DOING HIS DADDY PROUD

Wow.  Sometimes there IS some good news on those early morning AOL stories.  Check this out.

JUST FOR LAUGHS????

From the wonderful In These Times, a cartoon that shows how far we believe Dirty Deeds Done Cheap can really go.  I do, anyway.

POSSIBLE ILL WINDS

Early Tuesday morning, the remnants of Hurricane Jeanne approaching us today with "possible damaging winds and tornadoes," severe thunderstorms, four inches of rain.  Not something to look forward to.  However, nothing like what Haiti is going through, continuing horror.  I feel close to the situation in Haiti because I have so many Haitian students.  They are not able to focus on learning English grammar at the present, their attention is on the number of bodies being pulled from the flood waters back in their homes.  I have two brothers in two different classes who have lost seven family members as of their last contact with people in Haiti.  Contact is difficult because phone lines are out to the areas that were hit the hardest and travel to places outside the areas is difficult. 

G's brother-in-law died last Weds night, and I drove her to the train station in Wilmington to catch the midnight train to Boston (which can't help sounding like a song lyric) to be with her sister.  The funeral was yesterday, in Amherst, and G will stay with her sister til the end of the week.  It's wonderful that she could get time off from work to do this, she has been such a support and lifeline during this difficult sad time. 

So I'm a Lone Ranger, taking care of the animals, getting the yard mowed before four inches of rain come to shoot it back up around my ankles.  Will it ever stop growing this fall?  I made it through the first week of two jobs, but was certainly exhausted by Friday afternoon.  Not sure I can keep this up.  I'm loving the work, which is really nothing like "work" at all.  Spending several hours with these kids helping with math problems, reading questions, spelling words, sentence writing, even science projects, is a lot more fun than it is work.  But it's still exhausting.  There are several who are recent arrivals from Latin America and speak little or no English.  With them I'm trying to do some ESL, just to help them survive.  Doing advanced math problems with a seventh grader who has had one year of schooling in her native Guatemala is not a possiblity.  Teaching her English is first priority.  Now that this county has a 50% hispanic population it needs to start taking ESL in the schools a good deal more seriously.  This kid will drop out of school when she's sixteen, she's fourteen now, go to work in the poultry industry and be lost in the cosmos.  Unless she learns English very soon.

I know I'm supposed to be Keeping the Faith and believing that Hope is On The Way, but politically right now I feel a lot like Lady Liberty looks in the drawing to your right.  Dejected and pissed.  I'm keeping on keeping on, nonetheless, oh yes.  Final push for voter registration coming up the next two weeks, and phone calling starts big time.  A story that raised my spirits last week: I had a call from La Esperanza, the Hispanic community aid center, that there was a woman who'd come in and wanted to register to vote.  I grabbed my clipboard and ran over.  When I asked if she was a citizen she proudly pulled her citizenship certificate from her bag.  I told her I believed her, didn't need to see proof - but took it anyway.  The date on the certificate was the day before. She had JUST become a citizen and the first thing she wanted to do with her citizenship was register to vote.  As, I'm happy to report, a Democrat.

PLANET ON THE EDGE OF TIME

In 1991 Marge Piercy wrote one of her best books (THE best, for me, is still Woman on the Edge of Time), called He, She and It.  The story takes place in a time "after the rising oceans had drowned much of the rice and breadbaskets of the world, after the rising temperatures had shifted the ocean and air currents, leaving former farmlands scrubland or desert, after the end of abundant oil had finished agribusiness on land..."  North America, now called "Norika," is a vast toxic wasteland dotted with huge environmental domes, enclaves of the monolithic corporations...; the far fewer "free towns" where the remarkable technology of the age has not yet been turned against the individual and the "Glop," the overwhelmed stretches of megalopolis where ninetenths of the Norikans live - violent festering warrens unprotected from the poisonous atmosphere and ruled by feuding gangs and warlords. (This last bit of description is taken from the jacket copy, and is exactly right.)

I read this book when it came out, and even then found it amazingly, eerily, prescient.  I think of it every time I read things like this latest dispatch from Tom Engelhardt:

Xtreme weather meets Xtreme media bubble

This post can be found at http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1851

When it comes to weather news, it's been all-hurricane-all-the-time -- and under the pressure of storm after storm, news language has escalated. "Bizarre" and "strange" have been two recent words of choice in describing Florida's weather disasters. Yesterday, I heard a CBS radio announcer complain that "Mother Nature's piling on"; while the "chief meteorologist" for a local Florida TV station recently wrote, "But I think I echo the sentiment of many when I say, ‘Come on, Mother Nature, you are out of control!'"

When "Ivan the Terrible" threatened New Orleans, correspondents there had a field day discussing whether the city might literally disappear beneath the waves -- this was referred to asthe "Atlantis scenario." Then there were those dramatic shots of gridlocked highways filled with fleeing refugees -- whether from New Orleans or the Florida Keys; there were the pans of massive post-storm destruction; the close-ups of weeping survivors; the dramatic tales of rescue; the interviews with people who had "lost everything"; the discussions of President Bush's trips to "comfort" the survivors; and above all, the endless shots of correspondents in rain slickers in front of dripping camera lenses trying to keep their balance in the pelting rain and swirling wind, shots which have become the sine qua non of hurricane coverage in recent years.

And yet something was missing. For the first time in history, four hurricanes – Charley, Frances, Ivan (the Terrible), and now Jeanne -- have smacked into Florida's long coastline one after another in a single hurricane season (not yet over), and here's the strangest thing of all: Forget that in March Brazil experienced the South Atlantic's first hurricane ever -- Brazilian meteorologists didn't even know what to name it; or that the Atlantic coast of Canada got whacked by Hurricane Juan, "the storm of the century," late last year (and the Canadian government suspects a link to global warming); or that the United States has already experienced a record number of tornados in 2004; or that Japan has had the worst season of typhoons in memory; or that Xtreme weather events have increased in recent years across the planet, including massive flooding in Europe, Bangladesh, and China, and a deathly summer heat wave that struck Europe in 2003. Forget the rising sea levels and the increased melt-off toward the poles. Forget that the head of at least one (hated) country in the path of Hurricane Ivan -- Fidel Castro -- was ready to warn his people about global warming and hurricanes, or that the Bush administration's closest ally, Tony Blair of Britain, made a major speech, widely ignored in the American press, labeling global warming a danger beyond compare. ("What is now plain is that the emission of greenhouse gases…is causing global warming at a rate that began as significant, has become alarming and is simply unsustainable in the long-term. And by long-term I do not mean centuries ahead. I mean within the lifetime of my children certainly; and possibly within my own. And by unsustainable, I do not mean a phenomenon causing problems of adjustment. I mean a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence.") Forget all that, and just focus for a moment on the fact that it took almost to the moment Jeanne hit Florida for our media to produce a spate of pieces that even speculated in passing about possible links between the hurricanes in Florida and global warming -- and almost all of those articles denied that there were any connections at all.

It's often been said that, in tossing the Kyoto Agreement out the Ozone hole, relaxing fuel-emission standards, burying or altering governmental global-warming research and the like, the Bush administration, with an Ivan-the-Terrible-style environmental record, has stuck its head in the proverbial sand (probably Tar sands at that). And this couldn't be truer. Ignoring global warming -- and so any preparations to safeguard the world for our children and grandchildren -- is but another form of global terrorism; it's a way of loading and locking another kind of weapon of mass destruction. But in this behavior, as it happens, the Bush administration isn't alone. The American mainstream media has been a major aider-and-abettor in the process.

We know that the President and his companions live in a bubble world. When he travels the foreign peripheries of our planet, for instance, central cities are emptied as he passes through them; and everywhere, from Washington to his campaign events, "security" regularly replaces reality in his life. At long last, the Iraqi fantasyland he inhabits has become a theme of the Kerry campaign. Kerry has begun to point out that those 15 of 18 Iraqi provinces Bush's chosen Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has declared "completely safe" exist only in their mutual brains. If, to one degree or another many Americans seem to live with George and Iyad in a counterfactual Green Zone of democracy and progress, at least there is now counter-evidence on the nightly news.

When it comes to the emission of greenhouse gases, and so to global warming, perhaps the single most pressing issue for the human future, there is next to no counter-evidence because our mainstream media lives inside the bubble too, and consequently so do the American people, at least those who don't make it to alternate or foreign sources of news via the Internet. With rare exceptions, even when aspects of global warming are reported on, the disconnect with our American world is severe. For instance, one night soon after Ivan cut its swath of destruction through the Caribbean and then Florida (only to partially re-form last week and threaten Florida again), I watched ABC prime-time news give over the first part of their broadcast to its depredations. Typically, however, there was not a mention of global warming. At the soft, human-interest end of the broadcast, however, there was indeed a story about Xtreme weather changes and global-warming clues -- in China.

The report focused on a group of Chinese scientists studying the melting of China's glaciers (which account for an estimated 15% of the earth's ice) and managed to indicate that China was already suffering from global-warming related Xtreme weather conditions. In the course of this, it was pointed out that the Chinese researchers had all watched the American global-warming catastrophe film The Day After Tomorrow in which much of the Northern Hemisphere is shown freezing over, and that, while they considered it exaggerated, they still saw a good deal to recommend in it. Naturally, ABC News never mentioned possible global warming links to the hurricanes just then bearing down on the United States.

Only the other day, the British Guardian had a piece on the same Chinese glacier study that began: "The world's highest ice fields are melting so quickly that they are on course to disappear within 100 years, driving up sea levels, increasing floods and turning verdant mountain slopes into deserts, Chinese scientists warned yesterday." This would be a significant catastrophe, resulting first in major flooding, later in desertification. The scientists have concluded, "Once the mountain ice was gone, rivers would start to dry up and ocean levels would rise, threatening coastal cities."

By now we know -- or should know anyway, that global warming is manifesting itself most powerfully at the peripheries of our planet -- in its frozen stretches where melting is occurring at startling rates, and in its archipelagic parts where rising sea levels, connected to that melting ice, are threatening to create instant "Atlantis scenarios" -- trailers, you might say, for the future fates of New Orleans, New York, Shanghai and other coastal cities. These areas of initial victimization are, however, places where peoples, often tribal and with no power whatsoever, live. At a recent hearing, Inuit Circumpolar Conference Chair Sheila Watt-Cloutier told the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, "We find ourselves at the very cusp of a defining event in the history of this planet… The Earth is literally melting." And she pleaded with the assembled senators: "Use us as your early warning system. Use the Inuit story as a vehicle to reconnect us all so that we can understand the people and the planet are one."

But if the Inuit feel such urgency, it's not mirrored in our media world at all. When such a story manages to slip into our papers, as Andrew C. Revkin's Antarctic Glaciers Quicken Pace to Sea; Warming Is Cited did in last Friday's New York Times, placement tells all -- even when it has paragraphs right out of some catastrophe film. The Times piece, for instance, indicated that the expected change in sea levels from Antarctic glacial melting "already constitutes a slow-motion catastrophe for places like Bangladesh, New Orleans and low island nations, experts say. But the findings add weight to the idea that rising seas could be a fact of life for centuries to come, requiring serious reassessments of the human penchant for living along coasts." The Times editors nonetheless chose to place this global piece on page 24, the sixth and last page of its National Report (not counting the four full pages of ads in the section), appropriately opposite the obituaries.

Someday this will, of course, look like the most errant of follies (if anyone's looking). You might say that, as the Inuit canary expires in the mine, our response is to dig harder and faster, while those whose job it is to signal danger point the rest of us the other way. Among the few modest bright spots in a coal-dark Washington is that Senate Commerce Committee where Chairman John McCain has been pushing for some modest response to the dangers of global warming and the release of all those greenhouse gases. He said recently, in what is certainly an understatement, "We are the first generation to influence the climate and the last generation to escape the consequences."

By the 1980s, the interconnectedness of life on our planet had become one of the sentimental clichés of the environmental movement. But what of newspapers and TV shows that refuse to connect anything, that consider local and national weather catastrophes the most wonderful of stories -- like covering wars without the same danger levels -- but insist on treating them in fabulous isolation from other global developments? At first, no connections between the hurricanes pounding Florida and other global Xtreme weather events were even considered in the mainstream. Then, a new kind of weather article suddenly began appearing. A typical example -- from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel -- was David Fleshler's Scientists: Surge in hurricanes likely not caused by global warming which began:

"As hurricane after hurricane strikes the southeastern United States, many people wonder whether the rash of storms is the result of global warming.

"The answer from scientists: Probably not."

In it, the possibility that the hurricanes were indeed linked to global-warming trends was quickly raised -- only to be instantly shot down by quotes from a multitude of scientific experts. Oddly, this denial then freed the reporter to discuss a future moment when such a linkage might lead to catastrophe. ("But if global warming continues, it could inject a new element into these ancient meteorological cycles…. More significant, the study found that maximum precipitation could go up by about 34 percent, which ‘could have important future societal consequences'… Worsening the impact of these stronger hurricanes would be a rise in sea levels, also caused by global warming… etc.")

Indeed, it's true that four hurricanes in a historic package add up to no more than anecdotal evidence at this point; but the curious thing is that most of our reporters can't even discover a scientist who believes any linkage between the Florida hurricanes and global warming might be possible. On the other hand, the alternate media from Wired magazine to the Johns Hopkins News-Letter, and the foreign press have had little trouble populating either side of what is considered a debate about how immediate the effects of global warming may be. And elsewhere, especially on low-lying islands, other conclusions are certainly being drawn -- as the editorial page of a Jamaican paper indicates:

"Those of us who live in small island states understand the impact, the power, and danger, of these highly-charged storms. But the threat is not only from storms. The corollary to a warming world is melting ice caps, which translate to higher sea levels, which ultimately will mean the drowning of large areas of what we now call our homes. This applies not only to small, poor island states like Jamaica, but to the entire planet. Rich countries, too, are in danger."

Recently -- to offer congratulations where it's due -- two mainstream magazines, National Georgraphic and Business Week stepped out of line and made cover stories of global warming. Business Week's story ("Remarkably, business is far ahead of Congress and the White House. Some CEOs are already calling for once-unthinkable steps.") reflects fears in certain sectors of the business community, especially the insurance industry, about the potentially catastrophic financial impact of global warming.

But when it comes to hurricane coverage, in the far reaches of the mainstream press I've been able to uncover but one balanced, speculative piece (Warning in the Winds) suggesting possible links between our "strange" hurricane season and global warming -- and that appeared in the Washington Post Sunday Outlook section. Unsurprisingly, it was written not by an American, but by Mark Lynas, a British journalist who has also produced a book on the subject High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis:

"Watching storm after powerful storm plow into the U.S. coastline this year, I can't help wondering if the world's weather is actually trying to tell us something… Buried deep in the Web site of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is a graph that shows how tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures have steadily risen between 2000 and 2004. NOAA classifies all but one of these hurricane seasons as "above normal" -- the exception is 2002, which suffered the hurricane-suppressing influence of a weak El Niño, the warm-water current that occasionally crosses the Pacific Ocean from west to east. To many, this suggests a global warming fingerprint: The accumulation of greenhouse gases -- principally carbon dioxide -- has driven world temperatures to new heights (2002 and 2003 tied for second place after 1998 as the warmest years ever). The seas are slowly heating up, too, providing more energy for tropical storms."

The Post, however, also had one of those no-connection-at-all-say-the-experts pieces in its news pages (2 Storms In Florida Not Seen As Trend, Experts Don't Fault Global Warming).

Perhaps it's the fact that global-warming math is so self-evident -- and so devastating -- that causes our media so insistently to look the other way. We in the United States make up 4% of humanity and yet are responsible for 25% of global greenhouse emissions. Facing the phenomenon of global warming, we have actually upped our greenhouse emission patterns, created vehicles that use yet more carbon-dioxide producing fossil fuels for less punch to the mile, made no serious national efforts at fossil-fuel conservation, put no significant national funds into quick-fix programs to find less harmful, more sustainable ways to run our world, and turned global warming into a money-making night at the movies – Nightmare on Earth Street. It's not a pretty record, either for the Bush Administration or for the media.

So welcome to the bubbledome of folly. At the moment, it's hard not to suspect that if the Atlantis scenario kicked in and New Orleans disappeared under water few connections would be made -- though who can doubt that a greenhouse-gas coughing Bourbon Street replica would be recreated in Las Vegas. Being in denial, if you don't live in Florida or along the Gulf coast where the American bubble has just been pierced, is still kind of fun. But at least remember to alert the Homeland Security Agency to dig us all a giant, fortified hole to jump into when the moment comes. Just make sure it's inland and well above sea level. Tom

PEACE TRAIN TAKE THIS COUNTRY....PLEASE

Maybe if we play it backwards there's a secret terrorist message?  Cause it's hard to see where it might be, reading it frontwards.  Whaddya think about this most recent Stupid Event? 

This song has been playing in my head ever since I first read (yesterday?  day before?) about Yusuf Islam being removed from a United flight from London (in Bangor, Maine!) and shipped back.  If Cat Stevens is on a terrorist no-fly list - we have all stepped so far through the looking glass there is probably no way back.

Peace Train by Cat Stevens

Now I've been happy lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun

Oh I've been smiling lately, dreaming about the world as one
And I believe it could be, some day it's going to come

Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again

Now I've been smiling lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun

Oh peace train sounding louder
Glide on the peace train
Come on now peace train
Yes, peace train holy roller

Everyone jump upon the peace train
Come on now peace train

Get your bags together, go bring your good friends too
Cause it's getting nearer, it soon will be with you

Now come and join the living, it's not so far from you
And it's getting nearer, soon it will all be true

Now I've been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating, why can't we live in bliss

Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home

LETTER FROM OUR MAN MICHAEL

From TruthOut comes this heartening pep rally from Michael Moore.  I'm going to read it to myself every day from now until Nov. 2.  I had already decided to just ignore all the polls, they change too quickly and disagree with one another so vastly that I can't imagine there's any truth to them.  Besides, has anyone ever called to ask YOUR opinion?  Mine either.  So who are they asking?   

 Put Away Your Hankies...a Message from Michael Moore
    MichaelMoore.com

    Monday 20 September 2004

    Dear Friends,

    Enough of the handwringing! Enough of the doomsaying! Do I have to come there and personally calm you down? Stop with all the defeatism, OK? Bush IS a goner -- IF we all just quit our whining and bellyaching and stop shaking like a bunch of nervous ninnies. Geez, this is embarrassing! The Republicans are laughing at us. Do you ever see them cry, "Oh, it's all over! We are finished! Bush can't win! Waaaaaa!"

    Hell no. It's never over for them until the last ballot is shredded. They are never finished -- they just keeping moving forward like sharks that never sleep, always pushing, pulling, kicking, blocking, lying.

    They are relentless and that is why we secretly admire them -- they just simply never, ever give up. Only 30% of the country calls itself "Republican," yet the Republicans own it all -- the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. How do you think they've been able to pull that off considering they are a minority? It's because they eat you and me and every other liberal for breakfast and then spend the rest of the day wreaking havoc on the planet.

    Look at us -- what a bunch of crybabies. Bush gets a bounce after his convention and you would have thought the Germans had run through Poland again. The Bushies are coming, the Bushies are coming! Yes, they caught Kerry asleep on the Swift Boat thing. Yes, they found the frequency in Dan Rather and ran with it. Suddenly it's like, "THE END IS NEAR! THE SKY IS FALLING!"

    No, it is not. If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win... Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate -- he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don't run -- and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.

    Yes, OF COURSE any of us would have run a better, smarter, kick-ass campaign. Of course we would have smacked each and every one of those phony swifty boaty bastards down. But WE are not running for president -- Kerry is. So quit complaining and work with what we have. Oprah just gave 300 women a... Pontiac! Did you see any of them frowning and moaning and screaming, "Oh God, NOT a friggin' Pontiac!" Of course not, they were happy. The Pontiacs all had four wheels, an engine and a gas pedal. You want more than that, well, I can't help you. I had a Pontiac once and it lasted a good year. And it was a VERY good year.

    My friends, it is time for a reality check.

    1. The polls are wrong. They are all over the map like diarrhea. On Friday, one poll had Bush 13 points ahead -- and another poll had them both tied. There are three reasons why the polls are b.s.: One, they are polling "likely voters." "Likely" means those who have consistently voted in the past few elections. So that cuts out young people who are voting for the first time and a ton of non-voters who are definitely going to vote in THIS election. Second, they are not polling people who use their cell phone as their primary phone. Again, that means they are not talking to young people. Finally, most of the polls are weighted with too many Republicans, as pollster John Zogby revealed last week. You are being snookered if you believe any of these polls.

    2. Kerry has brought in the Clinton A-team. Instead of shunning Clinton (as Gore did), Kerry has decided to not make that mistake.

    3. Traveling around the country, as I've been doing, I gotta tell ya, there is a hell of a lot of unrest out there. Much of it is not being captured by the mainstream press. But it is simmering and it is real. Do not let those well-produced Bush rallies of angry white people scare you. Turn off the TV! (Except Jon Stewart and Bill Moyers -- everything else is just a sugar-coated lie).

    4. Conventional wisdom says if the election is decided on "9/11" (the fear of terrorism), Bush wins. But if it is decided on the job we are doing in Iraq, then Bush loses. And folks, that "job," you might have noticed, has descended into the third level of a hell we used to call Vietnam. There is no way out. It is a full-blown mess of a quagmire and the body bags will sadly only mount higher. Regardless of what Kerry meant by his original war vote, he ain't the one who sent those kids to their deaths -- and Mr. and Mrs. Middle America knows it. Had Bush bothered to show up when he was in the "service" he might have somewhat of a clue as to how to recognize an immoral war that cannot be "won." All he has delivered to Iraq was that plasticized turkey last Thanksgiving. It is this failure of monumental proportions that is going to cook his goose come this November.

    So, do not despair. All is not over. Far from it. The Bush people need you to believe that it is over. They need you to slump back into your easy chair and feel that sick pain in your gut as you contemplate another four years of George W. Bush. They need you to wish we had a candidate who didn't windsurf and who was just as smart as we were when WE knew Bush was lying about WMD and Saddam planning 9/11. It's like Karl Rove is hypnotizing you -- "Kerry voted for the war...Kerry voted for the war...Kerrrrrryyy vooootted fooooor theeee warrrrrrrrrr..."

    Yes...Yes...Yesssss....He did! HE DID! No sense in fighting now...what I need is sleep...sleeep...sleeeeeeppppp...

    WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons are back on the street -- and 54% now believe the war is wrong. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS -- YOU JUST HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU DO THAT?

    Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the courage to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still inside him. Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold out a hand to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat the forces of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?

    Yours,

    Michael

I'm sorry to whine as I did in the last entry, though I thank all of you for your kind and understanding remarks.  It's foolish to waste my time kvetching about something so petty as a Weekend Assignment in these journals - there are so many real things that can be wrong.  We learned last week that one of our daughters-in-law has breast cancer - we're waiting to hear the surgery and treatment plan now.  It should all be planned out this week.  She's young and strong and brave, has a good and hopeful attitude towards this, but it's a shitty goddamn thing and I want to rail against the fates.  Useless and silly, the fates don't give a rat's ass if I rail or not.  It's hard to be so far away from the kids at a time like this, it's always hard but it's worse when we know we could be of use (babysitting, driving, running errands, etc) if we were close by. 

And at the same time G's sister's husband is dying of cancer in a hospital near Chicago.  They went out there from Massachusetts as a last-ditch effort in this battle - it's a hospital with cutting-edge technology and treatment evidently.  However, things are not looking good at all for him.  They have both been so valiant and amazing through the past couple of years with this, a coupled devotion that I have seldom seen.  Again, I want to rail, howl and curse and shake my fists, do a wild King Lear against the demons of cancer.  Why can medical technology and science not find a way to end this scourge? I actually believe there is a political answer to that question, but it's nothing I care to grapple with at the moment.

Hold each other tight tonight, tell someone you love that you love him/her/them.  Don't waste time with the small stuff, the big stuff is always waiting around the corner. 

 

GRUMPY GROUCHY TOUCHY AND PISSY, RE WEEKEND ASSIGNMENT

I have to admit, I'm a little put out at Dr. Scalzi's assignment of the weekend:

Weekend Assignment #24: Tell us what the first song was at your wedding reception and why you chose that song. If you're not already married, tell us the song you would like to have played first at your wedding reception. Also, for the purposes of this assignment, those of you who have had commitment ceremonies can join in the fun (it's that whole "we're going to spend the rest of our lives together, and now we're going to dance" thing).

Extra Credit: What song did you make sure wasn't played at your reception?

As lesbians, and - as we all know - threats to the very bedrock of all Americans' Way of Life, G and I have never even contemplated a wedding.  Therefore, no wedding reception either.  Yes indeedy, John throws in "committment ceremony" as a sop to us not-really-married folks, those of us who live together without the benefits of legal entanglement (although we have some papers supposedly conferring terminal rights upon each other, even those seem to be in doubt nowadays), those who may have had one of those not-recognized-by-any-government, and precious few churches, ceremonies where we say good stuff and someone plays something moving on a guitar and a liberal clergyperson officiates, or not.  And then you have a "reception" somewhere, if you can afford it (no parents are paying for these things, you realize or at least ours certainly weren't when we got together as middle-aged people).  Or not. 

The two humans in this house got together over 23 years ago, and are now in their late 50's/early 60's respectively.  I loaded my shit into a van and drove it up the road to Massachusetts and moved into G's house in Newton with her and her two sons - et voilà - that was our ceremony.  Maybe it's almost time to tell the story of how we met each other  (given that I lived in Texas, she lived in Massachusetts - you might wonder, huh?) and managed to get together at all.  Not right now, but soon.  In any case, we've stayed together through the teenage years of two boys,  the death of parents, two nervous breakdowns on my part, one on hers, both boys' marriages, the birth of four grandchildren, an affair (of which I have written elsewhere) on my part, numerous moves, running our own businesses, and now we are trying to figure out the possibility of retirement together:  how to do it, where to do it, IF we can do it, etc.  What a long strange trip it's been. 

And all without a wedding, a wedding reception, and dancing to any song.  We danced to "Love Me Tender" at my sister's wedding (that brother-in-law is a big Elvis fan),  how about that?  does that count? 

Marriage bestows a lot of perks on those allowed to partake, I don't really think the J-Land Weekend Assignment should tie in to this prejudice by only allowing those who are officially coupled, and had a reception with music to prove it, to write in about it.  Okay, yeah, it says if you're not married what would you LIKE to have played, but that's like the thing we used to do when we were kids - you know, writing our names with the last name of a boy we liked, Mrs Theodore Frazier, for instance, to see how it looked and giggle.   

You see, I'm grumpy about this.  I'm actually pretty grumpy on the whole subject of marriage in general:  gay, straight, committment-ceremonied, unioned, whatever.  If you're interested in some way earlier entries on this subject you can start here, then go here and here.  I still don't feel substantially different than I did last November when I wrote that three-part entry.  In the bad old days of 2500 character limits.  Sure glad they're over now.

L'SHANA TOVA

Round loaf of challah

At sundown last night the Jewish High Holydays began.  To our astonishment, G's and mine.  We live now in a very Christian environment - on which more at a later date - no surrounding cultural help for remembering the Jewish calendar.  A culture shock for two who once lived in Newton, MA, and hung out in Brookline, MA, a lot.  Those who live in the Boston area will relate to this.  Brookline is extremely Jewish, delis and bakeries and butcher shops and temples every few feet.  The best bagels in the world, as far as I know.  Beautiful loaves of challah piled in bins. Kugel and tsimmes already made by somebody else's Jewish mother, ready to take home and pop in the microwave.

When I happened to meet the only other Jewish person we know in the area in the cafeteria at school yesterday and she told me she was taking today off - I looked puzzled.  She said...it's Rosh Hashanah, dumbass.  Well, no, she didn't say dumbass, but she might as well have. I didn't see G until nine o'clock last night (our schedules really suck, as far as seeing each other is concerned) and when I told her it was Erev Rosh Hashanah, she almost cried.  We had no apples and honey, no challah, none of the traditional sweet year food to celebrate with.  For this holiday, whose name means "Head of the Year" the challah is baked in a lovely round loaf, to symbolize the head itself.  In past years that we've been here,  friends have come from New York to celebrate with us, or we have gone to Brooklyn to be with them.  

We don't do anything religious, really, but we do like the symbolic gestures - wishing people a sweet new year by dipping bread or apples in the honey is certainly one of them.   Another symbolic gesture that we always do during these Days of Awe is the ceremony of Tashlikh.  I'm not sure if it's the accurate way to do it, but we go to the beach or to any moving body of water and throw stones or pieces of bread into it.  The stones symbolize our sins, our errors, our deeds against others in the past year.  We repent of them, and toss them away, thus ridding ourselves of the year's past burdens, so that clean and new we may begin a new cycle. 

This new year is the year 5765.  May it be for any and all who stumble upon these words a year of goodness, peace, and hope.  It grows harder to believe these things are possible, but we must, we do.  And so, we continue to work for them, pray for them, live for them.  L'Shana Tova to all.

DESPAIR IS A LIE WE TELL OURSELVES

As we know from Freud, there are no accidents.  So at the moment of my deepest political despairing (so far) comes this little piece by Tony Kushner.

Despair Is a Lie We Tell Ourselves

By Tony Kushner, AlterNet. Posted September 14, 2004.
More stories by Tony Kushner

This essay appears in 'The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (Basic Books),' by 'Soul of a Citizen' author Paul Rogat Loeb.

A Chicago cab driver recently told me, "If there's a supernova 60 light years away from here, the world will be totally wiped out. We don't stand a chance." He gave me something to think about, namely the fact that life, each individual life and our collective life on the planet, is a teleological game. It is not infinite, like Bush's justice. It has an ending, and so the future you put your faith in is not, in fact, limitless.

Given the catastrophic failure here and abroad of the Kyoto global warming accords, given our newfound post 9-11 imperialist exuberance, given the sagging of the world's economy and the IMF-directed refusal to see any solutions beyond making poor people suffer even more than they always do in the hopes of reviving a market that only ever revives long enough to make the rich even richer, given the eagerness in Washington to explore new and tinier kinds of nuclear bombs, well, it's sort of optimistic to believe it's a supernova that's going to get us. It's clear that what's much more likely to get us, if we are got, is our present condition of living in a world run by miscreants while the people of the world either have no access to power or have access but have forgotten how to get it and why it is important to have it.

Since I was a little kid I've been told I have choices, the right to make a choice. Though I've never been dumb enough to believe that was literally true, I've also never been dumb enough to be literal. I have always believed I could choose to believe, or not believe, that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

I do not believe the wicked always win. I believe our despair is a lie we are telling ourselves. In many other periods of history, people, ordinary citizens, routinely set aside hours, days, time in their lives for doing the work of politics, some of which is glam and revolutionary and some of which is dull and electoral and tedious and not especially pure – and the world changed because of the work they did. That's what we're starting now. It requires setting aside the time to do it, and then doing it. Not any single one of us has to or possibly can save the world, but together in some sort of concert, in even not-especially-coordinated concert, with all of us working where we see work to be done, the world will change. And we have to do it by showing up places, our bodies in places, turn off the fucking computers, leave the Web and the Net – and show up, our bodies at meetings and demos and rallies and leafletting corners.

Because this is a moment in history that needs us to begin, each of us every day at her or his own pace, slowly and surely rediscovering how to be politically active, how to organize our disparate energies into effective group action – and I choose to believe we will do what is required. Act. Organize. Assemble. Oppose. Resist. Find a place a cause a group a friend and start, today, now now now, continue continue continue. Being politically active is for the citizens of a democracy maybe the best way of speaking to God and hearing Her answer: You exist. If we are active, if we are activist, She replies to us: You specifically exist. Mazel tov. Now get busy, She replies. Maintain the world by changing the world.

So when the supernova comes to get us we don't want to be disappointed in ourselves. We should hope to be able to say proudly to the supernova, that angel of death, "Hello supernova, we have been expecting you, we know all about you, because in our schools we teach science and not creationism, and so we have been expecting you, everywhere everyone has been expecting you, except Texas. And we would like to say, supernova, in the moment before we are returned by your protean fire to our previous inchoate state, clouds of incandescent atomic vapor, we'd like to declare that we have tried our best and worked hard to make a good andjust and free and peaceful world, a world that is better for our having been here, at least we believe it is."

Tony Kushner is the author of 'Angels in America' (Theater Communications Group, 2003) and 'Homebody/Kabul' (Theater Communications Group, 2002). His newest book is 'Save Your Democratic Citizen Soul' (New Press, 2003). This essay is adapted from his talks at Chicago's Columbia College and New York's Cooper Union.

APOLOGIA PRO VITA MEA

Life as I now know it has little time for journaling in my own blogs, reading other people's blogs, doing the laundry, walking the dog, sleeping, cooking real food.  The classes I'm teaching at Del Tech are very time-consuming, and I am enjoying them very much this semester.  We have changed texts in two of the classes, and that has made things so much better.  But working with the beginning level classes on Reading and Writing is just totally exhausting - I'm using every mental and physical resource I have or know. 

Political activity continues, and will pick up as we get even nearer to the Big Day.  I've signed up for phone banks, which will start next month.  We're even going to be calling into nearby swing states, mainly Pennsylvania, as well as calling folks here in Delaware.  To prove to you that I really am certifiably nuts, I'll be starting a second job next Monday.  My classes at the college are all in the mornings, I'm finished by 12:30 with actual teaching.  There's always other stuff of course, I didn't leave campus til almost 3 p.m. today - working with the tutoring center and a student to get her signed up for much-needed help, giving a make-up test to another student who missed the test because of a sick child - so, yeah, other stuff. 

But...when Joe, another ESL teacher, put out the call for a teacher to help in an afterschool program that he heads - I decided to sign up.  It's a homework help program for Hispanic elementary and middle-school kids - homework help and academic enrichment.  I'll be working with the older kids every afternoon for three hours.  Some of it will be ESL, some will be Social Sciences, Math, English, etc.

Joe's goal for the program is to give these kids the same kind of help that other kids may get at home from parents who can read and write the English language.  Most of the parents of these young students had rudimentary educations in their own languages in their own countries  (many of our Latinos in this county are from Guatemala, a country so long devastated by war, revolution, poverty,  that education was not a priority, especially in the rural areas these people have fled),  and are doing well if they can manage to hold their own just speaking English for work and survival.  One of the great goals for many of my adult students is attaining the ability to help their own kids with their homework.  Until that time, we're over at First State Community Action in La Casita working to help those kids after school until they go home for dinner.  There are already so many signed up for the program that there will have to be two shifts.  Two groups of kids, coming and going, each group getting only an hour and a half of help.  I'm looking forward to this, although I know it will not be an easy gig.  I've worked in similar programs before, and know it's often a matter of running in place.  They don't have the federal grant money yet, so who know when I'll even get paid.  Life in these times.  Trillions for war, a trickle for children in need.

All of which is to say - if I don't post the sort of deeply thought-out, intelligently researched political or environmental entries that my inner self would love to have time to write, please don't give up on me.  I know it's a cop-out to just cut and paste something someone else has written, but it's often the only thing I can do.  And I hope that sharing some of the stuff I read or find with you is of some use. And so I give you, The War President:

 
And an article to go with it.

 

 

 

AGAIN WITH THE WHALES

Several entries back I posted about the problems our Navy's underwater sonar is causing various species of whales - in that post it was the melonheaded whales.  Here is a simple action you can take to send a letter over your name to the Secretary of the Navy asking that the Navy avoid areas that are known breeding and feeding grounds for the whales.  This letter comes from the Biogems Defenders section of the NRDC, an organization I've often written about here.

I'm at a real low point currently, election-wise.  Went to a meeting last night, where we had encouraged "undecided" voters to come and share their concerns, ask their questions about the Kerry campaign.  I left the evening wanting to slit my throat.  Although I have to say, the FOOD was good.  It was catered by one of the top restaurants at the beach.  Anyway, the whining and kvetching, the expecting to be spoonfed all information, the utter laziness of people who seem never to have heard of the Internet, or newspapers, or even of the amazing idea of thinking for themselves. 

Is the "October surprise" getting closer with every breath we take?  Are all these goddamn polls that show Dubya ahead by mulitple points real?  Do they matter?  Am I going to have to move to Costa Rica?  Do we truly deserve the leaders we get?  Can this country be collectively that gullible and stupid?  Then, yes, it's time to move to Costa Rica.  Though I'd have to leave a 23 year relationship to do it.  G says we have to stay here and fight on.  sigh.

Finished with the college voter registration drive, continuing to work on registering any citizens within our local Hispanic population, and registering folks at the beach on the weekends.  Signed up for phone banks and for driving people to the polls on Election Day.  Doing everything I can, no matter how hopeless I feel.  Not slitting my throat just yet.

SEPTEMBER 11, 2004

Today I slept until 1 p.m., something I haven't done since undergraduate school, I think.  In part this was because I was so worn out from a hectic week, not just of teaching, but of many things of an extracurricular nature.  As soon as I woke up I realized it was also because of the date, one I was subconsciously avoiding.  An AP article I read recently here on AOL about the people who had jumped from the WTC tower upper floors has haunted me badly, brought it all back quite vividly to my mind. 

The following letter from Sam Hamill, founder of PoetsAgainstTheWar.org, was waiting for me as soon as I opened my emailbox.  I post it here in its entirety because it is the best statement of our position in the world today that I have yet read.  It is a tremendously moving essay, from the perspective of a poet.  Please read it.  I believe in the power of poetry in the same way that I, a person without a religion, believe in the power of prayer. It is a spiritual force that permeates us all, that heals and helps unite the human spirit in all that is good about that spirit.  Visit Poets Against the War, donate to this cause if you can, in any way.  Help this monumental effort survive, help it defeat the evil that has been unleashed by war, hatred, division, bigotry, lack of understanding. Send this letter to anyone you may know who is yet "undecided" in their choice of presidential candidate.

An Open Letter on 9/11 from Sam Hamill

September 11, 2004

"Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
—George H. W. Bush, 1998


As of today, the casualty count exceeds 1,000 Americans and something in the neighborhood of 30,000 Iraqi civilians killed. The war that George W. Bush said Iraqi oil would pay for has now cost us over $200 billion and that debt grows exponentially every day. The Bushies are still trying to tie Iraq to September 11 and the "war on terrorism" that even Bush admits will never be won. The Republican party has treated the U. S. A. to a display of fear- and hate-mongering that hasn’t been seen since the days of Joe McCarthy. Bin Laden is alive the numbers of his comrades have grown exponentially.

No one, of course, believed for a second that a few thousand American poets could stop this or any other war. But we have entered our sincere pleas at this tribunal of all humanity, and history will ask just how much better off the world would be today had Shelley’s "unacknowledged legislators" been heard by this deaf-eared administration. What can we do but make our gift? And if, as Katha Pollitt truthfully observes in her elegant poem, we often take on a tone of moral superiority, must we admit it, while realizing nevertheless that in matters of nations at war, silence is a crime. We must resist. We must find our lives in words.

No doubt most of the world will pause for a moment this day to remember the horrors and tragedies and eventually heroism of September 11, 2001. And many people all over the world will also reflect on the horrors in Spain and in Russia and in the Sudan and elsewhere; and we will reflect of the inevitable tragedies of empire-building and the long history of bloody crusades undertaken by the government of the U.S.A. We have bombed more than forty countries since the end of World War II. Our history is a long sad litany of almost perpetual warfare, and when we were not ourselves waging war, we were the world’s great supplier of arms. We have repeatedly supported dictators like Manuel Noriega in Panama and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, both put in power by the CIA. How could there not be deep-seated resentment toward such a dictatorial superpower? What message does it send to independent-minded Iraqis when the two most powerful political leaders in their country both have long CIA ties?

Democracy is not a government that can be imposed. We are not a democracy. If we were, Al Gore would be president, and it’s utterlyimplausible that wewould be floundering in the quagmire we presently face at home and abroad. Our air would be cleaner, our water less polluted. And there would have been far fewer children "left behind." It was the spirit of democracy that inspired the Dr. Kings, the Gandhis, and yes, poets like Whitman, Dickinson, and Hughes (and the generations who follow in the footsteps), to make their commitments to ideals. It is a poet’s business to dream as much as it is a politician’s to glad-hand and grin. But a poet’s dreams are not just fleeting, superficial things. They are the very stuff of what arises from within as we attend with great care and consideration that which informs us from without. The conscious needs the subconscious just as the rational depends on the irrational: each to define itself. Chuang Tzu dreamed he was a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu and a great philosophy was born.

As we dream of a safer, saner world, we must dare to stand beside our few well-chosen words. We must never fail to correct those who insist that poets are merely dreamers: while freedom and democracy are abstract ideals, we all inch one step closer one step at a time, and artists are as important in that struggle (and in every other) as anyone else. Poetry has entirely practical uses. Who knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of poems have been written about September 11? Each was necessary. Each was a vital communication.

In Chile, September 11 is the anniversary of the demise—authored by the CIA— of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. When Pinochet’s troops stormed into Pablo Neruda’s house, the poet declared, "The only weapons here are words."

Those who suffered as a consequence of the Attica prison riots remember September 11, too. We have been victims and we have been executioners. We can do better.

There are presently over 16,000 poems at poetsagainsthewar.org —the largest single-theme anthology ever compiled. Is this to be our final statement? Or is there a lot more work we all agree needs to be addressed? The war most of us oppose is not merely the war in Iraq, but Bush’s plan to rewrite our Constitution and, ultimately, to dominate the world.I hope everyone will join us in our efforts to free our nation of this neo-fascist administration. Yes, "neo-fascist" sounds harsh, but it was Mussolini who defined "the perfection of fascism" as "the marriage of the corporation and the state." Government by Halliburton, for Conoco? Is that not what’s at stake? We have no anti-war candidate. But almost any candidate would be an improvement over the mendacious, swaggering
international bully presently occupying public housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Do not forget for a second that Iraq had no connection to September 11. And September 11 happened on George Bush’s watch despite an August memorandum and many other warning signs.

September 11 is a day that lives in infamy in many ways. When I remember the horrors visited upon the people of New York City, I think of the dreams that perished, foremost among them the shared dream of a peaceful world. Peace can be made only by a commitment to an ideal presented and clarified in a few well-chosen words. Our poetry will remember the shock, the suffering, and the heroism of those days, and also the candles, the flowers, and the continued pleas to Bush from the people of New York City: "Please don’t wage war!" I think of all those connected with the devastation at the Pentagon, the children, grandchildren, friends, who are often left out of the equation because the image of the crumbling towers in a majestic city is so indelibly incomprehensible.

This is not merely a referendum on Iraq. Iraq is only the symptom. The disease is the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their Project for a New American Century. It is positively Orwellian. And indeed, what’s at stake is likely to be the future of the world: from endless war to environmental disaster, from the destruction of the middle class to the impoverishment of our constitutional rights, this is the most dangerous, threatening administration in American history. One in three citizens has no faith in the election system itself already, in part because of Bush’s successful theft of the 2000 election.

We must all work diligently for a fair and open election, and for the election of John Kerry and John Edwards. The very fundamentals of our democracy are at risk.

We presently connect with like-minded poets’ organizations in dozens of countries. There is important work we can continue to do in conjunction with poets around the world. I believe it is our duty to join with fellow poets, to listen closely, and to join with them in times of need. But to do so, we must address one major issue immediately: If we are to continue past the November election, we must change our name (something like "Poets for Humanity"?) and establisha democratic leadership and enlist new volunteers. We who founded this organization—and the volunteers who have given so very much—are all exhausted. The international networks are mostly already in place, and we have only to make our organization better organized, more democratic, and more efficient.

If we sustain the organization, there will have to be a small annual fee. We still have about $2000 in debt. A small member fee would allow for web site updating and expansion and perhaps allow us to sponsor a few activities. Anyone knowledgeable and interested in working on organizational transition should contact us. Unless this is accomplished, we shall have no choice but to bid sayonara and go in peace.

Please visit poetsaginstthewar.org for update and to post any
scheduled readings or related activities.


Yours,

Sam Hamill

EXTEND THE ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN

On the same subject as the previous post - if/when you get tired of hitting the White House comment line's redial button, you want to take some other action - try this link, from the Violence Policy Center.  They will send a letter to Bush, your senators and congresspeople, it's totally easy and fast.  I don't know how this snuck up on me - I've signed the petition that the NRA Blacklist people (do you know them?  great blacklist to be on, in decidedly good company. the site is worth a visit for the music alone.  makes me laugh every time.  through my tears.) put out some time ago. But nothing beats personal voicing of opinion from a voter.  The NRA certainly knows this.

PHONE THE ASSAULT PRESIDENT - NOW!

Alas, this is easier said than done - every political group I belong to has emailed me asking me to do this.  So all the rest of the commie pinko liberal world that doesn't care to ever see a repetition of the Columbine shootings is in a queue waiting to get thru to the White House comment line.  Which is actually a very good thing. Not much time left til 5 p.m., get on your phone and try to get a message thru.  You could also keep trying again tomorrow - the vote is on Monday.

ACTION ALERT:
Call The President to Save the Assault Weapons Ban

National AWB Call-in Day
Today, September 9, 2004, 9am-5pm ET

Call the White House: 202-456-1111
or if this is busy try 202-456-1414

Asked about the growing momentum to renew the Assault Weapons Ban yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said: "I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire."

He lied, and he knows it. Surveys show nearly 80 percent of Americans want it renewed.

Tell President Bush what the will of the American people really is.

Call the White House today to demand that President Bush stop playing election- year politics with the Assault Weapons Ban. Unless action is taken, the ban will expire on Monday, September 13. When he first ran for the White House, President Bush pledged to support the Assault Weapons Ban, saying "It makes no sense for assault weapons to be around our society." But now he is blocking the renewal.

Here's what to do:

Call the White House Comment Line -- 202-456-1111 -- between the hours of 9am and 5pm ET (6am-2pm PT).

If you get a busy signal try the White House Operator -- 202-456-1414 -- and tell them that you have a message for President Bush.

Tell President Bush to follow through on his campaign pledge to support the Assault Weapons Ban. Tell him every major law enforcement group supports renewing the ban.

Thanks for your support,

stoptheNRA.com

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"AN ESPECIALLY MEANINGFUL PICTURE"

Here's Señor Scalzi's current weekend assignment.  An easy one, because he's in Boston, and it's Labor Day Weekend and we're all recovering from a year of laboring, aren't we?  So, I'm gonna do the easy assignment right here in my usually-more-political blog.  A relief from all the horror of the past week:  the Russian school hostage situation, which has devastated my heart;  the political polls, the pictures of BushCo everywhere. 

Weekend Assignment 22: Got a photo you really love? Show it and tell us why. It'd be nice if the photo was one you haven't shown on your site before, but doing a repeat of an especially meaningful picture is groovy too.

This is a picture of G's elder son E, and his own little son, soon after Ben came home from the hospital.  It's an old picture, Ben entered kindergarten this year, but still one of the most cherished we have of the two of them.  The love and exhaustion in E's face, his hand on Ben's neck, how beautiful they both are - for these reasons we love this picture.  I consider both of G's sons to be my sons too, as I entered the family early in their teenage years; endured the drama and the trauma of those years, then enjoyed the delightful metamorphosis they underwent in college and thereafter. Now both of the guys are professionals, one (this one) a writer and publicist, the other an architect, husbands and fathers, pillars of their communities, delightful human beings.  Furthermore, as you can see, E remains a Red Sox fan, though he's moved far away from Boston.

These guys and their children now are sources of great joy - we hope soon to move closer to them, to be able to spend our Elder years enjoying being Grand-mothers.

NO, MELONHEAD IS NOT TODAY'S NAME FOR THE PRESIDENT

Back in early July a gang of these critters swam into shallow waters in Hanalei Bay, off the island of Kaui.  They are normally deep-water whales, and this activity was distinctly abnormal.  At the time it happened, the Navy denied using their underwater sonar close to the time the animals were first sighted.  Now, however, the truth has surfaced, like a submarine emerging from murky waters.  This story was in both The Boston Globe and The Washington Post in the past two days, it's the same story, by the same reporter.

Navy Sonar Used Before Whales Rushed Hawaiian Shore

8/31/2004
Copyright 2004 washingtonpost.com

The Navy has acknowledged that vessels on maneuver off Hawaii last month used their sonar periodically in the 20 hours before a large pod of melon-headed whales unexpectedly came to shore in the area. The acknowledgement added to an already contentious debate over whether the sound from sonar has been causing marine mammals to strand.

Navy officials said that a review of the July 3 incident indicates that two ships turned on their sonar between 6:45 and 7:10 a.m., by most accounts just before the unusual movement of almost 200 deep-water whales to the shoreline of a Kauai bay. The Navy had said earlier that no sonar was used until more than 90 minutes later, well after the animals came ashore.

Lt. Cmdr. Greg Geisen, the Navy spokesman responsible for information about the maneuver, said a Navy review of the incident still concluded that the ships were either too far from the whales or were using the sonar at the wrong time to cause the mass movement.

"There is no evidence of a relationship here between the sonar use and the whale behavior," he said.

But the newly released information from Geisen and other Navy officials -- that the ships were testing their sonar in preparation for the maneuver on the day before the whales came ashore, and early on the morning of the near-stranding -- has caused some observers to question that conclusion.

"Every time the Navy changes its story, it reduces its credibility on this issue," said Cara Horowitz, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has sued the Navy over a related sonar issue. "The Navy would be better off spending more time developing commonsense ways to protect whales from sonar and less time denying a connection that is unfortunately been repeatedly shown."

Officials at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is looking into the incident, said it remains uncertain what caused the near-stranding.

"At this point, we still know very little about what might have made those whales behave so unusually," said Donna Wieting, chief of the Marine Mammal Conservation Division of NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service.

"But saying that sonar played no role might be a premature determination," she said. "Even if we can't establish a clear cause and effect, we're having these coincidences [of unusual and sometimes deadly] marine mammal behavior around sonar, and we have to ask why."

Some marine mammals come to shore naturally, because they are following a sick lead animal or trying to avoid predators and such natural occurrences as potentially harmful red tides. Melon-headed whales are relatively small and highly social animals that normally live in deep waters, at least 15 miles from shore. Wildlife officials said it is highly unusual for such a large number of them to come to shore as they did on July 3, although there is one report of a similar mass movement in the 1850s.

The new Navy information about when the sonar was used off Hawaii was first made public in late July, at a meeting of the federal Marine Mammal Commission focused on how to limit the effects of ocean noise on whales and other sea creatures. Rear Adm. Steven Tomaszeski updated the information then, and said the Navy had concluded there was no connection between the sonar use and the unusual whale behavior.

He and Geisen said the July 2 sonar use could not have caused the whales to head into Hanalei Bay because the ships -- four Japanese and two American -- were too far away when the equipment was used. Geisen also said the Navy first learned of the stranding from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) at 5:30 a.m. on July 3, and not between 7 and 7:30 a.m., as earlier reported, making it impossible for the 6:45 to 7:10 a.m. sonar usage to have harmed the whales.

Wieting of NMFS said, however, that her office has received no reports of a 5:30 sighting, and still believes the whales were first seen after 7 a.m.

Navy officials are adamant about the need for sonar training. They say there is a substantial and growing threat from "quiet" diesel submarines that could menace the United States from coastal waters, and that only active sonar use can detect them. The Navy is planning a sonar training ground in the Atlantic Ocean, off the Carolinas.

Residents and government officials worked throughout July 3 to steer the whales back to open water, and all made it except one newborn calf that died of starvation. Officials say that some of the animals may have died at sea without a trace.

The Hawaii incident is the third significant one involving sonar and marine mammal strandings near the United States since 2000. The stranding of 17 whales of various kinds off the Bahamas in 2000, which resulted in the death of at least six of them, occurred during a major Navy maneuver. Navy officials at first said there was no connection between their exercise and the stranding, but later acknowledged that the loud sound from the sonar had caused the animals to flee ashore.

Another incident occurred off the coast of Washington state last year, where harbor porpoises unexpectedly came ashore after a sonar exercise. The Navy concluded that there was no connection between the two, but NOAA is still reviewing the incident.

The International Whaling Commission said in a report last month that there is "compelling evidence" that Navy sonar is harming some species of whales, but Navy officials dismissed the conclusion as "unscientific."

For more news, or to subscribe to the newspaper, please visit http://www.washingtonpost.com

washingtonpost.com Marc Kaufman

                               **********************************************

Here's the story, from back in early July, from the Honolulu Star Bulletin:

200 small whales linger
in Kauai’s Hanalei Bay

By Laurie Au
lau@starbulletin.com

About 200 melon-headed whales entered Hanalei Bay on Kauai yesterday morning and stayed into the night in what biologists said was unusual behavior.

The whales, swimming about 100 yards offshore, did not appear to be in distress and did not beach themselves.

"For them to be near shore is extremely uncommon," said Brad Ryon, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration marine biologist. "They usually stay away from the shoreline."

Lifeguards at Hanalei Bay said the melon-headed whales were first spotted at the east end of the bay near a popular surfing spot called Pine Trees at 7:30 a.m. yesterday.

The whales stayed tightly packed together all day, sometimes becoming quite active and sometimes just slowly circling. They made no attempt to swim toward the beach, nor did they make any effort to swim toward the open mouth of the bay, the lifeguards said.

"The big mystery is figuring out why they came into the bay," Ryon said.

Sounds like some pretty confused whales, huh?  And sonar couldn't possibly have had ANYTHING to do with it, right?  For lots more information on whales, things humans do to disturb them, including lots of troubling information about sonar, go here and read up. I've been following this through NRDC for about a year now.  Remember the Star Trek when they came back to save the whales?  It may just have to actually happen.

REASSURING WORDS FROM DUANE

Those of you who are fans of fdtate's journal, Progressive Musings, have noticed that he's been MIA for a long time again.  I just received this reassuring email from him to let us know he's alive, presumably well, and that his computer got fried by the random hand of fate in the form of a lightning strike.  He knows I'm a Jewish mother at heart  (and yes, I've left at least one worried message on his journal since he's been gone, and restrained myself from leaving others.  others of my ilk have done the same.)  and sent this to keep my forehead from wrinkling any worse than it already is.  We look forward to the fixing of his motherboard.

Here follows Duane's email:

Hey Mary Ellen,

Hope all is going well.  Hope things are going fine in your efforts to overthrow King George.  I've been watching some of the RNC.  Just a little.  I can only take so much bullshit at one time.
This is just a note to let you know I'm still alive.  I know how much you worry.  My computer died on me.  When the remnants of Hurricane Bonnie came through Chattanooga we had the thunderstorm from Hell.  It was like being in an artillery barrage.  Unfortunately, my son was on the computer at the time and my motherboard now seems to be fried.  I don't know when I'll be able to get my computer fixed, but hope it's soon.  I'm writing you now on a computer at my local library.  If anyone in Journalland asks, please let them know what's going on.  I was going to try to leave a message for everyone on my journal, but it won't let me access it for some reason. 

Keep up the good fight!
Duane