a primer

I came across this poem today in this week's New Yorker, and really liked it. Here it is, "A Primer" by Bob Hicok.

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into a clay mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word "truth,"
can sincerely use the word "sincere."
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we're not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you're from Michigan.
It's like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there's a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
"Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball"
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn't ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. "What did we do?"
is the state motto. There's a day in May
when we're all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he's from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.

i got a job!

Today I talked to Lucy, the woman in HR at CHF International, for the thirty billionth time, and the upshot was, they want to hire me! Mom reminded me to make sure I'll be able to take a week off in August to go to the beach, so I need to email Lucy again to ask, but, well, damn! Barely more than a week after graduation, I got a job. Sweet.

i got straight a's!

Well, almost. Only an A- in stupid Ecological Issues. But still, good enough for a 3.92, my highest GPA since I don't know when. And it's enough to bring my cumulative GPA to 3.52. Hurray!

springtime

Beware the lack of segues. Well, I finally finished all my exams and graduation business: got my tickets, cap and gown (colossal rip-off, I might add), poli sci honors rope and medal, confirmed dinner reservations, and got my plane ticket home for April 30. Sectionals were really fun, if a little disappointing in the end, and the weather has been non-stop gorgeous for the past week. Everyone is checking weather.com obsessively for the weekend forecast and hoping beyond hope that it doesn't rain during the ceremony. Even, it turns out, Mary Sue Coleman. I went to Bar Louie for dollar burgers last night with Anita and Jacob and apparently Jacob had run into Mary Sue on the steps of the union and talked to her for about half an hour about a bunch of different things. She sounded like a nice lady. My knee is finally starting to feel good again. I ran about two miles yesterday and jumped rope today and it feels fine. Today I ran to the CCRB and back and jumped rope and lifted a bit for upper body. Still not ready for lower-body stuff. But whatever, it just feels great to be active again after two weeks of rest and ice. I'm pretty out of shape.

Speaking of ice, I'm a complete convert to ice baths now. I took one on Saturday and another on Sunday after two hot days of frisbee, and definitely felt the difference in the morning on the following days, especially in my lower legs and hips. On an unrelated note, my interviews with CHF continued: I talked to Barbara Jones, the director program support, on Monday afternoon and then emailed back and forth with Lucy about coming into the office to meet her and Barbara and at least one of the regional directors for whom I'd be working (if they hired me) on May 2 and 9 in the morning.

Tonight a big group is going to the Tigers game against Texas. Anita got something like 20 people together so we got half-price tickets. It should be pretty fun. I've never been to a Tigers game, and it's been a good while since I went to any baseball game. Mom and Dad get in on Thursday night and then everyone else pours in throughout the day Friday. It's all very exciting but right now I actually feel kind of out of it and scattered. Oh well, maybe a shower will make me feel better. And some Primo Levi. I bought A Tranquil Star on Monday and have been reading the stories one at a time. That's all for now, hopefully I'll be in a better mindset the next time I write something.

finals and interview and sectionals

Well, finals are officially upon us. Some of my friends are already finished! I'm not, by a long shot, although I did just turn in my first paper. Modernity and nationalism in Latin America. Good bye, History 348! I won't miss you for a second! Now, on to the next: Polisci 497. I'm about halfway through my final for that class. It's a take-home affair: Four identifications of things we studied this year (for example, the conference of Catholic bishops at Aparecida in 2007); a 2000-word essay on how changes in religion have influenced political change; and a second essay, also of 2000 words or so, on a topic of our choosing. I've finished the first two parts. For the third, I think I'm going to write about gender issues and religion in Latin America. We read a whole book about gender issues, a lot of which has to do with the role of churches as interest groups, so this shouldn't be too hard. The whole shebang is due on Friday; I'd like to get it done today. Also due on Friday is my final for Polisci 389. Here's the prompt:

Huang argues that the Chinese state thinks of local capitalists as an adversary. That is why it gives preference to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). (a) Is Huang right? (b) Under what conditions might one envisage the state in China treating local capitalists on the same footing as SOEs and FIEs?

Fun, right? Politics and economic development of Asia has been an awesome class.

In other news, this morning I finally had a job interview in which I felt like I had a chance. I think it went okay, although she seemed disappointed that I have no professional correspondence-writing experience. Also, I wish I'd given a better response to the question, "Why are you interested in international development?" Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom! Talking and thinking about ID gets my motor running, now I want to help DO some! I'm fascinated by every aspect of it! Hopefully I'm just being overly self-critical, but I don't know. Lucy (the interviewer) did say she was going to set up an interview, either by phone or in person after I get home, with the director of administration and program support. She also elaborated a bit on the position, which was helpful. It's apparently pretty fast-paced: a lot of phone time, a lot of writing, a lot of juggling the needs of different people. Not really office administration, more like logistical and technical support for people in the field. It would be such a cool way to learn the nuts and bolts of how an organization like CHF works. She also seemed enthusiastic about my desire to go to grad school in a couple of years, which is good. Guess they don't expect people to have this job for too long at a stretch.

Sectionals is this weekend. Forecast calls for showers and temperatures in the mid-60s, which sounds just peachy to me. Way better than last weekend. However, I jogged through some drills yesterday at practice and my knee is definitely hurting today. Ibuprofen and ice for the rest of the week. I hope it holds up, at least through Saturday! It would be so disappointing to get all the way through the year and spend the last tournament of my college career taking stats and yelling on the sidelines. Being hurt sucks. Either way, I'm going to have to hustle home on Saturday night so I get back in time for the Bobby McFerrin-Chick Corea-Jack DeJohnette show!

Last bit, and then I'm going to grab some lunch before digging into this gender issues paper: At noon on Monday, at the conclusion of my Ecological Issues exam, I will be done with my undergraduate career.

a quick note about "red-baiting"

A piece on Salon today really pissed me off. Apparently, Bill Kristol has been comparing Obama's statement about depressed rural people clinging to guns or intolerance to Marx's statement about religion being the opiate of the masses. Leaving aside the sheer ridiculousness of that comparison, which whoever the Salon writer was did a good job of, I'd like to point out one little detail. THE COLD WAR ENDED TWENTY YEARS AGO! COMMUNISM IS NOT A THREAT! SOCIALISM IS NOT A THREAT! THERE IS NO RED SCARE! GET OVER IT!

religion and politics

To take a break from the papers I'm writing on this subject (two of them, plus some IDs, make up my final exam for Religion and Politics in Latin America), I came across the Critic at Large article in this week's New Yorker about the history of religion and politics in the United States. It's a great article, not much of a book-by-book review (can't really tell whether the books reviewed are worthwhile or not), but a terrific and concise overview of the history of religious freedom in this country. Check it out.

Okay, back to work.

an update

Well, I just wrote a letter to Jack updating him a little on what's been going on in my life this year. It turned out to be a pretty decent blow-by-blow of the things that have been important to me this year outside the family. So, since I haven't written here in a while, I'm just going to post part of it.

Classes have been pretty good, particularly my poli sci ones. I had two really, really great professors last semester, and I'm taking another class with one of them now, about politics and economic development in Asia. Partially because of that class, and partially because of how freaking sick I am of US politics, I've come to be more and more interested in economic development in the rest of the world. It's so complicated and so difficult to do fairly and well, and I think I'd like to join the ranks of people who are trying to make sure that the people "over whom the wave of progress is about to roll" don't get screwed in the process. That'd be a quote from Barrington Moore, Jr., in case you're interested. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. No, I did not have to look it up. As you might be able to tell, I'm still a giant geek.

No real transition to this, but it's important: Having Vale here for a month over winter break and then into January was really wonderful. I love her a lot and even though we're far away from each other now, and even though we broke up, it's still nice to know that I can be in love with someone as great as she is and have her love me back just as much. We still talk every week or ten days, on Skype.

I've gotten more and more serious about ultimate frisbee this year. I love playing for magnUM Reserve (the new, improved Tenacious B), going to tournaments and bonding with the guys on the team, losing and winning and getting dirty and hurt and having fun anyway. And I've finally found the motivation I always needed to get me off my butt and training hard. I love running and lifting and doing plyometrics and throwing and even doing drills. The most important tournament of the year for us, Michigan Sectionals, is coming up next weekend, and I can't wait to see if we can qualify for Great Lakes Regionals. We
don't have a prayer of qualifying for nationals, but that's okay. It'd be great just to make it out of our section. I'll be done with magnUM at the end of the year, obviously, but I'm going to try out for some club teams back in DC. Not elite-level open (men's), because I'm not good enough (yet), but maybe a regionals-level team, or maybe, just maybe, an elite-level mixed (coed) club. That last would be pretty sweet.

Things have gone really well with our apartment. It's big and comfortable and I really like all my roommates. That was pretty much a given with Gabby, but I've gotten to know Jon and Andrew really well over the course of the year, too, and now they're friends that I'll have for a long time. One big influence all my roommates have had on me has been in the music department: I listen to a lot bigger a range than I used to, including some electronic stuff that I probably would have scoffed at before this year. And a lot of afrobeat and soul, that I probably would have loved before this year but had never really heard. I can't wait to listen to some of it with you.

The prospect of all my friends splitting up is one of the hardest things to imagine and stomach about graduating in less than three weeks (!!!!). It's funny how friendships change just based on who you're around; I've spent a lot of time this year with kids I barely knew before, just because they're close by. It'll be interesting to see who I remain closest with after I leave Ann Arbor.

Speaking of leaving, and going back to Silver Spring, one thing that's given me a lot of anxiety this semester is looking for jobs. It's pretty rough trying to get hired, without a master's degree, in the fields that interest me (see above). I've applied at a bunch of places and no dice, but over the past couple of weeks I've started to calm down about that. My boss is going to keep giving me work through May, and I'll be able to look for jobs once I'm back on the street in DC. Might end up just bartending or working at a restaurant for a while, and that's okay. More time for frisbee! And running! Well, after my knee heals up. (I got me some iliotibial band syndrome: runner's knee. It sucks.) And more time for finishing the strange book I've been reading in my (limited) free time. It's called The Third Policeman, and well, let me put it like this: Some of the characters refer to a really hard problem as a "pancake" and believe that over a person's lifetime, that person become more and more like their bicycle, just as that person's bicycle becomes more and more like them, to the point that the person can't stand still without leaning on something, and the bicycle starts to tool around of its own volition.

And, speaking of reading, I'd better get back to mine. I'm doing well in all my classes at the moment, but the home stretch is upon me and work is starting to pile up, including about a bajillion pages on nationalism in Latin America and China's economic boom to do for this week. Woohoo!

There you have it. And now, home to ice the knee and read until I fall asleep. Good night.

mercedes sosa

I came to this song via Echidne of the Snakes. "Gracias a la vida," by Violeta Parra, sung by Mercedes Sosa. It gave me wave upon wave of goosebumps. I hope it gives the same to you.

some things to think about

Hunger precludes me from writing much of a post at the moment, but there are a few articles that I've read in the past couple of weeks that are fascinating, and to which I'd like to link here. The first is from the New York Review of Books: an article by David Bromwich called "Euphemism and American Violence". In a beautifully crafted way, it makes an extremely important about the centrality of language to our tolerance and even acceptance of violence as a country. The second is also from the NYR, and also deals with the importance of words in shaping the way we perceive and think about issues: "The 'Problem of Evil' in Postwar Europe". I might have posted a link to this a couple of weeks ago, but it's so interesting that I thought I'd go to it again.

The third and fourth are not print articles, but clips from Saturday Night Live: Tina Fey's defense of Hillary, from a few weeks ago, and Tracy Morgan's pro-Obama rebuttal from last weekend. Both are freaking great.

The fifth, is an article in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki about the shortcomings of microfinance. I'm not ashamed to say that I've jumped on the microfinance bandwagon a little bit; if one of them would hire me I'd go to work for a microlending firm next month. But Surowiecki's article points out something important and kind of lost on people like me and Natalie Portman, which is that while microloans are undoubtedly helpful to a lot of individuals, they don't do much about systemic poverty. A large proportion of people in developing countries already technically own their own business, but typically they have a staff of one or two or five. In order to solve chronic underemployment, medium-sized businesses, which have staffs beyond the owner and her family, must be encouraged to a greater extent. Not as sexy as personal loans; nothing like Kiva exists for medium-sized businesses yet. But just as if not more important.

The sixth article is from the New York Times: David Berreby's review of Dan Ariely's new book Predictably Irrational. Turning conventional microeconomics on its head, how fun! There are a couple of other articles that I've liked recently, but unfortunately they've been for class and from sources that aren't available for free (tuition covers them, as it damn well should), so I'll refrain. Plus, six is enough for the time being.

It's time for lunch now. I've been ruminating about some things, and plan to post on them in the next couple of days. Maybe if I say that it'll actually come true.

immigration cartoon

I really liked this one. Brings the point home pretty hard, doesn't it? (h/t Slate)

tournament cancelled

This could not have been more last minute, but Boogie Nights, at Miami of Ohio, got cancelled just now because they're going to get a foot of snow down there. I knew about the snow and thought it was a bit odd that the thing was still on; we've played and practiced in snow before but never more than 3 or 4 inches. Well, that opens up my weekend a lot but it sucks that we won't get to play. There'll be practice tomorrow and Sunday instead. And there's a tourney next weekend at Bowling Green.

So now, instead of rushing around trying to get my errands done (paying dues for Pi Sigma Alpha so I can get my special Poli Sci honors tassel at graduation, turning in my time sheet, buying a book that I need to finish reading by next week) before yet another 4-hour slog down to southern Ohio, I can relax a bit, and get some work done. Good news. Hope you all enjoyed Sharon Jones the other day; I'm really enjoying her stuff with the Dap-Kings. What a crazy story, too: She sang with James Brown and Lee Fields back in the day but never got signed to a record deal, so she worked as a corrections officer for years, only a few years ago did she start to come back. Now she's got three albums with the Dap-Kings and, at 51, is kicking it (literally--check her out on YouTube) all over the world. If they weren't in Australia and New Zealand for the foreseeable future, I'd be making plans to see them ASAP. Okay, time to go eat some lunch and then work a bit.

A final bonus for the tournament's cancellation: The girls across the street are having a "Whiskey and Whiskers" party tonight. I'm not a big whiskey fan, but I've got the whiskers part down; it would have been sad to miss it but now I can go! Maybe this tournament got cancelled at just the right time.

song of the week

I realize I'm a little behind the curve on this Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings business, but I finally got one of their albums, "Naturally," last night, and it absolutely kicks ass. This is my personal favorite, "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?" So so so good. And now, the moment of truth on my Enviro exam.

a hopeful note

Spring Break was wonderful; I couldn't have imagined it going any better. I'm not going to get into any specifics now because that would take too long and I have to go get some lunch or my stomach is going to eat itself. However, I just read a piece in Salon about the candidates' brands. It's a bit fluffy at the beginning (okay, a lot fluffy), but it ends with a really good point: The president is our most important citizen when it comes to how we're seen abroad. His or her image is extremely important in the way we're perceived by people around the world, and really only one candidate in this election fits the bill as someone who can revive our image. I don't much like Obama or Hillary, but you gotta admit, Barack's got the kind of image that we badly, badly need to project and Hillary just doesn't. McCain, it goes without saying, doesn't either. Here's how the article concludes.

"In Germany, they're fascinated with him, they call him 'Der schwarze Kennedy,' the 'black Kennedy,'" says Dick Martin. "They feel he has the same aura about him." In fact, just a few weeks ago, Germany's leading newsmagazine Der Spiegel ran a cover feature on Obama, illustrated by a paired set of images -- Barack on the left, JFK on the right -- and asking whether America will "finally have the chance to be loved again." The issue's cover line raised the stakes to a new level: It read, simply, "The Messiah Factor."

That's because, in Europe, and in Asia, Latin America and Africa as well, the perception is that an Obama presidency represents the potential for catharsis after nearly a decade of frustration with the U.S. "Our brand has been hammered recently, but beneath the anger, there's this underlying hope among people around the world that we can do better," says Patricia Martin. "And we can. We reinvent ourselves. It's what we're known for: We've had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra. I think that's why you have people in every country eating up every little turn in this election's story. This election, the whole world is watching."

Boy do I want to believe that.

very sad

Tonight, this is how I feel. Vale and I just had a really hard conversation about what we're doing and where we're going and I just miss her a whole lot. We decided to try and be "just friends," but the idea of giving up hope of seeing her again for a long time really hurts. I'm glad I found a little corner of the fishbowl because I really don't like the prospect of a bunch of strangers watching me cry to myself. I was going to do more work but I think I'll just go home instead. Do check out that link, though. Good night.

my concession to valentine's day

thumbs up!

This morning I got an email from Terry Provance, of Oikocredit, saying he'd like to interview me for the job opening there! He suggested that we talk by phone next week and then hopefully in person when I'm back in DC over spring break. Hurray! I mean, nothing's settled yet, but that job looks really cool. Plus I just figured out that Terry Provance is a UCC minister, which is what Dad's going for right now. Cool! The place is maybe a little more ecumenical than I first thought (well, okay, a lot more), but that's okay. It's based in the Netherlands and has branch offices in Costa Rica, Peru and Uruguay, not to mention Germany, several places in Africa, and India and the Philippines. So it's a widespread organization, although the US office appears to be, well, Mr. Provance's house.

On an unrelated note, the teaser for this opinion piece by Condi Rice and Robert Gates in the Post today is "On Iraq, Trust Us." Are they freaking kidding? Those fucking people have SO abused my trust that they will never, ever be able to earn it back and I will assume that they are either lying, wrong, just trying to cover their own asses, or a combination of the three, for the rest of time. I'd be laughing right now if I wasn't so disgusted. Okay, class time.

thumbs down

Got my first letter of rejection from a job app today, from Arabella. That's okay, because it was the group I was least interested in working for and, as they pointed out in their gentle, if concise and blunt, letter, seemed like the least comfortable fit for me. Still, not very nice to get rejected from anything. Oh well, time to get used to it, I suppose. Back to work.

That means emailing Oikocredit (today) and Partners of the Americas (on Thursday or Friday, if they haven't emailed by then) to follow up on those letters, and Jeff about hopefully coming in to see what CHF is all about over Spring Break. Also, it means going through the little list I compiled of other places of interest and banging out apps for them. Somebody, somewhere has got to hire me, right?

But right now, it means writing this blasted essay about pentecostals and faith healing.

And buying a ticket to see the DALAI LAMA AT CRISLER ARENA ON APRIL 19!!!!

scattered thoughts

This weekend went pretty well overall, except that it was horrifically cold and windy and that I got clocked in the face by a guy trying to huck as deep as he could. Totally a foul on my part, but there wasn't any doubt who got the worse of the exchange and I don't think I played the rest of that game, deciding instead to focus on the bleeding and the ring of pain that had exploded in a horizontal circle around my head, right around the base of the bridge of my nose. The good news is, I didn't break it and I'm not concussed. The better news is, we finished in third place, of 22 teams, and played okay as a team. It's a rare, and nice, feeling, for us to feel like we outclass most of the competition at a tournament. But we did, going 6-1 and losing only to a Marquette team that had the wind on its side and a really great handler who killed us with upwind swings and some great looks down field. And, it was a good team bonding experience, sleeping 8 to a room and freezing to death outside and playing well together.

Hugo Chavez, it seems to me from my vantage point up here in the great white north, is a pretty small man. Not physically, of course, but just in the sense that he's become nothing more than a clownish oil despot who aspires to be the grand opponent of the US in South America. Not that we don't need a grand opponent down there, someone to really lead the "Pink Tide" movement against the Washington Consensus. I just don't think he's that guy. He's too busy preening in his red shirt and bloviating about how he's building up a badass army to fight against Colombia and the US. What a peacock.

I have a paper due tomorrow on the rise of pentecostalism in Brazil and how it's connected to Andrew Chesnut's idea of "pathogens of poverty." It should be a fairly easy paper, only 1500 words, but I'm kind of adrift still about how to focus it. Well, it'll come to me. This class, by the way, is still kind of unfocused in general as far as I can tell.

Klein gave me a book, The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler. He wrote LA Confidential, which got turned into one of my favorite movies, so I'm excited to read it. Not sure when I'll have time, but that's okay. Other book notes: Development as Freedom is disappointing only in the sense that the writing is sometimes convoluted and unclear. Nothing like The Argumentative Indian, which is beautifully written. Come on, Amartya! Still, it's extremely interesting.

Vale and I talked last night, on Skype, which was nice except it's always a little weird when she has a camera and I don't, so I feel a little like I'm spying on her. But she seemed good, if a little sunburned and a little lonely. She works all day by herself in the office because Katty is doing other things and Isa left, then goes home to her single apartment. Some days she goes up to Cecilia and Rodrigo's house, which she likes, but still. Also, I miss her and, last night, found a job at OAS in DC that would be perfect for her, except that she doesn't have "excellent mastery" of English (the job requires Spanish, too, but she's obviously not lacking there). It's an HR job, requires a bachelor's in business administration, which she has, and at least a year of experience with human resources, which she definitely has. Oh well.

It's time for breakfast. Today, we must go to the grocery store.

i'm goin to disney world! i mean, cincinnati

This weekend is Arctic Vogue, in Cincinnati. The weather forecast is terrible. Saturday: high 45 with rain and snow in the morning tapering off into partly cloudy by the afternoon and winds 15-25 mph. Sunday: high 25 and partly cloudy with lots of wind. That could hardly be worse. Wind=sloppy play. Precipitation=sloppy fields. Below freezing temperatures+sloppy fields=pothole-filled, frozen fields. We're leaving around 4:30 this afternoon and coming back on Sunday probably early-evening-ish. We're also the second seed this weekend, which is a lot of pressure. The goal at any tournament is to break seed, so basically we have to win in order to call it a successful weekend. We can beat all of the teams that are coming; the only one we've ever gotten rolled by who's gonna be there is Bowling Green alumni. But we're a way better team now than we were then.

In other, also-sports-related news, I spent a little while yesterday looking through the Navy SEALs training book in Borders, where I was to spend the $50 gift card I got from being in some experiment or other. (More about the books I bought sometime later; one of them, A Small Place, by Jamaica Kincaid, I already finished and it was awesome. The other was Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen.) Anyhow, it got me inspired for this summer. Working out as consistently as I have been feels great, but still feels a little unstructured, like I could be getting more out of it with a concrete plan. So I'm going to keep on doing the team thing for the rest of this semester, and then this summer set myself up with a week-by-week, month-by-month workout plan. I can't wait. Right now, though, it's time to enter some data on German MPs. Yay! Wish us luck this weekend. And a break in the weather.

duke 89, unc 78

Boo ya.

political betting markets

I think it's safe to say that I've been following the betting markets (Slate keeps track of them here) for the presidential race more closely than most. That might not say very much, but I check them at least a couple of times a week and think they're very interesting. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about them with Vincent Hutchings, a professor here who studies electoral politics. He said that they're generally pretty accurate measures of how things are going for the candidates. If you go to the Slate page and click on "All Candidates," you'll see that John McCain has taken the lead, by a narrow margin, over Hillary and Obama. However, if you click on "Winning Presidential Party," the Dems are still big favorites. McCain is the prohibitive favorite now in the Republican race, and in the Democratic race, Obama has made up a ton of ground on Hillary.

The point is this: McCain would be a gigantic disaster. Hillary sucks. Obama also kind of sucks, but not as much as the other two. In other words, I'm pulling for Obama. If I were more important, I'd say I was endorsing him. As it is, I'm just (halfheartedly) rooting for him. Let's go, Great Logo.

Check out the Post's Super Tuesday coverage if you're bored enough by whatever else you're doing. And now, to the fishbowl to do some work, and then to the gym to do some working out (Navy Seals today, baby, WOO!) and then back home to eat dinner and watch CNN until I throw up all over Wolf Blitzer. I wish I were abroad, we'd at least get the BBC 24/7. Oh well.

the windchill is -12

I lost my phone last night but got it back this morning, thanks to a couple of decent people. Hurray for being nice and doing the right thing. Also, the windchill is -12.

dream

Also, I just remembered my dream last night. I was in a room somewhere with Mom and a few other people whose faces I forget. I think I had just come back from some kind of physical exercise--probably frisbee practice--and I began to feel tightness in my chest. It was pretty intense for a few seconds and then faded, but didn't go away. "I think I'm having a heart attack," I said. Everyone else in the room panicked, but I stayed calm and ended up being the one to call 911. In the ambulance, the pain got worse and I guess I passed out, but the EMTs must have kept me going until I got to the hospital, because I woke up in a hospital bed, with a new heart and a gigantic, almost cartoonish scar down the middle of my chest.

weekend

This weekend has been discouraging and disheartening. Michigan Indoor, the tournament Magnum hosts here every January, was terrible. We played really unevenly as a team--gave A a run for its money, shat all over ourselves against MSU, crushed Oberlin, lost to a Purdue team we should have beaten by 5 or 6 points. I played great on Friday night (against A), then almost not at all against MSU, inexplicably because the people who were getting in point after point weren't playing well and I had the night before, then okay but not great against Oberlin with almost no PT in the first half and then a bit more towards the end. This morning, I played a little bit more because tons of people were hung over or still drunk from the tournament party last night but I didn't go. But overall it was a really discouraging, frustrating weekend in terms of my own play and value as a player. Compounding this was the disappointment I felt that none of my friends, particularly Gabby (obviously) came to watch. I dropped as many hints as I could to him, reminding him of when games were, telling him he should come, etc. But he didn't get it, that this for me is like all the times I've gone to see him in plays. I don't go to them because of an abiding love for student theater, I go because he's poured time and effort into them and I owe it to him as a friend to go. Well, I've poured more time and more effort into this than he has ever poured into a play, and the one chance he will ever get to see me play in college, he blew. I told him so when I got home this morning and he was reclining on the couch, that I was offended and insulted that he hadn't shown up, explained the play parallel, and went back to bed (our game was at 8, I was up at 6 trying to get a ride, and I was home by 11:15, having watched A beat Miami of Ohio senseless despite not playing all that well), without waiting for a response. To his credit, he got it, and left a page-long apology under my door while I was asleep. But I'm still angry, at him and at myself. Now I've got to buckle down and get this presentation on Barrington Moore done for tomorrow. It's on a chapter I love ("England and the Contributions of Violence to Gradualism") from a book I love (Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy). Deep breath. Also, if anyone is tempted to post an attempt at an encouraging comment or something, please don't. I can't take it right now.

vale should root for huckabee

Because if he gets elected, I swear that I will leave this country. Here's Joe Conason's piece in Salon about Huckabee's dominionist past and friends. Scary stuff.

new link

My roommate Andrew started working part-time earlier this month for an college blog site called The Campus Word. So I'm going to add it to my links on the right. He's in charge of the "World" section of the site. I've explored a little bit, and some of the writing isn't super great, but there's a ton of variety in the material and some of it is really interesting stuff.

first amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. It's right there. No law having ANYTHING TO DO WITH ANY RELIGION. It's in the FIRST FREAKING AMENDMENT, BEFORE ALL THAT CRAP ABOUT FREE SPEECH AND FREE ASSEMBLY. Original intent THAT you stupid, small-minded idiots.

This makes my head spin.

old marx

Today is a sad day. I dropped Vale off at the airport at 1:30 for her flight back to DC; she's spending tonight with Mom and Dad and then flies back to Chile early tomorrow morning. A couple of friends are over, and all four roommates, and we've had a low-key, fun evening, but I'm still overwhelmed by loneliness. Whatever emotions and feelings are running through me now are too fresh to write about or even really think about right now. So instead, I'll transcribe a poem from this week's New Yorker, by a Polish poet named Adam Zagajewski. It's called "Old Marx."

I try to envision his last winter,
London, cold and damp, the snow's curt kisses
on empty streets, the Thames' black water.
Chilled prostitutes lit bonfires in the park.
Vast locomotives sobbed somewhere in the night.
The workers spoke so quickly in the pub
that he couldn't catch a single word.
Perhaps Europe was richer and at peace,
but the Belgians still tormented the Congo.
And Russia? Its tyranny? Siberia?

He spent evenings staring at the shutters.
He couldn't concentrate, rewrote old work,
reread young Marx for days on end,
and secretly admired that ambitious author.
He still had faith in his fantastic vision,
but in moments of doubt
he worried that he'd given the world only
a new version of despair;
then he'd close his eyes and see nothing
but the scarlet darkness of his own lids.

back to school

Well, in my one day of classes yesterday, I went to The Rise of the Southern Novel in Black and White (which I liked and which has Adrian Arrington on the class roster, but which I will probably have to drop) and Ecological Issues (which I can't drop, but I liked it so that's fine). I would have had discussion for Race and Ethnicity during the National Period in Latin America (REDNPLA), but we haven't had a lecture yet, so no go there. So far I'm pretty sure I'll be taking Politics and Economic Growth in Asia (with Ashu Varshney, my Gov't and Politics of India and South Asia professor from last semester), Ecological Issues, and REDNPLA (which is a 5-credit class because I'm taking my discussion in Spanish!). My other Poli Sci class is TBD. Currently it's Religion in Latin America, but two overlapping classes on Latin America might be a bit much. So we'll have to see next week.

Today we set ourselves to moving from room to room. Jon isn't back from Philly yet, but since he's not moving, that's okay. I'll be taking Klein's big front room, he'll be moving to the back room, and Gabby will be moving to the double, with Jon. Klein paid Jon off a little to stay in the double so that Klein wouldn't have to share. From my perspective, the whole thing couldn't have worked out more smoothly. Moving itself is kind of slow-going, but that's all right. I've got most of my stuff out of the room. All that remains are a few papers and my clothes. Although, to tell the truth, most of my clothes are either in my suitcase still or are dirty. Better do some laundry this weekend. Before I go, I will report that Gabby has apparently gotten a subscription to Foreign Affairs, which is odd because he doesn't know why that's the case. Whatever! Okay, time to get back to moving.

One more thing: first Magnum practice tonight, 8:30-10. Then Sunday, 8:30-10, Wednesday 11:30-1 every week until we move back outside.

idiots!

If you've been following the baseball-steroids-Mitchell Report story, then you know that Roger Clemens takes up nine pages in the report and appears to have used a lot of performance enhancers. So his HOF status is now in doubt because some people are freaking morons. Look, I don't give a shit if he used steroids, he's the Barry Bonds of pitching. Greatest of the last 20 years, no question, hands down, it's not even close. The point of this report is that in that time period, EVERYONE was doping, and he still managed to elevate his game above everyone else. It's the steroid era, you idiots. Clemens and Bonds should be mortal locks. They deserve it.

San Francisco Chronicle writer Ray Ratto said it right in this ESPN story.

"I would vote for Bonds on the first ballot, as I would vote for Clemens, because the Hall of Fame isn't church,'' Ratto said. "It's the history of baseball, and this is part of the history of baseball. I can assure you that Bud Selig will be voted into the Hall of Fame, and he is the commissioner whose name will be linked with the steroid era by first ignoring it, then profiting from it, and finally blaming others for it. I know that Cap Anson is in the Hall of Fame, and he was instrumental in the creation of the color line, which is way worse than PEDs. So this discussion ends up being an excuse for people with no institutional memory or understanding to claim a moral superiority they're not really equipped to display.''

giddy

Taking a break from my India paper to report an event that made me feel like a little kid who just opened the present he'd been hoping for all year. I've known for a while basically what I want to argue in this paper (which asks us to explain the disparity in economic growth rates between India and China). There's lots of peripheral support for the argument in the literature we read for class, plus some stuff I've found on JSTOR, Project MUSE, etc. But just now, on JSTOR, I found an article written by none other than Tom Weisskopf, the erstwhile director of the RC and professor of economics here. It makes my argument, but in 1975. Absolutely brilliant. The greatest possible thing I could have found: An article totally legitimating my argument but far enough removed that I can avoid being completely derivative. I could sing.

two new links

Two I've been meaning to put up: one for a couple of days, the other for months. CHF International is the IDP/refugee organization in Silver Spring that Jeff Meer works for. And Kalil's World Passport is the fantastically eclectic podcast site that I've been going to since the beginning of the year. It's got music from all over Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, and a little from the States. So cool. Now it's time for bed. Although I'm kind of afraid because Jon has been talking so loudly in his sleep than I can hear him clearly through the door. Sometimes in French, sometimes in English. But definitely complete sentences or at least ideas. God I can't wait to have my own room next semester.

more books -- updated!

Two books reviewed in Salon recently really caught my eye. The first is Peter Hoeg's new book, The Quiet Girl. He wrote Smilla's Sense of Snow, which I read last summer at the beach and really liked. The second is My Colombian War, by Sylvia Paternostro, a Colombian-American who went back to Colombia after 22 years in the States and wrote a book about Colombian life outside the drug war. We essentialize Colombia so much, tie it so closely to drugs in our own imagination, that we can't think about what she calls "human dynamics, the relationships between employer and employee, between man and woman, teacher and student, government and citizen, artists and civil society."

In other news, I finally found the website of the organization that I think I remember Jeff Meer works for or is connected to in some way. It's called CHF International. Wouldn't mind working there right out of college. It's on Georgia Avenue, for crying out loud.

UPDATE

Also Waiting by Ha Jin.

rip sean taylor

For those of you who don't know already, Washington safety Sean Taylor died early this morning from a gunshot wound to the leg after somebody broke into his home in Florida. I find myself much more affected by this than I would have thought I could be by the death of somebody I don't know, and don't even really know that much about. Nothing I have to say about this situation is original, so I'll spare you (and myself) the cliches. Suffice it to say that it is tremendously sad. My heart goes out to his family and especially his baby daughter. If you want to read more, here's the ESPN article about it.

what a fucking disgrace

Well, the final opportunity of my student career for us to beat Ohio State comes to nothing because our offense was absolutely execrable. That actually isn't strong enough a word. We were pathetic, disgusting, an embarrassment. Ninety-one yard of offense. Fifteen yards rushing on 24 attempts. Dropped pass after three-and-out after dropped pass. Our D played well, held OSU to just 14 points, but the offense just didn't fucking show up. Walking out of the Big House as the band played the fight song one last time was one of the most depressing experiences I can remember.

new blog...by sebi brown!

Sebi is a kid I went to high school with until senior year, when he went with his family to live in Jerusalem. He's at Juniata now, and really into immigration and border issues. He started up a blog about them, so I thought I'd give him a plug here. Here it is, you should check it out. Sebi, if you find your way to this blog anytime soon: It's been too long, man.

300!

This. Is. Spah! Ta! I still haven't seen that movie, nor do I plan to. This is my 300th post, though. Anyhow, nothing particularly interesting to report other than that I called Kucinich's scheduler back today and left another message, which I'm afraid I kind of blew by making it too snappy. Not in tone, just in a particularly phrase... I'm probably just freaking myself out. Another thing, before I head to fascism class: Reading Sidney Blumenthal's column in the Guardian today, I got to thinking about the US Civil War. Now, I generally picture the war in terms of two massive blocks, blue and grey, going at each other around the Mason-Dixon line. Those blocks are solid on the map, the whole populations covered by each are incorporated by and support them. Of course many northerners were racist and had Confederate sympathies in that they favored slavery and weren't too fond of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln didn't suspend habeus corpus because Marylanders were his biggest fans. So the blue block begins to take on a bit of nuance. But what about the South? I still can't think of anything I've read or heard about that suggests divisions in southern opinion surrounding the secession and then the war. There must have been some southerners who supported the Union, or opposed slavery. Unanimity just doesn't happen on that scale. But who were they? Did they write anything down? How were they treated by everyone else? How did they make out during and after the war? Who knows. And now I'm going to be late for class.

my legs feel like napalm

After lifting Sunday, practice yesterday and a stair workout today, my legs don't feel like jelly. They feel like PETROLEUM jelly. In bomb form. No pain, no gain, though. In more exciting news, today I talked to Dennis Kucinich (!) thanks to Jules. He wants to set up an appointment for an interview as soon as possible! I was practically having palpitations in class this morning waiting to call him. I emailed him and called his scheduler, too. I keep telling myself that I have a pretty slim chance of this going anywhere, but it's cool just to have the opportunity. Also I went and hung out with Hanna Ketai today at her co-op, which was nice because I hadn't seen her in a while. One of the things we talked about was self-expectation and optimism versus pessimism when going for new things. She tends to have really high expectations for herself and other people, so she's disappointed a lot. I tend to have low expectations for myself and other people, so I'm constantly pleasantly surprised. This happened most recently with frisbee. But her point is that the laws of attraction apply; you get in life what you think you can get. So if you think you can't get very much or go very far or make that new friend or get that job, you're less likely to get it. You are what you project, in part. It's also a lot braver to have high expectations than low ones. I'm feeling really unfocused right now, so that's enough for now. But I'll return to this theme, I think it's an important one for me. Also, at some point, to the various discussions I've had recently with people about grad school. And my senior release! I can OFFICIALLY graduate on time as of today. Now, a badly needed shower.

caetano!

Because I'm going to see him at Hill tonight, and because I haven't put up a song in a while, here's Caetano Veloso's classic "Tropicalia." Enjoy!

i mean, you don't even really have to read past the headline

This post, "White House tells Pervez Musharraf to never restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism" at Crooks and Liars just kind of left me numb. It's unbelievable. What do you do with hypocrisy that deep?

short story

Well, I promised that I'd put this up once it was done, so here's my short story about being in Santiago on September 11 of last year. Hope you like it. It's called, in a stroke of creative genius, "El Once de Septiembre."

Eric took down his blazer, slacks, his one button-down shirt and tie from their hangers and laid them on the bed. Gingerly, using only his left hand, he took off the sweatshirt in which he’d slept, removing his left arm and his head before sliding it down his right arm and onto the floor. He held his right arm to his chest as he slid his pants down his legs and then took of his socks one by one. Shivering against the chill and puffing little clouds of condensed breath from the effort and pain of undressing himself, he put on his button-down shirt and his slacks and black socks. Tying his shoes was the hardest task of all. He crammed his knees into his chest and reached, panting and grimacing, until his right hand could just barely do its job in tandem with the left. The necktie he abandoned after visualizing the motions he’d have to go through in order to get it on. Last, he put on the white mesh sling that the nurse had given him at the hospital two nights earlier.

* * *

While Eric struggled to dress himself, shopkeepers across Santiago began to unlock their front doors and put their merchandise out on display. On this day, the thirty-third anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s bloody coup against the ailing socialist government of Salvador Allende, many added a Chilean flag to their front windows, or made sure to have patriotic music playing extra loud. Pinochet ruled as a brutal dictator for 17 years, and the anniversary of his rise, so long officially celebrated as a great victory in the fight against socialism, had become a day of anger and protest. In the central places, the shopkeepers made sure they had brooms ready to clear the sidewalks of broken glass, and most did not remove the metal screens from their windows at all.

* * *

In the kitchen he put on water to boil for tea and made some toast with jam and then called a cab, relishing briefly in his mastery of this small interaction in another language. As the tea began to wake him up, Eric thought about the day. It had been a perfect morning five years earlier, as everyone recalled now. But his thoughts were interrupted by a beep-beep outside: the cab was waiting.

The taxi driver smiled at him as he got in. “Buenos días, señor, ¿a dónde va usted?”

“La embajada de Estados Unidos, por favor” said Eric.

The cabbie nodded and started to drive. “¿Le molesta si subo el volúmen?” Do you mind if I raise the volume?

Eric did not mind, so he shook his head and the cabbie turned up the radio, which crackled with the iconic voice of Victor Jara, of whom Eric had never heard before coming to Chile.

“Seis de los nuestros se perdieron
en el espacio de las estrellas.
Uno muerto, un golpeado como jamás creí
se podría golpear a un ser humano.
Los otros cuatro quisieron quitarse
todos los temores,
uno saltando al vacío,
otro golpeándose la cabeza contra un muro
pero todos con la mirada fija en la muerte.”

Eric translated to himself, Six of our own were lost in the space of the stars. One dead, another beaten as I had never imagined a human being could be beaten. The other four wished to remove fear from themselves, one leaping into the emptiness, another striking his head against a wall, but all with their gaze fixed on death. “God damn,” he said out loud, but the taxi driver didn’t hear.

The taxi turned off of Los Leones onto Once de Septiembre and five minutes later they arrived at the US Embassy, where Chilean policemen in formal dress checked Eric’s passport before allowing him through the gate. A steady stream of somberly-dressed Americans preceded and followed Eric out of taxis and into the fortresslike embassy’s garden. In twos and threes they addressed each other in hushed tones, shaking their heads and clicking their tongues. In the garden, they gathered around a temporary podium by a small patch of flowers. Eric, alone, wandered off to admire the mountains to the east, beautifully lit in the morning light, and wished that Santiago’s urban planners had decided to build in a place that obscured less of the view, or perhaps to limit the height of new buildings. Behind him, the US ambassador began to speak, and Eric turned around.

First in Spanish, the ambassador talked blandly about the grief everyone present felt, the need for togetherness and cross-cultural understanding. Then he simply read from President Bush’s prepared speech for the day. “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other,” he said. The ambassador was serious but stoic and unemotional as he recited platitude after platitude.

Eric sneered and turned away. He was embarrassed by the ambassador’s execrable Spanish accent, by his lack of creativity, by the gigantic glass office buildings, by the Starbucks he knew was right down the street. This is what we have to offer to the rest of the world? Exasperated with the present, Eric slipped into the memories that had been interrupted earlier by the taxi’s arrival. He turned his mind back to the morning, five years ago, when he had been sitting in English class, close to the window, and his government teacher had walked into the room and said, “Turn on the TV.”

Ten minutes later the class was in total silence, its attention undivided as it watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center. A second plume of thick gray smoke joined the first. No one could call anyone; the cell phone circuits were jammed. At quarter to ten, CNN cut to a shot of the Pentagon spewing that same smoke from a new, gaping hole and his friend Carla screamed. Both her parents worked there, worked in that part of the E-ring. They and their offices had been blasted apart. So much grief came out of that day. Anger, too, a desire for revenge, but mostly it was just pain.

The sound of “Taps” being played mournfully by a lone bugler brought Eric back into Santiago. Marines came out and laid a wreath of flowers on a small monument next to the podium and then the mourners, perhaps 70 of them, filed out just as quietly and gravely as they had entered.

His shoulder throbbed dully as Eric walked down El Bosque towards the Metro. As he passed Roger de Flor he saw one of the other kids on his study abroad program, Lewis, on the other side of the street. He called to him and Lewis stopped and waited for Eric to cross over.

“Coming from the embassy?” he said.

“Yeah,” said Eric. “Where were you?”

“Why freeze my ass off at some ceremony? I know what happened, I don’t need them to remind me.”

“True, true,” Eric said. “I mean, it was kind of bullshit anyway, the ambassador just read Bush’s speech. He barely mentioned Chile, I wanted to be like, ‘Dude, we’re ten blocks from a street named after this date! We know what happened to us sucked, you’re the fucking ambassador, why the fuck aren’t you talking about what’s up here?’” But I thought that maybe other people wouldn’t appreciate me yelling in the middle of the ceremony.”

Lewis laughed a little. “Yeah, probably not. Where you off to now?”

“Well, I don’t really want to go home right now, you know, my family is all pinochetista and I don’t think I could handle a lecture about how great the coup was right now,” Eric said.

“Yeah, man, sucks that your family’s like that,” said Lewis. “It’s so weird that people still think that way. I mean, most don’t but so many people still support him.”

“I know, right? Where should I go instead?”

“I don’t know, man. I’m about to go to Starbucks, do some reading, if you want to come.”

“Nah, Starbucks is not what I need right now,” said Eric. “But thanks, though.”

Lewis laughed again. “Fair enough. Alright, see you mean.”

“Chao,” Eric said.

They parted ways and Eric walked the rest of the way to the station. He boarded a train and stayed on past his stop, watching as more and more people got on. No one seemed to be getting off and Eric absently wondered why. He thought about the ceremony that he had just left. It had been so sterile, so disconnected and false. Of one thing Eric was sure: Everyone there had been truly sad and had come to the embassy desiring a meaningful shared reflection and recognition of their tragedy. What they got instead was a selection from the President’s official address for the day and a wreath. They left in the same ones and twos and threes in which they had arrived, talking together in the same hushed tones as before.

At Estación Plaza Italia, the central stop on the line, the cars emptied, and Eric flowed out with the crowd through the gates and up to the vast intersection of Santiago’s main arteries. When he arrived at the top of the stairs, Eric paused and looked around and his eyes opened for what felt like the first time all day. He took in the scene that faced him. An angry crowd had gathered, chanting, banging drums, waving flags and bearing bright signs and portraits of Salvador Allende. The current of people around him dispersed into the crowd and swelled it, and the plaza rang with their fervent shouts. In the middle distance stood a line of policemen on horseback, but the throng paid it no mind. Eric saw more police peeking out of every side street up and down the main road, standing in riot gear alongside their hulking armored cars. The people around him pulsated and moved in all directions at once, but the police were very still.

His pocket vibrated: a text message. It read, “US Department of State security warning: In light of day’s events, all US citizens are advised to avoid large crowds,” and Eric was suddenly very aware that no one else in sight was wearing a blazer.
He sat down on a bench and took off the sling in order to stretch out his elbow and take his shoulder through its still-limited range of motion. Just as he was finishing this already-routine exploration of his shoulder’s pain tolerance, Eric felt the crowd snap. A great shout went up and people who had been milling about aimlessly suddenly chose a direction and started running: half towards the mounted police and half in the other direction. Eric did not know what to do, so he remained seated and watched.

A short man with a moustache stopped in front of Eric, grabbed him by the lapel and pulled him to his feet. “Qué carajo estai haciendo ahí, huevón? Ándate! Vamos!” the man shouted. What the fuck are you doing there, man? Move! Let’s go! So Eric got up and ran. Over his shoulder, he could see the mounted police advancing on the crowd, shields up against a barrage of rocks. And down the street, the armored cars were beginning to move. As he ran, Eric found to his surprise that instead of being afraid, he was exhilarated by the movement, the noise, the violence he could sense behind him. Up ahead he saw a plume of smoke and as he drew closer he realized that someone had set fire to a car parked along the sidewalk.

The flames and heat and billowing smoke transfixed Eric. He slowed to a walk and then stopped beside the car. People rushed all around him but several stopped next to him, to watch. The heat became to much and he blinked and turned away and, his concentration broken, noticed that he no longer had his sling. He wanted to go back to get it, but he realized with a jolt that the ache in his shoulder was gone. Looking back up the street, Eric saw police beating back surging young men with sticks and high-pressured hoses and felt suddenly overwhelmed by the scene, by the seething fury of the mob and the cold, systematic advance of the police. Young men, his age, alive with fear and rage, were beating at each other to commemorate the anniversary of their deeply ambivalent national trauma.

He ran again, away from the truck and the burning car, until he found himself in the lobby of a friend’s apartment building a few blocks away. He called her to no answer but then remembered that she was visiting family on the coast, so he took the elevator up to the roof and joined a small, quiet gathering of people watching the action on the streets below.

The day slouched towards twilight and then night. His fellow audience members began to move back downstairs to their apartments, but Eric could not join them. He stayed on the roof, leaning on the railing and watching as more cars went up in flames, as new skirmishes started and finished, as shop windows were shattered by stray and sometimes not-so-stray rocks. It was in the small hours of the morning when Eric finally went back out onto the street and hailed a cab to take him home. As he climbed into the taxi, his shoulder began to throb again, and he remembered his dislocated collarbone for the first time since he’d jumped up off the bench many hours earlier. He thought ruefully of the pickup soccer game where he’d injured his shoulder a few days earlier. A mid-air collision with his friend Carlos had ended with him writhing on the ground in pain and Carlos frozen between celebration for having won the header and scored a goal and guilt for having rammed Eric into the ground.

Eric smiled to himself. “Poor guy,” he thought. “At least it wasn’t confusing for me. For me, it just hurt.”

PS: I kind of hate this ending, but I couldn't think of anything that would work better there despite trying at least eight or nine different things. Any suggestions?

genarlow wilson freed!

At long last, a court has ordered that Genarlow Wilson, a black kid from Georgia who was sentenced to 10 years in jail for having consensual oral sex with a minor, although there was only two years' difference between them (he was 17, she was 15). The Georgia state legislature changed the law that put him away, but he didn't get out until the state supreme court ruled today that his sentence was cruel and unusual under the state constitution. It's about damn time. Here's TalkLeft's post about it.

the revolutionary guard is a "state sponsor of terrorism"

Here's the Times article about it. Gee, just like our military is, however inadvertently, sponsoring the PKK in Northern Iraq. Only difference is, the PKK has actually INVADED AND KILLED THE TROOPS OF ANOTHER COUNTRY. The Revolutionary Guard is horrible and probably responsible for a lot of really bad shit. But the PKK overtly attacked one of our major regional allies, Turkey, without whose help any future withdrawal from Iraq will by much, much harder.

The Bush foreign policy gets more tortured and hypocritical every day. What's perhaps most unbelievable is that I'm not even the least bit surprised by this potentially catastrophic turn of events. Just another day for Bushco. Madame Speaker, I know you said you wouldn't impeach Bush. But you know what? HE AND HIS ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY AND EVERYTHING WE STAND FOR. They are war criminals, domestic felons and usurpers of the Constitution. If that's not enough to get impeachment hearings going, I don't know what is. Oh, right, the right wing noise machine is enough. Damn, wish we had our own army of horribly dishonest demagogues ruling the airwaves and editorial pages. That'd be nice. Related note: The top three opinions on wapo online today are by Broder, Novak and Will. That they even pretend to be fair there anymore is distressing. And that anyone accuses the Post of being left-leaning is simultaneously laughable and sneerable. Sidney Blumenthal's piece in Salon this week is about media complicity; I couldn't even open it because I'm angry enough as it is.

On a lighter note, I'm loving fascism class more and more. It's really nice to be in an interesting and edifying setting where I feel like I really get the connections and implications and nuances of what we're learning about. Now it's time for me to go home and change before the MagnUM track workout at 7. Oh, one more thing. I really, really love Los Fabulosos Cadillacs' cover of "Revolution Rock," by the Clash. So here's a video of half the song (couldn't find a complete one).

Todo el mundo moven los pies, ya bailan hasta morir!
[Everybody move your feet, now dance until you die]
Esta música causa sensación, este ritmo toca la nación!
[This music causes feeling, this rhythm touches the nation]
Llama a viejo, llama a tu vieja!
[Call your papa, call your mama]
Todo todo todo va a estar bien!
[Everything's gonna be all right]
Escuchálo, no lo ignores, todo va a estar bien!
[Listen to it, don't ignore it, everything's gonna be all right]

new blog

Just now I read a column by Berkeley public policy professor (and former Clinton cabinet member) Robert Reich about the need to raise taxes on the wealthy (and why Democrats are reluctant to do it). It was very good stuff, and there was a link to his blog, which is also full of good stuff. So I'm going to be adding it to my list and reading it. You should, too.

turkey

Juan Cole has a really interesting article over at Salon today about the abject failure that is the Bush administration's foreign policy. Here's a particularly troubling excerpt:

As usual, the Bush administration has reacted to these predictable problems in a purely ad hoc manner. There is no evidence that anyone in the administration has crafted a policy for dealing with tensions between Ankara and America's Kurdish allies. The U.S. State Department has designated the PKK a terrorist group, but the PKK is given safe harbor by the Kurdistan Regional Authority of northern Iraq. What will Bush do about having wound up as the de facto protector of a radical peasant guerrilla group that is attacking the troops of a NATO ally? If the United States acts against the PKK, it risks alienating the Iraqi Kurds, whose pro-American peshmerga fighters perform security duties and enlist as troops in the new Iraqi army. If Bush does not restrain the PKK, then he is playing Mullah Omar to its al-Qaida and "harboring" terrorists, which he trumpeted six years ago as grounds for war.

frisbee

Well, after two weeks of psyching myself out, telling myself over and over that I'd get cut in the hopes that if it happened it wouldn't hurt quite so much, I didn't get cut! I made the B-team (which they're calling the Developmental team now). So there was room for me after the shake-up after all. Only five new guys made the A roster, and they are all clearly better than me, so no hard feelings about that at all. I'm just glad I get a chance to keep playing. So, image for the day:



Magnum on three, Magnum on three...one two three MAGNUM!

david horowitz is criminally fucking insane

This week at Michigan. I don't even know where to start with this. Horowitz and everyone who thinks like him are a threat to national security. People are dying in Iraq and dying in Israel/Palestine because of this kind of totally divorced-from-reality worldview. Bush DID create the War on Terror. To even try to deny that is laughable on its face. He obviously didn't create jihadi Islamism nor its conflict with the US; nobody who's even been paying a LITTLE bit of attention thinks that. But the War on Terror is his ugly, disfigured offspring. Also I'm not sure I've ever seen or heard a left-winger claim that global warming is a greater threat to national security than "Islamofascism." Not least because left-wingers tend not to use unbelievably dishonest terms like "Islamofascism."

Juan Cole has a good and very upsetting post on a related topic today, though, so go read that.

ron paul

Came to campus last night to speak on the Diag. I went to see him, along with a couple hundred other people. It was nice because I got to talk to Jessica Hibma for a while, and Sam B-F. They're both cool and I hadn't really talked to either of them in a while. Well, I guess I saw Jessica earlier in the day yesterday, but it was in passing and hardly counts. Anyhow, to sum up Paul's speech: "Freedom freedom Constitution troops home freedom freedom government BAD." He's a racist libertarian extremist who wants to abolish the IRS and the Federal Reserve, and in 1992 had this to say about black people in his personal publication:

Regardless of what the media tell us, most white Americans are not going to believe that they are at fault for what blacks have done to cities across America. The professional blacks may have cowed the elites, but good sense survives at the grass roots. Many more are going to have difficultly avoiding the belief that our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists -- and they can be identified by the color of their skin. This conclusion may not be entirely fair, but it is, for many, entirely unavoidable.

Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country. Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action.... Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the "criminal justice system," I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

If similar in-depth studies were conducted in other major cities, who doubts that similar results would be produced? We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.

Perhaps the L.A. experience should not be surprising. The riots, burning, looting, and murders are only a continuation of 30 years of racial politics.The looting in L.A. was the welfare state without the voting booth. The elite have sent one message to black America for 30 years: you are entitled to something for nothing. That's what blacks got on the streets of L.A. for three days in April. Only they didn't ask their Congressmen to arrange the transfer.

Maybe I'm just being judgmental and unfair, but I feel like a lot of the people who were there last night waving signs with his name on them were sucked in by his being against the Iraq War. Well, kudos to him for being right on that count, but he's wrong on just about everything else and I feel like he wouldn't have so much support if people knew just a twinge more about him. One thing I can say, though, is that he does seem like a principled guy, never really wavers or compromises what he believes in. The problem is that his principles are terrible.

glory days!

Big news! I'm going to Naperville, IL this weekend for Glory Days, which is a big fall ultimate tournament. So that should be fun.

okay, and a song

Because it's a great song.

back by popular demand

Well, I've just finished my paper for tomorrow on the federal budget as key to understanding real governmental priorities, and let me tell you, the budget is really interesting. The paper topic and limits (1000 words hard cap) meant that writing this baby sucked. I would have much preferred to write 5000 words and been able to get into real meaty rants about public and media misunderstanding--and governmental manipulation--of tax policy, but as it was I barely covered revenues, outlays and expenditures and a couple of recommendations for shrinking the deficit (another area I could have really sunk my teeth into) in the space allotted. Oh well.

Seems that some people are asking for a little update about school so far, so here goes. My classes are as follows:

ENGLISH 223 Intro to Creative Writing
ENVSTD 232 Intro to Oceanography
POLSCI 300 Contemporary Political Issues
POLSCI 357 History and Politics of India and South Asia
POLSCI 489 H & P of the European Right

So far, the first two have been satisfactory but kind of up and down. At least they've been easy. The Poli Sci classes, on the other hand, have been fantastic. CPI, for which I was writing until 15 minutes ago, is really basic but engaging all the same and also easy in terms of reading/work load. The India and European Right classes feature fascinating subjects and are taught by two high-powered and absolutely terrific professors, Ashutosh Varshney and Andy Markovits. I could (and do, often) go on and on about these two, but won't right now.

My apartment is big and beautiful, although we've had a few problems with leakage from the apartment upstairs and with our dishwasher, which is on wheels and supposedly hooks into the sink, but which doesn't, in fact, hook onto the sink. No really big deal there, we just have to do dishes by hand and they pile up sometimes.

Frisbee has been a little more stressful than sophomore year because they're shaking up the way the teams are organized and as a result there might not be space on either the A or B teams for an average-skilled, average-athletic player like me. We hosted a tournament last week, Best of the Midwest, which was really fun and led to me making the first cut down to about 70 guys (from close to 150). So now, really all there is to do is keep showing up and playing hard and hope not to be in the next 20 cut (there'll be about 25 on each final roster). I'd say my chances are about 50-50. But we'll see. Hopefully I get invited to the Glory Days tournament in Naperville in a couple of weeks, that would be a good sign, I think.

Things seem to be going pretty well on the family front, which is obviously great, and even more so because things have been a bit chaotic here. Okay, I've run out of energy to write for the time being and my eyes are starting to cross, so I think I'll close up shop here at the library and head home. Sorry for the abrupt ending. I'll try to post more frequently, but now that I'm back in the country the blogosphere has become a lot less important to me in general. As a final note, I feel compelled to announce that Blogger's own spell check doesn't recognize the word "blogosphere." And with that, good night.

ferlinghetti

Found this poem thanks to C&L. I think it's called "Pity the Nation." Pretty straightforward stuff, I guess, and at some level I don't even think this is a very good poem, but on the other hand, here I am, posting it on my blog. Wonder what that's about.

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation -- oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

some new music

I like this song okay (my roommates are going to have me sold on at least some techno by the end of the semester) but what's really cool is the video. Make sure to watch until the lady starts speaking in tongues. It's really cool. The song is "Det snurrar i min skalle" by Familjen.

michigan 38, notre dame 0

That's better.

thank you, jhumpa lahiri

I read this story, "The Third and Final Continent," again just now, in a lull before class, and once again shivered at how true it rings, how beautifully it's written, how closely it strikes me. It feels so intimate to me and I almost get choked up towards the end, all the more so now because I know it so well. Here are the last few sentences:

In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his own way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

I have no words.

you can't talk to a man with a shotgun in his hand

I'm sitting in Angell Hall having just read a few posts from Orcinus and Unsane and I'm feeling infused with energy. Being back at school is great, my apartment is working out wonderfully so far, classes start tomorrow, I found out about a neat-sounding volunteer organization that works with the Latino community in and around Ann Arbor. Plus I'm feeling full of fire, ready to go freaking FIGHT and bring some people to the light, to help someone. Sara at Orcinus has a really good post reprising her trichotomy of authoritarians in the States and I'm getting waves of goosebumps at the thought of engaging the ones here.

abriré la ventana.
abriré la ventana.

seems i'm getting tired of writing this

I no longer really feel a need to write on this with any kind of regularity, and when I sit down to write about, say, the amazing time we had at the beach last week, other things always seem more important or interesting or worthwhile. However, I'd like to just say that if we go to war with Iran, any shred of doubt left in my mind about George W. Bush's guilt as a war criminal will be gone.

west africa is where it's at

Listening to Tinariwen with Dad the other day, he pointed out the obvious: that even after listening to just part of one song, those musicians listen to lots of blues and blues-rock from the U.S., and how that music in its turn came from the traditional music of West Africa. It's all one big circle, albeit one filled with a lot of pain and suffering in the form of slavery and racism and imperialism. But having just started to discover bluesier artists like Amadou et Mariam, Ali Farka Touré, Boubacar Traoré and Tinariwen, and really just starting to discover Afrobeat and Afrofunk, well, the current stopping point of that circle has produced some kick-ass music over the past 30 or 40 years. Here's a song by Fela Kuti, "Sorrow Tears and Blood." Forgive the still image, even YouTube has limits to its selection. I suggest closing your eyes and paying no attention to your body. If it doesn't start moving of its own accord, you're probably quadriplegic.

puerto rican obituary

Found this poem today by Pedro Petri, written in 1973. I had never heard of it or him before but, well, damn. Here it is:

Puerto Rican Obituary

They worked
They were always on time
They were never late
They never spoke back
when they were insulted
They worked
They never took days off
that were not on the calendar
They never went on strike
without permission
They worked
ten days a week
and were only paid for five
They worked
They worked
They worked
and they died
They died broke
They died owing
They died never knowing
what the front entrance
of the first national city bank looks like

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
All died yesterday today
and will die again tomorrow
passing their bill collectors
on to the next of kin
All died
waiting for the garden of eden
to open up again
under a new management
All died
dreaming about america
waking them up in the middle of the night
screaming: Mira Mira
your name is on the winning lottery ticket
for one hundred thousand dollars
All died
hating the grocery stores
that sold them make-believe steak
and bullet-proof rice and beans
All died waiting dreaming and hating

Dead Puerto Ricans
Who never knew they were Puerto Ricans
Who never took a coffee break
from the ten commandments
to KILL KILL KILL
the landlords of their cracked skulls
and communicate with their latino souls

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
From the nervous breakdown streets
where the mice live like millionaires
and the people do not live at all
are dead and were never alive

Juan
died waiting for his number to hit
Miguel
died waiting for the welfare check
to come and go and come again
Milagros
died waiting for her ten children
to grow up and work
so she could quit working
Olga
died waiting for a five dollar raise
Manuel
died waiting for his supervisor to drop dead
so he could get a promotion

Is a long ride
from Spanish Harlem
to long island cemetery
where they were buried
First the train
and then the bus
and the cold cuts for lunch
and the flowers
that will be stolen
when visiting hours are over
Is very expensive
Is very expensive
But they understand
Their parents understood
Is a long non-profit ride
from Spanish Harlem
to long island cemetery

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
All died yesterday today
and will die again tomorrow
Dreaming
Dreaming about queens
Clean-cut lily-white neighborhood
Puerto Ricanless scene
Thirty-thousand-dollar home
The first spics on the block
Proud to belong to a community
of gringos who want them lynched
Proud to be a long distance away
from the sacred phrase: Que Pasa

These dreams
These empty dreams
from the make-believe bedrooms
their parents left them
are the after-effects
of television programs
about the ideal
white american family
with black maids
and latino janitors
who are well train
to make everyone
and their bill collectors
laugh at them
and the people they represent

Juan
died dreaming about a new car
Miguel
died dreaming about new anti-poverty programs
Milagros
died dreaming about a trip to Puerto Rico
Olga
died dreaming about real jewelry
Manuel
died dreaming about the irish sweepstakes

They all died
like a hero sandwich dies
in the garment district
at twelve o’clock in the afternoon
social security number to ashes
union dues to dust

They knew
they were born to weep
and keep the morticians employed
as long as they pledge allegiance
to the flag that wants them destroyed
They saw their names listed
in the telephone directory of destruction
They were train to turn
the other cheek by newspapers
that mispelled mispronounced
and misunderstood their names
and celebrated when death came
and stole their final laundry ticket

They were born dead
and they died dead

Is time
to visit sister lopez again
the number one healer
and fortune card dealer
in Spanish Harlem
She can communicate
with your late relatives
for a reasonable fee
Good news is guaranteed

Rise Table Rise Table
death is not dumb and disable
Those who love you want to know
the correct number to play
Let them know this right away
Rise Table Rise Table
death is not dumb and disable
Now that your problems are over
and the world is off your shoulders
help those who you left behind
find financial peace of mind

Rise Table Rise Table
death is not dumb and disable
If the right number we hit
all our problems will split
and we will visit your grave
on every legal holiday

Those who love you want to know
the correct number to play
let them know this right away
We know your spirit is able
Death is not dumb and disable
RISE TABLE RISE TABLE

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
All died yesterday today
and will die again tomorrow
Hating fighting and stealing
broken windows from each other
Practicing a religion without a roof
The old testament
The new testament
according to the gospel
of the internal revenue
the judge and jury and executioner
protector and eternal bill collector

Secondhand shit for sale
learn how to say Como Esta Usted
and you will make a fortune
They are dead
They are dead
and will not return from the dead
until they stop neglecting
the art of their dialogue
for broken english lessons
to impress the mister goldsteins
who keep them employed
as lavaplatos porters messenger boys
factory workers maids stock clerks
shipping clerks assistant mailroom
assistant, assistant assistant
to the assistant’s assistant
assistant lavaplatos and automatic
artificial smiling doormen
for the lowest wages of the ages
and rages when you demand a raise
because is against the company policy
to promote SPICS SPICS SPICS

Juan
died hating Miguel because Miguel’s
used car was in better running condition
than his used car
Miguel
died hating Milagros because Milagros
had a color television set
and he could not afford one yet
Milagros
died hating Olga because Olga
made five dollars more on the same job
Olga
died hating Manuel because Manuel
had hit the numbers more times
than she had hit the numbers
Manuel
died hating all of them
Juan
Miguel
Milagros
and Olga
because they all spoke broken english
more fluently than he did

And now they are together
in the main lobby of the void
Addicted to silence
Off limits to the wind
Confine to worm supremacy
in long island cemetery
This is the groovy hereafter
the protestant collection box
was talking so loud and proud about

Here lies Juan
Here lies Miguel
Here lies Milagros
Here lies Olga
Here lies Manuel
who died yesterday today
and will die again tomorrow
Always broke
Always owing
Never knowing
that they are beautiful people

Never knowing
the geography of their complexion

PUERTO RICO IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE
PUERTORRIQUENOS ARE A BEAUTIFUL RACE

If only they
had turned off the television
and tune into their own imaginations
If only they
had used the white supremacy bibles
for toilet paper purpose
and make their latino souls
the only religion of their race
If only they
had return to the definition of the sun
after the first mental snowstorm
on the summer of their senses
If only they
had kept their eyes open
at the funeral of their fellow employees
who came to this country to make a fortune
and were buried without underwears

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
will right now be doing their own thing
where beautiful people sing
and dance and work together
where the wind is a stranger
to miserable weather conditions
where you do not need a dictionary
to communicate with your people
Aqui Se Habla Espanol all the time
Aqui you salute your flag first
Aqui there are no dial soap commercials
Aqui everybody smells good
Aqui tv dinners do not have a future
Aqui the men and women admire desire
and never get tired of each other
Aqui Que Paso Power is what’s happening
Aqui to be called negrito
means to be called LOVE

holy crap dream

Kellyanne, Robin H, Josh Scannell and I had decided, on our last day of high school, that we were sick of a particular class and instead of having it we'd bring some guns and hold up the teacher so we could just goof off instead. This we did; my gun even had a silencer. It was kind of fun, in the dream, but also strange, the teacher (it may have been my 8th-grade English teacher Mrs. Kajder) was so quiet and clearly confused and scared. Anyhow as I was leaving the room at the end of the period arms reached out and grabbed me from behind: a cop. I no longer had my gun so, perfectly aware of my guilt, I started playing innocent, acting like I didn't know what was going on. The officer didn't say anything, just marched me to an empty hallway, where Robin and Kellyanne already were, in long flowy dresses. Josh had apparently gotten away. I lay down on a bench (Robin and Kellyanne were dancing) and was depressed and kind of disbelief that I had done something so stupid. It was scary, I was sure that I'd go to jail and never get to college or amount to anything.

After a while waiting on that bench, someone came and brought the three of us to an auditorium, where a collection of police officers in plain clothes were getting ready to talk about how to solve our case. Lincoln was also there, and motioned to me to sit next to him. But he was in a three-seat section of the room, and the seat next to him was taken and in front of the other one stood a woman talking to the people in the row ahead. I went and squeezed into that other one and there was some awkwardness about how she was supposed to sit, but she ended up going elsewhere. The lights dimmed and a cartoon was put on, a Looney Toon, that I had seen before, about what to do with bad children, punish or give a second chance? On the way home with Mom and Dad (Lincoln had to stay at school) I was very upset, especially because Mom and Dad were saying that now I'd never get into the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins because Aunt Katie had just gotten in and now, with this whole gun thing, I could never measure up to her as an applicant.

I was at home alone with Jack, waiting for news about the investigation. We had a chair, one of our real-life kitchen chairs, fitted with a rocket pack. I decided to try it out and started flying little sorties around our neighborhood and back. I looked longingly at maps with Jack, talking about where would be the best place to go in the chair to get away from all the mess I'd started. Eventually I decided to take a slightly longer trip and began flying away towards DC. The flying, by the way, was really fun. I got pretty far, but realized at some point that I was going to run out of fuel, so I tried to race back home. No such luck, and I touched down, totally empty, next to Farragut West metro (although the setting actually looked more like Gallery Place did ten years ago). Having just flown away from home, I had nothing in my pockets, no way to get the rest of the way home, and no way to call. The streets were pretty empty and I didn't want to ask anyone for change. Finally I decided to suck it up and find some quarters to call home with. When Mom picked up and I explained the situation, she laughed and said of course she'd come pick me up. That's all I remember.

I didn't make a single iota of that up. Holy crap.

ratatouille

I can't believe it was still playing, but Mom and Jack and I went to see it yesterday evening at the Majestic and all three of us LOVED it. Brad Bird, who made "The Incredibles," too, basically proved to me with this one that A) he's a really good director and B) he knows how to make really cool credits. Or maybe the credits thing is just Pixar. I had read in a review a while ago that one of the great things about the movie was that it didn't shy away from the rats' being rats. They don't look like Mickey Mouse, they don't look like the bugs from "A Bug's Life," they look and move like rats. It fit and amplified perfectly the message of the film, which is that anyone can do anything with talent and perseverance, no matter what how daunting the obstacle. It sounds trite like that, but in the context of the movie it's quite wonderful. The food and kitchen themselves are also terrifically depicted and animated. It goes into my second tier of animated movies (below "The Lion King, "Beauty and the Beast" and "My Neighbor Totoro").