Ted, Ted, Ted

I’ve been reading Harry Potter to Laura a little bit — only when she brings it to me; I don’t bring it up myself. It’s not that I mind it so much, but I wonder if other people who have read Douglas Adams or Fay Weldon or C.S. Lewis find this Potter stuff as skim-milky as I have. It feels like someone carefully analyzed all the little verbal tricks and tics in the Hitchhiker’s Guide books, sorted out the ones that work the most reliably, and then tinker-toyed a bunch of them together, with some plot points for connectors, hoping for a similar effect. It doesn’t work, of course. At some points it sits on the page like the lab-spawned text in those Disney picture books, refusing to move. At its best it manages to be a little bit coy where Adams was maddening, and comfortably eccentric in the spots where Adams achieved full wacko-hood. But we slog through it, sporadically. The only thing that keeps me on the ball through some of the muddier pages is Laura’s insistence that the hero be called Harriet, which forces a certain alertness. She catches me every time I forget.

“The post office sent me a card telling me how to recognize ‘dangerous mail,’” says Stephy. “I threw it away, because I’m not playing that game.” Stephy has posted a lot of valuable stuff about the Ashcroft too-much-darn-freedom crusade. You should check it out.

Next item on the war agenda.

The Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study “follows approximately 5,000 children born to unmarried parents in 20 cities across the country to learn more about the circumstances and experiences of these families.” It has some interesting numbers.

“Primary school students are the unrecognized cutting edge of social thought, because ‘fair’ and ‘not fair’ have yet to be layered over with social rationalizations.” A moving letter from an English teacher to a former student who was imprisoned two weeks ago for refusing to join the Israeli army.

A spam that has been making the rounds (thanks, Rachel):

Many of you have heard Dr. Laura, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and others speak of the “Homosexual Agenda,” but no one has ever seen a copy of it. A friend of mine recently obtained a copy directly from the Head Homosexual. At long last we will all know exactly what is on this “Homosexual Agenda.” I certainly hope it will assist all of you so that you will be prepared when these leaders reveal their plan…

The Homosexual Agenda:
6:00 am: Gym
8:00 am: Breakfast (oatmeal, egg whites and mimosas)
9:00 am: Hair appointment
10:00 am: Shopping (preferably at Neiman’s or Saks)
12:00 pm: Brunch
2:00 pm: Assume complete control of the U.S. Federal, state, and local governments, as well as all other forms of world government, destroy all healthy marriages, replace all school counselors in grades K-12 with agents from Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels, bulldoze all houses of worship, secure total control of the Internet and all mass media
2:15 pm: Be fabulous
2:30 pm: Mud mask and forty winks of beauty rest to prevent facial wrinkles from the stress of world conquest
4:00 pm: Cocktails
6:00 pm: Light Dinner (soup, salad with romaine, radicchio, arugula and balsamic vinaigrette dressing, and Pouilly Fuisse)
8:00 pm: Theatre
10:30 pm: “Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight…”

I was pretty sure the cracks would start appearing fairly soon in the media war-hype machine. This, for example, in the Christian Science Monitor last weekend. It’s little, but it’s a crack: “[The] US media is spending so much time flag-waving, or covering the story of the minute until you’re tired of hearing about it, that they are not doing a very good job covering all aspects of the story.”

Mary and Lillian have been in Atlanta all week, schmoozing it up at the American Public Health Association convention. It’s been pretty hard, not for any practical reason — things have gone very smoothly for me and Laura so far — but because I love them both so much and like having them around. Laura, ever in touch with her feelings, has kept me updated on how much she misses them but hasn’t seemed upset about it. We’ve been staying busy. I worked at home Monday and Tuesday so I could drop off and pick up Laura at school, and in the evenings we worked on our big project. (I can tell you about it here without giving away the surprise, because I’m pretty sure Mary won’t be looking at any Web browsers while away from home.) We cleared out my old work space downstairs, which I haven’t used much since I stopped freelancing, and turned it into a nice cozy office for Mary. I moved her computer down there and hooked up the very nice 20-inch monitor, which she didn’t have room for upstairs, while Laura decorated the walls with colorful frescos of dinosaurs, spaceships and girls with bows in their hair. I threw out a few years’ worth of paper, which I’d been meaning to do for a long time. That cleared out a surprising amount of space.

I hear the FBI is now saying the anthrax letters are probably domestic in origin. That’s a relief. In view of the great job they did on the Eric Rudolph investigation, they should have this one wrapped up in no time.

Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 19:56:54 -0700 (PDT)From: theokuster@usa.netSubject: on scheduleWe are on schedule. We keep up the pace. People continue to invite us over, and we continue to overeat! Yesterday we had horse during the first course, and then a large carp, smoked with tomato and pepper and basil. That was only the second of three meals on Sunday!The church services are all very strong, good liturgy and good preaching. They use LW in Russian. There is a big need for the translation of Buls’ Notes, sermon helps into Russian. 20 or more students and pastors would be using them, but these people are not good at English. We might be doing that as a new project, it could cost maybe $5 for each note, and maybe some people back in SE MN might be interesting in “sponsoring” a note or two.On the other hand, the physical organization of the congregations into a church body that can be self supporting, self governing, and self propagating is not going well at all. In fact, it is the same story we saw in Panama, and in other places, the missionaries will not let it happen, they want to maintain control of all decision making and treat the people like children. Too bad, but this could be changed in time.We have had good weather for the entire trip. And the music events are very good. We saw Aida, the opera, on Saturday night. Our good friend Gabit, the Bach specialist, gave a wonderful concert on Friday night.We have 3 hours of video. Way too much for anybody to sit and watch, but maybe we will see it in little segments.We return on Wed according to schedule. But the London to Mpls leg was not reconfirmed, they said there would probably be no problem, but NW is keeping it tight and canceling flights. We have 5 hours in London and will probably call from there.Dad

Op-eds replete lately with ex-peaceniks doing variations on, “Now that I’m no longer draft age, I’ve discovered how much I like war.” Hell no, we won’t go — we’ll send somebody else. Because we’re going to be busy watching that Peter Paul and Mary reunion show on PBS. Reminds me of a 20-year-old who said to me, “Dude, I don’t think it’s an accident that they’re called baby boomers.”Imagine for a moment that the old tired peace movement rhetoric really is outdated. What is the new, hip way of saying let’s not kill any more people? Is war now not bad for children and other living things? Roll eyes, throw up hands.

Update, 10/23: That 20-year-old was Rob, son and step-son of our old friends Judy and Peter. I remembered that suddenly when someone from the Green party called the other night to get us signed up for flyer distribution and stuff. We were making the arrangements, and he stopped and said, “Is that Ted?” It was Rob. Turns out he is taking time off work to manage the Greens’ campaign for public power and solar investment and various other things that are on the local ballot next week. That sure gave me a lift.

Paul at his sharpest: “What Betsy Ross once pieced together is bright but facile, and served the barber pole best.” Ouch.

My big sister says this in response to this:”Speaking of propaganda, have you heard that the Age of Irony has come to an end? Here is a link about saying what you mean. What do you think about that?
Love, Jo =:-)”

About every other week Laura and I go to the branch library, which has evening hours on Wednesdays. Lately we have been taking Lillian along, which means we get less reading done at the library. We make up for it by taking out more books. Laura is pretty much finished having me suggest books for her, although I do get to point out shelves that she might want to pick from. Her tastes run to prehistoric stuff and humor. She could be into Barbie and Barney Golden Books, for all I care; what matters is that she is at home in the library. The library is about much more than books, of course. Here is Marc Crispin Miller on how much more: “We live in a time (now I’m going to sound archaic but I think it is the most appropriate word) of propaganda. It is a time of unprecedented mass saturation of various propaganda, be they political or commercial. Advertising is a form of propaganda. In contrast, the function of the library, like the function of the school, is to help us to become better citizens by introducing us to other points of view.”

Why do I always assume this guy is going to be obscure? Some clarity from Humberto Eco in La Repubblica last week:

“What is confusing is that often we don’t understand the difference between identifying with our own roots… and distinguishing good from evil.”

The things the House and Senate are about to do should be of immediate concern to anyone who uses the Internet. Which, I believe, means you.

Yesterday (the 11th) was Larry West’s birthday. Larry is Laura’s namesake. (Is that how you say that? She is named for him, I mean.) Laura’s birth, and her getting Larry’s name, did a lot to help me get over Larry’s death. The world still doesn’t feel complete without Larry in it, but it is much closer to it with Laura. Sometimes I imagine that I’m detecting some of his manner in her — I don’t know what it is: the directness, the obstinacy, the animal obsessions — and it makes me think of him, for which I’m grateful.

Dave Marsh in Counterpunch: “The first time ‘God Bless America’ became a hit, around 1940, Woody Guthrie grew annoyed at the sanctimonious jingoism and wrote an answer…: ‘This land is your land.’” Woody is sort of our household saint, I guess. It’s good to see him being invoked now. He has so much more to offer (with all due respect) than Irving Berlin at a time like this.

An alert from my friend Peter in Brooklyn. I naively thought this would be cleared up by now (Peter wrote about it last Thursday) but the strip is still not back in the paper. Apparently the cartoonist is being penalized for drawing attention to U.S. government complicity in promoting terrorism. Of course, if one comic is judged politically unacceptable, it follows that all the comics that do run in that paper have been judged by the same standard and found acceptable. Doesn’t it? I’m not interested in reading material that has been approved by a censor. Guess that means no more “For Better or For Worse” for me.Thus Peter: One of the main reasons I buy the NY Daily News every single day is to read the comic strip “The Boondocks.” Today (Oct. 4) “The Boondocks” did not appear. You can see the censored strip here.”The Boondocks” has always been a comic strip with a sharp political edge — that’s what’s great about it. I am frightened — and angered — by the idea that a comic like today’s is considered offensive. It makes me wonder what kind of country I’ll be living in five years from now.Please join me in protesting this censorship by the Daily News. You can call the paper’s comics editor, Sam Poppa, at 212-210-2100. You can also write a letter to the editor. Include your full name, address and phone number. Keep the letter to 3 sentences for the best chance of being published.Thanks,Peter

A balance sheet for the world’s largest supplier of arms to terrorist organizations.