Why We Should at Least Think About Boycotting Apple

I am an IBM user. But it is just a fluke of my technological education. Had I first been introduced to computer technology through the Macintosh, I would be an Apple lover I’m sure. I don’t own an iPhone or an iPad. Not because of any ethical stance or loyalty to another brand, but because I’m broke and making myself use what I have. I’ve envied my colleagues who've used Apple products for decades. So cool, so sexy. Even now, there are all those apps that can be downloaded and no more paper files to carry from meeting to meeting.

I first I heard about the human rights violations in China from  Mr. Daisey. Like Steve Jobs and Apple, I ignored him. Then I read a full expose in The New York Times here, which was followed by this in the L.A. Times and this in The Guardian. I was initially surprised to hear that Apple’s manufacturing plants in China were so deplorable. I don’t know why I associated Apple with earth friendly and humanitarian issues. Maybe it was because Steve Jobs seemed like a New Age man, with his eye well into the 21^st century. My husband, a scientist, tells me I shouldn’t be surprised because Research (which Jobs headed) is totally separate from Manufacturing (which I suppose is headed by someone else). Jobs may or may not have known about what was happening, but from a scientist’s perspective, my husband assures me, one can understand why Jobs would be oblivious.

I have many, many friends and colleagues who are loyal and devoted Apple users, and my intention is not to deny them their tools. But when Guy Debord writes about the future of capitalism manifesting itself in the spectacle of technology, where we appear more connected but are actually more alienated (from the conditions of others around the world?), the strange paradox he points out is not so strange after all. What is going on in China is no different from the Western Imperial impulse of the 19^th century to bring spices, teas, silks, gold, as well as beautiful and refined objects home to the mother country. This time, though, it’s Technological Colonialism, where we mine for abstract human effort rather than raw materials to make the objects we find so awesome.

Jobs’ genius was to show us the beautiful and aesthetic qualities of his technological innovations, to make us think that beauty and pleasure reside in technology. Like a hard gem-like flame that hangs in front of our eyes, Jobs' rhetoric of aestheticism mystifies and seduces. I’m not asking that people give up their Apple gadgets (as though it were even possible), but that we should at least think about the global cost of our avant-garde sensibilities. Ultimately, it will be the Apple devotees who make the difference.

The New Year in Las Vegas

The Las Vegas local news reports the New Year has been good for our town. Hotels are at a 95% occupancy rate and the holiday brought in tens of thousands of visitors, up for the third year in a row. We have suffered greatly during this Great Recession, so the news bodes well for 2012.

However, I wasn’t at the Strip for New Year’s Eve, never have been. It’s the equivalent to going to Times Square in NYC. I never did that either. My New Year was spent at home. My husband cooked for my daughter and mother and me what he cooks best—chicken cacciatore. I baked an apple pie and provided a nice 2005 Pinot Noir. We were all in bed before midnight.

I have never been one for New Year resolutions, so I won’t make any here. But I have a very big year coming up (which you will hear about in later posts), and I’m getting old (which you will also here about in later posts), so I’m determined to make time for the things I’ve wanted to do for myself. This blog is one of them.

After reading a blog about blogs here, I learned three very important things. First, a blog is about making new friends. Okay, I can get with that, who can’t use a few extra friends? The second is that my readers are looking for information. Third, that the blog should have a focus. As you can tell from the bio I tagged my blog with, “an East coast girl writes about books, food, family, and life in the desert Southwest,” I have lots of information to give and not so much focus. The last suggestion from my blog about blogs is to plan the subjects of my posts and to set deadlines. So my goal this year is to write one post per month and to limit each entry to 500 words (so as not to bore you, my dear reader).

Here are some titles of posts I hope to bring to you this year:

Walking on the Ocean Floor                                        

Cheddar Cheese Scones

Turtlehead Peak

Hieroglyphs: A Review

Virginia Woolf Comes to Vegas

Spectacle in the Desert

My Nuclear Family

Street Names

New York City from the Other Side

Adventures in Technology

How Public Libraries Saved My Life

It is a potpourri of delightful topics. Who knows what else 2012 will bring and that’s the fun of it, I guess. Like writing itself, the year will only unfold as I enter into it. So here’s to us, my friends, a toast to a New Year, to unknown opportunities and unthought-of experience, to love, to passion, to creativity.

Happy New Year to you all from a Vegas of my own.

Welcome to My World

When I graduated in 1992 from a private New York City university with a Ph.D. in English literature, I was ready to be employed. As usual, there were no jobs in the humanities, but I did not give up. Looking in my library at all the books on Virginia Woolf (the topic of my dissertation), I found which cities the publishers were in, called information for their phone numbers, and then asked for the editors and  what they wanted me to submit. Lo and behold, one press, a good one at the time, sent me a contract after looking at my material. This was the beginning of my new life.

I was unmarried and desperate for work, so I was open to moving anywhere. Staying in the Northeast was my greatest desire, but parts of the South were okay, and even the Midwest or California had possibilities. There were also the places I wouldn't go. Not Florida, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Alaska, Montana, or Idaho. One place not on either list was Las Vegas, Nevada. But when I sent out my 50+ applications and went on my painful on-campus interviews, it was a large public university in Las Vegas that offered me the job.

June came around and I was packed and ready to go (they had summer school teaching for me). I left the East coast and looked out my airplane window at the stretch of homes, businesses, and highways that are NYC and its surroundings.  When I arrived in Las Vegas (after looking out the window only to see nothing but desert on initial descent), a new colleague, who offered to let me stay at her home in Blue Diamond (just outside of Las Vegas), picked me up. As we stepped out of the air conditioned elevator into the parking garage a wave of dry heat overwhelmed me. Through the concrete poles of the garage I could see the lights of the LV Strip, foreign and disorienting, and my colleague, waving her arm with a flourish of delight cried, "Welcome to your new desert home!"

At the time, I resented the statement. My plan was to leave as soon as I found another position. Not in my wildest imagination did I ever think I would be here 17 years later. I would like to tell you how this East coast girl survived her struggle to adjust to the life and landscape of the desert Southwest, but that would be a lie. I still struggle with the place that has given me so much--an awesome job teaching Virginia Woolf, a daughter who is a native of this place, a husband who allows me the structure and time to be creative, and friends who laugh at my jokes and with whom I share secrets.

In spite of myself here I am, living in a Vegas of my own. And you, too, are welcome to it.