Month: September 2006

  • SATURDAY PHOTO

    It’s late in the day and I just don’t have the energy to do a serious
    photographer/photo thing, so instead I’ll post one of my own which is
    also one of my favorite things.  And since twoberry tagged me to
    list them here are nine more.

    Instructions: Name 10 of life’s simple pleasures that you like the most.

    1. Talking to my cat on a bright fall morning on my back porch.
    2. Thinking of ways to be unperturbed by It All.
    3. The smell of an autumn wood fire.
    4. Knowing Dylan is still out there in peak form making new music.
    5. Ben & Jerry’s Everything But The… ice cream.
    6. Reading thenarrator’s memories and dreams.
    7. Picket fences.
    8. Horses’ eyelashes.
    9. A good mattress.
    10. Anything about Peace.

    I’m making a decision not to tag someone else but you can write your own if you want to.

    Deep Thought:  “It’s interesting to think that my ancestors used to live in the trees,
    like apes, until finally they got the nerve to head out onto the
    plains, where some were probably hit by cars.”
    Today I am grateful for:   Plants
    Guess the Movie:  “I
    wouldn’t give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them,
    they didn’t have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and
    a little looking out for the other fella, too.”  Answer:  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939.  Winner:  twoberry.
    Mixed Feelings about Snap Judgments, Depending on the Frame

    by Garrison Keillor
    My sandy-haired, gap-toothed daughter likes to snap my picture on a
    cell phone as I’m eating my bran flakes in the morning and brooding
    over the front page of the Times, over which there is now more to brood
    than ever. She is 8, and she looks stunning in pictures – and I look
    stunned, as if someone had just clubbed me with a baseball bat.
    “Smile,” she says, and I try, but still I look like an ugly white
    person who is fixing to die.   (Rest of article here .)      

  • SUNDAY GOOD NEWS

    It
    seems like every time I do this Sunday piece, all I can find for good
    news is something in the medical/health area, and this week we did have
    the stunning news that Wal-Mart and Target are going to go mano-a-mano
    in reducing generic prescription costs to a price pretty much anyone
    but a homeless person can afford.  All going to show that they
    could have done this all along, but hey….. You gotta give it to
    Wal-Mart in terms of PR.  Somebody in that organization is Very
    Sharp.  (More here.) 
    And then there was the proposal by the Centers for Disease Control and
    Prevention in Atlanta to do routine HIV testing of Americans between 13
    and 64.  Another idea that could have been sprung years ago, but
    hey….. (More here.) 
    However, since the central characters are so photogenic and the cause
    is so pressing, my favorite good news was the handing over of a promise
    of $3 billion over 10 years by Richard Branson, head of Virgin Atlantic
    Airways, to the Clinton Global Initiative this past week in NYC to
    research solutions to global warming.  Okay, it could be kind of a
    Wal-Mart deal on the PR level – after all Lear Jets do contribute mega
    amounts of fossil fuels to our atmosphere.  But hey…..  And
    where was Al Gore in this photo?  Just when I thought he was the
    way out front leader in caring about the environment.  (He
    actually spoke at the conference as well.)  Makes you wonder how
    much farther along the path to safety for our grandchildren we might
    have been had the Supreme Court not elected GWB all those years
    ago.  (More here.)

    Deep Thought: 
    “The
    big, huge meteor headed toward the Earth. Could nothing stop it? 
    Maybe Bob could. He was suddenly on top of the meteor-through some kind
    of space warp or something. “Go, Bob, go!” yelled one of the
    generals.  “Give me that!” said the big-guy general as he took the
    microphone away. “Listen, Bob,” he said. “You’ve got to steer that
    meteor away from Earth.” “Yes, but how?” thought Bob. Then he got an
    idea. Right next to him there was a steering wheel sticking out of the
    meteor.”
    Today I am grateful for:  The idea of perspective
    Guess the Movie:   “Everybody
    wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there,
    waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a
    soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade.
    Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that’s who he really took his
    orders from anyway.”  Answer:  Apocalypse Now, 1979.  Winner:  Eliminate_the_Impossible.
    Groups Denounce Deal on Detainee Rights
    by Jim Lobe
    WASHINGTON
    - Human and civil rights groups have broadly denounced a compromise
    deal on the application of the Geneva Conventions to detainees in the
    “global war on terror” worked out between the White House and a group
    of rebellious Republican senators whose efforts have been backed until
    now by their Democratic colleagues.   (Rest of article here).

  • MONDAY READING

    Recently, a dear person gave me a subscription to a magazine called The Sun,
    published in North Carolina, and full of strikingly thoughtful and
    literate articles on many topics.  I’m delighted, needless to say,
    to have a new source for mental refreshment, but I found myself most
    amazed by a section of little pieces sent in by readers called “Readers
    Write.” Here is one of those:

    I grew up along Chicago’s “North coast,” where all the
    blocks end at public beaches on the shore of Lake Michigan.  In
    warm weather my friends and I would spend the entire day on the beach,
    swimming and listening to transistor radios.  In winter I would
    wander along the broken sea walls and rocks that littered the
    shoreline.  Though my mother, my sister, and I lived in a shabby
    old apartment with peeling radiators and scuffed wooden floors, we had
    broad windows to let in lake breezes, and when it got too hot at night,
    my sister and I would run down to the beach barefoot in our nightgowns
    to take a dip before bed.

    After graduating from high school I left home and ended up in
    California, where I rented a cheap place near Venice Beach.  My
    mom moved from our old apartment after gentrification drove up the
    rent.  When I came back to the city a decade later, she was in a
    surburban nursing home.  I rarely returned to the old neighborhood.

    After our mother died, my sister and I poured her ashes into the
    lake.  Mom had spent every summer of our childhood sitting by the
    water on a cloth fold-up chair, wearing her Jackie O. sunglasses and
    reading a thick novel.  She padded into the water only when her
    deep brown skin got too hot.

    Now my sister and I live seventy miles apart, but we meet on the shore
    of Lake Michigan every year to remember Mom.  One year we walked
    past our old apartment and saw a FOR RENT sign.  We rang the bell,
    and a young man answered and offered to show us the empty
    apartment.  We didn’t tell him that we’d grown up in those
    rooms.  He thought we were apartment hunting.

    In my old bedroom, the wood floor was discolored where I’d spilled a
    bottle of Burgundy as a teenager.  The bathroom sink was still
    cracked where I dropped my cassette player in it.  The stain and
    the crack were the only evidence that our family had ever lived there.

    Dana DesJardins
    Skokie, Illinois

    Deep Thought:  “Sometimes
    I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you
    don’t know what your rights are, or who the person is you’re talking
    to. Then, on the way out, slam the door.”
    Today I am grateful for:  Permission to be here
    Guess the Movie:  “What
    would you do if some miracle happened and we could walk out of here
    tomorrow morning and start all over again clean? No record and nobody
    after us, huh?”  Answer:  Bonnie and Clyde,  1967.  Winner:  thenarrator.

    World Marches to Save Darfur
    With demonstrations in 40 countries yesterday, pressure is mounting on
    Sudan to allow in peacekeepers and end a conflict in which 300,000
    people have died
    by Steve Bloomfield  (Rest of article here.)

  • SUNDAY GOOD NEWS

    The good news is the FDA is willing to bite the bullet and tell us all
    to Just Say No to All Fresh Spinach (including cooked).   As
    of this morning, the hit list had risen to 102 in 19 states with one
    death.   The assassin, E. coli, is a little organism that can
    cause diarrhea, rectal bleeding, and kidney failure if it doesn’t kill
    you.  We regularly get alerts here in Portland, Oregon in the
    summer about swimming in various streams or rivers when there’s been a
    sewage mishap.  Apparently, the spinach giant Natural Selection
    Foods in California is where the trouble originated and they ship even
    into Canada and Mexico.  (Their brands include Natural Selection
    Foods, Pride of San Juan, Earthbound Farm, Bellissima, Dole, Rave
    Spinach, Emeril, Sysco, O Organic, Fresh Point, River Ranch, Superior,
    Nature’s Basket, Pro-Mark, Compliments, Trader Joe’s, Ready Pac, Jansal
    Valley, Cheney Brothers, Coastline, D’Arrigo Brothers, Green Harvest,
    Mann, Mills Family Farm, Premium Fresh, Snoboy, The Farmer’s Market,
    Tanimura & Antle, President’s Choice, Cross Valley and Riverside
    Farms.)      Word is still out about whether any other companies are
    involved.  Whew, I can imagine the owner(s) of NSF are freaking
    their freaking freak about now.  Years ago, when I was on my
    youthful “vision quest” and living au naturel on the tiny island of
    Formentera off Spain with only an outhouse for plumbing and a cistern
    well for water, I contracted E. coli, and it just about decimated
    me.  I lost so much weight from dehydration that people I hadn’t
    seen in months barely recognized me.  I was lucky it was caught in
    time and it took me months to put the weight back on.  The bad
    news is I’m going to miss spinach, though I’m guessing we’ll be allowed
    to eat it again before Xmas.  It’s one of those foods you hold as
    a cherished symbol of parental abuse as a child and come to love in
    your aging wisdom.   In the meantime, what dark leafy green
    vegetables shall we trust instead?  Kale?  Yuck.

    Deep Thought: 
    “If you’re a circus clown, and you have a dog that you use in your act,
    I don’t think it’s a good idea to also dress the dog up like a clown,
    because people see that and they think, “Forgive me, but that’s just
    too much.”
    Today I am grateful for:  John McCain et all finally stepping really up
    Guess the Movie:  “Well,
    boys, I reckon this is it – nuclear combat toe to toe with the
    Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain’t much of a hand at makin’ speeches,
    but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin’
    on back there. And I got a fair idea the kinda personal emotions that
    some of you fellas may be thinkin’. Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be
    human bein’s if you didn’t have some pretty strong personal feelin’s
    about nuclear combat. I want you to remember one thing, the folks back
    home is a-countin’ on you and by golly, we ain’t about to let ‘em down.
    I tell you something else, if this thing turns out to be half as
    important as I figure it just might be, I’d say that you’re all in line
    for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing’s
    over with. That goes for ever’ last one of you regardless of your race,
    color or your creed. Now let’s get this thing on the hump – we got some
    flyin’ to do.”   Answer:  Dr. Strangelove, 1964.  Winner:  thenarrator. 
    The Content of Our Character

    by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith
    In a significant rebuff to President Bush and his security-driven
    strategy for Republican victory in November, the Senate Armed Services
    Committee on Thursday rejected the President’s military detainee bill
    and passed a radically different alternative. At stake in this standoff
    between the President and the Senate are legal and moral issues central
    to the Constitution and the character of the American people: the right
    to a fair trial, the use of torture, the accountability of high
    government officials for war crimes. It also tests the powers of
    Congress and the Supreme Court to rein in an errant executive. 
    (Rest of article here.)

  • FRIDAY FIVE

    Appetizer – What was the very last song you listened to?
    Just finished watching the film Heart of Gold, a concert by Neil Young
    after his recovery from a brain aneurysm in August 2005 in
    Nashville.  Beautiful collection of sweet, reflective songs. 
    Here’s the first verse of Heart of Gold:

    I want to live,


    I want to give


    I’ve been a miner for a heart of gold.


    It’s these expressions I never give


    That keep me searching for a heart of gold


    And I’m getting old.


    Keeps me searching for a heart of gold


    And I’m getting old.

    Soup – What is one company/store/corporation you would recommend that people stay away from?

    Well, Walmart, hello.  Of course, I’d still go in there if I was
    desperate.  But in a big city, how desperate do you have to be to
    depend on that beast?

    Salad – On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how much do you enjoy having your photo taken?

    Oh mercy, I just had it snapped today at lunch with a friend. 
    Ever since I had a few back molars excavated some years ago I’ve had
    the hardest time big-grinning.  I even practice with my digicam on
    timer and I can’t seem to get back there.  But I’ll keep trying.

    Main Course – Besides a bookmark, what is something you’ve used to keep your place in a book?

    Multi-colored post-it notes are good because they don’t fall out.

    Dessert – Name a food that you like that most people don’t.

    That’s a stumper.  I eat a lot of avocados and salmon even though
    they’re expensive and high-calorie because of the nutrition. 
    Don’t hear most people mention them as frequent yummies.

    Deep Thought:  “Dad always thought laughter was the best
    medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.”
    Today I am grateful for:  Fine point pens

    Guess the Movie: “If you ever see it again, whatever it is, don’t
    catch it, just call me and we’ll call somebody and have them take it
    away.”  Answer:  E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, 1982.  Winner:  thenarrator.

    Remembering Ann Richards


    by Molly Ivins
    AUSTIN, Texas—

    She was so generous with her responses to other people.
    If you told Ann Richards something really funny, she wouldn’t just
    smile or laugh, she would stop and break up completely. She taught us
    all so much—she was a great campfire cook. Her wit was a constant
    delight. One night on the river on a canoe trip, while we all listened
    to the next rapid, which sounded like certain death, Ann drawled, “It
    sounds like every whore in El Paso just flushed her john.”  (Rest of article here.)

  • WEDNESDAY MOVIE



    World Trade Center


    On Monday, we will have reached the five-year mark since 9/11 and folks
    including me are finally feeling ready to take in films about that
    traumatizing day.  I for one had such PTSD when it first happened that I checked the computer
    news every hour on the hour for a full year while I was at work in fear
    of not hearing more such news in time.  And I live on the West
    Coast.  I can’t even imagine how New Yorkers dealt.  I heard
    Oliver Stone’s film was not going to concentrate on the endless planes
    hitting the buildings footage but on two Port Authority policemen who
    went in to help just in time to have the building collapse on
    them.  One fact I learned that struck me was that only 20 people
    were rescued alive after both buildings fell.  John McLoughlin and
    Will Jimeno were the 18th and 19th.  Another fact that fascinated
    me was that it was a lone ex-Marine who drove from somewhere out in
    America on his own, put on his uniform and walked in after dark with a
    flashlight who found them after the day’s regular searching was
    over.  And who should he run into but another lone Marine with a
    flashlight.  Gotta love those Marines on a mission.  So it’s
    really a story about two guys who made it out alive and even endured
    many surgeries afterwards, and their families and all those who helped
    them survive.  The acting was just fine – Nicholas Cage and
    Michael Pena as the two cops; Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhal as their
    wives – and I thought Stone did a good job of just telling a
    story.   I guess I’m ready to move on now to United 93, which
    came out yesterday on DVD and is sitting on my shelf waiting.

    Deep Thought: 
    ”If you ever crawl inside an old hollow log and go to sleep, and while
    you’re in there some guys come and seal up both ends and then put it on
    a truck and take it to another city, boy, I don’t know what to tell
    you.”
    Today I am grateful for:  Having a pulse
    Guess the Movie:  “I’m da
    boss, I’m da boss, I’m da boss, I’m da boss, I’m da boss… I’m da
    boss, I’m da boss, I’m da boss, I’m da boss, I’m da boss, I’m da boss.”  Answer:  Raging Bull, 1980.  Winner:  Eliminate_the_Impossible.
    The ‘Crocodile Saver’

    by David Helvarg
    Three months ago, I stepped on a sea urchin in Hawaii, and my foot
    still hurts some. That’s hardly comparable to the sadly ironic death of
    “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, killed by the barb of a stingray, one
    of the ocean’s more benign creatures, while snorkeling on the Great
    Barrier Reef. Still, it reflects a truth about our ocean planet: that
    almost every creature of the sea has some kind of built-in mechanism or
    tool with which to defend itself, be it camouflage, shell, spine,
    tooth, stinger, venom or toxin.  (Rest of article here.)

  • melanomaSUNDAY GOOD NEWS

    With
    two members of my immediate family having been stricken with cancer
    this past year (multiple myeloma and ovarian CA respectively), I’ve
    become a bit more alert to news of progress against this ruthless
    illness. Thursday, Dr. Steven Rosenberg at the National Cancer
    Institute published results in the September issue of Science of the
    first major success in fighting cancer with gene therapy. The
    particular cancer involved was melanoma but the hope is to extend the
    research to treat other cancers as well. I’m so not able to explain
    exactly how it works but the jist of it seems to be to take T cells
    (produced by the immune system to kill bacteria and foreign tissues)
    from the patient, manipulate them genetically so they can recognize and
    fight cancer cells better, and then return them to the patient. It’s a
    tiny start with a tiny group of patients, but it’s a first and maybe a
    huge ray of hope for the future.

    Deep Thought:
    “I don’t think I’m alone when I say I’d like to see more and more
    planets fall under the ruthless domination of our solar system.”
    Today I am grateful for: Paragraphs, or who knows how long we might go on.
    Guess the Movie:     “I
    hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel, I’m
    gonna send you over. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That
    means if you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in 20 years. I’ll be waiting
    for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you.”  Answer:  The Maltese Falcon, 1941.  Winner:  hypatia.
    Sierra Club et al. Take Global Warming to the Supreme Court  (Rest of article here.)