>>Valley Patriot>>
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Random Thoughts
Mark
Palermo, NECC Professor
 Every year at this time, Christmas
tree lots sprout up along the sides of highways with
signs like the following: Christmas Trees 12 dollars. All
trees in”a” lot. If you don’t know
any better, you think 12 bucks is a good price. So you go
in to buy your $12 tree. But once inside you find
subdivided areas which are lettered: lot A, lot B, lot C,
etc.
Of course the $12 trees in “lot A” are
pathetic, lopsided and/or usually about three feet tall.
And naturally, Christmas trees in the other “lots”
are of better quality and priced three times higher. But
since you are already there…
I get tired of seeing this scam year after year. Imagine
a grocery store with a sign outside “All T-bone
steaks in ‘a’ case $1 each.” And when you
go in, you find they are all gristle and bone with
expired freshness dates- not even fit for dogs. But you
are already in the store, so you do your shopping. What’s
wrong with this picture?
The glib, ambiguous use of words to obfuscate clear
meaning may not be a violation of the letter of the law,
but it is nevertheless a deceptive and unethical business
practice which should be stopped.
***
The Merrimack Valley is a haven for municipal trash
incinerators. The Covanta incinerator off route 495 in
Haverhill has a capacity of some 1650 tons of trash a
day. North Andover’s Wheelabrator incinerator-just a
couple of miles downwind on route 125- can burn 1500 tons
a day.
Between these two incinerators, that’s a staggering
1.15 million tons of trash burned annually. And trash
doesn’t just vaporize after incineration. About 30%
is left behind as ash. That’s about 345,000 tons of
concentrated toxic ash to be landfilled in our community-
a legacy for our children’s children. Not to mention
mercury emissions.
No wonder Rhode Island banned incinerators in 1992. Even
the Philippines banned incinerators. Too dirty and
unhealthy for the Philippines, incinerators are
apparently all right for us. The trash industry has
indeed found a welcoming home in the Merrimack Valley.
***
Years ago, I lived and worked in Madrid, Spain. I have
fond memories of that time, especially of the Spaniards,
a gregarious and sentimental people. Like the Europeans,
I spent lots of time in cafes and bars. I remember a
conversation with a young Spanish intellectual in which
he remarked, “You Americans have a problem with the
body.”
He was a thoughtful and intelligent guy, not the rabid
sort of anti-Americanist one sometimes finds in European
cafes, whose train of logic starts with hatred of America
and works backwards producing the appropriate premises. I
thought it was a curious thing to say, but in the many
years since our conversation, I have realized what he
meant.
A good example of our collective problem with the body is
the furor over mothers nursing babies in public. I don’t
know what can be more natural and wholesome than
breastfeeding a baby, but not everyone agrees.
On October 13, Emily Gillette, 27, was on a flight out of
Burlington, Vermont. She was in a window seat discreetly
nursing her baby next to her husband, who was in the
aisle seat providing her a measure of privacy.
A flight attendant approached Mrs. Gillette, and ordered
her to cover up saying, “You are offending me.”
Mrs. Gillette refused to cover her child, and she and her
family were booted off the flight. As a result, protests
by nursing mothers were held in more than 30 airports
around the country.
Years ago in North Africa, I saw Arab women nursing
babies in broad daylight, on buses, and in outdoor
markets. They exhibited no apparent self-consciousness. I
saw one Berber woman with breasts the size of pillows
nursing a baby on a crowded bus while she chatted with an
old man lazily smoking a clay pipe.
I had always been taught that Arabs were puritanical and
sexually repressed. But breastfeeding had nothing to do
with sex for them; it was a natural process like eating
or sleeping and they saw no reason for shame over bodily
functions.
For Americans though, breasts equal sex -and sex is a
problem. The problem with the body, as evinced in toilet
jokes, jokes about body functions, and ramblings of
potty-mouthed radio talk show hosts and the millions
addicted to porn.
Wilhelm Reich called it “the emotional plague.”
Hollywood, in particular, has blurred the line between
sensuality and infantile sexuality. Not surprising then,
that ours is a sexually licentious and -at the same time-
a puritanical society. Maybe we would do well to heed the
advice of a young nursing mother who carried a sign at a
recent airport protest: “Breasts- they aren’t
just for selling cars anymore.”
Mark Palermo is a professor at Northern Essex Community
College in Haverhill and is the past vice-president of
the faculty union. You can email him at markpalermo@lycos.com.
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The December, 2006
Edition of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2006, Valley Patriot, Inc.
We publish 10,000 newspapers and distribute in Andover,
North Andover,
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Beach, and Lowell.
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