With apologies to Willie -- to all the cats I've loved before

To all the cats I've loved before
Who traveled in and out my door
I'm glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the cats I've loved before

To all the cats I've loved before
The winds of change are always blowing
And every time I try to stay
The winds of change continue blowing
And they just carry me away

To all the cats who shared the foot of my bed
Who now are someone else's cats, or dead
I'm glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the cats we've loved before

I must be getting old -- I always want to start blogging with a mini weather update -- it's foggy today, with chances of missing kitties. I can't believe I left the garage door open all night! My bike was still there when I got up this morning, but Fats was gone.

The stricken feeling I got made me realize I sometimes pretend to be sorry about things, like putting the knives pointy side up in the dishwasher, but this was the real thing. Fats, aka Kiki (after that annoying WestEnder whose screechy voice and clawing ways reminded me of the new kitty), had been afraid to crawl out from the tiny corner in the garage between a cardboard box and a tire all week. Two days ago I started trying to get Kiki to venture outside the garage. Last night I guess he did.

I had picked him up from the WE house Sunday, at the X's request. I had three cats when I left for Colombia last January. Only Kiki was left when I got back. Sammy disappeared a few weeks after Max died a horrible death at the jaws of some neighborhood dog gang. I was more shaken by it than I'd expected, cried about it for weeks.

Poor Sammy...they were pals, hanging out together for seven years since we brought them home from the shelter. Their little animal personalities developed with each other as the foil -- Sammy was always the timid one, while Max was funny and outgoing. Sammy was always my favorite -- his skittish ways and pitiful mews were so endearing.

Baby Kitty (I clearly didn't name this one) showed up one Halloween night, then disappeared after hopping into the back of X's truck one afternoon and leaping out right before he merged onto the highway, nothing but a kitty-shaped streak in the rear-view mirror.


But I've lost a lot of cats in my day. First Mustard, then Custard, then Pepper and Salt. Kitcat disappeared, his brother Milky Way lived a long life before expiring recently, and the mother of them all, Dora (for the way she always seemed to be on the doorstep when your hands were full of groceries). I dunno, maybe I'm all catted out.

Life in Lilburn

It's been a while since I had anything blog-worthy to say, if ever I did (never send your blog to your brothers). Then this morning my reflection in the mirror asked me what I'm waiting for -- if I want to write, I should write. The past two weeks are a blur, but I feel like my head is finally spinning back around, slowing down as it settles in.

Life in Lilburn...idyllic, yet isolated. It's the United Nations out here, without the interpreters and infighting. Our ice cream truck man (yes, there is an ice cream truck man, Virginia) wears the garb of the Nation of Islam as he passes out the melting treats to kids from India and Mexico, while their black, white, and mixed neighbors look on. Growing up in a very segregated DeKalb neighborhood, moving to an even more segregated West End Atlanta neighborhood, it's hard for me to believe.

And none of this was planned. White flight hit Gwinnett and turned out, in my eyes at least, to be a blessing. Not even a blessing in disguise, just one wearing an outfit that was unexpected, even exotic, to the white southerners who lived here before. Today Gwinnett is "Georgia’s largest and most diverse public school system with more than 100 different languages spoken in our schools..." Gwinnett promoters can brag that their school system "consistently outperforms our peer systems in the state and ranks among the best school systems in the nation in achievement." (Link to full article)
What created this human splatter, this array of languages, dress, and yummy food? Most of Atlanta ranks among the country's worst for residential segregation. It's changed so much since I was a kid, but it's still huge. Out here (I always call it that -- Slim loves it), out here, the housing is cheap and schools are good. Sure, people spend too much time in their cars and no one walks anywhere, but I'm starting to understand why people choose to live "out here" and to be less judgmental about that decision.

But given how much Gwinnett has changed, there's no reason why "out here" has to remain so isolated. We live three miles from the nearest bus stop. No one in the metro area should live three miles away from the nearest bus! I just got my bike back from my sister, but would never even consider riding down Lawrenceville Highway. So I have to use the sidewalks -- illegal, yes, but potentially lifesaving as well. And every time I ride the bus I hear people complaining about how long it takes them to get downtown. It's 25 minutes in a car with no traffic (which happens once a week, on Sundays) but about two hours by bike to Gwinnett County transit bus stop to Doraville MARTA station to Five Points, or an hour and a half by bike to the Indian Trail park and ride to Gwinnett County Express Bus to Five Points.

My bike, how I love it...

If Gwinnett were to approve the MARTA sales tax (or another funding mechanism), it could finally get the train station and quick access to metro area public transportation this diverse, thriving metro county deserves.

Recent article in AJC -- "Another look at MARTA rail: Board representative asks for feasibility study on bringing system to county" By PAUL DONSKY, , BEN SMITH

A group of Gwinnett County leaders is pushing for an extension of MARTA's rapid rail line to the booming area, 16 years after county voters soundly rejected a plan to join the regional transit system. Officials with the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District, which spans the Norcross and Lilburn areas, say the issue deserves to be revisited because the county has changed dramatically since the last MARTA referendum in 1990. Gwinnett's population has more than doubled, and its traffic problems now rival the nation's worst bottlenecks.

Public comments on the article here. The first comment (and a fairly typical one) reads:

By Stephen W December 6, 2006 05:19 PM | YES! Please bring MARTA into lower Gwinnett’s booming areas!

It’s time to move past the old racist arguments that it will bring crime. Anyone who’s actually been on a MARTA train will tell you that riders aren’t loaded down with stolen DVD players and Plasma TVs —Yes Gwinnett, let’s move into the 21st Century and say YES to this one!

image of Gwinnett County Courthouse, by architect Edmund Lind, from the GA Encyclopedia

la despedida

Colombia called. Said they'd call back, no message.

Photos from the massive going away blast:

Ellie, don't kill me for posting this - it's so cute! And I asked David's permission...

Goodnight

I wrote an (*ahem) beautiful post about my people here and what a lovely last day it's been in Bogota, but it got deleted somehow. Given what passes for sleep for me lately, that's not a big surprise.

I probably dragged out what I wanted to say anyway. Just this: home is where the people you love live, and you can have more than one. My home in Atlanta is where Slim sleeps, waiting patiently for me as he has all year, but Bogota will whisper softly to me in the night from time to time, so long as the people I came to know and love live here. I miss you all already. Goodnight!

ow. it hurts to leave.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "Connections are made slowly; sometimes they grow underground," writes Marge Piercy in her book *Circles in the Water.* "You cannot tell always by looking what is happening. More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet." Piercy advises us to use this strategy in our own lives. "Penetrate quietly as the earthworm. Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden. Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar. Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in, a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside, but to us interconnected with burrows and lairs." It so happens, Taurus, that this is the perfect astrological oracle for you, beginning now and throughout 2007.

(Brezsny's horoscopes)

--------------------

I started out quietly, sitting and watching, waiting for Colombia to show itself to me. Today I have a Colombia-shaped stain on my shirt, embedded in the fibers, odorless except for a faint whiff of cut grass and sweetly rotting fruit, but soft to the touch, and warm, so warm. I wonder if it will launder out.

--------------------

"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." -Max Planck, Nobel Prize-winning physicist

most emailed articles

I'm going to start a new recurring item: most emailed article of the day, on the theory that this says something about the current preoccupations, interests, and fears of the online news reading population.

Today's most emailed article from the Atlanta Journal and Constitution is, tellingly, in the business section: "Low-key, laid-back Jekyll Island targeted by developers." I found this out by emailing it myself, and after getting a little worked up by the article itself, I was somewhat comforted by the realization that others were interested in what was happening, or what will happen, as well. Hard to say what direction the interest goes in this case -- our *great state has been selling off state parks for years (see Stone Mountain, never a bastion of democracy, now a private sugary "historic" park).

If you grew up in Georgia, you probably have fond memories of a school trip to Jekyll Island's 4-H club, the way I do. I could never forget the Great Blue Herons that sprung, startled and wild from their nesting place above a swamp pond, or the look in our instructor's eyes when he told us that the sight was growing rarer and rarer. I can still taste the prickly pear's surprisingly sweet purple flesh, and feel the sting of the spines I hadn't removed in my haste to get to the fruit they protect.

Prickly pears...one of nature's secret delights. Removing the spines is laborious, something only a child has the time or interest to undertake. But the juicy interior's flavor clings to your tongue, leaving its taste in your mouth long after the buds have faded. It's not for everyone, but it's accessible to all who care to explore it.

I wish Jekyll had spines like that.

Eat. Words.

www.lacucaracha.com

I hate to do this, I really do. I ran across a column by David Brooks in the Times from two years ago that made me reconsider my passionate *ahem, dislike of his column. I'm a big girl, fully able to admit when she's been not 100% correct (known in the reality-based community as being "wrong"), so today I'm going to quote from and link to...gasp...a column by David Brooks, my second least-favorite New York Times columnist. Any guesses on the first?

The title, "The American Dream", comes from a Samuel Huntington (a good nemesis if anyone out there is looking for one) quote from one of his later broadsides against modern-day America: "There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican-Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English." Get this guy a time capsule, he's crumbling before our eyes.

You have to give Huntington a break -- remember he was stopped illegally and then felt up by that racist cop in Los Angeles, and ever since has been struggling with feelings of anger towards...wait, I think that was "Crash." Huntington, on the other hand, has no excuse for the pseudo-academic nonsense he's been spouting for the past twenty years. Maybe he's truly concerned with the demise of his "Anglo-Protestant society." I just don't know where it ever existed in the first place. The only truly American art forms are jazz and hip-hop, and Eminem and Michael Bolton not withstanding, neither is exactly a bedrock of Anglo-Protestant influence.

But back to Brooks, whose columns I normally enjoy ripping apart. In this one, though, he really gets it right. I think in light of the national debate over immigration policies, it's worth re-reading.

We are bound together because we Americans share a common conception of the future. History is not cyclical for us. Progress does not come incrementally, but can be achieved in daring leaps. That mentality burbles out of Hispanic neighborhoods, as any visitor can see.

Huntington is right that Mexican-Americans lag at school. But that's in part because we've failed them. Our integration machinery is broken. But if we close our borders to new immigration, you can kiss goodbye the new energy, new tastes and new strivers who want to lunge into the future.

That's the real threat to the American creed.

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wrenched

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

I believe that, but it's clear that not everyone does. Take the guy who shook his head angrily, not even willing to respond to my "excuse me, sir, but I think I'm lost" last week at the state government complex. And maybe it's not even true, but I choose this belief in the hope that it matters what we believe, hoping these choices make our lives richer, sweeter, and just generally more like ice cream (with apologies to Simply Wait).

I say goodbye to this country, to this year of my life, in one week. More than anything else, I feel wrenched. Knowing you're going to be in a place for such a finite yet intermediate period of time, at my age, you don't settle in too hard. You buy a bed, but maybe not the most comfortable one. You need curtains, so you pick up some cloth in the 75% off bin at a fabric store. You make friends, but keep most of them at a distance.

So it's almost a relief to realize you did live here, after all. For me the realization set in when I had an aha! moment last weekend. It was Saturday morning, too early after a late night waiting for the incredibly resonant club across the street to close. Just like every Saturday morning, I was awakened by a man selling something, that much was always clear, but just what I could never tell. The informal economy is huge in Bogota; since there are so few formal sector jobs to be had, people buy things in bulk or make crafts and sell them on the street, usually developing a sing-song jangle to advertise their wares. This Saturday, I crossed what felt like a significant signpost, just as I'm preparing to leave: I finally understood what this man was selling. Now I can buy "bolsas para la basura" (how embarrassing for me that it turned out to be so simple) any weekend morning I want.

Wrenched is the best word I can think of to describe this feeling. Twisted and turned til I don't stick here anymore, from one culture back to another. This morning a friend's English students interviewed me for a class project. They all wanted to know how my initial impressions of Colombia changed after I got here. All I remember is being terribly apprehensive | oh my god, did Macondo just open? It's after midnight on a schoolnight! I take it all back, I can't wait to split. Menea, menea... | and really having no idea what to expect. I knew it wasn't like the depictions in Hollywood movies (one has Bogota surrounded completely by jungle) but I didn't have anything concrete to replace those images I'd deleted.

Next week, I go back to something recognizable, but equally opaque in some ways. Exciting, cause it feels like anything could happen. Nerve-wracking, because it feels like anything could happen. And all I'm taking back with me is the belief I started out with, possibly lifted from a late-night made for tv movie, that we're all connected somehow. An inescapable network of mutuality. That and the ice cream. I'll always have the ice cream.

Jingly jangly

I just figured it out. Why everything Christmas is so damn appealing to me right now: I don't have a job. While this puts a bit of a chink in my gift-buying routine, it also means this: I don't have an office.

Which means this: I don't have co-workers.

Which means this: No office party.

Read what The Cynical Girl has to say about that.

Unless, unless! I put in an appearance at Slim's (former co-workers being worlds less annoying than current ones) and I'm guessing no one asks me to make a copy in the middle of carving the turkey this year. But I exaggerate. Wildly.

No discussion of what to do for the office party, as if we were allowed to exercise judgment and do a single thing different from the year before. Meetings of the DOJ "kitty committee," as we were reluctantly known, a forced labor arrangement that involved purchasing large quantities of bagels, then putting up with the snotty attorney who simply must have her favorite flavor, and with the right kind of cream cheese, or she's destroyed...where was I? Oh yes, the "kitty committee" meetings are designed to maximize your migraine: three hours later, "now about the decorations - what did we do last year? Did we have lights or candles, I can't remember..."

Attending your fiancee's office party by choice, in all seriousness, is a different beast entirely from having to attend your own. I can drink too much and insult the boss (not too far from an ordinary work day at DOJ) and no fear of being fired. Who am I kidding, his boss is great and drinking gets me all sappy and silly. Well, no fear of facing people I got ridiculous in front of the night before, anyway. Small blessings are the best kind.

So. Here in Colombia, I'm insanely attracted to every single blinking light, every hint of possible jingly bells like music (so far, nothing), every family-oriented pastiche of holiday bliss, each whiff of cinnamon in the air. It's revolting.

Christmas last year, Dad's foot on film.

I love collecting, then wrapping, gifts. It's like when I was a kid and was always bribing Kathleen to play the packing game. Putting things into boxes has a strange meditative quality for me. Maybe I can get one of those jobs wrapping other people's gifts at the mall! It's clearly a symptom of my disease that I typed that sentence, click-clacking happily away. The mall. Good lord, it's worse than I thought.

Secrets lost and found

I have too much to do. I'm leaving in ten days. You'll probably be seeing a lot of blog entries in the next ten days. Related events?

Two things I came across/was led to tonight:

One, a Book: LONDON: CITY OF DISAPPEARANCES edited by Iain Sinclair. Review here. I don't know about the book, but the review, by Peter Ackroyd, makes me feel mysterious, lost, and a tiny bit shiveringly, delightfully, decrepit:

The city is built upon lost things. It is constructed in a literal sense on the ruins and debris of the past; it towers above forgotten underground rivers and discarded tunnels. It is built upon old graveyards and burial pits.

...The city devours its former incarnations, leaving not a wrack or wraith behind. It buries its dead, and forgets where they lie. That is the source of its strength and its power. The living will in any case soon enough pass into darkness. The city itself will always rise again. It will be renewed when those who read these words have utterly disappeared and been forgotten.

There are stories here of other lost people — not dead but forgotten, relics of a past London culture that faded in the way that everything in the city fades. It is, also, a city of failure and disappointment that are the same thing as absence. That is why many wish to lose themselves within it.

I want to lose myself in it, I do!

Two, an Admission: "Colombian senator acknowledges singing loyalty pledge to paramilitary groups"-- and he wasn't the only one:

BOGOTA, Colombia: A pro-government senator revealed Sunday that he and dozens of other politicians, some of them now members of the government, signed a loyalty pledge in 2001 to right-wing paramilitary warlords.

They were supposedly forced to sign the document at a meeting they were "ordered" to attend. Who knows. It's possible they were not willing accomplices, but at least one senator is accused by Colombia's Supreme Court of "murder for his role in 'organizing, promoting, arming and financing' a paramilitary massacre of 20 people in 2000."

The senator who admitted signing the agreement also stated that some of those implicated in the scandal may claim status as paramilitary members to take advantage of the lighter sentences and greater protection this status provides since the hopelessly, even offensively, misnamed Law of Justice and Peace passed in 2005.

Passed by many of the same members of Congress who now stand to benefit from its measures.

Decried as incredibly lenient by human rights activists, legal observers, and families of the paramilitaries' victims. As Amnesty International points out, the law offers greatly reduced sentences, no extradition (to the US - this is huge for the armed groups, who are often involved in drug trafficking as well), short (in a vast understatement) investigation times that in practice in a country with a 99% impunity rate will only result in fewer crimes being prosecuted, in short, a multitude of ills.

A year later, we know that many of those called "reinsertados" in Colombia are once again involved in illegal armed activities. A demobilization process with no teeth resulted in, surprise, a justice that was swallowed whole and a peace that is indigestible.

Father Roy, founder SOA Watch

For some reason I felt compelled to check the AJC this morning. I haven't read it in months, so I'm not sure why today. On the front page is a link to this story about Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch and lifelong opponent of the US military training Latin American soldiers. I'm not often much impressed by the writing in our local rag, but this article really got to me. The reporter captures something about Father Roy that other articles I've read about the SOA watch did not. Check it out -- good Sunday reading: The protester-priest of Fort Benning.

Bourgeois is at a loss to explain how the Benning demonstrations grew from the passion of one man to an event of thousands. It is as amazing perhaps as his own transformation. A working-class boy who grew up in Lutcher, La., the son of a power company worker, he made it to college, even earned a geology degree at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. But the military provided his ticket to the world. After four years in the Navy, he volunteered for Vietnam.

The young ensign arrived in Southeast Asia in 1965, ready to serve. "I was ready to give my life," he says. But when he saw hatred in the eyes of the South Vietnamese, he was confused: "I really thought people would see us as allies. But there was another side I wasn't prepared for." In orphaned children with swollen bellies and open wounds, Bourgeois saw God. In the rice paddies surrounding Saigon, he felt his faith tugging. "That was my introduction to the victims of violence," Bourgeois says.

He had thought of a military career but decided to devote his life to healing, to being a peacemaker. After his tour, he entered a Catholic seminary. He picked the Maryknoll order — the "Marines of the missionaries: the toughest of the tough," he says. The Maryknolls sent him to Bolivia to live among the poor in the La Paz slums. He worked to start a medical clinic, day care center and education program. He watched the military take away community organizers, students and union activists.

"Men with guns were running the country," Bourgeois says he learned in the land of dictator Hugo Banzer, another graduate of the School of the Americas. Back at his hometown church, he began preaching taboo politics. He used words like exploitation to describe the fate of poor Latin Americans. Bourgeois went next to El Salvador and witnessed a war in which thousands of innocent civilians were tortured and executed by death squads that he says were extensions of the military.

"I was on fire when I came back from Salvador," he says. He knew then he could not keep silent any longer.

Atlanta!

In the Times: Atlanta among top five cities in attracting 24-35 year olds.

They are people who, demographers say, are likely to choose a location before finding a job. They like downtown living, public transportation and plenty of entertainment options. They view diversity and tolerance as marks of sophistication.

Good news for the Beltline, and for commuter rail. Of course, Charlotte is out in front of us. But have you been to Charlotte lately? I have flashbacks to my college days when I accidentally wandered into the khakied business school section of campus. Scary. When I'm in Charlotte, I feel a strange lightness inside. Then I get home to Atlanta and realize it was the soul being sucked out of me. I know, subtlety is not my strong point.

urbanismo

I'm reading an article that I'm thouroughly enjoying, for a change: "EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS GOING TO HELL: Urban Scholars as End-Times Prophets" by Dennis Judd at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Whether or not you agree with his conclusions, and I'm not sure I do, it's refreshing that someone is pointing out how an "end times" approach is not terribly useful in developing urban theory or for urban activists trying to change cities.

Post a comment or email me if you'd like a copy. Here are a few choice bits for you urbanists:

"...local politics became a vital field of study after World War II when it gave up its preoccupations with administrative efficiency and reform and began to consider questions “central to political science as a whole. Who had power? In what sense were cities democratic? Howcould the public interest be secured? What were the political relationships among social classes? Whatwas the significance of ethnic politics? Could race conflict be managed more peacefully in this century than in the last?”

"But soon, in Peterson’s view, urban scholarship turned away from such momentous questions...by abandoning the timeless questions of political philosophy, urban scholarship had become irrelevant to policymakers and dominated by “feudal barons” with narrow specialties in transportation, housing, and other policy fields, expertise in suburbia, the central city, or other restricted urban geographies, or specialties in minority politics of every stripe. The upshot was, “We no longer have students of urban politics” (Peterson 1981, ix-x)."

"Indeed, the reform impulse may be regarded as only one variant of an understanding, long shared among students of the city, that the city is always going to hell, that the changes under way (whatever they may be) are making everything worse, and that things will become truly dire if something is not done now or at least soon."

"The new turn in national policy was surely motivated by the political calculations of the Republican Party. But it is important to realize that the abandonment of the cities also was rooted in a coherent intellectual argument, one put forth in 1980 by a presidential commission appointed by a Democrat, Jimmy Carter:

“It may be in the best interest of the nation to commit itself to the promotion of locationally neutral economic and social policies rather than spatially sensitive urban policies that either explicitly or inadvertently seek to preserve cities in their historical roles” (President’s Commission 1980, 66).

The report of the President’s Commission was the opening salvo of what grew into a political and intellectual assault upon the most hallowed assumption underpinning urban scholarship: that federal aid to the cities was essential to the economic, social, and cultural well-being of the nation."

"Old habits die hard. It is still common practice for books and articles in the field to call for a resumption of federal aid to the cities (I will provide no examples here, lest I be accused of singling someone out). But as Bill Barnes (2005) recently observed, “The era of federal urban policy is, like,way over.”Even in a resurgent Democratic Party—perhaps especially in a resurgent Democratic Party—urban policy is not going to become any significant part of the political agenda."

"The narrative power of the Chicago school can be traced to its foreboding mood of fecundity, decay, and violence: As Hans Christian Andersen’s fables reveal, children, like their elders, are attracted to the tension introduced by these elements. In our own time, a similarly riveting narrative has emerged about urban life in the twenty-first century. Like the Chicago school of the 1920s, the L.A. school’s storyline derives its power from its sweeping and often dramatically bleak interpretation of urban life. (“Dramatically dismal”:
In MikeDavis’s writings, balls of rattlesnakeswash up on the beaches of Los Angeles; there are “pentecostal earthquakes,” “dead cities,” and the question, “who killed L.A.?”; Davis 2002)."

(and my favorite part): "These kinds of rhetorical indulgences may explain why a student in one of my recent seminars began a paper with the observation that 'hyperbole may have become the principal methodology of today’s urban scholarship.' Amen."

image by Zack K.

I am so in the right field.

a new low in the job hunt

seen while haunting craigslist's job board:

SHADOWLAND: The Publication of Terror and the Supernatural" is again open to submissions of: (1) Short Stories (2) Poetry (3) Art (black and white only)

Guidelines: Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy (preferably in a classic or retro style-- classic Universal, Hammer, Harryhausen, Rod Serling, Hitchcock, H.G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs). Would like to see traditional themes-- ghosts, werewolves, time travel, prehistoric monsters, aliens, zombies, wizards/witches, vampires, sea monsters and so forth.

You know, maybe I've been limiting my writing unnecessarily by avoiding those "traditional themes." Coming soon to this blog: a nice, old-fashioned zombie story. I did have a dream the other night that zombies had moved in to the Buckmaster residence without my dad noticing. They had set up huge wooden boxes angled at 45 degrees out in the front yard in the places where my brother spent his childhood digging holes. Dad mostly noticed those when he went to cut the grass, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised he hasn't picked up on the zombie presence.

shameful.

I saw this happening at the University of Georgia after the HOPE scholarship was created. HOPE mainly benefits middle class kids, although lower income people buy more lottery tickets to fund the program.

NYT Editorial
Public Colleges as ‘Engines of Inequality’
Published: November 23, 2006

"Democrats who ran for Congress this fall made the cost of college a big campaign issue. Now that they’ve won control of the House and Senate, they can prepare to act swiftly on at least some of the factors that have priced millions of poor and working-class Americans right out of higher education. The obvious first step would be to boost the value of the federal Pell Grant program — a critical tool in keeping college affordable that the federal government has shamefully ceased to fund at a level that meets the national need.

But larger Pell Grants can’t solve this crisis alone. Policy changes will also be required in the states, where public universities have been choking off college access and upward mobility for the poor by shifting away from the traditional need-based aid formula to a so-called merit formula that heavily favors affluent students. The resulting drop in the fortunes of even high-performing low-income students — many of whom no longer attend college at all — is documented in an eye-opening report released recently by the Education Trust, a nonpartisan foundation devoted to education reform."

• Aid to students from families making over $100,000 has more than quadrupled at state schools.
  
• state flagship schools are measuring success by how many applicants they turn away and SAT scores, which favor richer students who can afford the study courses

first thanksgiving without

Bob Herbert, as usual, is talking about things that matter: "The Empty Chair at the Table"

While standing on the porch where she got the terrible news about her son, Ms. Zappala spoke of the many other families that have lost children, or other close relatives, to the war. “I’m very aware that it didn’t just happen to us,” she said. “For everybody, it’s the same horrible loss. It’s the same tragedy. It doesn’t make any difference whether someone was for or against the war. We’ve met families who were very supportive of the war and we were crying with them. The pain is the same."

knitting a world

Numbers do not tell stories. Millions displaced, the UN says. Thouands of human rights abuses a year, the international aid organizations decry. Grow the economy with "free" trade, our government disseminates. But today I heard the voice of human misery behind the stock figures, the catchphrases glibly tossed and dire warnings unheeded. I won't tell their stories here; they are not mine to tell. And I missed some things I should have picked up on as important. We were talking about grants, and one woman asked, "but they won't want to hear about our histories?" I realized later what she was really saying was -- does what happened to me matter?

I was meeting with ASMULIDER, an incredible group of women knitting their lives back together again, literally. They do have an awful name, though. It's supposed to be evocative of leadership (the "lider" part), but I'm pretty sure it falls well short of that, but then again, few words could describe their collective experiences, or who they really are. They are 25 or so women who have been displaced by the conflict. Displaced really doesn't come close to describing the horrors people who make the decision to pick up everything overnight and leave their homes have had to face. It sounds so clinical, one object moving into the space of another; ice cubes in a glass of water. This is anything but that. It's messy, humiliating, and degenerating.

The process of claiming status in the government's eyes as a displaced person involves bringing photos of your loved one's corpse, in triplicate. I cannot imagine anything worse, after the loss itself. So today the gruesome images made their teary way around the circle. It's hard for me to understand how people find the strength to go on, but somehow they do, at least that's what it looks like from the outside. As Gracie is fond of saying, the fight continues because we keep fighting.

weighing in

best. dailyshowclip. ever. (I know, I'll probably say that about the next one I see, t00)

still sick-ly. saw an excellent movie last night: Machuca, about Chile in 1978 through the eyes of two boys from opposite backgrounds who become friends.

at the clinic the other night, where they gave me a shot in the ass but did not test for malaria, just looked at me like I was crazy for suggesting it, no matter how many times I repeated, but I've been in Uraba...the nurse guessed my weight. she was about 20 pounds short, which I can't say I minded, but then I got home, ran out of clean clothes and realized she wasn't as far off as she would have been pre-6 hour hiking days. so I'm looking a bit urchin-like since everyone else in Colombia, seemingly wears their pants pressed on.

back to the couch I am. went to the library for some brain food but they couldn't find the books I wanted. is it just me, or does my favorite library in Colombia specialize in making it nearly impossible to view or check out books? something about the top-story cafeteria makes up for it though. the only place I can read in Spanish.

"Beset by Violence, Colombia's Nasa Women Resist"

“C’mon, muchachos, let’s go!” With this abrupt order, Celia Eumesa and a group of the Nasa Indigenous Guard under her command jumped into a van and drove off in hot pursuit of a handful of guerrillas that had just kidnapped some people from her community. Armed with no more than decorative staffs, which they carry to symbolize indigenous authority, they sped behind the guerrillas’ car with a caravan of 60 other Indigenous Guards trailing behind her.

The Nasa people, who number around 300,000, are Colombia’s second-largest indigenous group, mostly concentrated in the departamento (province) of Cauca. Their traditional homeland in this southwestern part of the country has been wracked by some of the worst violence in the country’s 42-year civil war. The armed conflict pits the Communist-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or FARC in its Spanish initials) and smaller leftist insurgent groups against the Colombian military and its right-wing paramilitary supporters.

begendings

Why is it that once you decide to leave a place, things get a gagillion times better? Test it yourself, it's a proven fact. As soon as I had my ticket to ride on out of Atlanta, my life took a turn for the amazing. And while I wouldn't say exactly the same here, the circumstances being quite different, I have to say, life is good.

Today I had a paper proposal accepted to the XXVII Annual ILASSA Student Conference (now doesn't THAT look impressive, with those roman numerals and all...) in Austin in February. On a topic I don't recall. I submitted the 300 word proposal in a fashion you could conceivably call last minute (I realized ten minutes before the deadline that day was the day, and turned it in a minute before midnight). So I'm not quite as impressed with the quality of conference participants, shall we say, after getting my acceptance today. The fact that it was addressed to Emily Rebecca Serna (a lovely name, actually), didn't do much to increase my confidence levels. Speaking of which, back to that lost proposal. It did have quite an evocative title, which is I think what got it accepted: Participatory Budgeting in Bogota: Playing the Pinata. But I have no idea what it contains. Do you?

But back to Bogota making me miss it! Tonight was the big set-up -- I think it went well, probably because I had no hand in organizing it. I was just the convenient third wheel. I did get a delicious vegetarian meal and plenty of wine in the bargain though. Luscious tomatoes stuffed with brown rice, roasted eggplant and red peppers, basil, and asparagus. Not as good as Slim's stuff, but not half bad! And spicy...mmm. The luncheon Tom and Porter made Sunday was even spicier -- just what I have been missing here, just when it's time to go!

Also today we found out Trish is not leaving, not yet anyway. Her visa for the union job got postponed until next year. So now it's just me leaving. Better for Eli, so I'm happy, but it feels strange leaving everyone behind. Ah well, PorTom are still going home, so I'm not really the only one.

Last night I didn't have time to give my presentation on Community Justice in the Peace Communities, thankfully because as it turned out I hadn't the slightest what the presentation was supposed to cover. The professor, an expert in the field, sent me a very diplomatic email "suggesting" I make some changes, such as for starters hitting "delete" and starting over. Sigh. And today I spent the better part of the day translating the first Mauricio's letters of recommendation, which he wrote himself, for phd programs in political science in the states. The funny thing is, his research is on a topic I truly find interesting and important for the Andean region -- constitutional law and institutions. Things have been changing here -- Colombia has become the rightist exception to the leftist tilt. Although now with Uribe's senators being charged with paramilitary ties (to put it mildly: they may have participated in planning massacres), who knows what will happen?

That sums it up for tonight. I'm feeling agobiada (overwhelmed, my word for the day), exhausted, achy from a cold that wants to make its home, and exhilarated by the warmth of this freezing city, barely lukewarm showers and all. Tonight there was a conversation at least 10 minutes long devoted purely to the topic of gas water heaters, and who had them. One thing, at least, I won't miss.

parking minimums

Good article about parking minimums (sounds sexy, no?): "No Parking: Condos Leave Out Cars"

No mention of Atlanta, where apparently even discussing parking caps to limit the number of parking spaces developers must provide is considered "too controversial" for the first phase of Beltline planning.

how to be funny

Read this:
"How to be funny" compiled by babydaddy # 6, John Hodgman. (Yes I absolutely am hoping he links back again. What?) I just realized he is also the madman behind the scenes of "Ask a former professional literary agent," which I liked not quite as much as "Dispatches from a Public Librarian." Hopefully he won't hold that against me.

Of twists, turns, and Dramamine

In a new twist, "Rebels ask celebs to assist prisoner swap"

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA — Colombia's largest rebel group is calling on actor Denzel Washington and directors Oliver Stone and Michael Moore to help it reach a deal with the government on exchanging imprisoned guerrillas for rebel-held hostages, including three U.S. defense contractors.

Colombia will only be home to me for another 25 days. 25 days. Nothing, really. What a strange thing, this life. There's so much I'll miss of life here, but so much I miss from my life too. I'm almost ready to go home, but will I be ready to be home once I'm there? This train of thought is making me feel like Carrie...falls under the category of thoughts that may have profound implications for my own life, but aren't actually profound and probably should be handled internally. Blogs are ruining the world. People don't keep anything in anymore -- everything is public, shared, and less forceful because a dozen earlier memoirs said exactly the same thing. Restraint: an underappreciated emotional tool. Anyway. Back to me.

Colombia is both a really tough and incredibly easy place to dive into headfirst and grow to love, despite itself. Last night at Son Salome, an excellent salsoteca, a professorial type I was dancing with asked me how I felt about Colombia. I answered without hesitation that I loved it. What that means really I'm not sure, but the response surprised him. Why? Why in the world? he asked, dumbfounded. I don't know, I replied. It's the ánimo (a word I have a hard time translating) -- I love Colombia despite its Colombianess.

ánimo
1 (talante) spirit
2 (estímulo, fuerza) courage
3 (intención) intention

So there you have it. Today we had a second salsa lesson with an instructor recommended by our friendly star-reader. Tom and Porter basically had a private lesson; Eli and I got one too. It's hard to lead! I have more sympathy for men when they try to learn to dance after today. As the female half of the dance team (which makes it sounds like sequins were involved, but there weren't thank god), you are responsible for "following." It sounds sexist, but in some ways it's a relief. I wouldn't characterize Slim and I this way, but in past relationships I've had to do way more of the leading than I would have liked. It's tiring! So dancing can be a good way to let go of that for a while, and just follow along. It's a bit like the difference between writing a story and reading one aloud. Both are challenging, but the reader can relax into their own private world to some extent and not worry about the next move.

Me being me, I have a half dozen unfinished projects calling me before I leave. Not least among them a final presentation (Fulbright really asks so little of us, it seems petty to complain, but that probably won't stop me from doing it), a paper, a website, a grant to seek, a proposal to translate, a computer to locate, and so so many nasty phone calls. Nasty not because of the people on the other end of the line but because I hate making phone calls! Another thing Colombia has challenged me, well, taunted me with: my many limitations are even more limiting in Spanish. Gives me a whole new appreciation for immigrants, especially those who struggle with our messed up, irregular language.

Spanish, in contrast, is nice and neat. And it still kicks my ass many days of the week. I'm actually pretty competent most of the time, then something will happen like I'll make a phone call, introduce myself, then listen with dismay as the person on the other end of the line exclaims, "I can't understand anything you're saying!" And I will merely have stated my name. Now that's a humbling experience when it happens once. Try to imagine it happening once a week. What can I say, R's are tough for me. Mom, Dad, there are so many perfectly nice names that stay far far away from Rs...why couldn't I have one of those? If I ever live in Latin America again I'm changing my name, to Ana, or Diana, anything two syllables or less and easily recognizable when it leaves my twisted tongue.

In two weeks we're headed back to Medellin. I realize I still haven't completed the saga that was our trip to Uraba, and the "community" -- right now I'm just hoping the bus ride to Medellin will involve lesser quanties of dramamine. Speaking of which, I sure do wish there were some kind of dramamine that could prevent the motion sickness that accompanies culture shock. Atlanta, Bogota, Atlanta, Bogota, Atlanta. It's been a year full of adjustments, and there's one big one left to make. You know what, though? I'm ready. I realized this year how much I need to be around my big, loud, stressful family.

What I'm listening to: Never needed anybody, I never needed anybody // I never needed anybody, I never needed nobody // Don't worry about it, honey // I never needed anybody // I never needed anybody, it won't change now.

And you know what? It's just not true.
But in 25 days, I'll be able to go back to pretending it is. And that I'm looking forward to. Big, independent me. Inside though, I'll know. I'm more connected to my people than I ever realized; before I stretched those links across a continent, and they held.

nicaraguan elections

In Nicaragua, 70% turnout in presidential elections yesterday. 70%! from "Leftist headed toward victory in Nicaragua":

Mr. Ortega’s expected victory appeared to be another gain for leftists in Latin America, who, despite recent setbacks in Peru and Mexico, have also persuaded voters to abandon conservative governments in Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Bolivia.

Now 60 years old and balding, Mr. Ortega has maintained he is no longer a Marxist, but more of a pragmatist. He has promised to keep good relations with the United States and chose a former political opponent as his running mate. He has also vowed to help the poor and run a positive campaign around the themes of “peace, love and unity.”

E Day

Rainy season appears to have slunk past, nearly unnoticed in Bogota this year. Here's hoping for an un-rainy day in Georgia too! Dems hate getting wet. Republicans tend not to mind?

Last set of election day comics:

PreTeena

(Jeremy, there is hope!)
Brewster Rockit

Lalo Alcaraz

Election day strips

do you know who the police are?

Get Fuzzy

This made me laugh so hard this morning. I'm not sure it's really funny, but it did the trick. I'm nearly all caught up on my comics now after three weeks of travel and an adventure or two. But what Clara termed "quiet adventures, the kind you come back from." Although, I might add, you sometimes bring some microscopic friends back with you. Slim and I have been sick since we got back, but are all drugged up and recovering now. Maybe someday soon I'll even make it past 9 pm. Lately even full force Macondo hasn't been able to keep me up.

Candorville

a thousand words to make up for zero photos

"Courage is not the abnormal. Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches. It is the thing steady and clear. The marriage, not the month's rapture. The beauty that is of many days. The normal excellence, of long accomplishment. Not the Prodigal Son, but Penelope." -- poet Jack Gilbert

Last week this is the kind of courage we were to witness. And in the process, we had the kind of fun you love to complain about -- dirty, sweaty, backbreaking (from all the falling on our asses), dramatic fun. We hiked, incubated malarial jungle mosquitos, piled in a muddy heap on the floor, ate marvelous and simple food surrounded by donkey dung, and somehow just by being present helped accomplish something big.

We were in the mountains of Colombia to accompany a group of courageous people doing something that is extremely unusual in Colombia, land of the millions displaced: they were going back. Life in displacement camps had grow too harsh, too hungry for them, and they were going back to their land. We, the international wimps, were there to observe and hopefully prevent violent repression against the community, Colombian armed groups being reluctant to bite the long American arm feeding the ravenous military mouth.

But our presence was fleeting, and although FOR remains in the base community of La Union to help protect the decision to wage peace, in the Colombian conflict there are no guarantees and little precendence. This week the real work begins for the community of La Esperanza.

They are five families, striking in their quiet resolve, the kind usually portrayed in cowboy movies by men in hats of few words but always a piece of sugar in pocket for their horse. But this is different; this is no game of cowboys and indians, although it sometimes resembles one in its senselessness. The people of La Esperanza have been coming and going in fear of paramilitary reprisals since they were first displaced in 1996. Prevented from farming the land they had always known to be theirs, they have been aching to return ever since, and on this third try appear to have succeeded. Land in Colombia, where the exodus to the cities is a recent, bloody history, is not just land. It is power, money, sustenance, myth, and battleground.

Articles about peace communities, La Union, and La Esperanza

• San José de Apartadó - a model initiative under threat
• Recent Attacks and Threats Against the Peace Communities and NGOs
• FOR Peace Presence Letter from the Field: "Reclaiming the Promised Land"
• Letter from the Field: "The Hope of Return"

Yesterday Tom gave a talk about his thesis ("Good Fences, Good Neighbors, and the State: The Politics of Property Rights and Economic Performance"), so I'm fresh off a crash course in agrarian reform and land struggles in Colombia. More on this topic later, as I learn more about the history behind The Return. For now, on to my tale of two comfort-loving adventurers, arriving sleep-deprived in a city too hot for dreams.

-----

Chapter 1: Sleepless in Antioquia

We had quite a trip, leaving Friday the 20th on the overnight bus to Medellin. We emerged, ten hours later, frost bitten from the overactive AC and greatly enriched by our viewing experience. "The China Dolls" is a timeless classic, with a little something for everyone: kung fu fighting, a nihilistic attempt at feminism, Asian fetishism, stunning landscapes running with blood, some light kiddie porn, fights to the death, and a classic love story (boy meets girl, girl tries to kill boy, boy escapes and pursues girl to lock her up, boy carries girl's mother on his back to the hospital after her jealous mother-figure boss tries to have her killed, boy gets girl only to lose her to the allure of the sequel). Pretty generic stuff.

And after the final credits rolled (I took notes)...the music started up again. I took off for the front of the bus, on a collision course with destiny, or the control-happy bus driver, whichever I could find first. Luckily someone else beat me to him, and the rest of the bus ride was spent in frosty silence. Not because anyone was angry, just that we could see the breath steaming out of our mouths. We landed safely in Medellin, and after a nice taxi driver caught my mistake at the bus terminal and prevented us from going an hour out of our way to the wrong airport, caught our plane to Apartado. Met up with PorTom at the airport, and Trish&Co met us getting off the plane. All of whom were a sight for sore, bloodshot eyes...

to be continued...

simple girl

I was heartsick this week. I thought that's what I wanted, a good wallow. But I think what I really needed was exactly what I got tonight.

A salsa class had been planned (how I love the passive voice for avoiding responsibility...) for our living room (hardwood floors and no furniture = perfect dance salon) and I would've felt bad canceling, since we all know the show must go on. So on it went. Between heartache and stomachache, I tried to sit it out, but the clave and drums just wouldn't let me. It's a little known fact of modern medicine that Colombian bacteria can be mollified, at least for a time, with some good hip twisting and dipping.

Afterwards people stayed and stayed. We cooked, people left and brought things back, and there was laughing and silly talk and music. I felt slightly apart yet completely at home. Being surrounded by friends, the kind you don't have to explain things to, was exactly what I needed. Life has a funny way of giving you just that, at the very moment you give yourself up to it.

And the ultimate cure lived in a nice banana cake, baked up spur of the moment, half stuck in the pan, covered semi-convincingly with an even nicer rum glaze.

everybody was job hunting

Everybody was kung-fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact it was a little bit frightning
But they fought with expert timing

Almost everyone I know is looking for a job right now. If you know of anything that fits one of these bills, feel free to add a comment. All are Spanish speakers.

• Human rights activist wants to work in Portland, Oregon. Possibly labor organizing.
• Redhead with social enterprise background, master's in International Aid seeks job in Washington DC
• Her boyfriend is looking for a political science post at a decent university.
• History major and English teacher with activist and social services background seeks job anywhere, world. Prefers Colombia or cities in US with mild climates.
• Redhead (almost) with master's (almost!) in urban policy seeks job in the South. Something exciting, please god. No more desk jobs! Open to organizing positions that don't involve door stalking.
• Mailliw A. Retsamkcub, esquire, being of extremely certain mind and very dextrous hand-eye coordination due to years of training on home electronics equipment, and the broad experience that one gets bagging groceries at Publix, does hereby affirm that he never wants a job that requires him to a) show up, b) be nice to people, and c) show up. If one of my two readers has such a position, please be so kind as to forget about it; he won't show up for it.

Bex's tips on jobhunting:

Tip #1: People like to know what hair color you have when you are applying for jobs. Try adding a flavorful description to your job objective. Something like this: "Nonprofit executive with extensive experience in delivery of social services and consulting for nonprofit efficiency seek position that will allow her to utilize her brilliant streaked blond and grey hair for maximum effectiveness."

See how that works?

stay

For Better or for Worse

G.G. always read the comics first; I guess that's where I got the habit. I used to race her to the paper in the mornings, trying to get first crack at the funny pages. Usually I'd end up grudgingly sharing the half I'd already finished when she came downstairs, just a few minutes behind. If she got them first I'd have to go upstairs to ask for them, and sometimes wait until she'd finished. I realized reading them today as I do every morning (online) that I don't know which was her favorite. I read years later that people who read the funnies first live longer than people who read the obits first.

When Slim and I went up to Charlotte this summer we spent most of our time sitting and reading quietly in her room, G.G. with the comics folded in front of her, drifting in and out of sleep, waking up long enough to give orders, then drifting off again. When she felt like talking, she'd whisper "his name is Josh, isn't it? I do want to get it right." Finding out he was from Michigan, she reminisced about the time the whole family (all 8 kids) accompanied Grandpa George to a conference on Mackinaw Island. We didn't talk much, and she apologized more than once for being poor company, but it was enough for me. We'd never been big ones for talking, and most of the time we spent together we were both wrapped up in a book, curled up in parallel armchairs in the family room.

Momma

G.G., I'm glad for every quiet minute we had together, and even some of the more irritated ones, the ones I'm sure I'll look back on when I have obnoxious teenagers of my own. My parents may contest this, but it feels like I took more of my teenage angst out on my grandmother than on my parents. G.G., thanks for putting up with us, and for letting us put up with you for as long as we did. See you in the funny pages.

Grey Days

"I love the rain the most when it stops..." -- Joe Purdy

I wish the rain would stop. Or start. I hate Bogota's occasional grey ways. They always seem to coincide with greyness in our lives. My grandma is ill, tired and old. I wish she weren't any of these things. I wish I'd known her as a young woman, that we'd been nurses together in the war, or bridge partners, or middle-aged housewives feeling too young to have such broods. How cruel is it that the people who often matter the most to us, our parents, our grandparents, are so much older and die sooner? I just wish it weren't that way. GG lived with us when I was a teenager, and when her manic depression mirrored my teenage ups and downs, the house was a bundle of jangling nerves and slamming doors. Sure wish I'd appreciated her more then. We did have some good quiet times together, both of us curled up in armchairs, reading in silence, or watching Wheel of Fortune and each trying to guess the word first. Guess I owe her a lot -- my love of words and books, ability to sit quietly and be happiest that way, and probably also my aversion to smoking (from her falling asleep reading and smoking and burning little holes in her favorite chair).

the Tubernet

Jon Stewart: a lot of people don't know this, but the Internet is NOT a dump truck. Why didn't I think of searching for my baby daddy, ahem, I mean Jon Stewart, on youtube? And why am I so wide awake at 1 AM?

Answer: last night's "indigenous party," hosted by the Nasa I think. I drank chicha and made people laugh with my tall, tall dancing ways until 5 am Saturday. (Aside: one of the party-goers, a Wayu I think, kept asking why I wasn't an anthropologist. "But everyone here is either indigenous or an anthropologist," he repeated.)

I love coming home when the birds are coming up. One night last week I stayed up all night just because. Ah, the things I'll miss when I go back to having things like, I don't know, an actual job and a real live relationship, as opposed to one conducted almost exclusively over the tubes that make up the Internet (see clip above).

living a little more

"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit. " -- Norman MailerTonight, Anne from Ireland read our stars. Porter and I were willing subjects. As much as we talk, there were surprises, spots of light shed on unexamined corners, and lots of future fun made.

Anne started mine out by exclaiming, multiple times, "boy are you weird!" Elly was perhaps not surprised, but I kind of was, a bit. I mean, I look fairly normal (lifetime studying how to look normal), I speak, walk, behave pretty much like other people. But Anne kept at it. I've never seen a chart like this, I don't know how to interpret this, I don't know what to make of that. Ultimately, she settled on some educational experience, combined with great shyness, shaped (misshaped?) my brain, and now I have a very unusual way of seeing the world. Well, it is astrology, after all, and we are humans, and we hear what we want to hear, but I confess, I was thrilled! Everyone loves to be told they are different, and here was my confirmation. I'm weird, it's in the stars. As Porter said, tonight was the ultimate narcissist's dream: complete focus on me and what makes me tick.

I may not believe in these things wholeheartedly, but there are so many ways of approaching human understanding, and this one may be just as legitimate as the next. I did learn a few things. I ought to trust my strangeness, my own lens for the world. Who of us knows how our own oddity? How can we? We're all wrapped up in our own thoughts, our own filters and prior beliefs. Who of us has any idea of the other?

In a minor example of this, Porter mentioned that at the U of Mich, referring to someone as an "anthropologist" is practically an insult -- they are completely focused on quantitative methods, and anything that values a different tool is threatening and therefore ridiculed.

Okay, Buckmasters, you can start making fun of me now. I did ask for it, calling to find out what time I was born...but I'll have you know I had your charts read too.

Fixin' to be

from Dave Pollard's post on Intentionality:

But there are steps and there are steps, and the important steps, even the small ones, are bold ones, with no turning back. These are the steps that we only take when we must, when we have no alternative, when the pain of going forward is less than the pain of staying where we are. Those who profit from our inaction, our lack of true intentionality, our fear, are counting (with good reason) on the fact that, for most of us, we have not yet reached that tipping point when we must act, must Let-Self-Change. They keep us distracted and addicted and comfortable enough with our prison life that escaping is never urgent enough.

My weblog is, more than anything else, a diary for talking myself into practicing what I preach, for convincing myself that I must act. Help convince me, it says to my readers, who are impatiently hoping for me to convince them. How to be a model, I write. Won't somebody be a model for me, I am asking, to those who want and rightfully expect me, the advocate of Let-Self-Change, to be the model for them. My audience is dwindling as so many get tired of all-talk, no-action. So we sit here, by the exit doors of the prison, talking about possibilities and trying to talk each other into real change, to make each other bold.

We do what we must, then we do what's easy, and then we do what's fun. We are not yet persuaded that we must take that first bold no-turning-back step, and we know that step won't be easy and that it may not be fun.

We will only leave the prison when someone, probably inadvertently, with the best of intentions, or accidentally, sets it on fire. Maybe that's what we're all waiting for.

Worth a look. I love how honest he is about himself.

change

"The moment you come to trust chaos, you see God clearly. Chaos is
divine order, versus human order. Change is divine order, versus human
order. When the chaos becomes safety to you, then you know you're
seeing God clearly."

—Caroline Myss, *Spiritual Madness: The Necessity of Meeting God in
Darkness*

I've been thinking about change lately, how we all change all the time, but often nothing seems to change for eons and eons (in our tiny brains). I decided I'm change-oriented: I focus on changing/improving myself, helping people around to make changes, changing the things I see wrong with society.

But Slim is helping me understand that it's also important to accept -- change, or lack of change, or just what's around us -- without growing complacent. That's the paradox: I had to learn to accept things the way they are in order to get better at making change. And now I'm learning to make change in a literal sense (cents...argh!) tending bar at el espacio (if it doesn't get shut down for good).

My latest favorite song: "I can change" by John Legend (with Snoop).

What's your orientation? Change, acceptance, something else?

Colombia Migration Project

Got a link to this site today: Have Money Will Vlog. It's an interesting approach to fundraising, and the featured project is a New York anthropologist's baby, the Colombia Migration Project, a series of interviews with Colombians living abroad. She is raising money to travel to Colombia to interview people waiting to leave. Some estimate that as many as 4.2 million Colombians are currently living abroad, whether for political or economic reasons. About half of these live in North America. In addition, some 3.5 million Colombians have been internally displaced.

photo from bbc.uk.co

Two organizations that help Colombians outside the country contribute: Conexion Colombia and Give to Colombia.

weekend wrap-up

El Espacio's website is up: www.elespaciobogota.org with photos of us, in capes. It only took me the whole first night to figure out who the guy taking all the photos was -- yeah, the webmaster. I kind of thought he was just a creep, oops.

Bad news for the Space, though -- more police harassment, and now they've been temporarily shut down after two minors were found in the 500 concert-goers. Check out photos of the party that spilled out onto the street, in the fanciest commercial zone in Bogota, you'll have a better idea why. Throw in a little sexual harassment by the police, some screaming aunties of rich, young concert organizers, and lots of kids who rather die than throw their own beer cans away, and you're practically there! The martini and seven jeans crowd doesn't want a bunch of punks messing with their exclusive fun. Or maybe it was all those capes.

------------

Medellin was great - no alarm clocks (you know how I feel about those, Slim), sweaty rivulets down our backs from just sitting still, lung-clogging air, streets that existed only to sell stinky fish, their eyes bulging from the heat, lots of aimless wandering punctuated by greasy and so delicious arepas, a mountaintop view from the comunas, friendly metro workers and warm people to match the warm weather in general, and dancing dancing dancing! And Craplations closed its doors in Medellin, so we actually (kind of) deserved the vacation we got.

-------------

In latest too strange to not be true news from Bogota, "Colombia's chief prosecutor hired a psychic who hypnotized his staff and even performed an exorcism over a voodoo doll in exchange for a government paycheck and use of an armored car." Full article: "Hiring of Psychic Haunts Bogota Official."