Thursday, March 30, 2006

The Power of One Person's Story



Here we have Abdul Rahman who converted to Christianity 15 years ago, came back to Afghanistan in recent years and was almost hanged for apostasy. (How often do you get to use THAT word?)

I'm glad the guy got out alive. The Pope even came to his rescue. But this really highlights to me the bizarre nexxus of government and personal PR. From Terri Schiavo to Elian Gonzales to Abdul Rahman (hey, aren't popes involved in all these stories?), we have governments waking up and smelling the coffee time and time again for one person who has a publicity machine behind them, conveniently ignoring the larger issues the stories represent.

It sure was easier to tell the story of the warring Schiavo factions than it is to deal with end of life issues and Americans' fear of death. It was easier to strong-arm the Afghan government to let this guy off and have him whisked away to Italy than it is to deal with the fact that we're building and paying for a government there that doesn't believe in religious freedom.

I guess with a president who constantly reminds us that what he's doing "is hard work!!" we can't really expect him or his cronies to really DO the hard work of diplomacy or good governance that's required to fix these things. And of course I LOVED his coming back from vacation early to sign into law the Terri Schiavo Interference with the Will of the Coma Victim law. That was hard work that played well to his base.

So it annoys me when his ilk blames everything on the media, when we're learning time and time again that if you don't get media, you don't get attention from your elected leaders. Media = power if you don't have money. And if you've got religion on your side, you can surely get the contributions to pay for the media attention.

It seems the answer to all our problems is to get one person who's a great example of every issue facing us, then have a tragedy befall them, then call the Today Show.

There. That's my expert advice today. Go forth and spin.

Monday, March 27, 2006

It's an Ambien World

Flaming June, by Frederick Leighton, 1895

We've heard about how people who take Ambien are sleeping driving and sleep eating, now it seems "sleep-divorcing" is happening. Of course, if I were a woman in a country where a man could divorce me by just saying "I divorce you" three times, I might claim I heard him say it in his sleep, too.

I doubt, somehow, that Ambien is to blame in this case of sleep-divorce in India. But it does bring up the issue that people everywhere are having a hard time sleeping. I'm not the only person I know taking Ambien occasionally. I have friends who can't get through a night without it - and one who has to take it in combination with another drug to make it work. What are we doing to ourselves?

My current sleeplessness is about, as usual, work. I bolt awake around 2 am many nights, wondering what I'm doing trying to start my own business when I have a mortgage to pay and a dog to support. The mind fills with "what ifs" and leads to several hours of tossing and turning. Sometimes I get up and make my dog keep my company in hopes that the sound of her snoring will lull me back to sleep. It's times like that that I'll reach into the night stand and break off half a tab of that dreaded pharmaceutical to knock me out. I hate to respond so well to it - and to the ads that promise a new controlled release version that will get me past 2 am.

But more and more of us are dreading bed and sleepwalking through our days. Is it the constant diet of fear we're fed? Is it too many bills and not enough jobs to pay them with? Children? School? Living up to high expectations?

I don't know what the answer is. I'm walking an hour a day up and down the hills around my house, in hopes that exercise will soothe the brain. It's not helping yet, but at least I'm not getting flabby as I work at the computer all day.

And it's spring in Oregon. Who wants to be inside and unconscious? Maybe sleep is over-rated after all.

Friday, March 24, 2006

End Your Friday Happy


Click here, then go to the far right-hand video entitled "The Big Finale" and enjoy.

And thanks to Susie Bright via Driftglass for pointing the way to the appropriately named Chris Bliss.

-- DC Native

Thursday, March 23, 2006

When the Crap Floats

(Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)

"Mr. Rove is operating as impishly as ever. At a party at the British Embassy when Mr. Bush and Mr. Card were on their way to India, Mr. Rove was asked by a group of guests how things were going.

"Everybody's away, so I'm running the country," Mr. Rove replied, playing off his caricature as an all-powerful behind-the-scenes puppet master.

And another creepy quote from the same NY Times article:

"An ingredient that's missing right now in the White House is that sense of urgency, that passion, that intensity," said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota. "When you've had horses there that you've been riding for a long time, you kind of need to change them once in a while."

Now, getting past the creepy, tangy, sweatiness of thinking of Rove as a horse you're riding... which is an insult to horses everywhere... I think what's missing in the rest of the country when they look at the Administration is any sense that these people are like them. I mean, we've all been in offices where people have failed up (they're related to the boss, they're sleeping with one of the bosses, they're too litigious to fire, etc...), but I think Average Jane American looks at these losers continuing to screw up and still have jobs and goes What the F***?!

And they're all a bunch of those pasty white prep school guys that we all hated, too. They're always the ones with the weirdest fetishes, aren't they? Speaking of which, we never did find out what Jeff Gannon did all those evenings in the White House, did we?

All that being said, she says trying to get back to seeming calm and classy, it's a great time to be involved in the debate. It has truly become like Stephen King's The Stand. There's the good and there's the evil (obviously through your own prism) and you have to fight for your own sense of the Good. The debate has never been so divided.

In environmental issues, the moral card is a winning card. People always call beautiful places "God's Country," so how far a stretch is it to connect that belief to our own innate belief that you need to take care of God's country (nature)?

With the way Bush and Co. are getting us into debt, there's a clear right and wrong: it's wrong to levy a birth tax on children. Now every kid who's born starts out in the "Debt" category. How is that right?

This may seem radical, but I also question why it's right that we're blowing up Iraq because "if we don't fight the terrorists there, we'll be fighting them here." What did the Iraqi people do to deserve to be our strafing range? If we really were the tough nuts Bush portrayed us as when he said, "Bring it on!" we should be willing to fight the people who did 9/11 in our very streets. Or, as I did, you can leave the Big Obvious Terrorist Target Cities, make some sacrifices, and revitalize rural America.

A lot of that option seems right to me. A lot more right than incurring astronomical debt to continue to finance a fiasco that's costing us millions - or is it billions? - per day and sending home troops horribly scarred. And it would certainly clarify the stakes for all Americans. It's like Guantanamo - someday these things will have to be stopped, but the guys in charge now refuse to be the ones to do it. They'll instead retire from the hole they've dug us into, cash in being on boards of directors, and shoot down the Democrats who eventually have to come in and clean up the mess.

The crap floating continues. "Ending tyranny in our time" or however Bush puts it is a ridiculous goal. America had many happy centuries upholding tyrannies that worked for us. How about shifting gears and trying: "protecting human rights across the globe?" or "ensuring that every person on the planet can drink clean water" or spreading the belief in "loving thy neighbor as thyself"... "doing unto others as you'd have them do unto you?"

I think the guy who's credited with those last ideas was -- heaven forbid -- one long-haired hippie.

Let's see... long-haired hippie vs. pasty white dough boy in the photo above? I know who I'd choose to follow - and I'm not even a Christian.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

A Time for Heresy

I didn't say it. Bill Moyers did. It's a long 'un, but as always, worth it.

-- DC Native

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Botox That Forehead

You know, if they shot some botulism into this man's forehead, he'd no longer have either a foreign or a domestic policy. Right now, the wrinkles are all he's got.

But he's a BOY, so he doesn't have the guts to inject poison into his face. Ha!

Honestly, one of the hardest parts about living in the Pacific Time Zone is that sometimes you have to endure things like a presidential press conference before your first cup of coffee. Today was one of those.

Dubya's performance grade: B+. I thought he really handled the hour well. The lies are now so ingrained he doesn't have to work so hard for them anymore. And he's learned his lesson about calling on Lebanese women. She may be short, but she's smarter than you, Boo-Boo.

That was a lovely moment:

QUESTION (Helen Thomas): I'd like to ask you, Mr. President -- your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime.

Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, your Cabinet officers, former Cabinet officers, intelligence people and so forth -- but what's your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil, the quest for oil. It hasn't been Israel or anything else. What was it?

BUSH: I think your premise, in all due respect to your question and to you as a lifelong journalist -- that I didn't want war. To assume I wanted war is just flat wrong, Helen, in all due respect.

QUESTION: And...

BUSH: Hold on for a second, please. Excuse me. Excuse me.
No president wants war. Everything you may have heard is that, but it's just simply not true.

BUSH: My attitude about the defense of this country changed in September the 11th. When we got attacked, I vowed then and there to use every asset at my disposal to protect the American people.

Our foreign policy changed on that day. You know, we used to think we were secure because of oceans and previous diplomacy. But we realized on September the 11th, 2001, that killers could destroy innocent life.

And I'm never going to forget it. And I'm never going to forget the vow I made to the American people, that we will do everything in our power to protect our people.

Part of that meant to make sure that we didn't allow people to provide safe haven to an enemy, and that's why I went into Iraq.

(CROSSTALK)

BUSH: Hold on for a second. Excuse me for a second, please. Excuse me for a second. They did. The Taliban provided safe haven for Al Qaida.

BUSH: That's where Al Qaida trained and that's where...

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

BUSH: Helen, excuse me. That's where -- Afghanistan provided safe haven for Al Qaida. That's where they trained, that's where they plotted, that's where they planned the attacks that killed thousands of innocent Americans.

I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council. That's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed.

And the world said, "Disarm, disclose or face serious consequences." And therefore, we worked with the world. We worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world.
And when he chose to deny the inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did. And the world is safer for it.

QUESTION: Thank you, sir. Secretary Rumsfeld...

BUSH: You're welcome. I didn't really regret it. I kind of semi-regretted it.

QUESTION: (inaudible)

BUSH: That's right. Anyway, your performance at the Gridiron was just brilliant, unlike Holland's (ph) which was a little weak.

(LAUGHTER)

Under the related topic of "incompetence" and "malfeasance:"

From the Washington Post:

Congress Raises Ceiling for Borrowing
$100 Billion Is Spent Without Offsetting Cuts

By Jonathan Weisman and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff WritersFriday, March 17, 2006

Congress raised the limit on the federal government's borrowing by $781 billion yesterday, and then lawmakers voted to spend well over $100 billion on the war in Iraq, hurricane relief, education, health care, transportation and heating assistance for the poor without making offsetting budget cuts.

On vote after vote in the House and Senate, lawmakers demonstrated the growing gap between their political promises to rein in spending and their need to respond to emergencies and protect politically popular programs. The votes followed last weekend's GOP leadership meeting in Memphis, at which virtually every speaker called on the party to renew its commitment to fiscal discipline and to control federal spending and the deficit....

With no brakes on spending and no moves afoot to raise taxes, the federal debt is now raising at an unprecedented clip. The government bumped up against its $8.18 trillion statutory debt ceiling last month, forcing the Treasury to borrow from employee pension funds to keep the government operating. After weeks of pleading from Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, the Senate took the politically unpalatable but economically critical step of raising the ceiling for borrowing to $8.96 trillion. Under House rules, the debt limit was raised last year without a vote when lawmakers approved a budget.

It was the fourth debt-ceiling increase in the past five years, after boosts of $450 billion in 2002, a record $984 billion in 2003 and $800 billion in 2004. The statutory debt limit has now risen by more than $3 trillion since Bush took office.

"This should be a wake-up call for every member of the Senate, every member of Congress, and a wake-up call for the president of the United States," said Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee. "The question is: Are we staying on this course to keep running up the debt, debt on top of debt, increasingly financed by foreigners, or are we going to change course?"

****

During his performance today, Dubya talked about how his failed misadventure in Iraq was his way of spending his political capital. EVEN AS A CYNICAL COMMUNICATIONS PERSON, I find it offensive to hear anyone brag about spending something as ephemeral and ... egotistically driven as his political capital.

But recent estimates I heard said that his war has cost every man, woman and child in America $30,000 so far. In Oregon, that's a year's salary. I don't vote for that. I CHOOSE NO. How can I make that count? Who's with me?

If the Dems have half a brain, they'll start touting such numbers. Find ways to crunch them like Republicans do, to turn them to your advantage. On the liberal side, at least you know you have God and "What's Right" in your corner. Right? Who would Jesus bomb? Whose student loans would he destroy to trade for his political capital? Which natural monument would Christ strip mine? Which child would he tear from his meth addict mother's arms? Which child would he bring into this world saddled with debts he'll spend his whole life paying, that were squandered before he was born? Which schizophrenic would he be happy to leave sleeping on the street?

If the Dems can't paint the picture this black and white, they are truly lost and it's time to get a third party going. Hell, the Dems can't win the way they've been working for quite some time now, so what if we annul Hillary's soon-to-be-failed bid for the Presidency? Ahhh, the Oprah moments yet to come! Or we could just bring back Bill.

I'm thinking our slogan should be this:

National Security Means More than Bombs.

We're secure when our children are fed and educated.
We're secure when people can live on just one job per person.
We're secure when different kinds of people accept one another.
We're secure when our elderly don't live in poverty.
We're secure when our air, land and water are clean and our most beautiful places aren't held hostage to industry.
We're secure when we can believe in any god we want -- or none -- without harassment.
We're secure when women have rights, especially those over their very bodies.
We're secure when compassion rules the day, not financial or political power.
We're secure when our budget matches our priorities and are fulfilled through competent leadership and judgment.
We're secure when our elected officials work for the people who vote for them, not for the corporations that fund their campaigns.

I guess you could call that my Ten Security Commandments.

And now, as Jon Stewart would way, your moment of Zen:

Dubya: "That's why I said in my second inauguration address: The goal of this country ought to be to end tyranny in the 21st century. I meant it. I said that for the sake of peace."

I keep being reminded of Donald Rumsfeld during the Shock and Awe campaign, talking about "the most compassionate bombing in the history of the world."

Why, oh why don't I think they know what the hell they're talking about?

Monday, March 20, 2006

Pop Culture, Fermented

A day at the mall for an abaya-clad Michael Jackson in Bahrain. (Reuters)

And to think, when I was a kid, I really looked up to this guy.

Sad. Mental illness disguised as eccentricity via the deodorizing patina of money.

His poor kids (i.e., "Blanket" wearing a hood).

-- DC Native

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Children with the Sad Wisdom of Age


10-year-old girl shot and killed at her birthday party

Englewood residents, already reeling and enraged by the slaying earlier this month of a 14-year-old girl, spent Sunday struggling to absorb another tragedy: a 10-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet during her surprise birthday party. Deanna Woods (left), aunt of Siretha White, collapses in the arms of Siretha's sister, Davonna Woods, 18, on Sunday.
(Tribune photo by Chuck Berman) Mar. 13, 2006


From the mouths of babes - too old before their time.

-- DC Native


Why are we fighting to live if we're living to die?
By Shontanette Brinson, 8th grade
Published, Chicago Tribune, March 19, 2006

THE CHILDREN SPEAK

Imagine that, last weekend, you saw your friend shot to death at her 11th birthday party. Imagine that this wasn't the first time you had lost a friend to a bullet meant for someone else. That another girl from your neighborhood, a little older, had been killed the week before, the girl everybody thought was going to make it out. Then imagine all the others who died before them, the boy who was strangled just before the school year started, the fathers and cousins and aunts and brothers. Last week, some of the pupils at Vernon Johns Community Academy, the grammar school that both Starkesia Reed and Siretha White had attended, wrote letters and poems to the two girls who died eight days and a few blocks apart. Now imagine, amid the angry marches, the rhetoric and political posturing, that you can hear the voices of the children of Englewood:

Why are we fighting to live if we're living to die?

Why are we fighting for love if it only makes us cry?

Why are we fighting for gangs when all our colors are the same?

Why are we dying with no one to blame?

Why are we killing for all the wrong reasons?

Why are we dying every day, every month, every season?

Why are we worried that Daddy isn't coming home?

Why are so many children left in this world alone?

Why can't we go outside and play?

Why is Mommy worried that one of us may get hit with a stray?

What is the reason Daddy isn't coming home today?

Why do we have to sleep on the floor at night?

Why do we hurt and fight?

Can we all stand together and make all wrong right?

Why do people bring babies in the world like this?

Why did that bullet have to hit Starkesia?

Why didn't it miss?

Why does money make the world go around?

Why when we die we get put in the ground?

Why does it seem as our life changes in so many ways?

Why does it feel as we are living in our last days?

Why does this gang get into it with that gang?

When everyone lives in the same community and has the same things?

Why doesn't death scare me anymore?

Because death is a game and has reached its final score.

Why is it that when a person dies a baby is born?

Or is it that the person comes back reformed.

Why is it that we are focused on the good and never expect the bad?

Why after we laugh, we cry?

Why are we fighting to live if we're living to die?

Shontanette Brinson is an 8th grader at Vernon Johns Community Academy. She likes to write poetry and listen to music. She was friends with Starkesia Reed and Siretha White and said she was inspired by Tupac Shakur's "Runnin' (Dying to Live)" to write this poem.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Kiss Us, We're Irish

My college roommate's mother, a famous Irish singer named Carmel Quinn.

Every year in New York after I met Terry, we'd go to Carnegie Hall tonight on St. Paddy's Day to see her mother sing. Arthur Godfrey had brought Carmel over from Ireland when she was a young woman to be on his show. Now, let's have a show of hands. Who knows who Arthur Godfrey is? Think "ukelele." Anybody? Geez. I am old.

So, that was a good part of being Irish. It was a night of the best Irish singers in New York. There's nothing like hearing an Irish tenor sing Danny Boy to bring tears to your blue eyes.

Things we Irish are good at:
  • Telling stories
  • Drinking
  • Having babies
  • Doing what it takes to make babies
  • Having lovely accents
  • Obeying God, as long as He doesn't get in our way
  • Guilt
  • Arguing
  • Writing
  • Taking both the high road and the low road to Lochloman
  • Grieving/wailing
  • Death

I won't get into what we're bad at. That wouldn't be celebratory.

I must say, the thing that makes me proudest of Irish people is that we finally got past The Troubles and created a booming economy over there. I can't actually say "we" in that except for the American part: sending George Mitchell to broker the agreement. I never could understand - as in so many civil conflicts - how people even knew who to fight. They all looked identical as far as I could tell. I guess it's people who knew each other for generations, so they knew who the Orange Men were.

Now, in true Irish fashion, I gotta go write. Top o' the mornin' to ya and all that. Here's the ol' Irish blessing to speed you on your way:

May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

May God be with you and bless you:
May you see your children's children.
May you be poor in misfortune,
Rich in blessings.
May you know nothing but happiness
From this day forward.

May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the warm rays of sun fall upon your home
And may the hand of a friend always be near.

May green be the grass you walk on,
May blue be the skies above you,
May pure be the joys that surround you,
May true be the hearts that love you.


Lucy, my Irish terrier.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

If You Meet Buddha on the Road...

Give him a lift.

Murder Most Foul

Well, I've talked about politics a fair amount and pop culture, so there's no time like the death of Slobodan Milosevic to talk about my third blog topic category: murder.

I have several problems with murder. First, except for the occasional pretty white girl...


A notice offering a reward in Imette St. Guillen's case hangs near the bar where she was last seen alive.

...you never hear about the victim. It's always the killer. That's the story that gets told whether it's in the news or a TV show or a movie. Serial killers a specialty.

Serial killer nurse Charles Cullen, sits alone in court during his sentencing in Somerville, N.J., Thursday, March 2, 2006. The nurse who admitted to killing as many as 40 patients... received 11 consecutive life terms in prison, making him ineligible for parole for nearly 400 years. (AP Photo/Mike Derer, Pool)

The story that rarely gets told - because it isn't sexy and the protagonist is hampered by his/her state of being dead - is that of the victim and those left behind.

When you know someone who's been murdered, you spend a lot of time imagining their last moments as if putting yourself through that scene will pay some psychic price and you could get them back. It's like having that last contact with them that you were cheated out of.

It's quite a moment, the moment you realize a) someone you love is dead and b) that another person actually planned, if even for a few minutes, to kill that person. They thought it was a good idea. Then they did it and succeeded.

Your options are limited. You don't get any second chances. You expected the victim home for dinner. For about the first 30 seconds, your mind goes, "No, that can't be. They're coming home for dinner!"

Your life then becomes a series of periods: 1) being awake and trying to stay upright and 2) tormented sleep that you awaken from to those moments where you still think the person is alive and all is right in the world. Until this happened, you never realized how little it took to make all right with the world. You vow to never take it for granted again if only god would bring that person back. If only you could trade a year of your life for one half-hour more with them. Okay, five minutes. I just have a few quick things I never said that I've got to say.

But it's too late. Incredibly too late. And it's too late because of someone else's hatred for the person you loved.

My big lesson when my friend was killed was that I'd rather have the killer locked behind bars for the rest of his life than be put the death - that would have been the easy way out. I could get into the level of retribution that would keep him in orange jumpsuits at Angola State Prison Farm in Louisiana. I would have paid extra taxes for it, in fact, but he got out after 10 years. In those 10 years I had to let go of my need for retribution and justice. Retribution just lowers me to his level, and justice is rare in life. At least I got 10 years of the man's life. I hope he learned something and never kills again.

But I was nuts for several years. I'd walk out into traffic and hope to get run over by a taxi. I'd stand at the edge of the Metro tracks and figure out the exact timing to make the jump successful. You don't want to survive jumping in front of a subway train. Luckily, I was too chicken to try any of that stuff, but my mind went there over and over again. It would certainly have stopped the pain.

The other story that never gets told - maybe because it doesn't have an ending - is that there is no getting over grief, especially from murder. You just learn to deal with it. Nothing you can do is going to bring the person you loved back or turn back the clock. No amount of hatred or screaming at the murderer is going to take away the pain. You could take a knife and rip them open, then pull out their innards with your angry hands, and it will change nothing. After your shower, you'll still be in the same hole.

Only time and some kind of healing will show you the way out of it. First you realize it's been a minute since you thought about the murder and your loss. Then weeks later, it might be as long as a half hour. A year later, you might go half a day, and on and on til years pass and it's worn a soft, sensitive groove in your heart. You no longer touch it all the time, but when you do, it's as fresh as the first day. The only thing different is you've learned to accept the cruel and unacceptable.

If you could understand this at the beginning of the grieving, you could save yourself so much trauma - and so much to those around you. Is it possible though? Just because I did it once, would it be easier the next time someone I love is murdered? I doubt it. Last time, I was nuts for about three years. Maybe next time it would only be a year and a half. Now take those numbers and apply them to all the families in America who've been touched by murder. That's a lot of suffering to be healed.

Isn't it weird that, when it comes to the phenomenon of murder, we never do anything about the consequences left behind? How can we ignore the tidal wave of pain that emanates out from the ripples of every murder in America? You can say it's one of those issues that's just too big for us to handle, but we once thought you couldn't test every bag of blood in this country for AIDS and we finally did it. Where there's a will there's a way.

Murder's an accepted epidemic in this country, easily ignored until it touches your life. But like any disease, it won't get better by pretending it doesn't exist.


Isaiah Reed, 18 (center left), brother of murder victim Starkesia Reed, is consoled by Hal Baskin, a community activist, as they march with neighborhood volunteers Monday to hand out information alerts regarding his sister's death in the Englewood neighborhood last week. Starkesia was getting ready for school when she was shot. (Tribune photo by Kuni Takahashi) Mar. 6, 2006

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Where Will All the Cities Go?



This upset me today, an article entitled, New York Asks Help From Poor in Housing Crisis.

"The New York City Housing Authority, landlord to more than 400,000 poor New Yorkers, is facing a budget shortfall of $168 million and has proposed narrowing the gap by charging residents new fees and increasing old ones for everything from owning a dishwasher to getting a toilet unclogged.

The authority says its operating deficit stems from enormous increases in energy and pension costs while its federal financing for public housing has been cut. Since 2001, the agency says, it has spent $357 million from its reserves to close repeated budget gaps; this year, for the first time, it no longer has enough reserves to cover the shortfall...

"The chickens are coming home to roost," said Representative Jerrold L. Nadler of Manhattan, who added that the federal government was taking less responsibility for public housing. "The Housing Authority has, by one ingenious means or another, been holding it together with spit and baling wire. This could be really devastating."

... Arlyne Allen, who lives in the Amsterdam Houses on the West Side of Manhattan with her husband and three teenage children and provides day care out of her home, said of the fees: "It'll affect me a lot. You can't even afford what you have now." If she could, she said, she would move to Pennsylvania to find private housing that she could afford....

Saul Ramirez, executive director of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, traced the budget shortfall to "a steady disinvestment" in public housing at the federal level. "Obviously," he said, "there has been a decline that has gotten to a critical point in the area of operations."

*****************

So the rich are getting richer while the poor move to Pennsylvania? Have I got that right?

I am undoubtedly a Big City Girl. The smallest town I've lived in til now was Washington, D.C., population around 500,000. But like lots of people who didn't catch the real estate wave at the right time, I've been priced outta Dodge. I moved to a small college town on the West Coast (but one with an airport at least) and live in a style I could only have dreamed of in any big American city these days.

And that's a pity, because cities need all sorts of people -- even ones like me.

Cities used to be mosaics of ages, races, and economic levels. Neighborhoods were built by people with things in common, set in the middle of the vast raging masses. If you don't know New York City, you might think it's a cold, hard place, and it can definitely be that. But I've never lived in a city where everybody was so aware of their neighbors. People in New York care about what goes on around them and they don't mind raising their voices to tell you so. And they come together in a crisis like no place else. I was there for the subway strike in the early 1980s and all I remember is what a good time I had hitchhiking in Manhattan, getting into cars with interesting strangers - everyone a goodwill taxi driver - crawling along at 10 or 15 miles an hour on Broadway.

You are both anonymous and very famous at the same time in cities. You can blend in with the crowd, but will almost certainly run into the only person among that 100,000 nearby that you were hoping not to see. Especially looking like this.

There are some people you're forced to crowd next to in cities, not always with your wishes. You learn things about other people's personal habits... you hear them tell their innermost secrets to friends... you watch parents discipline their children right there in front of you and learn to say nothing... and you avoid men spitting.

Car cities are a little different. In L.A., you drive around in your own personal pod. The crowds are bumper to bumper, not butt to butt. But the fundamental things apply, as the song says.

So I mourn the loss of our cities to the very wealthy. Who ARE these people who can afford $800,000 for a condo these days? Are there that many incredibly successful people who just beat me to the punch? Are there that many trust fund babies? Or is everybody maxed out on the credit cards of life?

All I know is that the cities are getting drained of their color, their life, and their uniqueness. And you know where it might be going? To small college towns like this.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Wimpeachment


There. Now we can say there's a Dubya in "impeachment."

I'm starting to get hopeful. I mean, when Garrison Keillor starts writing about impeaching Bush, you know you're onto something. It's kind of like Walter Cronkite turning against the war. Harper's cover story this month (buy it!) goes further and enumerates, with lots of footnotes, all the legal reasons Bush should be impeached. To quote them quoting Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, "I think if we're going to be intellectually honest here, this really is the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton was referring to when impeachment was discussed." The magazine goes on to quote Bruce Fein, former associate deputy attorney general under Reagan, who said of Bush that he "presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law."

Wimpeachment works on so many levels. Impeach the wimp. Hell, impeach all the wimps in Congress too who've let him get away with his criminal behavior for years.

Let's talk about strength, shall we? Strength is not being the loud, obnoxious parent in the stands at the soccer game, screaming at the kids and picking fights with other parents. Strength is being the dedicated mother or father who volunteers a few afternoons a week to coach the team. Strength isn't "the most compassionate bombing the world has ever seen" (Rumsfeld during Shock and Awe), strength would have been building up Afghanistan, creating jobs, ending the poppy trade instead of boosting it, educating everyone including women, building infrastructure, etc., etc. Strength is in it for the long haul, not for PR events and short-term projects that might look good but don't last.

Folks, we ain't got no coach. We've got a guy bent on war and destruction because it pays his and all his friends' bills. Can you say "Iran's next?"

I actually stopped on Fox News last week (Beltway Boys) and found them discussing the possibility that the Dems could win both houses of Congress in the fall. They said, with Bush's sinking poll numbers, that he has about 3 weeks left to "turn it around" and win over Fox viewers, then all would be lost. Praise Fox's Lord. Also, beware of Big Events happening in the next three weeks. I don't put anything past these guys to solve their poll problems.

They've proven that absolute power corrupts absolutely - and more blatantly than I've ever been aware in my young life. I know the Dems were corrupt too when they ran the Hill for 40 years, but at least they managed to accomplish good things during said corruption like civil rights, environmental protection, and a modicum of women's rights.

Just imagine - because all change has to start with being able to imagine something - that Bush was left at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for two whole years with the Dems in charge of the House and the Senate. They could finally impeach him. How lovely would that be?

Sing along, won't ya?:

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself: "What a wonderful world!"

Sunday, March 05, 2006

Oscar Buzzzz


I seem to either be stunning my audience here or boring them to death, judging by the lack of comments, so I'll touch on something lighter: the orgiastic celebration of my first professional homeland, Hollywood.

Somehow my Oscar invitation got lost in the mail, so I had to watch it from up here, 800 miles north with local friends, including two ex-patriates from Paramount.

As a quote-unquote Real Person now, I was slightly appalled that the gift bags given to presenters were worth over $100,000 each. Might this not have been the year to have that sort of money donated to charity? Maybe buy some armor for the troops or something?

I got past that factoid, just like I get past every factoid about wealth rising to the top in America. At least in Hollywood, they look pretty for it - though I predict next year's new award category will be in makeup, for artistic superiority in covering facelifts so they look good on HDTV. I was actually happy when the bald fat guys got up. Their eyebrows moved. It was... refreshing.

Other scary part: how thin the women are getting. I thought Dolly Parton was going to faint dead away. Obviously, I couldn't have lasted this long in Hollywood. I don't have the patience to diet that much.

As I drove away from Eric's house after the show ended, I was thinking happy thoughts about Hollywood and how much fun I had working there. Then I drove a little further and remembered all the days I had spent in Eric's office, bitching about my job (and he in mine doing the same). Many, many scenes poured through my head and all of a sudden I didn't miss it quite as much. I especially remember refusing my boss's request for sex when his wife was really pregnant. I'd tell him no, then shut his office door behind me as I left and say, "You can do whatever you want once the door is closed." Now, that was f-u-n.

My first year in TV, I used to ask non-producer friends the same question: Did you have to be an asshole to become a producer or did the process of becoming a producer make you an asshole? It was a question that stumped most people. You could see them running a cast of characters through their heads, tallying up who'd grown up in Beverly Hills vs. who fought their way up. I never did get a consensus. Now some of my friends are producers, and I just pray they haven't become producer pod-people. Maybe things are getting better.

My friend Laura - who was speaking of theater producers when she said it - once pronounced that producers had all been children that nobody else would play with, so they became producers so everybody had to play with them. For a 20 year old (at the time), she was very smart.

As I watch shows like the Oscars, for all their self-congratulatory air, I do applaud the pure stick-to-it-iveness of everybody who was on that stage - even the model/companion girls. All those people stuck to it and achieved. And this year, I even think the quality of the films they got produced was good. Shocking.

I'll try to be positive and remember the good times of being on sets and working with good people - from the lowliest grip to the most famous international star. For the most part, everyone is thrilled to show up at work every day on a Hollywood lot and that does make it a different environment from most offices. People are all a little larger than life, that's why they're drawn to that world. And a bonus for putting up with the torture of writing comedy is that everybody's always trying to make you laugh. What's wrong with that? (Well, I can think of a few guys I'd have liked to close down, but...)

So, I salute the few friends I still have who remain in Hollywood and who still work in the business. It ain't easy, but the scenery sure is nice -- as long as you stay off the 405.

Friday, March 03, 2006

As the Sun Sets on the Right to Choose


A pro-choice group was once a client of mine when I was working at an agency. They put out a 25th anniversary book of women's abortion stories and asked me to be part of it. I wrote the following story. They asked for something a little tamer, which is what they published.

Now, a few years later, there's something called the blogosphere, and it seems the media has caught up with the message of the original piece. It's a little dated. A younger woman wrote it, but it's still valid.

It seemed appropriate during this week where women's right to choose is melting away faster than the polar ice caps. If the tide of righteousness that carries the anti-choice movement along succeeds in taking away this right, lots of us will be going down.

-- DC Native

They paint us as hellions, racing to abort a seven-pound, viable fetus from our wombs because it took us too long to decide we didn't want to be inconvenienced by motherhood. Or we forgot to schedule the appointment. They outlaw life-saving fetal tissue research as if we'd support ourselves in the future by making our wombs fertile fields for lucrative fetal body parts. The life-givers and the grave-robbers all rolled into one.

They either don't know, or can't, what it is to have life inside you and not be able to keep it. For a million different reasons to a million different women who never thought they could or would have an abortion, sometimes it is the only choice. A child is not a choice. Certainly true. A child is the rest of your life. It is a commitment to be ready for anything. It is every penny you will ever make, every breath you will ever take, every thought you will ever have. It is opening the door to the unforeseen, often the unsupported, with you as its only anchor in the hurricane that blows through your life. It is the end of your life as yourself and the conscious giving it over to another.

You may be young. You may even be a responsible adult. Your body betrays the potential child inside you before you even know you're pregnant. Your breasts are tender. Your nails become like rock. Your very skin changes texture as the clock ticks by on your decision. You can't feel the cells dividing in your womb, only the shell mutating to another purpose. And every demon that ever passed through your conscience suddenly has you cornered.

One thing it is not: a decision made lightly.

We don't generally have abortions on the way to cocktail parties. We don't have resorts built that offer deals on "abortion/massage/seaweed wraps." Our hairdresser doesn't make us pretty for the occasion.

Many of us do it alone, without telling our friends or families. We pack a bag with a sweater and a box of maxi-pads early on a Saturday morning. It's not a happy day. It's another day of doing the chores that equal taking responsibility for ourselves and for our future children. If we're lucky, we don't have to explain ourselves to anyone. If we're not, we suffer tears and recrimination from others that barely echo the castigation we've given ourselves. One moment of not paying attention, one moment of not taking responsibility, one moment of senseless passion and we become society's target.

You see the signs waving in the distance as you approach the clinic. You hope it's an adjacent store being struck by workers, but you know it's not. You speed up your pace as you head for the door. "Think about Jesus before you do that!! Murderer!! You'll rot in Hell!" They shout disgusting things at you in the name of their Lord. Someone with whom you've had an intimate relationship all your life, but not to their satisfaction.

You sit in the waiting room. The TV blares Saturday morning cartoons. Frank Sinatra croons on the clinic's PA system. Couples murmur somberly together. Women flip through worn magazines. Nothing drowns out the shouting of bitter epithets or of righteous Our Fathers from out on the street. A weird counterpoint finds its own rhythm in the cacophy of this surreal morning. You try to absorb Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote to numb yourself for the longest hour of your life.

They call you in in groups. You watch a video. You have the procedure explained in graphic detail. You learn what sounds to listen for to tell you it's almost over. A certain camaraderie builds as it does any time a group of women collects. Only these women know how you feel, as if you're taking the same life-changing workshop.

You can't hear the madness on the sidewalk from the back rooms. It's there that you change together, as a group, in what's basically a large closet. Someone volunteers to go first. Everyone else wishes you well as you walk out the door.

Finally, you're alone in the room, lying on the table where an unassuming machine waits. The nurse comes in. She holds your hand and asks if you're sure you want to do this. The tenderness in her voice, the caring in her eyes, makes you well up with tears as you nod 'yes.' She tells you that the doctor won't do this if he comes in and sees you crying, so once again you do the adult thing and swallow all emotion. No sense making it harder on everybody than it has to be.

The doctor is kind and quick. The sound you heard about comes with a little cramping and it's over. You go to the recovery room and rest. Your life can begin again.

But you spend the rest of your life angry. Not always at yourself - though that's there too - but you know that was a decision that was right at the time. You're angry at the onslaught of the righteous who never knew you and who never would care to. Those who want to make the most difficult decision of your life even harder because it makes them feel better about themselves. It makes them feel like they're saving lives.

The truth is they couldn't care less about the life you'd give to a child once it's here. They are the people who want everyone off welfare. Who wouldn't vote for state-sponsored day care or health care if their lives depended on it. Who spit when they say the word "feminist" to a single mother who decides to have a baby on her own when the father walks away.

I've seen it in their eyes in the lines of protest outside clinics - their hatred for us. For women who don't do as they say. Who disobey the rules they live by. Most of them have never read the Constitution. Couldn't care less that this country was founded by people running from religious persecution. They want this country declared a Christian state and have us all toe the line of a Jesus they'll define for you.

I don't mind their hatred. It makes me know I'm right. That freedom begins inside each of us and extends all the way out through our skin. The whole body. Freedom of our minds and hearts to rule our bodies. Freedom, even, to make mistakes if that's how they see it. I defy them to live lives of perfect decisions every moment.

But they can't take my freedom away. I'll do what I have to do, as God made me, using the intelligence and strength that was my birthright. And I'll piss off as many of the fakers as I can along the way. Gladly.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

A Cure for Mercury in Retrograde

Stop leaving and you will arrive.
Stop searching and you will see.
Stop running away and you will be found.

-- Lao Tzu

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Give Up Complacency for Lent

You don't have to be Catholic to give something up for Lent. I gave up Catholicism when I was 15, but this time of year still makes me feel like doing a little penance.

This year, I'm encouraging everybody to join me in giving up something deadly: complacency. Today's challenge, call your representatives in Congress now and stop one of Bush's many stupid ideas: the logging of burned over forests. (Now that I HAVE representation in Congress, this is one of my greatest joys.)

Basically, do you want this...


and this...

Or this:


And this?

These are all actual photos from the Pacific NW, your last remaining repository in the West of any substantial part of the Ancient Forests of America. Here's how it goes: a fire, which occurs naturally, burns through a forest. Left alone and given nature's clock, it takes time, but will regenerate. Trees grow from what's left of old trees. The necessary mix of different kinds of plants and trees comes back. Certain kinds of birds nest in certain kinds of burned-over forest. Grasses and flowers regenerate. Nature does its thing.


Industry says it just wants to go in and take dead trees, but as the photos above show, once they get the right to get into our forests, they go for the biggest trees for the big bucks. I've met former loggers who've been there when they put old-growth trees straight into the chipper to ship the chips to China where they get turned into pressboard furniture. Industry lies and gets away with it over and over. If you've ever seen a clearcut, you know there's no justice in the way our forests are managed. And nobody's yet been able to change the equation that a 200 year old tree is going to take 200 years to grow back. Industry doesn't give a rat's behind about 200 years from now, but you do, don't you?

Right now, a really bad bill is trying to make its way onto the floor of the House, and we still have time to stop it. It's the Walden-Baird Logging Bill, H.R. 4200. If it passes, logging after fires will be expedited across the country. The bill waives the National Environmental Policy Act and makes consultation under the Endangered Species Act optional for big business. This is exactly the kind of "streamlining" of our environmental checks and balances that the Administration LOVES to give to industry.

Without these ancient forests and the roadless areas this bill would open to logging, our watersheds will suffer more degradation and devastation than the last five years of industry giveaways by government have already brought about. Logging loosens soils that end up in streams. The soil in the water kills fish and other species. Since the trees are no longer there, the soil left in the forest heats up to temperatures that keep it from being able to do its healing thing. And I don't have to go into the value of trees for cleaning the air, do I? For more info, check out the Siskiyou Project.

I could go on and on, but I'd rather you just get on the phone now and tell your representatives you think keeping our air, land and water clean is more important than making the timber industry fat and happy. Replace logging jobs with forest restoration jobs and there goes the economic argument - which is specious anyway since the American taxpayer inevitably foots the bill for cleaning up what industry leaves behind.

They're taking away our future and our health. Stop them. Now. Before it's too late. Do it for Lent. It's certainly better for the soul than just sitting there!