Completed Category: Documentary Short

 It's my first completed Shorts category this year, and quite the opposite of last year when I was thwarted and nobody would let me complete all of the nominees before the ceremony and it was mainly this category's fault because they weren't showing at a theatre in Atlanta (although the Animated and Live Action were) and one didn't become available online to rent/stream until last June!  How do I measure a year?  In Oscar nominees watched, that's how! But why dredge up the past? 

Anyway, so the powers that be decided to let me see all the Doc Shorts this year, thank you very much, and this I have now done. 

THE ABCs OF BOOK BANNING:  Hot topics do well at the Docs and at the Shorts and at the Doc Shorts, so this already starts out ahead. Is it well done? Yes. Are the featured people interesting? Yes. Does it invite me to look at this topic in a new way, or offer some fresh perspective?  Honestly not really. This series of reactions and analysis from a bunch of people, mostly young, about banned, challenged, and restricted books is not really breaking any new ground. Does it draw someone in who might not be interested in the topic at first? It does all right. People like charming little kids, right?  (They're not all that little.)  The first group of girls who started us off with their self-assured platitudes were a wee bit obnoxious, but some who get interviewed later are rad. The blond boy with the kind of mullet-look is by far my favorite.  "I just like to know stuff."  Yes. My man. Look for him. He's great. 

THE BARBER OF LITTLE ROCK:  Community development is my jam!  Haha kidding, it's just my job five days a week, as they say. But I fully loved Arlo Washington, his work, his team, the barber college, the way they drove around to show and point out the discrepancies between the predominantly white and predominantly Black communities on either side of a freeway, and the clear, cool-headed examination of the persistent racial wealth gap.  This absolutely featured interesting people, new perspective, and a way of drawing you in. I don't really fault it but it could have been a teeny tiny bit clearer on chronology but not in a way that mattered. Basically, good! Totally OK if it wins. 

ISLAND IN BETWEEN: I liked this one probably more than some people because I like to contemplate China and China-adjacent things and I am always fascinated by Taiwan, both so China and so not right now. This look at the Taiwan island that is just off the coast rightupthisclose to mainland China just really worked for me. But it might float in the middle of the pack here. 

THE LAST REPAIR SHOP: This one, though!  What a beautiful little slice of life, really well done, intimate (yet global in reach), a brilliant interweaving of stories, a profound look at how we really can make a difference.  I am one million percent #TeamTheLastRepairShop.  I always say any film that makes me feel positive feelings about humanity did a damn good job! In this case, the group of co-workers at a musical instrument repair shop and several kids in the Los Angeles Unified School District who have discovered how important playing a musical instrument is to them  tell their close-up stories, and the filmmaker weaves a pitch perfect macro out of the micro. I loved it! 

NAI NAI & WAI PO: Meh. This was kind of one note. Definitely was telling you it was more clever than it was. The premise of a guy documenting his two living grandmothers, who live together, was all right but the execution was...meh. Sometimes weird little ones like this resonate with people though, eye-rollingly to me. 

Order I want them to win: 
The Last Repair Shop
The Barber of Little Rock
Island In Between
The ABCs of Book Banning
Nai Nai & Wai Po

Order I think they will win: 
Like I said, probably The ABCs of Book Banning has the strong upper hand here
The Barber of Little Rock  has a chance
I hope The Last Repair Shop has more of a chance; maybe the L.A. connection will help? 
Nai Nai & Wai Po, ugh
Island In Between - just not sure how much this will wow people

Did you see the Documentary Shorts? 
What do you think? 

J'accuse!

Among the many things I read in the Chicago Tribune today (that's the actual paper edition, mind you, but I will obligingly post a link for you online masses to the digital version, sigh) was an editorial headlined "What does the West do now?" I'm not sharing it for its stark either/or characterization of what it calls the "militant Islamist assaults on liberal Western lands and their freedoms" but rather for one of the points it makes in its list of suggestions of what, in fact, "the West" can do now.

One of its bullet points is that "More Westerners would be open to calls for tolerance of Muslim immigrants if more leaders within Islam would publicly, and vigorously, denounce jihadist sentiments that attract some Muslims to religious extremism."

Apart from the troubling phrase "Muslim immigrants" (immigrants go from nation to nation; the religion isn't really a factor; the phrase dangerously implies there aren't native-born Muslims in these so-called liberal Western countries, etc.), I would love to see more of a discussion of this suggestion.

Particularly, I think it's a good idea to -- and I wish more people would -- call for leaders to "publicly, and vigorously, denounce" jihadist sentiments. In other words, your half-assed calls for peace ain't cuttin' it, might be another way of putting it.

But lest you think I am applying this only to Islam vs. its extremists, which I think misses large parts of the problem, I wonder if we shouldn't call for more leaders in other areas to publicly, and vigorously, denounce the psychos who act in their name.

Should evangelical Christians be urged to publicly, and vigorously, denounce the Ku Klux Klan? The Westboro Baptist Church?  The Quiverfull movement?

Should Mormon leaders publicly, and vigorously, denounce polygamy? I'm forever annoyed by how non-Mormons call the shots in associating current Mormons with this abandoned practice. One can only assume that the church leaders tacitly support the idea of bringing it back someday when they refuse to publicly, and vigorously, denounce it.

Will any of our political leaders ever publicly, and vigorously, denounce the warmongers and torturemongers in their ranks? Or the awful shenanigans in countries that have oil/other resources we want? What if people in the military could have publicly and vigorously denounced the horrible Iraq war choices without being called unpatriotic, or worse?  What if Edward Snowden had been able to publicly and vigorously denounce unchecked unfounded surveillance without then having to flee as a refugee?

Or will everyone just keep playing the Oh-my-gosh-I-wouldn't-want-to-offend-anybody game?

Many of us from Arizona have to spend more time than we'd like publicly and vigorously denouncing the psychos who get themselves elected with alarming frequency there. Publicly and vigorously denouncing people who claim to speak for you isn't so bad. It can be fun. Try it sometime!

Super Duper Losers a stream-of-consciousness pigskin rant

I used to not care for (American) football. I don't think it was for the same reasons that most people dislike watching the sport, which I generally hear  to be along the lines of it's "boring" (too much down time, play stoppage, etc.) or "confusing" (lots of rules and penalties and whatnot), or possibly that it's a giant waste of money with which some people are far too obsessed. That last may be true, but none of these were the reasons I didn't watch it for years. Instead, I just thought it was sexist--the one sport (in my world, having grown up in the U.S. as I did) that not only was blatantly male and specifically excluded women from playing (except for the occasional newsmaking teenage girl with chutzpah and mad skillz who makes her school team and grabs headlines for a few days, but I'm talking systemically excludes women) but also built up an entire substitute "sport" (cheerleading) for the girls, which in turn launched its own thousand debates about what's really a sport and what gets short shrift and the whole thing was annoying to me because at the time I was only looking at the idea of equal opportunity as a social thing. But in terms of sports, it's just a physical thing. You see, the male and female bodies are different. (I feel more and more strongly about *this* every time the gender debate escalates to a place where sex differences are entirely thrown out the window.) I don't have a problem with those bodies doing different things that cater to different strengths, namely, male upper body strength and female hips/thighs/different-center-of-gravity-and-flexibility strength. For example: ballet. It is incredible, and the skills and talents involved in the male-female lifts and other ballet feats totally involve different body types, all making one beautiful ballet dance. In that light, I totally reconsidered and now accept football as a sport designed to capitalize on the bulky male body's peak performance and I don't really care anymore that it exists (although I OBVIOUSLY agree that women and women's sports should be given equal access, opportunity, funding, etc.)  What's weird is that I, who grew up doing gymnastics, was unable to make sense of this back then, seeing as gymnastics is entirely constructed around the different strengths of the different male and female body types. But, like I said, the whole social aspects took precedence (as they SO often do with football) in the debate and so I didn't care for it. NOT to mention the fact that I went to a fabulous, storied football school (USC) during its worst couple of football seasons in recent memory, so my best chance at fandom glory was also shot. (I re-engaged with my Trojan football love, too, post-late-'90s, after graduation. I do enjoy the college football, I do.)

Anyway, so I didn't use to watch much professional American football and on top of that Phoenix  didn't even have an NFL team in my early childhood and then we got the Cardinals and then they sucked and then I moved away and everyone in Phoenix had just kept always being Cowboys (mostly) or Broncos or 49ers fans (or possibly fans of the team from whatever Midwestern state they hailed from)  As a youngster I'd thought about maybe being a Broncos fan because I liked orange and blue...but nothing ever really came of that. So then I lived in L.A., which had its own NFL issues, and when I moved to Boston, while the Patriots were (are) undeniably great, I moved there just in time for the Red Sox to become awesome and lift the curse and win their World Series so all Boston sports excitement was all about that. Then I went to Korea. You see, no NFL football team ever took hold, really, mentally or emotionally for me, even as I stopped hating the whole inequality thing.

I might add that now I am in Chicago where I am so amused  by the Bears fans and their inability to comprehend how their team could possibly have a losing season when these fans are so clearly entitled to be given a winning season and the Chicago Tribune has about sixteen writers on staff dedicated to telling us all about that every day on the front page (not just of the sports section, I mean the front page front page) that I could never actually become a fan of the local team; it would ruin all my schadenfreude fun.

When I lived in New York, I thought about being a Jets fan, especially the one year I lived down the street from their practice place, but then again, I loathed Long Island. The last few years spending time with Brian I've idly paid attention to the Lions, those lovable losers, but I haven't really committed. Instead, I basically just circled back around to my hometown and decided I might as well like the Cardinals. Like, when they went to the Super Bowl? That was ridiculously awesome! Of course I rooted for them! And people I knew in New York who also knew me from Massachusetts-California or whatever were like, "Arizona? How does that fit in?" and I'm all like whatever people, I'm totally allowed to root for them (even though I hadn't bothered to do so for a couple intervening decades) and especially the last few years as we've been living in various countries but hanging out with sports fans and someone needs to stand up for the team from Arizona, yo.

The point is (bet you thought we'd never get there) that all year I've been delighted by the Arizona Cardinals' performance and their playoffs and even Super Bowl potential but then someone started killing off all our quarterbacks and it looked grim but then we thought, you know, the Panthers?! We can do this! Only we couldn't.

And then to make things worse, Brian's Lions had to go and lose after a promising first half of their game today to, of all things, "America's team" (groan. I will NOT consider adopting the Cowboys, ever). And with that, I have lost interest in the Super Bowl and will now only watch, if I deign to at all, for the Katy Perry halftime show.

Also, I hate the word "belly."

The race that can only ever be against yourself

It was called "perfect," but I think it was more of a potpourri of good, bad, and ugly...and more. Here's how it went down.

Today was my fourth 10K. Careful readers will recall that this is my Year of Ten 10Ks, and the "year" of course runs from mid-May to mid-May, being inspired as it is by my sub-par performance in the annual 25K held in Grand Rapids each May at which I annually suck, as well as my birthday that same week in May, which makes it fun to have a goal year go from May 13 to May 12 instead of January to December. So this past May, I declared that I would run ten 10Ks in the intervening time between my terrible 25Ks. Today was 10K number four.

Chicago's Perfect 10 is a little different from other races. Usually there's a 5K and a 10K and sometimes a half-marathon or maybe some other distances thrown in there. This race is all about the 10--the two race choices are a 10K or 10 miles. Fun, no? Both races started and ended at the east end of Navy Pier, so basically in Lake Michigan (hello, wind!), and the course gives you some pretty spectacular views of the city, lake shore, Loop buildings, lake, and so forth. Ten miles is a fun distance to consider for next year, but this year it's all about the 10Ks for me.

So, how'd I do? Did I improve on my time from 10K #3? Indeed I did! 1:47 faster, to be precise. You may also recall that my three other (or possibly more important?) goals for each 10K are:
1. Finish the race with no walking - check
2. Not last - check
3. Iced coffee after the race - check

In fact, the whole "not last" thing worked out a little better for me, and I have a theory as to why. Now, I am not a fast runner. So, usually within the first mile or two of my races I definitely see the crowds around me thin out as the people who run fast go on ahead and I just go steadily along with the peeps near the back (not last!) Today, I noticed that I still had lots of folks around me, a couple miles in. Was I running faster? Not by enough to make this much of a difference--I was still surrounded, and even passing a person here and there. The way I figured it, there were two possibilities. One, that usually the people who don't run a 10K very fast* opt for the 5K, leaving fewer people of my pace in the 10K to begin with, and leaving me with something like an 85-95 percentile finish in my gender and my age/gender division. (But not last!) But today, there being no 5K, the 10K was the slower race so I had way more of my peeps jamming out with me or even behind me, and my finish was more like in the 51-52 percentile.

*(and by "fast" I mean, of course, fast enough to please the Judgy McJudgersons who are all like, 'Oh, that's so sad to run a race and not be the best! How sad that you ran those miles soooo sloooowly while I sat over here on the couch thinking about how I don't do things unless I can be the best!' which is just an awful way to look at life, in my humble opinion)

Or, the other possibility, I thought, since my last three 10Ks were in Michigan, could be that Michiganders are just more badass than Chicagoans... hahahaha. I'm not dumb enough to make a public declaration about that when I still have to show my face in this town, and that state. We'll just stick with discussing theory number one for now.

Actually, I will tell another story from the race, but I am going to write something kind of gross so SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH if you don't want to read it. I witnessed something kind of freaky. I generally have a no-bodily-functions policy on the blog and I would never ever ever write something bodily function-like without warning you, so you've been warned, but this is your last chance to skip this paragraph. Somewhere toward the end of the second mile-ish, along the ol' Lake Shore Drive there, I suddenly realize that just ahead a bunch of people are gathered around a man on the ground, a runner lying on his side, kind of being held up on his side by some of those gathered. One gal, another runner standing, was shouting to all of us approaching, "Doctor? Nurse? Is there a doctor? A nurse?" And the man, who looks like he's maybe fortysomething, and just a normal looking runner-type man, with a moustache, wearing running shorts and a knit-type hat, is lying there being held up on his side and the look on his face -- I have never seen a look like that in real life, The closest thing would be something I've seen in a horror movie. His eyes were wide, and his whole face looked ghastly and stiff, and here's the gross part, he was vomiting, and it was gray. I mean, I'm seeing this as I run past and just thinking, I have never seen anything like that. And this is all happening quickly, of course, and so by now I'm passing the guy and trying to think fast: what should I do? Can I do anything? So many thoughts go through your mind in  a second. Well, the lake shore path is not that wide, and there were already, as I said, ten or so runners stopped helping him, holding him up, shouting for a doctor, etc., and if everybody stopped, it would make things worse because then everyone else still coming would just run into a big pile of people and clearly the rest of us should just keep going, and enough people run with their iPhones in their little armband things (for music) (and hey, the occasional mid-race phone call) that I was sure someone had already called 9-1-1, let alone all the people who had also already passed who could shout at the next race official they saw, and so I kept going although I did say and motion to the next bystander I saw that someone was injured and call for help, even though I'm sure it wasn't necessary on my part at that point. Within a couple minutes, I heard many sirens. What I am less sure about is whether this guy was OK. What does it mean, medical people, when someone is vomiting and it's gray? And you have to think, he had obviously collapsed long enough before I saw his face that ten people had time to stop, organize themselves around him, shout for help, etc., and there he is still throwing up -- and those eyes -- I can still picture them. It was a ghastly look; there's no other way to describe it. With so many thoughts going through my head, I also felt bad (if you know what I mean) for the runners who had got there before the rest of us and who had stopped and were now obviously sacrificing their race time and stuff...but meanwhile, this guy might have been dying. Was he dying? I really don't know. I have zero medical knowledge. I hope he wasn't dying. It was messed up.

All right, we are safely out of that paragraph now.

All in all, this was a nice race, with such great views along the race course of the city, the city from another angle, the lake, the lake shore, the pier, etc. And there is a whole expo with booths and vendors and Peet's coffee and a complimentary beer for finishers at the end. Good times.

In my previous 10K, which was 10K #3 in my Year of Ten 10Ks, I disappointed myself a bit with my finish time, and really, in my awareness of just how I need to be a more disciplined person. You may recall that at that time I quoted professional distance runner Paul Tergat: "Ask yourself, 'Can I give more?' The answer is usually 'Yes.'" I thought about that a lot today. I still need to dig even deeper, but I did manage to make myself give more at my traditional five to five-and-a-half-miles spot that is generally where I tell myself, "OMG I really can't go any faster" but where I today reminded myself, "Yes, you totally can" and stuff. I'm digging deeper, digging deeper, Ani, I promise. I was happy that I improved my time today in 10K #4, but I can recognize the improvement I still need to make.

I would also like to mention something else. I have been blogging in a lighthearted tone, and I do believe, in a "the show must go on" and "life goes on" way that it is OK to do so. But it wasn't just a stranger whose fate remains unknown to me that gave me pause today. I also received a message overnight about the death in a car accident yesterday of somebody that I knew in Arizona. He was a major figure in the lives of people close to me and people who are part of the basic framework of my Arizona/out West life, and he died in a horrific collision. It was a shocking piece of news to receive, and since I woke up at 5 a.m. to head out to the early start at Navy Pier, I was basically getting ready and then riding the brown line 'L' train in the dark, with few people around, and everyone alone with their thoughts, and I could only think about him, and the many aspects of life and people and connections and what it all means. In my own personal way, inside my head, I "dedicated" my run to these people, thinking of this loss -- one mile "for" each of these people, the deceased himself and those whom I know so well that are affected by this death, a mile for each person during which I thought about them, wishing the best for them. My thoughts seemed so small. We're all so small in this world, but we're such a big part of the worlds of the people around us. And people are struggling all around us, too. Some lives end in tragedy, and some encounter tragedy along the way, and it's enough to make a person realize she should be digging deeper in oh so many ways. Rest in peace, and for those of us still here, let's not take a single breath for granted today.

When a Habitat build ends...what else begins?

Time passes interestingly when you're on a volunteer trip with Habitat for Humanity. In my experience, the first two days of the build always seem longer, as you sloooowly learn how to do what you're doing, work with new materials, work with new people, get accustomed to the work site, settle in to your accommodations and routine, practice the language, etc.

Our work, in progress

Then, the third day, often a Wednesday, all of a sudden the week seems to accelerate and the next few days go by in a blur. Regardless of the length of the build (mine have ranged, but usually the trip is between one to two weeks), the second-to-last day seems to go a bit more quickly in the afternoon, like all of a sudden it's almost time to be over. The last day often has a last-day-of-school feeling, although there's no pithy "See you next year!" tossed off in the yearbook signing, because there's a good chance you might not ever again see these people with whom you have worked, sweated, and broken bread.

I loved pretty much everything about Poland and traveling there, and turns out the Habitat project itself was also great. As I've previously blog-mentioned, we were building a house for a man who was part of the Barka community of Marszewo, near Nowy Tomysl, west of Poznan, Poland. We, the baker's dozen volunteers, worked with him, our Habitat Poland coordinator, our local construction supervisor, and several other locals. Besides our coordinators, only one of the local guys spoke English, so there was definitely some opportunity to practice my Polish here and there. To be honest, when I'm with twelve people who can't speak a word and only one other North American with any grasp of bits of the language (beyond those who had early in the week mastered "piwo" for "beer"), even my minimal skills could come off as impressive once in a while, simply for being able to ask where something is or tell someone I understand. "Ahhh, you speak Polish very well!" they would respond in Polish. Ha! Don't worry, they'd quickly realize the truth. But it's fun to have even basic conversations, like, "I like the cat." "Me too." 

There's Donna, up to her elbows in the mud tub

The whole mud-straw-clay mixture process was one of the dirtier jobs I've done in this world, and I think it will be forever embedded in my Habitat Poland t-shirt and the shoes I wore on the work site, so those might never again be fit for normal daily wear. Our site was really well organized, and I got to try a few different jobs during the course of the build. I enjoyed the inside wall sanding/smoothing work the most. But the whole week was great, and I enjoyed the tunes and language acquisition I got by listening to the Polish radio station, too! Once in a while, the guys had to unplug the radio from the extension cord in order to plug in a drill temporarily and I would be eager for it to come back on. 

And, I've already mentioned that the animals on this site were great: the three wonderful cats, the frolicking puppies (really, dogs, but I basically call any dog that I like a "puppy"), the goats who would come say hi when I walked toward their fence and said, "Hey, goats!", the poor pigs who live inside a pen their whole lives, the chickens with their daily greetings...

As I've told a few folks, I think it's really important to go work on a Habitat volunteer project, and not just because I believe in the cause of eradicating poverty housing. I spend a lot of time inside my head and/or staring at a computer screen, and I need to make myself go do real work in the world. Sure, for the physical exercise of it, but also for the mental. Get out of that inner space and out into the world. 

As the wise Girls sing, which I've surely quoted here before, "Now I know a refuge never grows/from a chin in a hand and a thoughtful pose/gotta tend the Earth if you want a rose." (that would be Indigo Girls from "Hammer and a Nail"--feel free to play it while you read this blog entry!) I've been listening to that song for more than 20 years now (um--gulp!), and I understand what Emily Saliers means when she looks back on her early lyrics and cringes and sees them as pedantic or wishes she could change them...but really, once you actually do "go out and get a hammer and a nail," you do totally get it, in a way that's even deeper than when you sat in your bedroom playing that song (on cassette) over and over as a teenager. I don't really think she needs to worry too much. I mean, lines like "even my sweat smells clean..." are still, well, true!

"Loft"-y concepts, indeed

And sure, maybe she would tinker with the words and the poetry, I get that, but to actually try to make your life more than a vision, to "get out of bed and get a hammer and a nail" on so many levels, is really a decent goal. Don't worry, Emily! Your youthful expression of this lofty concept still resonates. 

One thing we talked about in multiple discussions while in Poland, including one great dinner conversation with the national director of Habitat Poland, was the immense challenge of solving the housing problem. But another thing we talked about was how many of us on this trip have worked with Habitat for a while and we observe it changing and growing, something that is crucial to any organization's success and effectiveness. It's not all about getting out there (with a hammer and a nail) building a new house, but Habitat also does advocacy work, building with eco-friendly materials, renovations, and so on. I personally love that Habitat works to restore and renovate urban housing (including in U.S. cities) because I think that is what we all should be doing (hello, developers, are you listening?)  As someone who grew up in Phoenix, I have certainly observed the endless suburban sprawl, encroaching every month further upon the beautiful Arizona desert, while people demand more and more space (and then wonder why there are scorpions in their bathroom...)  I may hate millennials (that's a long-running inside joke; don't try to understand it if you don't understand it) , but if they as a generation (if) are more interested in neighborhoods in urban centers than driving to a subdivision every day, they've got one thing right, anyway. I would love to see a moratorium on new home construction (oh my god, you can just hear the heart attacks that economists and politicians would have upon reading that line) and a major societal push (with financial incentives) to build, restore, renovate, and live in already-existing neighborhoods, in cities that have deteriorated AND in cities that have grown by flying ever outward and eating up the land. 

(I might add that any of you who freak out about house cats killing birds and therefore advocate keeping cats imprisoned inside for their whole lives? might want to consider your !@#&%* subdivision's part in clear cutting and destroying birds' habitats, not to mention your endless malls and parking lots, and you might want to stop blaming the cats, who would much rather control the mouse population in the city for you anyway, and then everybody wins.)

Well, back to the U.S.A. I come with all my Poland and Habitat thoughts, and all my cares in the world. Gifts to bring, as Emily and Amy sing. Gifts to bring...

I remember when, I remember, I remember... when in the course of human events

Today, the 13th anniversary of the tragic September 11th/nine-eleven/World Trade Center however-you-personally-like-to-say-it terrorist attacks on multiple U.S. cities that caused the deaths of thousands, has turned into a veritable "Where I was when" fest on the ol' Facebook. Rather than add to that with a mere status update, I thought I'd give a quiz about where I was during some of the big news events of the Generation X Lifetime. I'll tell you my vivid memory of where I was when... and you see if you can determine what newsworthy event happened when I remember Where I Was When it happened.  (Small prize to the winner!)
note: events are in chronological order, which might help you figure them out...

1. Phoenix. Home sick from elementary school that day. Watching an Indiana Jones flick, I think on, like, The Movie Channel, in our Villa Rita house living room when Grandma called to see if we were watching the news. Since we weren't, she informed my mother what had happened, and needless to say Mom hurried in, shut off the movie, and turned to some broadcast network or other. How will I ever know what happened to Indy, mom?!?! Does he vanquish the enemy and get the girl and save the treasure or what? Before Setpember 11th, this event was often described as "my generation's" Kennedy-assassination-like moment, but I am going to demonstrate here that I remember where I was when I heard other news, too. This was the first biggie for people of a certain age (mine), though.

News Event? ______________  Year?  __________

2. Phoenix. Chez Marcia, one of my high-school best friends. Watching a little after-school Jeopardy (nerds then, nerds now, nerds forever!) on the small TV set her family had on the kitchen/breakfast nook counter. A breaking news alert meant we never did get that final jeopardy answer, but instead watched several hours of harrowing reporting from people who were indeed in real jeopardy.  (Now both Harrison Ford AND Alex Trebek have been interrupted. Is nothing sacred?)

News Event? ______________  Year?  __________

3. Provo, Utah. Walked into my friend Ranj's apartment and I distinctly remember being on the stairs next to her kitchen and she poked her head into the stairway to announce the news. She was either on the phone with her younger sister or had just got off the phone; said little sister had been plunged deep into mourning, for she had apparently just recently been to a concert where he waved at her... (She was probably already wearing black, though, to the best of my recollection of her wardrobe.)

News Event? ______________  Year?  __________

4. Back in Phoenix. Working at Best Western's reservations call center one seemingly normal evening, and suddenly the call volume just plummets. Nothing. The phone lines aren't dead, but nothing's coming in. Finally a guy calls, and as we're checking out his double room and continental breakfast options, he asks, "Are you watching this?"  I warily reply, "Watching...what?" Ahhhh. That explains it. I had a 15-minute break coming up; naturally, everyone in the break room downstairs was glued to the TV. Not that there was really anything happening, but that was kind of the point of this one. What was going to happen? Anything? Just keep moving, as they say.

News Event? ______________  Year?  __________

5. Phoenix. Listening to the radio this time, at home in the apartment I lived in with my mom on Thunderbird, getting ready to leave for class. I was an avid listener of the 106.3 The Edge morning show with Jayn Sayd and Dead Air Dave (Willobee having left for greener L.A. pastures). They read the news and I altered my morning radio routine just a little by turning on the living room TV to get some visuals and more details, though I kept the radio playing in the bedroom. And I totally remember lots of "Who's the Muslim?" speculation. (Not necessarily on the part of Jayn and Dave, just people in general.)

News Event? ______________  Year?  __________

6. Phoenix, but just in town visiting, staying with Mom at her 19th Avenue apartment. Very recently returned from Cuba (by like a week), I was trying to practice my Spanish one night. We were watching this already-starting-to-develop story on TV, and I had insisted on keeping it on the Spanish news channel for a bit, so I could impress myself with my new language listening skills, as opposed to my previous growing-up-in-Phoenix life in which I had always cruised right by the noticias en español. Well, I was letting the details wash over me aurally when suddenly the newscaster upped the ante and I sat bolt upright. "Mom!" I said, then repeated (in English) the devastating new detail in all its finality, adding, "I think that's what he said?!"  She quickly flipped to an English news station, which confirmed the sad news.

News Event? ______________  Year?  __________

7. Los Angeles. I had bizarrely fallen asleep with the TV on the night before, which was weird because at that time of my life I rarely if ever watched TV, let alone fell asleep with it on overnight. I had been drowsily continuing to sleep and drift with no real awareness of what the morning newscasts were saying until a sudden noise and clamor on the television was enough to jar me awake, around 7 a.m.. Took one look at the screen and then jumped out of bed and ran to look out the window, sure I was going to see bombs raining down from the sky over L.A., or some such thing.

News Event? ______________  Year?  __________

8. Boston. It was a Sunday morning and I was on my way to work at Borders, which entailed me taking a quick bus ride from my house to Harvard station, stopping by the in-subway little Dunkin' Donuts for my coffee, then proceeding through the station to catch the red line of the T. The station had that sleepy Sunday morning feel, with only alternative-shift kind of commuters like myself passing through. I'm not sure I'd ever noticed that there even were little TV sets anywhere in that station, but that day I realized the Dunkin' Donuts workers were watching this oh-so-satisfactory-to-many announcement.

News Event? ______________  Year?  __________

9. Andong, Korea. Way ahead of many of you time-of-day-wise, it was Monday morning for us. Brian and I were at home in our apartment, working on our various things. We often had CNN International on in the background, while also both being online; I was likely writing up and researching stuff for About.com, with multiple tabs open, and one of them was probably Facebook. In other words, the news suddenly came at us from several sources at once, but I definitely stepped out of our "study"/spare room into the living room where the TV was (and where Brian was) and we watched some footage of, as Brian called it (referencing his girl Miley), the "party in the U.S.A."

News Event? ______________  Year?  __________

10. Honorable mention: These two bits of breaking news weren't quite as major, no offense intended, but are memorable and particularly so for me because I was basically in the same place and circumstances, two years apart, for these eerily similar announcements. Both times, Brian and I were staying in our same beloved apartment-hotel in Phuket, Thailand. Both times, it just so happened that the TV was on with news in the background, I was focused on doing other stuff on my laptop, and Brian was lying  on the bed. Both times, the news appeared (thank goodness in English) on the screen and I said to Brian, "Hey, ________ Ho----n died!"  Both times, a similar tragic cause of death of not-that-far-apart-in-age people. 

News Events? _______________   Years? ___________

Well, ladies and gents, how did you do on the quiz?  And do you remember where you were when these things happened? 

Isn't it interesting to consider that in the course of all these newsworthy events, and despite my other ways of getting the news on multiple occasions, my reaction was always to get more details from television news? Talkin' bout my generation...I guess that's just how we do. (Some other generations do that, too.) Although I have logged fewer television-watching hours than many of my Gen-X cohorts, I recognize its place as a sort of "gathering" place for us all to watch, hear, learn, and experience when earth-shattering news happens. I used to think of breaking news on television as a kind of proxy for a town square, or suburban street, or dorm hallway, where instead of rushing out to say, "Oh my gosh, neighbors! This news!" we all watch from our own homes/workplaces and collectively experience it that way, and later talk face-to-face and remember together what we watched separately and yet kind of together. I suppose Facebook is kind of sort of where we do that now, although Facebook itself is still not really breaking news to us, just alerting us to "trending" things that we are all putting up there, news that we got from somewhere else first. Would I prefer to experience these things on my smartphone, tablet, or other handheld device? Abso-!@#$^&-lutely not. The time element is key: whatever was being broadcast over the airwaves, it was being broadcast at that time, and though some might have tuned in earlier than others, we then watched our many minutes or hours or days of coverage as they unfolded. Watching uploaded videos individually on our phones at our leisure removes that transmission (I'm sorry, millennials, should I say that "streaming"?) element from the collective experience. And although I have never really had to get earth-shattering news from the morning newspaper headlines, I definitely of an age where I liked to look to the morning paper for the details, the full story, the yellow ribbon on top of the front page of The Arizona Republic when the hostages in Iran were released (I was a tiny tyke -- that and John Lennon's death are basically the first news events that I remember, ever), or the Christmas Day end of the Soviet Union (who wants to blare TV news on Christmas? but reading the paper surrounded by a tree and opened presents seemed all right...)   I'm pretty sure I saved a few major The-Next-Day newspapers over the years, although I might have eventually recycled them, as I didn't find them while we were unpacking here in our new apartment in Chicago. We do have a television, though, and we watched Obama last night, talking to the nation about air strikes and ISIL...and so it goes, and so it goes.

What do I want to know and when do I want to know it?

My questions for the world today are simply:

1. How do I get on all these e-mailing lists? How does it happen? Total unsubscribe party happening.

2. Why do you think it's better to start the school year in early August than to start it in September like normal people? (This one directed at Arizona.)

3. How many deaths will it take 'til they know/that too many people have died? (I didn't make that one up. But I would like the answer.)

Those are my questions.

Meanwhile, in the hoopla over the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation, let's not forget that this means it's also the anniversary of my boy Gerald Ford's ascension to the throne. What a great time to be in the G-Rap (area)!

Pure Michigan

I was going to talk about the incredibly difficult and mentally painful process of attempting to get health care, which I began last fall via the ol' healthcare.gov, continued in the spring with many Arizona web site and phone call customer service experiences, and have sadly extended through the summer, with even today there being no answer as to my ever-pending potentially eligible status. Nearly a year later. Still waiting. To see if I am insured through Arizona's health insurance or not. Still. Waiting. Yeah, I was going to talk about that, but that seems so...futile. Let's talk about Michigan instead! (If you're interested in my incredibly painful health care application process details, let me know, and I will blog about them another day. We can discuss hilarious things like the fact that the application asks you if anyone applying for assistance is pregnant, and I could actually have been not pregnant, then been pregnant, then had a baby and become not pregnant again, all in the time since I first signed up on healthcare.gov.)

Well, as much as I love being an Arizona resident and attempting to hear from the state of Arizona regarding my eligibility within thirty business days, or even two or three or four times that amount of time, at the moment I find myself sort of vacationing in Michigan. I say "sort of" because our time here has been extended beyond what we thought/intended/desired and now it's become more of an unfortunate incarceration (joke, Designing Women reference). But at any rate, I have spent a lot of time in Michigan. I can't really decide what I think about it.

Lots of states and regions evoke extreme emotions of one form or another. Just the ones I have lived in might go something like this:
Arizona - nostalgia! sunsets! wide open spaces! cowboys! deserts and pines and high country and mountains and Grand Canyon! saguaros! and the chance to laugh at anyone pronouncing that last word with a hard 'g'
Utah - mountains! Mormons! more mountains!
Wyoming - Dick Cheney! Teapot Dome! more cattle than people!
California - carefree life! freedom! creativity! convenience! coast! a million film and TV and song references heard 'round the world!
Massachusetts - colonial history! progressive politics! two-family houses! mill towns! college towns! a million college students! no Mexican food! lots of Dunkin' Donuts!
New York - wondrous chaos! people who don't know where any other states are!
Illinois - corrupt politics!
etc.

But Michigan somehow seems more calm and steady. This despite being an economic wasteland and all. Now, the folks who are from around here definitely have the home-state passion --hooo! boy, do they!--but I can't quite feel the intensity yet. The thing about Michigan is that it's got a lot of things to do, but it's definitely not a flamboyant state, so you kind of have to poke around and sort of rustle up the things to do by yourself. It's a shame, because there's, like, tons of stuff: lakes ("4 out of 5 Great Lakes prefer Michigan"), other outdoor fun (peninsulas & waterfalls & bike trails & even a bit of skiing), charming towns (Saugatuck and Petoskey, just to begin with), famous places that are on your radar your whole life without you really knowing why (Traverse City, Kalamazoo), the greatest city possibly in the world ever for journalists, according to one of my USC professors, that being Detroit...It's got the hometown of my boy Gerald Ford, and in that hometown (also Brian's) are a MILLION restaurants and artsy things...It's got the hometown of my (really) boy Michael Moore...It's got Big Ten schools and fruits for the picking and symphonies and ballets and rock n' roll...And everyone who's anyone has a family vacation house near a lake, or, as they call them, "cottages."  But you find out about almost NONE of this stuff until you come and spend a lot of time here.

Basically, what I am saying is that maybe Michigan needs a better PR team. I mean, unless they want to keep all the good stuff secret so they can have the place to themselves. But how well has that worked out? (See: economic wasteland.) Of course, they could also use some better weather. The fact that you are buried under lake effect snow for seven months of the year isn't helping draw visitors, I imagine. ("Come to Michigan! Rent a car and dig it out! Sit in your hotel room and enjoy the snow falling outside your window!")  I never really understood as a child the idea that summer didn't begin until the solstice on June 21st, because it was obviously so much earlier than that that one began swimming in the backyard pool, chasing the ice cream man, watching terrible blockbuster movies, and so forth. Here in Michigan it really might not begin until the end of June. If then. With schools in Arizona starting in August or even the END OF GODDAMN JULY nowadays, as evidenced by my home state peeps on my Facebook news feed, this leaves a very small window for a vacation in Michigan, no?

On the other hand, there are certainly people who do vacation here. We have spent a good portion of this unfortunate incarceration (Anthony! I'm telling you, Anthony! and if you don't get it, you just don't, so sorry, or, rather, #sorrynotsorry) at Brian's family's lake house ("cottage") in Holland, Michigan (tulips! Dutch ancestry! um...a random windmill or two!), a town I actually rather like (when it's not sweatshirt weather in the middle of July), and a few of the neighboring "cottages" have been filled with an endless stream of renters who come with their gaggle of kids, cousins, siblings, aunts, and whatnot for a week of, well, vacation, before disappearing and making room for the next lot. I am curious how these people chose a rental cottage at Lake Macatawa/Lake Michigan in Holland, Michigan for their vacation spot. (But not curious enough to walk next door and ask them, because I prefer my position of anti-social comfort on the porch with my cats.) How did they know this place was here? Family? Friend's recommendation? Travel agent? Brochure? It certainly never would have occurred to me as a family vacation idea when I was a child (it's really far from Disneyland) nor as an adult (it's really meant for people who like to self-cater, i.e., cook, whereas I say half the fun of vacation--make that more than half--is that you are totally really justified in eating out every day, as opposed to the rest of your life when you have to actually convince people it's a good idea to eat out every day).

Lonely Planet declared Brian's/Gerald Ford's birthplace (see, I was born where Dick Cheney hung out, and Brian hails from where Gerald Ford hung out; I definitely get the worse end of that deal) of Grand Rapids to be the Top U.S. vacation spot for 2014. And just based on the beer alone, they are on to something! The whole craft brewery thing is kind of amazingly out of control here. Plus the aforementioned arts. Did it work? Did travellers arrive here in droves? I don't know the numbers.

I also must say that Michigan has a lot of trees that all look the same, plus really straight roads and highways. That might sound like it's not a unique thing (trees? highways? just hear me out) but really, it's kind of bizarre. There are a lot of roads (on which your car may feel free to emit all it likes, as there is evidently no emissions testing to register a car here?!) in Michigan; despite all the driving, I wouldn't call it a land of wide open spaces so much as a land of carved up spaces. But so then you're driving along I-96 or I-196 or I-696 or I-94 or US-31 and they all look the same. Not the way "all interstates look the same" but there is just rarely a time that you are in anything but a highway corridor through the trees. Which seem to be all the same trees. I find myself getting really excited when there's, you know, a curve. It's too flat and tree-y to ever open up into wide vistas, I suppose. Those wide expansive highway vistas of which I speak are a staple of driving in the West, but they aren't just out West - you get the vistas in Nebraska and Iowa and Texas and stuff, too (dotted with cows). And in other states where you're hemmed in by trees (Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts) the roads seem to be smaller and more winding. Or it's southern and swampy, like in Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, with lush branches draping themselves over one another above the bayou, or above the alligators. Michigan is just hiding everything, and you have to get off the highway to see it.

What do you know (or want to know) about Michigan?

States

If I am not careful, I am going to reach the point of having spent more of my total lifetime in Michigan than in Utah! That is just wrong. I am *definitely* closing in on having spent more time in Michigan than Illinois. I might even be passing it right about now...

Obviously, the states where I've spent the most time are the states where I've lived. So the top eight are, in order:
1. Arizona
2. California
3. Massachusetts
4. New York
5. Wyoming
6. Utah
7. Illinois
8. Michigan

But, see, I haven't really actually lived in Michigan, like lived-lived, and yet I kind of transitionally in progress have. And that's why it's annoying. Because of the not-really-ness of it.

FYI, the two states I have not been to, and which I really need to get to, are Alaska and Hawaii. As for the other forty states in the middle, between my eight lived-in/"lived"-ins and my far-flung unseens? There are a few where I've spent a fair amount of time (at least several weeks in a row, if not more, with multiple stints):
Virginia * Maryland *Pennsylvania
(also, D.C.)

And states I've been to a bunch of times, where I've racked up lots of days:
Nevada * Texas * Colorado * Vermont * New Hampshire * Connecticut  * Georgia * Florida * New Mexico * Louisiana * Washington

Or where I haven't been as many times, but have still spent some quality time:
Rhode Island * Maine * New Jersey * Indiana * Ohio * Tennessee * Iowa * South Dakota * Idaho * Nebraska * Missouri * Alabama * Mississippi * Oklahoma * Arkansas * North Carolina

And states I've visited, though briefly, where I should see and do more:
South Carolina * North Dakota * Wisconsin * Minnesota * West Virginia
And the states where I've done little more than pass through and look around, and definitely need to revisit:
Kentucky * Oregon * Delaware * Kansas * Montana

I like states.

Now I have to go think about how many state capitals I've been to. It's at least thirty. I like capitals, too.

End Employer-Based Health Insurance Now Or, when your hobby is lobbying against health care...

We have a major problem in the United States of America, but no one seems to have articulated it very clearly in the wake of the horrifying Supreme Court ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby and other corporations who don't want their religious liberty burdened. No, the problem to which I refer is not the fact that people in extremely high positions (such as CEOs and Supreme Court justices) think that corporations have religious liberty to be burdened in the first place, although that is, indeed, a problem. (Perhaps we should examine the blurring of religious/corporate lines in another post. It works both ways: churches are big business, you know.)

The problem to which I do refer is the fact that we (by which I of course mean "we") somehow still think it's a good idea for employers to provide health insurance in the first place. Why, oh why, does anyone still think this is a good idea?

It's not a good idea. Employer-based health insurance is a terrible, awful, no-good idea.

This problem has failed to be clearly articulated in the last several years as the debate has raged on (and on and on) about "Obamacare" and health insurance mandates and single-payer systems and Medicaid expansion. Many, many people have glossed right over that part where employers provide health coverage in the first place. We should immediately and permanently do away with that system.

It has never made any sense to me to begin with. A workplace is a random grouping of people who happen to live in more or less the same area, but not even with entirely the same skill sets/interests. For example, a corporation might employ HR gurus, software engineers, and architects, who have nothing in common. But, they are suddenly a "group" for health insurance purposes. It doesn't make any sense, but almost everyone has been conditioned to think it makes perfect sense.

The exception to that "everyone"? People like me who have made a living for a decade from freelancing, indepenent contracting, pursuing an advanced degree, and working abroad. Those noble pursuits will quickly show you how awful employer-based health care can be for someone trying to eke out a living without being on a corporate payroll. I could spend 50 hours working on writing and editing as a freelancer or independent contractor, but because I wasn't on a company's payroll, I was somehow less entitled to group coverage than someone who worked 35-40 hours in a cubicle. And changing employers, from country to country? Yikes! Arguably, the freelancers and independent contractors of the world (whether those contractors are artists or plumbers, whether they build kitchen cabinets or tutor youngsters learning violin) are working even harder to hustle, collect payments, maintain schedules, get clients, and so forth than "full-time employees," but we are apparently "lesser" when it comes to determining if we are eligible for health care.  We are asked to buy insurance as individuals, without an employer subsidy, and we are charged at least $400-700 per month, sometimes more, for the equivalent coverage of what was an $80 or so pre-tax paycheck deduction when I was a full-time employee of a company that wasn't Myself.

Why not group everyone by zip code (like auto insurance does) or by some combination of age/smoker-non-smoker/exercise status, or heck, by their favorite NFL team (with all the "no preference" also forming a group?

Why don't these ideas make as much sense as deciding the employees of X company are now an insurance group?

This is hugely important because not everyone is employed by a company,  but everyone can have a favorite NFL team (or "no preference"). Sometimes there is an idea that those who are not "employed by a company providing health coverage" are just the deadbeats/unemployed/lazy/illegal aliens/whatever who don't "deserve" health care, an argument we're not even going to waste time refuting, because it doesn't address what I have already pointed out: that it isn't just the "unemployed" who don't have employer health coverage. It is the very hardworking temp employees (I once worked for a YEAR as production assistant paid through a temp agency, before actually being hired as an official employee of the radio program--same desk, same duties, same everything) and the independent contractors and so forth.

There is major resistance to government-provided health coverage, but I don't know why that is any worse or weirder than employer-provided coverage. People change employers during their lifetimes a lot more often than they change citizenship. And wouldn't life be easier for employers as well, not having to deal with employees' health insurance?  Which, by the way, has nothing to do with the work of most companies but necessitates having someone/some department deal with benefits all day? It's like a giant colossal waste. Why not have benefits people working for a benefits company that is just about benefits? Allocated by the NFL-team alignment, or zip code alignment, or favorite color alignment, or type of animal that was your first childhood pet, or whatever!!!!

WHY NOT, people??!  Tell me why not?!?!

And guess what: then this Hobby Lobby religious freedom nonsense would not even be an issue. Religion would have absolutely nothing to do with it...because employers wouldn't be asked to do anything for health care, so they wouldn't have any religious objections.

Or, we could just divide everyone by religion/lack thereof in the first place and have the religious beliefs/non-beliefs be the health coverage groups (instead of the NFL team preferences). Then the health coverage groups would be the Mormons, the Catholics, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Orthodox Jews, etc. and naturally the atheists and agnostics and humanists could also have group coverage.

Anything but this horrible system of employer-based group coverage, please. It is deeply flawed because it does not make insurance available to all, and it apparently causes problems because employers have to grapple with decisions they never should be having to grapple with in the first place (like the religious beliefs of anyone in the corporation, from top to bottom).

The federal marketplace/health exchanges are supposedly helping to solve this problem, although I have had such a hideous time trying to enroll in my Arizona health insurance (for which I qualify, freelance income-wise) that I still can't tell you, months later, if all of my paperwork has been finalized and approved. It's a disaster. (Not  just a federal government web site disaster, states' rights people, but a state-level disaster as well.)

I don't know why anyone thought employer-based health coverage is a good idea, but today's Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision proves once again that it is not. I am more than ready to be assigned to a group that has nothing to do with my employer.

I am more than ready to just cast my lot with the Arizona Cardinals fans, or whoever I elect as "my" team.

Imagine somebody worked super-hard for twenty years, saved money, and at age 45 had enough in savings, investments, and so forth to "retire" and just pursue basket-weaving in the garage? Well, if you weren't in the military for your "career," good luck with that. Not because you need to work for the income, but because you need to work for the health insurance. I'd much rather live in a world that groups us by NFL teams.

But even worse is the situation of the person who weaves beautiful baskets for her or his entire life, procuring the materials, creating them, selling them, and providing a much-needed service to everyone who wants baskets and lives a simple but comfortable life, unconcerned with SUVs or six-bedroom houses or 64-inch high-def television screens...but cannot so much as go to the dentist without spending a couple months' income. This latter situation is the world we live in, thanks to employer-based health insurance.

#endemployerhealthcoverage

Could we use a man like Herbert Hoover again?

Normally, I write about books over on the ol' Literary Supplement, but what I have to say after finishing An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover is far less about Richard Norton Smith's book, which had some pretty serious flaws, and more about Hoover, the man.

Strengths: Efficiency. Thrift. Churned out a lot of words. Anti-militaristic. Fed people (entire starving nations, in fact). Supported equal pay for women, the end of child labor, etc.  Worked hard. Worked tirelessly, into his ninth decade. Self-made man, as they say. Traveled the world. Known to offer up a pithy comment or two. They loved him in Belgium. And Poland. Random acts of generosity. Enthusiastically supported young people, from Scouts organizations to Boys' Clubs to answering thousands of letters people wrote to him, well into his old age.

Example: He agreed with a young woman that "the chances of a female president were improving; after all, 'the men have not done too good a job of government...in the last forty-seven years' and wishing her well 'if you are a candidate for President about thirty years hence."

Another girl, Kathleen, told him she wasn't yet born when he was president and she wanted to be not president, but a doctor. He wrote, "My dear Kathleen, You were saved a lot of trouble by not being born earlier. I am glad you want to be a doctor and not President. We do not have enough doctors, and there seems to be a sufficient number of candidates for President." --from p. 383 of An Uncommon Man 


Weaknesses: Probably wasn't meant to be a president, namely because he didn't excel at the compromising political schmoozing of it all. (On second thought, maybe this is a strength.) Listened a little too carefully to some of Joseph McCarthy's fears, although not the rabid paranoia.

Fascination factor: High. He was born in 1874 and died in 1964. The year he was born, Thomas Edison was inventing the duplex telegraph, Jesse James was robbing trains, and Hoover's eventual alma mater, Stanford University, did not yet exist. By the time he died, he had gone from meeting with Charles Lindbergh through advising against dropping the atomic bomb to congratulating John Glenn on orbiting the Earth. He also outlived, among others, his wife Lou, his pal General MacArthur, and Eleanor Roosevelt, not to mention his successor FDR and John F. Kennedy, whose father the ambassador to England had known Hoover for a while.

The man got around. He met everyone from Hitler to Eva Peron, and he was friends with other presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry Truman, with FDR being basically the exception (he spent time with and was consulted by Eisenhower AND Kennedy). Bottom line is that Hoover had a fascinating decades-long pre-presidency career and an accomplished decades-long retirement, but all most people know about him is "the Depression!" And really, he was unfairly blamed for the so-called Great Depression, as if any one person caused it or could solve it single-handedly, and it's interesting to note the complicating factors of his administration, such as: Congress. The economic policies of his predecessor, Calvin Coolidge. The fact that FDR was his own brand of crazy, when he swooped in to "save" the day -- and the fact that FDR used some of Hoover's ideas and already-started-before-FDR-got-there tactics.

Other  fun facts gleaned from this bio, in a more-things-change-the-more-they... way:

*In the aftermath of World War I, "Washington sports fans cheered a uniformed sailor for shooting to death a fellow spectator who refused to stand for the national anthem."

*In a 1935 speech, Hoover noted the way some politicians stifled dissent: "They set up a glorious ideal to which we all agree unanimously. Then they drive somewhere else or into a ditch. When we protest they blackguard us for opposing the glorious ideal. And they announce that all protesters are the tools of Satan or Wall Street. When we summon common sense and facts they weep aloud over their martyrdom for the ideal."

*"If America joined the [World] war [II], he said,  and was rewarded with victory, 'then we will have won for Stalin the grip of communism in Russia and a greater opportunity for it to extend in the world. We should at least cease to tell our sons that they will be giving their lives to restore democracy and freedom.'" -p.298

*In a 1954 critique of foreign policy, he noted: "We should cease to jabber about leading the world. Sometime the world will turn on us with remarks as to where we have led to."

Furthermore, I hereby declare that we should bring back the name Herbert. Come on, hipsters, get with me on this! I previously mentioned, during my reading of the William H. Taft bio, that I really like President Taft's brother Horace--he was a fun guy!--and that I kind of wanted to bring back the long-forgotten name Horace. Well, now I'm adding Herbert to my list. If I have twin sons, perhaps they'll be named Horace and Herbert. Or maybe I should just get two puppies or kittens for this purpose.

While I learned a lot about Hoover, I should probably check every fact in this book, because author Richard Norton Smith and his editors apparently couldn't be bothered to do so themselves. I've ranted elsewhere about the incorrect statement that the Hoover Dam is on "the California/Nevada border" (hello, can you read a map?) but that isn't the only fact Smith gets wrong herein. So, I do advise you to learn a thing or two about Hoover, but maybe check out some other sources while you're doing it.

And may we all hope to be as accomplished and prolific in ninety allotted years on this Earth!

Mom, what's a chaperone?

So, the other day or week or whatever, a piece in The Atlantic started doing its viral thing, thus popping up in my Facebook news feed. It's called "The Overprotected Kid," and it details a lot of incredibly obvious stuff, like how kids need to play outside and discover things on their own and not always have parents breathing down their necks. It talks about how it's actually good for kids to not know how they're going to get out of a predicament, and then to get out of that predicament, because that's called growth. But we have reached the point, chronologically, where we now have college kids who have never had to get themselves out of predicaments, and I really wish that the college professors would stop capitulating to their whining. (I should rephrase: I wish they had never started. I wish not a single solitary grade had EVER been changed. Ever. Because: consequences, people!)

One of the interesting lines in the article was that kids are growing up now with the assumption that they are always being watched, and therein lies the problem. Now, of course the parents today offer up lots of good reasons to always be watching their and other kids, chief among them because otherwise the kids are going to be kidnapped. As the Atlantic author points out, child abduction by strangers is as uncommon as it ever was, and it seems to me that basing your entire life around those odds is kind of like doing your monthly budget with the assumption that you are you going to win the lottery. Yeah, you might (especially if you play), but it really has no practical purpose in your plans. Most missing children are either abducted by someone they know, which is often a parent, or they are runaways. And let's not forget that independent teenagers and adults can also be stranger abducted, as horrible cases like the recent one in Ohio remind us (and as Criminal Minds likes to remind us also--why doesn't that create some abduction-of-adults paranoia to accompany the abduction-of-kids paranoia?)

Obviously, I think children should be prepared, as I was, for what to do in "stranger danger" situations. Sometimes you should  talk to strangers, politely, especially in places of business. If it's not one of those times, you should not be afraid to scream, make noise, run away, etc. And no, I'm not advocating for kids to be alone outside all the time --by all means, walk to school with friends, have curfews, keep in touch, come in before the streetlights go on, let your parents know where you are, and all the rest -- but my god, my nephew is ten-and-a-half years old and he is still not allowed to do anything by himself, or even, say, walk through the neighborhood with his eight-year-old sister but no parents to my dad's (their grandpa) house, which is less than half a mile away. I think I was babysitting other people's toddlers when I was ten-and-a-half. I walked to/from school without adults (with friends) from age seven or so. I've seen the car pick-up line at my nephieces' school. It hurts my brain. (This is also due in part to the reconfiguring of gifted education in that school district, making it a magnet program at only one school that necessitates driving longer, non-walk/non-bicycle distances for all the families who live in the zone of other elementary schools but have to schlepp their kids to the one gifted magnet school, and that's annoying and horrible for lots of other reasons too, but also my nephew could not walk the less than half a mile through the residential streets home from elementary school in second grade when he still attended in their very own neighborhood. Is second grade too young? Not with a friend, I'd say, and I daresay that's a good grade to start the whole Mom-walks-to-the-end-of-our-street-then-watches-you-go-down-the-street-toward-school thing even if the kid is alone, but I don't daresay that to my sister, because then we just have a big fight, because I'm not allowed to talk about parenting until I have my own kids or maybe not even then, although my sister herself admits she is "highly paranoid" -- her words, not mine)

OK, that parenthetical bit was so long you probably even forgot we were in parentheses, eh?

The point is: watching. A day or two after seeing some parental friend types post and ruminate about that piece ("Why can't I just send my kids outside to play?" mused the attachment parents, with the obvious implications just hanging there in cyberspace), I was typing something in a Facebook post or comment and it red-squiggly-underlined the word "chaperone" and I was struck. Aghast, I thought, 'My god, is this what it's come to??? We don't even use the word chaperone anymore in this modern/attachment/helicopter parent 21st-century?? Because kids are always being watched so they wouldn't even know what a chaperone is, because there's just always an adult there?!??!! There is no distinction!' Then I realized that the Facebook/Google/Blogger/internet spell-checking overlords apparently prefer the alternative spelling "chaperon" that I think looks incomplete and that I have never before this sentence used in my life.

But I was a little worried for a minute there.

Cool runnings

It's air-conditioning season in the GZ! You might also know it as sticky-muggy-sweltering-it-rains-every-day-and-when-it's-not-raining-life-is-a-mushy-pile-of-sweat season. Now, I am not here to complain about the heat because as anyone who knows me knows I am sort of mystified by all the folk who are always complaining about the weather all the time. I mean, it's like, well, summer is hot. Winter is cold. This does happen regularly -- every year, in fact -- and yet they always seem so surprised... Anyway, no, I am not going to lament the fact that the summer rainy season in a sub-tropical place is steamy and hot because that would just be silly. I am just going to point out something, just this one teeny little thing. OK? Ready, China, are you listening? Here goes.

It's not that I don't like the feeling of the cool blast of air that I feel through the wide open doors of the department store/office/coffee shop ATM vestibule when I'm walking down the sidewalk. Like today, when I was running and all gloriously hot and sweaty and I trotted by the Bank of Whatever and felt a little arctic blast for a second. Yeah, that felt great and all, but here's the thing: every time it happens I kind of freak out a little bit and lose a little piece of my soul. I come from a place that would actually not exist as we know it without air conditioning (Phoenix!) and I come from a family of engineers, several of them electrical engineers, and they design power plants for a living and coordinate all sorts of mysterious power grid supply things, and in particular I have a parent who worked for Arizona Public Service, electricity provider extraordinaire. I was raised to shut that door quickly quickly quickly no that's not quick enough!! if the air conditioner was running (which, in Phoenix that could be like nine months out of the year. Maybe more.)  So I'm just pretty much blown away (see what I did there) every time this whole "Wow! Feel that A/C blast through the open doors out to us here on the sidewalk!" thing happens.

The thought does occur to one that if you people would maybe, you know, just kind of shut the !@#$&* doors you could save a whooooooooooooole lot of energy and maybe you wouldn't have actually needed to build that gargantuan mighty largest ever Three Gorges Dam and stuff. Just a thought.

Tombstone

I don't always cross post my recent Literary Supplement updates here on my "main" blog....

...but when I do, there are copious amounts of beer involved and the story kind of usurps the book that was supposed to be the point of the blog entry. Yee-haw!

Querétaro Block

I'm in one of those blogging funks, wherein I just don't seem to have that compulsion to share my thoughts with the world, as The Wonder Stuff sing. I hate it when that happens. There is a tiny little part of me that worries it's because sharing pithy comments on Facebook and Twitter gets my venting and ranting out there into the world, leaving no more desire to blog, but as much as I want to push that thought away in a great fit of denial, I truly don't think that's what's behind the blogger's block. I think being in a relationship is the single greatest difference between my current blogging and my blogging as I once did, because in the beginning I was very much a this-is-me-against-the-world blogger, and now I'm not like that. Which is interesting.

There's also the fact, however, that I CAN'T blog about some of the things that are foremost on my mind. I mean, besides the cockroaches. I could blog endlessly about cockroaches. But believe it or not, there are many other things on my mind here in Mexico, despite what James Taylor would have to say about that, and unfortunately I can't put some of them on the web for the world to see and that is annoying to me. I don't like doing things and being in situations that I can't openly blog about. I'm not into secrets like that. (This, in the end, is why I really can't be a politician or work for the government. I'm just not into being secretive about what I'm doing.)

So, apart from the annoyances that have to stay under wraps (and apart from the cockroaches) Querétaro is actually all right!  Festive red, white and green decorations have stated popping up around the Centro, and I am getting excited about the upcoming Independence Day celebrations. (We've been over this, but for those of you who have forgotten: no, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day; rather, it's Sept. 15-16.)  The rainy season seems to have sort of stopped, but we still get occasional rains, and rain in Querétaro tends to be a torrential downpour of biblical proportions that can really cramp your style for a fewhours. Brian and I have been enjoying our weekends in town by hitting up restaurants, plazas, and so on here in the historic Centro area where we live. I've pretty much become comfortable and even occasionally rather zen about driving the stick shift. Also, I've been running. The first few weeks here I was not at all into running because even when walking around the neighborhood in shorts listening to my MP3 player I did not like the looks and comments I got from men, all machismo-ed out and reminding me of the Latin-male catcalling in Brooklyn when I ran, only worse. But Brian discovered a great path on which to run to the big Alameda (park) just over a mile from our place, and now that I have that running route it's all good and I can do my running thing without being bothered. There's a Querétaro marathon (and half marathon and 10K and 5K) coming up in a little over a month, and I'm pretty sure I'll run the 10K.

All I want to do is read and have more time to read and write. I was actually supposed to have more time to read and write here in Mexico, but that's one of the annoyances actually - I don't have as much time for those things as I thought I would. However, I am reading cool stuff, when I have time to do so, and even sort of regularly updating my Literary Supplement with my book thoughts, most recently Grover Cleveland, and now I'm in the middle of a Salman Rushdie book.

We've met interesting people here in Mexico, including a couple of people who are currently in the midst of a bicycle trip through Mexico. Bicycles! On the highways! Isn't that so totally awesome and fearless?

But time marches on, summer has come to an end, my nephews and nieces have started school back in Phoenix (not that I ever get updates from them or my sister, but I know that they have), kids have started back to school here in Mexico, food here is delicious, the prices of eggs are in crisis because of a strain of avian flu in some Mexican state or other, I more or less get to keep up with all the batshit insane politics back home in the states (and the shocking level of ignorance about basic human biology that passes for acceptable in our elected officials), and there's still so much to see and do and learn in the world!

One very interesting thing I came across recently was a man named Xokonoschtletl.  He was speaking to a small crowd in Mexico City, near the Zocalo, about Tenochitlan and the destruction by Spain/Cortes etc. of the Aztec civilization, and how Montezuma's crown/headpiece is still in Austria, and how good-but-ignorant so many modern-day people are, and how people buy hook line and sinker the propaganda of the powerful, continuing hundreds of years of imperialist terrorism. I could have listened to this guy forever. Later, I looked him up (based on his book, Juicio a Espana) and discovered that he is in fact a somewhat known activist and speaker and whatnot. He should be even better known; he's awesome. You can watch him on YouTube or visit his web site. I'm so glad I randomly came across him. I loved Mexico City, p.s. I love learning about Mexico and its past.

Because really, the best thing about being in Mexico has been learning more about Mexican history, and the indigenous struggle, and the pre-Hispanic civilizations, and the continuing traditions, and all of that. I mean, don't get me wrong, I REALLY like the food here. But the food has been exported. I really think this historical cultural knowledge has not been exported at all. Even in neighboring Arizona, where we think we have so much experience with Mexico/Mexicans, we are missing so much of the story.

In which it all makes sense now....

OK, I *loved* Depeche Mode when I was an adolescent. Basically what happened, as I recall, is that I heard the song "Strangelove" one day and I immediately had an epiphany, began buying all their albums (mostly on cassette, p.s.), and learned what it means to have a favorite band and care about music.

But you know what I didn't know when I was 12?  British English. I mean, there I was, growing up in the U.S. of A., and although I bought Smash Hits whenever I could get my hands on it, it would be years before I was the highly educated, well traveled, ESL-teaching, friend-o-Brits that I am today. So back then, sure, I may have known that those English folk said "flat" when they meant "apartment" and stuff, but I didn't know everything. And although these days I have definitely passed a British English quiz or two (these generally involve a bored British friend, beer, or both), I am still surprised every once in a while when I'm teaching English from a textbook full of British vocabulary and I discover in, say, an automobile vocabulary lesson that windscreen is their word for windshield.

I mean, I knew about boot (trunk), and bonnet (hood), and indicator (signal), but...have I heard windscreen used in that context? I mean...that means...a windscreen is....wait! It ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!

"Death is everywhere
There are flies on the windscreen
For a start
Reminding us we could be torn apart
Tonight..."
  -- Depeche Mode, "Fly on the Windscreen"

Cripes! Dead bugs on the windshield?! Is that all?  When I was a 12- or 13-year-old listening to this song, by which I of course mean obsessively playing this song over and over in a darkened room while brooding about the meaning of life, the word "screen" meant, you know, a screen. Like a screen door. (Hello, raised in Arizona, land of patios.) Or possibly a screen in a window. So if it was a windscreen, then I guessed it was just, I don't know, some big screen. With flies on it. Flies that were symbolic of evil, the minions of the devil, Beelzebub trying to get into our hearts.  Flies that covered an entire window, like in The Amityville Horror.  But all he was talking about was dead bugs on the windshield? I mean, the song's still really profound and thoughtful and all that, but it's certainly not as creepy or grotesque of an image if it's just a smashed bug or two while you're driving down the highway.

I had no idea.

+52 (442) I-N-F-L-A-T-E

I have had a flat tire while driving exactly twice in my life, and both times have been in the last two months. That's not the weirdest part, though! I will now tell you the weirdest part.  Keep in mind that I mean while I, myself, was driving, as opposed to other times when I was a back seat child passenger on a road trip or whatever. No, I mean flat tires with me behind the wheel: two, and here's what's weird.

First, in May, Brian went to Mexico. I was still in Phoenix for two more weeks. On my last Thursday in Phoenix, there I was scooting along the 101 when I heard a really loud noise which I thought was the engine dying, turned off the radio, pulled off the (luckily close) exit, and only then realized I had a flat tire that was flopping and grinding along. Luckily, I had joined Triple-A upon my acquisition of said car after returning from Korea to the U.S., and I called them to come help me out. While I waited in the hot, dark desert night on the side of the freeway in lonely 7th St/Loop 101 north Phoenix, I received a text message from Brian from a new phone number: "This is my Mexican phone!"  To which I of course replied something along the lines of "Can't talk right now, stranded by the highway with a flat waiting for triple-A."

Fast forward to July. I'm in Mexico, and as you will recall from recent blog posts, I have been forced here to learn to drive a stick shift (wheeeee!) and I perform this task for five round-trips per week. And wouldn't you know it? On Monday afternoon, almost back from that day's duties, as we crawled along in stop-and-go (mostly stop) highway traffic (I stayed in 1st gear! that's how much "stop" there was), the driver in the car to our right suddenly waved until he got our attention, then did the whole pointing down to the ground below your car thing while mouthing something unintelligible, which is the universal symbol of "You've got a flat tire!"

But here's what's so weird: I just got my Mexican cell phone number that day! Finally. Isn't that bizarre-o?!?!?! The only two days ever that Brian and I have ever got our Mexican cell phones are also the only two days ever that I have ever been driving and got flat tires.

What does it all mean?!

When in the course of Queretaro events...

As my mom reminded me today, the old joke goes: "Do they have a 4th of July in [Mexico]?"  Ha, ha. If you don't know the answer, um...I can't really help you. But seriously, today was actually a good day, the lack of fireworks notwithstanding. Irony alert: after years of holidays in Arizona and California on which many illegal fireworks were heard to be launched in random city neighborhoods, including the occasional Mexican holiday and thus, presumably, the occasional launching of fireworks by Mexicans/Mexican-UnitedStatesians/people celebrating Mexican something or other, I find myself IN Mexico on my homeland's holiday without a firework to be found.

A fellow United Statesian teacher here in Queretaro hosted a lovely afternoon barbecue to celebrate the ol' U.S.A. independence. The majority of the guests were teachers of business English, and our schedule is basically this: teach corporate classes in the morning (beginning of their workday) and then have a long break and then teach corporate classes in the evening (end of their workday). That long break in the middle? Is long enough for a 4th of July barbecue! Said barbecue included four of us red-white-and-blue-lovin' peeps, a few Mexican friends, our friend from Argentina, and even an Englishman for good measure.

We had hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill, Coca-Cola and Coors Light in the fridge (plus some Mexican beer if you didn't want to stoop to Coors Light, you commie swine), and baseball games on the computer, including the Nationals and the Phillies, such appropriate Independence Day cities. A good time was had, even if I had to leave and go do English teacher things, although I must add that my students and I had a great discussion about the 4th of July, holidays, Mexican Independence Day in September, and perhaps most importantly the vast amount of food and tequila to be consumed on that upcoming day.

In a further tribute to the greatness of 'MURRica (ahem), I would like to report the following exchange from my morning beginning-ish level corporate English class on the topic of Difficult Colleagues:

Me: (having discussed various "difficult" characteristics and listed them on the board) Do you know anyone like that, who blames others for their problems?
Students: No, not here. At my other company, yes! Not here.
Me: (starting to fish for "politicians") Well, what about in the outside world? Can you think of a famous type of person who often blames others for their problems...?
Student: Britney Spears!
Me: Well, yes. I see what you mean. A celebrity might blame others for her problems. Can we think of another...?
Student: Lindsay Lohan!

I mean, you really have to hand it to them. They got the concept and ran with it.

All righty then, I'm off to pursue some happiness.

South of the Border

And so Linda Without Borders has arrived in Mexico.

Perhaps it was destined to happen; after all, I was raised in a state famously obsessed with border issues, and that particular border happens to be a Mexico one. Yes, a line drawn in the sand indicating where some folks think the Mexicans should halt -- although that land they are trying to "defend" was actually Mexico longer than it has been Arizona, but who's counting?  The indigenous peoples, you say?  Oh, aren't you quaint.

Anyway, selfish Europe-derived settlers aside, here we are. At the moment we are in Queretaro. The city of Queretaro, emphasis on the second syllable, is in the state of Queretaro, and it has about a million people and a whooooole lot of big businesses, factories, and international companies. It also has a lot of English language schools. Coincidence? You decide. Regardless, there are definitely English teaching gigs to be had here, and here we are!

When I galavanted off to Korea, the first things people tended to think of were M*A*S*H, kimchi, and the so-called threat of North Korea randomly invading. When I galavant off to Mexico, what do people think of? It seems there are two thoughts that pop into most minds, either:

1.)Ahhhh, I remember my luxurious vacation in Cabo/Cancun/Puerto Vallarta/Mazatlan (or, back in the Love Boat days, Acapulco).
2.)Isn't everyone there getting murdered by drug cartels? 

Well, so far I have neither gone to a beach nor seen a drug killing, but I will be sure to keep you posted. Mexico is a large country with a lot going on, and it's good to remember that there are different parts of it. There is also soooooooo much to see and do that I am overwhelmed even trying to decide where and when and how to plan my excursions and journeys and overnight adventures.

I had a layover in Mexico City once as well as one in Monterrey, but I didn't get to do anything in either city, so my only real Mexico trips in the past have been in the northern border cities. This time, I am in the central/south central part and am ready to explore.

What's your favorite thing to do in Mexico? Besides eat, duh. I have been doing plenty of that, don't you worry. 

Most triumphant!

Today I found in my mother's closet a box of various things from my formative years, items such as my high school calculus textbook, scented candles (what female college student doesn't have a candle obsession in her first apartment or two?), an old mousepad, etc. Amid all these things lay a buried treasure. That's right, I found my Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure movie poster.

OK, well, maybe just the poster is not *that* exciting, although it does make me nostalgic. I remember it was on my wall for years and even made the journey to college with me to hang on my dorm wall, because that's how totally excellent I thought (and still think) that movie is.But being the budding occasional collage artist that I was, I had some things attached to said poster. For one thing, there is the big "Coming Soon at AMC Metro Village" sticker.  Sigh....how many movies did we see at Metro Village, back in the day?  My second home. Also? The ticket stub! A relic!  The actual ticket stub from my excellent adventure seeing Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  The date was 02/18/89. The price, impressively, was $2.75.  Please note that this was at 7:40 PM on SAT, back in the days when I was actually willing to go to a movie with lots of other people around me. $2.75!! However, there is a "CH" by the price, so maybe $2.75 was the youngsters' price. Isn't that fun to remember? 

Bill and Ted, dude!  And the great thing, obviously, about seeing it at Metro Center was that it was partially filmed IN METRO CENTER MALL!  I do believe that we in the audience cheered when that part came on the screen. Genghis Khan wreaking havoc on the sporting goods store and whatnot.

I totally love Bill and Ted forever and always!