at 7:00, when they open. I wish they were open earlier, as I’d love to be able to keep with my 5:00 a.m. time slot I have during the work week.

One of the benefits of these early morning workouts is that the group that is able to roll out of the sack at this early hour tends to be a bit older, and is mostly made up with the kinds of gym members that have been working out for a long time. What this means for me is that this crowd has a similar mindset as I do—get in, get busy, and get out. As a result, I’m actually enjoying my early morning chances to huff, puff, sweat, and push some weights around.

This past week has been a bit of a challenge, however. Tuesday morning, when I arrived a bit late, at 5:15, I could see the parking lot was already quite full. Entering the well-lit gym, most of the cardio equipment, particularly the treadmills, was being utilized. I figured that many of these were enticed by the $1 offer to get fit, as I didn’t recognize them as regulars.

My wife, who works out at Coastal Fitness in Westbrook has been complaining all week that she’s had trouble getting on the cardio equipment because of the flood of new members who have shown up. I imagine that if I went in the PM to PF in Auburn, I’d run into the same kind of cattle call.

An early morning appointment in Fairfield prevented me from keeping my customary morning fitness appointment this past Thursday, so I went yesterday morning instead. The gym was virtually deserted when I jumped on the elliptical trainer at 5:10. By 5:30, there were 15-20 people working out. I was pleasantly surprised. I knew that most of the $1 set would be gone by early February, but after one week? So much for sticking with those New Year’s fitness plans.

I found it somewhat comical watching two rather large women who I guessed were two of the 100 new members who have been joining daily in Auburn. Apparently by Friday none but these two were motivated enough to get up early on a bitterly cold morning to sweat off some fat. While these ladies were at the gym, they weren’t doing much to raise their heart rate and burn calories. In fact, when I walked by the wall of exercise equipment near the locker rooms, they were lounging on the back equipment, doing nothing but talking. After working working their gums, they made their way to the arc trainers where they spent about 15 minutes and barely broke a sweat. Then, after another 10 minutes on the treadmill, both were out the door, just as I was readying to hit the weights after my 30 minute cardio warm up.

I’m betting that they felt good about burning their 250 calories each, and probably both treated themselves to a carbo death wheel, aka, a bagel, surely loaded with cream cheese and some high calorie coffee drink with whip cream.

Since I began coming to Planet Fitness, there has been a group of men, some my age, a few older, and one younger gentleman that lift a lot of weights each morning when I’m there Monday-Friday. I can tell by the amount of weight they lift, their demeanor, and their upper bodies that these guys are serious. They have become a fitness comfort blanket of sorts for me.

Interestingly, I haven’t seen them since just after Christmas. I’m thinking that they’ve taken a sabbatical until after the fitness wannabes clear out.

New Year’s resolutions don’t work. Lifestyle changes do, however, which is why I’m down 51 pounds, and have been maintaining my weight loss for the past six weeks. It’s based on a simple formula. Reduce calories, increase calories burned, by increasing my level of activity intensity, and stay consistent with my commitment.

Rural matters

Yesterday, I drove north and spent a portion of the day in Jackman, in northern Somerset County, not far from the Canadian border. This represents the far reaches of the workforce district that I cover with the Local Workforce Investment Board that I work for.

I went at the behest of a community partner who belongs to a group that I also am part of that meets monthly in Skowhegan, after she chided our group that "Skowhegan is not Somerset County." Her point resonated with me, as I realized that in three years in my position, I had never taken the time to visit the Moose River Valley, assess some of their issues on the workforce development side, and meet some of the key members of the community. Shame on me for this.

This behavior is clearly not acceptable for someone that has written regularly about rural Maine, and in fact, my first book detailed how small communities have been affected by a variety of changes since WWII, using the metaphor of baseball to track many of the shifts occurring in small town Maine (and by extension, small town America). Yet, in an official capacity, I had neglected a portion of my region. My colleague's point was an accurate one, as I learned from during my four hour visit.

Spending time in Jackman, and having the opportunity to meet some key leaders in town--school officials, a manager from Moose River Lumber, and other community movers and shakers--as well as being granted a chance to speak to the Jackman Leadership Group, which meets monthly to work on key initiatives in the town--made yesterday a worthwhile visit. There is a positive energy present in the community, one that I wouldn't have known about without visiting. Their school and its principal and superintendent are developing innovative programs, some of them with the potential to act as economic incubators. Moose River's mill is one of the most technologically advanced facilities east of the Mississippi. All of this wasn't surprising, based on my experiences visiting other rural areas of the state.

I plan on unpacking some thoughts I have, mainly about workforce development, over at Working in Maine in the near future. I also plan to touch on some of the struggles affecting rural communities not only in Maine, or nationwide.

Unfortunately, both federal and state policies often work against promoting economic vitality for the almost 60 million Americans living in areas classified as local. Nowhere is this more obvious than with rural schools, which are often the centerpiece of life in this small towns. In Maine, its been the insistence of the current administration to consolidate schools. This plan is misguided at best, in my opinion, as I've stated before.

Understanding the culture of people and place is important. I think one of the primary reasons that some journalists miss the real story, and politicians and state and federal policymakers often get it wrong when it comes to laws and regulations affecting rural America, is that they either don't care, or rarely take the time to really understand that culture. Merely making a campaign stop won't provide the depth of understanding required, and neither do perfunctory visits to pseudo-rural communities.

More to follow on this topic.

God's people snowed in once again

What is it about snow that's become the 21st century's version of a biblical plague for church people? When it starts to snow, you can be sure that the people of God are incapable of mobilizing and making it to church.

I've touched on this before in greater detail, but it still seems like the greatest of ironies. Don't tell me about how great your God is, how he's blessed you with riches because you've got the power of positive visualization going on, and then, when a few flakes begin falling, the cancellations of chuch services start filling the scroll at the bottom of my nightly newscast, made up almost entirely of Sunday services being called off.

When I was a member of a band of bibical literalists during my fundamentalist wanderings, preacher after preacher railed against us for our lack of belief--usually the context involved some variation on trusting God to take care of us, after we gave our last dime to him, or his church--with a wealth of scriptural examples of God's people trusting him for their safety and deliverance. Apparently, snow has become God's kryptonite, as any weekend snowstorm inevitably means that Sunday services will be the exception, rather than the rule.

I think this illustrates really well how irrelevant that Xianity has become in the 21st century (if it hadn't already shown its ineffectiveness as a system prior to now). If your organization gets grounded from snow, and winter weather, how effective are you really? The reality in all of this for me, is that I rarely, if ever meet anyone that self-identifies as a Xian that inspires me. Mainly, they're either about positive affirmations, or telling me what I can and can't do, and worse, trying to dictate government policy propped up by a set of rules and regulations that were ineffective two centuries ago.

Here's my charge to you; if you want to be taken seriously as a societal force, don't let something like a winter snow storm derail you from what I was taught was a weekly duty--attending Sunday services.

Oh, btw--my friends over at the Shiloh are cancelled due to another winter storm.