I’m a little nervous about stormy weather here in Middle Tennessee, because this is, of course, tornado country. But nonetheless, the past 24 hours of weather have been kind of beautiful, spring rain without depressingly torrential downpours, followed by periods of clouds interspersed with clear sky. Tonight was particularly wonderful, with a little rain followed…
Category: Meaningful Labor
East Bound and Down
One week from tonight, we will have begun our journey out of California … for the third, and hopefully last, time. We’ll be on our way to Nashville, Tennessee, to take up a new, and hopefully less stressful way of life. Frank starts a new job with Vanderbilt University on 15 Dec. I will start…
Wednesday
This pic pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the weather this week. It actually got hotter after I took this picture; it was 114 degrees later in the afternoon. God, living in the valley is hell.
Rarin' to Go
Gavin Newsom, the man who presided over our first civil union ceremony when he was still a San Francisco supervisor, wants to get a jump on gay marriages «the evening of 16 June», instead of waiting for the next morning: ‘San Francisco officials have asked the state for permission to begin marrying same-sex couples a…
'Baptized in Blood'
I’m not sure why I’ve been leaning towards supporting John Edwards this primary season. Perhaps its his populism and anti-corporatism (although I’m realistic about his chances to actually do anything about it once in office). Or perhaps it’s because it’s refreshing to hear reasonable, quiet, calm, realistic talk during times of international crisis (as opposed…
Visceral
A very moving, and very sad, slideshow of the «Benazir Bhutto assassination» has been posted at the New York Times. A horrible end to a horrible year. The «complete collection of photos» is available for viewing (and purchase) at Getty Images. Meanwhile, her 19-year-old son, «Bilawal» is purportedly named her successor. What a huge burden…
The Beast's 50 Most Loathsome
The only end-of-the-year list I ever pay any attention to (and agree completely with) is the list of the 50 most loathsome people produced by «Buffalo Beast», which features The Boy Emperor firmly in spot el numero uno, up from el numero tres in 2005 and 2006: ‘Is it a civil rights milestone to have…
36 Hours
36 hours from now, my cholocystectomy should be finished and I should be floating on a cloud of anesthetic and pain killer. Can’t happen soon enough for me. There’s a 10-mm stone in there and I’ve been on a fat-free diet for two months. I’ll keep most of the diet, but hopefully lose all the…
Farewell, Sweet Molly
Since I wasn’t posting during the last few months, I missed noting the saddest day of the year, which made me weep. Molly Ivins is no longer with us. The Nation collected a beautiful «salute to Molly Ivins»: ‘The country was founded by dissenters, and if as a doubter of divine authority Molly inherits the…
It's Hell Being Offline
Posting and pictures have been temporarily disrupted because internet service hasn’t started at the new house. I’ll have things to post, especially pictures, hopefully later today as our service provider gets its act together. Things are good, but we’re very tired and sore. We are in Brentwood, the dog has his backyard, the stuff arrived…
Heading West — Day Five
« Photos from Day Five » Last Long Leg Written @ 08:35 MST | Saturday 15-Jul-06 | Salt Lake City, UT This morning after the usual breakfast and loading of the car and checking out and making the dog mad that we’re back in the car for another long day, we went to the Beehive…
Heading West — Day Four
« Photos from Day Four » Wyoming is Almost Done Written @ 12:00 MST | Friday 14-Jul-06 | Little America, WY Last night, we went through downtown Cheyenne to get some pizza. Downtown itself is kinda cute, but a few blocks east is rather scruffy. The pizza was good though, and I also found a…
Heading West — Day Three
« Photos from Day Three » Rainy Again Written @ 11:42 CST | Thursday 13-Jul-06 | Gothenberg, NE We hit a small spot of rain, but it’s nothing like day one. We’re 36 miles from North Platte, NE, which will be our first stop of the day. Jeepy needs gas and beagle needs walkies. I’ve…
Heading West — Day Two
« Photos from Day Two » Field of Opportunity Written @ 12:44 CST | Wednesday 12-Jul-06 | West Des Moines, IA After getting up at 08:00 and having a little breakfast and loading the car, we left Davenport this morning at 09:55 and we’re now just west of Des Moines, which we didn’t really see…
Where's My Reference Librarian?
Frank usually handles these things and does a far, far better job of it. I’m pretty stream-of-consciousness on my trip writing, while he does the reference librarian thing and provides all the great writing and details that really make the blog great. But I’ll give it a slight shot, and he should feel free to…
Heading West — Day One
« Photos from Day One » The Very Rough Last Night in A2 Written @ 13:30 EST | Tuesday, 11-Jul-06 | Ann Arbor, MI The beagle gave me a rough night. After the farewell party, I went and gassed up the Jeep and then back to Ann’s to spend the night. I was informed he…
On Restless Beagles and Night-Before-Road-Trip Insomnia
Okay, so I thought the next post would be from Davenport, IA, but, thanks to one of the most wonderful women in the world, I have a nicer place to sleep than my empty townhouse, as well as a working internet connection, so what they hey. I also have insomnia; it’s 1:30 a.m., my last…
Countdown Begins
No, not of the shuttle Discovery, of my final week in Ann Arbor. It now seems like an amazingly fast three years. I’ve so many wonderful friends and accomplished some incredible (for me) things and I don’t regret our time here at all. But new jobs, houses and vistas await. Time to get on to…
Oops.
Has it really been almost two months since we posted anything? Yeegads. Apologies. Let’s see. In the past two months, I’ve survived a narrow brush with winter, a hellish brush with three intense grad school courses orginally designed to be taken over four months crammed down into one, hideously exhausting but fun days in the…
Lost in 2005
There were some remarkable people who left us in 2005: ‘When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that loses.’ —Shirley Chisholm, who died 1-Jan-05 ‘“We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the…
Lost in '05: Hunter S. Thompson
The year that was: « Goodbye Hunter S. Thompson »: ‘‘Politics is the art of controlling your environment.’ That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that ‘it doesn’t matter who’s President’ has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die…
Happy Holidays!
Reg Dwight Gets Hitched
High-profile celebrity civil commitment ceremony: check. Quaint British setting (the same location as Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles’ ceremony in April): check. Crowds of paparazzi: check. Almost as many everyday well-wishers: check. Only, the couple is Elton John and David Furnish, and for some reason, in the UK (and in Canada, and in a number…
Asi es Nuevo Mexico
Stuff like « this » makes me wonder if my desire to return to my home state is really all that wise of an idea: ‘An essay contest at a New Mexico high school asks students to explain why preserving marriage between men and women is vital society and why unborn children merit respect and protection. The…
Courage and Conviction vs. Cowardice and Coercion
“Rabbi Yoffie! You’re my new hero!” We need more courageous heroes like « Rabbi Eric Yoffie » to speak more truth to power: ‘The leader of the largest branch of American Judaism blasted conservative religious activists in a speech Saturday, calling them “zealots” who claim a “monopoly on God” while promoting anti-gay policies akin to Adolf Hitler’s….
Paradox? Or Hypocrisy?
“Jesus, save us from your followers!” I’ve been meaning to blog this for weeks, to read it into the record, so to speak. But what with grad school hell, I just haven’t had time. I’ve long thought that we need to take Jesus back from his followers. And Bill McKibben wrote up « some persuasive arguments »…
Mike Cox: Republican Hypocrite
Before I forget, I didn’t fail to notice that the « Fascist Michigan attorney general who is trying to strip faithful Michigan couples of all their health insurance is himself an adulterer »: ‘Attorney General Mike Cox announced Wednesday he had an extramarital affair and accused the state’s most famous attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, of threatening to expose…
Just Married
Thank you, Canada! And thank you Neil Hodgins and all our wonderful friends! Pics are up: « The Wedding » « The Reception »
Just Married
Thank you, Canada! And thank you Neil Hodgins and all our wonderful friends! Pics are up: « The Wedding » « The Reception »
Cold Weather
Cold is finally here. Temps have been frigid the past several days, with highs not hitting 50 and lows easily dipping down near freezing. The past couple of days have even necessitated gloves and a parka. A few people are still walking around in shorts but they are few and far between. The mass grumbling…
Wrong Again
It’s been back up in the mid-80s with high dewpoints for the past several days, just proving once again that trying to predict weather in Michigan is (especially if you’re a rank amateur, like me) a fool’s errand.
Autumn Is Here
Today did, in all seriousness, feel for the first time like autumn. It didn’t really get much above 60 degrees all day (it’s supposed to dip down to 36 tonight), and there was that unmistakable bite in the air that hasn’t been around for at least five months, or whenever the freak day or two…
Overheard Outside the School of Social Work
“It’s just like wintertime out here today!” “I know, isn’t it horrible?” And so the next five or six months of kvetching begins …..
Now Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Benefits!
Dear Fascist Michigan Voters-For-Prop-2: « Screw. You. »: ‘A Michigan judge ruled on Tuesday that a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage does not prevent the state from offering health insurance benefits to the same-sex partners of state workers. Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk said health care benefits are benefits of employment, not marriage. Twenty-two same-sex couples…
Autumn?
Yesterday actually felt like the first hints of autumn to me — it was very hot, like it’s been for the most part for at least the past three weeks here in Ann Arbor, but it also was somewhat windy, the heat was accompanied by less humidity than it has been, and there was a…
City Beneath the Sea
I’m melancholy tonight, listening to « Harry Connick Jr.‘s » Way Down Yonder in New Orleans, Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, Basin Street Blues and, especially, City Beneath the Sea, his love song to New Orleans, which is one of a handful of my favorite cities on the planet. Tears my heart…
Approval from Jerry Falwell
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,…
We Are All Londoners
Just as on 11-Marzo, we were all Madrileños and on 11-September we were all New Yorkers, as of 7-July we are all « Londoners ». ‘Once the shock had settled, I started to feel immense pride that the LAS, the other emergency services, the hospitals, and all the other support groups and organisations were all doing such…
The Intelligently Designed Four
So. « Ayn Clouter writes movie script treatments ». Who knew? ‘What is really needed to refresh the medium is to bring in, not “politically correct” references to current society, but real down-and-dirty politics filled with Red State values. Hence this treatment for a much better remake of the original material, meant to be financed by a…
Next Up: They Dig Up the Body and Re-Enact the Resurrection
Undaunted by the « autopsy », Terri ‘Schiavo’s brain damage “was irreversible … no amount of treatment or rehabilitation would have reversed” it, said Jon R. Thogmartin, the pathologist in Florida’s sixth judicial district who performed the autopsy and announced his findings at a news conference in Largo, Fla. Still unknown is what caused Schiavo, 41, to…
On Memorial Day
On Memorial Day, I always think back to 1989, when as a newspaper reporter, I was privileged to meet a great group of heroes: Memory Of WWII Still Vivid For Vets (Part I of the Wake Island Story) ‘Considering the power accumulated for the invastion of Wake Island and the meager forces of the defenders,…
Holding Down the Home Front
Wives Cope With Husband’s Memories (Part II of the Wake Island Story) By Steve Pollock The Duncan (OK) Banner Sunday, August 13, 1989 MARLOW – It all came back to them this weekend – fists lashing out during nightmares, the traumatic memories, the attempts to catch up on lost time. The wives of 10 Wake…
Remembering Kent State
Author Philip Caputo had an interesting interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that I caught the other day at lunch. And the NPR website has « an interesting section featuring Caputo’s writing on the Kent State shootings » on the 35th anniversary: ‘The hill slopes down in a sweep of green to a green field. That must…
V-E Day Video
Here on the 60th anniversary of VE Day, I’m watching two films, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willens and the Criterion version of the French film Nacht und Nebel. The first is the face that the Germans wanted to present to the world, the second is of the reality. Both are quite shattering, especially Nacht und…
Church Purge Confirmed
And now there’s confirmation in the mainstream press about a « North Carolina church’s purge of Democrats »: ‘Some in Pastor Chan Chandler’s flock wish he had a little less zeal for the GOP. Members of the small East Waynesville Baptist Church say Chandler led an effort to kick out congregants who didn’t support … Bush. Nine…
Democrats Purged From North Carolina Church
« WLOS », an ABC affiliate in western North Carolina, is reporting interesting news: ‘Religion and Politics Clash: Religion and politics clash over a local church’s declaration that Democrats are not welcome. East Waynesville Baptist asked nine members to leave. Now 40 more have left the church in protest. Former members say Pastor Chan Chandler gave them…
Soulforce for Good
Every once in a while, there’s a ray of sunshiney hope that pierces the gathering gloom that is life in the Christo-Fascist Empire. This time, it’s « Soulforce’s Mel White and 500 others protesting at the gates of the citadel of Fascist FunDumbMentalism »: ‘At least 500 people braved spitting snow showers and cutting wind Sunday outside…
Heil Benedict!
So, a few days after the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Konzentrationslagers Ravensbrueck and Buchenwald, and on the anniversary of Waco and Oklahoma City, 117 men in red dresses have decided to elect as Pope a former member of the Hitler Jugend who also helped man Volksturm anti-aircraft batteries at the end of World…
Deathbed Dollars
While we’re all a bit tired of poor Terri Schiavo (let her rest in peace), I say we keep screaming about this one and hang it squarely on the Fascist FunDumbMentalists’ heads … like a flaming rubber tire. They are, after all, not shy about using a vegetable for their political purposes, as we’ll see…
Duly Noted
According to World Health Organization figures, on the same day that Terri Schiavo died and so-called Christians mourned her so-called ‘murder,’ 6,000 other human beings died from vaccine-preventable diseases including diphtheria, measles, polio, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, Hib and yellow fever, because they and the countries they live in are too poor to afford the…