Model Citizen

City bus banner

Gazing Hooters invitation through my windshield

A model citizen no doubt

Prepared to giggle and tickle my testicles

You gorilla vision to sugar scene

Relishing in tiled shower, I move to hold hair and

Sample vanilla silicon

But sight rolls in a different lane

I fondle steering wheel

O mind of merit!

Give passion to poster and pours to eyes

The better to embrace…

Gasp! You reach out past glass and dashboard

To feel, to caress, to delight

Hand nears my chest, abs, lower, lower please…

But no brushed touch erects

Instead fingers of raw and meddle

Desires to thrust cooled by air-conditioning and

The stink of fried poultry

I once walked under nocturnal eyes

Taking water and fries

I sat amongst great men doused in their Thursday’s best

We called upon you, asking for apple pie

And your teeth flashed like billboards

A gasoline flow

The cycle of statues runs deep into our animality and

Beyond comprehension

Inspiring heights and doubt

Shall statue be blamed for lust

Or lips that kiss it?

Patron desires sculpture

Sculpture grows from desire

Where does power lie

In a symbiotic paradox?

And so, as red turns green I hoot

“My dear lady

What is a golden owl, but a golden calf?

What is a poster, but a mirror?”

Copies of World War Me are still available. Contact etrotter(at)themelononline(dot)com if interested.

“Are you comfortable with soft and hardcore pornography?” Melissa, one of my interviewers, asked me in a whisper.  “Since ten years old,” I replied.  She and Sandeep, my other interviewer, started laughing as they exchanged approving nods.  They made it clear from when I first sat down that a sense of humor is important when you edit porn for a living.  It’s one of those professions where you need to keep yourself constantly removed from your work in order to not feel like the scum of society.  Normally, I wouldn’t have bothered interviewing for such a position, but this wasn’t some shady porn site- this was Playboy.  And even though I went into their corporate office thinking they didn’t make hardcore pornography, it turned out they own several companies that do.

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The Melon’s Jack Faust meets with Aurora Jewell and Erin Ward from Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and discusses its missions, services and recent struggles during our current economic climate.

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Aurora was kind enough to hit us up with some clarifications and additional information about Planned Parenthood.

Websites:

• Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest www.ppgnw.org People can schedule appointments, find volunteer opportunities, explore ways to take action for reproductive rights, down load the Speaking of Sex Podcast and get comprehensive, medically accurate information about reproductive health in Washington State.

Health Care for All March-Mothers Leading the Way! www.may30marech.org We will be mobilizing volunteers to go to the march. If people would like to go to the March with Planned Parenthood they can email us at ppactionwa@ppgnw.org

Regarding Plan B

Men can purchase Plan B without prescription at Planned Parenthood who meet the legal age requirement for purchasing Plan B. The age for purchasing Plan B over the counter, without prescription was 18 but has recently changed to 17 years of age. However, Plan B is not being dispensed over the counter to 17 year olds just yet because the marketing materials and new labels have to be approved by the FDA. This is a common practice when laws change around prescription medications and we do not know how long that process will take. Until then, Plan B can be purchased over the counter, without prescription by women 18 years and older.

Regarding Human Papiloma Virus (HPV) Treatment

HPV stands for human papilloma virus. There are more than 100 types of HPV. Some types produce warts – plantar warts on the feet and common hand warts. About 40 types of HPV can infect the genital area -the vulva, the vagina, cervix, rectum, anus, penis or scrotum. Genital HPV infections are very common. HPV is so common that about half of all men and more than 3 out of 4 women have HPV at some point in their lives. But most people who have HPV don’t know it. In fact-

· Most HPV infections have no harmful effect at all

· Some types of HPV may cause genital warts. These are called low-risk types of HPV

· Some types of HPV may cause cell changes that sometimes lead to cervical cancer and certain other genital and throat cancers. These are called high-risk types.

Genital warts can be removed with various genital warts treatments. A person should talk with their health care provider to decide which treatment might be best for them. There is currently no HPV treatment to cure HPV itself. Most HPV infections are harmless, do not require treatment, and go away by themselves. Treatment is available for the abnormal cell changes in the cervix that are caused by HPV. Common treatments include colposcopy, cryotherapy, and LEEP. For more information about HPV please visit our website at ppgnw.org

Regarding the Gardasil Vaccine and Minor Consent

There is no consent for minors when obtaining the Gardasil vaccination in Washington State because it is a vaccination that prevents a sexually transmitted infection. In Washington State, a person can access reproductive health care services without parental consent. However, for all other immunizations minors would need to obtain parental consent unless the minor met the criteria for the Mature Minor Doctrine. You can learn more about minor consent laws in Washington State by visiting http://www.lawhelp.org/documents/216941minors_health_care_rights.pdf?stateabbrev=/WA/

Regarding Planned Parenthood’s History

Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, opened the first birth control clinic in 1916; it was located in New York City. The first Planned Parenthood Health Center in Washington was opened in 1945 and was located in Seattle. For more than 90 years, Planned Parenthood has promoted commonsense approach to women’s health and well-being, based on respect for each individual’s right to make informed, independent decisions about sex, health, and family planning.

Regarding coming to Planned Parenthood

When a person is in of need medical care, birth control, education or information, Planned Parenthood is here to help. As the largest reproductive health care provider in the Northwest, Planned Parenthood has been providing services for men and women since 1935. We have 21 health centers throughout Western Washington. We provide services for anyone seeking birth control, STI testing and treatment, cancer screening and other preventative care. Our professional staff and experienced counselors give patients up-to-date information and the opportunity to discuss their personal needs. Everything is confidential. We provide services for all people regardless of income, whether they are insured or not insured.

Regarding the Take Charge Program

All Planned Parenthood Health Centers in Western Washington participate in the Take Charge program with free family planning services for women and men without current Medicaid or other insurance.

To qualify for Take Chare, a person must provide proof of:

· A gross (before taxes are taken out) income at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty level.

· U.S. citizenship (such as a birth certificate or U.S. passport or be able to provide information about where and when you were born). You may also be eligible if you have a green card and have been a permanent resident for at least 5 years

· Washington State residency.

A person would need to bring all documentation with them to the Planned Parenthood Health Center on the day of their visit.

If a person were to qualify for Take Charge, Family Planning services at no cost to them would include:

· Annual exam and counseling

· Birth control pills, Depo-Provera, IUD, condoms, foam, contraceptive patch, vaginal ring, diaphragm

· Emergency Contraception

· Vasectomy or tubal ligation (sterilization)

Family Planning service coverage is good for one full year. A person may reapply each year for additional coverage. Fees may apply for visits that are not for Family Planning.

In a not-so-surprising-but-still-fascinating twist, researcher Cristina Gomes, along with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, recorded chimpanzees trading sex for food in the Tai Forest of the Ivory Coast.

In a June 2004 Wenner-Gren Foundation grant study, she and her colleagues recorded grooming, aggression, aggressive support, food sharing, and copulations as traded biological commodities on the meat market.  Male and female chimps groomed other chimps that groomed them in return, supporting Cristina’s original hypothesis that grooming suggests an exchangeable complex biological market.

Her second study, published this week on April 8th, shows an interesting tweak on her commodities  market theory: since females do not often hunt other animals, they trade sex in exchange for meat.  Cristina wrote in PLoS ONE, “The meat-for-sex hypothesis aims at explaining these cases by proposing that males and females exchange meat for sex, which would result in males increasing their mating success and females increasing their caloric intake without suffering the energetic costs and potential risk of injury related to hunting.”

Not only is this observation fascinating, but the long-term effects, as well.  Males do share meat for sex, but they are also sharing … for the sake of sharing, which means in the long run, they get more sex since they cultivate their female counterparts.  As the females get more protein in their diet, they are more likely to come into estrous, and once pregnant, carry a healthier offspring.  Survival of the fittest, a natural phenomenon that occurs in all life, is outplayed here as the gene pool expands and a sharing male’s genetic spawn continue the same tradition … if they are smart, that is.

Anthropologists must be all over this study, to determine if men will have a greater copulative success rate by  bringing better quality produce home from local farmer’s markets.  Sharing is caring.

It is a biological fascination to make connections between species, especially when they can be directly related to the human experience.  If male chimps cultivate a food caretaker mentality, how do human  males outplay a similar enactment?  How do human females respond, and what, exactly, is it that women are looking for in a man?  It is the eternal question that neither sex may fully be able to pie graph for one other.

While chimps trade meat for sex, women get bigger, better, and more orgasms if their partner has a good chunk of money available.  In another fascinating study, Dr. Thomas Pollet, a Newcastle University psychologist who, frankly, is quite young himself, recently submitted research that suggested “the wealthier a man is, the more frequently his partner has orgasms.”  Pollet believes this phenomena is an evolutionary adaptation, hard-wired into women, “suggesting that women are inherently programmed to be gold-diggers.”

And meat shoppers, but of course, not their own meat–man’s meat.

You heard it here, The Melon.

The Melon’s current discussion topic gives me a chance to write about Wendell Berry, an author I’ve loved for a while. Berry is a prolific non-fiction, short story, novel, and poetry writer, so I’m never sure how to discuss his various themes, but since The Melon wants different perspectives on the family, I’ll discuss Berry’s views, most with which I agree.

Of all the structures in society, the nuclear family is the one to which Berry thinks people owe the most responsibility. By default, average American adults must interact with at least a handful of structures: the government, their workplace, their local community, and their family (to name a few). An individual’s responsibilities to these groups inevitably, at some point, come into conflict with each another. “Fidelity” is the story in which Berry most clearly describes his view on the family as the paramount structure in society. In this story, Danny’s father, an old man named Burley, is in the hospital, in a coma. The hospital staff says he may still be cured, but Danny knows that Burley is old and dying and would want to die on his own land near his family. So Danny steals Burley from the hospital, takes him home, is with him when he dies, then buries him. The state puts a detective on the case who wants to find evidence of the “kidnapping,” so he can prosecute the family for acting against the hospital’s wishes. But Burley’s family and a few of his close friends confront the detective, and their comments make him question the legitimacy of his investigation. These two examples show the two different perspectives:

“And you, [Detective Bode], are here now to tell us that a person who is sick and unconscious, or even a person who is conscious and well, is ultimately a property of the organizations and the state. Aren’t you?”

“It wasn’t authorized. He asked nobody’s permission. He told nobody. He signed no papers. It was a crime. You can’t let people just walk around an do what they want to like that. He didn’t even pay the bill.”

“Some of us think people belong to each other and to God.”

In that scene, Berry poses a dilemma: To whom does an individual ultimately belong? To the government or to the people who love him? The characters who speak for Berry argue the later, although Bode does have a point that a family shouldn’t be able to get away with just anything, just because they’re family.

And later:

“A fellow would need [the hospital’s] permission to get in. If he needs their permission to get out, he’s in jail. Would you grant a proprietary right, or even a guardianship, to a hospital that you would not grant to a man’s own son? I would oppose that, whatever the law said.”

“Well, anyway,” Detective Bode said, “all I know is that the law has been broken, and I am here to serve the law.”

“But, my dear boy, you don’t eat or drink the law, or sit in its shade or warm yourself by it, or wear it, or have your being in it. The law exists only to serve.”

“Serve what?”

“Why, all the many things that are above it. Love.”

Every time I read this passage (I wish I could quote the whole thing), I have an aha moment. The law should not simply legislate indifferently, it should serve. The state deals indirectly, not directly, with eating and drinking and warming and clothing. The government, an abstract entity, should give deference to individuals. (More on that later.) This principle, as most principles, looks different in different situations, but I would rather the state be in allegiance to the family than the family be in allegiance to the state. (As a student of Russia, the Soviet structure comes to mind as a system in which the family had to make allegiance to the state their priority.)

Berry is not an anarchist; he is a tax-paying, voting citizen, active and vocal in his community and the nation, especially in matters of farming and food production (He’s had a large influence on the writer Michael Pollan). But he knows that the other societal structures exist only to serve the family, whereas many live, maybe unconsciously, that the family is secondary to their obligations to other groups in society.

Berry thinks government can hinder or break apart the family; he also thinks higher education can potentially have the same negative impact. When a young person leaves for college, she often breaks apart from her family and community, often never to return. Berry thinks colleges have become isolated centers of learning instead of entities which prepare locals to interact with their community, the initial impetus of many colleges.

In Berry’s novel, Hannah Coulter, an elderly Hannah laments that her two sons and a daughter are spread out across the country, and she attributes their location to her insistence that they pursue higher education. She then compares her and her husband’s attitude toward education to her neighbor family’s attitude:

December 1 is World AIDS Day, a day in which countries, individuals, and organizations around the world come together to stop the global epidemic. While not all research and changes in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention can be summarized here, I will do my best to provide a snapshot of the state of HIV/AIDS in 2008.

Background:

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) originated in chimpanzees in Africa. However, most cases of SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus) affect only chimpanzees in captivity; other primates such as sooty mangabeys can live with SIV in their bodies to no ill effect. The earliest human case found was from a blood sample in 1959 which had been taken for another purpose. Current research, however, estimates that the virus may have begun to evolve as early as 1900. HIV attacks the immune system and causes key immune cells, CD4 cells, to malfunction. HIV cannot be cured, though drugs can be used to slow its progress. When certain vital immune cell counts fall below a threshold, HIV develops into Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). AIDS, in itself, does not kill; it provides an opening for secondary infections to invade the body. Tuberculosis is one of the most common secondary infections that currently kills AIDS victims.

There are several strains of HIV currently known, a few of which are resistant to anti-retroviral drugs. Each year the proportion of drug-resistant strains increases, in large part due to unsafe sexual behavior between HIV-positive partners. The drug methanphetamine (aka Tina, crystal, crystal meth) has also been implicated as a cause speeding up the process of HIV evolution among gay men in the United States.

HIV is a relatively difficult virus to acquire: malaria can be transmitted in mosquitoes, or the flu can be transmitted by breathing in air another person coughed into, but HIV cannot be transmitted in either of these ways. It can only be transmitted through blood to blood contact, contact with sexual fluids (e.g. semen, menstrual blood, and vaginal discharges coming in contact with tiny wounds, mucous membranes, and/or the cervix), and breastfeeding. HIV has a very high rate of co-infection with other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). For example, having herpes, even with no outbreaks, can significantly increase the risk of contracting HIV.

I have always wondered if humans were just a more evolved form of a dog, since dogs sniff each other’s back ends to get to “know” one another. It appears we are. Far from being a weak sense, our smellers are acute and as Josie Glausiusz says in “The Hidden Power of Scent”, scent “shapes our social interactions in ways we do not consciously realize.”  Our sophisticated society disdains body smells, instead choosing to mask themselves with Christian Doir, or Dolce, Gabbana perfume.

While visiting the Tulsa, Oklahoma symphony one year, I almost passed out from Old Woman Perfumes drowning me and fogging my brain with harsh chemicals. Thank god for hippie northwest, where petruli, “a hippie-used scent that smells just like sweat, ass, and body odor combined” rules the day. I believe people should use their sniffers and appreciate the different odors of people that make each unique and special, unless you are a sick bastard with really bad b.o., and in that case, I say that calling yourself a hippie doesn’t fly with me, pal.

Since scent shapes many social interactions, new exciting research has found out the perfect birth control for those who can no longer stay on the pill (a necessary deterrent to pregnancy for those participating in a “social interaction”.) The contraceptive pill can mask women’s ability to smell out her compatible partner, says Dr. Craig Roberts, who published his recent findings in the Royal Society Journal. This may be the best birth control in the long run, for Dr. Roberts says that once a woman goes off the pill (presumably to get pregnant), she starts smelling her mate for the first time, and realizes how repulsive he really is and leaves him.

The best animals for smell have usually been attributed to man’s best friend. Specially-bred Bloodhounds have about 300 times the number of odor-detecting cells in their noses that I have, and yet mine is still quite sophisticated. I know, because I am neither on the pill and I still believe my boyfriend is a gem, so his b.o. must be attractive, and not just to his mom. In contrast to dogs, we have roughly 12 million odor detecting cells, which are keen enough to enable some types of navigation as Neuroscientist Noam Sobel found out. He blackmailed 32 undergraduates to don earmuffs and blindfolds and crawl like stinkbugs across the grass, following the scent from a rope coated in chocolate. Two thirds of the suckers followed the 33-foot rope to the end. Dr. Sobel also found out that the more the participants practiced sniffing the rope, the more successful and faster they were in following the rope to the end.

According to recent research and Scientific American Mind, we use odors to evaluate potential partners. Many sex pheromones are secreted from the nipples, genitals and armpits and contain around 200 chemicals, which are then brewed by skin-dwelling bacteria and cause b.o.

Psychologist Denise Chen must have a fun job at Rice University, since she gets to sample armpit sweat from people who have watched both funny and scary movies, and then convinces other people to sniff. In a 2000 study, Chen concluded that volunteers could identify the odor of the scared people, and the odor of the happy people.

While researchers are finding more and more useful things our olfactory process picks up, we continue to bathe in cologne and perfumes. “It’s a puritanical hangover from a Victorian attitude about civilization, how people who are civilized and have any valuable contribution should be scent-free for the most part” and “during the 19^th century, smell was considered a bestial, animalistic sense.” Maybe the “bestial, animalistic” sense is true, after all. Found in male sweat and semen, androstadienone turns women on to increase sexual arousal. Neuroscientist Claire Wyart says that androstadienone changes the hormonal balance of women “providing first direct evidence that humans, like rats, moths and butterflies, secrete a scent that affects the physiology of the opposite sex.”

Maybe it is time to cast off our cannibalized smells and start smelling the natural world for the first time.  Maybe this will increase our abilities to find a compatible mate, or smell trouble, or taste food better.  Whatever the case, our olfactory process is vitally important to our biological evolution and ability to sense our world.

Breathe with me, smell me.

Image from http://flickr.com/photos/8136496@N05/

SPOILERS AHOY!

Every Friday I eagerly find a television to watch Battlestar Galactica. It’s on Sci-Fi, and it’s one of the best and most politically relevant shows I have ever heard of. It provides nearly up-to-the-minute commentary on hot button ethical issues as well as extended, deeper probing of more fundamental problems. For example, the end of the third season (Crossroads parts one and two, aired March 2007) featured the trial of a former state leader for war crimes – two months after the hanging of Saddam Hussein and in the midst of arrests of former leaders for war crimes in Cambodia, Chile, Argentina and other nations. The episodes also commented more broadly on the nature of justice and the almost guaranteed lack of it for the unpopular. Baltar’s acquittal was portrayed as a lucky accident, possibly caused by nepotism – raising further questions about whether the means matter in pursuing the end of justice.

But aside from the nuanced political and social commentary, Battlestar is amazingly anti-sexist (especially in a genre characterized by the sexualization of hot babes for the viewing pleasure of the socially inept). Until this week’s episode, that is, and for that matter last week’s.

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