Deborama

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

2011-12-21T22:08:00.002Z

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

The Mountain Goats - "Christmas in Prison"

2011-12-21T21:57:00.000Z

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

2011-12-14T13:24:00.001Z

(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

2011-11-17T16:46:00.002Z

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

2011-10-18T17:57:00.004Z

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

2011-10-06T07:36:00.004Z

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

2011-09-14T09:28:00.004Z

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

2011-08-23T03:01:00.002Z

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

2011-08-10T14:05:00.005Z

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

2011-08-10T13:21:00.002Z

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

2011-06-25T10:30:00.003Z

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...

2011-04-05T12:22:00.001Z

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

2011-04-05T09:12:00.002Z

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

2011-03-27T00:00:00.004Z

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

2011-03-25T19:20:00.003Z

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...

2011-03-25T19:19:00.001Z

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

Farewell to Liz

2011-03-25T19:07:00.003Z

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

2011-03-15T15:42:00.003Z

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

2011-01-27T10:49:00.000Z

Things that make me crazy

2011-01-03T19:38:00.002Z

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

2010-10-27T22:33:00.003Z

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...

2010-08-07T11:53:00.004Z

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

2010-07-14T16:16:00.002Z

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

2010-06-22T19:35:00.001Z

This is nice.

In loving memory, Shephard H. Patton, Sr.

2010-06-18T20:16:00.003Z

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

2010-06-16T09:10:00.003Z

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

2010-04-18T13:51:00.002Z

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

2010-04-04T14:12:00.002Z

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

2010-01-27T09:31:00.000Z

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

2009-11-21T15:55:00.003Z

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

2009-11-05T17:51:00.003Z

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

2009-09-25T23:22:00.003Z

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

2009-08-23T09:26:00.003Z

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

2009-07-26T11:26:00.005Z

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

2009-05-17T16:57:00.004Z

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

2009-03-22T12:07:00.003Z

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

2009-01-31T13:58:00.003Z

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."

2009-01-18T15:48:00.003Z

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

2009-01-18T15:47:00.003Z

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

2009-01-17T00:07:00.002Z

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

2009-01-10T00:08:00.003Z

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

Ukulele Orchestra of GB Anarchy in the Ukulele

2009-01-03T23:11:00.003Z

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

2008-12-27T12:00:00.003Z

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

2008-12-25T12:15:00.003Z

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

2008-12-04T17:52:00.004Z

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

2008-11-28T23:42:00.003Z

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 . . .

2008-11-23T21:20:00.003Z

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.

Europe and America - together again

2008-11-23T20:49:00.003Z

This article from the Economist analyses the prospects for renewing the Transatlantic Alliance - before it's too late.

Yet in the longer run the chances of better transatlantic co-operation may be greater than they seem at first sight. The reason is simple. For both Europe and America the long-term outlook is quite bleak. Global acceptance of American leadership has diminished both because of the Iraq war (and Guantánamo) and because of the rise of emerging powers with different ideas about how to order the world, some of which carry a whiff of 19th century great-power rivalries. Today’s Europe has little military clout, and is in demographic and (relative) economic decline.

A lot of articles on the economy and on the new administration coming to the US in January 2009 all take as a given that the power of the US, and indeed of "the west," is definitely on the wane. Some put the high-water mark back as far as 1948, although I would disagree with that. I think 1989 has at least as strong a claim. But there is no argument at all that the eight years of the Bush administration hastened the end for America, and a surprising number of pundits agree with me in pointing to Hurricane Katrina as the smoking gun that proved it to be so.

Obama's job number one - close Guantanamo

2008-11-23T20:45:00.001Z

It's not just I who am saying, it's The New York Times as well. I think they hit the nail on the head with this one.

"Thank you, white folks"

2008-11-12T20:36:00.002Z

Jack White of The Root says, "Thanks" to white America for voting for Obama in such large numbers and even adds, quite graciously, "we couldn't have done it without you."

Why you have to love Michelle

2008-11-12T20:12:00.003Z

Heather Wood Rudulph of the Huffington Post says thou shalt love Michelle Obama. I already did, so I'm cool. Yeah, she does gush a little. But you know what? she's right.
In the same HP, an old interview with the president-elect from 2004 is unearthed, which contains some very revealing statements about faith and values. Thanks again to Ashley for sending me the link.

"Mama Africa" Miriam Makeba. 1932 - 2008

2008-11-10T23:08:00.003Z

Miriam Makeba, the pan-African activist and musician known as "Mama Africa" and the "Empress of Africa", died of an apparent heart attack following a concert Friday in Italy. A friend of Nelson Mandela, and one-time wife of Stokely Carmichael, a protege of Harry Belafonte and a mentor to many younger performers, she was connected to everyone in African politics, civil rights and music. Many younger Americans were first introduced to her as part of Paul Simon's Graceland tour in 1987, at a time when she was still officially in exile from her native South Africa and from the US for her controversial political actions.

And so it goes

2008-11-09T10:53:00.007Z

It's Remembrance Sunday here in Great Britain. A day for looking at the past, and yet all the poppy-bedecked talking heads on Andrew Marr's show were pointing more toward the future, even when they were referring to the theme of Remembrance Sunday; that's how it is when you perch on a cusp of history, on the Great Divide as it were, where the rivers change directions.
Last night, I received another group email from my old DSA comrade Dan F. in St. Paul. I read every word, and it made my blood run a little cold, providing a bracing counterpoint to the overwhelming waves of optimism of the past week. (I must confess, I still leak a few tears of joy and disbelief every time someone says "President-elect Obama" on the TV or radio.) The e-mail had the entire text of this Monthly Review article by Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Depression : A Long-term View". It made me a bit dizzy as well, an effect I last remember for certain that came from reading a dystopian novel by Samuel R Delaney.
Remembrance Sunday is about honouring all the dead of the Great War (World War I to modernists), the dead and wounded of all the other wars in between, the survivors and currently serving Forces men and women, in more or less that order. DH and I observed the occasion by watching last night an excellent film of a Pat Barker novel of the Great War, Regeneration. (Every year, I also give a few pounds the Poppy Appeal and then promptly lose my poppy. It's those stupid straight pins. I have a great suggestion for bringing the past into the present a little better and instead of flogging paper poppies with a straight pin, feature optional sticky-back glossy poppies that you can press onto your coat or shirt without making a hole. Just a thought.)

Street party in Atlanta

2008-11-05T20:29:00.006Z

This was last night, outside Ebenezer Baptist Church. From right to left, my son, his girlfriend and a mutual friend. I don't know if the AJC covered this spontaneous street party, but the title link is about the more official Atlanta Dems celebrations.

And here's the story behind this picture, from my son's message to me on Facebook.

You could even post a pic on your blog of me putting the Obama sign on Martin Luther King's grave and talk about how some woman told me it was wrong of me to do it but then thanked me and took a picture. I was confused, but I didn't care. It's what I felt like doing. Because Martin deserved to share in the celebration.

Daily Kos electoral scoreboard

2008-11-05T11:44:00.002Z

Change has come

2008-11-05T11:08:00.010Z

REUTERS/Jim Bourg

Here is an awe-inspiring photo-stream of pictures from last night. Amongst the show of 31 photos, it shows a vigil at Martin Luther King's grave in Atlanta, a site visited by my son and his girlfriend last night as part of their victory march through their (and my old) hometown.
Here is a full text of Obama's victory speech.
For the geeks like me, an election map from the BBC. The UK news media is if anything even more wonky about the US election than the US media. It's touching. The BBC and MSNBC maps are all Adobe Flash so I can't paste them into my blog.
And let's not forget all the other races! Minnesota is on my mind today. According to Live Blog of the election at the Minnesota Daily (U of M student newspaper) the Senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman is still too close to call.

What a great birthday

2008-11-05T10:27:00.003Z

I got up at 1:30 am which was 8:30 pm EST to watch the election. Obama was pretty far ahead even then, and the red states in the south, less Virginia and Florida, came in and he was still ahead. Soon after I started watching, Pennsylvania was called blue, and then Michigan. I finally went back to bed about 4:30, still a couple of hours or more to go before Obama would arrive at Grant Park for his big moment. But before I flagged, I saw the electoral college vote cross the line when California and then Washington came in. Virgina, Florida and New Mexico were all but in the bag. The carousing, the ecstasy, the weeping and hugging, had begun in Times Square, in Grant Park, in Obama's father's village in Kenya, in ex-pat parties in the UK, in the student union at Morehouse College and many other places round the globe. I saw John McCain's very gracious, noble and dignified concession speech and that's when it hit me that change really was sweeping not just the US but the planet. Maybe it was my imagination, or maybe it was a sort of self-selected crowd, but the tearful faces of the Republican faithful seemed to be saying "maybe it won't be that bad, maybe we can stop all the frenzied red-blue crap and get on with it, like he says".

Studs Terkel, 1912 - 2008

2008-11-02T10:47:00.002Z

Studs Terkel, another of my all-time great heroes, author of the ground-breaking oral history book Working and Hard Times, passed away on October 31 at the age of 96. If you didn't know the great man, you could do worse than to read "Why Studs Terkey Mattered" from his hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune. Or, here's a little sample, from a radio interview:

With Enron and corporate scandals in the news, Studs recalled the 1930s depression: “Things don’t repeat themselves exactly. But we’ve learned nothing from it. Unregulated, free, untrammeled, what’s it called, ‘free market,’ fell on its ass again, as it did then. We’ve learned nothing.”

Powell endorses Obama

2008-10-19T14:07:00.003Z

This just in. This could be one of the most important endorsements so far, mainly because it could tip exactly the kind of people who are still sitting on the fence.

Sub-prime nation

2008-10-12T21:05:00.006Z

I have had this great blog post about the economy running around in my head. I have the left view, the right view and correct view (maybe). I have how we got here and where we may be headed and what to do about it. But somehow, with reading this cacophony of voices, I am unable or unwilling to add my own. So all I can do is share.

Madeleine Bunting of the Guardian has a stunning critique of the "free market" myths, beliefs, and orthodoxies that were in a great part responsible for our current woes.
John Cochrane, an economist of the Chicago school, is probably a "believer" and he has the traditional conservative case against the (original) US bailout plan (now largely superseded by events - was it really only a week ago?) but also the most succinct and understandable description of what the mortgage crisis is really about.
Freakonomics has loads of good stuff; I especially liked Save or Splurge? by Daniel Hamermesh, because of the little vignette about his marriage. (DH and I have lost over a third - a third! - of our retirement fund.)
Recently I joined (under my "work" persona) a website community for IT and banking industry professionals that has an excellent news feed, making me overwhelmed with cluefulness. It's called Finextra and some of the more energetic (than me) members have blogs.
Back at the Guardian, Gary Younge, a resident USA-expert, links the economic meltdown back to the people and power, and the election, of course.
Update: stop press! I just found this, which has got everything, with large type titles. No really, go read it right now, it's brilliant.

Paul Newman, 1925--2008

2008-09-28T19:33:00.003Z

I was crushed to read suddenly of the passing of Paul Newman. What a beautiful soul he was. Such a handsome man, a great actor and patron of the arts, a humanitarian and an all-round great example of how to live. I hope they give him a standing ovation in heaven.

The Onion rips a new one for MoveOn.org

2008-09-17T22:28:00.004Z

Yes! The Onion has surpassed itself.

And now I feel really good about my decision to cut off all emails from the profoundly annoying MoveOn.org. (No link; I don't want to encourage them.) I had sent them several thoughtful replies about how all these petitions were really terribly unproductive. Finally I just got tired of being simultaneously ignored and inundated with presumptious emails. Apparently I am not the only one. I like Obama's way* of dealing with them.

Perhaps most telling of his recent frustrations, Obama's mail records confirm that, in April 2008, he replied to a MoveOn.org e-mail entitled "10 Things You Need to Know About John McCain" with the message "Shut up."

* Obama didn't really do this; the Onion is fictional and satirical, for those of you not familiar with it.

Prominent left-wingers' views of the financial meltdown

2008-09-17T20:13:00.008Z

What? We still can't say the word "depression"? How about "recession", can we at least call it that? Are we all Keynesians now?
The Guardian has a nice selection of comments and insights into the global financial crisis, coming out on the same day that Lloyd's TSB is in talks to buy out Halifax-BOS (both major UK banks and the result of earlier mega-mergers, but in more optimistic times.) But rather than being the thoughts of pundits and economists, these views are from philosophers, artists, socialists and peace activists.
Is capitalism done for? Is it even in trouble? Most of the thinkers say no. They are not so positive about the chances of the nemesis known as New Labour, however. Many of them bemoan the undeniable fact that the left does not have an inkling of a reform plan. But still, the analyses are mostly quite spot-on.

Ken Livingstone (former mayor of London) : As a system for the distribution and exchange of goods, you can't beat the market. But the mistake a lot of politicians have made is to think that because the market was good at that, it could be good at everything: it could train workers, create infrastructure, protect the environment, regulate itself. Quite obviously, it can't.

Max Keiser (former broker) : This is not a blip. It's extremely significant. We will see a shift in power away from the US, and towards the developing world - to countries such as Brazil and the Gulf states that have commodities to sell, and to China, where the savings ratio is high. We are going to see a new world order. America as a driver of the global economy is finished.

Shelia Rowbotham (professor of gender and labour history) : The Labour party has always been ambiguous about whether it is trying to make capitalism more efficient, or whether it is trying to soften its harshness. Since the 1970s, the left has been much weakened, as neoliberal ideas became totally ascendent. Under Blair, the idea that the Labour party was committed to any redistribution was pushed to the sidelines. I would like to see a new kind of left - a left that would relate to the present predicament.

Late breaking addendum : Nobel prize-winner Joseph E. Stiglitz has an article on CNN about preventing future financial catastrophes (in the US) through prudent regulation.

Sickening new electoral tactic

2008-09-17T20:03:00.002Z

If all else fails for the Republicans, they are counting on the tactic of limiting voting by poor and non-white voters. Some bright spark has siezed on the mortgage crisis as a sort of natural selection device to keep people who might want regime change away from the polls. To cut to the chase, some state Republican parties are arming their poll-watchers with list of recently foreclosed properties matched to the electoral rolls, so someone who is, say, dispossessed and evicted from their home in the weeks leading up to the election can be disenfranchised on the basis that they haven't established a new home yet and updated their address. (Some states don't allow you to update your address for quite a long period before election dates, making this tactic so much easier to deploy.) I think the story says it all; there is nothing I can add.

Speaking of truthiness . . .

2008-09-17T19:49:00.002Z

The Guardian's Michael Tomasky is getting really frustrated trying to be fair and balanced about those nasty Republicans. But seriously, it is hard to find fault with what he says. And it is impossible to fight a clean and principled election against people who make lying both a virtue and an art form. Check his points against the Truth-o-meter and see what he means.

Deborama's WWW Number whatever - the Flip-o-meter

2008-09-17T19:39:00.004Z

Deborama's Wednesday Website of the Week returns for a one-off engagement.
An online friend who is almost diametrically opposed to me politically (but a decent guy) (I could say the same about my sister except for the guy part, obviously) sent me this link : Politifact.com. It includes the invaluable Flip-o-meter and also the Truth-o-meter. It also includes the Attack files and the special Chain E-mails files, with truthometer readings for each item. I am very impressed! How on earth did we do anything before the internet? (We didn't have chain e-mails influencing elections, true enough.)

Duelling restaurant reviews - and an anniversary

2008-09-17T19:25:00.002Z

Check it out at Deborama's Kitchen.

Deborama is loving this election year!

2008-09-02T21:06:00.003Z

The only bad thing is I'm not there.
Brits and Europeans are still incredibly caught up in the Obama phenomenon. Co-workers ask me anxiously - might he actually win? Could he possibly lose? Is it all about race? (The answers to these questions are more or less the same - how the heck do I know?)
Up until a week ago, we had a lot to work with. The first black candidate of a major party, a front-runner. The Bill and Hilary show, now with added Chelsea. Republicans trying to woo Democrats and a Democrat wowing Europe before he is officially nominated. An acceptance speech that was watched by more viewers than the Oscars to finish off one convention and then an impending hurricane that almost derailed the other one.
And now we have the glorious soap opera that is Governor Palin. California has the governator. Minnesota used to have Jesse the Brain Ventura. But surely only a state as cussed and weird as Alaska could have this force of nature, shooting (both her gun and her mouth), breast-feeding, beauty-contest winning and marathon running her way through history. I sure as hell would never vote for her, but as long as she doesn't accidentally gain the most powerful job in the world, I love this woman!
And, as a follow-up to the life-imitates art thread (Jimmy Smits in a West Wing role prefiguring Senator Obama) has nobody but me noticed the spooky similarities between Sarah Palin and Bree van de Kamp? Or is a subconscious identification of her with the formidable Desperate Housewife what gave legs to the fake pregnancy rumour in the first place? Desperate Housewife runs for Vice President; you can't make this stuff up. She would probably want to change the title to Virtue President.

50 greatest arts videos on YouTube

2008-09-01T16:57:00.002Z

Courtesy of the Observer / Guardian. A collection of cinema arts, visual arts documentaries, videos of great classical, jazz and folk performances and dance.

"Black in a new light" and other stories

2008-08-24T12:48:00.003Z

The Wall Street Journal has an article about the sociopolitical ripples of Obama's candidacy in the black American community. It reminded me of an article praising Michelle Obama I read recently in The Root.
The Washington Post is doing an in-depth biography of Obama. This segment, quite long and full of information, covers his childhood and the life story of his parents. I found it very absorbing, the sort of thing you would find interesting for the characters even if Obama himself were a relative nobody.
Darling Hubby and I just finished watching the BBC/HBO production House of Saddam. It's worth a watch.
I am thinking of downloading iPlayer to fill in the gaps created by my crazy schedule vs. the restrictions on recording Freeview (basically the same as SkyPlus, in that you can only do two or three shows that overlap, and since the channels tend to schedule all the good stuff at once, this is a problem.)

The Audacity of Taupe

2008-08-16T21:08:00.004Z

A couple of weeks ago, I have discovered a great blogazine, side-barred at Slate, called The Root. And this really excellent article/post, The Audacity of Taupe, discusses Obama as a man of mixed race, and the changing self-image of mixed race Americans over the generations. By David Swerdlick.

Black people can't argue a speeding ticket after sundown, and the only thing in life that white people can't do is use the N-word. To that simple rule, I am now officially adding the M-word. Good news, though—"Creole" has been approved for everybody's use.

Honeybees in the UK - a status check

2008-08-13T21:44:00.002Z

It's not looking good for the honeybees. So far, experts have not found evidence of CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) but there has been a massive rise in honeybee deaths this past winter and spring. Honey shortages are expected. But it's more than honey, you know. The shift from food crops to bio-fuel corn and wheat leads to food shortages for humans, but also to pollen shortages, which means bees die off, which means they aren't around to pollenate fruits and vegetables which leads to reduced yields of other food crops. It sets up a feedback cycle, a race to the bottom. The most pessimistic scientist-experts say frightening things, like all the bees could be gone in ten years, and humanity cannot survive ten years beyond the extinction of bees.

A new twist on Red vs. Green

2008-08-12T21:18:00.002Z

You know what they say about "the left" (if such a thing even exists any more, or ever did) : the only time they form a circle is when they're going to form a firing squad. In a way this is the red vs. green battle from the 1970s, but with all the (polluted) water that's gone under the bridge, there has been some shifting. George Monbiot, as lefty-greeny as you can get, made the quixotic gesture of trying to bring some sense into the carbon-reduction, energy crisis, global warming (WE'RE ALL DOOMED!) "debate" and essentially issued a challenge to the boosters of nuclear energy. A challenge that he never expects them to be able to meet. But having failed to pronounce Shibboleth correctly, he came in for attacks.
Last week's Guardian had a comment piece by, of all people, Arthur Scargill (I'm ashamed to say, I genuinely thought he was dead.) The title directs itself to Monbiot, and claims that coal is not the "climate enemy" but rather a potential planet-saviour. It is an astonishing piece really, and I am quite glad that Monbiot answered it, because I did think, when he (Scargill) waxed lyrically about all the deep, rich coal under England's green and pleasant, the first thought in my mind was "open-cast". And my instincts were right in this, if Monbiot is to be believed instead of Scargill:

When he speaks of a resurgent coal industry, he pictures deep seams hacked out by grimy workers romantically dying of silicosis. But, with a few minor exceptions, this is no longer how coal is produced in the UK. New research I’ve commissioned, published for the first time here, shows that the industry is planning a great opencast revival.

Monbiot goes on to tell about a proposal in the Welsh assembly to require a minimum distance from any new open-cast mine to any residential area, and although it doesn't seem a very great distance (half a kilometer), if adopted, it would "sterilise" any proposed new mines.

This means that they could no longer be dug. The pits are viable only if they are allowed to wreck the lives of local people. Even before a lump of clean coal is burnt, its extraction trashes the environment.

Scargill's and Monbiot's otherwise fascinating articles both end with some strange arcane business about a "duel" where they will each be sealed in a room with the poisonous substance of their choice, which I found totally baffling. I guess you need to have a penis to really understand how some things work after all.

George Orwell, August 1938

2008-08-12T20:54:00.005Z

The Orwell Prize, in association with the Orwell Trust and others, have begun a daily blog of George Orwell's diary entries in real time but 70 years later. It just began a few days ago (9 August) and not much "has happened" yet (he is in some sanitorium in Kent), so it won't take you long to catch up. The diaries were kept daily from August 1938 until some time in 1942, so they cover the period of his recuperation (partial) after being shot in the neck in Spain, his sojourn in Morocco, and his thoughts on the coming of WWII and the first two years of that conflict. And as with any blog, you can interact and leave comments and read those of others. Or you can just go for quality over quantity and stick to Orwell.

Whole Foods - how the mighty have fallen

2008-08-11T07:30:00.003Z

I shouldn't gloat.
Some years ago, I refused absolutely to shop at Whole Foods. It wasn't just the high prices that later led to the nickname of "Whole Paycheck"; it wasn't just the unnecessarily vicious anti-union attitudes of its founder and management. It was these factors combined with the threat it posed to my most beloved of institutions, the new-wave consumer-owned food co-op. Eventually, it came to a point where it wouldn't matter any more. Co-ops had shrunk in number, but those that survived generally gained in strength. A lot of this was down to a tipping point in consumer preference for organic and artisanal foods, especially amongst the economic upper-middle classes. This benefitted both Whole Foods and its major competitor Wild Oats, as well as Fresh & Wild in the UK and food co-ops throughout the US.
In the past year or so, Whole Foods has acquired both Wild Oats and Fresh&Wild. Almost exactly a year ago, Whole Foods, with great fanfare, announced its opening of the first UK outlet, in London, natch, in Kensington, natch. Just in time for the so-called "credit crunch".
Last week, Whole Foods announced that it had lost $18 million in its first year in London. Of course it could have been expecting losses in any case, and on such an expensive piece of real estate, with British shoppers not being in the mood for costly food-shopping experiments, it should have expected the near disastrous results.
In the US, when the overall profit slump triggered a share sell-off the next day, Whole Foods laid most of the blame not on its ill-fated expansion into the UK, but on the costs associated with acquiring Wild Oats. Well, maybe.
Now Whole Foods is pursuing a brilliant strategy (in the US only I presume) of sales, discounts and budget-related customer education, trying to reverse its "Whole Paycheck" image. As I said when they opened the London branch, we'll see.

On the anniversary of Hiroshima

2008-08-06T20:59:00.003Z

The lies, then and now. By John Pilger.

We want unsound investments and we want them now!

2008-08-04T20:00:00.001Z

From the Onion : Recession-plagued Nation Demands New Bubble to Invest In. Some likely candidates for the 2008 bubble: undersea mining rights, postmodernism, illegal immigration futures, "widgets" or fairy dust. Anything really, as long as it can create massive, unsustainable debt while triggering a burst of good old recession-busting spending. One of the experts cited in the article, who works for a prominent bubble-based investment firm, reminds us that "the American economy cannot exist on sound investments alone." How very true.

Obama - blogs and pundits

2008-07-27T21:20:00.002Z

There is a lot of Obama blogging going on, and the media is in a tizz. I will post far less than I have read. The best is still this pre-hysteria piece by Gary Younge, a Guardian columnist whose task it is to interpret American politics and society for the chattering classes of Britain (and he does it pretty well, too.)

Also worth a look:

Where's Tony?

2008-07-27T21:12:00.003Z

The Middle East Suffers, but where is Tony Blair?

Will Blair quit his hopeless Mideast task?

Two articles from The First Post answered a question that had been nagging me. He is lurking in hotels, under threat and mainly failing completely to bring peace to a region that he formerly inflamed. I have one word to say about Mr. Blair: hubris.

A little late for the Fourth, but worth the wait

2008-07-06T21:38:00.001Z

Women in technology and science

2008-07-06T09:47:00.004Z

ComputerWorld had a very thought-provoking article a couple of weeks ago: "Why women quit technology careers". Or, if they don't quit, why they find themselves 55 years old, nurse-maiding their own bosses who are 15 years younger, half as intelligent and male, and feel only vaguely discontented about it. Not that I'm at all bitter.

George Carlin, 1937-2008

2008-06-23T20:03:00.002Z

George Carlin died yesterday (Sunday, 22 June). Sadly, he was scheduled to receive a prestigious award. the Mark Twain Award for Comedy, in November. He will be remembered for a number of things, but probably most for "The Seven Things You Can't Say on Television" which led to a landmark obscenity case in the US Supreme Court. The tributes are pouring in already, including this good one in WaPo, about "angry George" and "gentle George".

My Barack Obama

2008-06-14T09:02:00.004Z

Make no mistake about it, I am for Obama. I have been so since before the beginning, I have never really wavered, and things have worked out for him (so far) far better than my paranoid, pessimistic Scorpio nature would have allowed me to hope. But I can still take the piss. And so can The Onion, which has a great article on Obama practicing his "Looking off into the future" expressions (the triptych above is "wistful", "determined" and "unbridled".)
But for one of the really serious reasons why I believe Obama must be elected, I can cite (at length! sorry, can't help myself) from a Thomas Friedman/NYT Op-Ed piece my friend Joani e-mailed to me. Friedman is writing this piece abroad, in Egypt, where he has a similar experience to my everyday experience of being approached by the locals eager to discuss their complex feelings about this astonishing new direction in American politics. While granting that it hurts Obama's chances a mite when Muslims identify with him, and while admitting that Egyptians still have "issues" with America and vice-versa and an Obama presidency won't eliminate them, he reports touchingly on the excitement that Africans the world over feel at the thought that the great Babylon may actually elevate a son of Africa to be its head of state.

[E]very once in a while, America does something so radical, so out of the ordinary — something that old, encrusted, traditional societies like those in the Middle East could simply never imagine — that it revives America’s revolutionary “brand” overseas in a way that no diplomat could have designed or planned.
I just had dinner at a Nile-side restaurant with two Egyptian officials and a businessman, and one of them quoted one of his children as asking: “Could something like this ever happen in Egypt?” And the answer from everyone at the table was, of course, “no.” It couldn’t happen anywhere in this region. Could a Copt become president of Egypt? Not a chance. Could a Shiite become the leader of Saudi Arabia? Not in a hundred years. A Bahai president of Iran? In your dreams. Here, the past always buries the future, not the other way around.
. . .
In his history of 19th-century America, “What Hath God Wrought,” Daniel Walker Howe quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson as telling a meeting of the Mercantile Library Association in 1844 that “America is the country of the future. It is a country of beginnings, of projects, of vast designs and expectations.”
That’s the America that got swallowed by the war on terrorism. And it’s the America that many people want back.

Scottish Deadheads, a real minority

2008-06-04T20:43:00.003Z

Roddy Woomble, a solo artist and lead singer of Idlewild, tells a very hippie-ish tale about Ripple.

All right! My kind of politics

2008-06-03T18:14:00.003Z

From The Onion (who else?)

"This nightmare ticket presents the American people with an unprecedented lack of opportunity in 2008," Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote Tuesday. "For just one vote, citizens will get four years of McCain's brilliant temper, the incredible inexperience of Barack Obama, and the powerful two-headed monster of Hillary and Bill Clinton."

Hollywood's Greatest Mensch

2008-06-01T20:48:00.003Z

As my regular readers know, I have got into the habit of posting obituaries for those whom I admire or at least (in a few cases) am interested in. Sydney Pollack was definitely in the admired category. Greatest mensch? I don't know, but up there, for sure.

Tales from the trail

2008-06-01T20:44:00.001Z

Reuters on the web has a really good blog tracking the US elections - Tales from the Trail. Check it out.

Ain't Nobody Who Can Sing Like Me - a great podcast

2008-05-25T21:44:00.004Z

I have only listened to three or four podcasts in my life so far. If I had more time I would listen to a lot more. This one was excellent. And by the way, the CD is great too.

A Lottery of Hope

2008-05-25T21:36:00.002Z

A Thomas Friedman op-ed piece in the New York Times brought tears to my eyes. It concerns a SEED Academy in Baltimore that allots place by a lottery, and a recent placement round saw over 300 hopeful applicants vying for just 80 places. It was this quote in particular (and no, it wasn't the grammatical sloppiness of it):

If you think that parents from the worst inner-city neighborhoods don’t aspire for something better for their kids, a lottery like this will dispel that illusion real fast.

Ms. Lewis said she’s seen people on crack walking their kids to school. “We had parents who came into our office who were clearly strung out,” she added. “They could not read or write, but they got themselves there and said, ‘I need help on this application’ for their son or daughter. Families do want the best for their children. If they have a chance, they don’t want their kids to inherit their problems. ...

The Democratic nomination end game in sight

2008-05-11T07:07:00.005Z

They hope it's all over. Super-delegates are deciding for, and in some cases switching to, Barack Obama in droves in the last few days. Not surprisingly, it may have been Clinton's latest rather desperate attempt to "play the race card" that decided it for some of them. Amongst Clinton's supporters, too, there is a note of desperation in the pronouncements. (Thirty points in Puerto Rico? In your dreams!)
There are various predictors in US electoral folklore. One of my favourites is the "democrat dark horse on the cover of Time" although in this case, the candidate, though of middling dark complexion, was far beyond the dark horse stage when he was graced with it this week. (I have heard that there has never been a Democratic candidate for nomination who was on the cover of Time magazine before the primary, who didn't go on to be nominated and elected. But I am having no luck Googling this, so maybe I imagined it.) By my count, Obama has been on the cover of Time at least four times now: November 2006, October 2007, March 2008 and May 2008. That's pretty excessive, even though he is my man. And in November 2006 he was a horse of the deepest black.

First Diet and Fitness Post

2008-05-09T17:10:00.003Z

I have started my diet, health and fitness sporadic journal over on Deborama's Kitchen with a post about my workout and my music. More on that later . . .

Percy has passed on

2008-05-05T10:52:00.003Z

I mentioned "my" bird, the cockatiel Percy, who was named as a boy but turned out to be a girl. She just died last night, in the night. Only a week ago she was fit and well, and even flying around the house when out of her cage, and she had stopped laying eggs, which was a good sign. But DH noticed a couple of days ago that she had suddenly got painfully thin. We got her some worm medicine and drop-fed her some sugar water and put a heat lamp on the cage, but we were too late and by this morning she was gone. I am really down about it. She was such a sweet little thing. Sadly, the only picture I have of her is as a baby, where she is cuddling up with a clutch of baby Hahn's Macaws.

May Day in Minneapolis

2008-05-05T09:12:00.002Z

Last year I was there and posted about it, but this year I missed it. May Day in Minneapolis is always on the first Sunday in May. It starts in January, with workshops at the Heart of the Beast puppet theatre, and it reaches a climax as the bands, the bicycles, the mothers and toddlers and fathers and teenagers, the giant puppets and heartfelt messages of peace, wind their way through the Phillips and Powderhorn neighbourhoods, and it culminates with a powerful, tribal ceremony of calling the sun back from the clutches of winter, enacted in canoes on Powderhorn Lake. I found a great photo set of 2008 pics by RJ Toad on flickr.

Why Bother? and the cheap-energy mentality

2008-04-23T20:47:00.005Z

In the NYT Magazine for last Sunday, Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food - An Eater's Manifesto (in the UK published as In Defence of Food - The Myths of Nutrition and the Pleasures of Eating) has written a really brilliant comment piece called "Why Bother?". He poses the question that so many pose, and then immediately give up - in the face of the enormity of environmental peril and climate change: how can my actions possibly make a difference? Pollan says his heart sank when at the end of Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, his exhortation is for everyone to change their light bulbs. (Yeah, that really does bite. Thanks for that, Al.) After making a rather weak appeal (in my opinion, but I guess one does have to choose ones words, and the article is already four pages, very economically worded) to out-of-fashion concepts like virtue and community, he turns to the even more out-of-fashion Wendell Berry, a man with whom we should all be (but possibly some of us are not) familiar. Berry was the originator of the "cheap-energy mentality" critique. This is getting more to the heart of the matter, as Pollan points out that it is cheap energy, the division of labour, and the resultant atomisation of communities that both contributes massively to global warning and at the same time, makes changing our ways so impossible, and even impossible to think about or understand.
Then, thankfully, after laying out the utter hopelessness of the case, he turns to hope. You can only do what you can do, and he does give reasons why we should do it. So the task now is to decide - what is the most effective thing to do, the most urgent, and also fully within the realm of possibility? (Hint: it's not light bulbs, it's not "carbon offsets" and it's not writing a cheque or joining a club.) The answer is to grow your own food. Yep, just exactly what all us hippies said to do way back in 1970. Damn shame we were all too high to make a coherent point.

Blogkeeping and My Life

2008-04-21T09:07:00.003Z

I haven't posted for a while here. Some personal changes are happening in the Deborama household. DH and I just got back from Manchester yesterday where DH had a gastric band operation. This was the first time he had ever had surgery of any kind, so it was rather fraught for me leading up to it (and probably for him too, but since he's British, there is no way to tell.) But he came through it just fine. He was a little grey in the face for the first hour I saw him, as he was waking up fully. (This was a good two or three hours after his operation, but they kept him in recovery and then put him into an ICU due to his sleep apnoea. I arrived at the hospital as he was just waking up, but they stuck me in a private room saying they would wait and give him a chance to "settle" before I could see him. The same nurse said this to me, along with "just 10 more minutes" about four times, and I was just about to explode with a very American "Settle, schmettle!" before she finally sensed my mounting anxiety and escorted me to his bedside.)
DH spent the night in the ICU (although he was very well, and hardly merited the extra care, but it was apparently hospital policy) and I spent the night in a Travelodge near Manchester airport. But now we're home. DH had lost an amazing five stones (70 pounds) in the six months preceding his operation. He is now expecting to lose perhaps another 100 pounds or so with the help of the gastric band.
Meanwhile, Deborama has been attending clandestine (it's a long story) Slimming World meetings and I have lost a stone since joining, having lost about 10 pounds before, for a total of about 25 pounds since I was at my heaviest. I joined a small local gym last May and I have been attending quite faithfully, an average of three or more days per week. I was very frustrated to not lose any weight in the first five months of this regimen, as I was not really regulating my diet at all, but hoping that building some muscle would cause metabolic changes that would "kick-start" a weight loss and give me some incentive to give up my beloved breakfast of an unsweetened latte and a croissant, my frequent cereal bar snacks and my occasional (but probably more frequent than I cared to admit) late night scoop of ice cream. I think it was around November of last year that I all but gave up the croissants and very slowly and painfully lost the 10 pounds, and when the Slimming World invitation came in January I decided I must bite the bullet and face the fact that at my age I need to do both diet-control and regular exercise; the days of "effortless" weight-loss are now well and truly past.
Now this is the last personal or diet-related post you will see in the main Deborama blog. I am doing a mini-relaunch, and I am going to confine the Deborama posts to serious news, comments on the world at large, religion, philosophy and ethics, sexual politics, the environment, humour and culture. The one exception will be photos and news of our birds. I will post these on Facebook or Flickr, with a link from here.
Simultaneously, I am going to relaunch my other two Deborama sub-logs. Deborama's Kitchen will become my new Diet Blog (keeping the name, though) and any personal journalling will be there, along with its usual fare (although it has been nothing at all for a year or more) of recipes, food politics and food-related news.
Deborama's Books is going to get the third relaunch/make-over. I plan for it to be more joined up with another of my recently neglected passions, Bookcrossing. I am hoping to get back into attending the Bookcrossing meetups, and now that I have a study (I was using the dining room table, in an open plan room with lounge with its almost always-on telly, another excuse or reason for the lack of blogging going on) I have huge backlog of books to register on Bookcrossing. Also, I have been planning to add some movie and television reviews to the books blog, as well as reviewing the books I have read but failed to mention over the past three years.
I know myself, so I don't expect this will happen overnight, or even all that quickly. If I achieve the three goals set out above within six weeks I will be satisfied (and if I fail to do it in that time, chances are it won't happen, so I had better get cracking.)

My life; Birds update

2008-03-24T21:13:00.003Z

I haven't been keeping you updated on the birds in our lives. We acquired another Hahn's Macaw, after LouLou, after keeping the big Blue and Golds and after giving them back when their mummy got back from the holiday in the States that ended up being unexpectedly extended. (I did tell you about LouLou, didn't I? She's a Goffin Cockatoo, full of attitude, tends to bite women and snuggle sluttishly against men. She is seriously bonded to DH, who spoils her rotten.) Anyway, the "new" little green guy is with us now; he has had two previous homes plus our friend, the rescue centre keeper, and she gave him to us. He was called Mango, but we call him Vernon. He was missing all his feathers except his head and tail and then he pulled out his tail. Han, whose feathers had all grown back, started plucking himself too, but he only got as far as the grey fluff on his chest and then thankfully stopped.
Meanwhile "my" cockatiel, Percy, turned out to be a girl and keeps laying little clutches of eggs and sitting on them. They are probably not fertilised, but we have to let her sit on them for a while or she would just keep laying until she got calcium-deprived, which can lead to a sometimes fatal condition called "egg-bound". (I won't go into detail if you don't mind.) And another budgie passed away, probably of "old age". He was Huey, the last of our original four pet shop budgies. So we currently have budgies: Holly, Muffin, Nelson, Bob and Margaret; cockatiels: Winnie, Daisy and Percy; Hahn's Macaws: Han and Vernon and a cockatoo: LouLou. DH keeps saying he is going to take pictures of them all, but he has a lot going on just now. More on that later maybe.
A friend of mine from Minneapolis, Dolores, is coming over here to visit next week. She and her friend are mostly staying in the south, but they are finishing off their trip with a quick tour of Oxford and Blenheim Palace, followed by a Shakespeare play at the RSC in Stratford. So I am going to meet up with them in Oxford and do Oxford and Blenheim Palace. I am really looking forward to it.

Blogkeeping

2008-03-24T17:33:00.002Z

It has been more than three weeks since I posted a blog. Where does the time go? I will try to do a catch-up, but it may take more than one.

There have been some notable deaths - Anthony Minghella, who was too young, and Paul Scofield who was so old I didn't know he was still alive. (Great actor though.) Arthur C. Clarke. More banks have gone to the wall, and there has been a little farce with the Bank of England.

The Democrats Abroad primary votes came in and Obama got about 2/3 of our votes, Clinton the remaining 1/3. That was a couple of weeks ago. The race has been absorbing my attention, but I don't have anything major to add to the buzz. But what a buzz it is over here! The Brits just cannot believe they're not allowed to participate, just cannot believe how long it takes and cannot understand why our elections are so much more thrilling and interesting than theirs. But even though I have nothing much to say myself, I will share some of my favourite commentary by others:
Gary Younge on "the speech"
Ian Williams on Samantha Power
Sasha Abramsky on Hilary Clinton
Paul Krugman on the economy as election issue
Maureen Dowd on Hilary the Terminator

Another view of the so-called Warrior Prince

2008-03-02T09:50:00.002Z

Catherine Bennet's insightful and rather more realistic look at the Prince Harry love-fest chimes perfectly with my cynical, republican views. Several things I wish I had been clever enough to say . . .

Katoucha, accidental death and other news of interest to feminists

2008-03-01T08:41:00.003Z

Katoucha, ex-supermodel and campaigner against female circumcision, is found drowned in the Seine.

First female "maazun".

The Erudite Conservative, RIP, WFB

2008-02-28T21:51:00.005Z

I Am Lapidary But Not Eristic When I Use Big Words said the headline of one of William F. Buckley's articles in the New York Times. Buckley died yesterday at the age of 82. He was the man I loved to hate, and I learned a lot from him in my youth. I guess I sort of admired him, even though mostly I deeply rejected his beliefs and his arguments. This NPR eulogy is an excellent summing up of a remarkable life.