Open City

Teju Cole's narrator-flâneur on Ground Zero:

"The place had become a metonym of its disaster. I remembered a tourist who once asked me how to get to 9/11: not the site of the events of 9/11 but to 9/11 itself, the date petrified into broken stones."

on partisan rancor

daniel schorr thinks voters (influenced by the media) are responsible for elite polarization.

It's become commonplace to blame politicians as the class and to suggest that what is needed is a new Congress. It may be that what is really needed is a new electorate. The present Congress reflects some of the voter anger at politicians fed by news media portrayals of scandal and corruption in the government. Gridlock is produced by legislators trying to respond to the anger of their constituents. Too much partisanship, not enough progress, as Senator Bayh explaining his bye-bye to Congress.

Many Americans seem close to rejecting the whole machinery of government that Evan Bayh found wanting. What happens when the people turn their back on their government is a phenomenon that this democracy has yet to experience.

wilde in love

in honor of [in spite of] v-day, excerpts from a letter oscar wilde wrote to his lover (while serving time in prison for "gross indecency")--

My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence. To keep you in my soul, such is the goal of this pain which men call life. ... I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree. Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other...

to hear garrison keillor read more, listen to writer's almanac

visual recipe by claudia pearson

visit her etsy shop

the sheltering sky

in 1949 paul bowles wrote a novel about morocco that grips you in the beginning, sputters out quickly, and ends tragically. i can't help but think of it as the north african version of d.h. lawrence's the plumed serpent. the plot is remarkably similar. american travelers equally repelled and fascinated by remote, exotic locale. female character gets involved with native men and submits to hypermasculine power. et cetera.

he walked through the streets... why do i feel this way about them? guilt at being well fed and healthy among them? but suffering is equally divided among all men; each has the same amount to undergo... emotionally he felt that this last idea was untrue, but at the moment it was a necessary belief: it is not always easy to support the stares of hungry people. thinking that way he could walk on through the streets. it was as if either he or they did not exist. both suppositions were possible. the spanish maid at the hotel had said to him that noon: "la vida es pena." "of course," he had replied, feeling false even as he spoke, asking himself if any american can truthfully accept a definition of life which makes it synonymous with suffering.

no impact FAIL

just when i was beginning to think this whole thing was too easy (of course most of my food is local! of course i recycle more than i throw away!), yesterday turned into one of those days. and i broke every single rule of no impact week.

1. i completely forgot to bring my re-usable coffee mug. bought coffee and later, a water bottle (!).
2. yes, i drove to school. and i will probably drive again tomorrow. i have a MWF parking permit and it doubles my commute time to ride the shuttle (i do ride it on days that start with T though).
   
3. major lunch disaster (spilled a burrito all over my white shirt) resulted in two more violations. first, i tossed all the napkins i'd used to wipe up straight into the cafeteria garbage. then, i rushed off to the bookstore to buy a $10 UCSD logo tee. yeah, classy, i know. but i had to teach section after lunch and wanted to look decent... if not professional, clean.

today is turning into a fail too. i was supposed to "go off the grid"... heh. i did get to school on a bus powered by biodiesel, so that counts for something, right?

no impact week: day ONE

my one week "carbon cleanse" started today. yeah, it's a gimmicky environmental movement thing, but it's not going to be as easy as i thought -- especially on friday, when i am supposed to replace my 30-minute hot shower with a "sponge bath". ick! (**dear friends who have served in the peace corps, forgive my only-in-america sins).

i signed up for no impact week without really knowing what it was. i thought it was just a commitment to not buy anything for week (except food, and even that is supposed to be non-packaged). seemed like a great money-saving idea for a pathetic grad student swimming in credit card debt. i found out about it because i was searching grist.org for an article about a woman who gave up corn products for a week (the article is actually here). umbra, the stalwart eco-advice columnist, was promoting no impact week, and heck, i had to click on it.

so here i am.
day one was all about stockpiling your garbage (i decided there was no need to stockpile my recycling: a water bottle and some sheets of paper). at the end of the day i only had two items in my garbage bag: a used lint-removal sheet and an empty bag from those delicious snap pea crisps. success? well, i had already cheated, and in a really embarrassing way. i did not stockpile my feminine hygiene-related trash. i'm not going to apologize for this. end of story.

i also failed in the consumption department. after biking to the farmer's market to buy ethical eggs, i stumbled upon a booth full of art by this artist (spenser little) i have been trying to track down for months. i "bought" a relatively expensive piece as a gift for k.'s birthday. i say "bought" because i made him pay for it, with full promise that i would pay him back next week (not so much because of N.I. week as because i didn't bring my wallet).

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