|
|
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
 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 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".
 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.
 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."
 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.
Reuters on the web has a really good blog tracking the US elections - Tales from the Trail. Check it out.
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 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. ...
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.
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 . . .
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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
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.
I kept checking Baghdad Burning every couple of weeks for months and months since Riverbend announced that she and her family were leaving, but after a while, I stopped and then forgot. But she came back on the scene with two long posts last autumn, from Syria, one in August and one in September. They are brilliant as usual; sad, but full of spirit, angry but loving and forgiving (not of America, though.)
 Jimmy Smits, who played the West Wing's Matt Santos, with Barack Obama in 2005. Photo via the Guardian, by Chris Greenberg/Getty
Did you get the connection? The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland explains it all. Apparently (and rather bizarrely) the character of Matthew Santos was loosely based on Barack Obama in the first place, back when Obama was not even dreamed of as a near-term presidential candidate, but was just a fresh new face after his amazing speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. What a difference four years make, eh? I was musing on this today at work, and it occurred to me that an ill-fated US TV show called, I think, Commander-in-Chief followed in the coat-tails of TWW with a female president. She (the character) was not as charismatic and universally loved as the character of Matt Santos. (Sort of like you-know-who.) And I began to wonder about the spooky power that fictional TV (like 24, for instance) holds over the American psyche.
 Tony Blair's intention to run for the position of first president of Europe has called a "Stop Blair" movement into being. Where do I sign up?
In his numinous and magical novel Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut introduced the idea of "granfalloons". These are random groupings of people who think, erroneously, that they have some shared destiny as a group, and for whom this delusion is a source of suffering and misguided action. Examples, famously, are given, thus:
Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist Party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Association of Oddfellows - and any nation, anytime, anywhere. I think of this statement, which has become a sort of mantra to me over the nearly 40 years since I read Cat's Cradle, literally every time I pass through an airport, see a reference to immigration or international trade, and about the half the time I am watching, listening to or reading the news. Especially when I read about things like this.
This article, by Paul Krugman in the NYT, is not so in-depth as the WaPo one, but has a similar case to make, particularly:
It wasn’t just Alan Greenspan’s unwillingness to admit that there was anything more than a bit of “froth” in housing markets, or his refusal to do anything about subprime abuses. The fact is that as America’s financial system has grown ever more complex, it has also outgrown the framework of banking regulations that used to protect us — yet instead of an attempt to update that framework, all we got were paeans to the wonders of free markets.
As the government here is in minor turmoil over the "Northern Rock crisis" and the company I used to work for (on whose premises I still work as a contractor) just made 500 people around the country redundant, I just happened upon a really brilliant op-ed piece by Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post (or WaPo as most typing-shy bloggers call it). Now this article is over a year old, even though it is more relevant now than when it was written (which we word-infatuated bloggers call "prescient") so you may need to register with WaPo to read it, but you can opt out of getting any of their friendly and well-meaning spam and it is free. But knowing my readership as I do, I decided to revert to my old habit (avoided lately for IP reasons) of long quotes, because I sense that you won't register, and this is just so good:
In a normal recession, the to-do list is clear. Copies of Keynes are dusted off, the Fed lowers interest rates, the president and Congress cut taxes and hike spending. In time, purchasing, production and loans perk up, and Keynes is placed back on the shelf. No larger alterations to the economy are made, because our economy, but for the occasional bump in the road, is fundamentally sound.
This has been the drill in every recession since World War II.
Republicans and Democrats argue over whose taxes should be cut the most and which projects should be funded, but, under public pressure to do something, they usually find some mutually acceptable midpoint and enact a stimulus package. Even in today's hyperpartisan Washington, the odds still favor such a deal.
This time, though, don't expect that to be the end of the story -- because the coming recession will not be normal, and our economy is not fundamentally sound. This time around, the nation will have to craft new versions of some of the reforms that Franklin Roosevelt created to steer the nation out of the Great Depression -- not because anything like a major depression looms but because we face an economy that's been warped by two developments we've not seen since FDR's time.
The first of these is the stagnation of ordinary Americans' incomes, a phenomenon that began back in the 1970s and that American families have offset by having both spouses work and by drawing on the rising value of their homes. With housing values toppling, no more spouses to send into the workplace, and prices of gas, college and health care continuing to rise, consumers are played out. December was the cruelest month that American retailers have seen in many years, and, as Michael Barbaro and Louis Uchitelle reported in Monday's New York Times, delinquency rates on credit cards, auto loans and mortgages have all been rising steeply for the past year. So, I hope that was good enough to entice you to read the entire article. He goes on to offer real, serious and radical ideas about "what is to be done".
This is my first blog of 2008 and it's already the 8th. Not so good, I know. Blogs do wither and die, and even though this one has had its ups and downs, and is definitely in a slow period now, I don't want to let it die. It's not because I'm tired of it, or don't know what to say; it's purely a matter of lack of time, being tired in the evening, having other things that I don't want to do but have to do. But enough whining. Let me tell you all what I have been up to.
For one thing, I am all absorbed in and excited about the 2008 presidential election. Oh, yeah, not very original. So is half the planet. The BBC, honest to God, it's almost all they talk about. The Guardian is in hog-heaven.
Although I am supporting Obama, I am almost as happy about Edwards. I would not mind it he won the presidency at all, especially given that Obama is very young and could run and win again. And I am not thrilled that Clinton is having such a rough time. Sure, I would like the US to have a woman leader. But - well, there are so many "but"s with Mrs. Clinton. I wish she would bow out and just start grooming Chelsea for 2016.
I have been following the events in Pakistan. And those in Kenya.
I have just started a boot camp exercise class on Sundays. More on that later.
I was very happy to see the Richey guy finally get out of prison today.
I still have tons of pictures from my November holiday to put online somewhere.
I have been hanging out at Facebook, exploring ScotsCafe and Sagazone, and I went to one "new" meetup - of American ex-pats in Nottingham (maybe more on that later too).
This is the blog title I hoped never to write. Bhutto has sacrificed her life for democracy in Pakistan. I am watching the BBC news covering this breaking story in real time, and like so many others around the world, I am bereft and shocked and desperately worried about the future. True, I don't live in Pakistan or even know anyone who does, but can anyone doubt now how we are all connected? This is a cruel blow for all who want peace and democracy.
 Photo by Lewis Ramage
We have two house guests staying for a month or so. This is Chewie, a young female. The other one looks very similar, and is male, named Max, and a bit older. They are Blue and Gold Macaws.
 The family of Jamil el Banna, photo from Guardian Unlimited
There are breaking stories in two on-going sagas of British residents/citizens caught in the web of the US courts. First, the Guantanamo four: the British passport-holding inmates of Guantanamo were returned to Britain some time ago, but four remaining detainees were British residents, though not citizens, some with very strong ties to Britain, such as close family who are citizens. The Blair government, in its wisdom, probably sacrificed them in order to get a swifter and more favourable deal for the passport-holders. Or something, who knows. I have been following this story intensely since the first cages were erected at "Camp X-ray" and the whole business just sickens me. In any case, three of the four have been returned to the UK just this week: Abdennour Samuer, Omar Deghayes and Jamil el-Banna. (El-Banna is 45, but looks at least 60 in his picture.) Although Samuer was released with no further questions (all three men may be subjected to control orders at some time in the near future if they choose to remain in the UK), Deghayes and el-Banna were arrested in the UK before they got a chance to see their families who were left waiting and uninformed. Apparently it is Spain who is the culprit now, alleging that the two were members of a Spanish cell of al Qaida, although there is very little if any evidence of this. One piece of evidence is a video-tape of Deghayes training men in Afghanistan, but it has been shown conclusively that the named person is not him. Both men were finally released on bail and reunited with their families yesterday.The other story concerns a British citizen with dual US citizenship who has been on death row most of his adult life and just hours from execution on several occasions. It is now generally conceded that he is completely innocent, but due to the intricacies of the case, he had to enter a plea bargain of no-contest to reduced charges to be released from prison. Kenny Richey will not be home for Christmas after all, due to falling ill with heart disease just as he was about to enter the plea bargain that would automatically lead to his release. He has had severely deteriorating health during his time on death row, not surprisingly.
This is one of those tragedies of capitalism and human appetites. About five years ago, part of the ethical food movement, along with emphasizing "local produce" and an explosion of demand for fair-traded and organic products, was the promotion in the UK of game birds and meats as an ethical alternative to farmed animal-based foods. As so often happens, the decision turns out to be more shaded greys than black-and-white. The rising popularity of game birds has meant there is not nearly enough supply in the traditional supply chain of seasonal shooting. So we see speciality farms raising caged quail, partridge and pheasant, and selling the meat and eggs as "game". You can see where this is going.
I came across this gem in my occasional perusal of Wikipedia's site of the day. I love how this highlights radical history, makes links between seemingly disparate movements, and also tells a touching story of courage and principles. Even the "see also" linklist at the end is like a roll call of all that is dear to me.
After having had to listen to my pro-kudzu rant (I am the eternal champion of despised vegetables and animals) my son simply put this link in a comment to my only blog from Atlanta.
But I am sure there is a dramatic difference in the appearance from the air of Atlanta, and not an improvement, which perhaps only accidentally coincides with the kudzu-abatement programme. And yes, I do miss the kudzu.
I am in Atlanta for the start of my fortnight-with-the-family. I have just met Carey's girlfriend Ashley. She is amazingly cute, smart and a great match for him in the personality arena, or so it seems to me. They hug all the time and semi-fondly bicker like an old married couple. She drives a Toyota Camry with a stick shift and she drives like my old high-school buddy and partner-in-anti-social-behaviour Margaret (or Maggie, as I began calling her, and I think it stuck.) I describe the driving style as "like a maniac with a guardian angel", that is, fast, confident and leaves the passengers more breathless and speechless than shaking and scared, as less protected maniacs do. It was actually kind of exciting.
I saw their loft apartment at the Mattress Factory. Nice.
We ate at R. Thomas, which I just cannot recommend enough.
I am now blogging from the Atlanta Public Library, which I also recommend; they're such nice people in Atlanta. I had sort of forgotten over the years.
I just discovered I can't capture a picture to illustrate this post. Oh, well, sorry. You'll have to find your own pictures.
I just heard Norman Mailer, who died two days ago, in an interview with Andrew Marr in 2002, say something very profound: "The essence of totalitarianism is the perversion of language." (This is, I admit, a paraphrase, from my age-enfeebled memory.) He was talking about Bush, of course. One of my major political prophets was George Orwell, who expounded so eloquently on this in the immortal essay "Politics and the English Language", and indeed, that essay is probably the germ of Mailer's political analysis, as it is of mine. The other, closely related, concept besides "newspeak" that Orwell invented in 1984 is the idea of "thought crime". When I read 1984 in 1968, I wondered if things would ever come to such a pass that Western so-called democracies would have thought crimes. In 1984, when Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan held powerful sway, I believed we were on the brink, but still safe in the sane world where evil must be done, rather than just thought about, written about or even aesthetically appreciated (abhorrent as that idea is) before a crime had been committed. Now, in 2007, the US and the UK have had thought crime for about five years. Prisons whose existence we still do not know about are full of these mental "perpetrators".
This week, what I consider a gross miscarriage of justice showed just how far this can be taken.
A 23-year-old Heathrow airport worker who dubbed herself the "lyrical terrorist" today became the first woman to be convicted under the government's anti-terror legislation.
Samina Malik, who burst into tears on hearing the verdict, wrote poems entitled How To Behead and The Living Martyrs and stocked a "library" of documents useful to terrorists. The article on the trial and conviction of Ms. Malik goes on to catalogue all her "crimes", e.g. the possession of books, the writing of things in a private diary and an ominous nickname she used on social networking websites. "I am not a terrorist." Malik said after her trial. She claimed to have used the nickname "lyrical terrorist" because she thought it was "cool".
Norman Mailer, author of The Naked and the Dead and many other fine books, a prolific writer in the New York media, and an often controversial political commentator, has died aged 84.
Deborama's Wednesday Website of the Week is a railway company that has not started running yet. But it will - soon! No, really, they promise. And if you want to find out what Marilyn Monroe has to do with it, you'll have to read the link. But here's a little tidbit for free:
 All tables in First and Standard will have imprinted Monopoly®, Cluedo® and Chess Boards for those looking for some more traditional and inter-active entertainment on their journey. Pieces will be available to purchase from the buffet, or passengers are very welcome to bring their own.
Cool, eh?
My goodness, but Her Maj had a busy day today. Not only did she have the Queen's speech to deliver, making it already one of her busiest days of the year, but on the same day she opened the newly refurbished St. Pancras Station to Eurostar travel to the continent. (She doesn't have to write the speech, even though it's called the Queen's speech; the PM writes it and she just reads it, but she reads it very nicely.)
|
|
