odds & ends VIII

I know I'm being obtuse, but it continues to rile me that the Environmental Protection Agency, at least in its current incarnation, seems intent on allowing the destruction of as much of the environment as possible before next January. This doublespeak grates on the nerves, to put it mildly. Can't these people just rename themselves the Corporate Protection Agency or the Environmental Destruction Agency and be done with it? Why is honesty such a bad, bad thing? I'm keeping my fingers crossed that, come this time next year, the EPA nomenclature will no longer be a lie.

Speaking of incarnations, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry upon learning that my heroes Harold & Kumar, of White Castle fame, will be making their great escape from Guantanamo Bay this April. This article in today's Times, on the shifting place that Guantanamo holds in popular culture and the world's imagination, was fascinating. It got me thinking about the little I know of my parents' experience being stationed at the Guantanamo naval base back in the early 1970s. It mostly consists of mangoes, officers' dances, flying cockroaches, and gin and tonics, honestly, though that could be mostly my own imagination at play. Then there was the Guantanamo made famous back in 1992 by Tom Cruise and Jack "You Can't Handle The Truth" Nicholson in A Few Good Men. And somehow we've moved all the way through injustice and torture and horror, all the way back around to (hopefully) satirical humor. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this, despite my undying devotion to good old Kumar and Harold.

I was pleased to see, though, that Samantha Power, renowned author of A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide and founder of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, is coming out swinging for Obama this election cycle.

And last, my favorite bookstore in the whole wide world was featured this month in BookSense. Should you ever find yourself on beautiful Fidalgo Island, stop by the Watermark Book Company and give Patti a big hug for me.