Esprit de L'Escalier

Soggy thoughts on what I want to be when I grow up

Today started off a bit soggy. It started raining yesterday evening and did not stop until this evening. Thus my trip to the polls early this morning was fairly wet, and my galoshes got a work out. I found something amusing with voting today. It must be that Ohioans aren't used to voting in primary elections, because I saw two people have mini tantrums about having to choose one ballot over another. I think it's because they were Republican and only wanted to vote on the Democratic ticket for president. Frankly I didn't have a lot of sympathy.

I am currently coming off the giddiness that follows public speaking. I just gave my final presentation for my "Where Do I Fit?" class, in which I had to describe what kind of planner I want to be when I get done with my master's program. We had to have one slide with an image that would serve as our inspiration. I chose this photo of the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall in Shanghai. When I saw it, I thought about the mass of humanity that would be living in such a dense urban area, and how nature and community could possibly be balanced. My interests in planning are related to design, community and sustainable living. In a perfect world I'd be able combine these three interests in a job to make urban living better in America in places like Columbus, Ohio. I'd also like to be able to write about it. (Have I told you how Dwell magazine influenced two major life decisions last year, including getting a master's in urban planning? I'd love to be published by them one day.)

I'm writing about this now partially to start forming more coherent thoughts for myself (and my final paper for that class). It's funny how this assignment has been both difficult and easy. I know what sparks my interests and passions, but it's hard to consolidate those interests into goals. Part of the assignment entails writing a "perfect future resume" - which I haven't yet started. It's exciting and scary to dream, especially when there are real life implications (even if they are good implications).

Anyhow, sorry for the navel gazing, though that's what this space is often for. I just got two rolls of film back today and have some great photos to share this week. Stay tuned! (Below is a shot of the main drag in town, taken Sunday during our short bit of beautiful weather.)

Mittens and other political thoughts

Oh Mittens. You bowed out already? I'm so surprised. I found your "I'm suspending my campaign" speech highly offense, but what's new. According to Harold Meyerson you were approaching the Platonic ideal of inauthenticity, to which I both heartily agreed and laughed. I can't wait to see how much more the GOP will disintegrate.

Something has happened to me recently. I started to feel again about politics. For so long I was angry and then I was numb. Suddenly I'm not numb anymore. I'm listening to NPR in the morning and actually hearing and caring. I feel excited again. I'm still undecided, unlike a couple of friends. It turns out that my vote in March might mean something.

This may seem a little whatever to you, because who hasn't been discouraged since 2000? But to me this change of heart is huge. I was raised discussing politics and my Grandmother, my hero and favorite person, was a CSPAN junkie and it was because of her that I studied political science as an undergrad. This deadening over the past couple of years has saddened me on another level, because of this connection to my Grandmother. I'm sorry she's missing this election cycle, because she would have enjoyed it. I'm excited to vote again, and that she would love.

Please help if you can

I am often at a loss about what to do when I read about disasters or escalating problems in faraway lands (even sometimes when they are in my country). It's hard to know how you can help or do your part to show you care, etc. Luckily, I have friends like Dana, who figure out ways to make the world a bit better for her job.

Dana is an old friend who works for GlobalGiving, an organization that is trying to change the way people give. It connects donors with organizations, and is very explicit on how donated funds are used. It's mission is to "build an efficient, open, thriving marketplace that connects people who have community and world-changing ideas with people who can support them." I find that exciting and noble.

Dana has been worried about her friend Stella Amojong Omunga in Kenya since escalating violence started to occur after their recent election.

Dana sent out this message in email (and on her blog), asking us to sending some money to help her. (If you are interested in donating, please go here.)

Dana said:

I've worked at GlobalGiving, for about three years, and one of the best parts of my job is getting to work with (mostly over email and phone) some amazing people around the world who are doing amazing things in their local communities. Stella Amojong Omunga started a small NGO in Eldoret, in western Kenya, doing health and education work with teenage mothers. We became fast friends over email-- she is funny, eloquent, enthusiastic in a way that even spills over into electronic communications, and totally dedicated to her work. Her reports about her use of funds are detailed down to the penny, and while some people will tell you that only large donations make a difference, Stella was always deeply grateful for any $10 or $20 or $100, and could stretch it to do amazing things.

I got increasingly worried watching the news after the Kenyan election, especially after dozens of people were burned alive in a church in Eldoret where Stella lives. I emailed Stella to see how things were going and the first sentence of her response made me pause: "I'm terribly ashamed to be Kenyan right now...what we are witnessing is beyond human comprehension! I'm even taking a huge risk to check my mail, our country has been turned into a war zone: no food, no drugs, no transportation...its simply hell!!" She described the lack of food, medicine, and supplies, and how she is personally sheltering women and children at her home. "We are regrouping and doing anything in our power to provide humanitarian assistance."

In Stella's words about the current needs:

I'm not sure getting foodstuff or other supplies would be a good idea: all roads are barricaded by armed youths and unless you have heavy paramilitary escort, getting to the ground/villages is simply hard. Relief agencies, like Red Cross, are donating basic food to the displaced families, but this is not enough. Our bank has been opening the local branch sporadically and I believe it will continue doing so next week. We have had to sell some domestic electronic equipment (fridge, cookers, TV) to raise some quick money to buy food. Prices are quickly escalating and supplies are beginning to diminish but we still hope for the best.

My preference would be to send in the money and we can use our local networks in sourcing for basic food, drugs and other necesities. Indeed you can direct other donors to our project so we can have as much impact as possible. The key word here is URGENT.

If you can spare some money, please considering making a donation here. Also, I encourage you to bookmark GlobalGiving's website and to explore it further. Find a cause you believe in and start making a difference. Thanks.

Some random bits

These two bits of celebrity gossip make me sad. I know it's stupid to feel badly when celebrity relationships go belly up, but it's too bad all the same.

I'm also sad to hear of the passing of Pavarotti. Check Lance's place for a video.

For another music clip, check out Josh Ritter's video for his new song, "The Temptation of Adam." This song *kills* me, as does this video. Nothing like a pre-apocalyptic love song. It works on so many levels. "If this was the cold war, we could keep each other warm... I didn't have to learn to love her, like I learned to love the bomb, she just came along and started to ignore me..." His new album is good (and rocking), but is lost some where in the wilds of my storage unit. Boo.

I feel like I'm getting a little sluggish and lazy at my parents'. I keep saying I'm going to get up and go on a bike ride, but it just isn't happening.

Last night, I watched a sneak peek of Tim Gunn's newest show on Bravo and was very disappointed. It's basically a re-hash of What Not To Wear, but with bigger names and labels and expensive things. I just don't think it works as well as WNTW. Don't get me wrong, I love Tim Gunn, but don't think this is working. Maybe I'll be wrong, but it's dull so far. At least Stacey and Clinton know how to throw around quips and can make a woman feel better about herself without a lifestyle coach. But Tim has access to big designers and freebies from Coach. Maybe Tim just shouldn't mingle with the normal people.

For more not-so-great-tv-but-we-watch-it-anyway, check newcritics tonight, where MA Peel will be hosting the live blogging of Mad Men. I still think that the writers just make the characters do the worst thing possible in every situation. Which I find to be lazy and uninteresting. Where's the nuance to that?

Fun part about being home? All of the old photos to paw through. Check out how cute I was at two.

Dire straights for internet radio

The US District Court denied a stay for the unfair, retroactive royalty rates, which will go into affect Sunday for internet radio stations. Payment should be fair over all radio mediums. Please call your representatives now to support and bring the Internet Radio Equality Act. As Tim says, this is a medium that needs to survive. (For some reason the vid that I posted above isn't showing up in IE, here's a link if you can't see it.)

Other links:
Here's an article from KCRW in Santa Monica by Celia Hirschman called "When Our Leaders Fail Us".
Here are all of KCRW's posts on the issue.
Here's another link to SaveNetRadio.org.
Here's a Paste magazine article on the issue as well.

Immigration issues

Editor's note: I don't often talk politics here. Mostly it's because I feel too incoherent about the anger and disappointment I feel about our government. There are a lot of other people who do the gig so much better than I. Immigration issues are something, though, that I discuss on almost a daily basis. My roommate works for an immigration law firm and she and I discuss the ins and outs of our messed up legal system. She's not pleased with the current immigration reform bill, and neither am I. I'm frustrated by the lack of dignity with which we treat so many people in our country, and I see this bill as only furthering that.

Below is a message cobbled together by my roommate, who sent it out earlier this week. I sent it as well, and some of you received it. I don't know how people feel about this, because it seems a difficult topic to discuss. I urge you, however, to read her message and think about it.

Thanks, Claire.

Hi everyone-

If you get a moment today, please contact your senators about the current immigration bill. It is truly flawed and is going to radically change family-based immigration without greatly benefiting employment based immigration, making it near-sighted and ridiculous. I've pasted an e-mail below that you can feel free to cut and copy when contacting your senators via e-mail. Yes - it's long. But the legislation is exceptionally bad, so I like to think it's simply proportional. I've also included the links to the Illinois senator's e-mail suggestion boxes and a general link to senate contact info if you are outside of Illinois.

Thanks, guys.
-Natasha


Obama: http://obama.senate.gov/contact/index.php

Durbin: http://durbin.senate.gov/contact.cfm

find your senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Dear Senator:

I am writing because I believe the immigration reform bill as it is currently written is unworkable. While the "bargain" certainly contains many important and positive provisions-broad legalization, family backlog clearance, Agjobs, DREAM Act-these provisions cannot be accepted as a "trade-off" for devastating provisions that would harm families and workers for decades to come.

1. Decimation of Family Immigration:
The bill eliminates current family preference categories and limits future family immigration to spouses and minor children of citizens and permanents residents, caps parents of citizens at 40,000, and makes no provision for those who have been in the family backlog for two years or less. This legislation flies in the face of other reform proposals which increase the 2A category or place it the immediate relative category.

2. Decimation of Employment-Based Immigration:
The bill eliminates current employment-based immigration categories and puts in their place a new "merit-based" point system with totally inadequate numbers (approximately 40,000 per year while current backlogs are cleared over 5-8 years). The new "point system" would be wildly skewed toward highly educated, English-speaking professionals, with few visas for essential workers or adult children or siblings of citizens. The point system contains no provisions for multinational managers, extraordinary ability aliens, outstanding professors or researchers, or those doing work in the national interest. There would be no labor market test to protect native-born workers. (There are now also awful H-1B and L-1 provisions in this bill).

3. Lack of Path to Permanent Status for Future Flow Essential and Highly Skilled Workers:
The new Y temporary worker program would create a constantly churning workforce, as it provides only a two-year nonimmigrant visa and requires that workers leave the U.S. for one year before being eligible to renew their work visa for a subsequent 2-year period. There is no "bridge" to allow essential and highly skilled but non-degreed workers a path to eventual permanent lawful status. There is a carve-out of 10,000 green cards per year for "essential" Y workers, but it appears they could not seek a permanent visa while in the United States.

4. Lack of Adequate Future Green Cards for Families and Workers:
The future legal immigration program (after 8 years of backlog clearance) provided for in the Senate bill contemplates a legal immigration system composed of 380,000 work visas and 127,000 family-based visas, plus unlimited visas for spouses and minor children of citizens, and some number of refugee visas. These numbers are totally inadequate. All economic projections and assessments of family unity needs point to the need for at least 1.8 million visas per year in the future. The provisions of the current Senate bill guarantee that new backlogs will grow immediately, and that undocumented immigration will continue. This is no solution.

5. Obstacles to Legalization:
The legalization provisions in the Senate bill require currently undocumented workers to register for a temporary work permit, and then, before receiving final lawful permanent status in 8-13 years, travel to their home countries and file applications with the U.S. consulate there. The cost for a single Z visa holder to legalize would be at least $8,500, and could be as high as $11,500. Z holders would not be permitted to sponsor spouses or minor children who are outside the U.S. as of January 2007. While the legalization program provisions are broad and include a generous cut-off date of January 2007, the obstacles inherent in too-tight deadlines, costs and required contact with overseas consulates are obstacles that must be addressed to assure that all who qualify for legalization can obtain permanent status.

Please amend this bill and create meaningful legislation that will truly help protect our rights and foster our values.

A moment of silence

My head is still reeling from the unbelievable violence in yesterday's shooting attack at Virginia Tech yesterday. My heart and thoughts are with the people there.

An old email I wrote

There has been some rumbling by Tom Watson in some of the comment sections of a couple of my favorite bloggers. In fact, it's almost come to fisticuffs. Tom wants the liberal bloggers to not write about tv or flowers in the weeks coming up to an extremely important election. He wants us to keep motivated about politics! Let us not be swayed by the shiny, pretty things that distract us from the horrors of the current administration.

All of this has reminded me of an email I wrote to many friends the day after the 2004 election. I had worked as a poll watcher that day and hadn't had a very good experience. (It's a long story, probably better heard in person.) My roommates and I threw a party the night before to watch the numbers come in, and we even got cable so we would have Jon Stewart to keep us laughing, which turned out to be very necessary. I woke up the next day not very jazzed about the world. This is what I sent to my friends and loved ones:

Dear Friends,
In times of trial, we often turn to beloved and revered texts to search for higher meanings in our earthly struggles. This morning I woke up with a burning need to read the Federalist Papers today. Federalist X has always been my favorite, and today seemed an appropriate time to revisit Madison's thoughts on the perils of factions.

"Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”

Madison defines a faction:
“By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

Madison then explains that the sources of factions (liberty and diverse opinions amongst the electorate) cannot be cured, because doing so would be like “annihilation of air” because it “imparts fire to its destructive agency.” He stresses that the effects of factions must be controlled.

This is easy, of course, with a minority faction, but with a majority faction there is danger for the democracy. “When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of citizens.”

He says that it is the question of how to control this “overbearing majority” that he desires to answer, though I do not find much hope in his answers. “Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression.” Unfortunately, if this cannot be avoided, as it has not been avoided in this election, Madison offers little. He concedes that “neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control,” especially not if the overbearing majority sees itself as morally and religiously superior to the rest of the electorate.

Madison goes on to discuss the importance of how our Constitution balances power between the minorities and majorities, and how this balance should hold in check the dangerous factions that are inherent in our form of government. The bicameral legislature, and the checks on it by the executive branch, was created to make laws difficult to enact. Our government was designed to move slowly, so factions could not quickly rise to greatly change the legal landscape of the country. It is difficult to change the Constitution for that reason as well, as it should be. This slowness is an incredibly important check on overbearing majorities, but what happens when both the executive and the entire legislative branch are in the hands of one faction? What happens when they fill the judicial with other members of that faction? How do the checks work to balance the needs of majorities and minorities? How does our democracy continue to function as it was originally intended if the country is so divided, yet one side holds all the power? These are the questions that plague me on this sunny November morning. Unfortunately Madison has not assuaged any of my fears, only underlined them.

I spoke with my mother today, who went to bed early last night, confident and exhausted after a long day of canvassing and poll watching. She awoke this morning, as many of us did, aghast. She told me she feels like maybe the South did win the Civil War after all.

I’m sorry to fill your inboxes with such a gloomy missive. Though we may have lost this battle, I don’t think it is right to concede the control of the nation’s hearts and minds to a single faction. I think this election underscores the massive work that is needed to be done with our political parties and electoral system. It’s hard to feel energized on a day like today, but it is important to remember that our democracy constantly needs to be fought for; it is a goal that we should always be working towards, even when our causes seem lost. It is so important that we continue to fight, we cannot lie down and let a faction rule with no recourse, we must continue to make our voices heard.

My friends, you are all in my thoughts and heart today, as is this uneasy future of our country. I’m not willing to give up yet, and I hope you aren’t either.

Love,
Claire

__________________________________________________________
"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood."
-----Daniel H. Burnham

I kept the quote at the bottom because I forgot that used to be my email signature and it's a great quote. I forwarded this on to Blue Girl today and she encouraged me to post it.

Remember to vote!

Setting the bar a little higher

It may be rainy and horrible out (with me still needing to move my car due to street cleaning), but I awoke to news that made me smile. (It's not often that NPR at 6:45 am makes me smile, not that I don't love it.)

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has partnered with the Rockefeller Foundation to bring the Green Revolution to Africa. Yes, I often curse Microsoft for Word doing screwy things on me, but I admire and appreciate so much what the Gates Foundation is doing to make this world a better place. According to the press release, 16 of the 18 most undernourished countries are in Africa. The partnerships first iniatives will include:

Breeding better crops that are adapted to the variety of local conditions in Africa. The goal is to develop 100 new varieties in five years.

Training African breeders and agricultural scientists who can spearhead this process in the future.

Guaranteeing reliable ways to get high-quality, locally adapted seeds into the hands of small farmers, through seed companies, public organizations, and a network of 10,000 agro-dealers, the small merchants largely responsible for providing supplies and knowledge to Africa’s farmers.

I think this an ambitious but wonderful project.

The Evening Vaudeville Show News Hour

Have I said how much I'm enjoying my class on Old Media, New Media? I really love being back in a classroom, and I find this class to be very stimulating. This week was the first in two weeks' discussion of how journalism is changing (and has changed).

This evening we talked about how public sentiment for journalists keeps declining and how the news organizations keep making themselves more and more into cartoons of their former selves. We talked about the arrogance of the analog news services, especially the NYTimes. (Which I have to say I enjoyed more than I should have.) We talked about how news has become this vaudevillian display where news stories aren't actually told, but incredibly slanted spectacle is given as if it has some meaning. We watch a lot of clips in class, and this is usually a lot of fun, but being forced to watch 3 hours of tv news clips underlined the reasons why I don't watch tv news. It all makes me a little ill. I don't want to see how straight news gets gussied up only to have the lede and important information buried for the sake of marketability.

One thing that we watched that was really amazing in its arrogance was a documentary the NYTimes created and sent to journalism schools to show how real news is made. Thomas Friedman explained the three step process to writing: 1) Collect as much information as you can about the subject; 2) Cross off what you don't believe; 3) Write up the rest.

Let's focus on #2. There was once a time when the basic rational powers of people were respected, but I guess we've moved light years away from the Enlightenment, haven't we? Why are people leaving mainstream media? Arrogance and paternalism. Hello? Cross off what you don't believe? Isn't that slanting the story? The media is all about directing people's thoughts on any subject. Giving two "talking heads" a chance to screech about each side of an issue isn't being balanced. Can we move away from the corporatization of the news or are we too far gone? (I think I could say that about the country, actually.)

Anyhow, for more angry ranting about what a mess the media is, please see Lance.