Who's Your Best Friend ?

This is a just in case post, info found via Blog Meridian. Neko Case, alt-country singer extraordinaire, had offered to donate five dollars to an animal rescue organization, Best Friends Animal Society, for every blogger who reposted the link to a free download of a song from her forthcoming album, Middle Cyclone. Now, here's the thing: by the time I'd found my way back into the blogosphere and had caught up to my reading on John's website, the offer had expired (Feb. 3). Yesterday, however, the New York Times magazine had an article on Neko Case and mentioned the post a song/donation project. I know all about real time vs publishing time, but in hopes that the offer will be revived and extended, I'm posting the link here: People Got A Lotta of Nerve.

The free download still works, and I left a query on the blog site.

Of course, you can always just donate to your local animal shelter or rescue group. Believe me, they need anything you can give, and it need not be money: old towels, household cleaning supplies, old blankets, spare cat litter, etc. Just call and ask. Most organizations have a wishlist, and there is bound to be something you can give.

Buttons, Beans, and The Blogosphere's State of Investigative Prowess

My inner etymologist surfaces: the movie Coraline has apparently flooded the internet with questions about the origin of the word for "fear of buttons," koumpounophobia. The biggest question is what is its origin and is it a "real" word or something that Neil Gaiman made up ? It's real: it comes from the modern Greek word for "to button," κουμπούνω, (koumpouno) which comes from the ancient Greek word for "bean" (κύαμος, kuamos), which makes sense, because the ancients didn't have buttons, but some buttons resemble beans, + πονέω (poneo), "to work hard." So you can see where the modern Greek word comes from. Check any modern Greek dictionary, attach "-phobia" to the noun form, and you've got yourself, well, a legitimately rooted word. I wasn't going to write a separate entry, but this got to me, reading the silliness out there. I fear for our nation if people can't do basic research. Goodnight.

It's So Bad, We're Starting to Want to Help People

I read so much, info glutton that I am, I have just spent half an hour trying to retrace my steps to find where I read (but I did read it) that things on Wall Street are now so bad, the article baldly went, that an increase in grad school applications is up, especially in MPA (Masters of Public Administration) programs, aka the gateway to civil service and non-profits. Cynics. Ironic, of course, that the world of high paying sector jobs would crash just as the new social idealism that swept Obama into office has also taken hold. No segue, just links:

The New Service
Idealist.Org/Action Without Borders
The American Red Cross
US Department of State/Jobs (with links to more opportunities)
Organizing for America (MyBarackObama.Com)

My we all find a way.

Not Shuttered For Good

I wondered if I'd be able to start up again without remarking, or rather lamenting, how much I'd let go unsaid, but not unthought, in between. Too many long days at---- what to call it besides "the job" or "the option," as I've been doing ? Every morning, where I am now, and it has been frigid, I walk past a little greenhouse appended onto the back of a larger building. Inside, beautiful cacti and succulents fill the glass enclosure with their climbing greenery, and I love to look at them. Their safety reminds me of my own luck. Housed in their proper environment, they thrive, they produce, they breathe. It is not as if I have need to grasp the fact that I was unhappy before; I think that was obvious, in many ways, the catalyst for this blog. Now, once again, too late in the evening to give this its due, I will try to get at something complicated. I had not led a charmed life before I came to that point that I have called "exile" in this blog, but I had led a fairly consistent professional one, no scratch that--- I had had a consistent professional identity. Even I did not know how much I needed it, or how, when outside of it, how difficult the ideas and ideals that I had often drawn upon and assumed I lived, such as Berry's "Be joyful though you have considered all the facts." would find their limit. I knew, these past few years, that I had hit up against a new kind of limit, one where the facts, considered, vanquished a good portion of joy, taxed and even defeated my ability to be playful and creative, because, frankly, the intellectual and social life I had had, vanished behind me. And, after it seemed that that kind of life was gone for good, I was able to step back into it again, but picture the action movie where the parking garage door may clamp down before the protagonist can get the car through, the air running out before the astronaut can back in the airlock, Jack Bauer looking for the truth, and then you will have a sense of how singular, narrow, and unlikely the chance that this would happen. There were, you know, interviews and such, and I remember at one point, after learning that I had been recommended to go up the next level, lying in bed, and literally picturing a barred gate swinging open onto a green field, and willing myself away from the cliché and the hope all at once, knowing that I just could not continue doing what I had been doing. And now I am back in a world I know, and, unfortunately for this blog, so fully engaged with it that I let many posts written in my head slide by with a cup of tea at the end of the day or evening. I had a few, including what I was going to ominously title "The Dead Guy's Desk," which is my desk. I can't call the person who used it before my predecessor in any real sense, and, worse, he is only metaphorically dead. Maybe I will still post it, in some form: a discussion of what happens when your phone number and desk were previously assigned to someone who came to a controversial end. And so many thoughts on Obama and the inauguration. But all that will have to wait. I wanted to open back up again, so to speak. I'm even set to travel again soon. And that's the news from Greenhouse City. Ah, there you go: perfect, we'll keep it at that: I work in Greenhouse City. Good Night.

Great Britain Schools Its Wayward Child In the Ways of Empire

Now that it's becoming fairly clear that the Brits are leading us out of the finance mess (never, I mean never, elect a President who cannot manage the ownership of a baseball team), I found these contrasting stories quite telling:

The Right Thing (so far): "Simpson 'Expects Sack from BBC'"

The Wrong Thing: "Buckley's 'Sorry, Dad' Piece Leads to Exit"

The news about Buckley underlines the fact that it is increasingly impossible (if not already and actually impossible) for us as a nation to engage in political dialogue and dissent based on analysis of the issues at stake. Subscribers, outraged by Buckley's column, have apparently been cancelling subscriptions en masse, the NIMBY approach to the ideals behind the First Amendment. To be fair, Buckley offered to resign his column; it should be to the great shame of the National Review that they accepted his offer.

Funny that the BBC has taken the stance that the views of a respected journalist ought to be, you know, respected.

Old Bike

There it sits, the Schwinn that was my ride for years, not spared the indignity of being seen with flat tires, cracked sidewalls, and rust. Since this photo was taken, when I was going to list it for a dollar on Craig's List, I have pumped up the tires (the tubes, amazingly, are intact) and scrubbed some of the rust from the frame and parts, and hatched a much more foolhardy plan: perhaps I can turn it into an Xtracycle. As I noted in a rambling comment on Carbon Trace, the frame is a very sturdy one and the fact that I could not carry an Xtracycle up the three flights of stairs (see apartment building visible in the bike photo for the kind of stairs we're talking about) is no deterrent to this strange dream of keeping my longtime bike with me. Refurbishing, even without the Xtracycle free radical attachment, would be costly, which is why I bought a new bike instead in the first place. I don't need two bikes; I've got a rack and panniers on the new one, but still, the idea is taking on a life of its own. I keep the old tires full now, waiting.
That bike and I, we went places together.

Post Scriptum: Listening to a bit of Elvis Costello, as what could be more appropriate after McCain got his American History wrong ? So, here are the lyrics, by J.B. Lenoir, that Costello croons and rocks in the sadly apt "Eisenhower Blues." Music here.


Hey everybody, I was talkin' to you
I ain't tellin' you jivin', this is the natural truth
Mm mm mm, I got them Eisenhower blues
Thinkin' about me and you, what on earth are we gonna do?

My money's gone, my fun is gone
The way things look, how can I be here long?
Mm mm mm, I got them Eisenhower blues
Thinkin' about me and you, what on earth are we gonna do?

Taken all my money, to pay the tax
I'm only givin' you people, the natural facts
I only tellin' you people, my belief
Because I am headed straight, on relief
Mm mm mm, I got them Eisenhower blues
Thinkin' about me and you, what on earth are we gonna do?

Ain't go a dime, ain't even got a cent
I don't even have no money, to pay my rent
My baby needs some clothes, she needs some shoes
Peoples I don't know what, I'm gonna do
Mm mm mm, I got them Eisenhower blues
Thinkin' about me and you, what on earth are we gonna do?

I'm Back

Whew. That was close. I almost became a regular blogger back there in August. I've been so busy, happily so, adjusting to the new job and trying to get into a rhythm of biking to work. I seem to have had the opposite problem of John at Cycling in Wichita, who was having trouble with cooler temperatures; the heat was getting to me. No reason to sweat, the slow bike movement claims, unless, you know, your ride involves going uphill on the home commute and it's a humid 80+. So I waited. We also had some fierce weather, as in lightning almost every afternoon, but the idea of biking in remained a siren song. Now, I've had some beautiful mornings, and I'm fairly addicted to mornings in the high 60's-low 70's, the ride up past beautiful farmhouses and green lawns (I settled on a longer route than the one I filmed, to avoid the car-whizzing road on the most direct route). I'm out at about 6:45, and here is the thing I enjoy most amid the dewy fog rising off of the green all around me, the dark lifting to orange, and it's a funny and poignant sight all at once: high-schoolers waiting for their buses. I turn the bike out onto the street, and halfway up the block are a gaggle of children in uniform, mostly African-American, who by now are getting used to me, but for whom I provided quite a spectacle at first glance. Adults, of course, are so ridiculous. Giggles, "where she goin' ?"; "hey, it's bike lady." Up and over the hill, where the road opens to farms and houses set back behind trees, it's mostly white kids, two or lone standing at street signs, already dressed to perfection in the costume of their tribe. My favorite is two punk girls: the tunics, the tights, the leather boots, gelled hair, black eyeliner, lacquered lips and nails, who never fail to stare in open-mouthed wonder and disdain as I ride past. They look so awkward and assured all at once. I suppose the adjective is incongruous: me, with the cool of the air on my skin and the scent of morning making its way past my cappuccino fueled self, while they scan for the bus, anxious as if something might mar them before the yellow doors swing open and sweep them off to their world, backpacks and cellphones, lockers and rules, that beautiful and ruthless self-consciousness of teenagers, two of whom lean against the street post, snicker, and silently telegraph what the hell are you looking at ? But I see their eyes slide as the bike glides by, how freely it escapes the yellow behemoth coming up from behind as they await the hiss and the hot air of the unfolded doors and I ride on.