For My Lucky Friends Living In The Sun

Posted on by Laughingnomad

You live in the Pacific Northwest if

1. You know the state flower (Mildew).

2. You feel guilty throwing aluminum cans or paper in the trash.

3. Use the statement “sun break” and know what it means.

4. You know more than 10 ways to order coffee.

5 You know more people who own boats than air conditioners.

6. You feel overdressed wearing a suit or nice dress to a restaurant.

7. You stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the “WALK” signal.

8. You consider that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it’s not a real mountain.

9. You can taste the difference between Starbucks, Seattle’s Best, Veneto’s, Pied Cow, Peets Coffee, Coffee People and Stumptown Coffee.

10 . You know the difference between Chinook, Coho, Sockeye, Farmed and Wild Salmon.

11. You know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Haceta, Yaquina, Yachats, Issaquah, Oregon, Yakima and Willamette.

12. You consider swimming an indoor sport.

13. You can tell the difference between Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai food.

14. In winter, you go to work in the dark and come home in the dark while only working eight-hour days.

15. You never go camping without waterproof matches and a poncho.

16. You go camping.

17. You are not fazed by “Today’s forecast: showers followed by rain,” and “Tomorrow’s forecast: rain followed by showers.”

18.You have no concept of humidity without precipitation.

19. You know that Boring is a town in Oregon and not just a state of mind.

20. You can point to at least two volcanoes, even if you cannot see through the cloud cover.

21. You notice, “The mountain is out” when it is a pretty day and you can actually see it.

22. You put on your shorts when the temperature gets above 50, but still wear your hiking boots and parka.

23. You switch to your sandals when it gets about 60, but keep the socks on.

24. You have actually used your mountain bike on a mountain.

25. You think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or tourists.

26. You buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old ones after such a long time.

27. You measure distance in hours.

28. You often switch from “heat” to “a/c” in the same day.

29. You design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit under a raincoat.

30. You know all the important seasons: Almost Winter, winter, Still raining (Spring), Road Construction (Summer), Skiing and Crabbing Season (Winter).

31. You can take hours agreeing on which restaurant to go to because Portland has more great restaurants per capita than any other city in the country. Seattle is not far behind.

32. You understand these jokes.

US Aid To Mexico For What?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

During the teacher strike and ensuing rebellion in Oaxaca in 2006, tear gas cannisters dropped out of helicopters and found all over the city were manufactured in Jamestown, PA. And it is rumored that Mexico’s PFP (Federal Riot Control Police) are trained at the School Of The Americas. During the take-over of Oaxaca City by the PFP on November 25, 2006, nearly two thousand people, including many who were never involved in the rebellion but simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, were arrested, beaten and incarcerated without being charged. Nearly 25 people were killed in night-time raids last year…a couple in plain daylight during the marches. The women have marched against the killings, arrests and rapes. Many are still missing. The “dirty war” continues.

So when President Bush announced Monday in Washington that he will ask Congress to approve a $500 million package to help Mexico fight drug cartels, the largest international anti-drug effort by the United States in nearly a decade, human rights groups were alarmed.

The Washington Post reports that the much-anticipated Mexico aid plan, which is included in the president’s $46 billion supplemental budget request for war funding, would pay for helicopters, canine units, communications gear and inspection equipment, the State Department said.

The program also would include training and technical advice on vetting new police officers, and case-management software to track investigations in a nation where drug kingpins have infiltrated many state and local governments and infighting among drug traffickers has cost more than 4,000 lives in the past 22 months.

The aid packages are part of what the Bush administration hopes will be a multiyear, $1.4 billion initiative.

Bush administration officials have praised Calderon for deploying more than 20,000 soldiers and federal police officers to fight drug gangs, but human rights groups have complained about use of the military after a series of rapes and rights violations in which security forces were allegedly involved.

Joy Olson, director of the nonprofit Washington Office on Latin America, said Monday she is concerned that the Bush administration did not say which Mexican agencies would receive aid money.

“If they are allocated to civilian control structures, the funds are more likely to have a positive effect in strengthening the rule of law and civilian institutions,” Olson said. “If funds are sent directly to the receiving countries’ military forces, the plan could undermine civilian control of the armed forces and weaken efforts to strengthen civilian public security institutions.”

Many in Mexico and elsewhere suspect the aid will also be used to put down rebellions by Mexico’s poor who are fighting for better education and against the illegal confiscation of ejido land (owned by the people) by multinationals for mining and other activities.

Expect many more human rights abuses in Mexico in the future.

Panties Subverting Burma’s Junta

Posted on by Laughingnomad

To widespread international condemnation, the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, crushed mass anti-regime demonstrations recently and continues to hunt down and imprison those who took part.

So the International Herald Tribune has reported Friday that women in several countries have begun sending their panties to Myanmar embassies in a culturally insulting gesture of protest against the recent brutal crackdown there, a campaign supporter said Friday.

“It’s an extremely strong message in Burmese and in all Southeast Asian culture,” said Liz Hilton, who supports an activist group that launched the “Panties for Peace” drive earlier this week.

A comment on the Lanna Action For Burma web site goes like this:

The protest is innovative, but ironically it depends upon the willingness of women to reinforce a belief of the innate superiority of men over women that is held not only by Burma’s generals but also by most men in the country. Men are potent; women are weak. Thus women’s genitalia–especially if menstruating–are dangerous to men’s potency.

Day-to-day this means, among other things, that men in Burma actively avoid having contact with women’s lower garments, and that special restrictions are placed on the hanging of women’s washing that do not apply to men’s articles. Perhaps the organisers of the protest should have considered these features of the “culturally insulting gesture” before going ahead with it. Who is really being insulted?

The group, Lanna Action for Burma, says the country’s superstitious generals, especially junta leader Gen. Than Shwe, also believe that contact with women’s underwear saps them of power.

What do you think?

Who Are The Mexicans & Why Does It Matter To The U.S.

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I refer to the “U.S.” instead of “America” in the title because if there is one thing I have learned in the last year it is that Mexico, Central and South America is also part of the Americas.

There is an interesting article in the LA Times this morning about where Mexicans come from by Gregory Rodriguez, a columnist for the opinion pages, director of the California Fellows Program at the New America Foundation and author of the just-published “Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America” that will be released on Tuesday October 23.

“Mexicans,” Rodriguez says, “mythologized a tale of the violent and tragic conquest of Mexico by Spain to explain their birth as a people: the story of the Spaniard Hernan Cortes and his indigenous translator and mistress, Doña Marina, a.k.a. La Malinche.

Marina was Cortes’ victor’s prize and, in 1522, she gave birth to Martin Cortes, one of many mestizo children born to the conquerors’ mistresses and paramours. Four and a half centuries later, in 1950, the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz famously wrote that the “strange permanence of Cortes and La Malinche in the Mexican’s imagination and sensibilities reveals that they are something more than historical figures: They are symbols of a secret conflict that we still have yet to solve.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, the psychic power of the Cortes-Malinche story, you won’t find many monuments to them in Mexico City. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain in the early 19th century, Mexican nationalists, who sought to distance themselves from their European heritage, demonized the conquerors in general and Doña Marina in particular.

At the imposing two-story stone house at 57 Higuera St. in the Coyoacan district of Mexico City, for example, there is no plaque to indicate that Marina once lived there. Though for centuries she had been described as a beautiful, noble woman who commanded respect, 19th century depictions began to condemn her for her role in the Spanish conquest. Out of these portrayals arose the peculiarly Mexican concept of malinchismo, which means the betrayal of one’s own.

Paz contended that the Mexicans’ fixation on — and ultimate rejection of — both progenitors in their origin story left them in a state of “orphanhood, an obscure awareness that we have been torn from the All.” The history of Mexico, he wrote, “is the history of a man seeking his parentage, his origins.”

This alienation resonates profoundly throughout the culture. On the one hand, Mexico proudly acknowledges its Indian ancestry; on the other, it clearly prizes whiteness as a status symbol. It endlessly questions its identity: Is it modern or ancient, Spanish or Indian? And the Cortes/Malinche story, instead of defining Mexico’s origins in a constructive way, merely prolongs and exacerbates the country’s ambivalence about its history as a conquered nation.

Mexican mestizaje — racial and cultural synthesis — may have begun in a violent conquest, but it didn’t end there. Interracial love and attraction also played a role. Ultimately, racial mixture was rampant, and it combined with a rigid colonial caste system to create a society in which race was a malleable category. Mexicans developed — in the words of Mexican American poet Gloria Anzaldua — “a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity,” particularly in the realm of race and culture.

As Mexicans came north to the United States, that long history of mestizaje was also brought to bear on another cultural force, Anglo America. One scholar, Roberto Bacalski-Martinez, has described Mexican American culture in the Southwest as “incredibly ancient on the one hand, and surprisingly new on the other. Indian, Spanish, Mexican and Anglo elements have gone into its formation, and they continue to affect it. In each case, the introduction of new elements began as a clash between two peoples which eventually resulted in a newer, richer culture.”

I can hardly wait to read this book which has been said to offer an unprecedented account of the long-term cultural and political influences that Mexican Americans will have on the collective character of our nation.

Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico and former United States ambassador to the United Nations says “In the midst of a narrow, polemical debate on immigration, Gregory Rodriguez has written a generous, sweeping, prodigiously researched, and judicious history of Mexican Americans that helps us understand their long-term influence on American society. Smart, fun, and eminently readable, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds explores five centuries of cultural collisions and convergences, and dares us to imagine a new way of thinking about the future of America.”

In my perception, on the one hand, Mexicans purport to celebrate their indigenous history…but on the other hand the racism based on color in that country is systemic. The dilemma: how to love the conqueror’s blood in themselves. And then what happens when they migrate to this country?

Timely.

Courtyard Music

Posted on by Laughingnomad

My friend Max waxed recently about living in Oaxaca City.

“For the life of me, I can’t figure out why most Oaxacans aren’t deaf. I mean, take Charlie the drummer over there:

Charlie got deaf playing rock and roll, in band after band, for decades. After all those years of having huge pounding speakers near his ears, he ended up with speakers in his ears: he has to wear a hearing aid when he wants to listen; a lot of the time, he’d just as soon tune out.

Us old folk, who have been hangin’ in Oaxaca for a while, but are still sensitive to loud noise, have for the most part figured out how to avoid much of it (if you think you’ll be able to dodge all of it, you just don’t know Mexico). Some of us own a bit of acreage out in the Etlas, with a good-size house on it. Others opt for separate bungalows in compounds – with or without gate – in residential suburbs. Still others are in townhouses, apartments or bungalows in the center of one of the downtown blocks, far back from the traffic.

The less fortunate among us, either because we made bad choices or just can’t afford the Gringo luxury of peace and quiet, have to live with the noise. There are only two advantages to this: after a while, you stop noticing it so much; and you can still grumble about it to anyone who hasn’t heard your story before (or the forgetful folk who have). Usually they lodge with families, or in a family compound, or small apartments in working class neighborhoods. These are the ones most likely to hear the ‘Courtyard Music.’

Courtyard Music is a blend of two or more loud radios tuned to different stations, shrieking kids, barking roof dogs, and people yelling back and forth at each other. This is a more or less constant accompaniment. The bass line; the left hand on the piano.

The melody constantly changes. Motorcycles are revved up. People wander in from the street and stand in the courtyard hawking 5 gallon bottles of water, tortillas by the handful, tanks of propane gas, and other more exotic items. There may be a carpenter’s shop in the courtyard: sawing and nailing provide the percussion. One poor unfortunate lives next door to a recycling center where they do cans and bottles.

From time to time there will be a wedding or a birthday party, accompanied by a three piece, amplified electric band adept at the three traditional Oaxacan party music modes: Marriachi, Tex-Mex and Oompah.

A musically inclined friend who lives in a noisy, two or three hundred year old courtyard with a big extended family, a dozen kids and four neurotically barking poodles, has become resigned to this aural environment after two years there. He has this to say:

“Sometimes the courtyard music is just annoying – if you’re trying to sleep or think deep thoughts. Sometimes, it all comes together, the children’s singing and laughing blends with the vendors cries and all the rest into a kind of counterpoint that is as complex and beautiful as anything Bach or Villa Lobos could do. Sometimes…”

Of course, this is someone who is clearly a little crazy. Not that he wasn’t a little weird when he got here. Probably, it was the courtyard music that drove him around the bend.”

It Isn’t Over In Oaxaca

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Marches in Oaxacas continue to call attention to the occupation of 128 schools by section 59 and the PRIistas, the continuing incarceration of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, and to commemorate the assassination of APPO and teacher sympathizers by the local and federal police in October of 2006.

October 18: 16:00 leave Fuente de los Siete Regiones and march to zocalo
October 27: 7:00 Santa Maria Coyotepec
8:00 march leaves from office of Procuraduria Gral. de Justicia and Callicanto, Santa Lucia del Carmen and goes to zocalo
October 29: October regional marches
November 2: political cultural “jornada” and I don’t know exactly what that means
November 25: teacher-popular march

Political Correctness: Searching For A Dogma

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I have always chaffed at the idea of political correctness…that honest ideas and opinions must be subject to the language police…a practice that Doris Lessing, this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature, has said was particularly evident in Marxist thought. She says “the process nearly always means that the pupil gets only the propaganda the instructor approves of. ‘Raising consciousness,’ like ‘commitment,’ like ‘political correctness,’ is a continuation of that old bully, the party line.

In recent years, I understand the reasons for this. We are trying to snuff out bigotry and prejudice. But getting rid of repugnant language does not seem to be successful at getting rid of repugnant behavior. Indeed, when coded words do slip out they are brutally judged and pounced upon by well-meaning people…creating resentment and anger…until there is an opportunity to lash out.

Stifle language and you have stifled civic discourse and the opportunity to openly and honestly explore ideas…and with it the opportunity to, as Lessing says, discover “ideas capable of transforming our societies, full of insights about how the human animal actually behaves and thinks.”

Questions You Should Never Ask a Writer
New York Times
October 13, 2007

On Thursday, the novelist Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. Moments after the announcement, the literary world embarked on a time-honored post-Nobel tradition: assessing — and sometimes sniffing at — the work of the prizewinner. One of the most pointed criticisms of Ms. Lessing came from Harold Bloom, the Yale professor and literary critic, who told The Associated Press, “Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable.” He went on to add that the prize is “pure political correctness.” Interestingly, Ms. Lessing had some strong thoughts about political correctness, thoughts she expressed in this adapted article, which appeared on the Op-Ed page on June 26, 1992:

By DORIS LESSING
WHILE we have seen the apparent death of Communism, ways of thinking that were either born under Communism or strengthened by Communism still govern our lives. Not all of them are as immediately evident as a legacy of Communism as political correctness.

The first point: language. It is not a new thought that Communism debased language and, with language, thought. There is a Communist jargon recognizable after a single sentence. Few people in Europe have not joked in their time about “concrete steps,” “contradictions,” “the interpenetration of opposites,” and the rest.

The first time I saw that mind-deadening slogans had the power to take wing and fly far from their origins was in the 1950s when I read an article in The Times of London and saw them in use. “The demo last Saturday was irrefutable proof that the concrete situation…” Words confined to the left as corralled animals had passed into general use and, with them, ideas. One might read whole articles in the conservative and liberal press that were Marxist, but the writers did not know it. But there is an aspect of this heritage that is much harder to see.
Read More

Americans Living Abroad

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Americans living and working outside U.S. borders are recognizing their growing importance in the electoral process. The outcome of the last several primary and national elections could have been very different had they been able to easily register and vote in a timely way…especially since living abroad gives Americans a keen understanding on the ground of the issues facing our foreign policy wonks.

Could You Become An American Citizen Today?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Found on Salon.com this morning written by Tim Grieve:

True Confessions

In the interest of self-reflection or self-flagellation or something, I just took the new-and-improved naturalization test unveiled this week by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

I scored 96 out of 100, which had me feeling pretty good about my bona fides as a U.S. American until I realized how the test really works. While there are 100 questions on the overall exam, any individual citizenship applicant is asked a randomly selected 10, and you need to get six right to pass. What that means: If the four questions I couldn’t answer were among the 10 I happened to get, I would have received the absolute minimum passing grade.

How can that be?

Well, let’s see. Despite having sort of studied American history under a Pulitzer-winning professor and done reasonably well at one of the better law schools in the United States, I couldn’t say, right off the top of my head, how many amendments the Constitution has. It turns out — and you knew this, didn’t you? — that there are 27, the last one providing that “no law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.”

Whatever. Not knowing the number of amendments is hardly an indictment of my civic knowledge. Nor, I thought, should I feel so bad about thinking that the Statute of Liberty sits on Ellis Island. It turns out — and you knew this too, right? — that while Ellis Island is part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, the statue itself sits on Liberty Island.

Trivia, I said to myself.

But then there’s the small matter of Question No. 23: Name your representative. I know, I know: Of all people, I should know. And just a few months ago, I would have: I lived in Sacramento, Calif., and my representative was Doris Matsui, and her late husband, Bob, had been my representative for about a million years before that. But I moved to Bethesda, Md., in late July, and as I stared at Question No. 23, it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet taken a moment to figure out which representative represents the part of Montgomery County where we live.

Pleased to meet you, Rep. Chris Van Hollen. Having humiliated myself in public, I shall never forget you.

So that’s three wrong. How’d I miss four? I’ll put that law school education to use now and quibble. Question No. 68 asks for “one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.” My answer: He signed the Declaration of Independence. That’s correct, of course, but it’s not one of the officially sanctioned right answers: “U.S. diplomat”; “oldest member of the Constitutional Convention”; “first postmaster general of the United States”; “writer of ‘Poor Richard’s Almanac'”; or “started the first free public libraries.”

Yeah, well, he did that thing with the kite and the key and is said to have said that beer is “proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” too. Would a test administrator give me credit for one of those? Probably not. But I’d argue, if my citizenship depended on it, that my answer about Ben and the Declaration ought to be close enough to count.

After all, an officially acceptable answer to Question No. 8 — What did the Declaration of Independence do? — is “declared our independence.”

Language And The Brain

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I just couldn’t resist this.

Maybe this is an explanation for why we seem to be able to tolerate the contradictions and disconsonate ambiguities in much of our public discourse. Maybe there is an inherent logic to it that is going over my head. Or maybe I’m still experiencing culture shock from listening to so much addled TV after five years without it. Why does Jon Stewart make more sense to me than the “news?”

scrambled, jumbled words and language recognition theory

Arinocdcg to rencet rseaerch, the hmuan brian is plrectfey albe to raed colmpex pasasges of txet caiinontng wdors in whcih the lrettes hvae been jmblued, pvioedrd the frsit and lsat leetrts rmeian in teihr crcerot piiotsons.

The fcat taht you are ridenag tihs now wtih reaitvle esae is poorf of the thoery.

Wehre did all of tihs strat?

It smees taht the trehoy orgteiinad form a 1976 ppaer at the Uvnitsriey of Nigaonthtm wtiertn by Graahm Rwsnailon of Asrhodelt, wichh gvae rsie to an acirlte wihch aaeprrped in the ‘Narute’ pbuolitaicn in 1999.

A fhrtuer alircte in the Tiems neppeawsr in Speemebtr 2003 pivroedd mroe eanxopiatln auobt the peohoemnnn.

In the Tmeis aitlcre, Dr Reoaesln MhActcry, a neruo-phylcoogsy lruecter form Knig’s Ceglloe, Cgmdbriae, ssegegtud taht hmuan bnegis are albe to usnatdnerd jeublmd up wdors buaecse the hmaun bairn parimliry raeds the mannieg rehatr tahn the piothenc cnontet of wdors (the sdnuos of the wrdos and leertts).

Dr McRtcahy was qoteud as saiyng, taht “…if you can acaitinpte waht the nxet wrod in a snnetece cloud be, you wlil not nslsciareey ntcoie if smoe of the leettrs in taht wrod are out of pclae…”, and she aslo taht she was sepsrruid at jsut how rosubt the barin’s rgceotnioin aeiibtils had been pverod to be. “The hamun biarn is a lot mroe toanelrt tahn we had pahrpes risaeled, and it has to cpoe wtih diisputrng in eevydray lfie.”

The torehy pdeoivrs a fiatsincang pprciesetve on mderon cutonacniimmos and the dmveelnoept of laguange.

The terohy aslo hples to eaipxln the doepmevnlet of merodn txet mseniagsg lagunage, and how the hamun biran so rlaidey utendrnsdas atboivbinears and cimtonobnais of lrettes and nbrmeus mainkg new ‘wdros’ whcih we’ve nveer seen beofre and yet stlil are albe to usterdannd alsomt iammeiltdey. For emxpale: ‘c u lte8r’, wihch you’ll nitcoe you can utransnded eevn thgouh it’s jmulebd.

One of the gerat lsneoss form tihs troehy dmsttnareoes the rmaaebrlke pweor of the huamn biarn.

Wehn we are yonug we not olny lraen how to raed, but aslo ibcerndily and uninaenionltlty lraen how to raed waht wuold by nmoral cooevntnin be decerbisd as uettr nnsosnee.

Tihs bges qtuseonis abuot the dicrieotn of laagngue eolotuvin.

Waht wlil lgganaue look lkie in geotrnaiens to cmoe?

Whtuoit dobut hmuan binegs are albe to asobrb pvrseiogerlsy mroe maening form pvolesesrrigy rucdnieg anotmus of wrdos and lrttees.

We now raed in shohtnrad – and iamegs – and sfcginltianiy we are beord by aiytnhng taht is too lhtngey.

Posorneiafl witerrs need to get tehir pniot asorcs in jsut a few seodcns, or the raeedr’s anitttoen is lsot.

The jmbleud wdros torhey datrmneeosts jsut how caalbpe the biarn is at arnboibsg mneaing far mroe qilcuky tahn msot wrietrs wuold eevr iaimnge.

And a fnail daioertomstnn of how celver yuor barin is – can you raed tihs?…