baby blanket for nikhil

gold

bridge, 2.23.08

cargo

slate

winter II (b)

winter III (b)

bridge(s), 2.19.08

quote of the day

"Our whole American way of life is a great war of ideas, and librarians are the arms dealers selling weapons to both sides."
-James Quinn

dreams, excerpt of the day, & other oddities

Nick and I were exchanging dreams over lunch this afternoon. By which I mean sleep dreams, not aspirations. Nick's apparently been spending his nights dreaming about politics. Clearly he's the intellectual amongst us. I, on the other hand, had a very vivid dream about John Francis last night. More specifically, John Francis and his gorgeous, blond, long-haired, girlfriend. The gorgeous girlfriend started kissing me in the middle of an over-crowded bar we happened to be drinking in. John Francis was pissed. Nick said, "Wait, Em, is this real or a dream?" I said it was a dream, duh. He said, "How is this different from your real life?" Having never made out with a gorgeous, long-haired blond in a crowded bar before, I wasn't sure how to take this. I kind of wish my real life were more like the one Nick seems to have invented for me.

This dirty little light switch just in from stepbrother Erik. Thanks, Erik, you're clearly a heathen after my own heart! And for the decidedly unsqueamish, the 'Scourged Jesus' fiberglass statue...

Someone in a biology class at the University of Michigan has been naughty lately.

Chiung-Yin posted this article the other day and as a bona fide library geek, I couldn't help but spread the word - library patrons given the option of dancing off their late fines.

The city of Obama, Japan, weighs in on our presidential election. No surprise as to who they're backing.

Have I mentioned how much I love my state and its governor? I still do. Spitzer and the Catholic Church are at loggerheads over the state's support of abortion rights.

Mark Bittman posted about the good vibrations of food the other day and it made me laugh aloud.

And here, the excerpt of the day, from an article in The Nation:

When asked if he thought the men at Guantánamo could receive a fair trial, Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes--the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department.

"[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time," recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, which had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

"I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process," Davis continued. "At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, 'Wait a minute, we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions.'

In an entirely different vein, I don't know much about Wisconsin. There is a woman  whom I had a huge crush on many years back now, and the little I know of Wisconsin pretty much comes from her. They seem to drink a lot there. And like dogs. And eat cheese. And apparently it tends to be quite cold there in the winter. Even now, years later, tidbits in the news about Wisconsin seem to jump out at me. Like the fact that their primary was this past Tuesday (Obama took it). And then there is this.

pharmacy

"Oriol Vall, who works with newborns at a hospital in Barcelona, says that the first human gesture is the embrace. After coming into the world, at the beginning of their days, babies wave their arms as if seeking someone.

Other doctors, who work with people who have already lived their lives, say that the aged, at the end of their days, die trying to raise their arms.

And that's it, that's all, no matter how hard we strive or how many words we pile on. Everything comes down to this: between two flutterings, with no more explanation, the voyage occurs."

-Eduardo Galeano, Voices of Time

sidewalk, revisited

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.