The malapert bookworm

Otherwise, things might be REALLY bad....

AP: "With the country spiraling deeper into recession, the Federal Reserve is ready to slash its key interest rate -- perhaps to an all-time low-- in hopes of cushioning some of the economic fallout felt by many struggling Americans."

Bureau of Labor Statistics (including rising joblessness)

CNNMoney: "Gas prices rose for the second consecutive day following eighty-six consecutive declines."

Bloomberg: This was the year the global economy fell apart. Next year may not be that much better, as policy makers try to put the pieces back together."

"The economic crisis is putting an increased burden on nonprofit organizations, including those that help homeless people. More people are seeking the organizations' services at a time when donations are down and banks and local governments are less willing to help the groups."

How much worse would it be if they'd just divvied up that $700B among all of us?

Tags: issues, money

Today is a big day at Hannah's school -- the annual Historical Dinner, the climax of much work and anticipation. She and her classmates have been toiling to research historical figures, write limericks about them and make papier-mache heads and stuffed bodies (life-size). This evening, they'll present their subjects -- seated at a table as if dining together -- and recite their limericks. Hannah's nervous.

But she's not nervous for the reasons you'd think. She might get a few butterflies before speaking to a crowd, but she's a natural performer and a seasoned stage veteran.

No, she confided in the car this morning that she's nervous because of the July 27 shooting. "Now, whenever there's a big event, I worry that someone's going to come in and shoot us," she said. July 27 was, after all, the last big performance she was to have, but the play (Annie) was, infamously and disastrously, disrupted by gunfire and tragedy, as I guess the whole world, pretty much, knows by now.

I had to take a minute. Then I tried to reassure her, reminding her that I had lived my entire life -- 40 and a half years! -- without ever encountering a shooting like that. I promised her that the man who shot at our church had an irrational grudge against that group, that he was just one crazy person, and that he was locked up now. "Is it a big lock?" Hannah asked with a grin. "Very big!" I told her, able to return the grin. "And there are lots of police officers around him, too."

The whole time, though, there's a little voice in my head: "Liar, liar, liar." Yes, James Adkisson was just one crazy person with an irrational grudge, but that grudge was fed by the hateful rhetoric that bubbles so widely beneath our society's discourse that we can almost -- not yet? -- call it mainstream. Yes, he was alone in his violent action, but not in his hateful attitudes.

And he was not alone in his reliance on guns to solve his problems. As far as I know, Hannah doesn't know about the fatal shooting at Central High School. And she doesn't know (YET!) about the fatal shooting yesterday at a local mall. But a friend of hers and his mom, a friend of mine, were at the mall; both had also been in our church during the July 27 shooting. Apparently, investigators don't yet know the motive in the mall shooting, but there seems to have been an altercation between the shooter and the victim, rather than indiscriminate shooting into crowds. That somehow makes a difference to me, though I know it is small comfort to the young man's widow and infant daughter. Still, another terrified group of people, taking refuge from gunplay. Still, another public place spattered with blood. Still, another group of children with new sensitivity to loud noises and new fears in the night....

How, I wonder, will my friend be able to reassure her son? How can I promise Hannah that the world is safe when it so palpably isn't?

You may already have seen the reports of the suspected terrorist acton Friday  in Dayton, in which a chemical irritant of some kind was sprayed into a mosque in Dayton, Ohio. I just learned of it this morning, and have been badly shaken by it. If you haven't heard, you can read the local paper's report here. The worshipers were forced by some foul, irritating substance to flee the mosque. Apparently, a child saw two men with a white can at the window of the room in the mosque where the youngsters were kept during the evening prayers. Muslims are observing Ramadan, so I suspect the mosque was even busier than it might be at other times of the year.

No one seems to have been seriously hurt, but two people were hospitalized and many suffered more transitory yet painful and bothersome symptoms, such as coughing, watery eyes, scratchy throats and so forth. Sounds like pepper spray, but the investigators, as of Saturday, hadn't found the irritant, presumably because it had dissipated?  Some bloggers are linking the attack with the recent release of the hateful screed Obsesssion, a piece of anti-Muslim bigotry masquerading as a documentary, so toxic that it's being released privately, mailbox-to-mailbox, like kiddie porn. I don't know if the cretins who attacked the mosque were "inspired" by this film or not. Surely they were inspired by the larger culture of hate and intolerance that has seeped into our culture.

What especially struck me about this story was a sentence, quoted by Chris Rodda in her blog about the attack. She cites an email from a friend who was comforting a family who were in the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton at the time. The friend muses, "I wonder what kind of country is this where people have to fear attending their place of worship?"

It struck me much too close to home. What kind, indeed? The friend's description of the frightened, crying children, of people afraid to go back to the place they had seen as a sanctuary (in the larger sense), resonates so strongly with our experiences at TVUUC after the July 27 shooting. I don't presume to know how the Dayton mosque worshipers are feeling, because I do not belong to a minority faith that is so obviously marked in our society, one whose mockery and even persecution are so openly tolerated in the mainstream. But I do share some of that mother's grief and fear, and I hope that many people all across the political spectrum as well as the religious spectrum will express their sympathy for the families whose worship was disrupted, for the individuals whose safety was threatened, and for the children who cried themselves to sleep.

No, really -- not some paranoid fantasy that recommends your putting aluminum foil on your head, but a sharp (and, yes, hilarious) examination of very real techniques that the crafters of opinion (e.g., marketers, bloggers, advertisers, campaign managers, et al....) use to shape the debate in our society.

With the result that there isn't really anything like real "debate" in our society, in the mainstream.

Read the article: 6 Brainwashing Techniques They're Using On You Right Now by David Wong. (Thanks for the link, cvirtue ; someday, I promise, I'll actually post something of my own again, and not something I nicked from you!) The article uses strong "adult" language and has pix that not be SFW (depending on where you work, I guess).

( more thinkin' here )
edited later 9/24 because I realized the cut line referred to the original article, not my cut!
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I just found out that the average income of families whose children attend this university is $97,000. (The dean of one of the largest colleges at the university who gave out this figure couldn't remember if it was a mean or a median.)

What, I wonder, is the average family income of EMPLOYEES of the university? Sure, there are a few superstars pulling down big money, and there are folks whose research attracts federal grants and corporate consultantships and such. But there are hundreds of facilities workers, lab assistants, office managers and such. For us (both adults employed by UT) it means that the average student here comes from a home whose family income is WAY HIGHER than our own. And we have jobs that require a master's degree (mine) and a PhD. (his)!

Wha-huh?

And on top of all this, the state in its infinite wisdom decided to cut the university's budget -- no raises for state employees! That means all those dudes with the consultantships are doing fine, but the rest of us essentially took a pay CUT. If my salary stays the same, but I'm paying more for gas, milk, etc., that's what it amounts to. (The work nor the hours did not, correspondingly, reduce. Go figure.) 

So I say: Go ahead. Raise the tuition. Mom and Dad complaining about the hike? Let 'em. We're busting our butts over here, working for them (as citizens of the state) and their kids (as students of the university). They can kick in some scratch. If they complain, refer them to their representation in the General Assembly, and they can pay less directly. Either way, we're worth it.

"Hate speech" has become a big buzzword these days, one of those terms that gets thrown around a lot without a lot of definition. Having tackled some definitions a while back, I'll stop short of doing so again (and refrain, also, from retreating behind Justice Potter Stewart's famous line). What brings the issue to mind is Bill Moyers' comments about hate speech and the report in the Bill Moyers Journal that aired last Friday. salvador_dalai and I only got around to watching it Sunday night, and I haven't had the headspace to write about it since then.

( I hate hate speech )

Today at the bank, the teller floored me for a second. She asked, "Do you have a computer?" I sort of gaped at her, and she hastily added, "Do you ever use a computer?" I thought she was asking me if I had a computer ON ME at the moment, which seemed like a pretty strange thing for a bank teller to ask me. No, she just wanted to tell me about some contest/promotion the bank is running, and she gave me a piece of candy with a slip of paper with a url on it attached, so I can fill out a survey and win cash prizes, etc.

As I took my candy and turned, bemused, toward the door, I was thinking: "Of course I have a computer? Who doesn't use a computer?" Well, lots of people. As I held the door open for an older woman, I thought, "She might not have a computer." The young gal in front of me in line at the post office, adjoining the bank -- she might not have one! I mean, she might be all over MySpace, but maybe not. Lots of people don't have computers; I recently met someone who doesn't have a phone! The Census Bureau tells me that in 2003, 70% of American households had  at least one personal computer. That's a lot --  but that still means that 30% did NOT, and the Census report goes on to note that just over half (54.7%) had internet access.

As I got my mail from the PO Box, I was musing on this question, or rather, on my own startled reaction to it (second-guessing myself like a good li'l member of the liberal intellectual elite that I am supposedly a member of, they tell me). Then, when I tried to send a package and learned it had a bad ZIP code, the postal worker looked up the correct number. In a book. A big book, running his finger laboriously down columns of tiny print. (It looked a lot like a phone book -- I honestly don't remember the last time I looked something up in a phone book.) Gosh, I thought: If only there were some sort of device whereby information like ZIP codes could be looked up from some sort of central collection of such data, a "data base," if you will, accessible to the inquisitive (or, at least, to the civil servants) via some sort of series of tubes.

It's pretty comfy on my side of the digital divide, what with ubiquitous access to information and free candy from bank tellers. But maybe I should be less snarky about living over here.

I'm finally back, oral surgery behind me and Z's pneumonia under control. What a week!

There's so much to say about McCain's running mate, and all the ridiculous commentary about her, and about the insane gestapo-like stuff going on with press coverage of the RNC, that I just can't tackle it all. But Gov. Palin's  odious speech last night can not pass un-rebutted. What to mention? So much snark, so little energy. Fine, we'll focus on her demeaning of community organizers.

So, naturally, I'll crib something from politico.com: "Mrs. Palin needs to be reminded that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor."

Hate. Her. A. Lot.
Thought there was nothing McCain could do to make me love him less. I was wrong.

Some hot-button terms have come up in connection with the TVUUC shooting. Now that the emotional dust is settling (though occasionally stirred up), I have been thinking more reflectively on the incident and the legal case -- as the ever-eloquent salvador_dalai has put it on his blog and, I believe, in print, we move from "What if?" to "What now?"

Part of that move, for me, is thinking about words. But then, for me, everything eventually comes down to thinking about words.

edited to put video under cut

Was anyone else listening to NPR this morning? During the 7:30 news update, on the story on General Motors, I swear I heard the reporter call gas prices "The hot-pocket issue."

She couldn't possibly have said that, right? I mean, I know I'm out of touch with the kids and their slangy ways, but a reporter wouldn't use snack-based slang in a hard news story having nothing, otherwise, to do with frozen stuffed sandwiches?

Still, I don't know what else it could have been. You wouldn't say a "hot topic issue"; you'd just say "hot topic." I'm guessing she intended to say either "The hot topic is gas prices" OR "The hot-button issue is gas prices," and ended up in between. But I kind of like "hot-pocket issue." I'm going to start using that.

But then, slang is kind of a hot-pocket issue here at the university.

Last night at the candlelight service we sang the popular hymn (and favorite of folk singers), "How Can I Keep from Singing." Ironically enough, I was crying so that it was, indeed, very difficult for me to sing it. (You can find the lyrics at CyberHymnal: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/h/c/hcaikeep.htm.)


Today, I feel the power of those words more strongly even than last night. So many of you -- many of you total strangers, or folks known to me only through blogs -- have sent supportive and loving notes through this forum or on Facebook.

I am unbelievably humbled and grateful. There are indeed still nice people in the world, good people. There is a lot of hate, but not only hate. How can I keep from singing?

It has been a very long couple of days. I have only just now gotten to the point where I have the time and energy to write about what happened to our community yesterday. I'm sure most of you have seen tons of news coverage about the shootings at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. Some of you have also blogged about it, including my beloved salvador_dalai who was there with me and our family. This is not meant as a corrective or replacement to other comments and accounts, just my addition to the mosaic.

I wanted to write about some of my impressions. First a quick news update: My father, John Worth, was among the shooting victims. He got out of the hospital today and is going to be OK. He is in quite a bit of pain, and it is still too early to tell whether he will regain vision in his right eye. He is shaken up and exhausted, as is my mom. We are all having a lot of trouble sleeping, and the kids are understandably fragile.

OK, now I will back up to tell the story as I experienced it. It is very long, and not very pithy. I'm very tired.


I think my favorite comment on the whole event is from Hannah. "This was the worst day of my life," she said. "All those times, when I was having a bad day and said it was the worst? Well, this was worser."

Worser indeed.

Major spoilers for the House season finale below the cut...

Stayed up too late watching election returns between my usual early-week SF and anime: Woo hoo! I love the North Carolina and Indiana returns; just what I was hoping for (though I would have been even happier if Obama had outright won Indiana, I knew it would probably wouldn't happen).
And it's not just about the numbers -- I think this proves electability. (Last weekend, some in Louisiana tried to use Obama's image, along with Nancy Pelosi's, to tar a Dem candidate, and the candidate won anyway.) Even the b.s. distraction around the Rev. Wright remarks couldn't hurt Obama -- and he got traction on a real issue (gas tax "relief," aka Gas Tax Pandering), which gives the lie to those who claim he has no substance. (Those who claim that haven't been paying attention all along, as near as I can tell.)

The momentum is all Obama's. I don't see how Clinton can justify dragging this thing out.

Still think Clinton's math makes sense? Check out Keith Olbermann from Monday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9qd-P2bIiY

is Joe Andrew. Hearts!

There is almost no recycling in this building. The guy in charge of recycling on campus came around last week and told us that out of this 10-story building, mostly offices, there is only one barrel of paper recycled each day. He estimates there should be closer to 100.

I realized early on in my tenure here that the specially marked "paper only" recycling cans and the sidecars on the trash bins all just got dumped into the same big ol' trash can with the regular garbage. I figured the housekeeper had worked out some kind of deal where she was too busy to collect them separately. (She even put trash bags into the recycling bins, to make the point, I guess.) So I'd been faithfully carrying most of my paper out to the big recycling bin in the hallway, where I take my cans and such.

It turns out, the housekeepers are SUPPOSED to be bringing around separate cans for trash and for recycling, and they are NOT SUPPOSED to put it all together. So Tammy K. our redoubtable temp, took out the trash bags from the recycling bins and made up signs to tape under the "recycling" printed on each can: "PAPER ONLY! NO TRASH!" I quit carrying my paper out to the hallway bin, and started putting it into the "recycling" bins in the office. The recycling guy  said the housekeepers are supposed to have separate cans that they roll around, one for trash and one for paper.

Last night was the first night in a while I've been around when the housekeeper came around (I was here till 8 -- deadline week, grr). And guess what? The "recycling" bins went right into the same ol' trash can. Wha? I appreciate that her job stinks, but that's no excuse to passively aggressively decline to DO her job, y'know?  And then I had a sudden, clutching suspicion: Isn't she the same person who empties the hallway bin? Are all those Coke cans and newspapers going into the trash all this time, too?

Mr. Recycling said he wants to visit each department in the tower and discuss recycling, to get people to separate out their paper. If there are yahoos upstairs in the hoity toity admin offices not recycling, then that's horrible: Absolutely no excuse for it, as far as I'm concerned. It's laziness and selfishness bordering on the idiotically solipsistic. But my question for Mr. Recycling is: What if we do sort already, and the paper still gets dumped after it leaves our hands?

That is, apparently, the shocking statistic about Carme Chacon, Spain's new Minister of Defense. To me, it is more shocking that she is a self-described pacifist who was formerly Minister of Housing. How often does anybody, of any gender, make the jump from Housing Ministry to Defense?

Anyway, it's provoked a lot of comment in the country, NPR reminds us, which gave us the word "macho."


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1BvBxrvhlI

This is my and salvador_dalai's immediate response to those news (and pseudo-news, a distinction that is increasingly hard to maintain) stories intended to alarm people (especially parents) about the dangers of (a) household products, (b) playground equipment, (c) school buses... and pretty much anything else that has had or could be shown to possibly have, harmful effects up or to pose a risk to the small fry.

When a whole bunch of kids get really sick because they put into their mouths some piece of plastic toy that, due to manufacturing error or malfeasance, is coated with a toxin, then that's one thing. Consumers arguably need to know this. But when one kid gets really sick because he swallowed  a magnetic marble that is otherwise harmless (e.g., no toxic coating to make it extra-shiny), then that's maybe not so newsworthy. (Yes, there was such a news story a couple of years ago, and the child had to have surgery, but he was OK eventually -- but the report, on a local newscast, didn't say where he lived or really give any particulars, just a tearful interview with the mom about how scared she'd been. Result? Parents scared to death about a one-in-a-million near-tragedy.)

There have been several things that have gotten me thinking about this whole scare-the-parents thing lately.

The Geraldine Ferraro flap only cements my dislike for Hillary Clinton -- what's more, it cements my conviction that she should NOT be president. Was this Ferraro's "makaka moment"? Not really. She did not use ugly slurs as other public figures have done (Don Imus is a recent, vivid example, but Jesse Jackson, himself the target of Ferraro's sneering, once used a nasty anti-Semitic slur to describe New York City).

What disgusts me is not necessarily the tenor of Ferraro's remarks, although despite her defensiveness, these are a personal insult as well as carrying the unmistakable whiff of racial condescension, at least. (The intertwined histories of feminism and civil rights are fraught with tensions dating at least back to the 19th century, when arguments abounded over who should be enfranchised first, black men or [white] women.) What elevates these insults to the realm of the truly objectionable is the way in which the Clinton campaign, and Ferraro herself, have responded to the dust-up.

No apologies, nothing but the most condescending and defensive of postures. Ferraro, once the most noteworthy female politician in the nation and the first to run as a nominee on a major-party ticket, is characterized as "one of many" of Clinton's fundraisers, in one of many clumsy and obvious attempts to distance herself from any possible scandal. Ferraro herself has shrilly called "reverse discrimination" (although the Obama campaign has played it pretty classy and never, for instance, brought up the former Congresswoman's own race, or for that matter, her gender.)

Compare this to those occasions when members of Obama's campaign (much less prominent than Ferraro, and thus less deserving, one would think, of public scrutiny) have made insulting or disparaging comments about Clinton herself. Instant apology and dismissal. (And those insults never carried any gender or racial overtones.)

This behavior ought to seem sickeningly familiar -- it is, as
salvador_dalai observed, straight out of the Republican playbook. Never apologize, because it might imply you (or someone you know) was wrong. Stick to the talking points. And lie, lie, lie about the other guy. (On this last point, notice how all of a sudden Obama is charged with running a racially divisive campaign, when it has been anything but -- remember, early in the campaign, people were actually musing about whether he was "black enough" because of his centrist politics and unifying message?)

This was intended to be a post that pointed to the excellent comment on Clinton's use of rhetoric (the actual practice) and "rhetoric" (the concept). Don't let my ire dissuade you from it! My Apple Tree: Yes, let's look a little closer at language, shall we?