blogs don't die - they just fade away slowly.

I'm finally sick of complaining. I start my job on Monday, and maybe I'll post here if I have something to say after work, but otherwise enjoy the day.

I want these - I have always wanted them

I think every toy has been called "too dangerous" for one reason or another. Skateboards, snowboards, rollerblades, those rollerblade scooters, pogoballs. OK, maybe pogoballs were never considered that dangerous.

The bottom line is that kids are kids and you can't grow up a kid being scared of getting hurt all the time. More importantly, you will turn gray very quickly if you are that worried over your child. We are people - animals. We used to live in the wild and we made it this far. If a kid falls and bangs his head on the ground, she'll probably cry and feel pain, but it is highly unlikely that anything that bad will happen. Broken arms and wrists are not fun, but they are part of growing up.

At any rate, I want these shoes. They make them in adult sizes, so it's just a matter of time.

Something for the Fleet of Foot
Shoes With Built-In Wheels Are All the Rage -- and the Source of Some Angst

By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 21, 2007; B01

They're hard to spot, those Heely kids.

Although millions of Heelys have been sold around the world, turning the sneakers with wheels into a must-have accessory for the grade-school set, you seldom notice a child wearing them until . . . THERE'S ONE! . . . Over there, b y the giant fridge !

Like magic, 8-year-old Anthony Viera has shifted from walking to rolling on the wheels inside his shoes. It's as though he's floating as he zigzags past kitchen appliances, fishtails down another aisle where his grandfather is pricing air conditioners and then -- aye yi yi -- swerves near a display of big-screen, big-ticket TVs.

No one pays him any mind on a recent night at the Fair Oaks Mall, which is fine by him.

"One time, when I went to Home Depot, they told me to stop rolling," said Anthony, a third-grader at Cub Run Elementary School in Centreville. "They think you're going to knock things down."

A fad for some and an annoyance for others, Heelys have hit their stride just in time for summer. Last year, the company, Heelys Inc., had more than $188 million in sales, compared with $21.3 million two years earlier. But, alas, a backlash has set in as some worry whether the sneakers-on-wheels are safe. Some schools, malls and other public places have banned them.

For a company with about 40 employees, Texas-based Heelys has created a worldwide craze since the shoes hit the market in 2000. Many sporting goods and shoe stores carry them. A pair of multicolor Gelato-style Heelys at Finish Line in the Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax will set you back $99.99.

"When they first came out, they hit the market just fierce," said Finish Line assistant manager David Holy, 20, of Manassas. "I've had people in their 30s come in and ask to buy them."

But malls aren't just places to purchase the shoes. They're considered awesome places to wear them.

Look around the average shopping center and you're liable to see a child between 6 and 14 gliding along on wheeled sneakers, perhaps in tow as her mother holds her hand and dashes around on errands.

At Potomac Mills mall in Prince William County, security guards hand out warnings to children who are heeling recklessly. Those who continue heeling wildly are asked to leave. The mall adopted the policy in February after some customers complained about children rolling into them, spokeswoman Caroline Barry said.

World Against Toys Causing Harm, a Boston-based nonprofit group, puts Heelys on its 2006 "10 Worst Toys" list, and two medical studies, including one this month in the journal Pediatrics, have warned of their possible hazards. A 12-year-old Massachusetts boy died in March 2006. Two boys elsewhere were critically injured while wearing wheeled sneakers, though it is not clear whether the shoes were to blame.

The Pediatrics study also put its finger on the tricky thing about wheeled sneakers: Their appeal rests on their versatility, which allows children to be walking one moment and zooming around on wheels the next. How can a kid be sly about his new James Bond-like sneakers if he's armored head to foot like a hockey goalie? And so they forgo helmets and pads, despite warnings by the company and safety advocates.

"Nobody wears any of that stuff with Heelys," fretted Lenore Gelman, the mother of two sons -- Teddy, 11, and Sam, 8 -- who successfully lobbied for Heelys. Gelman, a special education teacher from Gaithersburg, said she had never heard of the shoes until her older son began begging for a pair.

"I saw them on other kids and I said, 'I gotta have those,' " Teddy said. "It just looked like a shoe with wheels. At first, I thought it was strange, but after more people started to get them, I knew what they were."

For those without a 10-year-old in the neighborhood, a word of explanation: Heelys come with one or two wheels in the heel so wearers can go from walking to rolling just by shifting their weight. The wheels are not retractable; they do not spin when a person's weight rests on the front of the shoe. The wheels can be easily removed, however, transforming a Heely into a pedestrian set of sneakers.

To keep from falling when heeling, the wearer is advised to stagger the feet, placing one ahead of the other for stability.

Some backlash was inevitable.

The journal Pediatrics highlighted the shoe risks. A study conducted by the Temple Street Children's University Hospital in Dublin reported that 67 children ages 6 to 15 had been injured on wheeled sneakers during a 10-week period last summer. More than 80 percent of the injured children were girls, and the most common injuries involved broken wrists, arms and elbows. There were no head injuries, and none of the injuries was life-threatening.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that 1,600 emergency room visits a year are caused by wheeled sneakers. But the commission also reports that scooters send about 44,000 children annually to emergency rooms.

"The recommendation to parents should be, if you're going to buy wheeled sneakers, you should buy a helmet after that," commission spokesman Scott Wolfson said.

Some Fairfax County schools have banned them, but there is no districtwide prohibition, spokesman Paul Regnier said. Montgomery County has reported a few problems, but no districtwide policy is in place, spokeswoman Kate Harrison said. The D.C. schools' public relations office did not return calls seeking comment.

The only reported fatality of a Heelys wearer occurred when Ryan Carmichael of East Bridgewater, Mass., was hit by a car while crossing the two-lane road in front of his house to collect the mail. Police Chief John E. Cowan said last week that there was no evidence the boy was heeling at the time of the accident and that the circumstances suggest that he had been walking. A 12-year-old English boy and a 10-year-old boy from Jersey City, N.J., suffered critical head injuries while wearing wheeled sneakers after they fell and were hit by cars.

But the shoes' fans, which include parents, say that heeling is no worse than many other outdoor activities.

"It's in the same league as table tennis, billiards and bowling," Edward J. Heiden, a Washington-based consultant who, at Heelys' request, analyzed more than 2 million incident reports compiled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Between January 2001 and September 2006, Heiden found, sneakers-on-wheels had a better safety record than bicycles or skateboards or playing basketball, soccer or tennis.

Scott Freedman, medical director of the pediatric emergency department at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, said the hospital has treated about 10 children injured while using wheeled sneakers in the past 12 months. "It's not a number that's astoundingly alarming," he said.

Still, Freedman urged users to wear helmets and other protective gear. And he advised parents to use common sense.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/20/AR2007062002361_2.html

$ & the power

“Power, not reason, is the new currency of this [Supreme] court’s decision making”

- Justice Marshall, on the final day of the court’s 1990 term. Two hours later, he announced his own retirement"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/washington/21memo.html

water conservation

Dear person in front of me filling up your big water bottle at the water fountain:

I hate it when you refill their one liter water bottle while I stand in line waiting. For one thing, it takes forever to fill your bottle - more time than you are actually supposed to spend at the fountain. You are like those people who go to the ATM and check the balance in each of 10 accounts while people wait behind them. Or maybe they are actually applying for a mortgage.

But the worst part is that after I have waited for 5 minutes while you and your buddy chat it up, I finally get to step up and grab my 2 second sip of water to wet my whistle. And what do I get? A mouth full of pee-warm water.

If you need indications that water fountains are not designed to fill water bottles, it's that they don't hold enough cold water in reserve to fill water bottles in succession. They DO have enough cold water to let people come through and grab a sip of water.

Besides, if they were intended to fill water bottles, don't you think the spicket would be higher so that you didn't have to use advanced geometry to get your bottle wedged under the stream of water, which still only allows you to fill it 2/3rds of the way?

money at work

This is an example of what I guess I'll call moral capitalism. Kellogs isn't doing this because it's the right thing, and they aren't doing it because some government regulation says they have to. They're doing it because in the long run this will be better for them financially, and that is just fine with me. As Walmart unveils its line of organic food, we can all be confident knowing that we make a difference and send a signal every time we spend a dollar. That is why it is important to know where your money is going.

Adult-Only Froot Loops

Childhood obesity too often starts at home — in front of the television set. Children are defenseless against the wiles of Madison Avenue, and studies show most cannot understand the difference between an advertisement and the rest of their television fare. Even worse, these snappy ads directed at the young help create bad eating habits for life.

Now, the Kellogg Company has added its heft to those trying to address the growing national concern about young waistlines. The $11 billion company has established nutrition standards and promised that by the end of next year, many of its less-healthy items will either be healthier — “reformulated” to cut down on fat, salt and, particularly, sugar — or will not be advertised on children’s television shows.

The company’s new standards allow advertising for products with up to 12 grams of sugar per serving. That means if Pop-Tarts, Apple Jacks, Cocoa Krispies and Froot Loops keep their current contents they’ll be off the cartoon circuit. Frosted Flakes, with 11 grams, will still be pitched to the young.

Kellogg is now the latest corporation to respond to growing efforts by educators, parents’ groups, pediatricians and experts on obesity to cut down on advertising junk foods to children. A threatened lawsuit from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and two Massachusetts parents also helped nudge the company in the right direction.

Kellogg’s plan to limit advertising — like Walt Disney’s promise to stop using Mickey and his pals to sell sugary treats or Kraft’s limiting Oreo ads aimed at children — is only one small move in the right direction. The sugar content for Kellogg’s new list is high, and there is concern that more effort will now be made to sell these fattening treats to moms. There is still a lot more that these big, powerful companies could do to make products that lead to healthy profits and even healthier customers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/opinion/16sat4.html

resurrection

This is one of the best movie scenes of all time. For any of you out there who may have gotten laid off today, enjoy:

(contains explicit lyrics)

defeatism

I don't know if I should be more surprised that proponents of staying the course in Iraq continue to use amorphous and simplistic terms of "victory" and "defeat" without ever explaining what they mean, or that I continue to expect them to put meat on the bones and enable true dialog.

This is not an issue of victory or defeat, or supporting the war or not. In order to have an informed and intelligent discussion about the best way to proceed in Iraq, as a political society we have to use words that have actual meaning.

No one advocates accepting defeat or rejecting victory. What they disagree about are actual specific actions - those are what we should discuss.

As much as I love a good conspiracy theory, this article from today's NYT suggests that the Russian invasion of Afghanistan was because of American defeat in Viet Nam. If only America had stuck it out until victory, there never would have been the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Accepting defeat is speaking in amorphous terms that remove the opportunity for meaningful discussion and suggesting that support for a single action or decision will mean the end of the world. Victory is embracing confidence that our American system of democracy will prevail; the people will ultimately make the right decision, and trusting that your ideas will stand on their merit rather than hollow rhetoric.

Defeat’s Killing Fields

By PETER W. RODMAN and WILLIAM SHAWCROSS

SOME opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat. A number of them are simply predicting it, while others advocate measures that would make it more likely. Lending intellectual respectability to all this is an argument that takes a strange comfort from the outcome of the Vietnam War. The defeat of the American enterprise in Indochina, it is said, turned out not to be as bad as expected. The United States recovered, and no lasting price was paid.

. . .

The 1975 Communist victory in Indochina led to horrors that engulfed the region. The victorious Khmer Rouge killed one to two million of their fellow Cambodians in a genocidal, ideological rampage. . . .

The defeat had a lasting and significant strategic impact. . . . [the Soviet] of Afghanistan was one result.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/opinion/07shawcross.htm

Tan-credo

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this republican debate. Tancredo just said the we need to stop immigration until we can assimilate the ones we have, and we'll know when that happens because the phone menus will no longer say 1 for English & 2 for Spanish.

I understand that this early in the primaries, there are always fringe politicians, and I always cringe when Dennis Kucinich gets his turn at the mic. But I'll take a wacko love hippie over a hate preaching fear monger xenophobe any day.

pick one

Which of the following is the real The New York Times quote of the day:

(A) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s about partial birth abortion. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

(B) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s an amnesty bill. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

(C) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is there's a war on terror. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

(D) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is there's a gas shortage. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

Answer: who cares? It's all empty political rhetoric and that's the way we like it. We're Americans. OK, it was B. Full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/washington/30immig.html

Personal Responsibility

An article in today's Times sets forth scientific research into obesity that indicates being over weight is determined by your genes. The article is quite interesting and provides some useful insight into how the body works and how it responds to changes in eating habits and weight gains and losses, but it is clearly an example of science in a vacuum. The sample sizes may be large enough enough and may provide results that are consistent enough to be statistically significant, but the fact is that they simply don't account for the public health realities of obesity.

There is no doubt in my mind that genes play a large role in determining your body type, including your metabolism. In some areas that role is probably exclusive and in others it is probably much weaker. There are most likely people who are genetically predisposed to have extreme problems with obesity. But genetics cannot explain the demographic trends of obesity.

Genetics cannot account for the disproportionate effect that obesity has on the poor, or for the increase is obese children. These are cultural and societal problems, not just genetic ones.

Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside

"There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/health/08fat.htm

happy mother's day

There is nothing more inspiring than when you are out for a jog feeling pretty good about your fitness level & performance when a woman passes you . . . going uphill . . . pushing a jog stroller . . . with twins.

The Fire is Burning

The Arcade Fire is no longer an underground sensation or one of those bands where people say "oh yeah, they sound familiar." I first heard of them in the fall of 2006 and they didn't immediately grab me. At the time I was more skeptical of semi-electronic sounding music and preferred being able to listen to each instrument in turn. They vocals on the songs I heard also seemed a bit obscured, which doesn't generally suit me.

It was the following spring or summer that I learned - listening to their first full length album "Funeral" on the metro to and from work and internships. Their music has something special and I still can't quite put my finger on it.

Friday night I saw them in concert for the first time. They played DAR Constitution Hall here in D.C., which is not one of the better places to see a show. Having come up on the Allman Brothers and then Phish and Widespread Panic, I am accustomed to seeing concerts where there aren't a great deal of stops between songs and the songs are generally between 6 and 8 minutes, so it was difficult to adjust to shorter songs with longer stops after each song. The 80 minute set is what I'm used to being the first set, not the whole show.

But all that said, the show was great. The energy in the room started to coalesce about half way through and the band did a nice job building momentum into the end of the show and the encore. If you have a chance to see them live, I highly recommend it.

Their records, however, absolutely must be on your shelf. No collection is complete without them. This could be the best band of the decade.

Even more taken than I was, a writer from the Washington Post characterized the band as "a sort of modern-day art-rock answer to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" and found "an undeniable grandeur and a thrilling vastness to the songs . . . but it's no empty bombast: In the studio and especially in concert, Arcade Fire's emotional music plays as deeply meaningful, soul-stirring art."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/05/AR2007050500995.html

Here are 2 mp3s from their show in New York on February 17 of this year. The first is a bit slower and close to spoken word. The other is not:

My Body is a Cage

Keep the Car Running



* I should recognize that the brothers who lead the band are from Texas, although they moved to Canadia before forming the band.

tit for tat

I'm not sure what Ms. Goodling expected to happen when she declined to go before Congress and lie for her boss, but we all could have seen this one coming:

Justice Dept. Announces Inquiry Into Its Hiring

By ERIC LIPTON and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, May 2 — The Justice Department has begun an internal investigation into whether a former senior adviser to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales improperly tried to fill vacancies for career prosecutors at the agency with Republicans loyal to the Bush administration, department officials said Wednesday.

The inquiry focuses on whether the former adviser, Monica Goodling, sought to determine the political affiliations of job applicants before they were hired as prosecutors — potentially a violation of civil service laws and a break with a tradition of nonpartisanship in the career ranks at the Justice Department.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/washington/03attorneys.html


And I sure am excited to learn that the biggest richest most complex tax evaders don't get audited because they are too big rich and complex. Now that's something to set your sights on:

I.R.S. Curtails Many Audits in Tax Havens

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, May 2 — The Internal Revenue Service is curtailing audits of many people who use offshore tax havens, even when agents see signs of tax evasion, because agents fear they cannot meet a three-year deadline for finishing an examination, Congressional investigators have found.

In a report to be released on Thursday, the Government Accountability Office found that I.R.S. agents are so hobbled by “dilatory tactics” by offshore taxpayers and other problems that it takes almost two and a half years to complete a typical audit.

Many I.R.S. agents told the G.A.O., the investigative arm of Congress, that the “safest way” was often to stop an audit prematurely and sometimes to refrain from starting one in the first place.

The I.R.S. reported that almost $300 billion in investment and business income was moved out of the United States in 2003. Analysts at the Joint Committee on Taxation have estimated that the annual outflow has shot to more than $400 billion since then.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/business/03tax.htm

not as easy as it seems

at first blush, even the NRA agrees that people who have been involuntarily committed and deemed mentally ill or a danger to them self or others should not be able to purchase guns. Indeed, it is a rare thing that the NRA supports a restriction on gun sales, or individual's right to purchase guns, so this must be a no-brainer right?

I'm not sure. Of course, it is already illegal for people falling within these categories to purchase guns. The problem lies in reporting by state agencies who are bound by state privacy laws. With the events at Virginia Tech fresh on everyone's mind and conscience, there is a new push to enforce these laws by creating or giving full effect to the national data base against which background checks are performed. That is something I do not support.

There should not be a federal law that preempts state privacy protections, especially for the mentally ill. There should not be a federally centralized list of all the crazy people in the country. If you want to buy a gun, then I think you give up certain privacy protections and one of those is being forced to divulge your mental health history.

But I do not want to buy a gun, and I do not want my name or anyone else's name in that database. Being put in a database is an infringement on your privacy, and you should not be forced to do that so that other people can buy guns more quickly. This returns us to the world of a couple day waiting period - it could even be an overnight or several hour thing. Each state would be networked and when you want to buy a gun, the dealer sends out the request and any states that have you on their list respond.

Privacy Laws Slow Efforts on Gun-Buyer Data

By MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Momentum is building in Congress behind a measure that would push states to report their mental health records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

But a thicket of obstacles, most notably state privacy laws, have thwarted repeated efforts to improve the reporting of such records in the past and are likely to complicate this latest effort, even after the worst mass shooting in United States history at Virginia Tech last month.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been adjudicated as a “mental defective,” as well as anyone involuntarily committed to a mental institution, from buying a firearm. But only 22 states now submit any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, against which all would-be gun purchasers must be checked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/us/02guns.html

see also http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050200282.html


in other news, this is why I try to stick with Organic foods as much as possible:

Millions Of Chickens Fed Tainted Pet Food
Risk to Consumers Minimal, FDA Says

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; A01

At least 2.5 million broiler chickens from an Indiana producer were fed pet food scraps contaminated with the chemical melamine and subsequently sold for human consumption, federal health officials reported yesterday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/AR2007050102071.html

These Gray Days

The funny thing about spring time is that you oscillate between days of gray skies and rain, wishing for the sun to come out, and then the sun comes out for a couple days and all you want is some rain to wash away the pollen.

These Gray Days
Lyrics by Jerry Joseph

It's a thin line hanging on the wall
Strike a little balance, shattering a fall
A thin line between charity and greed
What I want, what I need
Lately I ain't had much to say
Something seems to tie my tongue
On these gray days

A thin line between loneliness and crowds
Talking till you're burning, baby
A thin line between heaven and catastrophe
Who we really are, who we really want to be
Lately when things don't go my way
I'm taking comfort in these gray days

These gray days are better than others
It's a thin line between the oven and the sun
Thank God for giving me the cover
These gray days are better than none

Thin line hanging on the wall
Strike a little balance, shattering a fall
Lately I've tried to learn to pray
To see the miracle in these gray days

These gray days are better than others
It's a thin line between danger and the fun
Hold tight, my enemy and lover
These gray days are better than none

Lately I try to understand
Am I acting like a child or acting like a man
Do we take each other hostage
Or are we simply holding hands
Who's to say, on these gray days

Download an mp3 of this song from The Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh NC, April 21, 2007.
Full show from http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=506103

Sidetrack hijacked

I remember in college a good portion of my friends had prescriptions to ritalin or other ADD drugs. They would doll them out when people had tests or papers, or honestly sometimes when people just had a hair up their ass and wanted to snort some pseudo cocaine I guess.

The trick that people learned was that when they took the stuff, they had to go study before it kicked in because if they didn't, they'd end up totally focused and zeroed in on something other than their books. I can't count how many times the house got cleaned up because someone forgot that rule, or I'd come home during spring exams and the grass that hadn't been cut in months would not only be perfectly mowed (with the diagonal checkerboard no less), but the clippings would be raked, the sidewalks edged, and the hedges trimmed.


What made me think of this? Well, it's 10:00 on a Thursday night. I have my first exam of the season on Saturday (which is also happily my second to last exam of all time, assuming all goes well). I put the coffee on around 8:30 and so far I know a lot about lawn striping and the failures of previous Carolina Panther drafts, but I don't know much more about Conflicts of Law than I did when I dropped an extra sugar cube in my java.

prologue: based on my google searches, I have discovered that the lawn care term of art is not "diagonal checkerboard" but that the effect is a variation of "lawn striping"

All my Ex's live . . .

Over a year ago I started a serial topic called "Texas is Great," but it never got off the ground. Well here is the latest installment. You can check out previous posts here, or by scrolling down a little and clicking on the "Label" list at right.

Texas Legislators Block Shots for Girls Against Cancer Virus

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, April 25 — A revolt by lawmakers has blocked Gov. Rick Perry’s effort to make Texas the first state to require sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

In a 135-to-2 vote that appeared veto-proof, the Texas House gave final passage on Wednesday to a Senate bill that bars the state from ordering the shots until at least 2011. Even many supporters of the governor resented Mr. Perry’s proposal as an abuse of executive authority.

“There was no public testimony — why we were jumping so fast into a vaccine that was not for a true communicable disease,” said Senator Glenn Hegar Jr., a Republican representing a district just west of Houston who sponsored the Senate bill to overturn the governor’s order. It passed 30 to 1 on Monday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/us/26texas.html

The worst thing about this episode is that the Gov. was trying to do something that is truly progressive and what I think is a wonderful expenditure of resources. I understand that to many people an STD may not be a "true communicable" disease, but legislators need to look at public health realities rather than their personal sense of morals when deciding how to address medical issues.

The reality is that girls are sexually active at a young age. They are unlikely to ask their parents for the vaccine and many of the highest risk families probably can't afford it anyway. The government is in a position to save their lives, and the Texas legislature voted almost unanimously to let them die instead.


on the iPod:
Ryan Adams, Jacksonville City Nights

marching one by one

Today the ants are busy
beside my front steps, weaving
in and out of the hill they're building.
I watch them emerge and—

like everything I've forgotten—disappear
into the subterranean, a world
made by displacement.


These are the first words of Natasha Trethewey's poem Monument, from her Pulitzer Prize winning book Native Guard. She was on the News Hour this evening. Check the MP3 and more of her poetry here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_trethewey.html


News of the Day

People like this give good normal liberals a bad name. When Nancy Pelosi thinks you're focusing on the wrong part of the story, that should make you stop and reevaluate the reasons why you're doing what you're doing and why you get out of bed every day.

Democratic lawmaker seeks to impeach Cheney

Reuters
Tuesday, April 24, 2007; 7:44 PM

(Corrects day of the week in lead to Tuesday)

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Democratic lawmaker opposed to the Iraq war initiated a bid on Tuesday to remove Vice President Dick Cheney from office that even his own party leaders dismissed as futile.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio introduced three articles of impeachment in the Democratic-led House of Representatives against Cheney, accusing him of having misled the country into its 2003 invasion of Iraq and, more recently, threatening Iran without cause.

"I believe the vice president's conduct of office has been destructive to the founding purposes of our nation," said Kucinich, who is making a long-shot bid for the White House.

Shortly after Democrats took control of Congress in January from Bush's Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not consider impeachment, a highly divisive issue that could tie Capitol Hill into knots.

"Nothing has changed. It's off the table," said Nadeam Elshami, a Pelosi spokesman. "We're focusing on tough issues like bringing the war in Iraq to a responsible end."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/24/AR2007042401963.html

$$$

This is the time of year that everyone hits up everyone for fund raising support for a good cause. Tina is my fourth friend to send me such an e-mail - I've already contributed to a charity that rescues homeless animals, a ride for research into childhood diabetes (that's the one you're born with, not the one you earn by eating like shit for years upon years), and my cousin's Relay for Life team, which earned over 20k.

Soon I'll be sending my own e-mail trying to raise money for the Race for a Cure breast cancer run/walk here in D.C.

I know that receiving these e-mails can get tedious, but after participating in the Race for a Cure last year, I can attest to how meaningful it is to see someone contribute to your cause and support your efforts. So - don't blow your whole wad on the first e-mail that comes across your in-box. The important thing is giving something, not giving a lot. Drop a 10 or 20 spot and the person will feel huge.

I kept a mental list of everyone who contributed to my fund raising and thought of them all as I ran my race.

So, if I did it right, I added a $ tracker on the side of my blog for Tina's efforts to go work with children in Costa Rica. Costa Rica - I know, that was my reaction, but what are you gonna do? She's my friend and I support her. You can too.