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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First female "maazun".

The Erudite Conservative, RIP, WFB

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.

Riverbend

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.)

Art imitates life, then life imitates art imitating life , , ,

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.

Stop this man before he governs again

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?

Super Fat Tuesday!

Happy Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day and Super Tuesday, all in one!
It's Fat Tuesday in New Orleans, Super Tuesday lots of other places. (Louisiana's primaries are on Saturday.
In other Election 2008 news:
Deadheads and surviving band members unite for Obama.
Democrats Abroad this year are sending 11 delegates to the convention. Caucuses are being held even as I type in Oxford and London.
I guess you've heard about the endorsements of Obama by Caroline Kennedy, Senator Ted Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, and from the other end of the spectrum, Susan Eisenhower, grand-daughter of Ike.
And in other Shrove Tuesday news:
An Anglican bishop wants us to give up energy consumption for Lent
The nearby (to me that is) village of Atherstone has its 810th ball game between the "serfs of Warwickshire" and the "serfs of Leicestershire".

Why I am an internationalist

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.

Another similar take on US economic woes

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.

New kind of recession, new rules

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".

Blogkeeping and my life - 2008, election year

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).

Benazir Bhutto assassinated

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.

A Holiday Blessing for all whom I love

One of our two house guests

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.

Mixed blessings for British victims of US justice system abuses and failures

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.

A Seasonal Horror Story

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.

The Brown Dog of Battersea Park

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.

Kudzu

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.

ATL

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.

Victim of laws against thoughts

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 dead

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.

The Return of Deborama's WWW - the train you've been waiting for

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?

The Queen's big day

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.)

Minneapolis's first new wave co-op to close

Oh, this is sad. There seems to be a lot of sad stuff going on this week.
I was not a member of North Country, but I was a member of Seward Co-op, and I was a frequent shopper there as well, and also the Wedge when I was in the vicinity. I hope this does not auger the closing of other co-ops. Co-ops, interesting politics, the lovely bridges over the Mississippi, a quirky culture, polite cops and a decent bunch of people: these are the things that always made Minneapolis what it is. But the Minneapolis I knew is changing so much.
Still, on a more positive note, a couple of foody institutions with a 33 year relationship are joining forces to stay in business: The Wedge Co-op is to buy Gardens of Eagen organic farm. "None of our kids wanted it", said owners Atina and Martin Diffley of the farm. "But then we thought, the Wedge has 13,000 members. And they all have kids."

Dina Rabinovitch died this morning

I just read what turned out to be Rabinovitch's last Guardian column about a week ago. It is not comfortable reading, as you would expect from a woman who titled her last book about trying to live with cancer Take Off Your Party Dress: When Life's Too Busy For Breast Cancer, and who calls her blog "Take Off Your Running Shoes."

Blogkeeping - catch-up

Wikipedia's image of the day - the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland OR (I've been there!)

I have been in a fog. Too many things competing for my attention. Almost every day at work, except the days when I have been really busy, I see a few things I ought to, want to, blog about and I email myself a link (or two or ten) and then I don't do any blogging in the evening. To be fair, my computer keeps turning itself off. There have been some family issues, and I have been fighting off a cold, probably due to stress caused by all of the above. But still . . . I'll start with the silly, move through the serious, and hopefully something sublime will turn up.

In the Onion, "Entire Family Projects Neuroses Onto Their Innocent Dog" is priceless.

Received in an email (I'm sure it's on the web somewhere):

The entire city council of Ashland, Ore., has decided to enter relationship
counseling. The catalyst was Councilman David Chapman's telling Councilman
Eric Navickas to "shut your f...ing mouth" during last week's meeting,
though Navickas had previously called the city's mayor "a Nazi," and
tensions have generally been running high. Taxpayers will pay $37,000 for
the council's five months of therapy, which "may seem like a lot of money,"
said City Administrator Martha Bennett, "But if the council doesn't function, the city doesn't function."

The Vatican has had a bit of a rethink about the Knights Templars.

I was thrilled to bits that Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature, even though, yes, it was a bit overdue.

The Guardian Society section today profiled Edgar Cahn, the founder of "time banking", a sophisticated form of bartering and valuing social contributions as much as commercial ones.

And finally, how about that England rugby team, eh? Watched all the games so far except the first one (I was out). (I guess this is going to be the sublime bit.) In related news, facebook has a new Jonny Wilkinson Appreciation Society site.

Desmond is on the other side now

US presidential candidates courting Americans abroad

NPR's All Things Considered did a show about the candidates Guiliani, Obama and Clinton courting US citizens living abroad. Oh, yeah, we vote alright. The chair of the group Democrats Abroad was interviewed on this show.

Deborama's WWW Number 37 - Phase2, "bubble letters", Obey Giant and other urban artifacts

I have taken to looking at the main page of Wikipedia every day, just for the serendipity of learning something new and unexpected. Today one of the pages featured was that of a graffiti artist from the seminal NYC 1970s scene, who went by the name of Phase2. He is "generally credited" with the invention of the "bubble letter" or "softies" style which is now quite ubiquitous in the urban and even suburban and rural environment.
As one does on the web, I surfed from link to link, learning about wheatpasting, which led in turn to Obey Giant (which started out as Andre the Giant has a posse.) I remember Andre from the wonderful film The Princess Bride, which due to my kids, children of the early 1980s, loving it so much, I have seen many times and pretty much know by heart.) Obey Giant also has an "official" website.
Getting back to the subject of graffiti, I see some on my way to work every day (two trains, a little over an hour on a good day, through Narborough, South Wigston, Leicester, Loughborough, Attenborough, Beeston and ending in Nottingham, which has a thriving graffiti culture. And a fair number of anarchists too.) In the rural category, just across from the Ratcliff-on-Soar coal-fired power plant, there is a graffiti (a graffitus? a graffito?) on a little hump-backed bridge that the sheep like to shelter under that says, in very crude simple letters, "Peak Power". And on the approach to Nottingham, a graffiti attributed to a group called ALF, says "Devaste to Liberate". I am pretty sure they meant to say "Devastate to Liberate" and it is a real blot on the landscape, to my mind, to have grossly misspelled graffiti. And anyway, I have never signed up to that belief anyway, despite being an anarchist. In fact, I have even come up with a minor witticism to take the piss out of such philosophy: Fuck omelettes, I just like breaking eggs.©

A potpourri of stories: Guantanamo, racial injustice and -- the hyphen?

Just some of the things I have been reading these days.

The War on Terra: Omar Khadr turns 21 still in Guantanamo and Andrew Sullivan muses on a president who has lost the plot.

Technology: The UK slights Open Source, and they may regret it.

Language pedantry: The OED reveals the hyphen is an endangered character.

Racial fault lines in the US: The Jena Six and the Presidential candidate. (And in case you don't know who the Jena Six are, here is a backgrounder.)

Deborama's WWW Number 36 - Freakonomics

Yesterday I almost bought a book called The Undercover Economist. I was thinking to myself, as I saw this book, that I like books like that, but then I realised that I actually liked one book like that, or rather, like that but better. That's a book called Freakonomics. And there is also a blog called Freakonomics by the same authors.
The Undercover Economist is very UK-based and Freakonomics is a bit US-centric. But Freakonomics is still far more globally-conscious. The main thing is that every idea in Freakonomics is fresh and original and thought-provoking, whereas the ideas I encountered in my brief browse of The Undercover Economist were not that new to me and may be thought-provoking to someone with zero familiarity or interest in economics, but not to me. It absolutely did not deliver on the promises of either the title or the gushy blurbs on the back. So maybe I will catch it on the remainder pile or get one via Bookcrossing. Meanwhile, I heartily recommend the Freakonomics blog.

Mrs. Watanabe and the share market crisis

The New York Times has this interesting story about yet another Japanese social phenomenon little-known in the west: stay-at-home wives of affluent Japanese businessmen have been gradually gaining clout in international currency markets and margin trading. Trading exclusively online, with a subculture that includes best-sellers, TV interviews, clubs and blogs, they use their own or sometimes their husband's money as a stake and try (often successfully) to build up independent wealth to shield themselves from divorce or excessive control by their husbands. The current shakeup in international markets has brought chaos to their powerful little market, and professional traders consider them a wild card.

Deborama's WWW Number 35 - the Dylan Dream concert

I will definitely be listening to (and recording if I have the technology) this. By the way, Deborama is a big fan of Dylan's radio show, Theme Time Radio Hour, even though I don't often get to listen to it in real time, and in fact I have a massive backlog of them on the Freeview box to listen to.

Anita Roddick, pioneer ethical entrepreneur

I'm a bit late blogging about the sad passing (too young) of yet another woman I have admired greatly: Anita Roddick. Founder of the Body Shop, she was a real visionary. Nowadays, it doesn't seem especially radical to be an ethical businessperson, but when Roddick put gigantic signs in the window saying none of their products were tested on animals, believe me, it was radical. The fact that it is no big deal now is largely down to her courage and principles.

Sex or Rugby Union?

Guess the topic of this quote from a news story today:

Eh? You may think it's easy to sell shirts to large men suggestible enough to bury their heads in each others' thighs for 80 minutes, but . . .

OK, would you ever have guessed RU if I hadn't given it away in the title? Well, maybe if you're a serious fan and instantly picked up on the 80 minutes, I'll give you that. Anyway, for those of you who don't live on Planet Rugby, the World Cup is underway since yesterday. England's still hanging in, and France, ah, poor France. I think we will see a massive rise in the prescription of anti-depressants over there.

Deconstruct him

Under the marvelous title Dien Bien Fool (oh, how I wanted to steal that) journalist and blogging pundit Christopher Albritton in his blog Back to Iraq 2.0 takes on the job of addressing GWB's latest piece of imbecility (or at least the latest I know about, as I don't keep up with him as I should). I mean, of course, the address a few days ago to a VFW where he very clumsily attempted to use the "killing fields" of Cambodia 1975 as a reason to pursue the endless folly of the coalition quagmire in Iraq.
"Really, it’s hard to know where to start", he says. But he ends up here:

And finally Vietnam. In one speech, Bush had managed to drag out the knuckleheaded, right-wing argument that if only we’d stayed in Vietnam a little longer, we’d have won that sucker. If only the media and Democrats hadn’t been so hell-bent on undermining the troops…
This is a tricky subject for Bush, considering he spent the Vietnam years partying and “protecting” the Gulf of Mexico from the Viet Cong in a champagne unit of the Texas Air National Guard. It’s also tricky because war critics have spent the past four years comparing the quagmire or Iraq to the quagmire of Vietnam — which, I might remind you, we lost.

After addressing the again wrong-headed analogy of the aftermath of the US withdrawal from Vietnam, Chris also mentions "but the U.S. threw open its doors and took the “boat people” in. It has not done the same thing for Iraqis, instead forcing them to stay in a deadly cage or face the instability of life in Jordan and Syria."
The "killing fields" reference was very effectively dealt with by David Cortright on the blog "God's Politics" (Sojourner).

No more Minneapolis nice

I can remember when Minneapolis police were famed for their sensitive handling of political protests. Those days are long gone. A regular event in the protest calendar is "Critical Mass", when an assembled group of cyclists take to the city streets, usually at rush hour, to assert their rights to equal use of the roads. This Friday, it suddenly became ugly. Given the tenor of this quote, from before the incident that led to the arrests, I don't think it was the protestors who caused it either:

"Drive down Nicolet, herd the assholes down there. Any blocking of traffic, any blocking of anything, arrest them."

Is Athens Burning?

I have been following this story about wildfires in Greece. It is becoming very serious. There are real fears that along with property and lives that are being lost each day, the fires are threatening to destroy ancient sites of great importance. Fires are raging in half the country and the fire services are not even close to equipped to cope with the scale of the disaster.

Grace Paley dies at age 84

Grace Paley died Wednesday at the age of 84; she had breast cancer. Obituaries of note at NPR, the NY Times, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Guardian. There were lots of nice recent pictures of her in the various articles I read, but I just loved this picture of a much younger Paley from 1959.

I first became really aware of Grace Paley (although I had heard of her, and may have read some of her stories in my teens, a voracious reading period for me) through an independent film released in 1983 and based on her stories, Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. And Paley was more than just a great writer; she was also a peace activist and a central figure in her community in her New York days, and in her later years she lived in Vermont and continued in political activism right into old age.

Minnesota too polite to ask for federal funding

From the Onion, of course:

"Oh, we wouldn't want to bother the U.S. government—they've got more than
enough on their plate as it is," Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said. "Most of the
potholes on I-90 are less than four feet wide. We get by just fine."