Aught Seven, Act One, Scene Five: The Americas, Beyond the Beltway

On January 15, 2007, Rafael Correa (who got a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) was sworn in as the 56th president of Ecuador, and the seventh since the legislature removed President Abdalá Bucaram ten years ago in February 1997 in the midst of a debt crisis that devastated the country. That's Correa on the right with Venezuelan President and fellow leftist Hugo Chavez in the photo at left. See the map on the right, put out by the BBC, to get a picture of the leftward swing that has engulfed Latin America.

In his inaugural address, Correa stated his belief that much of Ecuador's $11 billion external debt is illegitimate, because it was contracted by military regimes.[21] Correa's administration has suggested that the new government will not sign an agreement allowing the International Monetary Fund to monitor its economic plan.

On April 15th, Ecuadoreans voted overwhelmingly (78 % in favor) to support the election of a constitutional assembly that will bolster the President's powers and curb the influence of traditional political parties. Congressional representatives of the traditional parties are resisting this effort.

In February, Harvard University named historian Drew Gilpin Faust as its first female president.

A Stanford study concluded that pollution from ethanol could be a worse health hazard than that from gasoline.

On April 16th, at Virginia Tech University, 23-year old senior English major Cho Seung-Hui opened fire in a dormitory and in classrooms, killing 32 people and then himself.

Aught Seven, Act One, Scene Four: The Americas, D.C. Division

Under the leadership of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, America's first female speaker of the House, the new Democratic majority in the House passed legislation to raise the minimum wage, allow the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare recipients, expand federal funding for stem cell research, lower interest rates on federal student loans, and remove tax breaks for oil and gas companies. The Senate, where the Democratic caucus holds a slim 51-49 majority, has failed to match the House's efficiency and, as a result, none of these legislative efforts have become law. The House and the Senate did reach an agreement on a spending bill that sets goals for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. On May 1st, Bush used just the second veto of his presidency to kill it (the first killed a stem-cell research bill).

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, now chaired by Democrats, invited Al Gore to return to Capitol Hill to testify that global warming is a planetary emergency. The leading Republican on the committee, Joe Barton of Ennis, Texas (who represents Mansfield in the U.S. Congress), denied that carbon dioxide emissions contribute to global warming, telling Gore "You're not just off a little, you're totally wrong." According to greenwire.com, Barton has declared on another occasion: "I cannot imagine any objective finding that CO2 is a pollutant. If that's true, God is a polluter." According to the National Journal, just 13 percent of Republican congressmen believed humans caused global warming (see photo at right).

It became clearer from congressional testimony that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired eight federal prosecutors because they had resisted pressure from Karl Rove's White House to subordinate law enforcement priorities to partisan politics.

An appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the writ of habeas corpus does not apply to prisoners in the American concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In March, a U.S. district court in Washington, D.C. found Vice-President Cheney's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury in the Valerie Plame investigation.

The Supreme Court told the Environmental Protection Agency to stop shirking its responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases. And later ruled in a 5 to 4 decision that the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act is legal. Pro-choice advocates fear that the ruling signals a turn in the judicial tide against a woman's right to choose, a consequence of Bush's selection of Samuel Alito as a replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired last fall.

Aught Seven, Act One, Scene Three: Europe

On January 19th, Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink (that's him in the photo at right), who wrote extensively about the Armenian genocide of 1915-1917, was shot dead outside his office in Istanbul, allegedly by Ogün Samast, an ultra-nationalist Turk. Pictures of Samast holding up a Turkish flag, flanked by smiling Turkish police and gendarmerie officers, have triggered a wave of investigations and the removal from office of those involved. Samast is now in custody.

Jurists in The Hague ruled that a genocide occurred when Bosnian Serbs massacred Bosnian Muslims at Srebrinca in 1995. Serbia, said the court, was responsible for not preventing the genocide--but not directly responsible for the genocide itself--and is thus absolved of any obligation to pay reparations. According to the BBC , at least 100,000 people died in the 1992-1995 war, triggered by an effort by Bosnia's Muslims and Croats to cut ties with Belgrade, a move opposed by Bosnian Serbs.

In March, a new French law made it a crime--punishable by up to five years in prison--for anyone who is not a professional journalist to film real-world violence and put the images on the Internet.

Aught Seven, Act One, Scene Two: Asia

In early March, Vladimir Putin installed Ramzan Kadyrov, a 30-year-old reputed warlord and torturer, as the acting president of Chechnya. He was sworn in on April 5th.

A little background: On September 13, 2004, following the Beslan school hostage crisis, Putin launched an initiative to replace the direct election of the governors of Russia with a system whereby they would be proposed by the President that is, Putin) and approved or disapproved by regional legislatures.

Born in 1976, Kadyrov is the son of former Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov, a muslim imam, who was assassinated on May 9, 2004. In the early 1990s, the Kadyrovs--father and son--fought against the federal forces in the First Chechen War and then defected to the Moscow side in the beginning of the Second Chechen War in 1999.

In August 2005, Ramzan declared that Europe's largest mosque would be built in place of the demolished ruins of Grozny's shattered downtown (the photo at left shows the work in progress). When he became the acting prime minister in December 2005, he banned the use and production of alcohol and spoke in favor of polygamy. In March 2006, he decreed that women would be forced to wear headscarves.

The German human rights group the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) has alleged that up to 70% of recent murder, torture, rape and kidnapping incidents in Chechnya have been committed by Kadyrov's thousands-strong paramilitary forces. On November 13, 2006 Human Rights Watch published a briefing paper on torture in Chechnya that claimed that torture "in both official and secret detention facilities is widespread and systematic in Chechnya." In many cases the perpetrators were so confident that there would be no consequences for their abuses that they did not attempt to conceal their identity.

Aught Seven, Act One, Scene One: Africa

This year, like last year, I hope to put out a trimester blog report on the affairs of the world (for my own benefit as much as for anyone else's). Last year I posted these reports as single blog entries, released in May, September and December. This year, in the interest of making the reports shorter (though I doubt they'll be sweeter), I'll roll them out in a series of seven posts released over the course of a week (again in May, September and December).

I'll start with three stories worth following in Africa (as I've said before, a lot of stuff is cut and pasted here directly from wikipedia, TIME, and Harper's Weekly Review):

1) After the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (Luis Moreno Ocampo of Argentina) filed charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Sudanese officials for the massacres in Darfur, Sudan's Minister of the Interior said that any party who tried to enforce the charges would be beheaded.
According to an April 15th article in the New York Times, the four-year-old crisis in Darfur (which began, roughly, at the same time as the U.S. invasion of Iraq) has sent 2.3 million people fleeing their homes (many are going to Chad), killed at least 200,000 — some say as many as 400,000 — and set off a broad conflict in one of the most unstable parts of the world. These are the same casualty numbers that were reported by the official UN News Service seven months ago in September 2006.

A little background on the Sudan: It is the largest country in Africa and has a population of 32 million (approximately that of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas together). Wikipedia says two million were killed in the twenty-year civil war that lasted from 1983 to 2003, which initially pitted black Marxist rebels in the South against the Arab-Islamic political leadership in Khartoum in the North. The militias doing the government's dirty work in Darfur (western Sudan) are Arab nomads.; they have been killing black farmers.

Click here to donate to Oxfam's Sudan Crisis Relief and Rehabilitation Fund.

2) On March 11th, Zimbabwe police arrested and beat opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Reports from the BBC News indicate that Tsvangirai suffered from a fractured skull and received blood transfusions for internal bleeding. After Tsvangirai's release on March 28th, President Robert Mugabe claimed responsibility for Tsvangirai's treatment, adding that Tsvangirai, "asked for it."

A little background on the Zimbabwe: according to TIME, in the 1980s, Zimbabwe was the second largest economy in southern Africa. Millions of tourists visited each year to see hippos, lions and Victoria Falls and the nation gave black Africans the best education and health care on the continent. But over the past two decades, Mugabe has devastated the economy and turned the country into a police state. Unemployment is at 80%, living standards are back to their 1953 levels, and the World Health Organization says life expectancy is the lowest in the world: 34 for women and 37 for men.

In 1999, Tsvangirai founded and organized the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), an opposition party opposed to Mugabe's rule . On September 30, 2000, he vowed to use any means necessary, including violence, to topple Mugabe. He lost a presidential election to Robert Mugabe in March 2002.

TIME's Alex Perry (that's Alex in the photo at right) makes a persuasive case that both of these stories have their roots in the global warming crisis . And there's more where that came from.

3) Finally, a little over three months after Ethiopia's U.S.-backed invasion of Somalia, Mogadishu is engulfed in some of the most savage fighting it has ever seen, according to TIME (Alex Perry, again).

As Ethiopian guns pound insurgent positions in the capital city, more than 300,000 residents have fled "leaving dead bodies in the streets."

"In 16 years of civil war," Perry writes," Somalia had known only a few months of peace and order, which came during the brief rule by the Islamic Courts Union (I.C.U.)" that the Ethiopians overthrew.

The Great Snail Race, Part VI: The First Debate

1. Hilary is about as electrifying a speaker as John Kerry is. She does better when she sounds conversational, but when she tried to tell a touching story about Columbine, her pauses were excessively long.

2. When Barack listens to a question, he shakes his head like he has Alzheimer's if he wants to indicate sympathy for the question's concerns.

3. I'm surprised to hear Bill Richardson say he would vote against funding the troops. Richardson creates some space between himself and Clinton when he says he would withdraw all "residual" troops by the end of the year. Clinton has said she will "end the war," but on other occasions she has committed keeping residual troops there.

4. Chris Dodd reminds me of an anchor man on a local news channel. Or someone who makes public service announcements. I guess it's the deep voice and the hair.

5. Mike Gravel's campaign bumper sticker is "I'm mad." (Both readings apply.) He claims some of the other candidates frighten him. He indirectly indicts John Edwards for his comment that "nothing is off the table" with regard to Iraq, which Gravel suggests as code for a nuclear threat, but he doesn't use Edwards's name, even when Brian gives him a chance to. Gravel then insults Biden as having "a certain arrogance." Gravel's here to remind us what real town hall meetings are like. When we go a long time without hearing from Gravel again, I wonder if Brian's punished him for going off. Gravel finally gets a chance and tells everybody he is angry because he feels like he's being treated like a potted plant even though he is the "senior statesman" of the group.

6. When asked, "What would you consider to be a mission-complete status in Iraq?" Barack doesn't answer the question.

7. I like the fact that Hilary says, "I think that Barack is right," especially since the theme is working together on ending the war in Iraq. Could this be a president-vice-president pairing? Barack later refers to Hilary by her first name.

8. I have yet to see much of a sense of humor in John Edwards—not the most important quality in a President, but it would give him more of the common touch.

9. Why is Brian Williams asking about hedge funds? What are hedge funds? Who cares about them?

10. I find myself listening to the first 15 seconds of each answer. I notice this when Bill Richardson is talking.

11. Biden has the best funny moment, when he delivers a one-word answer to the question about his "uncontrolled verbosity."

12. Edwards tries hard to emote compassion. Obama, by contrast, comes off as "considerate."

13. Bill Richardson is the NRA's favorite candidate, Republican or Democrat—that's a good note, Brian. Thanks. Bill also has the longest ears.

14. Edwards, Obama and Clinton have not had a gun in their house as an adult. That's the difference between the first and third tier candidates.

15. Edwards uses his hands more than anybody else does.

16. Bill is the first candidate who seems to be reading from notecards while giving an answer (about how he's going to pay for universal medical care without raising taxes). Maybe it's just a tic, though.

17. Edwards says his mistake was misjudging the Iraq War vote and the lesson he has learned from the experience is to trust his judgment more (wha?).

18. My favorite line of the night? Edwards in response to a question about the environment: "We ought to ask Americans to be patriotic about something other than war. We ought to ask them to conserve."

19. Richardson is most guilty of crossing over the time limits without wrapping up.

20. Biden seems to be getting more questions than Edwards is.

21. Kucinich produces a prop: a pocket copy of the Constitution. This is a perfect example of Kucinich's poor leadership skills. He uses the pocket Constitution to argue that Cheney should be impeached. Fine. Impeach him. But why do you need to hold up a pocket Constitution to make the point?

22. I'm giving the most eye-rolls to Richardson for pointless blather (which may just mean I'm actually trying to listen to his pointless blather).

23. Dennis and Obama are fighting. Dennis disputes Barack's assertion that no one disputes the fact that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

24. When asked who his moral leader is, Edwards pauses for a long time-. I imagine he's debating whether or not to name Jesus Christ. He begins by saying, "I don't think I could identify one person that I consider to be my moral leader." Then goes to ,"My Lord is important to me. I go to him in prayer everyday to ask for both forgiveness and counsel." And then picks up his wife "the finest human being I've ever known" and ends with his dad.

Calatrava's is Bigger Than Trump's

I've only heard of about half a dozen living architects. Some of them are: I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind. Another is Santiago Calatrava, who is originally from Valencia, Spain.

Today, I learned that Chicago is on its way to approving the construction of what will be the tallest building in the United States (a title currently held by the Sears Tower--the skyscraper on the far left in the image above on the left). Construction on that building, which is currently referred to as the "Chicago Spire," is supposed to begin in the next 2 or 3 months and be completed in 2010. The design is by Calatrava and it will be built just across Lake Shore Drive from Navy Pier. (Calatrava also designed the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge that is currently under construction in Dallas).

I like the Calatrava-designed Pavilion beside the Milwaukee Art Museum (his first major U.S. building--completed in 2001), which Mari and I visited a couple of years ago on my birthday.

The Spire (see image at left) looks to me like a Giant White Drillbit (or a something naughtier). But Chicago is all about skyscrapers (this one is to be 150 stories high) and I'm glad Calatrava's signature will loom large on the skyline.

I am also glad that it will overshadow the 96-story Trump International Hotel and Tower (at right) which is being built a few blocks farther west. The Trump--which is to put it nicely, unimaginative--is supposed to be completed in 2009 and will then be the second tallest skyscraper in the city after the Sears.

I'm not a big fan of Mr. Trump.

So It Goes

As of midnight on Wednesday, Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut are all dead.

My favorite Vonnegut novel: Mother Night (1961).

The quote from Mother Night that sticks out most for me: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."

Last Vonnegut novel I read: Hocus Pocus, published in 1990. I read it not long after it came out.

This comes from Slaughterhouse Five (1969):

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

When Mari and I were recovering from a Portugese Man o' War attack in the summer of 1992, we tried to rent a copy of the film version of Slaughterhouse Five at a video store in Macon, Georgia (we also rented a VCR). The video store employee asked us, "Did they make a fifth part to that?"

I don't think the film versions of either Mother Night or Slaughterhouse Five are very good.

Here's some more recent Kurt, from "I Love You, Madame Librarian," published in In These Times (August, 6, 2004): "In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were."

Kurt was one cool string bead.

The Great Snail Race, Part V: What About Bill?

In response to an anonymous request made on a previous Great Snail Race post, I have done some research on New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, one of the trailing snails in the Democratic Presidential Primary race, whose bumper sticker might read: "I'm an executive with extensive foreign policy experience."

Here's what I found out:

On Iraq: like Hillary, he touts his foreign policy expertise and counsels multi-lateral diplomatic negotiation.

On GLBT issues: like all the other candidates, he opposes gay marriage.

The Dirt:

Like Johnny, he has a chickenhawk record of opposing military base closures. He's a more extreme than Johnny is, though, in his support of the death-penalty. El Verdugo would broaden the use of the death penalty for federal crimes, limit the number of appeals allowed to inmates on death row, prosecute youths accused of murder as adults, opposes maintaining the right of habeas corpus in death penalty appeals, and opposes replacing death penalty with life imprisonment.

Like Hilary, he loves mandatory sentencing guidelines and is bullish on tax cuts. In January 2003, in his first year as governor, Richardson passed a broad personal income tax cut and won a statewide special election to transfer money from the state's Permanent Fund to meet current expenses and projects.

He has some surprisingly conservative views on immigration. He would end the current practice of awarding US citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants who are born in the United States.

He loves free trade agreements (as opposed to the "fair trade" policies favored by American unions).

He is an outspoken opponent of drug legalization and favors mandatory jail sentences for selling illegal drugs.

In short: Bill is further to the right than all of the Democratic frontrunners.

The Great Snail Race, Part IV: The Dirt

I got nothing on Barack "Moneyman" Obama other than what I have covered in previous posts. But Edwards and Clinton--who have more extensive voting records—are a different matter. Close scrutiny of the ontheissues.org reveals the following:

When Edwards first came to the Senate back in 1999, he played the part of a chickenhawk (that would be Johnny on the right in the illustration at right):

1) voting against another round of military base closures as determined by an independent panel;

2) voting against cutting nuclear weapons below START levels; and

3) voting in favor of giving more money to the National Missile Defense Boondoggle, a.k.a. "Star Wars."

Also in 1999, Edwards pandered to the gun lobby when he voted against an amendment sponsored by Orrin Hatch that would increase penalties for the illegal transfer or use of firearms and require background check on purchasers at gun shows.

In 2003, Edwards pandered to the ethanol lobby (an anti-environment vote according to the environment good guys—the League of Conservation Voters).

Finally, Edwards is the only lead Democrat snail to support the death penalty (ugh).

Then there's Clinton, who:

1) voted for corruption when she opposed the establishment of the Senate Office of Public Integrity—a non-partisan, independent body charged to enforce laws governing Congressional ethics;

2) sided with Bush and the wealthy when she voted in 2003 to extend tax cuts initiated by the President. The 2-year cost of the extensions on capital gains tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans was estimated to be about $20 billion. If Congress had deferred this tax break for the wealthiest people in America, it could have paid for basic health insurance for every uninsured child in America, thereby eliminating 20% of the uninsured Americans.

3) pandered to law-and-order, lock-'em-up-ers in 1994 when she supported "Three Strikes" legislation; in Hilary's words: "We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets."

According to a 2006 report from the International Centre for Prison Studies, the United States has the highest prison population rate in the world: some 714 per 100,000 of the national population. Second place goes to: Belarus, Bermuda and Russia (all 532). Almost three fifths of countries (58%) have rates below 150 per 100,000.

The Great Snail Race, Part III: On GLBT issues

Based on my analysis of Kathy Belge’s “Your Guide to Lesbian Life” at about.com, there is little reason to vote for one lead snail or the other based on GLBT issues (that's Kathy on the right in the photo at right with her partner and their Oregon marriage certificate). The lead snails' views and their voting records are virtually indistinguishable with regard to GLBT issues.

Each has supported the GLBT community on a number of occasions (I won’t catalogue them here), but each personally opposes same-sex marriage. For example:

Obama: "I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman."


Edwards: “I don't personally support gay marriage myself. My position has always been that it's for the states to decide."

Hilary: "Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage always has been, between a man and a woman."

During Bill’s administration, Hilary supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a law preventing the federal recognition of same-sex marriage.

The Human Rights Campaign—which Wikipedia describes as “largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equal rights organization in the United States, with over 600,000 members. The HRC "envisions an America where GLBT people are ensured of their basic equal rights, and can be open, honest and safe at home, at work and in the community,” and which serves as Belge’s main source—gave both Hilary and Barack a score of 89 out of 100 based on their 2006 Senate record of “sponsorship and voting on key issues of importance to gay and lesbian citizens.” (Edwards didn’t get a score because he wasn’t in the Senate.) Apparently, Hilary and Barack both missed out on a score of 100 because neither of them were willing to co-sponsor a Uniting American Families Act that would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to provide same-sex partners of U.S. citizens the same immigration benefits legal spouses of U.S. residents enjoy.

Edwards claims to be undecided on the United American Families Act. He is also undecided on a federal bill to outlaw workplace discrimination based on gender identity and expression and on another that would extend benefits protected by the Family Medical Leave Act to same-sex couples. I don’t know what Hilary and Obama’s views are on these bills.

The Great Snail Race, Part II: Foreign Policy

According to a New Yorker article by Jeffrey Goldberg (“The Starting Gate: Foreign Policy divides the Democrats,” January 15, 2007), it is “foreign policy, and not abortion, gay rights, tax policy, or voters’ churchgoing habits . . . [that] seems most to separate Democrats . . . from each other.” (That's Jeffrey in the photo at right; I don't know anything about him, but the link above and this one are surely educational.)

And what do the candidates’ statements on foreign policy tell us about them, according to Goldberg?

1) Edwards is “the candidate of troop withdrawal”;

2) Hilary the “connoisseur of statecraft”; and

3) Obama “the pleaser.”

Hilary is the most informed and experienced of the three, Goldberg argues. And, according to him, her “expertise, and essential centrism will be an asset to her candidacy.”

Obama’s outspoken opposition to the War back in 2002 will be “one of his most potent weapons,” but Goldberg notes that the views Obama articulates now are “studiously calibrated,” “relentlessly measured and sometimes banal”.

Edwards, meanwhile, “has something that the others lack: a position on Iraq [immediate withdrawal] that resonates best with his party.”

“There are consequences to taking positions,” Edwards claims, “but leadership in this situation requires you to make clear what you think should happen in Iraq.”

Ironically, though Edwards takes the strongest position on Iraq, his decision not to list counterterrorism as top priority set his announcement speech apart from those of his rivals. According to Goldberg, Edwards is more interested in issues like universal health care, ending poverty, and combating global warming.

So with help from Goldberg’s analysis, I’m ready to brand our three lead snails as:

1) The Competent Centrist;

2) The Level-Headed Cooperator; and

3) The Stand-Taker.

My own position on Iraq? How about: the U.S. should go to the United Nations with its tail between its legs, beg forgiveness for past transgressions, and promise to bankroll a massive force of blue helmet problem-solvers in Iraq (and Darfur, too, for that matter)?


Coming soon: The Great Snail Race, Part Three: On GLBT Issues.

The Great Snail Race

Imagine a debate about who has the best chance to win a hundred-mile race that is being contested by a group of snails and it will give you an idea of how I feel about debating the merits of the field of candidates who are campaigning for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination. Not that I don’t think that any of them can win the general election. I just don’t have any confidence that any of them has much of a chance of moving this country significantly closer to the social goals that I value.

Despite the profound skepticism I feel about this nation’s ability to elect a decent President, I find it hard to resist getting caught up in the “less bad” choice game and since TIME has already started tracking the progress of the current field of candidates, I am beginning my own vetting process. I intend to do some of the vetting in this blog space and hope that some of you will be willing to share your knowledge and insights here as well.

The Bumper Sticker

Each candidate gets to choose a simple answer to the question “what is your campaign about?” The first test of leadership ability is whether the candidate is capable of formulating a clear answer to that question.

Coming out of the starting gate, here are my impressions of the bumper stickers of the lead snails--Clinton, Obama, Edwards:

1. Hilary’s answer seems to be: “I am competent and moderate.”

2. Barack Obama’s answer: “I will be a champion of civil discourse and the politics of cooperation.”

3. John Edwards’s answer: “I want to wage war on the horrifying gap between the rich and the poor in this country.”

While Clinton and Barack are promoting themselves as problem-solvers, Edwards is promoting a political idea--and one that I happen to like. His “Two Americas” stump speech is probably as close as we’re going to get in this national political climate to the kind of “Two Worlds” rhetoric that good Marxists wield in their attacks on capitalism.

Edwards has his dark side, too, though. More on that in future postings.

Then there's Kucinich, whose positions may end up resembling mine more than any of the frontrunners, but he has the kind of negative leadership quality that makes any issue he speaks for seem less attractive, and I don’t want to encourage him.

Four Words, Sixteen Years

The photo below was an accident. I took it to commemorate the occasion of the sixteenth anniversary of the day when Mari and I started dating. I was holding the camera at arm's length and didn't realize the zoom was on. My first reaction was to click by it, but on second thought, I've decided that it's interesting. Our eyes are different colors, of course, but this shot reveals some of the other ways that our eyes are different, ways I'd never noticed. (And if you're wondering where my glasses are, I got a trial pair of extended wear contacts last week to replace the outdated prescription on the glasses Emilio has had so much fun tossing).

In honor of our anniversary, the Chicago Weather Gods gave us the first sixty-degree temperatures we’ve seen in months. We took advantage of the gift by going on a walk with Emilio around the neighborhood without coat, jacket, fleece or even sweatshirt. It was glorious. Mari also gave me the recently released DVD of Borat, my favorite comedy of 2006, and we look forward to checking out the extra footage some time soon.

Mari suggested “Chinchon, China, Chicago” as an alliterative three-word summary of our sixteen years together. I guess “child’ would be the alliterative fourth. They've been good words.

What I Learned About Gallstones This Week

1. The gallbladder is a small sac found just under the liver. It stores bile made by the liver. Bile helps you digest fats. Bile moves from the gallbladder to the small intestine through tubes called the cystic duct and common bile duct.* (This and much of the following comes to us from our good friends at web.md.com).

2. Gallstones are made from cholesterol and other things found in the bile. They can be smaller than a grain of sand or as large as a golf ball.

3. Most gallstones do not cause problems. But if they block a duct, they usually need treatment.

4. Most gallstones do not cause symptoms. Symptoms of gallstones may feel like chest pain caused by a heart attack and other serious problems. Nausea and vomiting also may develop along with the pain. These attacks may be intensely painful, similar to that of a kidneystone attack and according to our good friends at wikipedia, these attacks almost always happen at night.

5. If you have a bad attack, you may want to have your gallbladder removed.

6. Your body will work fine without a gallbladder.

7. Only 1% to 4% of people who have gallstones develop symptoms; of those who have symptoms, up to 30% do not have a second episode.

8. About 15% of people who have symptoms from gallstones also have gallstones in the common bile duct. Common bile duct stones can cause life-threatening complications.

9. Two types of surgery may be done, one using a large incision (open cholecystectomy) and the other involving several small incisions (laparoscopic cholecystectomy).

10. In about 5% of cases, a surgeon who starts a laparoscopic gallbladder procedure needs to switch to an open surgical method that requires a larger incision. Examples of problems that can require open rather than laparoscopic surgery include acute inflammation of the gallbladder (although laparoscopic surgery is being done more often in this situation).

11. After surgery you may have:

• Pain in the right shoulder and upper right abdomen that lasts 24 to 72 hours (from gas used to inflate the abdomen during surgery). It may last as long as a week.
• Widespread muscle aches from anesthesia.
• Loss of appetite and some nausea.

12. You will spend less time away from work and other activities after laparoscopic surgery (about a week to 10 days compared with 4 to 6 weeks).

13. Your mother may have an intensely painful gallstone attack on Sunday the 4th of March and may seek treatment on Monday the 5th.

14. It may take doctors three days to diagnose the problem. The attacks may continue throughout the week.

15. The hospital emergency room staff may schedule a laparoscopic surgery for the morning of Saturday the 10th and may switch to an open surgical method during the course of the operation.

16. She may be semi-conscious, and in considerable pain throughout most of the day following the successful operation.

17. She may be scheduled to spend two nights in the hospital.

18. Though she may be accompanied by family members, you may wish that you could be there, too.

God's speed, Spot

Emilio’s babysitter Emily told me this story last week and my love for the universe compels me to pass it on:
Her roommate’s sister was house-sitting for someone in Washington, D.C. and came back to the house one afternoon to find that the family’s dog had died.
When she called the vet, she was told that she would have to bring the dog into the clinic if she wanted to find out why it had died so suddenly. Not having a car, she had no recourse but to put the 50-pound dog into her suitcase, which she then took with her to the subway.
On the subway, a man who had noticed how heavy the suitcase was asked her what she was carrying in it. Not wanting to reveal the suitcase’s real contents, she said the first thing that popped into her head: “my stereo.”
Thereupon, the man punched her in the stomach, grabbed the suitcase and ran away.
The end.

If you love your data, set it free. If it comes back to you, it was yours . . .

As of this afternoon, the prodigal data has, thankfully, returned to its laptop home. (Thanks to James Tissot for the illustration; that's the data at the bottom left in the painting at right.) After giving me a $40 pity discount, Dorian and Florian are $250 dollars richer.

My next task: call Dell's technical support folks in Manila to find out why my brand new laptop won't shut down, preferring instead to conjure up an evil blue screen that spouts some ominous mumbo-jumbo about how I should reinstall some mystery software and/or hardware.

Come Dell or High Water

The plot thickens.

But first, a preamble: Not long before my hard drive crashed, I had a conversation with a guy whose hard drive had crashed, taking a year’s worth of grad school work with it. He was unable to recover any of it. I learned a lesson from that conversation: always back up your hard drive, and so soon after, I ordered an external hard drive from Dell. Unfortunately, I let it sit in the study for a couple of weeks before I hooked it up and by that time, as my loyal readers well know, it was too late (see my last post).

My new Dell laptop arrived this past Tuesday and yesterday I moved all the files I had saved on Mari’s laptop (where they’d been moved when we retired the desktop) to the new external hard drive so that I could then transfer them to the new Dell. These were the files from the pre-Laptop years (1998-2003), minus those (school-related, mostly) that I imported to the laptop when I got it in July2003. When I started loading them on to the new Dell, however, the new Dell froze. After several hours of try, try again, (the error messages that came up said something about “compatibility”), I decided to take the external hard drive to Florian and Dorian’s computer repair shop and ask them to transfer the data to DVDs, so that I could then put it on the new Dell that way.

Well . . . within five minutes, Dorian told me that my new external hard drive was broken and he couldn’t extract anything from it without major surgery. (Thanks to Francis Bacon for the illustration of my feelings at the time.) What’s more, the clicking sound the machine was making indicated that the problem was of a physical kind that would make the task more difficult than the previous extraction effort. He said he’d run the project by Florian when he got in and they would call me with a diagnosis.

When Florian called this afternoon, he said that to find out if they could or could not extract the data, they’d have to open up the machine, and if they did that, I would not be able to return it to Dell and get my money back ($125). I told him to go ahead and cut, since I moved the data instead of copying it, so it’s no longer on Mari’s laptop anymore.

So the lesson I should have learned is: if you don’t have your data in two places, it can, in an instant, disappear in to a hole from which money may or may not be able to retrieve it.

And if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?

The Escape, The Crash, The Cold, The Anne

Two significant events have taken place in my life over the past two weeks without acknowledgement from Blog:

1) I finally left my job at the City Colleges of Chicago after six months in the harness, an event that still gives me a motive to smile every time I think of it. Since then, Emilio and I have been hanging out together every day until Mari gets home from school in the afternoon, at which time, I head to the dissertation mines. On Thursdays and Fridays, Emily comes at 11:00 or 11:30 to give me a head start on the workday. These days Emilio is obsessed with the street traffic we can see from our third-story window, so we all spend a lot of time standing with him at the window on the lookout for the 92 bus. He also loves to look through his three signing books, which he is getting close to memorizing (his latest accomplishment: a waving hand signifies “book”). I am glad to be able to spend more time with him.

2) One week after I left my job, my Dell laptop (a birthday present from 2003) crashed without warning, rendering all my data inaccessible. After several useless hours on the phone with Dell technicians in Manila, I took it to a computer repair shop run by a couple of Romanian guys one block west of us. On the Monday the 12th, they informed me that the hard drive was inoperable, but they could pull the data (42 months of it) and put it on DVDs for $320. A new hard drive (installed) would cost $200.

After much deliberation, Mari and I decided to buy a new laptop rather than repair the old one (whose warranty had expired). I have had a lot of problems with Dell and their tech support, but according to Consumer Reports, the other companies are not any better (if anything, they’re worse). The devil you know . . . The Romanian guys offered me $150 for the remains of my old laptop and I ordered a new Dell last Wednesday. In the mean time, I have been working on Mari’s laptop.

The lesson I have taken from this experience is that computers are as fragile as light bulbs. (So get an external hard drive.)

In other news . . . these past two weeks have been among the coldest I remember experiencing during our eight years in Chicago, with swirling snows and highs in the single digits on some days (we had a high of seven degrees and a low of negative-nine on February 5th).

Valentine’s Day snuck up on us this year and passed through without much fanfare, but I was able to bring Mari a card and some chocolates from bon bon and they were well-received.

Yesterday, I finished reading Frank McCourt’s The Teacher Man (2005) and Lucy Montgomery’s Anne of Avonlea (1909), both of which were dissertation-related labors (my topic: depictions of educators in popular culture).

I often read Anne of Avonlea while I was on the El going to and from the City College District Offices in the Loop and wondered if anyone thought it odd to see me in my suit and tie, with a hammer-and-sickle pin on my shoulder bag, reading about the adventures of Anne Shirley on Prince Edward Island.