How red meat is like … red meat

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I go through long periods when I just can’t seem to finish anything: poetry, fiction, essays, it doesn’t matter. I work at it. I take notes, jot down ideas, begin paragraphs, sit in coffee shops streaming my consciousness. No matter how promising it looks, or, in desperation, how passable, I just can’t seem to pull the trigger. It’s a log jam (I won’t use the more obvious metaphor, although, as you’ll see, it’s more appropriate).

Then something comes along that just pushes the rest of it through willy-nilly.

For the last couple of days, the news has been all over social media that WHO has declared red meat to be “probably” carcinogenic. Vegan friends are beside themselves crowing, rubbing our faces in it with a vicious glee. There is nothing more likely to raise the hackles of the normal person.

Sometimes, though, it’s better to let sleeping hackles lie. The rest of us might experience that rare motivation to check things out for ourselves, rather than believe the first meme that comes along.

First of all, WHO has also declared the night shift to be probably carcinogenic. It’s not exactly an exclusive category. It’s just a statement of statistical fact; no attempt is made to judge how much of a danger it really represents

In the case of red meat, it seems that daily consumption of more than 100 grams is correlated to a 25% or so (the figures vary, depending on what you’re reading) increase in the incidence of colorectal cancer. “Yikes!” you might say. But what does this actually mean?

For some reason, WHO appears to have conflated processed meats with red meat for this study, so it’s difficult to assess either category by itself. It also appears to have ignored other lifestyle factors, but let’s go with what we’ve got.

The incidence of colorectal cancer in the general population is about .04%. Eating red meat raises your chances to a whopping .05%; that’s right, an increase of .01%.

Friends, you are more likely to die driving to the grocery store to buy the red meat than you are from eating it.

Some rank observations

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Why is the lowest rank in the army, which affords its holder no privacy whatsoever, called private? The corporal, at least, seems reasonably preoccupied with bodies. But what is a sergeant? Someone bedecked in serge? A warrant officer, I suppose, is the person in the office which processes warrants, but you’d never know it from their duties.

I get lieutenant; he’s a tenant in a place, and the captain is surely the head man. But if he’s the head man, why are there ranks above him?

To be sure, in the navy, there are fewer ranks above captain, but that’s the navy, always going their own way, doubtless from spending so much time on the bounding main, far from civilization. A friend, and ex-submariner, once told me they left port with 150 sailors, and returned with 75 couples. I guess that explains the ranks of mates; very chummy, these sailors. Perhaps it also explains admirals, presumably persons most to be admired. As for the rest of them (only some of whom are able bodied), they are seamen. Very clear and to the point, much like the airmen in the … air force. Someday soon these basic descriptive ranks will have to be modified to reflect the modern military: seapersons and airpersons.

But above the captain in the army there are majors and colonels before you even get to the highest ranks. Majors, I believe, are self-explanatory, but what on earth is a colonel? Something to do with columns? If so, why is he allowed to lord it over the head man?

The generals, those with the highest ranks, presumably do not have any specific duties, like the lower ranks, with the exception of the lowest of them, the brigadier, who mucks about with brigades. Yet they feel compelled to recapitulate practically the entire officer rank system among themselves, from lieutenant to major, skipping colonels, perhaps because generals get nowhere near any columns except during parades.

Don’t get me started on unit designations; that’s something only a very admiral general could explain.

The long, long silly season

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Hard to believe, but it’s still over a year until the election we’re all obsessing about. That’s more than enough time for all the current front runners to fade away, and for new ones to emerge from nowhere. Meanwhile, we’re filling Facebook, Twitter, and, yes, blogs, with not so much political opinion as ad hominem. Never have slings and arrows so thoroughly disdained outrageous defeat. Have at them now, lads, if they disappear, you’ll have missed your chance to smite those who disagree with your clan. Come to think of it, disagreement isn’t even necessary, just designation as the Enemy.

The worst part of all this is the ugly deterioration of discourse in social media. Of course, the bar was never set very high to begin with, but now it’s steadily approaching negative numbers. More like limbo than the high jump. How low can you go?

There’s an insidious dynamic at work, one which, I admit, has affected me at times as well. You make some statement, simplistic because, in the buzz of the moment, you don’t feel like putting in all the nuance, all the exceptions and caveats. Besides, what sells on social media is the punchy one-liner. In any case, you assume your friends will get all that, because they know you so well.

But then, it turns out they don’t. Someone responds with an objection, which itself ignores nuance, the better to firmly repudiate the shallowness of your post. In other words, by this point, the two of you have posted opinions that, although you generally find the gist agreeable, you do not wholly buy into. It could stop right there, and often does. All it takes is one side or the other opting out.

But sometimes, you just can’t seem to leave it alone. You feel wounded; it’s a kind of betrayal for a friend to think you would actually believe such simplicity. How could they, especially since their response is just as trivial? Besides, you’ve thought of a zinger that will stop the whole process by making it clear you have the superior position.

You’re off and running. The “debate” slides further and further into sheer defensiveness, until each of you finds yourself fiercely defending a position you would never have even acknowledged before things got out of hand. Worse, a friendship is threatened over what usually amounts to a difference in nuance.

With any luck, something truly horrific hits the news just then, and the two of you can come together on what dangerous lunatics the other side are.

Damned PC!

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Tired of all the political correctness? Hey, me too! Here’s a list of the rules of political correctness from when I was young.

• If you’re black, always defer to a white person
• If you’re female, always defer to a male
• If you’re a white male, always show your superiority by using the words nigger, chink, spic, pollack, and sheeny every chance you get
• Remember, when a woman says no, she means yes
• If someone uses a racial slur, a good-natured laugh and hearty agreement are the best responses
• Always laugh at jokes at the expense of minorities or women
• Never show an interest in shop class if you’re a girl
• Never show an interest in home ec if you’re a boy
• If you’re male, love sports. or at least pretend to
• If you’re female, wear clothes that emphasize your sexy bits, and give in to rape graciously
• If you’re an overweight college girl, be grateful when a frat boy takes you to an “ugly date” party
• If you’re male, always remember, no matter how ugly or disgusting you are, you get to pass judgment on the appearance of any female

Well, that’s just a few; there were many more. Bet you’re surprised that we’ve been fighting PC much longer than you suspected!

V-Mart

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Von's Bookstore has grown beyond comprehension.

Von’s Bookstore has grown beyond comprehension.

A few weeks ago, I visited West Lafayette, Indiana, where I went to Purdue for, um, well, quite a while.  I hadn’t seen the place for nearly 20 years, and it was a nostalgia trip for me.  Of course, I was well aware that Purdue had grown and metastasized enormously since then, but I hoped I would still find some recognizable haunts.  As it turned out, just getting to it through the maze-like slalom of road construction was a challenge, but I met it and prevailed without recognizing a single intervening intersection, and parked my car on a side street in front of a brick apartment building where a house a friend had lived in had stood.

Purdue was different, to say the least.  New buildings were everywhere.  On a corner near the old armory where once stood the Black and Gold Grille, affectionately know by countless generations  as the Barf and Gag, there was an imposing brick structure with a limestone façade.  In the campus center, parking lots had been converted to park-like malls by dumping great lumps of dirt at intervals and planting trees and grass thereon.  The old mall that I knew, lined with the oldest buildings (Purdue Hall, the Recitation Building, Stanley Coulter Annex), was now crisscrossed by concrete paths.  Students had long, long since begun to ignore the orders to stay off the grass, barked by senior ROTC watchdogs.  In fact, the ROTC itself had become declassee by the late 60s, after my first lovely and eternally-enshrined-in-memory two-year academic debacle forced me to take a hiatus.  Incredibly, lining the mall at the North end were temporary stalls selling everything from beets to baklava.  It was a farmer’s market, which I discovered happened every first Thursday.  The old admins would have paled at the sacrilege.

Everywhere there were crowds of young people being shepherded around by guides, only slightly older, but invested with all the wisdom conferred by an entire year or two as students.  It must have been orientation day, or week.  The guides held books, umbrellas, whatever came to hand, high in the air, the better to be followed, as they barked their well-rehearsed comments on the sights about them.  They looked for all the world like tour guides in any of the great European cities.

The old Student Union was still there, proud and hale, impervious to the modernizations thrust upon it.  In spite of everything, it felt oddly familiar, perhaps because of the couches in the long commons on the second floor, where students and faculty still dozed obliviously.  A small room at the East entrance, which had held a stereo system and a library of classical music (a refuge I availed myself of more than occasionally), was now a Welcome Center, manned, or, I should say, peopled, by three smiling young women.  They listened patiently as I explained how often I had sat there listening to Bruch or Scriabin, indelible smiles imperviously aglow.  They no doubt wondered what kind of music those bands played.  The only hint of a crack in their relentless cheerfulness was after I told them that the old couches in the commons were still doubtless rich with my DNA from my having collapsed so often there in a drunken swoon.  I left after having a greasy burger in the East room of the Sweet Shop, the only recognizable piece remaining of that venerable institution.  How often had we languished in delicious despair in those booths!

But to get to V-Mart, which, after all, is the title of this reverie.  In the little village area East of campus (now a rather large tumor) much stays the same, though much has changed.  The University Bookstore still hugs the corner, and Follett’s University Empire is nearby, but across the street next to the venerable Harry’s Chocolate Shop, Deac’s is gone, but that’s fine.  It’s space has been taken over by Von’s Shops, a phenomenon wholly of my personal era at Purdue.

In 1965 or 66, I heard that an English grad student, despairing of finding much worth reading at the existing bookstores, had opened a small one, selling books out of the living room of the house he was renting.  I decided to check it out.  It was – I hate to use the word, but it’s appropriate – awesome.  Not awesome like  the new bacon cheeseburger at MacGreasy’s, but awesome like a forest glade, or the sea in autumn.  Yes, all that, in the living room of a rented house.

There was nowhere to look in that room without seeing books, books upon books, in every cranny, on ledges; no horizontal surface was spared.  In no time I had gathered an armful of books, and walked up to the table by the door where Jon Von (he surely has a longer name, but no one seems to know it) sat collecting money.  I had one minor problem: I was broke.

“Can I get these on credit?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, no,” said Jon, “we only do that for regular customers.”

I stood, deflated for a moment, then ventured, “Can I be a regular customer?”  It was meant only half seriously, as a joke, but Jon said, “Sure!” and made out an IOU on the spot.  That was it, I was addicted, and remained a loyal customer from that moment on.

Later, after a hiatus of five years, I went back to school at Purdue, and discovered that  Von’s had moved up in the world, and occupied a tiny storefront, the leftmost shop in the photo, just like a real bookstore.  I went in, and was instantly relieved to find the same critical mass of reading material, now much enlarged thanks to the greater accommodations, but otherwise unchanged in spirit.  Jon still ran the place, now with an associate, Jim, whose surname I unfortunately can’t bring to mind.  Jon remembered me, and I immediately resumed my tab.

I have to say a few words about that tab.  It was, in my mind, a lifeline, a connection to a universe of literature I would probably never have encountered otherwise.  Von’s was, and still is, the kind of bookstore where it’s best to go in with nothing in particular in mind, and wander about aimlessly.  You will invariably leave with some books, most by authors you had never heard of before.  It was in just such a way I discovered Milan Kundera, Italo Calvino, Kobo Abe, Chinua Achebe, and a long list of others.  I cherished that tab.  I paid on it regularly, but always left a charge of something under $50, just to maintain a connection, even long after I graduated and left for good, coming back increasingly rarely.  I finally paid it off in full (I think!) when it became clear that the gaps were getting too long to maintain the fiction that I was a regular.  I don’t know what Jon thought of this curious habit.  It must have been at least annoying to a small businessman like him, but he never said anything, and it was on my own initiative that I paid it off, out of a sense of guilt that I was taking advantage of a generous person.

Over the years, the store grew.  By and by, the space next door was annexed for a record shop, the second of Von’s Shops, and we started joking about V-Mart when a K-Mart down on the levee went out of business.  Little did we know.  Von’s Shops eventually expanded into the entire block, selling records, beads, T shirts, and all manner of odd merchandise.

But the corner remains the bookstore, no different, and apparently immortal.  I went in on my recent visit, and was delighted to see that not only was the mass of books still lining shelves so close that you have to move sideways between them in places, but beyond all expectation, Jim was still there, behind the same unchanged counter piled with paper.  Stranger still, he looked much the same, unaged except for perhaps a touch of transparency.  I wondered if he had a painting tucked away in an attic.  I said hello, and so did he, looking at me expectantly, as if I had just been there the day before, and had some request, perhaps a book I wanted to order.  We talked; I asked about Jon.  Yes, he still worked the counter, Jim informed me, a bit incredulously, I thought, at the idea that he wouldn’t, but he was at lunch at the moment.  I looked around the shelves, and left with five new books, which seemed to have attached themselves to me in much the same way burrs do on hikes in the countryside.

I briefly considered putting them on my tab, which I am convinced still exists, on a 3X5 card in a file box still gathering dust somewhere.  In the end, I paid up, and took my treasures across the street to the Vienna Coffee Shop.  Things do change, even the apparently immutable.