'An Orgy of Consumption' The unspeakable is happening. After being wooed, stimulated, and encouraged in every possible manner to accumulate goods until they gradually, ineluctably clutter our homes, our basements, and finally our garages, the next bright idea is what? Consider moving some of it on, perhaps? Wrong! According to a recent article in The New York Times, a new fad urges us to hire a professional organizer specializing in ‘designer garages’. After we have over purchased, over spent and over accumulated mounds (often unused, if not useless) of consumer paraphernalia, now we are encouraged to further pay in order to get them organized! As expected, this new brand of service doesn’t come cheap: think between $8,000 and $12,000! But take heart, for this upscale service guarantees your ability to cram (and find) in your garage: pantry, lawn and garden supplies, sporting equipment, tools, weight bench, and yes, even your SUV! A deal, indeed! This new fad of organizing our clutter with sophistication is apparently based on our growing obsession for orderliness. I have to question this newly identified human ‘need’. Has it not, like many others, been simply created to appear indispensable to the mass when in fact, this ‘obsession’ may apply to a mere selected few? And read this: according to a survey by the Ikea furniture company reported by the National Association of Professional Organizers Website, 31 percent of respondents stated they got more satisfaction from cleaning a closet than from having sex! So I have to wonder: could humans be undergoing some morphing process where matter, ultimately, will take over mind completely, including their sex life? Again according to The New York Times, Peter Walsh, a psychologist who earned the job of celebrity organizer as host of the cable television program ‘Clean Sweep’, has expanded his focus from treating the symptoms of clutter to pondering its causes. ‘There is an orgy of consumption going on in this country’, says Mr. Walsh. In his book to be released later this year about the psychology of clutter, the author (sadly) acknowledges that ‘he is a lonely voice calling for a new era of American asceticism.’ It has long been proven that less is better and that ‘Small is beautiful’. Albeit wise, these challenging concepts may not have have made it into mainstream American thinking however. Well, at least not yet. Mr. Walsh concludes: ‘This is the Supersize-Me society. So it’s going to take a while.’ Designer garage, anyone?

One Writer's Love...

North Thompson River, British Columbia

Aline Lesage ©2003

I have no time now for anything but trying to love other people. That is a full-time job. To fill my writing with that will take everything I have. Anne Rice

Bravo, PBS!

Migrant Worker Huts, Okanogan, WA Aline Lesage ©2003

It’s a common saying: you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you come from. Considering the research tools now available, exploring one’s roots is no longer an unusually challenging feat. For many Americans of European descent who choose to initiate a search for their ancestry, the ambition to build a family tree is, in fact, a doable feat (for the beginner, the records at Ellis Island remain a well-documented and trustworthy source). All it requires is a healthy measure of patience along with a willingness to connect with a number of organizations, internet sites and/or distant family members having already gathered parts of the information. For many, as it turns out, assembling their family tree has become an entertaining and usually rewarding experience. But for many, many more, it is not so. In a series entitled African American Lives, the first of two parts which was aired on PBS last Wednesday night, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the masterly teller of this different story. With compassion, humour and superior skill, Mr. Gates leads us to an enlightening experience. Surely these tales of economic migrations, harrowing family separations and discontinuity are only too familiar, yet here they acquire an existential dimension not usually found in history books. In this impressive documentary, the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Quincy Jones and Whoopi Goldberg become models to demonstrate that a search of any African American’s ancestry is, at best, a startling, if not heroic endeavor. Thanks to the advancement of genetic sciences and genealogy however, this might be about to change. In the first episode of African American Lives, the stories of nine contemporary African Americans are traced to the nineteenth century, before emancipation. With the second episode to be aired next Wednesday, the excitement grows as it offers the promise of revelations that, for nine people at least, could bridge the crucial and appalling gap between two continents. It’s a sad enough truth that the ancestors of most African Americans never freely choose to immigrate to America. But, as this PBS series aptly demonstrates, their contemporaries are now being offered a small consolation. Finally, they may be given the extraordinary tools to learn, specifically, where it all happened, how it happened, and who they are.