Through a glass, darkly

In a little less than a year we - those of us who bother, those who have the motivation, are enabled by our background and social position - will go to the polls and elect a new government. What will our nation, and our world, look like then? And what effect will this have on our possible choices, and the outcomes of those choices? Today I step out on the pundit limb and make some observations about where we are and some guesses of where we'll go on that Election Day, 2008Foreign Policies: as a nation we are in an odd, almost inexplicable position. We are the global hegemon, the single greatest concentration of political, economic and military power in human history. And yet we seem functionally unable to use this power to our own advantage.
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The military response to militant Islam appears to be both ineffective in the larger sense of establishing us as the "attractive" choice for Middle Eastern moderates and inextricable in trapping us in a Groundhog Day in Central Asia. Through our own efforts we have managed to make our likely soon-to-be Great Power rivals, China and India (and probably Russia) the winners of our Iraq War (Gary Brechner explains it better here) while empowering Iran as the regional power we should have tried to contain.
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Meanwhile the problems we create for ourselves by tying our fortunes to the ill-thought-out "crusader state" , Israel, are magnified by our own geopolitical ineptitude and our unwillingness to do what Great Powers should do and force our proxy/ally to do what we need it to do to accomplish our policy goals. The farce at Annapolis was just the latest blockheaded attempt to try and get what we want without having the sack to force Israel to destroy its settlements and disgorge the conquered lands we will need to have a chance at preventing our discomforture at the hands of the eventual latter-day Saladin.Our current president makes it clear that he has no intention of significantly reducing our costly commitment to occupation - to the contrary, he and the current strongman in Iraq are attempting to lock in American occupation troops for a half-decade or more. This is useful to the current administration on multiple levels; as a foot in the petroleum source door, as a domestic political stick to beat the Democrats and other Americans disturbed and distrustful of the Republican indifference to Constitutional liberties.
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The domestic myopia of political advantage and the obsession with Islamic boogeymen abroad have combined to prevent us from being able to deal with the potential problems of a resurgent Russia and an aggressive China, not to mention the many unstable and potential trouble areas in Africa and the Americas. All this is locked in by our commitment to the Middle East, a commitment that will not be easy to reverse even if our "leadership" was decided on it. It is not.
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The inevitable result will be that no choice we make in November 2008 will affect this. We are now committed to being the imperial power in Iraq for the forseeable future, barring a general (think 1920 against the British) uprising. Which, given the political disarray of the country, the Iraqis are unlikely to manage short of an American Amritsar.
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Domestic Policies: the fundamental understanding we as Americans have about our nation and its government has been irrevocably - again, short of another Revolution - shifted. We have accepted - and will continue to accept - invasions of and restrictions on our personal choices and liberties for many reasons. Confusion regarding the extent and nature of the official lawbreaking; fear of enemies, both real and imagined by those same officials to justify their acts; simple sloth and loss of civic engagement. Our slow slide towards more complete oligarchy and personal surveillance will continue. Since we don't understand the issues, and no candidate wants to address them, this will not even be a serious campaign issue next fall. The descent will continue.

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Economic Policies: IMO the real ticking bomb. With a nation increasingly dependant on foreign investment, a nation losing the ability to manufacture or grow what it needs, a nation hostage to an inevitably-peaking (and possibly post-peaking) petroleum system for everything from transportation to agriculture, my guess is that we are within a generation or less of a major economic meltdown.
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One of the least-covered of the GOP revolution that has changed American life since Reagan has been the massive deregulation and devolution of oversight over everything from power generation to fuel economy to food production. The "subprime mortgage" mess is just a symptom; the real illness is that over the past thirty years the brakes have been taken off our economy. The entire farrago has been profitable predominantly for the rentier class that is largely insulated by wealth from the impacts of their economic choices. As at no time in living history since 1929 our economy is driven by short-term profit-taking and leveraged paper profits. The entire structure balances on the financial sectors (banking, real estate, insurance) that are, in fact, creations of a mass confidence scheme (that is to say, it depends in large part on the confidence of investors and financiers on the stability of the system) but one that is ever more bubble-driven while being overseen by fewer, and weaker, impartial outside controllers than (yes, again) before the Great Depression.
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Update 12/3: Here's a good example of just the kind of thing I'm talking about. As many as 15 people may have died in this Florida nursing home largely because the financial organization that owned the thing as part of a massive multilayered conglomerate wanted to save money. A combination of profit-taking, cost reduction, lax government oversight and simple human carelessness has led to an ugly mess that the families of the victims can't even unravel. What a total fuckstory, as my old pal James Struthers would have said.
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Ironically, economic issues have been almost completely absent from the political discussions among the candidates. We probably won't be able to make a sound choice because we will simply lack any way to distinguish one from the other - assuming that the vast sea of political contribution cash won't dissuade our "representatives" from taking any actions to steer clear of this iceberg. The question for me isn't IF - it's WHEN, and how quickly and deeply we'll sink.
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I'm afraid that this prognosis is dark, indeed. I wish I could be more optimistic, but as you know I'm convinced that we are living through the Fall of the American Republic. I'm afraid my only ray of hope is that I believe that by November 2008 the screenwriters strike will have been settled...so we will have our new episodes of "The Wire" and "24"...and won't be reduced to consoling our political and economic miseries with anything better than THIS:

Wednesday Random Ten

This has been an odd sort of week. Not bad, especially, although I'm already weary of the cold and rain, and especially the early-falling dark. When I was in college these short winter days (especially what seemed like the endless early part of the second semester in February) were known as the "Dark Ages", and campus dorm life in the cold and rainy Lancaster winters was punctuated by the outbursts of frustrated rage announced from an opened window with profane intensity. Last night was rough, with children up at all hours, crying, icebags, sippies and medicines for near-fatal boo-boos...sigh... So my thoughts are sorta all over the place.
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How do you gently direct a little boy away from whining? Words don't seem to work, bribery just brings more whining, while punishment - though effective in halting the immediate whining - hasn't stemmed the general condition. Is this a "phase" that he'll grow out of? He's such a sweetie when he's not whining; if only he'd choose to take the long and whine-ding road less often...
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Watching a pet grow old is always difficult; these little souls don't see their own fate, so they simply live each day as best they can. But we do know, and to see Miss Lily sleeping more each day, to watch her struggle up the bedclothes where she used to leap without effort...every day a little death.
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I'm my father's son, and for me pets are pets, not "family". They're animals, friendly, companionable animals but animals all the same - I've always gritted my teeth at the term "furbaby". Having lost a real baby, the idea that these pets are "like a child" is...well, obscene is the term that comes to my mind. It's not that I don't understand how others can feel this way - I just don't share it. And that extends to the degree to which I consider pets "part of the family". I care for these small charges, but I would no more spend thousands of dollars for veterinary surgery than I'd fly across the Willamette by flapping my arms.
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And yet - as I grow older, I realize how many of these small lives I've outlived and regret the passing of every one a little more each time. I'm not sure, since I've lived with pets my whole life...but I wonder if there will come a day when I won't be able to live with a pet, simply because I won't want to outlive it?Honestly. Was there ever a more idiotic display of civic incompetence that Portland's tragicomic "Let's Rename Interstate Avenue" folderol? I can't imagine. The only thing I can think of worse than breaking all the rules of the process and pissing off the bulk of the stakeholders involved is breaking all the rules of the process, pissing off the stakeholders and then accomplishing exactly nothing. "City that Works" my ass: these people would make twelve monkeys fucking a football a miracle of orderliness and sanity by comparison.

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I see that the national political campaigns are busy hitting all the usual moron buttons: abortion, gay marriage...have we sunk so far that we no longer have a sense of what is important to look for in an elected official? More and more I think so.

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Well, they didn't quite manage to win Big Casino. But here's to the Grant boys' varsity soccer team, 2007 edition: two goals away from the state title. Great run, gentlemen. Well played.
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And speaking of soccer: also on my mind are the University of Portland Pilots women's soccer team. Again (thanks, NCAA!) forced to play UCLA on the road to the semifinals. It's like having the U.S. women's national team as your neighbors only without getting to see Cat Deeley mowing the lawn in an old wifebeater and torn-up boxer shorts. Good luck to this years' gals - GO PILOTS!
How can I be a good father to my son and daughter, a good husband to my wife, good teammate to my company, good citizen to my country and good person to the world around me? What if I have to choose one before the others? Who, and how, should I choose?
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Don't know why I've been thinking of this lately: this operator was killed when his excavator slid off a logging road in Tillamook County.I just remember looking down at what remained of his last moments on earth and wondered what it must have been like, a falling madness of noise and confusion, descending like Lucifer, towards the earth below..?
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On the other hand, some things on my mind are just purely fun; fluff, utterly impractical but fascinating. The lovely and useless display of the Third U.S. Infantry on parade; butterflies; hairribbons. "Girl Genius" is one. So is "Spirited Away", which I watched again last week and marvelled at the magic you can create with your hands, a brush and an imagination.
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Why is it that sometimes a seemingly minor task or obstacle seems immovable, while other times you find the energy to burn the topless towers of Illium? The samurai used to say that death was lighter than a feather, while duty was heavier than a mountain. To whom - and what - do I owe my duty? And, while we all owe time and the world a death, what should I do in life to make that final nightfall feather-light and silent, parting the veil of death like eiderdown wafted from an upturned palm, drifting up and over and beyond into the bourne "from which no traveller returns"?Who watches "Girl Meets Cowboy"? And is this the sort of thing that H.P. Lovecraft meant when he talked about what happens when you meet the Elder Gods in the face? Is it the Apocalypse? And does this mean that there won't be another season of Stargate: Atlantis?
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Something has been bugging me at a very low level for a long, long time. Why does it seem that our friends never just call us to suggest we do something together? We know lots of lovely people who live right around us: Millicent/Floyd/Thor of Different Dirt, our friends the Wilsons (Oscar the Ginormous Fish's family), just bucketloads of friends. But its like we never just get a call out of the blue from them asking us to go snowboarding, or to go to a Wiggles concert, or anything. Is it us? Okay, to be egotistic, is it me? Am I too much of a jerk to be around? Mojo? Are her teeny-tiny social needs an excuse for friends to sheer off? Are we no fun? Have we lost our dainty freshness; do we offend? What? For whatever reason, it kinda sucks, and I try not to dwell on this because to do so would be seriously depressing. I wish I could figure out how to change this.
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If love is all you need, what about chocolate?
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Vizzini: You only think I did, that's what's so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned. Ha ha, you fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." But only slightly less well known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" Ah ha ha ha! Ah ha ha ha! Ah ha ha-- [Suddenly goes stiff and falls over dead]
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Update 11/30: Far from being "all over the place", rereading this post I seem to be fascinated by death. Wassupwitdat? One more thing to think about...

The Missy Files

This weekend was the two-month-i-versity of our parenting of young Miss Shaomei; from gotcha day to Thanksgiving. Here's our 60-day "progress report".
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To say that she's emerged from her orphanage fugue state would be an understatement up there with "Gee, that Chomolungma's a pretty big hill". She's become an energetic little girl, full of giggly toddler business and an insatiable curiousity. She babbles along in a positively brook-like fashion; we even think she said her first word ("hello!") the other day while she was listening to and babbling at the cell phone. She loves to throw, and she's developing a sly delight in nailing unsuspecting parents with projectiles whenever she can. She still adores pestering the cats, whose patience has been admirable (and who have been rewarded with a largesse of stinky cat food which she adores, too: there's nothing as surprising as nuzzling a cute little orphan child and getting a reeking facefull of Little Friskies' Ocean Whitefish that she has just sampled. Eegah!). Her diet is changing, and while she still loves her some congee as a belly-filler she's doing well with pretty much anything from bananas to cranberry stuffing. In fact, about every other day she becomes ravenous and we can barely keep her tummy filled. It does a father's heart good to see her getting bigger and stronger.
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Unsurprisingly, she does still retain some of the behaviors we saw first in China. She has a passion for being held. The intensity of her craving changes with her environment and with her mood. Some days she's as clingy as a baby monkey, and will sob if you plop her on the floor for so much as a moment. Other days she's fine by herself for long stretches of time. She is developing a healthy toddler jealousy of her ge ge - if we're cuddling with the Peeper she is so swarming up onto us like a Chinese Everest expedition. She's also started to fight back, and even initiates some of the "picking-on". She's even thrown some honest-to-God foot-stomping toddler tantrums. So emotionally and physically she seems to be doing very well.
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The Peeper his own self is still unthrilled by the "Mei-mei Phenomenon", and has developed his room into his own Fortress of Solitude, a refuge from loud and grabby little sisters. Miss Lily is his furry symbiote, providing purrs and soft fur for petting in return for a lofty refuge from clutching little fingers. She doesn't mind the trainyard under the bed - or if she does, she hasn't said anything.
One aspect of her hasn't changed: Missy is still a very compliant diaper-changee, throwing her feet over her head with the abandon of a purse-pinched Republican country club debutante enticing a callow Choate-and-Princeton trust-fund heir, but she's becoming much less compliant about actually getting dressed, to the point where catching and dressing the naked baby is something of an indoor sport. She is also the terror of the tub, a tiny raven-haired Cailleach Beara conjuring storms from the porcelin deeps. I'm still not sure how those tiny hands can move so much water from inside to outside the tub. Hydrologically it's an interesting point, but domestically we're gonna need one of those wet-dry shop vacs to keep up with our own little storm surge!
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So we're very happy and excited about our little girl's progress and looking forward to seeing what the next two months will bring.
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But I have to be honest and admit that I'm the one that's not progressing quite as well. It's very difficult for me to re-adjust to a life that's all kid, all the time, especially just when we were moving past that with the Peeper. It's like you were just getting over a cold when, slam, you're right back amid the crusty kleenex and the Dayquil. Not that I think of the kids as a disease! I love our kids and I'm excited about our future, but our present - the retreat of any semblance of an independant adult life - is a little tough for me. I'm trying to be a good, loving and happy Daddy for Missy and the Peep and a loving and caring husband for Mojo, but sometimes my crankiness seeps through. I've gotta find a way to deal with it, and I just haven't yet. Or perhaps it's more an issue of "resignation" and I'm still kicking against the pricks, so to speak... Just an aside, here, but any helpful ideas and suggestions would be gratefully accepted...
But, hey - how about these sweet faces, neh?

Quiet as a Turkey

It's late Friday night, both little people are sleeping: Missy after a poor nap and resulting early bedtime, and the Peeper after a LATE bedtime staying up to watch the second "Shrek" movie. He SO didn't get the pop culture references but liked the farting, so I suppose I have to give credit to the Dreamworks people - they know how to snare the four-and-a-half-year-old demographic. He also cried when he was informed that I would be doing the cuddling instead of Mommy. This boy doesn't cozen. He let me know in tearful volume exactly how not-acceptable I was as a substitute for Mommy. No quantity of Fudgesicles would make him mince his tears. He was still sniffling as he yawned his way to sleep with me stroking his back. Poor Peep. It's hard to be the big brother sometimes...
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We had a very comfortable Thanksgiving at Kelli's, along with several other adoptive moms and friends. Big public thank you and a shoutout to Kelli, the hostess, who was the Martha Stewart of Overlook (only without the prison record and all), and to the little people who helped make the occasion so much fun; supercutie Nina, a complete hand at five, adorable and so helpful at encouraging little one-and-a-half year old girls! And, prejudiced as I am, I thought little Missy walked off with the "Most Cutest Child Evah!" award for her excited "OhmiGAWDthiswhippedcreamstuffisSOGOOD!" scream every time I loaded her finger with a curlique of the white stuff. She was also the perfect turkey feed guest, getting herself around the outside of everything not nailed down to the point where we all remarked on her enormous buddha belly that night. Poor Peep and little Dumpling were feeling sicky, and we missed the two adorables Hazel and big sister Ruby, who had other commitments. But those who were there enjoyed the delicious food and the antics of the sweet kids. Good times. Good times.
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There was one moment that I will remember a long time for its bittersweet quality, though. Little Miss was sitting at the kids' table very quietly - I think she had a sippy and was just sitting, drinking sporadically and entertaining herself playing with the blocks Nina had left behind. Kelli's friend Heidi, who had been helping in the kitchen, came in and sat down at the little table and talked to Missy, just talked, all the while looking at her with such an expression of care and wanting... I hoped Heidi would stroke Missy's hair or cuddle with her, the look on her face was so openly longing, all I could think that here was a mother with a mother's love...and the only thing missing was the little girl of her own to love and be loved to fill her heart. Life is cruelly hard; we have ways of hiding it from ourselves or not seeing the harshness. But there are times when the light shines on the cruelty in such a way that we can't avoid it or deny it. It is those times when we need the kindness of those we love to help us. I'm glad Heidi, Kelli and their "Village" are there for each other. For the thought of having to face that world...with that look...and alone...
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The world is still troubled, and our family manages to get on through somehow, but I'm not ready to talk about it right now. So I'll be back Sunday, and until then I hope you, and those you love, and those who love you are all together in spirit if not in person, and that those loving fires make a joyous bonfire that warms you long after the embers of this holiday cool to drifting ash.

Cool - and not so cool - Things in North Portland: This Old House

One of the things that Mojo and I like about where we live is the "feel" of the neighborhood. We live in the "University Park" section of Portland, and our part of town is very unpretentious, the houses usually small wood-frame buildings, and in most cases built sometime between the Nineteen-Teens and the middle Seventies. The house at the top is one of my favorites - a rehabbed bungalow-style building at the corner of Yale and Monteith. Five years ago it was one of those scary dilapidated old-man-owner-found-dead-half-eaten-by-an-Alsatian kind of places. After the poor old guy did pass away (and was not eaten by anything, FYI...) the new owners have made a lovely job of making the old home look good again.
We like that we seldom feel lost or overwhelmed on our streets, that our little house and the neighborhood around us are built on a human scale.
The houses around us range from cute Craftsmans through grandiloquent Queen Annes to completely forgettable Seventies shitboxes.
This is perhaps the grandest of the local houses - this Queen Anne on Portsmouth is the pied a terre for some sort of artist who, while personally a bit of a jerk, does a terrific haunted house every Halloween. Does that make up for being a jerk? Hmmm....
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But - and I do have a "but" - the last handful of houses built or under construction in our neighborhood have been less promising.
It's not like you HAVE to build a grandiose Beaverton McMansion just because veryone else is. Several of the new constructions have been terrific-looking Bungalow or neo-Craftsman style duplex and multiplexes for the UP students. Here's an example of that, this one from right down Monteith. Nice, simple lines, new-but-fits-with-the-surroundings sort of look. But...but...
Here's the ugly face of the new stuff we're seeing. Sweetbabyjesus, is that hideous or what? These craptacular productions are the sort of thing that would be right a home in the inflated, anonymous cookie-cutter suburbs outside Aloha. My real pet peeve is the ridiculous "Great Hall" double-height entryway, a tribute to "more money than taste" and a huge ginormous waste of interior space. Freaking things should come with a Hummer H3 and a purse dog.
I'm sorry, but these are just butt-ugly. AND out of place in University Park. There's bad ideas and bad ideas. And then there's "The obstetrician should have slapped you AND your mama" kinds of bad ideas. Just one man's opinion, mind you. But as ideas...these are that bad.

Overheard on the Porch

Fricking Blogger. Pictures are still showing up as a bunch of ASCII gibberish. Honestly, it's like hacking your way though the Digital Era with a goddam stone axe. If I didn't have such a long blogging tail behind me I'd find a new webhost.
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Anyway, this was kinda sweet. Remember the little boy who made the comment that Daddy's possible decapitation of Little Missy with a chainsaw would be "a beautiful thing"? Well, he was outside playing with his friend Goofus the other day. Now I don't assign pseudonyms idly: Goofus is, well, goofy. Really. Clinically. He's got some sort of emotional problem, which you could probably figure by the fact that at eleven he WANTS to play with a four-year-old. Trust me - I keep a reeeeal close eye on him when he and the Peeper play together.
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So the other day he starts talking about Missy's little nose - you can see from the picture that her left nostril is a teensy bit flattened. You can barely notice it, but that's Goofus for you. He starts yattering on about her nose:
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"Her nose is wierd. Look at it, it's really funny looking. Isn't it wierd? Why is her nose so wierd?"
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Big brother Peep thinks about this for a minute and the says in a very quiet voice:
"I think it's pretty".

Rainy Sunday

Well, something goofy is going on with Blogger (am I surprised? No.) and all the pictures for this post have uploaded as ASCII gibberish. I'll keep on going in hopes that the pictures will show up online as pictures.
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This entire weekend has been the worst kind of Portland autumn weather: just a constant miserable drizzle, cold and raw. The sort of weather than can keep all but the hardiest of little peepers indoors. And to redouble the curse on our weekend, the expected indoor playpark at the St. John's Community Center didn't happen - not their fault; we read the schedule wrong. Duh. (Cool St. John's trivia: did you know that the SJCC was originally plunked down in an old cherry and prune orchard? Like, three blocks from "downtown" St. John's? In 1947? True fact.) So here we are: fourty-eight hours in to a weekend of nothing but each others' company and whatever entertanment we could scramble from what is in the house. We've played computer games. We've chased Little Missy around the house, watched Diego rescue the goddam elephants until I'm ready to go poach the things myself and to hell with the World Wildlife Federation. We're toast.
Important parenting safety tip: ALWAYS SCHEDULE SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKENDS. Sweetbabyjesus I'm ready to go mad.
One of the few nice things happening is that Little Missy has been terrifically sweet and happy this weekend. So I've thrown in all these pictures of a happy girl and her family. After the first week when we were so worried, it's nice to hear her silly laugh. Now we just need to find some friends for her to playdate...we're had completely ZERO luck contacting other parents in the Families with Children from China (FCC). Not sure why. Maybe our address raises fear. North Portland - that's where the gangsters are, right? So maybe they think we're raising our Orphan in the Hood...
Oh, and with the rains coming on we brought in a new exercise bike from my favorite sporting goods store: Play It Again Sports (your one-stop shop for truly funky smelling used lacrosse gloves!). Here's the Peeper trying it out.
So nothing new, or exciting. Just a nuclear family in the Twenty-First Century, locked in together by the rain and slowly going totally bugnuts.
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Come out, oh Great Heat Tab in the Sky! Have Mercy on your People! Come out, come out, wherever you are and let the Children of Your Sunlight Run Free (and their Parents Save Their Sanity!)

Game of Fools

So after all that, Portland's answer to the Long Parliament voted to change the name of Portland's City Hall's address.
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The new Calle' de Cesar Chavez will be SW 4th Avenue, the downtown street that runs from the old Chinatown through the heart of Portland. This after a last-minute "compromise" that left everyone pretty sore. The Mayor, who had mortgaged his influence on some sort of backdoor deal with the Chavez committee, was shown to have all the influence of an undersized gerbil in a pit bull fight. The Chavez committee (two of whom are shown here mopping the bitter, bitter lees), who for reasons utterly opaque to me decided to make this all about themselves - their passion at the Council meeting Thursday was all about the "insult" and "disrespect" shown them by, well, pretty much everyone, for not considering that their boneheaded display of intransigence might just have turned and bit them fatally in the ass...
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The Council itself, which proved splendidly inept in all aspects of governance.
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Steve Duin sums it up pretty well here: if you're going to break your own rules and govern by fiat, then you might as well get over wanting to be liked or respected. Feared, maybe. But if you want respect, follow your own damn rules. Maybe it was the sneaky passage the Portland Boulevard-to-Rosa Parks Way change slipped through that made our City Hall Solons so cocky. Well, gee, guys, did you got your dicks slammed in a door over this one? Unh huh? Maybe you won't be so quick to try and pull this stupid stunt the next time some racial or political group with an agenda tries to sandbag you...
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While the public and our city "leadership" were fulminating over this idiotic deckchair arrangement, over at Big Pink the folks at Portland Public Schools were standing around with their hands in the air as the reality that is Portland's increasingly poor, increasingly resegregated schools burned around them. PPS open transfer policy - in large measure forced by the damn "No Child Left Behind" farrago - allows the best motivated, best parented kids to bail on the "failing" (read: poor, read: black/hispanic) schools for the loverly white, white, white schools in Portland's Southwest or in darkest suburban Beavertron or Aloha.
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Here's a nice little map (from this cogent discussion page) that shows graphically which schools are losing funding (by the zip codes of the schools) and which gaining. Hint - the red zip codes? Don't be no rich people livin' up in St. John's (97203) or Interstate (97217), where Roosevelt HS and Ockley Green MS are hemorrhaging students as families flee. 97232? The Benson and da Vinci magnet schools. 97201? Lincoln HS, alma mater of the doctors' and lawyers' kids living in the West Hills.
This sort of foolishness isn't just local. We're seeing it at the national and international level, too.
The seemingly endless campaigning for 2008 has brought us endless and endlessly moronic public clamor over John Edward's haircut, Hilarys laugh, Fred Thompson's trophy wife (ohgod! My eyes! eeewww!), gay marriage, gay sex, sex in general, Republicans looking for gay sex in men's rooms...
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Sweetfuckingbabyjesus, the stupid - it burns! It we want to get all worked up about something, how about this?
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I'm not John freaking Wesley Powell, but even a stupid geologist like me can do simple math. It takes somewhere between 1,000 and 1,000,000 years to turn organic matter from organic hydrocarbons throgh kerogen into liquid crude petroleum. It takes about ten years to go from preliminary field exploration through well drilling to production, refining and combustion.
We're gonna run out of fucking gas, folks. And our government (remember them?), the folks that are supposed to be taking the long view, securing our future as we keep our noses pressed to the daily grindstone? They can't even be bothered to kick the nation's automakers to remind them that, yeah, duh, since we've got folks, y'know, like, dying right now to keep the Iraqis pumping our gas, ummm, the least you could do is figure out a way to squeeze an extra mpg or two out of next year's Hummer, fuckpoles.
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My dread - not as much for myself as for the Peeper and Little Missy - is that we have managed to create such a reality- and consequence-free existence for ourselves that most of us just don't care about this stuff. I've talked before how, like the Roman Republic before us, we have managed to combine greed, luxury, sloth and lust - quite a concatenation of Deadly Sins! - and abandoned the active role the Founders of this country believed its citizens would need to assume. They gave us a republic.
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The fact that Dick Cheney and George Bush are not impeached, disgraced and in prison reminds us every fucking day that we have not kept it. The fact that we carelessly accept that some kids get a decent education and some are just screwed reminds us that we have not kept it. The fact that we contnue to drive heedlessly into a post-petroleum future worrying more about how much we pay at the pump and less about what happens when the pump runs dry...
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We could have acted with the wisdom of adults, made the hard choices, dealt with the REAL problems. We have chosen, instead, to talk of foolish trivia, to believe lies and follow those who have lied to us, and continue to lie, and have not punished them for their lies. We have chosen to embrace those easy lies and rejected the hard truths and those who have tried to tell them to us. We would rather live in easy dishonor and careless foolishness than take the savage beating that our stupidity, our greed and our ignorance have earned us as the first step out of the darkness where we're playing our game of fools. And yet we haven't evaded the beating; it's still out there, waiting for us, and the longer we put it off the less pleasant it will be when we receive it.

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"Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity."

R. Heinlein

Story Box

In case you've never had the chance - and her blog is password-protected, so you might not have...

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This little story box is handcrafted by a gal in Texas who's got a whole pantsload of creativity. She calls this one "Bud and Annette, in her yellow coat". The other day she posted this picture on her blog - which will remain linkless as it's password-protected - and asked for submissions for a "back story" for the story box.

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I putzed around and didn't do anything for a long while (and hence missed the deadline) but I finally did come up with an idea that I kinda liked. And since what the hell good is having a blog unless you can use it like a vanity press to inflict your writing on others, I've decided to post it here.

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Not sure if that makes me vain or just another writer like all the others, trying to build my monument not from a pyramid of skulls like Timur, but from my own words. Anyway, here's "Bud and Annette, in her yellow coat":

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She found the postcard in the bottom of the box; it was near the bottom, last but one of the pottage of paper inside. Pastel colors on one side, the other scrawled with his familiar backtilted handwriting, the slashing slant of “l” and “h” as familiar to her as the color of the walls around her. She could almost see his hand moving across the cardboard. Strong, blunt fingers, big knuckles. Even after he’d retired, long after he’d moved up from the shop floor, he had a mechanic’s hands.

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She moved slightly, seeing not the empty room and the mess of papers spread out but the hard white light of a desert afternoon outside the dim hotel room. The bulk of him against the white doorway writing to his sister in the gloom; her yellow coat folded neatly over the plain wooden chair, spectator pumps primly together on the floor beside him at the table. Just another late afternoon on the road with him, the motels and meals in diners and reading in back seat in the shade of a cottonwood grove outside the plants while he was inside selling hose clamps and thermostats and voltage regulators.

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For a moment her body didn’t feel the aches and indignities of eighty years. For a moment her legs remembered the good long muscular stretch after that hard day’s ride, her scalp the feeling of sun-hot silk over clean hair, the rough caress of the back of his hand across her neck that could still then – ten years after that first USO dance – make her belly tighten and her shoulders loosen. Just for a moment, sitting dry-eyed in silence, in her sensible grandma dress, she could feel the way he made her feel when he looked at her slantendicular with those hard mechanic’s hands on the steering wheel in the hot, bright afternoon.

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And in that moment she missed him so hard that it crushed her chest, binding on her heart like a hose clamp binding a cracked radiator hose.

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“Mom?” came Jeanelle’s voice from the front of the house. “We can’t wait any longer if we don’t want to be late for the service!”

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Fifty years since they had last surprised each other, for good or ill. Fifty years leaving in the morning with a hard kiss and a cheerful admonition not to run off with the mailman. Only the last surprise of waking without him beside her, of the empty spaces around her, of the hard, hot pain within her.

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“Coming…” she answered. She stood up and placed the paper back in the shoebox carefully.

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“Goodbye, Bud” she said, and turned out the light.

Big Pool Fun

Have I mentioned that we loves us some Columbia Pool? Portland Parks & Rec does a great job providing the public with places to lark about and our local pool is a great example. The Peeper loves to go to the pool, for the pool itself almost as much as the ice cream machine in the lobby. His Mom and I have been CP visitors since he was an embryo - literally, since Mojo couldn't do much other exercising during her pregnancies - and so we enjoy accomodating the Peep's aquatic interests.
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Mind you, we can't do laps anymore, not with a little guy who hasn't made it through "Goldfish" yet, but we still bob in the baby-pool side and play games in the water. BLM (Before-Little-Missy) one of us would tend the Peep while the other got their exercise in. Now we're both Slaves to Evolution. But we still enjoy the pool.
So....when our friend K came over to visit yesterday we HAD to convoy down to the pool for a bit of a splash.
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The Peeper has a teensy bit of a crush on K - don't worry, Kelli, you're still his passion grande - and so he was delighted that she wanted to tow him around on the floatie and bounce around in the pool with him.
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This boy takes to the water like a Labrador retriever, despite the fact that he doesn't swim. And now that he's almost 44" tall (one ritual we must repeat when we go to CP is the traditional "Measuring Of The Peeper" on the can-you-come-here-unaccompanied yardstick at the front door) the shallow end of CP isn't over his head anywhere, so he revels in his new big-boy capability to bounce everywhere in his portion of Waterworld.
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Little Missy, fortunate, has also turned out to be a waterbaby, as her confident stride towards the vasty Deep shows. She and Mojo played a long time with this ball and the float, but she shows a hopeful tendency to float in a swimmingish sort of way. I'll feel better once they can both swim. But for now its enough that she loves to splash and play in the warm pool water.
And I enjoy the pool, too. It's fun playing with the kids and there's an added benefit just for the Daddy. It must be some sort of atavistic, protohuman hardwiring in the back of my brain, but I have always enjoyed Mojo's scent when she leaves the pool with the faint whiff of chlorine on her warm skin. I have no idea why this "works" for me, but you can keep your Chanel and your Obsession - give me HTH every time. Mmmmm.

Gobble Gobble

I have just flat given up. I can't think of anything to say about anything of import that doesn't sound mean, cynical and dispirited. I don't feel that way...but when I look at the news, well, I just get pissed off.
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Add to that the increasing frustration, anger and/or depression I hear from people dealing with the ever-longer wait for non-special needs adoptions from China that, in turn, makes me angry and frustrated for the kids not getting parents and the great parents not getting to be with their kids.
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I just don't want to go there any further. So this Friday will be thought-free!
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Instead I'll resort to the last desperate ploy of the overmatched swordsman: I'll tell a story.
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Actually, I got to thinking about this 1) while composing the preceding post about the teeny tiny Chinese bills, and 2) wondering about what to do for Maxine's First Thanksgiving. It's a leetle bit of a stretch, so bear with me
This September 25th was Moon Festival for China, and for many folks of Chinese heritage all over the world. Since we were busy trying to expand our family at that point, we pretty much gave the MoonFest a pass. The local folks were whooping it up pretty good, and Millicent and Floyd did give us a mooncake for a present that evening. So we feel like we chipped in at least a little.
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N.B. - the mooncake tasted like raw dough. Not sure if that's how they're supposed to taste...

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Anyway, the next day saw us on one of our many, many trips downtown Guangzhou to see our pals at the police station. We got to talking with our agency guide, the sharp young woman who was Rob the Yob's stand-in.
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"So, what's the deal with Moon Festival?" we asked her. "Oh, it's a big family holiday, all families get together and have a big meal and party." she explained. Mojo and I looked at each other.

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"Lemme ask you something...are you married?" She admitted that she wasn't.
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"When you go home for Moon Festival, do your mom and grandma give you a hard time about not having a man, getting too old, and not giving them grandkids?" Yep, she said, all the time.

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"Does your Dad and your uncles drink too much, argue and watch sports on TV?" She said that they usually did.

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"Do the kids make noise, raise hell and throw food, and does one of your aunt's kids throw a huge tantrum and/or get sick?" She agreed that was what usually happened.

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"And do all the grown-up kids hang out in the back yard, smoking, and complain about having to travel to do this every year?" She just smiled and nodded. Mojo and I smiled back, looked at each other and laughed:

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"THANKSGIVING!"

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So, folks, you heard it here first: the Pilgrims celebrated the first Moon Festival in the New World. And here you always thought it was just pumpkin pie, football, Puritan theocracy, and shiking the red man out of his homeland!

Ooh. Nice pecker, Tom. I'll take a little off the leg and some cranberry sauce...

Flying Money

While trying to come up with a think piece that doesn't come down to, in essence, a recapitulation of the "Sweet Baby Jesus, what a rotten, slimy, repugnant, Constitution-shredding, spastic, grab-ass-tic piece of monkey shit Dick Cheney and his fellow Republicans are" theme, I ran across this fun little comment about teeny tiny denomination paper money in the China P.R. in James Fallow's blog.
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In case you haven't followed his adventures in China it's worth a look in from time to time. He clearly has an "outside-in" look at the country and the culture and doesn't speak the language. Of course, that's not a problem here, where our cultured and clever Kelli brings her literate brand of travel writing to delight us with accounts of her travels and her take on the wait for adorable little Chinese orphans to adopt...

The Chinese have a great tradition of paper banknotes - the top illustration is "flying money" and a mint plate from the 13th Century A.D. But I have to say that the current PRC cash set-up carries this tradition perhaps further than it needs to go.
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In our toing-and-froing across Shamian Dao I managed to pick up a pocketful of these damn things. They're the half (5 Jiao), one-fifth (2 Jiao) and one-tenth yuan (or "renminbi", to give the currency its official name. In essence, they're a paper fifty-cent piece, a sorta-quarter and a dime.
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I note with interest that at one point back in the Fifties the PRC actially issued notes for the sub-silver coin level of currency, the "fen". The fen is the hundredth part of a yuan - in essence, a penny. I can't imagine what the fuck you'd do with a paper penny, but the word "tinder" comes to mind.
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One thing I found interesting in Fallow's observation was his comment that the entrepreneurs of cool and swingin' Shanghai consider these paper "coins" uncool and strictly for the rubes, but that he is running into them more often in Beijing.
We certainly encountered them in Guangzhou, all except for the 20-fen note, which is supposedly rare perhaps for the same reason that you seldom encounter a $2 bill in this country (which is, that most business can be conducted in tenths or halves - fifths is just, frankly, clunky).

I am not at all good with money. I will freely tell you this; my lovely bride will shout it to the housetops - I am just plain rotten with money. I'm one of those "How can I be broke I still have checks left?" sorts of people. Our household works in the early samurai tradition: the husband simply hands his money to the wife, who then hands him a stipend. But in my wildest, most profligate moment, I have never thrown away folding money. Never.
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Until now. We returned from China with wads of this fishwrap and I just stuffed them into a pocket until they became too irritating and then gave them to the Peeper to play with. When last seen they were being used as little construction site warning flags. I was reminded of the stories of the tiny paper saddleblankets that Sioux and Cheyenne children made from greenbacks taken from Custer's men.

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Sometimes cultural differences make it impossible for an idea - at the Little Bighorn the idea was "paper money" - to cross the societal divide.

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And sometimes - as in Guangzhou whilst adopting adorable little Chinese orphans - the damn stuff just is too much work to spend.