Ride, Sally Ride. We'll miss you here on earth forever now.

H.R. 347: The Strange History of the Bill with the Confusingly Euphemistic Title

The Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act.*

One of the few liberal media sources to cover the bill called it the anti-Occupy bill, but internal Occupy-related media seem to be largely ignoring it. The Tea Party is outraged by it, but nobody else thinks it’s aimed at the Tea Party. The Senate passed it unanimously and Obama signed it, but the few constitutional experts to review it are adamant that it’s unconstitutionally vague. Even the House, over two votes, could only muster three votes against it. And what is the bit in the title about “Grounds Improvement”?  Is that some kind of sick joke?

The bill in question carries the official title of The Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. It passed 399 to 3 in the House in 2011, was amended and then passed unanimously by the Senate in 2012, then the amended version passed the House 388 to 3 in 2012. President Obama signed it on March 8, 2012.  The “Grounds Improvement” riddle is solved by reading the introduction, or by more careful explication in the blog post from the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund “H.R. 347: Get the Truth on the New ‘Protest Law’”.  As the introduction to the bill itself explains, it is an act …To correct and simplify the drafting of section 1752 (relating to restricted buildings or grounds) of title 18, United States Code.  So it’s not the grounds being “improved”, it’s the original law, which was enacted in 1971 and then substantially amended in 2006.

What many of the more hysterical postings about the passage of H.R. 347 fail to note is that the dangerously vague and overreaching language they are objecting to was present at least from 2006. But there was one noticeable “improvement” that is a new departure. Despite blog posts to the contrary, the act does NOT make infringements that were previously misdemeanors now felonies and it does NOT add new scope to the powers of either the Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security. These constitutional failings and likely infringements of First Amendment rights were already present in the 2006 rewrite to the federal code. What the act does empower, potentially, is the easier prosecution of a defendant who has committed one of the proscribed acts.

The most significant change was to remove the words “willfully and” before “knowingly” in the description of the crimes in the 2006 act. What this means is, if the law itself or this change to the law is not struck down as unconstitutional, that a protester, for example, does not need to be proven to have known that their alleged trespass was illegal.  As the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund explains, “As amended, a conviction arguably only requires proof that a person ‘knowingly entered’ a certain area. This is an effort to lower the bar for prosecutors who would, arguably, no longer have to prove that a person knew his conduct was unlawful.” Or, as the Senate bill sponsor Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said, it will “improve the law enforcement tools available to the Secret Service in its attempts to protect the President, the Vice President, and others on a day-to-day basis by closing loopholes in the current federal law.” Loopholes?  Tools? An interesting spin.

This law has not really been tested for constitutionality yet, whether we are talking about the new “improved” version where you don’t even need to know the action was forbidden by the law, or the original law itself. Those commenters who realize that H.R. 347 is an amendment to a law that was already a “bad law” in the words of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund point to its vagueness and potential for abuse. A self-described Constitutional scholar associated with the Tea Party, KrisAnne Hall, although she does not mention that the language she is concerned about was part of the 2006 law and not newly introduced in H.R.347, does make a very important first amendment point in this article quoted extensively by the Gainesville Tea Party

The protected right of the people peaceably to assemble is something that has fundamental and historical foundations.  Our founders established a clear “no trespassing sign” in our first amendment to keep the government away from this fundamental right.  “Congress shall make no law abridging…the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”    Legislation in the Congress seems to be treading on the grounds of this constitutionally restricted territory.

…

The right to orderly conduct government is NOT a Constitutionally protected right. However we DO have the right to free speech and the right to peaceably assemble.  Our Constitution establishes the fundamental principle rights to speech and assembly are held by the people and the government must protect these rights, not limit them.

But again, this language was pre-existing in the U. S. Code. And although several constitutional scholars agree that it is but one of several flaws in the existing law, it needs to be tested before one can assert absolutely that it is against First Amendment rights.

And perhaps it will be very soon. When the 2006 law was written, the country was under a Republican administration. There had been no credit crisis, no austerity push (indeed, Federal spending was at an unprecedented high, mainly due to the war in Iraq) and there was no Tea Party. When the 2011 amendment, H.R. 347, was first proposed in 2011, it may have been directed at the Tea Party. But more likely it was in anticipation of both major parties’ upcoming national conventions, of a flood of Republican presedential contenders under Secret Service protection, and also in remembrance of highly volatile protests at G8, G20, NATO and other world “summit” meetings. It certainly could not have been the “anti-Occupy” bill, because OWS had not happened yet.

But it may be Occupy that tests it, for the next NSSE or “National Special Security Event” (this is one circumstance that can invoke the law, and includes all of the above as well as one recent Super Bowl) is the NATO Summit meeting in May in Chicago. And Occupy movements and affinity groups around the country and the world are even now planning an overwhelming and highly committed protest presence at this event, in most cases quite unaware of the constitutional challenge potentially hanging over their actions. 

*This article was originally written for print publication in a small Occupy newsletter but for complex reasons was never published there. I have changed it slightly to embed the links.

America's Oldest Teenager

Dick Clark, long-time host of American Bandstand, has died at the age of 82.

The Pogues Featuring Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale Of New York (Official V...

I apologize for the ad before this, but trust me, it's worth waiting for.

The Mountain Goats - "Christmas in Prison"

A Book Review on my books blog - The Polish Officer by Alan Furst

(Copy of a post on Deborama's Book Reviews and Store) Well, it's not often I review and blog a book I have only read one chapter of. In fact, it's not often I review and blog books at all anymore. And maybe I am more jetlagged and culture-shocked than I thought I was, or maybe it really was that good. I just read the first chapter of The Polish Officer by Alan Furst, entitled The Pilawa Local. I was in tears. It made me wish I was Polish. And to all my Polish friends, my God, you come from a noble people, and I am heartily sorry if ever in my careless youth I retold or even laughed at a Polack joke, no matter how good-natured.

How to save the economy

I predicted way back in 2008 that the recession soon to follow what was then just a "credit crisis" would last 15 years. Everybody said I was crazy. Now when I remind them, they just tell me to shut up. I was going to indulge my inner economics genius and post a blog about how and why this would occur, but of course, my inner trailer trash layabout kept me from doing it. And then I got laid off (American) or made redundant (British), and my life became so complex I didn't have the energy to even consider it. In the last couple of weeks, like a dam breaking but in reverse, my life has got a lot simpler. I now know (more or less) what I am going to do and when. So to the blog... But wait! I am not going to do the 15-year recession blog (now only 13 years of it left, of course.) The time for that has passed. The moving finger writes and having writ, moves on. Instead...
I didn't think Paul Krugman could ever become more of a hero to me than he already was. But he has. He has a cunning plan to save the US economy, and of course, it's based a bit more on history than on pure economics. If you have closely studied the 1929 stock market crash and ensuing 10-year depression, you will know that it was more due to an outbreak of war in Europe than to government or Fed policies that America began to be productive again around 1939-40. And you will know that there have been quite a few vague historical echoes in our current fiasco as well. So Krugman's idea is that the government should give up on economy-tittivating, which they are frankly no good at anyway, and fake an alien invasion.

Marie Haff - a dear friend gone

Marie Haff, my friend since 1984 when I first moved to the Twin Cities along with her son, passed away last week. We had drifted apart geographically, especially when I moved to England, but then she started trading in antiques after her official retirement, and was making periodic trips to Lincolnshire to buy British antiques. So we were able to reconnect, and my husband and I even managed to meet up with her in Horncastle one day several years ago. I took this picture of her a little over a month ago at a family gathering in rural Minnesota. I am so sad that when I finally manage to make my move back to Minneapolis, there will be no more meetings or chats with Marie. She was a very special woman.

Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

Back to obituary blogging, an increasing number of the subjects of which are nowadays my own generation. Jobs, yeah, he was younger than I am. But what a massive impact he has had on the way this century looks and feels. And the way we communicate and live our lives. A ten page obituary in the NYT, you have to admit, the boy done good! Most of the articles, both recent ones on his illnes and early retirement, and corporate ones showcasing his recent accomplishments, show a contemporary Jobs with his grey hair, his black turtleneck and his visionary gaze into the future he knows he won't be here to share. I have chosen an innocent shot with his proud creations of 1984. The boy is the father of the man.

Minneapolis in retrospect

I arrived back in the UK on the 6th of September, very jet-lagged, and then promptly fell ill. Apologies for the big delay in updating my blog, but then most of my activity, as I have mentioned before, is documented on Facebook. But the archive-index is a lot better here.

I was not successful in finding a job in the Twin Cities, but then that would have been almost miraculous, so I wasn't really expecting to. I was not as successful as I would have liked in laying the groundwork for finding a job, which was disappointing, but largely due to two facts - 1) I did open a credit union account and (I think) buy a condo, but it took a lot more time and energy than I was expecting, and 2) the social scene also took up more time than I was planning for. One of the big surprises of the trip was that my old comrades in the DSA and some new friends who have joined while I was away were so incredibly welcoming and positive about my imminent return to their company. KB, now holding my old post of "only permanent female member" became an instant friend and we discovered loads of common interests, and the old stalwarts really touched me with their insistence that they had missed me terribly and were thrilled to have me back.

Other social events included meeting up with old friends Janet and her daughter Michael, and seeing Michael's three children who I had known only as online photos, seeing Krista and Ben's "new" baby Oskar, along with of course Krista and Ben, and coffee with Loren, with catching up and a little discussion about my possible career choices. I found to my sorrow and distress that Marie, whom I love very much, is suffering a very severe form of cancer, and was able to spend a few hours with her, and also with her son Doug, an ex-bf now married with adult son. My dear friend Lou, whose world is a chaotic whirl completely outwith her control, nevertheless ferried me around, introduced me to Savers, accompanied Dianne and me on a few condo visits and lent me a smartphone for the duration, all of which made my trip a lot easier. I visited Walker Church and caught up with friends too numerous to mention. And finally I must give thanks and more thanks to both Steve S. and KC B., who picked me up and dropped me off respectively at the airport and housed me in their homes for eight and seven days respectively.

No hotel reviews this trip, but I will do some foodie reviews and others on Qype, Yelp, Trip Advisor and Deborama's Kitchen. I also read a really good book or two, which I want to review on Deborama's Book Reviews and Store.

Minneapolis

I'm in Minneapolis, takin' care of some business. I was going to post a blog from Keflavik airport on my way here, but their darned wifi was not connected to the internet for some reason. That was my first public wifi blog some years ago and I thought it would be cool to do a repeat.

Another little birdie passed away

Holly passed away last night, suddenly, as budgies do. Holly is the one on the left above; the one on the right, Pearl, passed some time ago. I think Holly was between 5 and 7 years old. He has some offspring out there somewhere, thanks to a little breeding holiday he took care of Cindy, our friend who used to live near here. Here is our current roll call of birds and other critters:

• Toby, a white, totally deaf English bull terrier / Jack Russell cross, male, neutered, drama queen, thinks he's a cat
• Max and Chewy, a pair of gorgeous Blue&Gold Macaws
• Fred, a cockatoo
• Leslie and Freddy, a pair of Amazons
• Four! Hahn's macaws (we now have more Hahn's macaws than budgies) : Han, Vernie, Kermie and Harry (we think they are all males)
• Three budgies : Bill-or-Ben, Little Bob (who is female, and she made babies with Holly) and Nelson (also female)

We are also temporarily boarding a pair of parrotlets, whom I have provisionally named Oscar and Lucinda. Of course, in truth, all these critters are Lewis's, although I do contribute a bit to their care. Quite a lot to Toby's, almost none at all to Fred, who would rip my hand off if I tried to handle him.

Lewis has been making some forays into the world of web design on behalf of the charity he is an officer of, Soft Landing.

The problem with social media

Well, I am on Google+, have been there a while. Definitely still on Facebook, where truthfully most of my online "activity" occurs. My problem with social media vs. old-fashioned blogging (funny that something becomes really old-fashioned in about 7 years) is one I have not heard expressed a lot. I really took to blogging, because it's sort of like being a self-published author and sort of like being an amateur journalist and sort of like keeping a diary. Social media, even if you post frequently and participate enthusiastically, is nothing like that.

Here's the thing. I just last week submitted my (£900!) application for naturalization as a British citizen. I had to recreate my travel journal for the last 5 years for the proof of residency section. Now obviously the passport is the first place to check. But as an American, I didn't always get a stamp on entering the US, and amongst my UK stamps and one Spain stamp and two Ireland stamps, they are not all that legible. So back when I was posting regularly here, I had a record of my travels, all nicely dated and indexed. But as I lazily moved over to Facebook, well it might be there somewhere, but it's almost impossible to look up and the only way to access it is to page backward literally forever (or however long FB keeps them, and frankly, my paging finger got tired.)

Here's another little gripe that may be almost unique to me: I am on this app for sharing blogs on FB, so this post will go there automatically (I think; of course, FB does keep changing stuff.) But to cross-post to Google+ is a major hassle, and you do wonder if it's worth it.

Blogger and mainly this blog is now an aide memoire for me, and also a memory lane trip, having recorded a lot of major events in my life, like Thanksgivings spent with family, death of most of our pets, birthdays I got to celebrate with Savannah, especially nice meals I cooked or books I read. But from about 2007 onwards, I just haven't been posting enough, and there are gaps in the record. Of course, it's a cop-out for me to blame FB, let alone Google. I just need to proper-blog more.

Peter Falk Obituary

Yesterday, actor Peter Falk passed away. Columbo may not have been the greatest detective show of all time, but it's amazing how Falk's brilliant character study has influenced future TV and film detectives, especially, I think, in British crime drama. And of course, I will always remember and love Peter Falk especially for his role as "Grand-dad" in The Princess Bride, one of the best cult movies of all time. He also starred in several serious films, including Husbands and A Woman Under the Influence by his friend, director John Cassavetes. And he had a great reputation as an actor on the New York stage as well.

Deborama...

This blog seems to be more and more about obituaries these days. I don't know if it's a sign of my age, or just the fact that it's so easy to post on Facebook that I only post here when I have something personal to say.

Manning Marable, 1950 - 2011

I was sad to learn of the relatively early passing of Manning Marable, a leading light of the DSA and a great historian, essayist and academic. Tragically, he died just three days before the ultimate culmination of his life's work, the publication of his eagerly awaited biography of Malcolm X. Although Marable had published several other non-academic works of history or political philosophy, the Malcolm X biography will probably establish his name with the public in a way these more obscure books could not. But to democratic socialists, students of African-American studies and the culturally aware, Marable was already in the highest ranks. He will be sorely missed.

Geraldine Ferraro

Feminist icon Geraldine Ferraro, pictured in 2007, the first female vice-presidential candidate to run on a major political ticket, died Saturday 26 March from lung cancer.

Remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire - 100 years today

On this day in 1911, 146 sweatshop workers died in a horrible fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. Some of the workers were as young as 14, most were immigrants and many were young women and girls. Read about the fire. Don't mourn, organize.

Deborama...

... you don't see any posts for weeks, and then three come along at once!

Farewell to Liz

The New York Times has this great Elizabeth Taylor timeline.

And when I heard that she was interred already, I thought that might mean that she had stayed faithful to Judaism all these decades after conversion, and so it did. I am glad. And while we're on the subject, there is something kind of grisly about our modern western "Christian" predilection for funerals days and even weeks after the death. The Muslims and the Jews are much more seemly in this respect.

RIP: Owsley "Bear" Stanley

Owsley Stanley, known to Deadheads as simply "Bear", has died following a traffic accident at the age of 76. He was also known as a pioneer of the psychedelic drug culture and the producer of the highest quality LSD ever made, as a one-time financial backer and early sound engineer to the Grateful Dead and as the first of the "tapers", a community of music activists / deadheads who carefully chronicled virtually every note of every Grateful Dead concert on a myriad of private audio tapes that were always swapped or given away free.

There's No One as Irish as Barack O'Bama 2012 - Corrigan Brothers

Things that make me crazy

I was watching a comedy (show or film, don't remember, probably British rather than American) where a comedy bigoted character said about immigrants (paraphrase) : they are lazy, they don't want to work and they come over here and take our jobs. He said this all in one sentence, oblivious to the irony (or something) of what he was saying, and even when a more level-headed character pointed out that they were either lazy OR job-stealing, but obviously not both, he didn't get it. So this was comedy, right?

A few days later, today, I was watching a supposedly serious show about "benefit fraud" on a supposedly serious BBC channel. They featured a story about a woman who came from Ghana to the UK, illegally forged a new identity based on a stolen British passport with her photo substituted and a faked birth certificate and faked educational credentials. she then got a job with the NHS which she had for several years (I am guessing from the earnings cited below seven to ten years.) Most of the fraud involved here was pretty ham-fisted; her birth certificate said Lutterworth, which is in Leicestershire, but then said County of Surrey (hundreds of miles away.) (For Americans, this is sort of like saying Sacramento, Illinois, only even more impossible.) Also, some documents implied she had never left the UK after being born here, but her fake diplomas were from Ghana. And implausibly had a photo on them. The same photo as on her stolen passport. So, look here, I am not saying she is a hero, or not a fraudster, or not a criminal. I am not defending her. But this is how the BBC summed up the story. This woman was said to have earned £230,000 plus a £40,000 "bursary" (not sure what that is, but I am guessing some kind of grant for either work or education.) So they claimed her fraud had COST British taxpayers (which includes me) £270,000, or "over a quarter of a million". But wait a minute, this woman was also a British taxpayer. And she didn't COST the country £230K of that, since presumably they got at least nearly that much value from her in service to the NHS. Oh, but here's the real kicker, just as ignorant in its way as that "lazy and steal our jobs" line: the woman is now in prison for many years! So she is "paying back that debt to society." No, she is now costing the British taxpayers (including me) probably about 10 times as much per annum to support in a prison, doing nothing of worth, as she was paying in taxes while committing her crime. Is it just me, or is this FREAKING INSANE?

UK's BA chief says boo to US flight security rules

Here are two viewpoints on the same story, one from The New York Times and one from The Guardian (UK).
The Guardian :

Britain should stop "kowtowing" to US demands over airport security, the chairman of British Airways, Martin Broughton, has said, adding that American airports did not implement some checks on their own internal flights.

The NYT :

The United States is making excessive demands for airline passenger screening, including measures it doesn't require on U.S. domestic flights, the chairman of British Airways says.

I read the NYT, WaPo, The Grauniad (British joke) and the BBC news website every day. Most of the stories are just copies of each other. It's interesting to me that in this case, the two stories are not copies at all, and have a subtly different tone and emphasis. Also, the Guardian's story is illustrated with a garish colour photo of the chairman looking stern and exasperated.

This evil policy, these craven people...

I am so appalled at this latest turn in the saga of Great Britain's immigration policies that I can hardly find the words. You would think after the even worse incidents in France (picture above from a notorious video of French police beating women and children during a protest by immigrants there) that the UK would be keen to be seen as more humane in their treatment of "failed asylum seekers".
I have visions of the scene toward the end of my favourite movie, Lawrence of Arabia, where a British doctor comes upon a marketplace full of dead and dying Turkish soldiers and no one doing anything to help them, and he keeps shouting "Outrageous" in an impotent fury. That's how I feel about most immigration stories I read, but this one really is outrageous, not for naked aggression, as in France, but for an utter failure to do the right thing, for pandering to racist tabloid media, for treating and thinking of asylum seekers and economic migrants as less than human.
After campaigning on the "moral outrage" of children of asylum seekers being kept virtually imprisoned, the LDs as part of the coalition government have helped to hatch this cynical flash-deportation scheme, trying to circumvent both human rights rules and liberal public opinion.

The briefing paper also shows that the border agency is worried that ending the use of detention could give families facing deportation more chance to launch community protest campaigns backed by the media and MPs. It says more police may need to be involved in deportations because "significant public order problems" could follow removals. "The alternative is not to inform the family of the exact time and date of removal, so that they are not prepared. However, this has its own difficulties, which would need analysing and addressing." The document says it is undecided whether a specific time and date should be given, or a longer period of a couple of days.

RIP Harvey Pekar

In These Times and the NYT cover the death of Harvey Pekar. I loved this film, American Splendor. My British husband "didn't get it." But that happens a lot with him and not just American stuff either.

Found on the interweb: Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

This is nice.

In loving memory, Shephard H. Patton, Sr.

My sister Cindy lost her husband of 31 years to cancer on Monday. I was blessed to be able to spend a few hours with them in his last week of life, and painful as it was, to say good-bye. The obituary in the Biloxi-Gulfport Sun Herald gives a hint at what an exceptional man he was.

A long time coming, but an astonishing result

Bloody Sunday.
If you had told me in the early 1970s that there would ever come a day when any government, least of all the government of the UK, would issue such an honest and devastating assessment of its own actions, I would not have believed it.
Of course, there are those who see it as a step too far in laying blame, particularly when a commanding officer is singled out for blame, while individual soldiers who shot and killed have their identities protected, and those higher up the chain are mostly let off the hook.
Families of the victims have had, for the most part, no appetite for revenge now that the innocence of their loved ones is established. One survivor says "Jail isn't something I can see happening. That wouldn't, in any way, bother me, I have no great desire to see a 60-year-old man go to jail."

Book Blogging at my other blog

I have reviewed a few books over on Deborama's Book Reviews and Store :E. L. Doctorow's The March, John le Carre's A Most Wanted Man and Dana Spiotta's Eat the Document. Check it out.

Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest post on Deborama's Books

Millenium Trilogy on Amazon UK
Check out my latest cultural (books, films, celebrities!) blogging over at Deborama's Book Reviews and Store.

We could call it the Mickey Mouse amendment

Following the SCOTUS decision that corporations have "free speech" rights, Facebook has a got a fan page advocating a Constitutional Amendment to assert that human rights only apply to individual humans. If you think that's over-reacting, or if you tend to be swayed by the fuzzy logic of bone-headed so-called Libertarians on this issue, read the article called Inhuman Rights from McSweeney's Internet Tendency. It is a brilliant example of the argument "ad absurdem", right up there with Swift's Modest Proposal.

Random Appearance of Deborama's WWW and My Life, My Family, Travelling

I'm in Atlanta, which it is now hip to call ATL. I am visiting my son and his girlfriend, and I am staying in the poshest hotel I have ever been in, at a fantastically reasonable rate, thanks to Expedia. (I have a picture of it on my phone, but I will have to upload it later as this computer in the hotel doesn't seem to have a USB port available.)


I have to do another Deborama's Wednesday Website of the Week, but I cannot wait until Wednesday (I will be mostly on the road to Hattiesburg then anyway) and technicallly I should not call it WWW anymore since it is far from being weekly. But I discovered the Believer magazine, a McSweeney's publication, at my son's apartment, and I have been obsessively reading it ever since. Absolutely brilliant, and I hope they'll forgive me lifting the image, since I am using it to plug their product.
Everybody here is laid off, or about to be laid off. It's quite sad what this recession is doing to those of my kids' generation, as if they haven't suffered enough. It's bad for my generation too of course; getting made redundant just as the verdant pastures of retirement come hazily into view is no picnic, I'm sure. Hopefully, I won't find that out firsthand on my return to Blighty, although it is a possibility.

Unhealthy America

This NYT piece by Nicholas Kristof is good enough to drag me out of blogging semi-retirement, which means too good to only click "Share" and send to Facebook. There is no way this can be repeated often enough to get the message across - the US does not have the "best health care in the world", far from it. Saying if it ain't broke don't fix it is only clever if it ain't broke!

A notable death, a death in the family

My ex-father-in-law, Lisle Carleton Carter, Jr., passed away on the 10th of September. It had been many years since I had seen him, but my son was very close to him.
Lisle was not only a person who I really loved and admired, he was just generally a remarkable man, a polymath, in that he was a leading academic administrator, a former government official and a lawyer until his retirement some years ago. And also a poet and a patron of the arts and many charities. He will be missed and mourned by many. His many achievements are featured in this editorial obituary in the Washington Post.

The Best article so far on health care reform

This Huffington Post article by George Lazoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics, is very long and a hard read, but worth it. Although he is focusing on a scathing critique of, and offering a cogent alternative to, the way the Obama administration has failed to sell health care reform, along the way he makes some really razor-sharp points about what is wrong with the current system. I think everyone in favour of health care reform (or insurance reform if you prefer) should read this article as a guide in how to discuss it, not just with those who agree, but especially with those who disagree.

The passing of a great friend - Gerry Bretzke

On the 18th of July, a great friend of mine back in Minnesota passed away. It was not sudden or unexpected, and from the descriptions on the web that I have been privileged to read, it was one of the most peaceful and beautiful deaths you could hope to have, given old age and disease and an imperfect world. Gerry Bretzke was a member of my church in Minneapolis and also the small spiritual study group ironically called The Initiates. The picture above, of about half of the core members of the Initiates, is an old one, from soon after I emigrated to the UK, or maybe just before. Gerry is the guy in the middle, in the feed cap, with his arm around me. The guy on the right end is George Tofte, who passed away a few years ago.

Let Women Choose

Michelle Goldberg, author of a recent book on reproductive rights "The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World," has an article in the LA Times that summarises the complex arguments made in her book. Both address the conundrum that the world faces twin crises in its demographic future: soaring birth rates globally, with the great majority being amongst the poorest members of the poorest countries, and plummeting birth rates in several leading developed countries, notably Italy, Japan, Spain and Russia. It may seem crazy to assert at first that both problems are the result of women's lack of reproductive and economic freedom, but the arguments are pretty strong. This book is in my Wish List.
Here's an excerpt from the article:

Some social conservatives are using the threat of rapid First World population decline to argue for restrictions on women's rights. But that gets it precisely backward. In developing countries, lower social status for women is associated with higher fertility, but once societies become highly industrialized and women taste a certain amount of freedom, the reverse is true.
Fertility is reaching dangerously low levels in countries where social attitudes and institutions haven't caught up with women's desire to combine work and family. When faced with men who are unwilling to share domestic burdens, inflexible workplaces and day-care shortages, many women respond by having fewer children or forgoing motherhood altogether.

Blogkeeping - my holiday

This is definitely the longest I have gone without blogging. Also the longest I have gone without a holiday. The last time I was abroad was Thanksgiving 2007. The only trip I took in all of 2008 was a one-day trip to Portmeiron, not even staying overnight. I am determined not to let 2009 go by the same way. I just got back Friday evening from a six-day trip to "the North" (where we do what we want!) I have reviewed and journalled the trip in more detail at Deborama's Kitchen, so check it out there.
Part of the reason I didn't travel is that last year everyone in my far-flung family was in a state of flux. My older younger sister and her husband, one at a time, have temporarily abandoned the family homestead in Gulfport and set up house in Kansas. This has left my aged Ps behind in a little duplex bungalow they built mainly for them. So now my younger younger sister, an academic in Hattiesburg and her husband, a realtor, are buying a second home in Hattiesburg and moving the aged Ps there. My daughter has split with her ex-partner, father of grand-daughter Savannah. My son is still with his partner, who graduated last year from her PG Architecture course and got a job in her field - just as the property market crashed. My son's company was sold and he was offered a less attractive job than he had, but of course he's going to take it for the stability. But no benefits, no holiday, and the stability is not real stability, as nothing is these days. Both my kids have two extra sidelines for income: Aimee is a web designer for her main job, and also teaches web design and is a photographer. Carey works for an online game company, and does painting and web design free-lancing. I am so proud that I raised two smart, hard-working, creative and above all resilient kids. And like all parents and grand-parents, I pray things don't get too much worse before they get better.
I have been meaning to do a blog on here called "The Fifteen Year Depression of 2008 - 2023." I would say keep an eye out for it, but it may not happen. (The blog that is; I am pretty sure about the depression.)

Torture 101

For over 20 years, I have supported the campaign to close the School of the Americas in south Georgia. All the while, there was this other military academy of torture that was even worse, that was probably the source of much of SOA's curriculum and that I had never even heard of. The author of this article, himself a "graduate" of the SERE, surmises that military interrogators would think something along the lines of "I survived waterboarding, so it's OK to do it to this guy". Well, I remember a top Pentagon / DOD official actually articulating that argument, with no apparent recognition of the essential sickness of what he was saying.
The thing is, both SERE and SOA, and also the "hazing" in military academies (not just in the US, despite what David Morris thinks - there is an ongoing scandal in the British Armed forces involving suspicious deaths of young recruits in training) are symptoms of the whole military culture that allows them to happen. That is not going to change by closing the schools, by presidential edict or by legislation. Not that I know how it can be changed. I thought bringing women into the military might help, over 30 years ago when I still had my idealism, but that theory has been quashed by the evidence at Abu Ghraib.

Obama: "He's going to be very hard to say no to, especially in the first year."

Andrew Rawnsley of the Observer has a great comment piece decrying the easy cynicism of the pessimists about the upcoming Obama presidency. There are even some who glibly claim that they're sure to be disappointed by his inaugural address, what with his overblown reputation for oratory and all. Although, I read somewhere else, and it's more convincing, that all he really needs to do in the current feverish and desperate climate is step up to the microphone and sneeze and the speech will be acclaimed in history. So, who you gonna believe. Rawnsley identifies one definite strength that the Obama team can use, quoted in the title above, and attributed to an unnamed official in the Brown government.

John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey,1923 - 2009

Photo Credit: Associated Press Photo

Sir John Mortimer, celebrated barrister, playwright and novelist, died 17 January, 2009. He was best known as the creator of the popular crime series Rumpole of the Bailey, featuring Horace Rumpole, a figure only slightly autobiographical, as he never aspired to, let alone attained, anything like Mortimer's own achievements. He was also the author of the Paradise Postponed series, which was made into a great TV series, Voyage Round My Father and several other popular plays. As a barrister, he had a long career during which he also published books on the law and defended free speech in high-profile obscenity cases.

Andrew Wyeth, 1917 - 2009

Andrew Wyeth died yesterday at the age of 91. Revered and reviled in almost equal measures, there was a time when the controversy of Andrew Wyeth's art was the biggest thing there was in American art, and some of his paintings, particulary "Christina's World" have become icons of the American image. But I reckon that somewhere under the huckster, the hen-pecked husband rescued by a woman from a domineering father, the rock-ribbed Pennsylvania Republican, the remote and fastidious realist, what we really had was a Zen master with an inherited gift. At least that's what I think when I see a painting like this one.

Obama plus Spiderman - it makes sense

Marvel comics has come out with a "Spiderman saves Obama's inauguration" title.

Ukulele Orchestra of GB Anarchy in the Ukulele

I had a YouTube video here of "Fly Me Off the Handel" by the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain but sadly YT has purged the video for ToU violation :(

Deborama's Health Care Piece

I was sent by my old DS comrade Dan a story from AlterNet, the title of which is The Right Wing's Latest Argument Against Public Health Care -- We'd Like It Too Much. Very good article, and I agree with everything in it except the first three words of the title. It's not "the right wing", whatever that means in America, that's opposed to universal health care. That title, and the mindset behind it, is all down to the regrettable flip side of the mostly wonderful American tendency to focus on the future: their astonishing ability to wipe out the past. And especially that maddeningly ahistorical quality of youthful American radicals to wrongly interpret their own history, forget, ignore or deny huge swathes of it, and reinterpret everything every few years, with often comical effects.
No my dears, I love you all passionately, but you don't know half the time who your friends are, who your enemies are, or what you are fighting for. You wouldn't know an authentic right-wing American if one infiltrated your organisation (and I assure you, one has) and the opposition to universal health care? it is the unholy alliance of insurance, big finance and big pharma, and therefore the entire infrastructure of global capitalism, and therefore your boss, and therefore all your co-workers and essentially you yourself. Yes, you cannot so much as draw a paycheque without making a huge contribution to this behemoth which has a strong vested interest in keeping you just barely well enough to work, in terror of illness and incidentally, of "big government", and vulnerable and malleable. Your mother and father and sisters are very possibly staunch opponents of "socialised medicine", even as they struggle through life underinsured, overmedicated and lied to at every turn. The one or two authentic "right-wingers" I have known were just as likely to be in favour of "socialised medicine" as opposed to it. The concerns of the right-wing in the US, given that there the mainstream would pass as the right wing of any European democracy, are mostly to do with such relatively arcane issues as racial purity, draconian anti-crime and anti-immigration policies, and ruling the third world in a harsh and unflinchingly imperialistic style. The endless dominance of capitalism they either take as given, or believe in a Nazi-style state control, which would include universal health care, along with forced sterilisation and euthenasia of the "unfit". So not really comrades, are they? But pretty sure to latch onto a popular and naive group working for universal health care.
Apart from these few quibbles, the article itself is good though. If only it had said "Big "Health-Care" Industry's Latest Argument ..."

Christmas Blogs for Christians

My friend Lance, an Eastern Orthodox Christian in Minneapolis, has this to say for Christmas. And for even more spiritually uplifting fare, possibly to counteract the unnecessary brouhaha from elsewhere (no link, you know who you are):
All about the angels of Christmas
A beautiful essay on the use of the Jesus Prayer
Why not re-read Franny and Zooey while we're on the subject?
Let it Shine! Inspiring quotes about the return of the Light
Brightest and Best, my favourite Christmas carol

Odetta - 1930 - 2008

Odetta, the "protest singer's protest singer" has died aged 77. She was planning to come out of semi-retirement to sing at Obama's inauguration. She will be missed.

India reeling

It's a strange and not pleasant coincidence. I don't blog about India all that much, and just a few days after I did, all hell broke loose in Mumbai. And what's really strange is that a friend of mine was over there (possibly, I hope, just leaving as the attacks began) on his second trip to the country. I will be worried until I hear from him. I can't remember exactly the dates of his trip and whether or not Mumbai was on the whirlwind itinerary (I think he was there to interview prospective students at the University where he lectures.)
The latest news - the breaking of the siege at the Jewish Centre. A lot of the UK media are unashamed about concentrating first and foremost on the question of how many victims are British, and only delving into the main story as an afterthought. (But the BBC coverage is good, both depth and focus.) US media are worse, and don't seem to pay it all that much mind. The international (US-owned) company I work for has hundreds of employees and contractors and clients there, but not a peep on the intranet, although they meticulously tracked the hurricanes in Texas and Florida and took up collections for the victims.

India calling . . .

No, it's not a story about call centres, far from it. This New York Times article is about the astonishing reverse-migration of US-born men and women of Indian extraction migrating "back" to India in search of their fortunes, or just a more comfortable or exciting way to make a living. There are some fascinating insights and great quotes in this short article:

Prior to living in India:
My parents married in India and then embarked to America on a lonely, thrilling adventure. They learned together to drive, shop in malls, paint a house. They decided who and how to be. ... It was extraordinary, and ordinary: This is what America did to people, what it always has done.

My parents brought us to India every few years as children. I relished time with relatives; but India always felt alien, impenetrable, frozen. ... Perhaps it was the bureaucracy, the need to know someone to do anything. Or the culture shock of servitude: a child’s horror at reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in an American middle school, then seeing servants slapped and degraded in India. My firsthand impression of India seemed to confirm the rearview immigrant myth of it: a land of impossibilities. But history bends and swerves, and sometimes swivels fully around.

Living in India today:

At first we felt confused by India’s formalities and hierarchies, by British phraseology even the British had jettisoned, by the ubiquity of acronyms. Working in offices, some of us were perplexed to be invited to “S&M conferences,” only to discover that this denoted sales and marketing. Several found to their chagrin that it is acceptable for another man to touch your inner thigh when you crack a joke in a meeting. We learned new expressions: “He is on tour” (Means: He is traveling. Doesn’t mean: He has joined U2.); “What is your native place?” (Means: Where did your ancestors live? Doesn’t mean: What hospital delivered you?); “Two minutes” (Means: An hour. Doesn’t mean: Two minutes.).

Countries like India once fretted about a “brain drain.” We are learning now that “brain circulation,” as some call it, may be more apt. India did not export brains; it invested them. It sent millions away. In the freedom of new soil, they flowered. They seeded a new generation that, having blossomed, did what humans have always done: chase the frontier of the future.