MY FAVOURITE THINGS
A One Act Almost Christmas Play
Scene: The reception area of a small hotel in Antigua.
Jonathan: Here comes Santa Claus.
Mizpah: You shouldn’t mock Joseph. He is doing a fine job. He is a good chef.
Jonathan: I cannot understand why men can’t cook at home and all the top chefs in all the hotels are men.
Joseph: It’s not that men can’t cook at home. Their mother and women spoil them; like you.
Jonathan: Always remember this: I refused the job that you have.
Mizpah: Women do not get the top chef’s job because of gender discrimination, and talk about women’s domestic life. From now on, any more advice from me about food will cost you two.
Jonathan: You should have applied for the chef’s job. What new advice do you have for Christmas?
Mizpah: I am looking at what is cooked and how it is cooked in this hotel compared to what is cooked outside because I want to understand why there is an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease just outside this hotel’s door. Food is killing us.
Jonathan: Inside the hotel too. Some tourists are so big and fat, they can’t pass through the doors.
Joseph: That’s the reason for the downturn. Some tourists are so fat they can’t enter this small country.
Jonathan: Too much fat, too much salt, too much meat, too much booze.
Mizpah: It’s the sugar, baby. Too much sugar.
Jonathan: Well tell me this, Miss Mizpah: If too much sugar is bad, how can plenty of fruits be good?
Mizpah: A really good man would understand why. In a nutshell (and nuts are good for you too), all of something, or someone, might be good for you but concentrations of some of the parts might kill you.
Joseph: There is coded message there but let’s stick to real sugar, not imaginary ones.
Mizpah: All sugars are not equal. Table sugar is sucrose. Sucrose itself is made from two other types of sugars: glucose and fructose. The key sources of fructose are fruits, vegetables, and honey. Fructose is the sweetest of all naturally occurring carbohydrates. It is about 1.73 times sweeter than sucrose, the common table sugar. Excess of any sugar is bad but excess fructose is so bad, it’s almost like a poison.
Jonathan: So, again, why are fruits, containing fructose, the sweetest of all natural sugars, so good, and sugars, including fructose, are so bad?
Joseph: I suspect we need another lesson in biochemistry.
Mizpah: Simply put, glucose is used by all cells of the body for energy and some of it is changed into fat or stored as glycogen in the liver. However, fructose is not used by any part of the body except the liver, where it is changed into fat and some other bad things.
Joseph: It’s complicated. Glucose causes insulin to decrease appetite. Fructose increases appetite. But excess glucose and excess insulin can also increase appetite. Too much of any sugar is bad.
Jonathan: Too much of anything. What is all the fuss about high fructose corn syrup?
Mizpah: High fructose corn syrup is in almost everything, from baby foods to soft drinks. It’s cheap and it is a good preservative for processed foods. But it’s not just high fructose corn syrup, since it actually has in fructose and glucose, almost like sucrose, the table sugar. It’s that we are using too much sugar.
Jonathan: I hear that fructose is almost like alcohol.
Mizpah: The liver handles them almost the same way, just that you don’t get a buzz from fructose.
Joseph: The way some children drink soft drinks you would think they get the buzz and are addicted to the fructose. Plus, fructose opens their appetite.
Mizpah: It’s not just soft drinks. Almost all sugary drinks, including fruit drinks, have added sugars.
Jonathan: So, again, why are fruits so good and the fructose in them is so bad?
Mizpah: You must eat the entire, natural fruit. When the fiber from the fruit is in your gut, it cuts down on the amount of fructose you absorb from your gut into your bloodstream and body.
Jonathan: So what happens to the remaining fructose in the gut?
Joseph: The bacteria in the gut act on it and change it into gas.
Mizpah: You have to know how and when to take your fructose or any kind of sugar. Take it in high doses in drinks and you get fat. Eat wholesome fruits and vegetables so that the fiber decreases the absorption of fructose. Be moderate. Eat too much fiber and sugar and you will make plenty gas and fart. That is why Dr. Robert H. Lustig, said that when God made the poison, fructose, it was packaged with the antidote, fiber. Fiber, unlike fructose, suppresses appetite. But again too much fiber with too much sugar will make you fart.
Joseph: Excess sugar makes you fat or fart. Stop drinking all those soft drinks and all those fruit juices too.
Jonathan: So I should eat an entire orange or local fruits, fiber and all, and drink water, for Christmas.
Mizpah: All the time. Eat properly or repair you body from fatness or excessive farting. Reparations again.
Jonathan: Why does everything with you always lead to reparations?
Joseph: Yes Mizpah, you pushing reparations too far. Reparations and food?
Mizpah: Food is all about choice and control. You have to look back and see the good, natural foods we used to eat in Africa before the European arrived, mainly vegetables and grains; very little meat, used mostly for flavouring. We had to change our diet by adding large amounts of salt, sugar and fat to make the junk food we ate during slavery more palatable for all the energy we had to put out. After slavery, some of us are trying to get back to good, natural foods, like the nutritious one-pot meal; like pepperpot.
Joseph: But the salt, sugar and fat remain along with salted pig tail, salted beef and salted fish.
Mizpah: Precisely. Until we refocus on our journey from Africa to here, how we survived, and regain control of our food, we are dead. Reparations are lined to food. Reparations will assist us at arriving at food security. We would eat more of our natural foods, stop importing so much junk, so much processed food with high fructose corn syrup, and stop financing the rich countries. The goose in not getting fat. It is fat.
Jonathan: The next thing I will hear about is reparations and Christmas.
Mizpah: Christmas, the celebration of the coming of Christ, not the comical, commercial celebration we practice, is all about reparations. But that is another story. I wish you a healthier 2010.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Murder Most Fowls and Most Other Animals
TEN TO ONE IS MURDER
Dr. Lester CN Simon
I have always wanted to be a detective. It all started with my fascination with the Green Lantern superhero and, more pedestrian, my absorption of Perry Mason novels, the first books without pictures that I had read. At first, all I wanted to do was to catch the crooks and show them how smart I was. Now, all I want to do is to understand why we have crooks, and reveal how I am not so smart after all.
My fascination with crime detection was peaked in Jamaica. I had done my medical internship at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) in 1977 and during my six months on general surgery and orthopaedics, a strange association occupied my time and space, living adjacent to the hospital. It was the sound of gunshot from the neighbourhood and the subsequent ring of the telephone. Since then, I have always looked to Jamaica to find the causes and solutions to the crime wave soaring across the Caribbean. But I have been looking in the wrong place. Let’s go north and examine the greatest country on earth, the land of the free and the brave, the murder capital of the world, the United States of America.
It was reported by Jill Lepore in the November 9, 2009 edition of The New Yorker that “The United States has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom, and six times that of Germany”. Might we in the Caribbean learn something from America regarding why one country is more murderous than another?
One of the theories reported by Lepore to explain the long decline of the murder rate in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present is the civilizing process. Simply put, this refers to a gamut of behaviours that require physical restraint and self-control. Importantly, it also reflects the “growing power of the centralizing state to disarm civilians, control violence, enforce law and order, and, broadly, to hold a monopoly on the use of force”.
How then does the United States fit into this mold? The American homicide rate has always been higher than Europe’s, even from the start. The reasons put out by some Europeans is that Americans have not undergone the same civilizing process (some might say outright that American are not civilized). The argument goes on that democracy came too soon to America. The suggestion is that, unlike in America, by the time democracy came to Europe, the populace had accepted the authority of the state.
It is argued that the American Revolution happened before Americans got used to the idea of a state monopoly on force. Americans have not only preserved the right for individuals to bear arms (rather than yielding this right to a strong central government). They still have medieval manners such as impulsiveness, crudeness and a belief in a culture of honour. In the case of the latter, Europeans are said to have replaced the culture of honour with a culture of dignity.
The lesson from this comparison between Europe and America is that we West Indians may be more American than we think. No matter how we try to avoid it, we seem to be forever circling the roundabout of how we build a society from slavery and colonialism, from a culture of honour in which “dissing” can cause your death, to a culture of dignity,without addressing reconciliation and reparations.
Recently, I heard the head of the Observer Group say that he was not interested in reparations, all he wanted was opportunities. I used to say the same thing, until I came to the conclusion that individual opportunities will be given, and I have been a beneficiary of the same, but collective opportunities require a seminal shift from a culture of dishonour (slavery) through a culture of honour (post slavery) to a culture of dignity (the future). Collectively, only reparations can do that for all us, West Indians and former colonials within and without the West Indies.
Crudeness can be rampant and subtle. I recall apologizing to a medical student friend after a movie for hitting him very hard during an action scene in the movie. He promptly, told me not to worry because, obviously unbeknownst to me, he had returned the favour in excessive measure. Crudeness applies to the way we eat (no more finger-licking chicken?) and terms we use, like “box off” a plate of food. It also applies to how we treat our womenfolk, directed, as we are, to either make her walk and talk, or “gee she work fu do”, with all the burning flames consuming her.
Some researchers say that the prevalence of guns in America does not support the high murder rate in America. Lepore noted that some scholars have suggested that laws allowing concealed weapons actually lower the murder rate. I recall the first (and only) time a gun was pointed in my face. My entire life passed in a slow-motion flash before me, like a movie, popcorn (with butter), soft drinks and cartoons included. The lasting effect is still present.
Lepore lists other theories for the high murder rate in America. Four other factors mentioned were, mobility, federalism, slavery and tolerance. Mobility has fractured the social fabric that used to bind society together; plus criminals can escape more easily, or blend in so well amongst a crowd of strangers in a small town like St. John’s, with a crowd of football fans peeping.
Federalism is said to be a weak form of government. There are other forms of weak government, such as West Indians in a small (place) state, disrespecting politicians and politicians allowing disrespect as a currency for being local, colloquial and for obtaining votes. Slavery, Lepore argues, rationalized a culture of violence. Tolerance, speak for itself here. From tolerating bad driving, bad roads, bad service, to bad credit, bad behavior, bad debt, bad death, and murder.
One remarkable point Lepore makes would be seen as racist, were it leveled at West Indian. She makes it in reference to Americans. One of the theories she mentions, leads her to conclude that Americans are medieval and backward and warlike, because they became free before they learnt how to control themselves. Risking the loss of friends, I wish to say the very same thing about post-slavery, post-colonial West Indian society. But I have a caveat.
Whenever freedom comes, it must be grasped with hands and feet and whatever else. Freedom must be wrestled away from the enemy, taken and celebrated. Immediately thereafter, the real battle to win the war begins. The battle is to build a society so that we can move from an disparate, murderous ten to one to an attempted oneness of civility, accepting as our battle cry that we will still be imperfect, but less so.
Dr. Lester CN Simon
I have always wanted to be a detective. It all started with my fascination with the Green Lantern superhero and, more pedestrian, my absorption of Perry Mason novels, the first books without pictures that I had read. At first, all I wanted to do was to catch the crooks and show them how smart I was. Now, all I want to do is to understand why we have crooks, and reveal how I am not so smart after all.
My fascination with crime detection was peaked in Jamaica. I had done my medical internship at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) in 1977 and during my six months on general surgery and orthopaedics, a strange association occupied my time and space, living adjacent to the hospital. It was the sound of gunshot from the neighbourhood and the subsequent ring of the telephone. Since then, I have always looked to Jamaica to find the causes and solutions to the crime wave soaring across the Caribbean. But I have been looking in the wrong place. Let’s go north and examine the greatest country on earth, the land of the free and the brave, the murder capital of the world, the United States of America.
It was reported by Jill Lepore in the November 9, 2009 edition of The New Yorker that “The United States has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom, and six times that of Germany”. Might we in the Caribbean learn something from America regarding why one country is more murderous than another?
One of the theories reported by Lepore to explain the long decline of the murder rate in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present is the civilizing process. Simply put, this refers to a gamut of behaviours that require physical restraint and self-control. Importantly, it also reflects the “growing power of the centralizing state to disarm civilians, control violence, enforce law and order, and, broadly, to hold a monopoly on the use of force”.
How then does the United States fit into this mold? The American homicide rate has always been higher than Europe’s, even from the start. The reasons put out by some Europeans is that Americans have not undergone the same civilizing process (some might say outright that American are not civilized). The argument goes on that democracy came too soon to America. The suggestion is that, unlike in America, by the time democracy came to Europe, the populace had accepted the authority of the state.
It is argued that the American Revolution happened before Americans got used to the idea of a state monopoly on force. Americans have not only preserved the right for individuals to bear arms (rather than yielding this right to a strong central government). They still have medieval manners such as impulsiveness, crudeness and a belief in a culture of honour. In the case of the latter, Europeans are said to have replaced the culture of honour with a culture of dignity.
The lesson from this comparison between Europe and America is that we West Indians may be more American than we think. No matter how we try to avoid it, we seem to be forever circling the roundabout of how we build a society from slavery and colonialism, from a culture of honour in which “dissing” can cause your death, to a culture of dignity,without addressing reconciliation and reparations.
Recently, I heard the head of the Observer Group say that he was not interested in reparations, all he wanted was opportunities. I used to say the same thing, until I came to the conclusion that individual opportunities will be given, and I have been a beneficiary of the same, but collective opportunities require a seminal shift from a culture of dishonour (slavery) through a culture of honour (post slavery) to a culture of dignity (the future). Collectively, only reparations can do that for all us, West Indians and former colonials within and without the West Indies.
Crudeness can be rampant and subtle. I recall apologizing to a medical student friend after a movie for hitting him very hard during an action scene in the movie. He promptly, told me not to worry because, obviously unbeknownst to me, he had returned the favour in excessive measure. Crudeness applies to the way we eat (no more finger-licking chicken?) and terms we use, like “box off” a plate of food. It also applies to how we treat our womenfolk, directed, as we are, to either make her walk and talk, or “gee she work fu do”, with all the burning flames consuming her.
Some researchers say that the prevalence of guns in America does not support the high murder rate in America. Lepore noted that some scholars have suggested that laws allowing concealed weapons actually lower the murder rate. I recall the first (and only) time a gun was pointed in my face. My entire life passed in a slow-motion flash before me, like a movie, popcorn (with butter), soft drinks and cartoons included. The lasting effect is still present.
Lepore lists other theories for the high murder rate in America. Four other factors mentioned were, mobility, federalism, slavery and tolerance. Mobility has fractured the social fabric that used to bind society together; plus criminals can escape more easily, or blend in so well amongst a crowd of strangers in a small town like St. John’s, with a crowd of football fans peeping.
Federalism is said to be a weak form of government. There are other forms of weak government, such as West Indians in a small (place) state, disrespecting politicians and politicians allowing disrespect as a currency for being local, colloquial and for obtaining votes. Slavery, Lepore argues, rationalized a culture of violence. Tolerance, speak for itself here. From tolerating bad driving, bad roads, bad service, to bad credit, bad behavior, bad debt, bad death, and murder.
One remarkable point Lepore makes would be seen as racist, were it leveled at West Indian. She makes it in reference to Americans. One of the theories she mentions, leads her to conclude that Americans are medieval and backward and warlike, because they became free before they learnt how to control themselves. Risking the loss of friends, I wish to say the very same thing about post-slavery, post-colonial West Indian society. But I have a caveat.
Whenever freedom comes, it must be grasped with hands and feet and whatever else. Freedom must be wrestled away from the enemy, taken and celebrated. Immediately thereafter, the real battle to win the war begins. The battle is to build a society so that we can move from an disparate, murderous ten to one to an attempted oneness of civility, accepting as our battle cry that we will still be imperfect, but less so.
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