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And Now, a Word from the Sponsored …

… Or: What $300 Billion Buys

We know that as seen from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, things in Iraq are getting better every day. Fewer maimings, better manners and more democracy, and even a few hours a day of electricity thrown in. Now here’s a view from someone who, while admittedly having an ax to grind, is a little closer to the situation than the lotus eaters in the Oval Office. Britain’s Observer has an interview with Ayad Allawi, the strongman Bush & co. put in charge of Iraq once it was time for our own boss to leave and we had given up on the guy who wanted to run things, Ahmad Chalabi. Here’s how Allawi sees things today:

” ‘People are doing the same as [in] Saddam’s time and worse. … It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things.’

“In a damning and wide-ranging indictment of Iraq’s escalating human rights catastrophe, Allawi accused fellow Shias in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres. The brutality of elements in the new security forces rivals that of Saddam’s secret police, he said. …

” ‘ …We are hearing about secret police, secret bunkers where people are being interrogated,’ he added. ‘A lot of Iraqis are being tortured or killed in the course of interrogations. We are even witnessing Sharia courts based on Islamic law that are trying people and executing them.’ ”

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Near the End of the Ride

November26

The natural destinations for cyclists in Berkeley often involve riding up into or crossing the hills that rise behind the city to the east. I went out for a kind of standard short ride late this afternoon: Up the west face of the hills on a gentle ascent (though not so gentle in my current state of fitness) called Spruce Street, through Tilden Park, a big regional open space that covers most of the top of the hills, then down to San Pablo Dam Road, which runs along the eastern base of the hills. It’s about nine and a half miles each way, and each way features a climb of seven hundred to eight hundred feet, a rolling section, then a long fast descent. Riding back into Berkeley, I came down into town on Euclid Avenue; near the top of the street, there’s a vacant lot — maybe it’s a park, though I haven’t seen any signs — with a clear view out to the west. Riding down Euclid near sunset, I often see people who have driven or walked or cycled to the spot to take in the vista. Tonight was the same. The weather has taken a cool turn (not to say cold, out of respect for those who live in places where it really does get cold), so people out in the twilight were kind of bundled up. The view here is across the bay to Mount Tamalpais. I’ll never get tired of seeing our mountains and ridges against the sky, especially against the evening sky.

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George Best

The Chronicle has the obit: George Best: 1946-2005.

The handful of soccer players I heard about growing up — a very small group — included Pele and George Best. I remember reading something about Best in Sports Illustrated once. His exploits for Manchester United were described as little short of incredible. Nice article, but it didn’t mean much because soccer wasn’t a U.S. game and I never got to see him play. But following scraps of career news over the years — I took an interest from afar because he was Irish — I knew that alcoholism had cut short his brilliance.

Two bits from the obit worth noting:

” ‘I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars,’ he once said. ‘The rest I just squandered.’ ”

And:

“Best had battled alcoholism for decades and was diagnosed with severe liver damage in 2000. He received a liver transplant in 2002 but later resumed drinking.”

The American sports star who comes immediately to mind is another preternaturally gifted athlete and helpless boozer whom the fans never stopped adoring: Mickey Mantle.

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Consultant Warns of Stupidity

From MSNBC, by way of J.P. Brekke:

“DENVER – Former FEMA Director Michael Brown, heavily criticized for his agency’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina, is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm to help clients avoid the sort of errors that cost him his job.

” ‘If I can help people focus on preparedness, how to be better prepared in their homes and better prepared in their businesses — because that goes straight to the bottom line — then I hope I can help the country in some way,’ Brown told the Rocky Mountain News. …

“Brown said officials need to ‘take inventory’ of what’s going on in a disaster to be able to answer questions to avoid appearing unaware of how serious a situation is.’

The guy’s his own straight man.

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Windshield Photography

Shastahighway
An hour and a half ago, I finished an up-and-back drive to Eugene to pick up Thom for Thanksgiving festivities. On the way to Oregon yesterday, the sun set just as I got to Redding, 200 miles north of here along Interstate 5. Winding through the mountains, Mount Shasta occasionally appears, always bigger than you expect. as you speed up the highway. The mountain, with new snow from the first storms of the season, held the last light long after everything around it was dark.  I tried a through the windshield shot (hey — you have your cellphone, I have my camera) at a low shutter speed; it’s good enough for what it was.

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The World of Tussie-Mussie

In the course of writing some copy about pleasantly scented household cleaning supplies — really — I wanted to check the exact meaning of nosegay. I remember reading the word in an American Heritage kids’ book that had a picture spread called “A Nosegay of Valentines.” When I was 8 or so — the same era when I thought misled was pronounced “mize-elled” — I got the sense that a nosegay was a collection of anything fancy. Decades later, when I had occasion to hunt for it in the dictionary, I got the more precise sense that it’s a bunch of flowers.

So back to the cleaning supplies. They smell good. They’re a bunch of things. Would nosegay work (the client I’m writing for sometimes seems to like obscure words)? Looking it up at the American Heritage Dictionary site brought back a short list of words: nosegay, naturally; bouquetier, a container for holding a nosegay; and … tussie-mussie:

SYLLABICATION: tus·sie-mus·sie

NOUN: 1. A small bouquet of flowers; a nosegay. 2. A cone-shaped holder for such a bouquet.

ETYMOLOGY: Middle English tussemose, perhaps reduplication of *tusse.

I don’t know from tussie-mussie. I can swear, almost, that I haven’t stumbled across it in my 19,000-plus days as me. I figured this must be like one of those obscure Scrabble words, like qanat or zobo, that we Standard American English people never use except when we’re looking for a killer play for a Q or a Z.

But no: the world of tussie-mussie is alive and well. There’s a book: “Tussie-Mussies: The Victorian Art of Expressing Yourself in the Language of Flowers.” The Royal Horticultural Society posted an explainer (no longer online in 2022) on the art and meaning of the tussie-mussie, complete with a sort of guide to different messages you can send through flowers (here’s a special George W. Bush tussie-mussie: tansy, columbine, rocket, and bugloss).

Bugloss?

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Day 732

Point-one (.1) score and zero years ago, a weblog crawled out of the ooze and mire. This one. To hold forth on — well, everything (and thus perhaps nothing). Dedicated to the proposition that — OK, we’re still trying to work that out. Platform for random quotings and digressions. Example:

This stupid world —

skinny mosquitoes, skinny fleas,

skinny children.

That’s the Japanese poet Issa, from Robert Hass’s “The Essential Haiku.” And that reminds me of a story I heard yesterday on NPR that acquainted me with a new term for “going hungry”: food insecurity.

The world will little note nor long remember what’s scrawled here, though thanks to the full-enough measure of devotion of you happy few (typical insertion of unrelated battlefield reference) these jottings get enough attention to satisfy. Thanks for reading.

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1963

He stood at the southeast window inside a barrier of cartons. The larger ones formed a wall about five feet high and carried a memory with them, a sense of a kid’s snug hideout, making him feel apart and secure. Inside the barrier were four more cartons–one set lengthwise on the floor, two stacked, one small carton resting on the brick windowsill. A bench, a support, a gun rest. The wrapping paper he’d used to conceal the rifle was on the floor near his feet. Dust. Broken spider webs hanging from the ceiling. He saw a dime on the floor. He picked it up and put it in his pocket.

He looked down Houston Street as the motorcade approached, slow and vivid in the sun. There were people scattered on the lawns of Dealey Plaza, maybe a hundred and fifty, many with cameras. He held the rifle at port arms, more or less, and stood in plain view in the tall window. Everything looked so painfully clear.

The President had chestnut hair and the First Lady was radiant in a pink suit and small round hat. Lee was glad she looked so good. For her own sake. For the cameras. For the pictures that would enter the permanent record.

He spotted Governor John Connally in one of the jump seats, a Stetson in his lap. He liked Connally’s face, a rugged Texas face. This was the kind of man who would take a liking to Lee if he ever got to know him. Cartons stamped Books. Ten Rolling Readers. Everyone was grateful for the weather.

The white pilot car turned, the motorcycles turned. The Lincoln passed beneath him, easing left, making the deep turn left, seeming almost to rotate on an axis. Everything was slow and clear. He got down on one knee, placed his left elbow on the stacked cartons and rested the gun barrel on the edge of the carton on the sill. He sighted on the back of the President’s head. The Lincoln moved into the cover of the live oak, going about ten miles an hour. Ready on the left, ready on the right. Through the scope he saw the car metal shine.

He fired through an opening in the leaf cover.

"Libra"

Don DeLillo

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Worst Time Waster — Ever

First: I warned you. This is bad. Very bad. Even worse than blogging.

It’s Websudoku.com.

On the other hand, just think how the world might be different if someone had told Bush about that site instead of giving him bright ideas about running for president.

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Merry Friggin’ Xmas

The other day, my friend Ted posted something about his alarm with the rising tide of militant Christian fundamentalism. No, we don’t have Bible-thumping extremists setting off bombs in our midst; well, hardly ever. The alarm is over the growing insistence among conservative Christians that their religious views should be adopted as central to our public institutions: not only should their god be recognized in public schools and courthouses, for instance, but he ought to become part of the school curriculum and acknowledged explicitly as our guide in lawmaking. If you happen not to be an adherent of everything these folks believe, too damn bad for you. You’re probably going to hell anyway.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a front-page story on the crusaders’ latest effort: Ensuring that Christmas gets the respect it deserves. The effort features Jerry Falwell’s “Friend or Foe” Christmas Campaign and several other groups:

“Falwell has put the power of his 24,000-member congregation behind the ‘Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,’ an effort led by the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel. The group promises to file suit against anyone who spreads what it sees as misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces.

“The 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International will be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” in the nation’s public schools. They’ll be reporting to 750 Liberty Counsel lawyers who are ready to pounce if, for example, a teacher is muzzled from leading the third-graders in ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.’

“An additional 800 attorneys from another conservative legal group, the Alliance Defense Fund, are standing by as part of a similar effort, the Christmas Project. Its slogan: ‘Merry Christmas. It’s OK to say it.’

In fact, it’s not only OK to say “Merry Christmas,” you’ll be trampling Christians’ civil rights if you refrain. Ah, the ironies: The poor, abused Christians whose holiday will be spoiled unless the rest of us not only respect it, but let them observe it exactly the way they want to, where they want to — sort of like the people in Berkeley who insist it’s their right to walk the streets naked. Using the courts, a.k.a. Satan’s playground, to give the unbelievers a taste of their own medicine.

The story goes on to report that Target stores are in trouble with another love-Jesus-or-die group, the American Family Association, for allegedly adopting a policy banning the phrase “Merry Christmas” from advertising and in-store displays. Target — which I think does deserve some heat for banning Salvation Army bell ringers from its premises — swears that it has imposed no such ban. No matter — the zealots are boycotting the chain next weekend unless the company gets right with their god and installs prominent “Merry Christmas” signage. Which presents a dilemma: Refuse to shop at Target because of the wrong-headed decision to keep the bell ringers away? Or do all my holiday shopping there next weekend to vote against the Falwell-fundamentalist axis.