Category: Current Affairs

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When Comment Is Superfluous

From the Anchorage Daily News:

After 300 Iraq missions, soldier killed by moose

Spc. Stephen Cavanaugh survived Iraq, but at a cost. For a full year, bullets whizzed past his head and bombs exploded around him.

When he returned to Fort Richardson in March, he had brain trauma from the many explosions and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, said his father, also named Stephen Cavanaugh.

Cavanaugh, who deployed to Iraq with the 98th Maintenance Company, was still trying to heal when his car hit a moose on the Seward Highway in South Anchorage last weekend. He slipped into a coma. His family took him off life support Thursday.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Emeryville mayor driving in rain kills guard crossing street

A vehicle driven by Emeryville’s new mayor struck and killed a security guard crossing the street after the veteran city official left a community meeting about a proposed pedestrian and bicycle bridge nearby, police said Friday.

Mayor Ken Bukowski, 56, was driving his SUV in the rain about 9 p.m. Thursday on the 5300 block of Hollis Street when he hit Michael Smela, 56, of Oakley, a retired police officer working as a security guard for drugmaker Novartis, authorities said. Novartis has a plant nearby and was host of the meeting.

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Season of Light

I put up a bunch of Christmas lights today, although I need another extension cord to light them all. I had spent all the good daylight hours puzzling out whom were the essential Irish American writers of the ’20s and ’30s (two are essential: Eugene O’Neill and James T. Farrell; Margaret Mitchell actually gets honorable mention; and F. Scott Fitzgerald and John O’Hara add some glitter, but you would never have known they came from Irish backgrounds from their writing; don’t consider this an exhaustive list ). So it was dark by the time I got around to the lights. I don’t want to think about how many strings there are along the eves and the little trellis on top of the driveway gate and on the hedge along the driveway. But enough that I think they’ll make the electric meter spin a little faster. And that spinning will make me think on and off again about how our merry light display and the ones around the neighborhood (and around your neighborhood as well) are all part of this warming equation that could make the North Pole untenable for future Claus & Co. habitation. That’s what I was thinking as I sat on the edge of my roof in a pair of shorts in the dark hanging those lights. And this: that it’s not as easy as it was just to plug the lights in and enjoy the spectacle.

Still: It’s the season of light, right? We’ll warm ourselves in this one and look down the way for the others to come.

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The Paper

A few months ago we did something that still depresses me to think about. Today I was reminded of it: the San Francisco Chronicle called to get me to start up the paper again. They were offering six months of the paper for ten bucks. That’s about a nickel a day, and that’s how hard up they are for paying customers. Meantime, back at the plant, they’ve been firing people left and right. A nickel a day would have done nothing to save any of those jobs; it’s a desperate ploy to prop up circulation numbers and what’s left of the paper’s advertising base.

That’s depressing right there. But there’s more.

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Continue reading “The Paper”

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World Toilet

Toilet crusade: From Seoul, the AP reports that the World Toilet Association opened its inaugural conference yesterday. “To the celebratory rhythms of a percussionist beating on toilets,” the story says, representatives from the U.N. and dozens off governments began deliberations. The surprise, for me: the association’s purpose is so serious — to reduce disease and death by providing proper sanitation facilities for the half (almost) of humanity who lack them — that there are dueling international toilet groups. The World Toilet Organization — www.worldtoilet.org — sponsors a World Toilet Summit, a World Toilet College and annual World Toilet Day (November 19 — we just missed it). The johnny-come-lately World Toilet Association, the one that’s beating on toilets in Seoul, sums up its mission this way: “Toilets are essential to life, human health, human development and the environment. Wisely managed toilets mean better health, prosperity and environmental sustainability. On the other hand, poorly managed toilets bring about vicious cycle of diseases, poverty, environmental degradation and a loss of human dignity.”

Both groups are led by someone named Sim — the WTO by Jack Sim, a Singapore real-estate mogul and sanitation activist who first founded a group called the Restroom Association; and the WTA by Sim Jae-Duck, whom the AP says is known in Korea as Mr. Toilet for his efforts to improve sanitary facilities in before the 2002 soccer World Cup held in Korea and Japan. As part of his campaign for toilet awareness, the WTA’s Sim has built himself a toilet-shaped house.

At a speech he gave in August at Malaysia’s National Toilet Expo and Forum, the WTA’s Sim said that on average, most people will spend two to three years of their lives going to the toilet. And though most of us think we know what a toilet is for, Sim expanded on its role:

For the establishment of the World Toilet Association, I visited many countries around the world and witnessed many regions at the risk of secondary transmission of contagious diseases owing to lack of toilet facilities. I could see that especially many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America were facing serious toilet issues.

Most of these regions and countries were too poor to invest in toilets, and it seemed that their people also considered this reality as a given. That was when I realized the importance of changing people’s perception. I wanted to tell leaders of countries all over the world:

By changing toilets, you can change politics.

By changing toilets, you can change people’s lives.

By changing toilets, you can change the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, a toilet is no longer a place for mere defecation. It should not remain out of our perception and awareness any more. The toilet is a “sacred place” that saves human beings from diseases. It is a place of “contemplation” that provides the philosophy of rest and emptiness. And it is a central space for living full of culture.

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Comets

The San Francisco Chronicle landed on our doorstep this morning for the first time in a couple of months; we actually canceled it, which is a subject worth a site unto itself, and I think the Hearst Corporation is trying to sneak back in (“You didn’t really want us to go away, did you?”); yesterday, we got a subscription offer: six months for fifteen bucks.

Anyway, the Chron materialized out of the predawn mist today. On the front page is a story about Comet Holmes, blogged here several days ago, and I wasn’t nearly at the leading edge of the Holmes enthusiasts. So yes, they’re a little late to the comet-gazing party. On the other hand, we’ve been pretty well socked in the last several evenings in the Bay Area, so no sightings from here. A couple nights ago, though, I took a quick trip up to the Sierra with my neighbor Piero, and the night sky was brilliant and clear: the comet was very bright, though you still had to know what you were looking for to find it (one apparent reason: the comet’s tail is extended directly away from Earth; so what you actually see is an immense cloud of illuminated ice and dust apparently being blown off the comet’s body).

The Chron’s story, while waxing expansively on Comet Holmes’s stunning emergence from nearly invisible object to celestial wonder, treats the phenomenon as something of an imponderable — just one of those things that astronomers scratch their heads about. The truth is, even the better-informed articles on the subject, like one last week in the Boston Globe, make it clear that no one really has a clear answer to why the comet is behaving the way it is. But there’s a range of speculation out there, and as long as you’re having your veteran science reporter write up the comet, and as long as readers are likely to be curious about the why of what they’re seeing, you might as well relay the best-educated guesswork in the field. The Chron’s story gives a couple lines to that near the end, but only after dutifully including notes from a local observer who calls the comet “amazing!” despite having his view obscured by trees and clouds.

Even if the story isn’t particularly well done, it does convey the wonder of seeing this thing that’s been invisibly sailing through space forever and suddenly reveals itself. I suppose that’s the best sort of encounter in journalism or literature: a story that uncovers an absorbing person or place or phenomenon that has been proceeding on his/her/its way for years and suddenly commands attention.

One case in point from today’s New York Times: a front-page story about the high school football team in Smith Center, Kansas — hey, I rode my bike into Smith County last year! In a high school with about 150 kids, in a town of just under 2,000, the team has won 51 in a row. In winning all 10 of its games so far this year, the team has outscored opponents 704-0. In one game, they scored 72 points in the first quarter. It’s a great tale.

Of course, in a sense, the Times can’t leave well enough alone. Landing in a symbol-freighted landscape — it’s small-town America, it’s the Great Plains — the Times investigates just how this juggernaut came to be and what it means. They find a coach who’s been on the scene for generations. And naturally, I suppose, they find that the lessons the coach teaches and that the kids and townsfolk learn isn’t really about football, it’s about life:

“None of this is really about football,” [Smith Center coach Roger Barta] added. “We’re going to get scored on eventually, and lose a game, and that doesn’t mean anything. What I hope we’re doing is sending kids into life who know that every day means something.”

Yes, of course. But presumably, the coach for the team that suffered that 72-point first-quarter stomping is trying to send kids into the world with some constructive ideas about living life, too (“Boys, sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug”). Presumably, too, Coach Barta has some athletes on his squad who are especially adept at administering lessons in blocking, tackling and execution to opponents. But the Times doesn’t mention any ot that. Instead, it insists on seeing not a gridiron story — not important enough to its elite audience, I imagine — but a wondrous and somewhat mysterious comet — why, after all, doesn’t the same story unfold everywhere? — glowing out there under the evening lights on the prairie.

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Whiskers

An abbreviated post this morning: Whiskerino. (More formally: the North American Free Beard Agreement Whiskerino 2007). It’s a beard-growing contest or festival (or something), running from now at least through the end of February. Not for me: I last grew a beard during the Carter administration and have never had the impulse to grow it back. I did keep my mustache nearly all the way through the Reagan years. When I shaved it, my younger son looked at me and cried. He’s gotten used to my clean-shaven appearance since then. Whether you intend to compete or not, and I realize some who visit this page are not genetically or hormonally equipped for the contest, I commend the site for its careful attention to detail, if not spelling:

III. BEARD GROWTH

According to Parker Brothers Beyond Balderdash the definition of a whiskerino is “a beard growing contest.” Participation in the North American Free Beard Agreement Whiskerino denotes that the participant will grow a beard. Refusal to grow a beard is not in the spirit of the contest. Note: Testerone levels differ in every male and all levels of growth, regardless of density and coverage, are encouraged. As long as the participant is not shaving the participant is growing a beard.

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Franken and Fawkes

Because we’ve given a series of stray donations over the years — all anyone has to do is show up on our doorstep with a bleeding heart and our checkbook starts to twitch sympathetically and also irresponsibly because it has gone so long without being balanced — we get what I’m guessing is more than the usual household share of fundraising pitches in the mail.

Today we got the best letter ever, from some guy running for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota. Highlights include the salutation — “Dear Person I’m Asking for Money” — and this passage:

“When I get to Washington, someone is going to have to explain to me how the federal government can fail to live up to its promise to fully fund education. Someone (possibly the same person) is going to have to explain to me why political appointees are allowed to edit the language of scientific reports. And you can bet I’m going to ask the members of that august body who still don’t believe in global warming some pointed questions. For instance: What’s wrong with you.”

The pitch is for small contributions. The checkbook is twitching.

(Meantime, how about Ron Paul? When I was up in Idaho with my friend Pete a month ago, we saw plenty of hand-stenciled signs around Coeur d’Alene with legends like “Ron Paul Revolution.” I saw homemade Ron Paul signs in Chicago when I was there a couple weeks ago. And during my trips up to the UC-Berkeley campus in the last week or so, there’s evidence of a well-organized Ron Paul sidewalk chalking campaign (I’d have taken a picture but I’m still sans camera). And just today — Guy Fawkes Day — he raised $3.68 at least $4 million. So is he this generation’s Ross Perot or Teddy Roosevelt, the insurgent who upsets the electoral calculus that has held for three of the last four presidential elections? Much too early to tell, but someone out there likes him.

The Guy Fawkes thing is an interesting ploy, too, since Guy Fawkes (the wonderful “V for Vendetta” notwithstanding) wouldn’t appear to be so much an avenging angel of human liberty as someone bent on seeing the Roman Catholic Church and English Catholics restored to their rightful places. This was the same church that was so in love with liberty and free thought that it would soon be putting the screws to Galileo for thinking too much about what he saw in his telescope. Seems to me that Fawkes is as much a symbol of freedom as say, Edmund Ruffin or Nathan Bedford Forrest, a couple of guys who have been celebrated in some parts as true American patriots and defenders of the people’s rights against an overreaching federal government.

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End of This, Beginning of That

I always have a little pang of loss when we turn the clocks back. The days have been getting shorter for months, of course; it’s dark in the morning; but for me, the fact we’re moving into the dark part of the year finally hits home these first few days after changing the clocks. The light at dusk is just as pretty; but the night starts that much earlier. The good news: the current daylight saving law, under which we go to standard tiime (maybe it should be called winter time) the first Sunday in November and then “spring ahead” the second Sunday in March, means that we’ve only got four months to go before we move the clocks ahead again. (Yes, I concede: if I were a morning person, I’d absolutely love setting the clocks back.)

In the meantime, here’s something to do with the early dark: Go out and look for Comet Holmes. I didn’t hear about it until yesterday, when I saw an item from a space-launch email list to which I subscribe that describes a comet that has suddenly become visible to the unaided (a.k.a. naked) eye. The Sky and Telescope site has an excellent guide on the comet and how to find it (if we were in the back yard together I could show you: “You see Cassiopeia up there, sort of in the northeast? That sort of ‘W’ shape. Good. OK — now go down and a little toward the horizon to that next group of stars; not down to the brightest star — that’s Capella in Auriga; just between the W and that bright one. Look up there by that little group of stars and you’ll see this fuzzy little Q-tip thing that you’re not really sure is there, but it is. Here — look through the binoculars. See? Isn’t that amazing?”) The comet actually has a pretty interesting story. Seen from Earth, it’s usually quite dim, even when its at its closest approach to the sun (that point, called the perihelion, is about twice as far away from the sun as we are). But for some reason, it has a history of “outbursts” — episodes during which it brightens suddenly (not unlike me when I find my lottery ticket has a matching number). Go out and see it.

And if you’re looking for another sky sighting, and you are a morning person, I note that the International Space Station/space shuttle tandem will make five-minute passes over New York City at 5:52 a.m. ET and (two orbits later) over the San Francisco Bay Area at 5:54 a.m. The New York appearance will occur shortly after the vehicles have undocked.

[Comet Holmes update: It looks even brighter tonight. Yesterday, the Boston Globe ran a nice piece on our overnight sensation.]

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Saturday Notebook

Head-gouge chronicles: Last night, I banged my head into the corner of an open kitchen-cabinet door and took out a little chunk of my bald scalp. It was not a graceful moment, and I did not react gracefully. What’s really frustrating, though, is that I seem to have developed a penchant for gouging my naked head on low doorways, window frames, cabinets, overhanging branches and such like. It happened at my dad’s about 10 days ago when I was hurrying to pack my stuff to leave. It happened to me a month ago, two violent encounters with Berkeley shrubbery, when I was out walking the dog. It happened getting into the shower at a friend’s house in New Jersey about 30 seconds after I looked at the low bar across the stall door and thought to myself, “I’m going to hit my head on that.” I’m not sure why all this is happening now. Maybe I’ve lost my ducking reflex, maybe I’m not paying as close attention to my surroundings as I used to, or maybe I’ve grown two inches without knowing it. All I can say is that I’m kind of tired of walking around with a scab on my head.

Power-shufflers vs. racing elitists: My friend Pete is doing a 50-mile running race today in Portland. Yes. Fifty. Miles. That’s nearly twice as long as a marathon, a distance that neither my brain nor my knees can comprehend. So, Pete’s a confirmed crazy ultra-endurance athlete (the big event he is preparing for: an Ironman-distance triathlon (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike course, and a marathon run) in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. As a serious student of the science of endurance sports, Pete has more than once commented on a phenomenon that has become firmly established in U.S. marathon running: participation is way, way up, and performance, measured in terms of finishing times, is way, way down. That’s because many among the hordes entering the humongous marathon fields in places like New York and Chicago are training merely to finish the course no matter how long it takes. Just in time for this weekend’s marathons in New York City, Salon is running a piece on the subject: “How Oprah Ruined the Marathon.” Now, in a country beset by obesity, you could argue that any popular physical activity is a great thing and ought to be encouraged. But there are those who say that what’s happening in the big marathons is sapping the athletic purpose and spirit of the races; what they see is a bunch of people who, instead of confronting the intense physical and mental demands of racing, are turning marathons into power-shuffling events — little more than long walks performed in fancy gear at a slightly elevated pace. Far from creating a nation of fit, competitive runners. Me? It’s been a long time since I walked 20 miles in a day, and I’ve never run a distance over 7.5 miles, so I’m not criticizing anyone who’s out there doing it at any speed. I think it’s great people want to get out there and get their heart rates up; but at the same time, there is something lost when the competitive ethic, the drive to perform and improve, is squeezed out. (And here’s a tragic postscript from today’s news: “28-Year-Old Marathoner Dies in Olympic Trials.”

Writeroom-Main-Screen

Scribing sans distraction: Now that I have installed the latest Mac operating system on my aging iBook, I’m trying out an extremely stripped down text editor called WriteRoom. When you launch the program, the entire screen is blacked out; you don’t see your computer desktop at all; so no email notifications or browser windows or docks (in Mac speak) to divert you from your writing task. The text you type appears as green on black, an emulation of ancient word-processing screens. Does the distraction-free environment really make a difference? This is only the second day I’ve used it, and I haven’t written anything I was on deadlne for (as opposed to something “optional” like this here post). But so far, I’d say that having nothing to consider but my brain and the words on the screen is a help.

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There’s Nothing Like a Nice Cake

Yoursign

By way of this here blog, it’s the Cake Writing Generator. If it were a real baked product instead of just a pretty virtual one, it would be on its way to the guy squatting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, 20006. Just as a nice human gesture, of course, like Sook and Buddy sending the fruit cake to President and Mrs. Roosevelt in “A Christmas Memory.” These times are different from the carefree days of the Great Depression; now, the White House advises us not to send “gifts of a consumable nature, such as food, flowers, and other perishable items … due to the security screening process.” If you’ve just got a picture of a cake, though, I suppose it’s OK to attach it to an email or print it out and send it by way of your preferred delivery service; though again, in these terrorized times you think about whether such a mild expression of disapproval might prompt a background check.