Art Changes Lives

I'm sitting here listening to This American Life, and they said something I found wonderfully interesting: Arts programs are more effective at changing kids lives than any other type of program. This is because the arts involve a more complicated collaborative process. Art changes you.

The story they told was of a young girl with a violent family and a gang membership. A theater production changed her life. Years ago, I told my dentist I was studying literature and art in college. He said "I would love to study that stuff, but I'm not smart enough." Way to inspire confidence in your clients, dude, but I'm starting to think there's something to that. Even my scientist friends don't like the other scientists they meet.

World Carfree Network Year in Review

THE YEAR IN REVIEW >>
______________________________

April:
Paris, France, unveiled a plan for banning cars from its centre. By
2012, only residents would be allowed to drive into the city's
central four arrondissements. Essential journeys such as hospital
visits would be exempt, as would commercial and public service
vehicles like taxis, delivery vans and ambulances.

May:
Organic, carfree weddings are on the rise in North America, reports
The Telegraph, a New Hampshire newspaper.

August:
The City of London gave children aged under 16 free travel on
London's buses. The scheme will be extended next year to include
anyone under 18 who is a full-time student.

September:
Millions of people worldwide celebrated World Carfree Day by walking,
cycling, or taking public transport, and by organising public events
in support of carfree cities.

October:
For the first time in more than 20 years, more bicycles than cars
were sold in the United States over a 12-month period.

November:
Dhaka, Bangladesh backed off from its longstanding plan to ban
rickshaws and other non-motorised vehicles on eight important roads
in the capital city. Instead, the city will look at properly
licensing and regulating rickshaw traffic.

December:
In a survey conducted by the Munich Public Transport Authority, more
than 10% of respondents said that, during the last year, they sold
their car, or at their second vehicle if they owned more than one.
Some 60% of respondents said that they now ride public transport more
often. The reason: rising fuel prices and more frequent train
service.

ERTMS Website

An unexpected benefit of the Galileo program
ERTMS Website

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Navigating future for road charges

Relevant to my Congestion Charging topic:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Navigating future for road charges

AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Car Trouble

AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Car Trouble

Favorite quote:
"The internet, he muses, could easily replace the automobile as humanity's dream of unlimited mobility."

Transportation Hierarchy

This issue is being discussed on one of my lists, and I thought it worth putting on the blog to keep track of it....

Transportation Alternatives: T.A. Magazine Article: The Green Transportation Hierarchy

--- Simon Baddeley wrote:
>
> In 1990 York Council (in UK) introduced a road user hierarchy to
> guide
> implementation of their transport policy. This gave priority to
> road users
> in the order:
>
> 1. Pedestrians
>
> 2. people with disabilities
>
> 3. cyclists
>
> 4. public transport passengers
>
> 5. commercial/business vehicles requiring access
>
> 6. coach-borne shoppers
>
> 7. coach-borne visitors
>
> 8. car-borne long stay commuters and visitors.
>
> The hierarchy also formed the underlying basis for promoting
> sustainability
> through the Local Plan and implementing the Transport Strategy's
> objectives
> in full.
>
> Specific initiatives within York which illustrate application of
> the road
> hierarchy include the Footstreet scheme in the city centre, Park
> and Ride,
> city cycle network, and area wide traffic calming schemes including
> 20 mph
> zones.
>
> http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_susttravel/documents/page/dft_susttravel_031509-08.hcsp
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Best
>
> Simon

Me, the devout Jew

My sister Ilana has made an observation about American Jews. It’s that their anti-Christmas traditions eclipse actual Jewish celebrations. This became apparent this year since Hanukkah fell on Christmas Day. Alex, who lives in Dick and Kathleen (Ilana’s father and step mother)’s in-law unit, had plans for tonight to go out for Chinese and then to the movies. Ilana’s boyfriend David’s mother always cooks a duck, and they did that today too. I, on the other hand, traveled an hour each way on the BART during its slow Sunday schedule to have potato latkes with my Jewish family. However, I believe all 3 households lit candles and spoke Hebrew prayers.

I’m not Jewish, but I believe this makes me more devout than many of the real Jews I know. I’m certain this has inspired the Old Testament God has put a gold star by my name. (But He knows I’m culturally Protestant and spiritually Pagan Buddhist Agnostic.) I believe Ilana’s observation is more about people than Jews. Christmas traditions are about food; Hanukkah traditions are about ritual. You don’t have to make Jewish food to light the candles.

Hanukkah is about light in dark times. (Ilana says it’s about the Macabees overcoming their oppressors. Which is, of course, about light in dark times.) The birth of Jesus is the same thing: the growth of the day from its darkest point onward. Christmas trees are about celebrating nature when plants actually aren’t growing but will again soon, i.e. light in dark times. OK, I think I made my point.

My family has traditions too. My mother wraps up a whole bunch of gifts. We open them, and then we reject most of them. She takes home the rejected gifts and proceeds to give them to people more polite than we. My mother also likes to wrap up things that aren’t really gifts like a CD she borrowed from Ilana 2 years ago, my toys from childhood, or something my grandmother left me when she died. (The theory is that because she grew up with a disabled twin sister, she doesn’t feel that anything really belongs to her, and therefore nothing really belongs to anyone else either, especially her daughters.) This year I took home about 1/3 of the gifts from my mother, and Ilana rejected one of my gifts (but clearly she needs to have her brain checked).

To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel very Christmassy this year. I tried: I made about a thousand cookies and sent nearly 40 cards. (I received 3.) I thought it was lack of appropriate music, but I found that the songs annoyed me. I’ve got “Sex and the City” going as I write this, and Carrie just learned that Big is marrying Natasha. She storms out of their lunch, tripping on the stairs as she leaves the restaurant, and yells to the hostess, “These steps are very dangerous!” Well, that’s exactly what I would have done. My grandmother died, and Christmas is therefore barred from my soul.

How couples meet, a scientific study

Seven or 8 years ago, I was single again for the first time in a while. I asked myself: how do people meet other people they want to have LTRs with? At the time, I had had 4 LTRs(1) and met 2 at school, one at home, and one thru friends (since then, I met one at a bar). But I wasn't in school any more, so I was counting on my friends, and they can't always deliver. (2)

I decided to cast my net wider for this study: how do the people I know meet the people they want to be with? Presumably, of all sub-sets, I have the most in common with the people I know. I counted 16 happy couples married/together at least 1 year: about 1/3 had met thru each mechanism: school, public places (bars, clubs, walking the dog, whatever), and personal ads.

Last Sunday, it rained. Eric and I spent a marathon day on the couch reading and talking (which he claims is his favorite thing to do). I think something in the issue of the Economist he was reading brought up the subject: how do people meet? He made the argument that meeting thru personals (like we did) was unusual. So, I got out my phone (for the list of names of people I know) and counted how they met their SO.

I'm older now, and I've been to graduate school since my last study. The result came out significantly differently this time, but still included 16 couples. Nine (56%) had met at school, 3 each (19%), friends and personals, and 1 at a bar. I wish I had that list of names from my 1998 study for comparison: who is still together? Does that correlate with how they met?

It's been a couple days now, and I have thought of a few more people I know, who all met in public, bringing that mechanism up to rival friends and personals. But what I started to wonder was, if so many of my friends met their partners at school, how does that correlate with how I met them? For the sake of this measurement, I changed the parameters: people either met their partner or me at school or not, is it the same? I found that 75% of my friends (the original 16) met their partner the same way they met me (at school or not).

Endnotes:
(1) For the sake of the study, a LTR is defined as a relationship lasting one year or longer.
(2) In a way, I guess what I was really asking myself is, if I get all proactive and try to meet met men at bars and/or thru personals ads, am I likely to find what I am looking for? Where should I focus my energy?

Bicycle Production Remains Strong Worldwide

Eco-Economy Indicators: BICYCLES - Bicycle Production Remains Strong Worldwide: "London"

Feel guilty buying a Christmas tree? Then rent one.

San Francisco Department of the Environment

DAN GOODIN
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - It might just take a Christmas miracle to deck out these spindly branches with ornaments or arrange a pile of gifts around their slender, bare trunks, but they've all been snatched up, and it's hard to argue with success.
The trees, rented out by San Franciscans for $90 each during the holiday season, are designed to give residents an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional, firs and pines.
The fruitless olives, Brisbane boxes and others range from six to 12 feet and aren't quite Charlie Brown's sad sapling, but they're definitely not the full-bodied evergreens most Christmas revelers have grown accustomed to.
That's just fine by Stacy Collins Johnson, who said she rented a live primrose so her two children, ages 4 and 6, can help replant it in one of San Francisco's needy neighborhoods once the holidays have passed.
"I wasn't really sure how this would play out, having a nontraditional Christmas tree in our house," said Johnson, a 43-year-old stay-at-home mom. "I thought they'd be upset, and they love it. They named the tree Charlie Green."
Like other San Franciscans participating in the program, Johnson paid to have the tree, complete with pot and soil, delivered to her home. Her family will decorate it, celebrate Christmas, and then city officials will arrange to pick up the tree and plant it in a neighborhood in need of greenery.
As December rolls around each year, environmentally conscious residents of San Francisco are confronted with a choice: buy a real tree grown expressly to be chopped down and strung with lights or get an artificial one. Either option has its drawbacks. Environmentalists say growing real trees is a waste of valuable resources and discarding them often clogs local landfills; artificial trees often contain lead and other harmful chemicals and also usually end up in dumps.
"We call it the guilt-free option," said Mark Westlund, spokesman for the San Francisco Department of Environment, which decided to introduce the program earlier this year. "You don't have to worry about cutting down a living tree and you don't have to worry about buying a tree with petroleum materials."
San Francisco created the program with help from the nonprofit group Friends of the Urban Forest, which plants trees along the city's streets. Within a week of announcing the program, all 100 trees were claimed, Westlund said.
Delivery began last week, and will be picked up during the first week of January. Officials will handle any damaged trees on a case-by-case basis and use the experience to shape their future policy, Westlund said.
"I'm kind of an unrepentant tree hugger," said George Slack, who rented three trees for his cabinet shop. "There's something very nice about having a living piece of greenery in your living environment this time of year."
But not everyone who rents trees to be planted after Christmas fits that description, at least when it comes to those picking similar offerings elsewhere in the country.
"My customers aren't granola-eating, sandal-wearing type people," said John Fogel, owner of the Original Living Christmas Tree Company in Portland, Ore., which has rented Christmas trees for 14 years. "It's a practical thing they do around the holidays."

Just say "Yes!" or How a Failing Suburban Mall Became a Beloved Indoor Town Square

Project for Public Spaces (PPS) - Placemaking for Communities - How a Failing Suburban Mall Became a Beloved Indoor Town Square

A forward from my mother (Letter from Sharon Olds to Laura Bush)

Here is an open letter from the poet Sharon Olds to Laura Bush declining the invitation to read and speak at the National Book Critics Circle Award in Washington, DC. Sharon Olds is one of most widely read and critically acclaimed poets living in America today. Read to the end of the letter to experience her restrained, chilling eloquence.

Laura Bush
First Lady, The White House

Dear Mrs. Bush,

I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

In one way, it's a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents--all of us who need the pleasure, and the inner and outer news, it delivers.
And the concept of a community of readers and writers has long been dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women's prison, several New York City public high schools, an oncology ward for children.
Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates and their students--long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom, become our teachers.
When you have witnessed someone nonspeaking and almost nonmoving spell out, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and essentialness of writing.
When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely nonspeaking and nonmoving (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self-_expression, accuracy, honesty and wit--and the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person's unique story and song.

So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country--with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain--did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top" and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism--the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness--as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing--against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.
What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.
Sincerely,
SHARON OLDS

Anti-Consumers Dig Through Trash For Food

Anti-Consumers Dig Through Trash For Food

This is awesome. Who wants to start fasting for the holidays?

Public transit trip planner via Google

Official Google Blog: Public transit via Google

TomPaine.com - The GOP's Roe Gamble

TomPaine.com - The GOP's Roe Gamble

Two things I thought really interesting in this article:
1) Political affiliation is usually determined by neighborhood. (Like land economics, where property value is determined by adjacent property value.) Here in the city, we have the progressive Mission and the conservative Marina (both urban). But this article posits that political affiliation can be predicted by land use type: progressive inner suburbs (low density) and conservative exurbs (very low density).
2) Every family wants their children to do better and not be bogged down with a teenage pregnancy. Position on abortion can be predicted by religion not political affiliation. So, the article says that formerly Republican families in the exurbs are going Democratic in order to protect their daughters' right to succeed. I have also noticed this issue divides my otherwise Republican cousins in exurban Cincinnati. While, at the same time, many of them ARE having babies very young; I think because of that, they see the appeal of choice.

EPA Socio-Economic Causes and Consequences...

November 16 was a big day for me. I got up early and went downtown to see what was going on at an EPA conference called “Socio-economic Causes and Consequences of Future Environmental Changes Workshop”. It was supposed to be about transportation and land use, but I couldn’t actually find any information on it online. If the title isn’t bad enough, I also couldn’t find information about the individual subjects to be discussed or how to register. The registration lady was no help either “just click the link,” she said, but the link only led to a page to register to be an virtual particpant. (It turned out the real purpose of the conference was for projects that received EPA funding to report back on their findings/progress.) Anyway…

The first session was on “Trends in Housing, Land Use, and Land Coverage Change”, which is code for Landis-style development models. One was of the southern Cumberland Plateau and the other Sonoma County. The speakers gave some context (or at least the first one did) and then led us step by step thru their modeling process. Wouldn’t it have been nice to see some pretty photos of these beautiful natural landscapes that may not exist for much longer? Here’s what I thought was interesting about what they said:
Gottfried, Cumberland Plateau
· Land moves over time to the most highly valued use.
· Locals don’t like pine trees – only outsiders are likely to choose a plot with pine trees on it – it’s naturally a hardwood area.
· 20% of areas managed for hardwoods have moved to other uses.
· People used to prefer to build their homes in grassy areas. Now, it turns out, they have a preference for treed areas.
· … and a preference against paved roads.
· The timber companies have been selling to local people, mostly for farm extensions.

Merenlender, Sonoma County
· In-stream salmon were the measure of water quality.
· Sonoma county is a landscape of estates.
· Low and very low density doesn’t require sewer systems; therefore cities can’t control it with their urban growth boundaries (UGB).

At this point, I snuck out to go home for a while and take care of some pesky business waiting for me there (health insurance, my email, etc.). The mid-morning sessions lacked titles and the early afternoon sessions were about aquaculture, I am sure a very interesting topic, but no one that I know anything about or will help me to know about. The session starting at 2:45 was about Land Use, Transportation and Air Quality. Sounds promising, right?

Steve Raney (Cities21) began with his report on transforming office parks into transit villages:
· The goal is to create a less auto-dominated suburb and reduce SOV trips to less than 50%
· Energy consumed by a typical suburb: 280; energy consumed by a typical urban apartment-dweller: 97 (not sure what the unit is here)
· Energy efficiency is not the issue, lifestyle change is.
· With 50 units per acre, 50% of trips are made without a car, instead people are peds, not public transit riders.
· Suburban office parks are the main cause of sprawl and congestion over the last 30 years.
· Shoup: parking lots are land banks.
· 70% of tech workers want to work in a vital, urban area.
· Change culture to make it cool to be green.
· Personal Rapid Transit (or is it Private) in the form of a pod monorail, electric, no waiting, no stops, runs 24/7, no drivers
o Made in Korea and Sweden
o Similar systems in MN, TX, and Dubai (which is easy bc they have no public review process)
o Propose Silicon Valley style product development
· If workers use transit, then employers need provide fewer parking spaces providing room worker housing on site and a source of real estate revenues
· Access
o First mile: between home and transit station
o Last mile: between destination station and office
· Carpooling is difficult socially to ask people to spend that much time with someone
· So, provide condos on-site for tech workers.
o Discounts to people who work nearby
o Low-income upward mobility – comes with job/job training
o Include grocery carts

Then a gentleman named Hobbs talked about power sector emissions, and I went for a cookie and to call my mom. I bought 2 cookies; I have no self control.

Waddell is studying how to integrate transportation, land use and air quality modeling, because of course they are inter-related. (On the other hand, I sometimes thing we need a whole other planet, a model, in order to assess the results of various scenarios.) Here’s what I wrote down: integrate lifestyle choices with modeling, and urban sim. Hey, I don’t know what it means, but I am sure that I’m a genius.

Back in Cervero’s Transportation and Land Use class at Berkeley, we all read the views of Susan Handy and how they differed from those of our professor. As usual, I figured it all out after the final (on which it was the essay component), but I believe the main point was the she is pro-unconstrained land use (ie, auto-subsidy) and our Lafayette-dwelling professor is pro-constrained, European-style, transit-node land use. Well, her research (on which she was not the lead researcher) was the least complete and is called “Regional Development, Population, Trend, and Technology Change Impacts on Future Air Pollution Emissions in the San Joaquin Valley.” (Someone has got to give these planning academics a lesson in titling.) Here are my notes:
· They did not take into account changes in mode split/choice and found that the “controlled” scenario (where sprawl is controlled and development is focused on the urban core) does not reduce vehicle miles traveled from the baseline much…
· “Uncontrolled congestion is more spread out.”
· I found her agenda clear and her science sloppy (as described earlier). However, the lack of real mode choice consideration is the problem with most transportation models.

I hung out downtown for a while longer and then headed to the TALC regional meeting. But I’ll tell you about that in a different post. That is, assuming I find the time.

Grace says:

http://melgibsonforgovernor.com/

I don't think it's fair game to note for political gain that the
Governator's father was a Nazi. For the same reason, I'd avoid
mentioning that Mel's own father's denies that the Holocaust
happened. But that Mel himself is a Holocaust denier, I think that
that's entirely appropriate to consider in a political context.

Word meanings

A few weeks back I heard a program on NPR about the origins of English words and how we can learn from them for every day life. I jotted down a few that I liked with the idea of doing a post on it, but then it got lost in the piles and never happened. I’m trying to clean up my desk (improve its feng shui and the like) as my life gears up. (It seems to take about 3 months to get back in the center of things, and I’m half way thru that.) So, here are the words, their meanings and some commentary:

Disappointed – literally means not chose. When you feel not chosen, ask yourself, are you choosing?
Adore – a gift, where you place your energy, speaking (what you speak of?)
Listen – to list or lean forward, a whole body experience
Patience – to suffer, the same root as passion; so, it means passionate expectation, trust in the universe that it will all work out.
Nice – ignorant, not investing

Mazda Recommends Employees Walk to Office - Yahoo! News

Mazda Recommends Employees Walk to Office - Yahoo! News

Boring laundry-list post about last weekend

I’ve been accused a lot lately of being… gasp… an Extrovert. This weekend, and my response to it, proves that I am not. Wednesday night I had a lovely reunion with my old housemates from Fairview Street. Thanksgiving, I was at Grampa Lizzie’s at noon, where my mother arrived 4 hours late because her husband was waiting for her at SFO and she was at Oakland (from Granny’s funeral), and he hadn’t call anyone of her friends or family within the last few days of being in the Bay Area. She had asked everyone to warn him. Or maybe it was just the last 36 hours. So, that was kind of upsetting. At dinner, I was thankful for life, the weather in California, and that we all have so many options. Yeah, I’m less thankful now (that it’s pouring rain).

Thus, I was 2 hours late to Laura’s, where there was a luscious, family-style Thanksgiving. I got there just after everyone had sat down anyway. They set up a table in the porch room where Charlie reminded me had once been a piñata on another infamous night celebrating Laura’s birthday. The laundry machines were covered with a tablecloth and used as a sideboard and the candlelight reflected off the glass. I bet we looked really cool from outside. Instead of giving thankful, each person drew someone’s name and we said what we liked about them. I drew Niki and said she was a good dancer, had a great sense of humor and a vibrant way of living her life. Elizabeth (Laura’s mom) said that I was smart and when things don’t go my way, I am always confident it’ll come out right in the end and then it does. I also made the best pecan pie ever in the universe.

Eric and I had a lovely, low-key day on Friday of eating leftovers, a leisurely walk around the neighborhood, and, as always, good conversation. Friday night, Eric was singing the Messiah in Cupertino, and I went to Sam and Jess’s for a mellow party.

Saturday, Alison and I went hiking in Marin County – some park in Ross, I forgot the name. Alison wanted to go there because, unlike the other parks in Marin, they allow dogs. Traffic was terrible (in Al and Jo’s Prius), and when we got to the park, we had to wait about 45 minutes for a parking place to open up. The people waiting in front of us were meeting a friend who arrived by herself and had already parked (why they couldn’t carpool even from nearby on-street parking meant, well, everyone had to wait that much longer), told us there was parking “like a mile” down the road. (When we checked, it was much further than a mile. The on-street parking is all marked “no parking Saturday, Sunday and holidays” because, of course, the people who live in the neighborhood don’t want to be inconvenienced by people who can’t afford to live there coming to enjoy it. The other thing I thought was interesting was the use of “like a mile”, which meant to them “too far to walk” but to us “very close”, but ultimately was “too far to walk”. Marinners are annoying.)

Anyway, it was beautiful. I took some nice pictures. And finally, it completely wore me out.

Sunday morning, I met DeAnne and Ryan at the Exploratorium. We had a coffee at the café and (Ryan) did the spiral color thingy. We asked him to show me his favorite displays, but he wasn’t interested. Instead, we took a walk along the beach at Crissy Field. Ryan played on the rocks and in the sand, and DeAnne and I talked.

The impetus for this visit was those Monterey Bay Aquarium tickets I ended up with. I sent out an email to a bunch of people I thought might want them. I was surprised by the number of replies. Alison pointed out that I expressed my politics with my choice of who to give them to; I chose the single, freelancing mom. And yeah, I bribe people to be friends with me.

I went home for 30 minutes between engagements, ate some delicious thanksgiving leftovers from Laura’s, and headed back out to meet Mitja (a friend from HS), Elysia, and Citrus at the Asian Art Musuem. I was collecting museum stickers that day. There was this really cute little guy there who carved Chinese character names into stone stamps (I have one, but I am not sure what it says exactly), and they got really excited about having one made for them. It takes about an hour to carve; so, we looked at the exhibition in the meantime. I was surprised at how small it was for the $10 entry fee. But I particularly like the Shivas with all those arms and, of course, the ones involving images of sex.

It was their last day in California, and Mitja needed a burrito. I was concerned about taking a 4 month old to an unsavory place like Cancun at 6th and Market, but they didn’t have a problem with it. Citrus is a perfect little angel. She’s also been sick. (They were at Children’s Hospital in Oakland for 5 hours the other day.) We had burritos, which a homeless lady helped us finish off, scooping the wet leftovers into a brown paper bag. I got to hold Citrus as we walked to their car. She drooled and wiped her runny nose in the cold onto my black scarf.

My friends here are all obsessed with “attachment parenting” where you keep the baby touching you as much as possible, breast feed, have the baby sleep in bed with you, etc.. I was surprised to learn that both these guys and my friend Kalyani in NYC don’t seem to be doing it. It doesn’t seem to be on their radar. I mean, it’s none of my business how other people raise their children. I am just a casual observer noticing that my east coast friends and my west coast friends parent in completely different ways.

I got home to realize that, while my phone was on silent, Tam had called wondering about our plans for the night. I called back to say that I needed some time, which ended up being longer than planned bc I fell asleep accidentally. Tam was going to India on Tuesday for a month and a wedding. But ultimately, we had a low-key visit involving hot water (bc it has gotten really cold). She sent me home with a grocery bag of leftovers (most of which I ate today; I was hungry! She, like me, hates to waste food).

I don’t regret a minute of it, but I slept for like a million years every night since then, and still didn’t have energy to do anything at all. I bought some things at the local stores, and partly bc of the rain and partly bc I am lazy, didn’t even make it to yoga. I did mop my kitchen and make some turkey soup from the carcass Laura kindly let me have. You know how I feel about making soup.

Go Ahead, Call In Sick -- It Prevents 'Presenteeism' - Los Angeles Times

Go Ahead, Call In Sick -- It Prevents 'Presenteeism' - Los Angeles Times

I used to go to work sick bc if you are going to feel crappy, you might as well be paid for it. They're saying that this article provides a good argument for having a functional telework program. The other thing that freaked me out about this article is the idea that everyone lives in fear that they're lose their job. So much so that they don't feel like they can even take care of themselves. I think everyone should be required to take their sick time even if they never get sick. People need time to themselves. I also think people should work when- and where-ever they want.

Heating of rental units

It seems like I tell people all the time what the laws are regarding the heat of rental units. Here's the quote:

"If the owner controls the heat source ( a central boiler, for example), then the owner must provide 13 hours of heat at a minimum of 68 degrees Fahrenheit from 5 AM to 11 AM and also from 3 PM to 10 PM each day in all habitable rooms (not bathrooms or halls for example). If the tenant controls the heat source (a space heater, for example), then the appliance must be capable of maintaining a temperature of least 68 degrees Fahrenheit in all habitable rooms. If it is 68 degrees or higher in the unit, heat does not have to be provided."
http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/rentboard_page.asp?id=4060

Find Pictures on traffic and transportation

Find Pictures on traffic and transportation

bicyclinginfo.org

bicyclinginfo.org

The remaining photos from my trip

Here's a link to the rest of the photos from my trip:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=ksr0nbj.bhpdtx9b&x=1&y=r5d4nd

IBND Index -Interntional Buy Nothing Day -

IBND Index -Interntional Buy Nothing Day -

Of course, when you're unwaged or just don't make enough to support yourself and your family you try to make every day a buy nothing day. Think about that.

Pesticide testing on orphans and children with disabilities

Organic Consumers Association - Educating for Health, Justice, and Sustainability

I didn't think this could be possible, but I checked with a reliable source who said it was....

Granny dies

My last remaining grandparent and namesake, Lillian Smith, died early this morning.

I'll think of some really moving things to say about later.

"Desperate" for a novel

You know that I watch 3 TV shows. Well, I watch other show some of the time, but there are 3 that I tape to make sure that I get to see them. They are: Alias, Desperate Housewives, and Veronica Mars. (...OK, you caught me. I also tape Friends reruns, but I only watch the episodes if I haven't before, which almost never happens.)

So, I was on the BART today after lunch with my friend Brian and a visit to Creative Growth (http://www.creativegrowth.org, where I am going to start volunteering). (I was originally supposed to go to a talk at Berkeley on Housing and the Bay, but I just couldn't take another talk this week, and it turned out Carolyn wouldn't be available until 7 PM, and I didn't want to wait that long....) On the BART, there was a Datebook section of the Chronicle. I read the article on have Desperate Housewives is... not what it once was.

But, to make a short story long, the punchline, to me, was this line: "At times the series has played out as a less-than-intricate collection of short stories, rather than a novel that everyone seems to crave." (Goodman) In the 90s, my writing group talked about how the short story was en vogue along with short shorts. We thought this was great news, and now I think that's because short stories and short shorts are just easier. We didn't have to work so hard.

Of course, the irony here is that I don't like short stories all that much and I love novels. I can't take the emotional rollercoaster. If I am going to get all involved with a bunch of characters and their story, I want it to last at least a week. However, with my current system, I have managed to make one novel last like 6 months. Argh.

Crossing Guard Runs Down Crossing Guard

NEW JERSEY
Crossing Guard Runs Down Crossing Guard

A crossing guard was killed in front of a high school by another crossing
guard on his way to work, Park Ridge police said.

Estelle Reynolds, 81, died after being struck in a crosswalk by a vehicle
driven by Marvin Hodgdon, 70. He was on his way to his crossing guard job
in nearby Hillsdale.

Hodgdon said he didn't see Reynolds, who was wearing high-visibility safety
gear, police Chief Richard Oppenheimer said.

No criminal charges were filed.

TJB
Source: [carfree_cities]

news

My grandmother is back in the hospital again. She got very weak from the radiation and not eating and had a fall. My mother flew out to be with her, which appears to have been a really good thing bc the doctors didn't think she would live thru last night. Except that she did.

In the meantime, Jane's mother has pancreatic cancer and Carolyn Helmke breast cancer. I don't have any updates on those. I am really worried about my mother if she loses bother her mommy and her twin sister in one year. She's never been good at taking care of herself. It seems like now would be a good time to start, but sometimes people can't change.

I asked my friend Tina about the uprisings in France (she lives in Paris), and here's what she said:
> yeah, i think things were kinda crazy up in saint
> dennis, etc. but not in central paris. and i do think
> the media kind of had a field day with it, bc i have a
> friend who lives there and another who works there and
> they both said they didn't really see anything and
> weren't affected. they live right in "93" the
> supposedly really bad part. i did see 2 burned cars
> in paris near pack villette in the 19th...not far from
> that bar where we tried to hear reggae on nuit
> blanche...the 2 cars did kinda freak me out. but
> that's about it!
I asked Bertrand for news of Strasbourg, but I haven't heard anything back yet.

Gabe and I hungout last night and had lots of interesting conversation as always. We went to this workshop on what the guy calls "practical wisardry" which was basically a motivational class. The bottom line is pay attention to how your body feels to know what you want and then think positively about getting it. He used a lot of self-help, science, and motivational jargon, but that was his main message.

He also spent a very long time talking about his life story. He worked in television bc he liked to watch it. Then he joined an internet startup where he wasn't paid enough. Then he became a web developer where he was happy for a few years. Having known my share of techies, I would just love to hear someone have a more interesting story to tell. Like how you farmed in Africa or meditated for 3 years in northern India or sold jewelry at Dead shows. Anything!

I took a lot of notes from the class and maybe I will type them up for you anyway. I do admire his wanting to be a motivational teacher, but it might not be the best medium for him. I could listen to Garrison Keiller read his shopping list out loud, but there are lots of other people who just shouldn't talk. Or maybe they just need coaching.

That said, I do think the class helped me. And more than that, talking with Gabe helped. I'm ready to conquer.

Wal-Mart: the high cost of low prices (film review)

Tam and I went to see this film at the Roxy last night (an event sponsored by the Party Progressive and Buyblue.com (1)). It included the following accusations against Wal-Mart:
* WM puts locally-owned businesses out of business
* WM pays and promotes women and minorities significantly less, or should I say, never.
* Owners donate very little money to charity (while Bill Gates donates 58% of his income, by comparison, the Waltons donate about 2%). Also, employees may donate to help other employees in times of crisis; employees donated several million; the Waltons donated $6,000.
* WM provides security for inside the store, but not the parking lot. In many communities Wal-Mart parking lots have the highest incidence of crime in the county. (2)
* WM destroys downtown economies, keeps people away from downtown streets (making them unsafe, among other things).
* WM doesn't pay employees enough to live off.
* WM employs sweatshop labor practices in developing countries and fires US employees who attempt to make conditions comply with the law.
* WM encourages employees to use public assistance when they cannot make enough to live off of. Employees use an enormous amount of public subsidy in many forms (food stamps, Medicaid/care, etc.).
* WM Union-busts.
* WM maintains environmentally-damaging practices until shamed into changing them by the media (despite repeated requests from local gov't officials over many months)
* What did I forget?

We watched about 10 minutes of the rebuttal movie, but then I got tired (and it was boring). The arguments presented were:
* people love to work at Wal-Mart (example, 90-year-old woman who has worked there for 15 years, since retiring). (3)
* poor people need to buy things at low prices to get by. (4)

Overall, I wouldn't say it was a good movie. It attempted to be inflammatory. It tried to manipulate the viewers emotions. And worst of all, it wasn't pretty.

What do you do? Wal-Mart may be bad, but the reality is that most stuff is made in sweatshops and most businesses exploit their workers. Here's Tam's and my 2-pronged plan:
1) Shop at locally-owned businesses esp the owner-operated (co-op?).
2) Shop low on the... shop-chain. That is, buy used stuff. When you can't find it used, look for that "made in the USA" tag we used to covet so much in the late 70s.

Endnotes:
(1) Buyblue.com lists companies that donate money to the Democratic Party (as far as I can tell). Sure, this may help fight the Republicans, but isn't the point more to take back our country FOR OURSELVES? That means supporting locally-owned businesses so that someday we may have a strong middle class again. Without distribution of income, I don't see how we can have a successful democracy.
(2) The information about crime in the parking lots was the only new information to us.
(3) Why is it that she doesn't want to retire? Also, she surely doesn't need to work; so, how is it that this is a good argument in WM's favor? Some people who work their actually need the income to support their families.
(4) Why do you think that these people are poor? It's like the old song says "I owe my soul to the company store." Most WM employees just turn around and spend all their income in the store again bc they can't afford to shop anywhere else. In this way, WM is perpetuating its own economy.

How people express themselves

Rachel and I were out the other night having quality girl time, and she mentioned an interesting idea (well, she mentioned A LOT of interesting ideas, but there's one I am blogging on now). She recently read a book about how people express their love. The point is that if you know how other people express their feelings, and the other people in your life know how you express your feelings, that you will all know what you are saying to eachother, and everyone will feel loved.

Rachel says: so here are the five love languages:
1. words of affirmation
2. quality time
3. receiving gifts
4. acts of service
5. physical touch

The book she read is specifically about couples and marriage, but to me this seems relevant to getting along with your parents, friends, boss, and neighbors. And it's not necessarily about how you express your "love" but how you express your respect to the people in your life and maybe even the spiritual.

Driving Around Manhattan, You Pay, Under One Traffic Idea - New York Times

Driving Around Manhattan, You Pay, Under One Traffic Idea - New York Times

Gift ideas for me :-)

· Sturdy, cozy house slippers
· Athletic underwear (I usually wear a M, in REI sizes, I wear the M/L for both tops and bottoms. BTW, I am talking about the tank top not the bra top.)
· Superhero underwear (cotton, I think you have to order this off the internet)
· Scarves (wool, silk, NOT cotton): purple, orange, brown, light colors, interesting patterns too
· DVD sets (complete, NOT “best of”): Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, Friends
· Something to play my iPod out loud on, ideally also includes a radio
· Book on Tarot (I have a deck but nothing to interpret with)
· Biographies: see blog post http://liliapilia.blogspot.com/2005/09/artist-biographies.html
· A pressure cooker
· A bag for my yoga mat

Caring for Your Introvert

LPO: Caring for Your Introvert

How to vote

No, I am not going tell you what to think about each position, initiative and proposition. I do want to list how I decide how to vote and where I tend to look for more information. Remember, democracy is a muscle; use it or lose it.

The best thing to do first is to read your voter information guides and decide what you think. While doing so, take a look at who is for and against each issue/person to see if you see a pattern. These things are complicated, and there could be matters what you didn't completely understand based on the information presented. So check your findings based on the endorsements and analyses at:
spur.org -- I think this one is particularly clear.
rescuemuni.org -- I nearly always do what Rescue Muni says.
sfbike.org
sfbg.com

Especially in SF, you have to be careful of political alliances. People sometime endorse or oppose other people or issues bc they need to be allied with the BOS or the Mayor (for example). (I am not going to name any names.) This doesn't mean it's best for the City. So, make sure you understand what's going on, and be sure to decide for yourself.

Happy Election Day!

PS, please let me know where else I should be looking. Thanks.

Quick thoughts

Alison and I were taking one of our usual Sunday afternoon walks (GG Park in the rain, this time), and the subject of blogging came up. We decided that I need to just post whatever, bc as it is I have like 7 half written blogs that may or may not ever complete themselves. So, I was listening to NPR this afternoon and wanted to share with you a couple things I heard:
* Brain bug -- when you can't get a destructive idea out of your head, like fear of dying.
* Listening is an act of love. (Then they played recording and interviews between family members. Nice.)

Doing nothing but dreaming

So I’ve got this system (why aren’t you surprised?), but the problem is that it requires that I actually DO things. I’m not wild about that. There are certain things I am supposed to do every day or week or month, and there’s this list on my bulletin board. Yeah. Well, today I have to do yoga, and honestly, I just don’t feel like it. I might go tonight, since I have carefully guarded my free time to leave tonight for myself. Unless one of you calls me up with an interesting invitation. Anyway.

I’m not doing anything. That is: I’m not working; I’m not taking any classes; I am not working on any particular projects. I wake up when I wake up and then I usually have a cup of tea. That’s about the extent of my commitments. And honestly, I’m not wild about it. My weekends are busier, as I systematically completely wear out poor Eric.

A couple nights ago, I had an interesting dream. Interesting being defined as a dream I remembered. I picked out this little brown dog (originally a chocolate lab, but later a much smaller dog). I was wild about this little dog. Then, I don’t know exactly how, I ended up with 2 goats as well. It seemed like a good idea at the time. So, I took my 3 new pets home. Eric was there and surprisingly supportive considering that he doesn’t like dogs. (I don’t know how he feels about goats, but the presumption in the dream was that he wouldn’t be excited about them.) I quickly realized that it was going to be difficult to have 2 goats in a little apartment without a yard. Eric was supportive of that decision and said he would help me take the goats back. But, for some reason, we had to take the goats out from the fire escape, and we couldn’t leave the little dog alone. 2 people, 3 pets, a ladder to climb down…. I went to carry the little dog down the fire escape, but he jumped to the ground and broke his leg (I could see from above). I wanted to get down to him and get him to a vet to set his leg, but I was still up on the fire escape and he was down below, running around with a broken leg. So, the plan was for me to carry down one goat and Eric would carry down the other. I started down the ladder, and that’s when I woke up.

Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | Will they never stand up to the carmakers and save our lungs?

Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | Will they never stand up to the carmakers and save our lungs?

[SF Gate]French vandals known as the Deflated target SUVs / Eco-guerrillas make tires go flat, smear doors with mud

French vandals known as the Deflated target SUVs / Eco-guerrillas make tires go flat, smear doors with mud

Ohio, part 4

The anticipated fatigue hit Granny today, the third day of radiation treatment. She said she felt just about like falling out of her electric wheelchair. She didn’t, but barely made it to her chair to watch some more “The Price is Right”.

I realized that Granny is all about games. I mentioned that she lives for Bridge, but she also enjoys other card games, most board games that involve thinking (as opposed to chance), and her TV shows are all gameshows. She’s not interested in drama, comedy, mystery or even really news (although she does watch news). I think she’s not that interested in people. The news she watches is the type where they tell you what to think about what’s happening in the world, and I think she watches to see what is going on that might affect my mother and her various parts of the world (or other close friends and family not here in Cinti) – the number of whom seems to be dwindling. I believe that she cares about her family, but I don’t think she cares much for other people (“Hell is other people” –XXXX). But over the years, everyone has a story about her choosing the play Bridge instead of help a family member in a crisis or meet an important new significant other, etc.

My mother and I have speculated about why she is the way she is, but we haven’t come up with a good explanation. She’s lost a lot of loved ones and experienced a number of other heartbreaks in her life. Yet we know that being close to other people is not only rewarding, it is also the only way to truly know yourself; the equation goes in both directions, as I am sometimes terrified by my own potential vulnerability. Maybe Bridge has felt like the only thing she could count on not dying or embarrassing her with socially “inappropriate” life-choices.

There’s a copy of Harper’s magazine in our room (probably left by me the last time I stayed here) dated November 2002. Over the last couple days, I have been reading and really enjoying it. Notebook, Audible silence, by Lewis H. Lapham discusses the political/national response to September 11, still fresh in the American consciousness at the time:

“The New York Skyline didn’t look the way it once looked, but the on-air company of talking heads (anchors, learned scholars, distinguished statements) held fast to the doctrine of American exceptionalism, and the bland certainty of their believe in the country’s innate goodness…. Max Frisch recognized as ‘the knack of so rearranging the world so that we don’t have to experience it.’ (pg 9) “… We know that what was said last week (on the news) will be said again this week, and then next week and once again six weeks from now…. Here we all are living more or less happily every after within the virtual reality provided by the news and entertainment media that can configure death as a sales pitch for a weapons budget, an insurance policy, or a face cream.” In Presidnet Bush’s militant speech to the UN the day after his benign appearance in NYC’s festival or mourning and during his visit to ground zero, “In neither setting did it matter whether he or anybody else understood what he was saying.” (pg 10) “The media were interested in mood and gesture, and so, on September 12, as on September 11, they directed their cameras and their questions to the presentation of an image rather than to the substance of an idea” and didn’t ask any questions about the speech as it was “so strong and brave and presidential – that no one wanted to spoil the effect by asking what it meant”. And finally, “but if it is disgrace for any country at any particular time in its history to rest content among the relics of a lost language and an imaginary past, it is a matter of some interest in a country that possesses the power to poison the earth without possessing either the means or the desire to know itself.” (pg 11)

That’s enough of someone else’s voice for one blog post, and there’s a whole lot there to think about. But as I spend a 3rd day in a row discussing my eyebrows (I exaggerate) I wonder if the thing about Granny is that she’s American. That is, someone who buys what the American media is selling. She sits up there in her comfy chair resting and watching [insert name of popular game show here], I can’t help but think that this 94-year-old cancer patient, with 3 of 5 children still living and several great-great-grand children taking their bottles, represents the both the foibles and the potential of our nation.

Ohio, part 3

The first radiation treatment went well, and Granny has been in high spirits. My mother is worried that Granny will offend absolutely everyone she knows and then be lonely bc when Granny is nervous she is grumpy and says mean things. Well, she doesn’t always wait until she’s nervous, but it certainly does bring unkind thoughts out of her mouth as well as anything else. Two nights ago she got tired and started saying unkind things to me – I think she needed an enemy and my mother wasn’t a good one bc she had just washed Granny’s hair and massaged her scalp. Now I’m back in favor bc I cleaned the kitchen floor after a glass of milk got spilled on it.

It’s an interesting lesson. My mother is exactly the same way. When she gets tired, she’s unbelievable rude. There’s nothing one can do about it other than just get away from her. I think I had this characteristic before I gave up coffee, but I haven’t felt the desire to say unkind things to people when I’m tired in many years. Thank Goodness.

This morning Granny couldn’t find her pain medicine, which made her nervous again. Well, it turned out to be next to her chair. So, all’s well that end’s well.

The other good news is that we don’t have to change rooms today. Granny made the reservations for September instead of October which meant that we could only stay in the room with 2 beds (the pink suite) until today and then we had to change to the room with one king sized bed (the green suite).* That’s another nice thing about the center: they have these hotel-style rooms that you can rent for $50/night in the same building when you visit a resident. It includes breakfast and, in this case, Granny is able to pay for it with the meal tickets they give her every time they show her apartment. (Her’s must be one of the prettiest bc they use it as a showcase for prospective residents.) They give her 3 meal tickets (value $5 each) every time they show her apartment and she must have close to $1000 worth at this point. Anyway, the point is that it is very comfortable and it works out to be free for us.

Sharing a room with my mother is another story. She becomes dead tired by 8 PM, is very bossy about use of the TV when we are both watching it. Forturnately there’s another TV in the common room around the corner where I can watch the huge screen all night long if I want – and again, fortunately, there’s nothing to watch despite 100s of cable channels. Last night I watched Veronica Mars and then 2 episodes of Sex and the City before bed. The night before, 8 mm (a movie). I’ve got mother watching CSI with me at 8 (as she drifts off).

Granny likes to watch Wheel a Fortune, Jeopardy and Fox News. It’s painful.

Depending on how much of a sleeping pill my mother took, she gets up between 5:30 and 7, leaving the light on when she leaves the room. So, yeah, I wouldn’t live like this forever, but I guess I can get by for now. It’ll be great to have my own space again.

Anyway, we’d better go visit Granny now before lunch (which they call dinner, dinner is supper), bc my mother and I are having lunch with her old friend Cathy at the Olive Garden. Strangely, none of the other friends or relatives are returning our calls/wanting to see us. I’m not terribly concerned bc I came here to see my grandmother. I only visit less than once a year. But it does seem strange to me since, if they are mad at us they might as well just tell us since they won’t get another opportunity to see us for a while. And if they aren’t then the least they could do is call back. Whatever.

* (sidenote) I’m sure this color naming is based on something arbitrary like the bedspread covers they happened to have anyway. Now, the rooms are neither pink nor green. The other thing that seems wrong about this is the traditional associations with these colors (both western and feng shui, which makes me think they are human-universal). Pink is associated with love and tenderness. Green is associated with youth, money, and nature. So, tell me, why would you make the room where people (presumably couples) share a bed green and the room where people don’t (presumably not couples) the color of love? Unless they are thinking that men (sons?) are more likely to stay with their female partners in the green room and daughters and granddaughters in the pink room (girly)….

Ohio, part 2

I live a very sheltered life, it’s true. I grew up in the People’s Republic of Berkeley. I went to Hampshire College, where I realized that I had some conservative political views (Of course now I have no idea what they were – maybe they’ve changed). I returned to Berkeley and then San Francisco. So, maybe it won’t surprise you that I just watched Fox News for the first time.

I was about sex crimes against children. The moderator interviewed 2 “experts”:
1) The father of a young boy who was raped (Granny asked, “How is a boy raped?”) and who is now a troubled young man. The offender was found guilty and given 6 months in jail for this crime and the judge on this case, who is an Asian woman, was shown on the screen and ridiculed by the moderator at least 3 times. He said things like “no action has been taken to punish this woman for her gross miscarriage of justice”.
2) A child psychologist, but I didn’t stay to watch the rest of the show.
I studied journalism for about 15 minutes, and the first thing they taught me was that the journalist is supposed to at least give the appearance of impartiality. I don’t care if you are covering the murder of children, it is always the journalist’s responsibility to withhold judgement and cover both sides of the story. I don’t know why the judge gave this sex offended only 6 months in jail, but the way the story was told, she was the criminal, not the sex offender. Was it because she is an Asian woman???

My grandmother doesn’t like to have people around her who don’t look exactly like her. One time one of the great grandchildren (the child of one of my cousins) brought a friend to a family party whose skin and hair was a shade or 2 darker than mine. She may have been Latina or she may have just had a nice olive complexion, but my Granny said “That girl doesn’t look like she belongs here – who invited her?” Granny is also known to point out people at her retirement community: “that couple is Jewish” etc. She also points out if there is something wrong with anyone’s hair or clothes or if they ask too many questions. She once said about my sister Ilana, “I like that kid even if she is half Jewish.”

Yesterday at lunch, we discussed the fact that most of the younger generation in my family haven’t married the person they have children with. I don’t know if it is too much of a commitment, they can’t afford it, or it just seems unnecessary, but they don’t seem inclined to do it. My mother speculated that, while all these Midwestern heterosexuals aren’t marrying, the homosexuals are fighting for the right to marry. I am delighted and shocked to report that my Granny said, “While why shouldn’t they get to marry if they want to? Someone ought to be doing it.”

I usually think of my Granny as the sort of quintessential dyed-in-the-wool-Republican American. She doesn’t think about the issues. She watches Fox News, where they tell the viewer what to think. She judges based on the superficial. So, you can imagine how much this last revelation surprised me.

The view from the airplane at dawn on Monday morning was also surprising. The weather had been remarkably clear and bright, and dawn over the bay reflected vividly with blue, yellow, pink and gray, sky and water and the occasional dark mass of land sneaking in. We watched the whole bay area recede from downtown Oakland, the Claremont Hotel, trails of Tilden Park, places I have played since a little girl drew away from the plane in clear angled sunlight. Meanwhile my mother wouldn’t stop talking.

I wonder who she would be without all the substances. She drinks a lot of coffee. She “needs” a drink at night. Every night that I have been with her, she’s taken a whole sleeping pill, which makes the circles under her eyes big and slack in the morning. We got Pete’s coffee in the airport before taking off, and slurped up as much of its dark muddy texture as we could before getting on the plane. It was almost instantly clear that a small size would have been more than enough (neither of us finished our coffee, tho mine was a decaf). So, I can hardly blame her for her yammering on like a speed freak.

Granny just got back from her first radiation treatment. She seemed in high spirits, tho I think she had been very worried about it, which may have made her grumpy. But today there was color in her cheeks and she had an appetite. I bought her some nutrition drinks for diabetics – high calorie, no sugar. She liked it and drank more than half of one along with the Chex Party Mix she was snacking on.

My mother wants to know how I think Granny is doing. I said she seemed to be doing well. My mother said “no, really….” But I meant it. I mean, maybe I can’t see her for the trees, for her spitfire personality, for her criticisms of my pants and shoes and hair, but she seems like the same old Granny I always had. What do I know? I have never watched someone grow old and die. Is it something that you see happening over a long period of time or is it quick? Are people themselves up until the very last breath or do they lose the strength to be superficial or wise or critical or funny or sharp like they always were? In the answer to those questions, I don’t know which truth to wish for.

Ohio, part 1

Ahoy there; it’s Lilia reporting from America! I’m not talking about any pantie-waist, sidewalk-walking, small-business running, local-produce-eating America. I’m talking about the real thing, where there is no sidewalk and you can only eat at Applebees or Arby’s, KFC or McDo. This is no “where the sidewalk ends.” This is where the wheelchair ramps lead up from the street into a complete lack of sidewalk.

I mean, I’m sorry to be dwelling on the sidewalk thing, but it is more than a pet peeve. My uncle said that they had been putting in sidewalks especially around schools (Federal Safe Routes to School money perhaps?) and expressed possible concern about how the townships were spending their money when no one ever walks. The price of gas is down about $0.50 a gallon (is it in CA?), but still hovering around $2.60.

I’m here to see my grandmother, who is 94 and has lung cancer that has spread to her bones and liver. She seems remarkably perky to me under the circumstances. But she says she’s in a lot of pain and won’t take her pain medicine bc she doesn’t want to get all dopey and lose her edge at Bridge. Keep in mind that this is the high school graduate who has never lost a game of… well, I was going to say Scrabble but really anything, to me or my mother, for as far back as I can remember.

The weather has been beautiful, not cold and not humid. The leaves are turning nicely, gently. We’ve really enjoyed watching the ducks and geese in the pond in the center of her retirement community, but have seen exactly 2 people out there or on their porches despite that fact that are more than 300 residents here, all with balconies, and all relatively mobile. I think it’s cultural, like the fact that my mother and grandmother were counting over lunch today the marriage proposals they’ve received in their lifetimes and I have never had any. I think that’s a cultural-generation thing.

Despite being in the deep exurbs of Cincinnati, I find this center to have elements of an ideal community. Granny moved here bc she could no longer drive a car – all of her needs are met within the building. She has a compact one-bedroom filled with her antiques, but her friends never visit her there bc there is a game room, a library, a dining commons, and several meeting rooms as well as tables and living spaces in many corners. She dines with her friends 3 meals a day. They play Bridge nearly every day, calling each other on the phone to arrange things. The center has various religious services, a pharmacy open from 1-2 PM every day, a shuttle to anyplace you may want to shop (Kmart, Kroger’s, Macy’s etc.), a beauty salon during certain hours each day, coffee, tea and snacks available at all times, and more than 300 other seniors with whom one could socialize, befriend, date or more.

My Granny lives for Bridge. I mean she really lives for it. When I call her and she’s feeling down (“I am going to die soon.”) I hardly have to ask anymore bc the answer is always the same “did you play bridge today?” (“No”). When she has played, she is full of pep and vigor. We’ve been trying to get her to play while we’re here but I guess she wants to spend her energy on us instead. She gets tired more easily now. She starts radiation tomorrow.

I have 2 uncles living here. Dick picked us up at their airport and noted that his brother Jim has had 3 new houses in his lifetime while Dick has had only had one himself. That’s the thing you do if you live in Ohio, you buy a brand spanking new house every few years, one that no one else has ever lived in. I am sure there are advantages to marrying a virgin, but eventually that becomes not the point and you’re left with who that person is, or in this case, that your house takes 3 days to clean bc it’s so big and you must travel more than an hour to get to the city center.

Nothing about me goes unnoticed here: my socks are discussed, my pants, my shirt, my hair, my facial features, my eyebrows, my hands, my feet, my shoes…. And even tho I left home… or I should say my mother abandoned me to travel Europe with her boyfriend-at-the-time nearly 20 years ago, she still doesn’t get that we are separate people. She just made plans for me to wash my hair tonight, in front of me, without consulting me. Likewise, I am volunteered to do chores as if I am not part of the conversation. My eating habits are even observed with hers (“we didn’t eat our buns”, “we didn’t like that side dish”, etc.). I wonder if she realizes that I actually can speak and make choices as an independent person. I’ve been practicing for 20 years.

Experience taught me not to say anything about these things in front of my grandmother. She takes my mother’s side, and we end up in an unpleasant row. This is another good reason that we don’t have a car here: my mother is a completely terrible driver. I mean seriously, her license should be revoked, but she uses it as a tool for dominance: she controls the car therefore she controls me. You can imagine how that doesn’t work.

Anyway, she just called to say that they are done washing their hair (I’ll wash mine in the morning when I take my shower) so I should come over and play Scrabble. If Granny doesn’t win then maybe she really is dying.

Matt stranded in Guatemala

As most of you know, I rarely read the news. It's not that I don't care about the world. It's that the news is always bad (does that make me a deeply superficial person?), and when it isn't bad, journalists will find something bad to write about anyway. Also, I rely on my friends with stronger consistutions than my own to tell me what's going on.

Well, today I learned about the Hurricane Stan's impact on Guatemala (and probably the rest of Central America) bc my dear friend Matt emailed from Panajachel. So, my google fingers found all sorts of photos and other writings about this natural disaster, and, my friends, I have to say that I'm worried. Here's what Matt said:

From: matt baze
Date: Oct 8, 2005 7:35 PM
Subject: the last gringo
well not really the last, there are probably about 12 still in town. so i´ll try to make this short. justine and i arrived in panajachel about 11 days ago. as soon as we got into town, it started raining and pretty much never stopped. i decided to take a few days of language classes and after that we agreed to head on to sunnier horizons. yeah right. on the last day of my classes the rain really picked up, torrential. and it really didn't ease up for about 72 hours. as a result, the river overflowed its banks, landslides were everywhere and rumors circulated and were later confirmed that the only road in had been completely washed away. at this point, it dawned on j and i that something big was happening. we took a walk to the river and that's when the magnitude of what was happening hit us. the river had tripled in size, walkways we had walked on days before were washed away, homes & business were being washed down the river right in front of our eyes.
more rumors of more severe damage around neighboring areas circulated. it seemed every 15 minutes or so the magnitude of wahat was happening grew. this is a full on regional disaster. gas is being rationed as is water and food. shelters are full, thousands are homeless and many have died in the region. aid is in short supply, because the roads in are destroyed and the helicopters can't fly in this visability. though some coppters have made it in. there are a lot of conflicting stories and facts are scarce, its like that game broken telephone, where somebody whispers a story to someone and it gets passed around until the end where the story is completley different from the original. doesn't help that my spanish still completely sucks!
regardless, j and i have been hanging out at the biggest shelter helping where we can, mostly slinging food and playing with the kids. i'm not sure how much help we are actually doing, but at least there is a novelty of a big ol´' hairy gringo hanging around that invokes a lot of smiles and a few hugs, mostly fromthe children. (oh yeah, i AM BIG here).
now to the last gringo part, there was a mass evacuation of all foreigners, prior info was short and again often conflicting (although, at least 200 foriegners got the memo) in the end j and i missed the boat, literally. ah well, we'll help where we can and hope the next storm isn't as bad.
one more thing, the people, the mayans are incredibly courageous and perservere with a lot strength and even smiles. its heartening.
i'm well, safe and sound as is justine.
hope this finds everyone well
mb

My weekend in London

There were a lot of events happening the weekend I spent in London:
• National Walking Day (the pictures tell the story best)
• The buildings were open (not sure what this was about exactly, but it was also true in Paris)
• Thames Festival (again, the pictures tell the story best)
• Some kind of Underground (Metro) celebration that I missed
I also had friends to see and compulsory activities like the theatre ;-).

I took the Eurostar after French class on Friday afternoon and arrived without incident (although the train was late). K and I went to see Pride and Prejudice (the movie), which had just been released and we were both wrapped up in the romanticism of it all. But by the next day, we had decided that Kera Knightly wasn’t very good. I thought the rest of the movie was lovely and particularly appreciated that they used the real, historic homes as the set. (There were materials available at the theatre, including a small movie poster, with this information.)

London did some really cute things with National Walking Day, like characters in costumes entertaining people in the square, free walking tours all around the city, and loads of free stuff if you signed a document promising to walk and bike more. Several local NPOs were there pushing their activities, and people seemed really excited about it (or was that just the free stuff?).

The Thames Festival was huge. I went over there in the evening after consuming some of the City’s magnificent art museums with a loose plan to meet my friends, but while I had K’s cel phone number, I am such a retard I didn’t feel like calling. Partly, this was bc despite there being literally a million people there, I was sure we would bump into each other. And I was right.

The festival had a few cool things like a professional sand castles and music and dancing. But most of it was people selling their stuff (“think of Christmas,” one sign read) and I am pretty turned off by street fairs that are all about consumerism. For dinner, I had some pretty terrible chicken tikka, and then noticed much better looking chicken at the next stand over. Alas. And yet then as I was watching, the woman chopping up huge quantities of chicken with plastic gloves on turned and, without removing her gloves, accepted a huge quantity of money from her colleague. She put the money down, now covered in chicken grease, and then returned to chopping the chicken (fingers dirty now from money), still without and change in her gloved status. I think it was God’s way of telling me I am doing OK (that I didn’t eat from that stand, and etc.). Later, I ate some much better Indian snackies which was a small compensation.

[There’s something there about separation of uses. Chicken grease is dirty. Money is dirty. You are always supposed to wash your hands after you use the bathroom even if you didn’t “get any on you”. And at the same time, you don’t want to touch money or chicken or anything after you have used the bathroom at the same time – dirty things need to be separated from each other....]

The stated goal of the visit was to check up on London’s transport system under congestion charging, and, from this perspective, it was relatively successful. I also wanted to see some art and freshen my knowledge of Michelangelo’s work given that I just finished his biography. And of course I enjoyed seeing my friends there. The following letters and journal entries describe the visit more.

Date: Sep 18, 2005 12:14 AM
Subject: art, rivers, tea, and whatnot
London is lovely. It used to be that when I came here, I'd stay but mostly do stuff on my own. Now it seems they have started to like me, and I'm almost overwhelmed with social events. This is a minor problem bc right at the moment K and her mother aren't speaking. Families are so funny. H and his sister weren't speaking when I first arrived, but he apologised, and she forgave him. It does appear that he still expects an apology, but maybe that will blow over. And all of these little spats are bc someone said or did something insensitive and the other person reacted strongly to it. The reaction, in all cases, caused the break, not the initial insensitivity. My family has its drama's, but they are different.

Speaking of family dramas, sort of, I just saw the Frida Kalho exhibit at the Tate Modern, compliments of L’s membership card. Kalho was quite an amazing woman. But I can't help but think that perhaps she, and definitely her audience (including her husband), encouraged/exploited/cultivated the "folk art" aspect of her work in a sort of colonial type of way. I am not sure exactly how to articulate this, but she was far from "folk". Her education (in art and everything else) was extensive, and she was wealthy.

But here's the point. L and W's mother, R, lived with Diego Rivera and Leo Trotsky for a while (she's a Marxist astrologer), and she had an affair with Trotsky. So, L wondered, "Mom, we're heard so many stories about that time in your life, why have you never mentioned Frida?" Well, apparently Frida wasn't there, and I think that would have been necessary since Frida also had an affair with Trotsky. He must have really gotten around.

I had a lovely cup of tea with L and D, and covered topics from Slovenia, R’s life, Frida, how much D loves his bus pass (I think I am going to use him as a case study for one of my presentations -- he used to always drive), to the various family feuds. Now, I am having breakfast with them tomorrow too.

[“The Oyster Card is the greatest invention since the zip lock bag.” –David Queen, Londoner. It works as a debit card but with a discount.]

Anyway, after that I went with K and the boys to see Journey's End about WWI, and it was completely emotionally devastating. I thought it incredibly well-acted and directed altho there were a few awkward parts (the boys pointed out) where people jumbled their lines, accidentally blew out candles or knocked over chairs. If they were really comfortable with the script they would have made that seem more natural. Despite that, I thought it some of the best acting I've seen, and the play and set are pretty good too.

We'd driven into the city center (crazy) and parked at a lot where they'd parked in the car (cars on all 4 sides) and didn't have the keys to a critical car in order to liberate ours. K and the boys waited, but I took off for the Tate Modern (and Frida). I found myself in Covent Garden and enjoyed a bacon and cheese pasty and did a little shopping (I need to buy a bag to put the panniers, they are impossible to carry on their own, and I have lost my body and foot scrubbies, and also, it appears, my jacket, but I didn't do anything about that today -- I just got the bath stuff. I am thinking I should steal a shopping bag from IKEA to carry my panniers.) It's the Thames Festival this weekend, so I walked along the river with about 1M other people. Lots of stuff going on, but nothing very interesting to me. Then the museum, which I already talked about.
...
….When most good storytellers tell a story, they start at the beginning and then move towards the moral or punchline while building some suspense perhaps with a few well-timed pauses. I don't do that -- or at least not naturally. My natural way of telling a story is to start with the punchline or moral and then explain it. I have worked hard to correct this, bc it doesn't actually work very effectively.

From my journal, Sep 18, 2005
I’m sitting here at the National Gallery, looking at paintings of 16th Century artists from Florence and Rome. I don’t know if this room is any representation, but while Michelangelo worked his ass off, Rafael (according to the book) partied equally hard; yes, this room has 2 *unfinished* Michelangelos and about 8 Rafaels. For example. But of course M was mostly a sculptor. However, it makes me conscious of how short life is to do our work. I had better get busy. (Alternate theory: M had trouble finishing things.

Maybe M was just one of those people for whom life was a struggle, while Rafael was not.)

Sept 19, 2005 (journal from the Tate Britain)
I am interested in stories – stories as told thru images, brushstrokes, words, stories that are told thru glances and calluses.

Date: Sep 19, 2005 9:41 PM (letter excerpt)
Today, I ended up puttering around until almost 1, when R was coming over. So, I stayed for lunch bc I like her. Then I went to the Royal Academy, except it's closed on Mondays. Then to the Tate Britain and saw lots of cool stuff, except I also remembered it all pretty well from last year. After that I walked to the Saatchi Gallery, which was closed for a private event (as it was when I tried to go yesterday). I took the bus back bc I wanted to ride on the top of a double decker bus, and I got the best seat in the house, on the top front right. Yay! (I guess that's 2.5 for 5, which not bad given the odds.)

PS, [I picked up a step counter a National Walking Day, and it read] 12,000 steps yesterday from 4 PM. Today it's 14,600 steps so far. I know you are the edge of your seat to hear how many steps I take tomorrow. (The goal is 10,000.)

(art) Americains in Paris

Thursday night, I saw some open studios: Americains in Paris around La Bastille (www.legeniedelabastille.net). My friend from NN, Michele King, is exhibiting her work as part of the event, but Jennifer and I saw about 4 other open studios. To use Mido’s words, I will call the art, in general, “dramatically bad”. That said, I particularly enjoyed seeing people’s studio spaces and the internal city of Paris – there is something really magical about the private and semi-private spaces of a big city, and we saw areas with creeping vines, bike sheds filled with bikes, random commercial spaces in odd shapes, rickety staircases and polished ones. I am hoping to see some more this afternoon if there ends up being time. However, about the art we saw, there are a few people’s work I would like to talk about (bc I only want to say good things). There are more than 33 open studios, each exhibiting at least one artist, so I also want to be clear that I am not judging the entire event.

The photographs of a French photographer whose name I can’t seem to find, were very interesting, and not just bc they were serving Champagne at his opening. His bio, which we skimmed, talked about photographing monuments (which he had done), and Jennifer was moved by the way he had managed to take pictures of Paris without the work seeming cliché (something she wrestles with). I particularly liked on of the Eiffel Tower (where he overlaid the tower against people sitting on the grass, presumably near the tower, and under its shadow, in bright greens, yellows and pinks) and another of, I think, the Grand Palace. Jennifer pointed out an interesting abstraction of the Eiffel Tower’s details, where the ornate details were not so much displayed but visible. Like the Golden Gate Bridge, I think sometimes these large monuments are best viewed in detail despite their scale (and I don’t mean that in an acid trip sort of way). All the photo abstractions used bright colors, and multiple exposures which worked well and probably matched people’s couches bc they were selling as we drank our free Champagne.

Ari Solomon has taken some interesting pictures in what looks like China with his panoramic wide lense. However, I couldn’t help but wonder if there is more to the work than what can be viewed thru that wide lense. It seemed almost like a crutch for him. I wonder if he was the guy in the corner picking his teeth at the exhibition.

The only other non-friend artist worth mentioning was Cheryl Finfrock of SF, whose strange animals made me wish for a chicken abstraction.

At Michele’s studio (where she is being hosted, with another American artist, by a young Parisienne artist), she has moved from large (or at least, human-sized) pieces to smaller squares (in 2 sizes) which she abstractly arranged on a large white wall. She was concerned that people weren’t wild about them, but I thought they were an interesting departure from her usual work. I wonder is this experiment will cause a shift for her.

They also worked nicely with Sonia Burel’s work (her local host; Muriel suggested her father may be a famous artist based on her name) who depicts places with multicolored squares. I was very fond of Sonia’s work after I spend some time with it – she uses color amazingly. (They are oil.) She has a breathtaking live-work space that we believe is provided by her parents. I spoke with her mother briefly and she mentioned that Sonia’s work had been selling well, but lately sales have slowed, possibly bc she is making larger pieces now (confidence?).

The other American sharing their space was Cheri Reif Naselli, who does strictly conceptual work about verbal abuse in an attempt to process her marriage (which ended 6 years ago). Her work involves gut-wrapped around Barbie dolls and twisted sweaters. It reminded me of Judy’s fiber are, and Jennifer of Lucian Freud, neither of whom Cheri knew. She also had tapes of conversations with her husband that she would share with anyone interested. Jennifer listened to them.

I found the gut aspect of the work interesting, and the idea of wrapping, containing oneself, esp since it reminded me of Judy’s work who didn’t have language. But in all honesty, I have no interest in conceptual art. Issues are important, don’t get me wrong, but my simple brain doesn’t process a relationship between the aesthetic and the intellectual. Tell me stories with meaning, but make them nice and sweet and simple or complicated, but don’t wrap me in your messages. They are your responsibility. This is why people like Joan Didion write essays: they provide a direct and clear why to communicate a message.

That said, you can have a specific idea in mind and still create art based in the visual experience. But to me, the 2 have to go hand in hand. I guess I hope to explore these ideas more when I am living in my own space in SF starting soon. The other lesson of the studios we visited was that, with exceptions, I can do that. Art isn’t something restricted to others who give themselves license. I can make art and once it’s finished, I can exhibit it. I am good enough.

[LA Times] 20% of California Seniors Flunk High School Graduation Exam

--- "Ng-Baumhackl, Mitja" (a friend from HS) wrote:
>
> I dropped out before it was trendy. Thought that should be known.
>

20% of California Seniors Flunk High School Graduation Exam Nearly 100,000 statewide are in jeopardy of not earning diplomas, a report says.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-exit1oct01,0,7413567.story?coll=la-story-footer&track=morenews

I have 2 reactions to this:
1) People have to pass a test to have children instead.
2) We already know, and everyone else should too, that you don't need to graduate HS to go to college. This would hardly be news if that information was better available.

(letter excerpts 2) On re-reading, productivity and collaboration, the complex and the simple, and (as always) relationships

Sep 12, 2005 7:48 PM
… I watched Lost in Translation again last night and had a completely different experience with it (than the first time). it reminded me of… how (when you re-read a book, it comes out differently, and) it isn't the book that has changed, it’s you who has changed and can then have a completely different understanding of the book (or movie in this case). I actually think it is more complicated than just you changing, I think we all change like the tides depending on what we ate for lunch, whether or not someone was nice to us on the train, or we got an email from our sweetie this morning ;-). Is it possible that my moods vary more in one week than my personality has in my lifetime? (I don't think I believe that, but it's another way to think it.)

Sep 13, 2005 4:02 PM
… all good ideas have to come from some kind of collaboration. Maybe it is just easier to credit one human brain rather than an entire community. This might come back to my point from long ago about what makes a thing great is that it is finished. Maybe that's not limited to art. Maybe what makes a truly great creation of any kind is that it is finished, and the "great" people in any society are the ones who finish those things and therefore get credit.
* On the other hand, looking at Picasso's work last weekend (at the Musee Picasso), I felt like many weren't finished (it was mostly later stuff on display in the few rooms that were open due to the upcoming exhibition on his drawing). I felt annoyed, and that he was sloppy, esp considering his obvious genius.
* On the same hand, the thing about Michelangelo was that he didn't get along with anyone, couldn't collaborate with anyone, no one else's work was ever good enough for him (and often his own too). I think that's part of what made him a genius, deep-seeded competence in a sea of incompetents (or is that just impossibly high standards?).
* On the other hand, (the fact that) Raymond Chandler(‘s wife and editor wildly re-wrote his stories for publication) supports the original theory. Maybe he would have been nothing without his wife and editor.

I don't know how Einstein or Feynman worked, but it might be worth knowing. I bet they talked with their colleagues regularly about what they were thinking, doing, and making. But they probably did the work themselves (like Michelangelo and not like Chandler). But who’s to say that's better? Maybe the ability to collaborate well is one form of genius. It just doesn't always get recognition bc the human brain can't function that way. This is one reason that in college I studied art movements, altho I didn't know it at the time. Would Hemingway have been great without Gertrude Stein and Fitzgerald? Would Zora Neale Hurston have been great without Langston Hughes? Would Monet have been great without Manet and Cassatt?

And what exactly is feedback anyway? Can I get feedback from Lost in Translation? (I think so.) How do these random geniuses rise up without a movement? It seems to me that there always has to be influences. Who edits their books and paintings, corrects their experiments, tells them an idea is good or bad or so over? How does anyone know when they are doing something great?

…my point (about Lost in Translation) was that I don't think I can identify any more closely with that sense of isolation depicted so well now than I did when I saw the movie the first time. This is going to sound silly and so live-journal, but I think I have always felt isolated. I don't think I liked the movie the first time because it wasn't anything new to me -- just the awful way I have felt most of my life. I don't feel more isolated in Bangkok than I do in Berkeley. This viewing of the movie, I related more to the character development, and I really liked that it is such a quiet film.
…

I had trouble sleeping last night despite not having had a nap or anything. Class was good today as usual. I pretended to sell this kinda annoying Israeli girl a car, but I made her pay a 1000 euro deposit and wait for 3 months while we built the car for her. She wears heavy bleu eyeshadow up to her eyebrow, has her jet-black hair streaked blond, and has absolutely no understanding of French grammar. But don't get me wrong, she's OK.

I've eaten 4 pastries today. I walked for a little bit after class and no one tried to talk to me. I think I'll try a short nap now despite having loads of stuff to do....

Sep 14, 2005 6:04 PM
I guess what I was trying to do was pull at the string of the lives of various specific artists, and look at how their specific communities contributed to their work. It's interesting that right now I am reading about Michelangelo bc, as his life and work are portrayed in this book, he was no collaborator. However, there's more to it than whether or not you let some other guy build the road (at the very least) to the new marble quarry which you have built to harvest marble for your sculptures (he didn't -- I kid you not -- he took individual creation to that much of an extreme). But he was heavily influenced by competition with da Vinci and Rafael. His jealousy of their success influenced him to do new things, a specific example being the Sistine Chapel ceiling (he started painting specifically to prove that he was a better artist than da Vinci, who mainly painted, of course).

It also ties in with the conversation about re-reading books. We are each the collection of our experiences and all that, whether it's the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings or a direct collaboration between individuals.... I was upset that I didn't get that job (years ago) with MTC but like in Dar Williams's song "Blessings", where she talks about how glad she is now that she had these painful breakups then, everything might just work out. Rafael is a great and famous painter, and I studied him in Art 100 I took at Smith College (a good place to study art history), but I don't think he's as famous as Michelangelo. Of course, da Vinci is another story all together. And yet, I just image-googled Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel came up more than any of his other works (the David is pretty famous too, but I was most impressed by the Pieta, myself. it really made an impression on me. Oh, I googled him bc I wanted to see the Leda and the Swan painting -- I didn't remember it. – it turns out this is bc it was lost almost immediately.) I guess I can imagine a world where Michelangelo wasn't driven by a mad jealousy of da Vinci to paint that ceiling (indirectly), but I don't think it would be the one we live in now.

All these names of artists -- they're just names to help us find and identify things, like you and your software capabilities -- tools to help us retrieve images or ideas. War and Peace is my favorite book bc Tolstoy's thesis he attempts to prove in those 1,424 pages of fiction is that nothing happens at the impetus of one single individual, but rather as a result of collective consciousness. Specifically, Napoleon didn't singlehandedly decide to take over the world -- the French people believed (and probably still do, with some reason) that they should run the world. Napoleon gave voice to that belief and began its movement (as told in War and Peace and in history).

I once made that same argument in a paper in grad school -- that the design of Market Street exemplified the city planning en-vogue method of each era. Unfortunately, the prof I wrote it for led the redesign post-BART/Muni underground, and he didn't like my thesis much. But the grade didn't matter much -- the point is that that is what I found, and realized (!) after talking about it with my friends (who hadn't even read Tolstoy) and colleagues. I guess that brings me full circle; so, I should try to talk about something else now.

I continue to have trouble sleeping. Class has been fine, but is more difficult when I am tired. I am getting pretty good about rambling on in French about CA politics or Choucrute Garnie. I know I still make loads of errors, but it's good practice. I made a list of things I have to do before I leave on Friday and how long each thing will take me, and it's about 10 hours of work. Not sure if I'll find time, but it's good to have goals.

Sep 15, 2005 7:41 PM
I agree that individuals and movements combine to create genius, but I also think that it also takes the initiative of those individuals. That's part of the "everyone is a genius" theory (which has more to do with medium than environment), bc when people are able to dedicate themselves to something over a period of time, they usually succeed. A good example from my life is my writing “career”. Before I left for my trip around the world (1994), I did a little freelance work. When I got back, all sorts of people called me to do this and that, but by then I didn't want to be a writer anymore. I was starting to want to be a planner. (I figured out that writing isn't very interesting if you don't know anything.) So, it surprised me that altho I was completely out of communication for 1 year, my career continued to advance. And of course, my planning career has been much the same, altho I have never been out of communication with planners bc of the internet.

The book indicates that Michelangelo worked much much harder than I ever intend to. And I think that discipline paid off for him. (Although he was also born with a great talent to draw anything and raised cutting stone.) This gets back to the "love, work, and friends, you can have 2 but never 3" issue that I think we've talked about. Altho it appears to me that Michelangelo only really had work with any consistency.

So, I would expand the statement that individuals and environment and environment conspire to create genius to also include medium and discipline -- which is kind of a subset of the other 2. I would display is visually as a square divided into 4 by one vertical and one horizontal line and arrows representing the flow between them. In this case environment becomes both large and small (who are your parents? Is the global political environment such that there is money available to pay you to make marble sculptures? etc. with your peer group resting in the middle, encouraging you and inspiring your jealousy). No wait, I think it is better as a triangle... Anyway, I just got tired of talking about this. (which doesn't mean you shouldn't add something if you want to.)

…Most "interesting" things are really very simple when you get down to actually doing them.

The best example I can think of right now is relationships. They're complicated and strange, and I don't understand them at all. But when you examine people in long-term happy relationships, it is really very simple. The Israeli girl in class had a problem with her boyfriend 2 days ago, and we got into a conversation about what makes relationships work. I tried to explain (in French, of course) about the relationships researcher at UW Seattle who did extensive research on marriages that last and found, to his surprise, that the single factor was that the men all said "yes, dear". Of course, the American and Canadian women in the class agreed. But the teacher didn't understand, probably due to the French culture more than my language skills. He dismissed me as a Feminist (which is a bad thing to be in France).

My point is that nearly everything can be seen as incredibly simple or incredibly complicated, depending on your prospective.

We continue to practice the future simple tense and possessive pronouns. We played Taboo again today, except this time it was the 4 best speakers (IMHO) against the 5 worst. We won 5-1. (Both times the Israeli girl was up, she said a taboo word in her first sentence.)

Jennifer and I had lunch, which was not great (the food, I mean, not the company). We talked about how tired we are and how we can't sleep and sleeping pills and a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, I still can't sleep. This English woman suggested it could be the changing weather.

Sep 16, 2005 11:20 AM
Didn't finish Michelangelo -- reading makes me fall right asleep these days. I agree with you about stories (that they bring and hold people together). Is that why I travel so much? (to collect stories?)

I told you the Israel girl was having trouble with her bf? Well, today she announced they're engaged. I wish them luck.