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This morning I found a caterpillar in my plum, and as I had not expected to see it and had almost bitten its head off, I uttered a small shriek.
My husband laughed. “You see, this is why women can’t be presidents. You’re afraid of worms!”
I shot him a vile look, although I recognized the trademarked irony he uses to provoke me. “You know why men can’t be presidents?” I asked.
“No, why?”
“Never mind, I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“Oh, come on,” he pleaded. “My imagination is far more cruel than yours.”
‘That’s exactly why I will shut up now.”
Cruel imagination
Nespresso: sustainability or greenwashing?
Nespresso has published a brochure in which they present their ecolaboration program and their newly released Limited Edition coffee. They claim that this coffee is of a 100% triple A sustainable quality, and my first response was: good for them. But what does it actually mean? Triple A proves to be a trademark from Nespresso itself, so what they are telling me, is that they are able to produce a product according to their own quality standards. Bravo. According to some Dutch sources, those standards are unfortunately far below the Max Havelaar Fairtrade standards.
But before I rush out to unsubscribe myself from their club, I’m going to do a little more research, and I will follow the Clooney – Solidair case closely. For anyone who is interested in coffee giant policies, I recommand reading this blog. One particular article I liked, talks about Nespresso’s recycling efforts.
Clooney, Nespresso and the need for Fair Trade Coffee
The Swiss organization Solidar has set up a campaign to get Nestlé to switch its Nespresso Coffee to Fair Trade. A noble cause.
They do this by means of a public appeal to Mr. George Clooney: ‘[…] promoting a company that does nothing to stop the exploitation of coffee pickers is really not right. I would therefore like to ask you make Nestlé choose: either fair trade coffee or no more George Clooney in the Nespresso commercials.’
I watched the accompanying video yesterday and thought: that’s a pretty bold way to address someone. Wouldn’t Clooney respond more favorably if he had just received a direct request from Solidar? (Even if his contracts might prevent him from making any immediate changes?) But then I realized: if it hadn’t been so bold, no one would have shared the request or written about it.
A minute after I posted this blog and tweeted it, I received a reply from Nespresso on Twitter. They must really be concerned about the power of social media. This is their response.
P.S. I do sometimes drink Nespresso and I know little of Nestlé’s policies concerning Fair Trade. But thanks to Solidar, I will pay more attention to it in the future…
Diary of a Bad Year – Coetzee
In Diary of a Bad Year, Coetzee narrates the story of an elderly writer who meets a young woman in the communal laundry room and asks her to type out his essays. The book itself is interlaced with these essays and the young woman comments on them.
The first series of essays is mostly political. The second series deals with topics like writing, birds and Bach - often with a personal undertone. The young woman prefers the second series and when I first read the book I disagreed with her: the political essays are far more urgent. After reading the book for the second time, I must agree with her: the humanist essays are far more memorable.
Coetzee about ageing:
“My hip gave such pain that today I could not walk and could barely sit. Inexorably, day by day, the physical mechanism deteriorates. As for the mental apparatus, I am continually on the qui vive for broken cogs, blown fuses, hoping against hope that it will outlast its corporeal host. All old folk become Cartesians.”
Magical thinking
On the ever inspiring TED site, I recently viewed the talk ‘The origins of pleasure’ in which Psychologist Paul Bloom investigates our love of art and wonders why we like an original painting better than a forgery.
In his opinion is has to do with the history of the piece of art that somehow enriches our experience. Human beings are essentialists, he claims, and our beliefs about an object interfere with how we experience it. Before we can fully appreciate something, we need to know what it is, who made it, and where it comes from.
I don’t disagree with his theory, but I think that something is missing. Why do we feel betrayed when we discover that we have been looking at a forgery? Not only because our assumptions were wrong, and we are staring at an object with a different, less interesting, history. It’s also because we are magical thinkers.
When I’m standing in front of a painting in a museum and I observe the details from up close, or when I place my hand (when allowed) on a marble statue, I secretly believe that the genius of the artist is still present in his or her work, and that by approaching it, a bit of that genius might jump over to me. An original work of art could therefore inspire us, as a forgery cannot.
But perhaps we have become too rational to admit to this type of thinking. Being an essentialist is much easier to accept.
Holiday 2011 – A letter to our neighbors in room 8
Dear neighbors,
Due to the paper thin walls in this charming hotel and the good condition of your vocal cords, we couldn’t help overhearing your recent attempts to communicate with each other and we were saddened by the end result (i.e. slamming doors and screaming). Please forgive us for being so bold, but we believe we might be of some service to you. Being professional writers, we have constructed and analyzed quite a few dialogues and have learned what makes speech and non-verbal communication effective. We decided to write down some free advice that might improve your skills.
To John: repeating the exact same phrase with the exact same intonation over and over again is not a good idea, unless you want your partner to think that you are mentally impaired or dangerously psycho. After saying: ‘Open the door now, Sarah!’, you might want to try: ‘Let me in please, so we can talk.’ Or: ‘Sarah dear, locking me out is not a solution. Please open the door, so we can look each other in the eye.’ Your next phrase: ‘All right, I’m off!’ did not contain sufficient amounts of information for your partner to draw any conclusions. If you had said: ‘I can hear you are really angry right now, so I’m going to leave you alone for a bit and will be back in half an hour,’ Sarah might have understood your point of view. Or you could have tried: ‘I’m too angry to talk at the moment. See you in a bit.’ However your action, leaving, was a good move in our opinion. It gave you both some time to cool off.
To Sarah: trying to win a debate while hysterically crying is generally speaking not an efficient tactic. It’s better to breath in deep to calm yourself and stick to short and easy phrases, like: ‘Please leave me alone for a while.’ Or: ‘I can’t talk right now.’ Another pointer: you have a strong tendency to interrupt your partners speech, but when you ask a question like ‘Why do you always blame me?’ and someone is actually in the act of trying to answer that question, you will not speed things up by interrupting him with the question ‘Why do you always blame me?’ (By the way, you both fall for these endless repetitions and we wondered: who started it? )
As we couldn’t figure out what you were fighting over, we don’t know whether Sarah had the moral right to temporarily lock John out, but as one last bit of advice to both of you we would like to say: yelling with a closed door between you is not recommendable. It brings out the worst in you, and in your neighbors.
Regards, Claire and Daniel.
Truth and Imaginations
A birthday dinner party somewhere on the right bank. After a few bottles of champagne in the lounge area, all the guests assemble around a heavy oval shaped table: five women, four men and one teenage boy. While waiting for the fish, that needs some extra oven-time, we struggle over a topic to engage us all, and someone mentions the magic abbreviation DSK.
Now at this time, pretty much the whole world is convinced the man is guilty. But the French still heavenly defend him. They might assume some questionable behavior – where there is smoke there must be some fire – but nobody at the dinner table believes in rape. They are all members of the un-united anti-Sarkozy front, which has probably played a role in the formation of these beliefs. “Did you know,” the host asks, “that the head of the NY police department is very close friends with our president?”
So what, according to them, has happened? One of the women has an instant scenario ready. “I don’t know who’s behind it,” she says, “and I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but it’s obvious that this man was framed. Or it was a freak accident. As I see it, DSK called an escort service from his hotel room and received three proposals: they could send a girl dressed up as a rabbit, as a pirate, or as a chambermaid. Next scene: a girl comes in, dressed in a chambermaid uniform, and the man makes his advances. When the girl rejects him, he states clearly that he does not like it rough, but that his credit card was charged and he does expect some service. Next scene…”
“Let’s leave it that,” the father of the teenage boy intervenes, and we all laugh.
“I see it very differently, though,” a male guest says. “It must have been one of those physical comedy episodes, where a rather innocent move of one person, leads to a spontaneous response from someone else, and by the end of it all, they are caught up in a chaotic dance that spins out of control. Imagine, for example, that DSK was in his hotel room alone, perhaps a little bit too alone, so he goes into the bathroom in his robe and…” He looks at the teenager across from him. “Excusez-moi, but I have to say this: he starts to masturbate. Being caught up in the act, he does not hear the knock on the door and is subsequently deaf to the maid coming into the room to clean up. Only after he is finished, he hears something and kicks open the bathroom door to see where the noise is coming from. The maid yells, and he launches forward to calm her, forgetting his current state of soiled nudity. Of course this act inspires more panic and…”
“We get the picture,” the mother of the teenage boy says. “Could anyone help me carry the fish to the table?”
Following the current events unfold, I keep wondering what has really happened. Will the truth be as comical as these French imaginations? I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed.