Monthly Archives: August 2005

Katrina

Posted on by

I have a dear and old friend who lives in New Orleans. He has lived in the French Quarter for the past few years. He loves New Orleans, and he has always sounded profoundly at home there. I have never had the fortune of visiting, but his stories about being there have always made the birthplace of Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet come alive in my mind.

And now — well, he phoned yesterday afternoon and said that he was all right, except for broken windows and some flooding. But things are different 24+ hours later in the city. As far as I can tell from the conflicting reports, the French Quarter has escaped the worst of the flooding (thus far), but there’s been a lot of looting and mayhem. I pray that he’s all right. I pray that he continues to be all right in the days ahead. With no way to contact him for now, all I can do is hope.

If anybody has any friends or loved ones in the city and environs of New Orleans, the rest of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or any of the other affected areas, my heart goes out to you.

If you can possibly donate anything to the relief efforts, please call the Red Cross at 1-800-HELP–NOW.

Approval from Jerry Falwell

Posted on by

Gosh. I feel so … honored. « Jerry Falwell now approves of me getting my master’s in elementary education », as long, of course, as I don’t ‘recruit’ the little buggers … whatever that means:

‘“I don’t think homosexuals should be granted a special minority status,” he told the paper. However, he said that gays, including teachers, should not be denied jobs solely because of their sexuality. “As long as a person obeys the law and doesn’t recruit a student to a certain lifestyle, they shouldn’t be prevented from teaching,” Falwell said. “Every American should be allowed to work wherever he or she wishes as long as they obey the law.” He has a caveat for that too, though. He said he is not going to hire gays for teaching positions at Liberty Christian Academy or Liberty University. “Our doctrinal belief is that homosexuality is wrong,” he said. “We also believe heterosexual promiscuity is wrong. Those have been standards since the beginning.”’
—365Gay.com

Well, okie dokie then. I need to look up the law that says ‘gay teachers can’t recruit students to a certain lifestyle,’ and then we’re good to go. I’m so relieved.

Finally Admitting What the Rest of Us Have Known for Three Years

Posted on by

« Oops! Our Bad. »:

‘The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad. The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say. “What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,” said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. “We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.” … But whatever the outcome on specific disputes, the document on which Iraq’s future is to be built will require laws to be compliant with Islam. Kurds and Shiites are expecting de facto long-term political privileges. And women’s rights will not be as firmly entrenched as Washington has tried to insist, U.S. officials and Iraq analysts say. “We set out to establish a democracy, but we’re slowly realizing we will have some form of Islamic republic,” said another U.S. official familiar with policymaking from the beginning, who like some others interviewed would speak candidly only on the condition of anonymity. “That process is being repeated all over.”’
—Washington Post

Sounds like the beginning of the end. All that’s left is figuring out how the Emperor can spin it into mission accomplished.

Birds of Summer

Posted on by

Saw a bird hopping around on the grass on my way to the bus stop Tuesday morning that I couldn’t identify (nothing new there, I still can’t identify most birds) — gray and brown tail feathers in alternating patterns, sort of robin-sized, and sporting a prominent bright red spot on the nape of its neck. I e-mailed Scott, who’s a birdwatcher, and he immediately tagged it as a yellow-shafted northern flicker — “common in these parts, but not in urban areas usually,” he said.

Several weekends back we were taking a walk with the dog behind Allen Elementary and a pair of low-flying bluish-black birds kept meticulously dive-bombing the grass. I was thinking that they might be purple martins, but Scott told me that those are rare — more likely a couple of swallows.

I’ve heard a lot of unusual bird song this summer, but actual sightings of unusual birds have been rare. Mostly the usual assortment of robins, starlings, and sparrows, with an occasional cardinal thrown in. I misidentified a cardinal sitting on a shrub branch as a tanager and got a chuckle from Scott one day a few weeks back when we were walking across campus.

Price of Tea

Posted on by

Recently the price of tea went up from $1.59 to $2.12 at my favorite pitstop, Cafe Ambrosia. Seeing as how the price hadn’t been hiked in 2 years, they were entitled to charge a little more. Nonetheless, there’s a subtle psychological barrier that makes it unappealing to buy a pint glass of tea for over two bucks, a barrier that wasn’t present when the same product cost a buck and change. It’s only a 53 cent difference. But that 53 cents will buy, for example, that day’s copy of the Ann Arbor News or Detroit Free Press (if I’m inclined to spend it on either, and yes, I recognize that I spend way too much spare change on tree-based news delivery sources). On the other hand, while tea still costs $1.86 at nearby Espresso Royale, and the taste of the tea is no different, the experience at Espresso Royale is not as appealing. The phrase “opportunity cost” springs to mind … and I realize that I spent way too much time immersed in econ my last term at SI. I’m just glad my caffeine habit is fairly bare-bones: I’ve never liked coffee, and thus have no compulsion to buy fancy cappuccinos or lattes.

Summer Already Winding Down

Posted on by

Looks like the undergrads are starting to stream back into town … a sure sign summer is coming to an end after the zenith (if you can term it that) of Art Fair. No tidal wave yet — I walked home from campus this evening and the neighborhoods around East University and Packard are still relatively quiet. But the center of campus was full of kids dragging cardboard boxes and shopping bags — I guess in preparation for the end of old leases and the start of new ones. School itself (at UM, anyway) starts September 6, exactly four weeks from today. It’s going to be strange not joining the flocks trooping off to class, but not strange in an unpleasant way.