If you only have time for one source of information on the Middle East, this should be it:

http://www.juancole.com/

Spring is here

Spring has sprung with a beach full of sand dollars and a park full of mating chickadees I kid you not. About a dozen baby house finches there too, little miniatures and busy busy busy.
Since I won’t be having any spring sex, spring cleaning will have to do. Followed by an attempt at tomatillo pork.

Kristen

$1500 an hour? Does she bring animals or something? I don't get it....

Josie

Allow me to introduce Josie Stolp Kennedy, my mother Jean’s mother. Josie was born 9/2/1891 in Cowley County, Kansas, the daughter of Ellen May Stolp and, well – don’t ask. Later Ellen married Oliver Crum (which is why she is referred to as Grandma Crum, though she is actually our great grandmother), a farmer, who was willing to install both and her b*** daughter as virtual slaves on his farm. Making this story even more pitiful - little Josie contracted an eye infection and became quite blind.
Eventually, Ellen took her daughter and left Kansas and the evil Mr. Crum, settling in Seattle, Washington, where Josie was trained as a seamstress (a popular profession among the blind).
Eventually Josie regained her eyesight and in July of 1918 married Richard Edward Kennedy, a musician and all around swell guy, though his eyesight wasn’t too good.

Happy VD To All My Sweet Babboos

Last Tango in New York

HEATH LEDGER - LEDGER APARTMENT BACK UP FOR RENT

The apartment HEATH LEDGER died in has been put back on New York's rental market. Three weeks after the actor was found dead in his bed after accidentally overdosing on prescription drugs, the Broome Street, Soho pad he had rented since September (07) is being offered to New Yorkers with deep pockets. The vast apartment is 10 times the size of many Manhattan homes, with 4,400 square feet of floor space; three bedrooms; two and a half bathrooms; an office; laundry room; kitchen and balcony. Ledger was paying a reported $24,000 (GBP12,000) a month in rent - so prospective new renters will need to be high earners. But real estate agents are confident it will be snapped up soon. One broker tells the New York Post, "You don't wait around in a hot rental market like this. As ghoulish as it sounds, people will rent that place in a heartbeat, especially when the vacancy rate is below one per cent."
07/02/2008 16:22 -- Contactmusic.com

Which raises the following questions: Couldn't they wait until he was in his grave? How much is a one-bedroom apartment in New York? Do the leftover drugs come with it????

Notes on Herd Thinning

Bye Bye to Mittens, who has dropped out of the race in order to keep the terrorists from killing us. Actually, since Edwards dropped out of the race Mittens no longer takes any joy in having his hair done, and going to the mirror for donations evokes a sadness past bearing. His children also wished to spare him the pain of spending more of their inheritance.
This leaves McCain assuming the position and preparing to brownnose Dobson, DeLay, Coulter et al. Having spent 8 years bending over for Cheney and Bush, he is well schooled in the task. Nevertheless, he can count on a certain amount of swiftboating from his own. The big issue is – who will he choose to be his VP (and the next President when he drops dead)?
The search for a reason to vote at all without becoming physically sick continues. My current rationalization goes like this: I would rather vote for a Republican pretending to be a Democrat than vote for a whack job posing as a Republican.

But take heart! There’s always Goldwater/Miller!

Super Tuesday, or so they say...

So there I was – ready to fill in my absentee ballot. My first love, Kucinich, had dropped out of the race, but I always thought Richardson was pretty hot, so that wasn’t a problem. Then Richardson dropped out so he could spend more time growing a beard, and I had to settle for Edwards, which was fine; I could do this and still look at myself in the mirror in the morning. Then Edwards took a powder, leaving me to fall back on sheer principle and vote for the person I actually really agreed with on the issues. And that is how I ended up dancing with the ugly guy, Mike Gravel. But I don’t know that I want to look at him in the mirror in the morning…

Thanks to #1 Sis for suggesting Isabelle Allende’s Ines of My Soul and My Invented Country. Then I had to go back and re-read House of Spirits which lead to Daughter of Fortune. It’s a good thing the California EDD is paying me to stay home and read, which was always my major career goal.

At my age one cannot waste too much time nurturing a broken heart, so after Richardson left me I looked for and immediately found my transition crush –Javier Bardem. Ok, that sounds kind of depraved (No Country for Old Men). For a less sicko (but arguably still a trifle disturbed) character, see him in The Sea Within. However, reviews of Love in the Time of Cholera are not encouraging.

Happy New Years -- 2008

What a beautiful New Years Morning. Woke up to the sound of a solo-playing Auld Lang Syne on a midnight otherwise soundless, still and -- dark! The power had gone out, seemingly simultaneously, which made the music omnipresent and pure. Pretty cool.

This AM the sun was not only shining -- it was actually putting out the heat. The park had bluebirds and the vultures were sitting in the tree tops, wings out to capture the solar energy. I picked out about 10 perfect sanddollars, stuck a feather in my hat and felt like Crazy Jane. No one offered me food or money, but no one confiscated the perfect size firewood I collected on the beach.

A Little Light Reading

According to NPR, the 99% Moslem country of Turkey really goes for Christmas, or at least the trappings thereof– the Santas and singing and decorations. I thought C would get a kick out of this, but she gave me one of those looks. I don’t think I’ll tell her about Beijing.
Karen Fowler – The Jane Austen Book Club. Nice little read with a nice little conceit: relating each book discussed to the life of a member of the club. Usually this involves more than a bit of a stretch (read artifice, read cliché, read lack of nuance). Ok, not exactly “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” but a nice break…
Saw Waitress on DVD; pleasant enough in a head full of cotton candy genre kind of way. Sort of like plowing through the entire Kathy Reich mystery series with the rationale that everyone else reads this crap, why can’t I? - but was relieved when I reached the last Reich. (I rest my case.)

Ol' Kel in Ol' Mexico

The Cast: #4 (Kelly) #4a (Kevin) #4b (Robin) #2 (MissKG). Cameraman: #3 (Chris)

The Place: El Sabado

The Time: October, 2007

The Menu: Jugo, coffee, hot chocolate, beer, tequila, Mole, Pozole, Menudo, Bacon, Sausage, eggs, empanadas, fruit, queso, tequila, beer, tequila.

The Review: 5 Stars

The Girls' Xmas Card to The Chairman.

Merry Christmas to General Ed Leslie of the Budgie Liberation Army of God, even though you’ve done a crappy job of liberating anything, feathered or otherwise.





A donation has been made in your name to the Drew Peterson Defense Fund.

— Mazie & Stella

Are these birds a couple of sick fucks or what?

Entertainment

If you're planning on seeing Lions for Lambs, bring a pillow. Very boring; C and I walked out maybe halfway through.

At the tender age of whatever, I have finally read War & Peace. This was accomplished by skipping all of the boring parts and only reading the soap opera. Short on sex, high on epiphinies. Cheat notes say that Tolstoy's characters are always becoming. A lot of them are busy becoming dead.

Good Morning

Paul Krugman on "Islamofacism":
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html?hp


My Birds on Drugs:

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

Farewell to Dennis Hastert, resigning his House seat so he can spend more time with his refrigerator.

Bye Bye

Those who do not learn from history include just about everybody...

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows...We are today not far from disaster.

-- T.E. Lawrence, in the Sunday Times, August 1920.

Quote of the Day*

"Knowing that George W. Bush is our nation's leader is not unlike knowing that Jeffrey Dahmer's your brother..." -- The Rude Pundit


*If you think you are really going to get a new quote every day, you haven't been reading this blog....

Gore and Me

Though he admired the magazine, it was clear from early on that his short stories did not meet the moral standards or fit the literary mold The New Yorker embodied. It “was a marvelous support group of middlebrow writers called John like Cheever and Updike,” Vidal observed. –Gore Vidal: A Biography – Fred Kaplan

Slogging through this biography, wishing I liked it more. Kaplan has done a tremendous amount of research, but could benefit from some judicious editing – the book is vastly overpopulated. Total indexing items under W: 52. Of these 50 are people, comprising 248 page references.

To be fair, all of Vidal’s literary works are indexed under “Vidal, Gore – writings of (fiction), “Vidal, Gore – writings of (nonfiction), “Vidal, Gore – writings of (plays, screenplays, and teleplays). Thus Julian would not be indexed under “J” (14 entries, Felix Jackson to Judith Jones, all people).

Though I do enjoy the references by Vidal and friends to Anais Nin as “stupid,”
55 pages (references to) are more than enough. I was sick of her after two.

Nice news from Riverbend

Baghdad Burning
... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...
Thursday, September 06, 2007
>Leaving Home...Two months ago, the suitcases were packed. My lone, large suitcase sat in my bedroom for nearly six weeks, so full of clothes and personal items, that it took me, E. and our six year old neighbor to zip it closed.Packing that suitcase was one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do. It was Mission Impossible: Your mission, R., should you choose to accept it is to go through the items you’ve accumulated over nearly three decades and decide which ones you cannot do without. The difficulty of your mission, R., is that you must contain these items in a space totaling 1 m by 0.7 m by 0.4 m. This, of course, includes the clothes you will be wearing for the next months, as well as any personal memorabilia- photos, diaries, stuffed animals, CDs and the like. I packed and unpacked it four times. Each time I unpacked it, I swore I’d eliminate some of the items that were not absolutely necessary. Each time I packed it again, I would add more ‘stuff’ than the time before. E. finally came in a month and a half later and insisted we zip up the bag so I wouldn’t be tempted to update its contents constantly.The decision that we would each take one suitcase was made by my father. He took one look at the box of assorted memories we were beginning to prepare and it was final: Four large identical suitcases were purchased- one for each member of the family and a fifth smaller one was dug out of a closet for the documentation we’d collectively need- graduation certificates, personal identification papers, etc.We waited… and waited… and waited. It was decided we would leave mid to late June- examinations would be over and as we were planning to leave with my aunt and her two children- that was the time considered most convenient for all involved. The day we finally appointed as THE DAY, we woke up to an explosion not 2 km away and a curfew. The trip was postponed a week. The night before we were scheduled to travel, the driver who owned the GMC that would take us to the border excused himself from the trip- his brother had been killed in a shooting. Once again, it was postponed.There was one point, during the final days of June, where I simply sat on my packed suitcase and cried. By early July, I was convinced we would never leave. I was sure the Iraqi border was as far away, for me, as the borders of Alaska. It had taken us well over two months to decide to leave by car instead of by plane. It had taken us yet another month to settle on Syria as opposed to Jordan. How long would it take us to reschedule leaving?It happened almost overnight. My aunt called with the exciting news that one of her neighbors was going to leave for Syria in 48 hours because their son was being threatened and they wanted another family on the road with them in another car- like gazelles in the jungle, it’s safer to travel in groups. It was a flurry of activity for two days. We checked to make sure everything we could possibly need was prepared and packed. We arranged for a distant cousin of my moms who was to stay in our house with his family to come the night before we left (we can’t leave the house empty because someone might take it).It was a tearful farewell as we left the house. One of my other aunts and an uncle came to say goodbye the morning of the trip. It was a solemn morning and I’d been preparing myself for the last two days not to cry. You won’t cry, I kept saying, because you’re coming back. You won’t cry because it’s just a little trip like the ones you used to take to Mosul or Basrah before the war. In spite of my assurances to myself of a safe and happy return, I spent several hours before leaving with a huge lump lodged firmly in my throat. My eyes burned and my nose ran in spite of me. I told myself it was an allergy.We didn’t sleep the night before we had to leave because there seemed to be so many little things to do… It helped that there was no electricity at all- the area generator wasn’t working and ‘national electricity’ was hopeless. There just wasn’t time to sleep.The last few hours in the house were a blur. It was time to go and I went from room to room saying goodbye to everything. I said goodbye to my desk- the one I’d used all through high school and college. I said goodbye to the curtains and the bed and the couch. I said goodbye to the armchair E. and I broke when we were younger. I said goodbye to the big table over which we’d gathered for meals and to do homework. I said goodbye to the ghosts of the framed pictures that once hung on the walls, because the pictures have long since been taken down and stored away- but I knew just what hung where. I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over- the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away.I knew then as I know now that these were all just items- people are so much more important. Still, a house is like a museum in that it tells a certain history. You look at a cup or stuffed toy and a chapter of memories opens up before your very eyes. It suddenly hit me that I wanted to leave so much less than I thought I did.Six AM finally came. The GMC waited outside while we gathered the necessities- a thermos of hot tea, biscuits, juice, olives (olives?!) which my dad insisted we take with us in the car, etc. My aunt and uncle watched us sorrowfully. There’s no other word to describe it. It was the same look I got in my eyes when I watched other relatives and friends prepare to leave. It was a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, tinged with anger. Why did the good people have to go?I cried as we left- in spite of promises not to. The aunt cried… the uncle cried. My parents tried to be stoic but there were tears in their voices as they said their goodbyes. The worst part is saying goodbye and wondering if you’re ever going to see these people again. My uncle tightened the shawl I’d thrown over my hair and advised me firmly to ‘keep it on until you get to the border’. The aunt rushed out behind us as the car pulled out of the garage and dumped a bowl of water on the ground, which is a tradition- its to wish the travelers a safe return… eventually.The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye-contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves.The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye-contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves.Syria is the only country, other than Jordan, that was allowing people in without a visa. The Jordanians are being horrible with refugees. Families risk being turned back at the Jordanian border, or denied entry at Amman Airport. It’s too high a risk for most families.We waited for hours, in spite of the fact that the driver we were with had ‘connections’, which meant he’d been to Syria and back so many times, he knew all the right people to bribe for a safe passage through the borders. I sat nervously at the border. The tears had stopped about an hour after we’d left Baghdad. Just seeing the dirty streets, the ruins of buildings and houses, the smoke-filled horizon all helped me realize how fortunate I was to have a chance for something safer.By the time we were out of Baghdad, my heart was no longer aching as it had been while we were still leaving it. The cars around us on the border were making me nervous. I hated being in the middle of so many possibly explosive vehicles. A part of me wanted to study the faces of the people around me, mostly families, and the other part of me, the one that’s been trained to stay out of trouble the last four years, told me to keep my eyes to myself- it was almost over.It was finally our turn. I sat stiffly in the car and waited as money passed hands; our passports were looked over and finally stamped. We were ushered along and the driver smiled with satisfaction, “It’s been an easy trip, Alhamdulillah,” he said cheerfully.As we crossed the border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began again. The car was silent except for the prattling of the driver who was telling us stories of escapades he had while crossing the border. I sneaked a look at my mother sitting beside me and her tears were flowing as well. There was simply nothing to say as we left Iraq. I wanted to sob, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby. I didn’t want the driver to think I was ungrateful for the chance to leave what had become a hellish place over the last four and a half years.The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness… How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death?How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and… peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe- even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions.I wonder at how the windows don’t rattle as the planes pass overhead. I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I’m trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest…How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?