Awkward moments at Stanford

Many people find the Stanford campus aesthetically pleasing. I get it. I even appreciate it. The arcades, the red tile, the palm trees, the fountains, the symmetry. But I'm still appalled by the sheer number of tourists. Buses come up Palm Drive, park along the Oval, and unleash their camera-toting multitudes to wreck havoc on the Main Quad. Usually I can take this in stride. Like how I deal with the fact that every time I bike to the department in my hoodie on a weekend morning to print some article or grab some last minute materials, I bike through the after shocks of a wedding. This is how things are. But sometimes, it becomes too much.

Cases in point: In the space of one week, both of the following happened to me.

1. Beautiful sunny day. I'm minding my own business, walking down the arcade parallel to Serra. Suddenly I realize that this guy walking perpendicularly to me is not manoevering to avoid me, but rather is on a crash course to intercept me. I look up. Young European-looking blond guy is handing me a camera and wants his picture taken with the sculptures and Memorial Church in the background. I do so, and he has to repeat directions on how to press the button as I try to get a pic that doesn't have too many other people in it.

2. I had just picked up the 1964 compilation of Harper's Magazine from the library, because I want to use the essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" in my PWR course. And I have this dream of inspiring students to use the library by giving them a copy of the actual magazine from 1964. Anyways. So I'm sitting at the bus stop flipping through 40 year old ads for vermeoth and vacations to Egypt -- Let me interrupt myself: While getting these old magazines, I happened to look at some mags from the mid-70's, which were advertising cars with 24 miles to the gallon. And I thought, Christ, this is depressing. Fuel efficiency hasn't improved in the last 30+ years. Imagine what technological improvements could have been initiated if big oil didn't own our government. It's not inconceivable that we could have been much less reliant on the Middle East, and could therefore have saved ourselves a few trillion dollars and many thousands of lives. But I digress.

So I'm sitting at the bus stop with my ads for scotch and typewriters, when this man and young woman approach me, camera in hand. "Can we take a picture with you?" At first I thought he was asking me to take a picture of them. But no. He sat by me, asked if I was a student ("Yes, in English"), put his arm over the back of the bench, and the lady snapped a picture of us. I smiled. He said something which I at first thought was "You should come to China," but was actually "I'm from China" (or something to that effect). Shanghai, in fact. Sounds like he's going to be a student here. To which I commented on the distance and the nice weather in CA, and to enjoy it.

What makes this even funnier, is that the same thing happened to Jessica when she visited a couple of weeks ago. She got her picture taken by a tourist in the bookstore coffee shop, despite her protests that she doesn't actually go here yet.

Who knew that Stanford students were a curiosity worthy of photo documentation.

Pudding

God I love this pudding.

My only complaint: I wish they kept the cookie crumbles separate from the decadent vanilla pudding. Otherwise, during the whisking process, the two become this very drab gray conglomerate. (But it still tastes good.)

Who Killed The Electric Car?

Too cute

Sweet Tired Cat


The aesthetics of cuteness.

FFL: "F" for "Fear"

"Feminists" for Life is a particularly problematic group. And they just bought Susan B. Anthony's historical house. If you visit their website, you'll find all sorts of questionable material. The first sign of trouble should be their ambiguous stance on contraception. You'd think that a group trying to empower women and to prevent abortions would be all over this *obvious* and *effective* way to do both at the same time. But not so much. Here's their FAQ page on contraception:

Feminists for Life's mission is to address the unmet needs of women who are pregnant or parenting. Preconception issues including abstinence and contraception are outside of our mission. Some FFL members and supporters support the use of non-abortifacient contraception while others oppose contraception for a variety of reasons. FFL is concerned that certain forms of contraception have had adverse health effects on women.

Our membership enjoys a broad spectrum of opinion that reflects the diversity of opinions among the American public.

In the time of the early American feminists, sex between married couples was not always consensual. Many women bore 20 or more children, of whom only half survived. In order to affirm women’s rights within marriage, most feminist foremothers promoted “voluntary motherhood,” whereby women would have the education and right to fully participate in the decision to have sexual relations. FFL likewise supports life planning by focusing on one's education and career plans coupled with mentoring and empowering programs for teens.

God, that's tricky, right? The reason it's so vague and side-stepping is because they aren't very well going to f-ing tell us anything. But let's, you know, try to decipher this.

First point: This is a group whose mission is to prevent abortion, and they're seriously saying that contraception and abstinence stances are outside of their focus??!! This should raise, oh, a few red flags. The purpose clearly isn't to help women NOT HAVE TO CHOOSE by never having an unwanted pregnancy in the first place, but to convince women that the only right choice is to carry the unwanted pregnancy.

Second point. They don't mention any specific "non abortifacient contraception" methods. Maybe because they aren't so sure what this means. According to the medical definition, this is a straight-up oxymoron. You can't contracept (prevent pregnancy) and abort (end pregnancy) at the same time. The only way you can even imagine this, is if you change the definition of pregnancy, which anti-choice activists have attempted to do (totally ignoring that the sperm-meets-egg moment, even under ideal conditions, still has only a 50% chance of implantation under the best of circumstances). Anyways. You would think that they could at least commit to condoms, right? This should raise more red flags. They're clearly pandering to a base that buys into the idea that a "contraception mentality" is bad.

Third point: So what's going on with this disclaimer that they're concerned about "adverse health effects" of contraception on women? This is pure baloney. What types of contraception exactly are they claiming has adverse effects? They don't say because they don't know. Contraception is far, far safer than either having an abortion or giving birth. There's also the side benefits (like the pill & clearing up acne). So unless we're never going to have sex (highly unlikely), we're probably going to opt to use contraception.

Fourth point: They do, however, seem to take some stance on what happens pre-pregnancy. But this is further shrouded in ambiguity. The rhetoric here is incredible. I've bolded it for your viewing pleasure. So first they take a look back at pre-modern contraception methods of advocating that women be able to choose whether or not to engage in sexual relations. This is a "duh" moment. Then they say "FFL likewise supports..." We might well be confused. So do they only really advocate abstinence from sexual relations? Are we never to have sexual relations unless we're trying to get pregnant? Should we therefore have sex around, oh, twice in our lifetimes?

The part that should be scary, is that they don't say otherwise.

Also scary, is the fact that you can't get to many straight answers on their website. And sometimes when you do, you wish you hadn't. Example is their "medical expert" on abortion. They try to paint it as a dangerous, scary procedure, with their "right to know" page detailing anything that could possibly go wrong. They oh so conveniently overlook the fact that an abortion is SAFER than giving birth. And that contraception is safer than either. And what really pisses me off is the blatant lies:

Finally, some of you may be aware that recently there have been reports that link breast cancer with abortion. Since abortion has been legal for over 20 years, and sometimes it takes 20 to 30 years for a cancer to develop, this link is just starting to surface. More research is needed, especially since so many women have abortions every year coupled with the fact that so many women also die from breast cancer.

More baloney. The medical establishment is more than clear on this, and these sorts of lies have actually gotten many abstinence-only sex ed. groups in trouble. Because it's a lie carefully crafted to play on women's fears of breast cancer, and because it ignores all the (better and more up-to-date) studies that show no link whatsoever between abortion and breast cancer. Actually, let's do what any intelligent-person-with-a-conscience-posting info.-on-health-concerns would do before dissemeninating said info. Let's look at what the National Cancer Institute has to say about it:

The relationship between induced and spontaneous abortion and breast cancer risk has been the subject of extensive research beginning in the late 1950s. Until the mid-1990s, the evidence was inconsistent. Findings from some studies suggested there was no increase in risk of breast cancer among women who had had an abortion, while findings from other studies suggested there was an increased risk. Most of these studies, however, were flawed in a number of ways that can lead to unreliable results. Only a small number of women were included in many of these studies, and for most, the data were collected only after breast cancer had been diagnosed, and women’s histories of miscarriage and abortion were based on their “self-report” rather than on their medical records. Since then, better-designed studies have been conducted. These newer studies examined large numbers of women, collected data before breast cancer was found, and gathered medical history information from medical records rather than simply from self-reports, thereby generating more reliable findings. The newer studies consistently showed no association between induced and spontaneous abortions and breast cancer risk.

Well, lookey here! Should we trust the National Cancer Institute, or the one "expert" over at "Feminists" for Life?

This has been brought to you as another demonstration on "The Rhetoric of Fear."

Fights over feminist roots

I've been interested in how groups like "Feminists" for Life have coopted the early figures of the American suffrage movement. It's always struck me as strange: these were progressive women, bucking conservative dogma, and proposing radical changes. Compare them to groups like "Feminists" for Life, which try to take away rights that women have fought for (namely, safe and legal abortions and many types of contraception). To me, it's never made much sense. So you can imagine my excitement over this NY Times piece, by a Pulitizer Prize winning historian, Stacy Schiff (it's aptly titled "Desperately Seeking Susan"). I'm excerpting my favorite parts:

There is no question that she deplored the practice of abortion, as did every one of her colleagues in the suffrage movement. Feminists for Life cites an 1869 article in her newspaper denouncing “child murder,” labeling abortion “a most monstrous crime,” and advocating its end. “No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed,” blares the article. “It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death.”

What is generally not mentioned is that the essay argues against an anti-abortion law; its author did not believe legislation would resolve the issue of unwanted pregnancy. Also not mentioned is the vaporous textual trail. According to the editors of Anthony’s papers, the article is not hers.

In her personal life Anthony was clear in her conviction that women were not preordained to motherhood, that sometimes a woman and her womb might go their separate ways. A devoted aunt, she claimed to appreciate her colleagues’ offspring, some of whom even felt warmly toward her. But she had little patience for maternity. At best she was the ever-helpful friend who asks if you realize what you are in for just as you have vomited your way through your first trimester. At worst she was a ruthless scold...

Above all, the drillmaster of the suffrage movement had no patience when it came to dogma. She won few points for her free thinking but forged ahead all the same: “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” She cast her vote always for tolerance, acting from a simple conviction: “For a people is only as great, as free, as lofty, as advanced as its women are free, noble and progressive.”

The bottom line is that we cannot possibly know what Anthony would make of today’s debate. Unwanted pregnancy was for her bundled up with a different set of issues, of which only one truly mattered: rescuing women from “the Dead Sea of disfranchisement.” In the 19th century, abortion often was life-threatening, contraception primitive, and a woman as little in control of her reproductive life as of her political one. The terms do not translate, one reason time travel is a risky proposition. No amount of parsing the founding fathers will reveal what they think of the war in Iraq, just as no modern chorus of mea culpas will explain away their slave-holding. To suggest otherwise is to wind up with history worthy of those classic commercial duos, Fred Astaire and his Dirt Devil, Paula Abdul and Groucho Marx.

For what it’s worth, Anthony has ceded her place on the dollar to another steely and resourceful woman, the face of manifest destiny, who — coincidentally? — appears always with a child strapped to her back, the original rendition of backwards-and-in-heels. Sacagawea may have been a crackerjack scout, but she left no paper trail. Who knows what she thought about white men or westward expansion? She’s up for grabs, an icon without a cause. Feminists for Life may want to hurry, before the logging industry gets there first.

I love the effort to contextualize Anthony's views, especially as I agree that we can't so easily map our own terms onto these figures. I mean, OF COURSE they didn't advocate abortion: at the time it was unsafe, and it would have won them no political allies. When you're fighting for the vote, you can't very well get five steps ahead of yourself.

Next post will be on FFL.

5 day weekends

So I haven't updated in over a week. And I did do some interesting things lately:

- Namely, went into SF w/ the cohort to see a play, Travesties. I loved it. I had no idea how they would stage it, especially since one needs quite a bit of background to understand what the hell is going on. You've got Lenin, Joyce, and Tzara bouncing around during WW1, filtered through the (failing) memory of Henry Carr, organized around the structure of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. And if you don't have that play in the back of your mind, I imagine it makes very little to no sense. Anyways, the perfect play for 2nd years to see post-quals. So the production did some kitschy things to signal when Carr's memory is on replay, and the set was awesome. Moving picture frames, a library cart rolling around the stage, etc.

- Desperate Housewives nights.

- Trips to the eye vision center. Amazingly, my eyes didn't deteriorate over the summer. Now my right eye has finally caught up with the left, so I won't have to worry about keeping different prescriptions straight.

- Bar night after sexual harassment training (that is, training as to what to do about responding to concerns, not HOW to harass).

- Putting together my comp & rhetoric course for winter and spring quarters. My theme is "The Rhetoric of Fear."

- Ebaying. I decided to buy a vase. It's French shabby chic.

Jersey Girls respond to Woodward's book

I found this story interesting after some recent accusations Bush has made, about Democrats being a party that "waits" for an attack without doing anything. This seems to be yet another example of the Republican administration transferring criticism they deserve to a group that doesn't deserve it (ie, some have tried to blame the pages for Foley's indiscretions, or pretended they didn't want to be seen as "hating gays" for calling Foley out. Come on, this is the party trying to ban gay marriage by inciting hatred, and suddenly they're afraid of being seen as homophobes?)

Anyways. Clinton has made it clear that he was after bin Laden, and passed on plans/suggestions that were clearly not followed by the Bush administration. We know that the administration had multiple warnings in the months and weeks leading up to the attacks. And we know that Ashcroft conveniently was told not to fly in commercial airliners. Too bad the administration didn't see fit to question whether the rest of the American public was safe.

Here's from the Jersey Girls:

Statement Regarding al Qaeda Threats
October 5, 2006

Astonishingly, five years post 9/11 the public is made aware about an urgent July 10, 2001 meeting that took place between former CIA Director George Tenet and then, National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice. This information comes from Bob Woodward's newly released book, "State of Denial".

Despite this Administration's rhetoric that they had "no warnings" leading up to 9/11, it has become abundantly clear, that key Administration officials were made aware of the vast array of Al Qaeda threats and warnings that existed in years prior, and more importantly, in the weeks leading up to September 11, 2001.

When we add the July 10, 2001 meeting to the plethora of other clear warnings that our government had, a very concise view of the al Qaeda threat emerges. Those other warnings include, but are not limited to:

* Warnings from leaders of other nations and foreign intelligence apparatus' of terrorist threats

* June 30, 2001 Senior Executive Intelligence Briefing (SEIB) entitled "bin Laden Threats Are Real"

* The threat of President Bush's assassination at the G-8 Summit by al Qaeda in July of 2001 – using aircraft to dive bomb the summit building

* July 2001 Phoenix memo, which told of potential terrorists taking flight lessons

* 52 FAA warnings – five of which mentioned al Qaeda's training for hijacking

* August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Brief entitled "bin Laden Determined to Strike in US"

* National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)entitled "Islamist Extremists Learn to Fly"

* Intelligence agency heads describing themselves with their "hair on fire" to characterize the imminent nature of the threats they were intercepting from Al Qaeda and their sense of urgency in relating them to the Bush Administration

* The arrest of Zacharias Moussaoui in August of 2001

* FBI Agent Harry Samit's 70 unsuccessful attempts to get a FISA Warrant to examine Moussaoui's belongings

So in conclusion: the party that waits for an attack? That'd be Bush's Republican administration.

(Oh, not to mention this new scheme for a wall on the Mexican border. Um, are we seriously worried about terrorists coming from Mexico? Seems like an expensive project with little potential payoff for preventing terrorist attacks. What about securing freight? What about securing our chemical plants? Oh yeah, Bush is waiting for an attack before he does anything about those.)

"My job is to do my job"

Jon Stewart makes everything better.

In this clip from Crooks & Liars, Stewart covers the 20 million in taxpayer dollars allotted for a celebration of "victory" in Iraq and Afghanistan (more like fiasco), Bush's Biblically laden comparison of the botched job in Iraq to a "comma" in the history books, his dismal job approval rating (36%), and a delightful montage of Bush sounding, well, like Bush (i.e., dumb as a rock. Except that a rock would be a whole helluva lot less dangerous to the world).

Movie Trailer

American Blackout Trailer



This looks amazing.

"Lies...atop lies"

Keith Olbermann is incredible. Video & text from Crooks & Liars.

Why has the ferocity of your venom against the Democrats, now exceeded the ferocity of your venom against the terrorists?

Why have you chosen to go down in history as the President who made things up?

In less than one month you have gone from a flawed call to unity, to this clarion call to hatred of Americans, by Americans.

If this is not simply the most shameless example of the rhetoric of political hackery, then it would have to be the cry of a leader crumbling under the weight of his own lies.

And thank God that some people are still reporting on the Bush administration's decision that "eh, we can do without the 800+ year belief in the value of habeas corpus." Somehow, "Predatorgate" has overshadowed the further dismantling of the Constitution.

Lately

It's been a good week.

Last Tuesday I had my second chance at quals, and it went much, much better. It was what I wanted to get out of quals. It was motivating. It was the capstone to a very busy summer.

Prof. M -- is amazing. And his "The Bourgeois" is a huge class. The reading list is a dream. This week we read Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism. Next week: re-reading Robinson Crusoe.

I'm also taking Prof. G --'s course on the 18th century and the essay. Very interested in what she was saying about these periodicals growing into the serialized novel of the 19th century...

So I'm actually taking courses with the same two profs. as last spring... But this time I'll definitely be writing individual papers!

I've done lots of shopping, outfitting the apartment and my pantry. God knows I need to have enough food to survive a zombie attack. Last week after my quals, I bought A REAL LAMP. This is a huge development. For the first week I was using my little crappy Ikea desk light in conjuction with my accent lamp. This involved putting said lamp on a chair, and scooting it next to the couch, and crouching under the desk light, which was set up on one of my breakfast bar stools. It was ridiculous. Anyway, so this lamp was the most expensive thing Target had. It was still only around $60. It has a real lamp shade. And I "splurged" and bought the $2.75 light bulb (full spectrum and actually white light). And it was very good.

The weekend was eventful... with Thursday night's cheesecake event, and Saturday's welcome party for the first year English students (let's just say, I got back at 3:30 am, even though I refused to accompany Steve to the English dept. on the back of his bike with a backpack full of alcohol). Sunday I slept till, I kid you not, 1:33 pm. And the only reason I got up then, was because someone set off the damn fire alarm. In the evening, I had Jessika & Saquib over for Desperate Housewives and dessert. I think this season is quite promising.

Today I had an eye appointment. They dilated my eyes. It was not good. I tried to ride my bike home, and was squinting uncontrollably. Luckily it was a very quiet time of the day as far as traffic goes. It was hours before I could see normally.

Anyway, what prompted this post was the fact that I just finished writing up my course description proposal for PWR (that's the composition & rhetoric course for all first year students, which I'll be instructing in the winter & spring quarters). And it was surprisingly enjoyable and empowering. Here's my tentative course title:

The Sky is Falling: The Rhetoric of Fear in the News and at the Movies

And now, time for bed!!

Collapse

Just had to pass along this op-ed piece from the New York Times by Robert Harris:

IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.

The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

...

Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompey’s opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey’s genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.

But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as “soft” or even “traitorous” — powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

...

Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of “serious” physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.

In Memoriam

My Prissy passed away tonight. She was the most opinionated, beautiful, and ridiculous animal I ever knew. May she somewhere tuck herself into blankets, drink directly from faucets, eat yogurt, and be cuddled (but only when she's in the right mood). Love you, Tub. And miss you already. Rest in peace.

Because the Inquisition was so enlightened...

This is ridiculous.

I'll just quote from the NYT editorial:

Rushing Off a Cliff

Published: September 28, 2006

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation ... so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

...

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Anyone else a tad bit worried that this bumbling administration now has overturned laws which were hundreds of years in the making? And could claim pretty much any leftist group/person was suspected of "terrorism"? Dear God, they were claiming Ned Lamont was supporting the terrorists by running against Lieberman.

Terror really is the artificial exaggeration of an unrealistic fear. Americans are more likely to be hit by lightning than killed in a terrorist attack. Hell, we're more likely to go bankrupt after a medical emergency -- millions of us don't have health insurance. But somehow we're investing all these resources into a war on terror that, thus far, seems to be only increasing the danger of terrorism, rather than diminishing it. I'm all for better intelligence agencies and targeting actual terrorist groups, but not for elective warfare. Trillions of dollars of debt, so that we're now LESS SAFE by experts' standards?

If we'd used that money to invest in education, music and arts programs, anti-dangerous drug programs (ie, I'm talking meth, not marijuana), health insurance programs, more jobs, more help for those in poverty, national parks, efforts to develop viable alternative energy resources, etc., wouldn't we be better off than we are after years in Iraq? And after watching Afghanistan sink back toward Taliban-esque policies? Why is big government lauded in elective wars, but not in domestic policies that make life better rather than worse for its citizens?

I think we'd have been more successful by being the "city upon the hill."

Daily Show Quote

So I jotted this down from a few nights ago, which is hilarious... it's about Bush's attempts to defend his still being in office:

"George W. Bush is the right man to lead us in the era POST whatever horrible calamity he leads us into next." - John Oliver, Daily Show

Bush vs. Reality

Bush has this really (not so) clever and obvious "trick" of simply repeating himself over, and over, and over again, until he thinks everyone MUST believe him, 'cause gosh darn it, he's said he, hasn't he? The DECIDER has weighed in on the situation, and he'll be damned if reality doesn't bend to his will.

And, the NIE report is pretty damning:

The war in Iraq has become a “cause célèbre” for Islamic extremists, breeding deep resentment of the U.S. that probably will get worse before it gets better, federal intelligence analysts conclude in a report at odds with President Bush’s contention of a world growing safer.

In the bleak report, declassified and released Tuesday on Bush’s orders, the nation’s most veteran analysts conclude that despite serious damage to the leadership of al-Qaida, the threat from Islamic extremists has spread both in numbers and in geographic reach.

Bush and his top advisers have said the formerly classified assessment of global terrorism supported their arguments that the world is safer because of the war. But more than three pages of stark judgments warning about the spread of terrorism contrasted with the administration’s glass-half-full declarations.

Yeah... I think I'm gonna go with the "most veteran analysts" in the nation over the C-average shoulda-been-a-cowboy who got us into this mess (and hence has every reason in the world to try to cover up just how badly things are going).

Check out the whole thing at MSNBC

Last weekend pre-classes...

It's been eventful...

Yesterday I talked to Sarah for a while, and she was incredibly helpful. She invited me into the city, and I thought, yes, I'll go. We hung out with Lee & Heather at a coffee/wine bar, got tacos in the Mission, and saw Heather's beautiful new apartment. Hayes St., wood floors, afternoon sun in the kitchen... perfect place.

Today I had laundry duty, and then headed onto campus... saw the remains of the brunch feast for the incoming first years, and sat in the terrace rooms with books and outlining materials. I've now got a timeline to help me conceptualize events with publishing dates, and an idea map to think about connections. Tomorrow will keep working on it.

This past evening I went with James and his roommate to see Little Miss Sunshine, which was HILARIOUS. I haven't laughed so hard since Josh Blue.

The only sad part of the day, was realizing that I didn't get to go on the hiking trip. Reminded me of last year, and realizing that a group was going hiking. The funny thing was, James had told me about going (possibly on Sunday), and I had been completely excited. But then, I didn't hear anything else, and wasn't sure if there was interest or not. So I finally have signed up for the outing club's mailing list. Maybe I can tag along at some point.

The Meatrix

This is awesome.

"The Meatrix" is what we tell ourselves about the meat/dairy products we buy...

It's the cows, stupid.

So when I first heard about this spinach e coli thing, I thought: "Huh. How ridiculous. E coli comes from cow sh*t which not so mysteriously ends up in cow meat that people then eat. How funny that people are going to continue feeling safe eating (US) beef (I'll just quote Fast Food Nation: "There's sh*t in the meat"), but are now going to AVOID eating one of the healthiest things we could possibly consume: spinach." I didn't think much more about it, until I came across this article:

Indeed, this epidemic, which has infected more than 100 people and resulted in at least one death, probably has little do with the folks who grow and package your greens. The detective trail ultimately leads back to a seemingly unrelated food industry — beef and dairy cattle.

...

Where does this particularly virulent strain come from? It’s not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. No, O157 thrives in a new — that is, recent in the history of animal diets — biological niche: the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms. It’s the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms.

...When cows were switched from a grain diet to hay for only five days, O157 declined 1,000-fold.

This is good news. In a week, we could choke O157 from its favorite home — even if beef cattle were switched to a forage diet just seven days before slaughter, it would greatly reduce cross-contamination by manure of, say, hamburger in meat-packing plants. Such a measure might have prevented the E. coli outbreak that plagued the Jack in the Box fast food chain in 1993.

Unfortunately, it would take more than a week to reduce the contamination of ground water, flood water and rivers — all irrigation sources on spinach farms — by the E-coli-infected manure from cattle farms.

...There remains only one long-term remedy, and it’s still the simplest one: stop feeding grain to cattle.

California’s spinach industry is now the financial victim of an outbreak it probably did not cause, and meanwhile, thousands of acres of other produce are still downstream from these lakes of E. coli-ridden cattle manure. So give the spinach growers a break, and direct your attention to the people in our agricultural community who just might be able to solve this deadly problem: the beef and dairy farmers.

Nina Planck is the author of “Real Food: What to Eat and Why.’’

Almost done. And another year begins.

This afternoon I had my quals exam. Unfortunately, I didn't think very well on my feet. I got over my nervousness, but in the process I lost sight of the "big picture." Missed the opportunity to think about and answer some good questions... afterwards, of course, I came up with all sorts of answers. Of course. But, I'm going to have something of a second chance, as I "pass conditionally," on having a talk with one of the profs. in my area, and asking myself questions. I was upset -- it's been a hell of a long summer, and I knew all sorts of facts and pieces of info and quotes, but hadn't really processed and distilled everything. So I think I'm going to make an "idea diagram," and get to the point of feeling like I've taken a step back from the micro- to the macroscopic. Jill, who is incredibly rational and helpful, gave me a pep talk. About my trying to work on speaking confidently all last year, and the benefits of getting some one-on-one help with that. She's right, of course, and I'm trying to internalize that. But I still feel rather dumb. I wanted more of what I DID know to come across, and I wasn't aggressive enough to interrupt and redirect questions. And I should have had more pre-thought ideas on hand.

So after wandering blindly (rather like the fallen angels in Paradise Lost, post-climbing-out-of-the-burning-lake) and thinking (which can make a hell of heaven, and a heaven of hell), I found myself waiting at the bus stop. I went food shopping. Two trips. Carried back yogurt, wheat crisps, feta cheese, ice cream, soap, dried mango, feta cheese, 100% cocoa powder, plastic wrap, italian plums, etc. It was soothing. Reminded me of White Noise -- looking at labels, smelling soaps, considering the sodium contents.

And then I came home and had my not-so-good TJ's sushi, while watching Grey's Anatomy & that new show on after it (which is the title I am giving it).

What I did this summer

So today I turned in my quals list -- the list of poems, plays, essays, novels, etc. that I can be examined on (my test is the 21st).

Here's what I read this summer:

Beowulf (ca. 700-1000)

Geoffrey Chaucer
Canterbury Tales (ca. 1386-1395)
“The General Prologue”
“The Miller”
“The Reeve”
“The Wife of Bath”
“The Clerk”
“The Pardoner”
“The Nun’s Priest”
“The Retraction”

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1350-1400)

Sir Philip Sidney
The Defense of Poesy (ca. 1579)

Francis Bacon
“Of Negotiating” (1597)
“Of Marriage and Single Life” (1612)
“Of Superstition” (1612)
“Of Truth” (1625)
“Of Studies” (1625)

John Milton
Areopagitica (1644)

Christopher Marlowe
The Jew of Malta (ca. 1592)

John Webster
The Duchess of Malfi (1613/1623)


William Shakespeare:
Merchant of Venice (Q 1600)
Hamlet (Q2 1604-5; F 1623)
Twelfth Night (F 1623)
Othello (F 1623)
King Lear (Q 1608; F 1623)
Tempest (F 1623)

Sir Thomas Wyatt
“The long love that in my thought doth harbor” (1557)
“Whoso list to hunt” (1557)
“Farewell, Love” (1557)
“My Galley” (1557)
“Divers doth use” (1557)

Sir Philip Sidney (From Astrophil and Stella, 1591, 1598)
#1: “Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show”
#7: “When Nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes”
#31: “With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb’st the skies”
#49: “I on my horse, and Love on me doth try”

William Shakespeare
#1: “From fairest creatures we desire increase” (1609)
# 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (1609)
#55: “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments” (1609)
#116: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds” (1609)
#130: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (1609)
#138: “When my love swears that she is made of truth” (1599)


John Milton
Paradise Lost (1674)
Books I, II, III, IV, IX

John Donne
From Songs and Sonnets (1633)
“The Sun Rising”
“A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”
“The Flea”
“Song: Go and catch a falling star”
“Song: Sweetest love, I do not go”
“Elegy 19. To His Mistress Going to Bed”
“The Relic
From Holy Sonnets (1633)
#14: “Batter my heart, three-personed God”

Andrew Marvell
“Bermudas” (1681)
“To His Coy Mistress” (1681)

Queen Elizabeth
“The doubt of future foes” (1568, 1589)
“On Monsieur’s Departure” (1582)
“To Sir Amyas Paulet” (1586)
“To Henry III, King of France” (1587)
“Speech to the Troops at Tilbury” (1588)
“The ‘Golden Speech’” (1601)


John Locke
“An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690, 1700) (Norton excerpts)

Jonathan Swift
“An Essay on Modern Education” (1728)
“A Modest Proposal” (1729)

Samuel Johnson
Preface to Shakespeare (1765)

William Wycherley
The Country Wife (1672)

William Congreve
The Way of the World (1700)

Alexander Pope
“Essay on Criticism” (1711)
“Rape of the Lock” (1717)
“Eloisa to Abelard” (1717)

Thomas Gray
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751)

William Blake
Songs of Innocence (1789)
“The Little Black Boy”
“The Chimney Sweeper”
“Little Lamb”
Songs of Experience (1794)
“Introduction”
“The Chimney Sweeper”
“The Tyger”


Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe (1719)

Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels (1726, 1735)

Samuel Richardson
Pamela (1740)

Laurence Sterne
A Sentimental Journey (1768)

Aphra Behn
Oroonoko (1688)

Mary Wollstonecraft
Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
(Excerpts in the Norton)


William Wordsworth
“Preface to Lyrical Ballads” (1802)

John Ruskin
Modern Painters and The Stones of Venice
(Excerpts in the Norton)

Matthew Arnold
Culture and Anarchy (1868, 1869)
(Excerpts in the Norton)

George Eliot
“Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft” (1855)
“Silly Novels by Lady Novelists”



William Wordsworth
“Strange fits of passion have I known” (1800)
“Lucy Gray” (1800)
“I wandered lonely as a cloud” (1807)
“My heart leaps up” (1807)
“The world is too much with us” (1807)
“Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802” (1807)
John Keats
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816)
“On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” (1817)
“On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again” (1838)
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820)
“Ode on Melancholy” (1820)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Mariana” (1830)
“The Lady of Shalott” (1832, 1842)
“Ulysses” (1842)
In Memoriam (1850)
Prologue
54: “O, yet we trust that somehow good”
55: “The wish, that of the living whole”
56: “ ‘So careful of the type?’ but no”
57: “Peace; come away; the song of woe”
“The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854)

Robert Browning
“Porphyria’s Lover” (1836, 1842)
“My Last Duchess” (1842)
“Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister” (1842)
“Fra Lippo Lippi” (1855)
“Caliban upon Setebos” (1864)

Christina Rossetti
“After Death” (1862)
“An Apple-Gathering” (1862)
“Winter: My Secret” (1862)
“Goblin Market” (1862)
“In an Artist’s Studio” (1896)

Gerard Manley Hopkins
“God’s Grandeur” (1918)
“As Kingfishers Catch Fire” (1918)
“The Windhover” (1918)
“Pied Beauty” (1918)
“Spring” (1918)

Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility (1811)

Mary Shelley
Frankenstein (1818)

Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre (1847)

Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights (1848)

Elizabeth Gaskell
North and South (1855)

Charles Dickens
Our Mutual Friend (1864-5)



D. H. Lawrence
Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)
T.S. Eliot
“Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919)
“The Metaphysical Poets” (1921)


Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895/1899)

Tom Stoppard
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966, 1967)


T.S. Eliot
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
“The Waste Land” (1922)
“Journey of the Magi” (1927)

William Butler Yeats
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” (1890)
“Easter 1916” (1916)
“The Second Coming” (1920)
“Leda and the Swan” (1924)
“Sailing to Byzantium” (1927)
“Byzantium” (1930)

W.H. Auden
“Musée des Beaux Arts” (1940)
“Lullaby” (1940)
“In Memory of W.B. Yeats” (1940)
“The Unknown Citizen” (1940)
“The Shield of Achilles” (1955)


Philip Larkin
“Church Going” (1955)
“Talking in Bed” (1964)
“Sad Steps” (1974)
“High Windows” (1974)
“Aubade” (1977)

Seamus Heaney
“Digging” (1966)
“Death of a Naturalist” (1966)
“Blackberry Picking” (1966)
“Punishment” (1975)
“The Skunk” (1979)


Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness (1902)

James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

D.H. Lawrence
Women in Love (1920)

Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway (1925)



J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur
Letters from an American Farmer (1782) Excerpts from the Norton:
Letter III: “What Is an American”
Letter IV: “Description of the Island of Nantucket, with the Manners, Customs, Policy, and Trade of the Inhabitants”
Letter IX: “Description of Charles-Town; Thoughts on Slavery; on Physical Evil; A Melancholy Scene”
Letter X: “On Snakes; and on the Hummingbird”
Letter XII: “Distresses of a Frontier Man”

Washington Irving
“Rip Van Winkle” (1819)
“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820)

Edgar Allen Poe
“The Imp of the Perverse” (1842)
“The Philosophy of Composition” (1846)
“The Poetic Principle” (1850) (Excerpts from the Norton)

Henry David Thoreau
Walden, or Life in the Woods (1846, 1850) Selections:
“Economy”
“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”

Herman Melville
Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866)
“The Portent”
“Misgivings”
“The March Into Virginia”
“A Utilitarian View of the Monitor’s Flight”
“The House-top”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“A Psalm of Life” (1838)
“The Slave’s Dream” (1842)
“The Fire of Driftwood” (1849)
“The Jewish Cemetery at Newport” (1854)
“My Lost Youth” (1855)

Charles Brockden Brown
Wieland (1798)

Edgar Allen Poe
“The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839)
“The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843)
“The Purloined Letter” (1844)

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Scarlet Letter (1850)

Herman Melville
Moby Dick (1851)

Walt Whitman
“Preface to Leaves of Grass” (1855)

Henry James
“The Art of Fiction” (1884)

Mark Twain
“How to Tell a Story” (1897)


Emily Dickinson
#324: “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church⎯” (1864)
#448: “This was a Poet⎯It is That” (1929)
#465: “I heard a Fly buzz⎯when I died⎯” (1896)
#709: “Publication⎯is the Auction” (1929)
#712: “Because I could not stop for Death⎯” (1890)
#754: “My Life had stood⎯a Loaded Gun⎯” (1929)
#1129: “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant⎯” (1945)

Robert Frost
“Mending Wall” (1914)
“Home Burial” (1914)
“After Apple-Picking” (1914)
“The Wood-Pile” (1914)
“Birches” (1916)

Wallace Stevens
“The Emperor of Ice Cream” (1923)
“Disillusionment of 10 o’clock” (1931)
“Sunday Morning” (1915, 1923)
“Anecdote of the Jar” (1923)
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (1931)

William Carlos Williams
“Portrait of a Lady” (1920, 1934)
“Queen-Anne’s-Lace” (1921)
“Spring and All” (1923)
“The Red Wheelbarrow” (1923)
“This is Just to Say” (1934)
“Lear” (1948)
“Landscape of the Fall of Icarus” (1962)



Stephen Crane
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893)

Kate Chopin
The Awakening (1899)

William Faulkner
As I Lay Dying (1930)

Zora Neale Hurston
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)



Ralph Ellison
“Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity” (1953)
“Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke” (1958)
“Stephen Crane and the Mainstream of American Fiction” (1960)

Tom Wolfe
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)


Elizabeth Bishop
“The Map” (1935, 1946)
“The Fish” (1940, 1946)
“The Armadillo” (1957, 1965)
“Crusoe in England” (1971, 1976)
“One Art” (1976)

Sylvia Plath
“Metaphors” (1960)
“Mirror” (1961, 1971)
“Blackberrying” (1962, 1965)
“Daddy” (1963)
“Lady Lazarus” (1965)
“Morning Song” (1965)

Sandra Cisneros
“Preface” to My Wicked, Wicked Ways (1987)
“My Wicked Wicked Ways” (1987)
“Love Poem for a Non-Believer” (1994)
“I am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House But Won’t Because I’m 38 and Not 18”
“You Bring Out the Mexican in Me” (1994)
“Loose Woman” (1994)


Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)

Sandra Cisneros
House on Mango Street (1984)

Don DeLillo
White Noise (1985)

Eudora Welty
“Death of a Traveling Salesman” (1936)
“A Piece of News” (1941)
“Why I Live at the P.O.” (1941)
“A Worn Path” (1941)

Tennessee Williams
A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)

Wendy Wasserstein
Uncommon Women and Others (1977)


J.M. Coetzee
Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997)

Derek Walcott
In a Green Night (1962)
“A Far Cry from Africa”
“Ruins of a Great House”
The Castaway and Other Poems (1965)
“The Castaway”
“Crusoe’s Island”
“Crusoe’s Journal”
Sea Grapes (1976)
“Sea Grapes”
“New World”
“Adam’s Song”


Chinua Achebe
Things Fall Apart (1958)

J. M. Coetze
Foe (1987)

Ahh, Mt. Hood!

Mer already posted the photo of us looking at the mountain, so here we are, looking back at the camera.

Bush: Bad for the Land

I'm so glad Tennessee Guerilla Women posted this. 1) Because it sums up all the ways in which Bush has screwed over wilderness areas & 2) because the author clearly is familiar with the West's beauty: hiking the Pacific Crest Trail & spending time on Mt. Hood.

People like Bush have been born into so much money, they can't seem to comprehend that most Americans don't own huge tracts of land (a condition which his policies seem to delight in, as agribusiness kills the family farm). So wilderness areas and national parks seem increasingly important. Especially since, as studies have shown, kids who don't spend time in nature/big backyards grow up to be adults who don't give a damn about protecting it. But the concept of land that isn't used for private use or big business, is, apparently, incomprehensible for people like Bush.

Which is why Bush's dream wilderness policy involves, well, not having wilderness. Just more logging and oil fields. Because God knows, we don't have enough developed land yet! Manifest Destiny of Big Business & Suburbs hits the forests.

My comments are in the bold brackets.

Stained Land
By Nicholas D. Kristof

A highlight of my summers is the annual backpacking trips with my children. This year I took my youngest, who is 8, through 65 miles of the Oregon Cascades, giving her the chance to suffer mosquito bites, slip on snowfields, cross raging streams on rickety logs and enjoy other wilderness thrills.

She is now a confirmed backpacker, and we’ve decided that we’re going to hike together from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail — when we’re both grown up.

This wilderness and trail system is a legacy of past presidents, beginning with Teddy Roosevelt. There aren’t many ways in which our lives today are shaped by a president who governed more than a century ago — or in which President Bush will affect our grandchildren’s grandchildren in the 22nd century — but wilderness policy is one.

Until now, the pattern has been for presidents of both parties to expand protections of natural areas, with a bipartisan record of adding to national forests and other protected areas.

... [But Bush is changing that]...

“There have been systematic efforts to weaken protections for wilderness-quality lands across the public lands estate, and to make it harder to protect these places in the future,” notes Peter Rafle of the Wilderness Society. Last month, a federal judge blocked an administration scheme to harvest timber in California’s Giant Sequoia National Monument, criticizing it as “incomprehensible.” ...

[Um, yeah, it is incomprehensible.]

A few examples:

¶Last year, Mr. Bush formally repealed President Clinton’s “Roadless Area Conservation Rule,” which had provided broad protections for 58 million acres of national forest lands without roads.

[Because we need snow mobiles EVERYWHERE! No where shall you enjoy quiet! Must use as much gasoline as possible! Drive off road vehicles, shun hiking!]

¶Mr. Bush has also used his “healthy forest” initiative as a way to promote logging over wilderness. He is right that forests are too vulnerable to fires today, but dispatching commercial logging crews is not the solution for most areas.

[This is brilliant. Let's protect the trees from fire... by CUTTING DOWN THE TREES. Whaaa...? I agree, there are better ways around this. I can see it now, a bill to promote Smokey the Bear protection policies, and realize that sometimes wildfires happen, naturally.]

¶In some parts of the country, Mr. Bush in effect has adopted a “no more wilderness” policy. In 2003, the administration announced that millions of acres of land in Utah and elsewhere in the West would never again be considered for designation as wilderness.

¶The administration has offered oil and gas leases on 70,000 acres of proposed wilderness in Colorado and 190,000 acres in Utah. Once oil or gas development occurs, the land is lost — no longer eligible to be included in the wilderness system.

¶Mr. Bush is trying to turn vast, pristine parts of Alaska into oil wells; some oil and mineral development is essential, but the past bipartisan sense of balance is lost. Mr. Bush is pushing to drill in many Alaskan lands that had been protected by past Republican presidents.

[What if we lessened our dependence on Middle Eastern oil by not just drilling up a temporary reserve of our own (which, let's face it, couldn't meet our energy needs for even a few years, let alone for the forseeable future), but by actually investing seriously in new technology?]

One of my greatest outdoor memories is of spotting a herd of caribou in the Alaskan Arctic, and then creeping up on them. Finally, they spotted me — and then they rushed up for a closer look at a genuine human. Drilling would change this land forever.

Many of these efforts took shape under Gale Norton when she was interior secretary. Now that Ms. Norton has been replaced by Dirk Kempthorne, we have a chance to pause and take a deep breath. Mr. Kempthorne seems more measured than Ms. Norton, and let’s hope he’ll take as his model Gifford Pinchot, the legendary Republican politician who founded our system of national forests and coined the word “conservation” as it applies to wilderness.

A week ago, I took my 12-year-old son out on his third trip around Mount Hood this summer. The weather was glorious as we started, but by nightfall a cold rain was pounding down on our tarp shelter. The next morning, we found ourselves stumbling through driving snow — and wishing we were on a couch watching TV instead. But that’s the wonder of the wilderness, an essential part of America’s greatness: time in the wild is the best way to tame our arrogance, to remind ourselves that we are temporary intruders upon a larger canvas. It puts us in our place, at times by freezing our toes.

So that’s why I mourn for our wild lands. In 100 years, Mr. Bush’s mistakes in Iraq may not matter anymore, but our wilderness heritage lost on his watch can never be restored.

The Post-UP Update

I never did write much about the last couple weeks in Madison, so I'm going to do so now...

Friday after we got back, we saw a Talking Heads cover band. Surprisingly good. I'd definitely see them again.

Tuesday a group of us went to see Through a Scanner Darkly. Which was excellent. And we were all rather boggled by the end, I think.

Weds: One last Devil's Lake trip... We finally did some hiking there, had only seen two trails, and those the previous summer. Went throug the Devil's Gateway (Very Paradise Lost, right?) and saw Balance Rock (not that impressive). Beautiful views though of the lake and surrounding hills and countryside.

Then we went out for dinner, at this vegetarian place called The Cheese Factory. Very '50's-cutesy. Amazing to see a menu of ONLY vegetarian food. In fact, I don't think I've seen such a thing before, ever. So they had various meat-flavored tofus/seitans, etc., and a surprising range of ethnic plates. I had "El paso al cielo" (the path to heaven), which was cornbread with creamy corn salsa and cheese and peppers, a fried banana & pineapple & salsa on the side. Andrew had veggie goulash. And since this place is all about the desserts, we had the most decadent chocolate layer cake I've ever tasted for dessert (which we saved for the drive-in). Fluffy & light and moist cake and whipped chocolate centers... ahh.

The drive-in was awesome. We saw Talladega Nights w/ Will Ferrell & Snakes on a Plane. Hilarious combination. Stuffed myself with popcorn & cake. And an apple to make me feel better.

I ended up staying in Madison 3 extra days since the airlines didn't charge... Living on borrowed time. Monday we made a brief appearance at friends' bbq, ran some errands, and had pizza... Watched Weeds, the newest show I'm addicted to.

Tues... sadness, last day in Madison. Did some errands on State St., read A Streetcar Named Desire, and had dinner at The Weary Traveler. Packing took a while... brownie & ice cream for dessert... sleep. Melancholy, with the combination of the end of summer, leaving Andrew, and coming back to CA for the quals test. Kills me.

On the bright side, I'm staying at Adam & Amanda's place... which gives me some time to not live out of boxes (after those boxes somehow get from storage to my apartment on campus). It's an adorable, sunny place, with wood floors. I love how they've decorated. But then of course, that would make me sad too, because my dream apt. for living a while in Madison w/ Andrew is on similar lines... floor of a Victorian house, w/ wood floors, a bay window w/ window seat, and, of course, a west-facing porch.

I forgot that the clouds burn off here... I woke up this morning to overcast skies, and was reading in bed since it has the best morning light, and gradually the sun came out and the sky darkened to blue.

And I bought a pound of organic figs at Trader Joe's for 3$. The only cheap thing in CA.

A Sunset

Andrew with the sunset over Lake Superior

Lake of the Clouds

At the lookout point over the Lake of the Clouds (in the UP)

Intrepid Travelers in the UP

So I'm finally posting about our trip to the UP (that's the Upper Penninsula, in Michigan, on Lake Superior). It was lovely. Here's how it went:

Friday: Left around 9 am, with a stuffed car. Stopped in Merrill at the Council Grounds and a dammed up river for lunch. We made "roadside" guacamole & sandwiches. On the way out, got some corn & a watermelon off the back of a farm truck parked at a gas station. Freshest ever.

Along the 6 hour drive (yes, 6 hours), we stopped at Bond Falls to stretch our legs. Lucky accident that we happened to choose that freeway exit. Beautiful rounded waterfall, with a boardwalk to get views from either side.

Back on the road, we stopped to look at a dead porcupine (Tim would be proud!) We saw a bald eagle flying over the road, and later a mysterious bird of prey flying out from a tree. Andrew saw a deer.

Finally arrived at our destination: Peterson's Chalet Cottages. Cute, rustic little cottages close to their Lake Superior beach. The sand, waves, and driftwood made me feel like we were at the beach. I moved us in, and Andrew grilled dinner -- tofu dogs & roasted corn. Read on our screened in porch for awhile, and made it down to the beach. Also roasted marshmallows over the grill (we could probably have done it over the gas rangetop, but for some reason Andrew finds it more authentic to do it over charcoals).

Saturday: Pancakes for breakfast. Because even when pseudo-camping, you need pancakes. We set off for the Porcupine Mountains park, and sat puzzling over the trail map at the Ranger's Station. Had some trouble deciding what hike to do. Eventually we decided to check out the Lake of the Clouds (beautiful, quite a view from the bluff of the lake and sky) and then hike into Mirror Lake. It was a looong hike. 4 miles in, with a pitstop for lunch (tuna sandwiches again). Mirror Lake was lovely... very quiet and tranquil since you can only get to it by hiking. I waded a bit.

Back at the cabin... We went swimming in Lake Superior, much warmer than you'd expect. We had our inflatable creatures: My "magic dragon" Nessie (or Puff), and Andrew's beluga whale (ok, it's a killer whale, but whatev). We ended up staying out on the water till late... And then Andrew unsuccessfully wrassled with the grill until he decided to finish cooking on the stove inside (at which point the charcoals lit up -- apparently they just wanted time and oxygen). Finally, around 10 pm, we had our shish-kabobs & more roasted corn. And it was good.

After dinner, I wanted to take a drive. Both to look out for wild creatures, and to explore country roads. We went down one a ways, without seeing much... Got out to listen to the crickets and look at the stars. Very beautiful. I love being out in the quiet at night.

We then went to the beach, as Andrew had hopes of seeing northern lights. We sat there for about 30 minutes without seeing more than a faint light blue glow over the lake. Around I think 12:30 to 1 am, the lights started to... change. This light blue/green pattern would fluctuate, sometimes spreading a rainbow arc, then moving in columns from right to left. It was hard to leave, but it was getting quite late.

Sunday: Cereal for breakfast, as the pancakes put a cramp in our plans to get out early. We went back to the Porkies to see the various waterfalls along the Presque Isle River. This turned into an impromptu hike, as we went up the east and west sides of the river to make a loop, ending at the "island" of layers of I think shale. Saw a view of Lake Superior, went over a suspension bridge (over yet another great view of the river), and headed home.

Back at the cabin, we had lunch, and then went kayaking. Definitely had trouble getting in at first. But then it was lovely -- bright, clear, sunny day. I leaned back and was ready to go to sleep on the water. Then we decided to go swimming, with Nessie/Puff.

For dinner we again imitated our camping fare, with rice & beans & string beans.

For dessert, we headed over to this fried-food & ice cream only sort of place. Amazing ice cream. And, our real motive: to see them feed the bears. Yes, Merrie is probably groaning and planning a lecture on why-not-to-feed-wild-bears. But we wanted to see some, and as it turns out, our hiking didn't lead us into any bears' path. Unfortunately, this restaurant isn't very picky about what they feed these animals. We watched one young woman feed Fred, an old man bear, a Little Debi oatmeal pie. In other words, corn syrup & trans fat. Sorry, Fred. Also saw a couple of younger, leaner looking bears. Terrific red sunset.

After the bear adventure, we made a campfire down on the beach. Roasted marshmallows and drank beer. No northern lights, as it was a bit cloudy.

Monday: Decided to add an extra night.

So we had the chance to linger over breakfast, eat pancakes, and then head out to the Summit Mt. viewpoint in the Porkies. Short hike in, and then up a watchtower... view of the whole national park, Lake Superior, and the surrounding area. Gorgeous. And sunny. Watched a hawk dive.

On the way back, we had to search for food. Backtracked a bit, as it was hard to remember where things were along this long and nearly deserted road. Finally put together a taco meal. I had a fit over the little bit of lard added to the refried beans. I of course didn't suspect anything, as who the hell would add lard to beans? Why contaminate a vegetarian's source of protein with pig fat? Why make it not kosher just for like a teaspoon of lard? F*#@ you, Old El Paso brand.

Anyways. We also made it to the gift store. It was ridiculous. The crazy woman was obsessed with bears. She was playing a children's CD of corny songs about bears sung by a cartoonish voice. "When a little bear loses his teddy bear, he gives you a bear hug..." OVER AND OVER. Needless to say, we just bought a couple of postcards and got the hell out of there.

After dinner, we took a walk along the beach... And went back to the bear restaurant. More ice cream (my only regret is not getting their cherry flavor), more bears eating sunflowers & "food scraps." Watched the sunset at a pretty beach with driftwood and tons of perfect stones for skipping.

Tuesday: We packed up, talked with Chuck (one of the hosts), and headed to Black River Harbor. This was quite the round about way to go home, but provided us with one more adventure. Went along the river, stopping at a series of waterfalls... we ended up visiting 3 out of the 5. Nearly deserted. And very pretty. Reminded me of Oregon. On our way up the steps from one falls (which was highly reminiscent of Wahtum Lake's steps), we spotted a deer with two fawns. We froze, and watched. The doe approached us, circularly, and stopped at a little mound about 10 feet away. She was watching us VERY closely. She'd stamp her foot, and then duck, watching us. Stamp, repeat. Stamp, repeat. I started laughing. It was amazing how clearly you could read her... She was approaching us alone, checking us out, testing us to see if we'd move, if we'd try to go after her, etc., doing all this at a distance from the fawns. Eventually she decided we were harmless, and headed back. Then the little family trooped across the parking lot and toward the neighboring park areas. Saw another deer in the next parking lot. The place is crawling with them.

The harbor itself was pretty, we climbed on the rocks and tried to see where we'd been hiking, as we could see the ski jump on one of the local hills from our Summit Mt. hike.

Andrew got lunch along the way at a "pasty" place. Pasties are basically potpies in the shape of a hot pocket. It was like walking into a bakery from 1950. Cafeteria tables and chairs, women in flowery dresses, men sitting around with coffee and pastries... the town was rustic, with an old Sprite sign (truly old, like '50s style), and a dead downtown. Unfortunately they didn't have any veggie pasties warmed up. I later ate at Subway.

Stopped at a few places on the way back... Rib Mt., pretty closed up off-season... and then Devil's Lake for a swim with Nessie.

At home, we had a quick dinner of ordering pizza.

It was a wonderful trip!

I was reading the end of Women in Love, Ros & Guil are Dead, and starting the American section...mainly Wieland. While driving, we finished The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test on CD... Intrepid Travelers!

Reading & Madison

Haven't updated on our Madison activities -- but suffice to say, I've been doing a lot of reading. Since getting back from Oregon, I've (re)read Sense & Sensibility, Jane Eyre, Heart of Darkness, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Mrs. Dalloway, some T.S. Eliot essays, modernist poetry (Yeats, Heaney, Eliot, Larkin, Auden), The Importance of Being Earnest (woo hoo, 4th reading), and, basically, Women in Love (50 pages to go). What rather bothers me, is that I've read all this stuff before. The experience of re-reading has been intriguing (what I missed before, what it's like to read knowing the ending, so I'm reading for the pleasure of the text rather than the plot, seeing my old notes on the texts, etc.). I'm about to hit the American portion, so I guess this will soon cease to be a problem. Although I'll still be rereading Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, etc. Hmm. Quals reading isn't quite what I expected it to be, but it's also exceeded my expectations a bit. I didn't really expect to get as much as I did out of re-reading.

Anyway. As for real world activity... We had dinner with Katie & John the night we returned from Oregon, and stayed late. We've done the farmer's market thing (yay for early apples!). Last week we took a trip to Devil's Lake (where we read, waded, and played frisbee) & then revisited Pedro's for dinner. The veggie tamales were excellent (and I love their corn cakes), but I was a bit disgusted the next day when Andrew ate the remains of his 3 lb. burrito. Someone in the kitchen had (inadvertently, I assume) gotten some plastic wrap mixed into the burrito's insides. Yuck.

Last week we also took a drive to Blue Mound State Park. There's a nice loop through meadows (butterflies, and ever so many wildflowers), down by a creek bed (buggy -- could hear a strange vibrating hum of bees), and back out by an apple tree. Also climbed their look-out towers, which have a magnificent view of Wisconsin (since these mounds are like the highest point).

Well -- should go now. We're going to watch the finale of America's Got Talent. I hope Bianca wins...

I get terribly addicted to summer reality tv.

Reason may prevail (with compromises)

It looks like reason might finally prevail in the FDA's decision on Plan B -- with a compromise. If things go as planned, women 18 and over will be able to buy Plan B over the counter, and when they need it, rather than after a doctor has been able to fit them into his/her schedule (and has charged said women a hefty fee for those 5 minutes). Yes, the morning after pill might actually become something women (who've had a birth control failure or have been raped) can take the morning after. And, look at that! The intended use is built right into the name: it's Plan B (ie, not one's primary birth control method). And come on, who would really take Plan B every time she had sex, rather than taking the pill? Or using a condom?

Anyway, here's from Ellen Goodman's aptly titled article "Reproductive Rights Victory -- In the Bush Era?!" (Via Feministe)

Emergency contraception is the one swath of common ground in the abortion wars. Plan B can prevent pregnancy and, therefore, abortion. It tells you how bad things are when wrenching approval for contraception out of the Bush administration counts as a smashing victory.

Nevertheless, my champagne flute is still going to be half full. This is a victory with a big asterisk. The price of getting women 18 and older easy access to Plan B has been to exclude those under 18. It's hard to celebrate policies and politics that subject girls to bigger hurdles and solidify the message that motherhood is their punishment for sex.

Let's go back over this torturous history. In 2003, the FDA's scientific advisers overwhelmingly recommended Plan B as safe and effective enough to be sold over the counter without any age restriction. It was described as "safer than aspirin.'' The right wing promptly went ballistic and tried to cast Plan B as an abortion pill. When that failed scientific muster--emergency contraception does nothing if you're pregnant--the same groups got behind the push for escalating age restrictions.

First, a cowed and politicized FDA told the manufacturer to reapply, restricting the pills to 16 and over. Then, more than a year later, one acting FDA commissioner upped the age up to 17. Now the newest acting FDA commissioner, Andrew von Eschenbach, has pushed the age up to 18.

While I suppose we should be grateful that he didn't push it to menopause, why exactly did the would-be commissioner pick 18? Was there some new data? A new study perhaps? The most that any senator could get out of him at the confirmation hearings on his appointment was pretty cryptic: "I believe 18 is appropriate.'' With that, von Eschenbach won the title of "The Believer'' to match his friend and president, "The Decider.''

The arguments in favor of the age restriction are indeed matters of unscientific belief. The morning-after pill does not change the night-before behavior, a favorite argument of those who equate E.C. with promiscuity. Nor does it replace ordinary contraceptives.

Oregonian-ness

The visit to Oregon was wonderful, busy, yet relaxing.

Getting to OR, however, was not so relaxing.

We left on the 25th via the Milwaukee airport. This involved driving there, dropping the car at a remote parking location, & taking a shuttle. All was well, the plane boarded on time, etc. Only complaint was crowdedness. The next leg of the journey was wretched. We boarded the plane in the midsummer heat, and, clever monkeys, they didn't/couldn't put on the air conditioning.

And then... (wait for it)

We didn't leave on time.

Shocking! (And yet not.)

Andrew & I found ourselves in the very back of the plane, positioned in the seating area between two (yes, two) sets of stinking box-toilets. Everything smelled like pee. When I bent to get stuff out of my bag, I could have sworn someone had peed on the wall at some point. Oh, and it was about 100 degrees, and there were about what, 200 people on the plane? And we sat there for an hour and a half. Oh yes, it smelled delightful.

The cause of the delay? One of the infamous "mechanical problems." You know, the type that mysteriously sets in after the previous problem-free flight, after everyone is already freaking boarded. The kind that equally mysteriously clears up after an hour or two of some supposed professionals staggering about somewhere out of view. Heaven forbid the plane be cleared of problems BEFORE loading hundreds of people on it. F*#% you, NW Airlines.

So. We did make it to Oregon. Found Mum & Mer waiting, hugs & stories relating the trip. Almost crying with laughing so hard. Ate on the way home.

Weds: Much activity. Scorching weather. Mer, Andrew, & I took a very long float down the canal -- walked to Aubert's bridge & floated to the end of Miller Road. Andrew wanted to try our smaller green floatie (easier to paddle about in), and we traded him for the larger River Rat tube. Andrew sat down in the green floatie, and immediately flipped over. One moment he was sitting down & getting settled, the next, somehow, his feet contrived to go up, as his head went under, and then the entire Andrew was lost into the canal -- rather like an accidental backwards somersault. Luckily, he came up laughing and with only one abrasion on his arm. I'm afraid I have no pictures.

Anyway, after our peaceful float, we had dinner, and then the fair. We waited in line forever (the Hood River fair of Odell was unexpectedly busy). Eventually, got in and saw the wild animals -- rather sadly caged. Amazing cats, including a rather playful bobcat. Awesome African porcupine. Large tortoise. Many unappealing snakes and spiders.

We had our share of fair fare. We split an elephant ear. Unlike other people, who walk while eating, we shuffled off to a corner and stuffed ourselves, getting greasy and sugary. Needed napkins -- so we got water & a snowcone, and the vendors gave me a single paper towel. Then Merrie bought cotton candy, and kindly shared. It was yummy.

We had a quick spin through the barns -- the sheep were baa-ing back and forth, and we got many a picture of one that had an old-man-goat voice.

Late night shopping trip to Rosauer's.

Thurs.: Busy day! Andrew made pesto from the basil bushes in Mom's garden. Then Mum, Mer, Andrew & I went up to Kingsley for a swim. We went the wrong way, so we had a scenic and bumpy detour. Almost stopped at the lower reservoir... perhaps should have stayed, but I rather wanted the real lake. Kind of windy, but I still wanted to swim. I ended up getting in, and once you do that, you're warmer in the water than out. So I paddled about, and eventually we all swam (even Merrie!) After, we went down the hill, and we took Mer's car to the wildlife rescue clinic in Mosier. I syringe-fed a baby bat, Andrew bottle-fed a fawn, and Mer fed a flicker (which died -- flighty little things). The young screech owl was my favorite. It bobbed about and dilated its pupils and I was rather worried it was going to attack me. I'll try to post a photo, because it was that cute. The eagles were hopping about, and the fawn frolicked a bit in the meadow.

Home -- pesto for dinner (ate outside w/ the mountain view), watched some America's Got Talent, and Scrabbled. Slept outside on the porch: many stars, some shooting.

Friday: Also super busy day. We made it up to Lost Lake, and took the trail around the lake. I waded a bit, and grazed on blueberries and huckleberries. Then we took the road to Wahtum Lake; along the way, we saw a mountain beaver on the side of the road. We stopped, and the mt. beaver went about its business as if there were no large jeep with five people idling next to him. He chomped off some brush, and proceeded to carry it under the jeep, and across the road. Somehow he managed to drop said brush, which Tim took as a memento. Very strange little rodent-fellow. The lake was windy and chilly. What is it, 254 stairs down to the lake? We took them, and ate our reward (cookies) by the lake. Explored around the shores -- salamanders and crawdads. After going back up the stairs, I was quite warmed up. For dinner: Feta/pasta/kale concoction. Slept out on the porch again.

Saturday: Family picnic! We took Tim's '56 Chevy, and arrived fashionably late. First time I'd seen so many cousins gathered in one place since Christmases of a decade ago or more. Very cool to see Janel (she's been in Turner's Fall, MA and doing poetry at Umass) & Mark (who's living in Santa Cruz). And I finally saw Debi's young children -- we ended up playing frisbee with Timmy for quite a while. Luckily, Andrew, who has camp counselor experience, tossed it back and forth with him -- and with Tim joining the game, I think Timmy was quite happy. Andrew became Timmy's favorite, although Delina favored me with a cup of "coffee." After sandwiches and wonderful cake (it had all the cousins' names on it -- I didn't eat my name, however, as I preferred a side piece with lots of frosting), we kids headed to Hood River. Went to Artifacts, and Andrew's Pizza for dinner. Dog River for coffee -- I had a nice Mexican chocolate frappe. And it was good.

Some errands after -- Wal-mart for sweatpants, etc...

Sunday: Portland day. We went to American Eagle (Mer was in need of staples, and the sales rack was as fruitful as I expected), Powell's books (got a stack of quals books, including the ever-elusive "Studies in Classic American Lit." by Lawrence), Everyday Music (my one selection was to share a Zombies hits CD w/ Mer), and Thai Orchid for dinner (sweet and sour stirfry w/ pineapple was OK but overly sweet; pad thai was pleasing as usual; Massaman curry which was my choice and, in my opinion, the yummiest). Quite a nice trip to the city.

Monday: Read in the morning (Wuthering Heights), and then went with Mum, Mer, & Andrew on a hike to Elk Meadows. Many legs to the journey: First a jaunt through the mild mountain forest -- quite level. Then crossing the river on a precarious bridge made up of various logs haphazardly thrown between the banks. This leads into the switch backs straight up a hill, which eventually get you to the levelness at the top. Then about a mile around the meadow (which was devoid of elk, and unfortunately clouds obscured what would have been a lovely view of the mountain). We stopped along this final loop to snack on potato chips, cookies, and apples... and were munching, when our snack-site was ransacked by camp robbers. Of the avian variety. Apparently they're also known by the slightly more dignified (but infinitely less accurate) description of grays jays. It was clear that these little beggars wanted food, and would do about anything to get it. So I had the bright idea of putting potato chip crumbles on my sweatshirted arm. They took the bait. I was quite nervous, God only knows what birds will do for food. Mer & Mum joined me, and we got some awesome photos & video. Voracious birds. Never had seen such things before. Right out of the Hitchcock movie. And since that soundtrack in entirely composed of bird noises/flapping of wings, the noises were reminiscent of the film as well. The birds were a highlight, and the chipmunks which seemed to perch in blueberry bushes and eat the litte unripe berries.

In the evening, we took a trip to Rosauer's & prepared for our camping trip. Tuesday morning we left -- it was awfully cold and windy at Lost Lake. Andrew set up the tent while me and Mer went to the general store for our camping pass, and then we set up camp a bit. I was cold, and went in the tent to read a bit. Shortly, I decided to nap. The others followed. We got up around 4 pm, snacked, and I urged everyone to at least do a bit of exploring before dinner. Went on what we assumed was the huckleberry trail. Ran into a scuzzy pond (but it did have redeeming water lilies). Mysterious combination of stand up grill, precariously leaning next to a tree, empty beer bottle, and discarded underwear. On the other side of the scuzzy pond, a condom wrapper. Andrew wisely observed: "I hope nothing bad happened here."

Ended up toward a trailhead into the Pacific Crest trail. Found a gravel road. Made Merrie and Andrew agree to take a drive out here after dinner in return for not hiking further. Had tofurkey dogs for dinner w/ canned corn. It was delicious. Everything made on a campfire is strangely good. Took our evening drive on Sentinel Rd... gravel road, leading to nothing. We got out, picked some huckleberries, and I killed many a mosquito (had to hit Andrew rather hard to kill some of them, but, what can you do?). We passed another mysteriously blocked off road, and I asked that we also explore that at some point when I had proper shoes on. Back at camp: S'MORES! We had a nice campfire, and warmed water for washing hands/ faces (it feels so luxurious when everything else is cold). S'mores are excellent. Slept quite well, and decided to sleep in.

Andrew made breakfast -- pancakes w/ huckleberries & chocolate chips. So good. We got ready pretty quickly, and made our way to the Lost Lake Butte trail. Switchbacked about 2.5 miles to the top, where we could see Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood intimately, and Mt. Jefferson hanging behind. Other hikers greeted us at the top. We made, I kid you not, tuna fish sandwiches w/ cans of tuna, a jar of relish, and the condiment packets we took from the store. And they were relished. Hung out for probably 30 minutes, listening to pikas beeping on rocks below the cliff, watching the little bits of clouds clear away from the mt., and taking pictures. Going down was much faster and easier.

I wanted to go swimming right away -- to feel clean and to make up for the hot hiking. Took our chairs and floaties to the lake, and claimed a little wooden dock. We read a bit, and then paddled about in the water: I alternately swam and clung to floaties. Mum arrived, and we had jambalaya (w/ leftover tofurky dogs, canned green beans, and squash), grilled squash, and salad Mum brought. Only problem: no forks! Andrew improvised with two spoons, and we washed old plastic forks. Then, as it was getting dusky, Mum headed home, and we headed up to Turner Rd. for a little exploring. This didn't go too far: We heard some sort of snoring/exhaling noise, definitely from a large animal. Mer and I predicted bear (Mer's prediction, however, was much more convincing). I quietly picked some berries, and eventually Andrew & I went to a nearby meadow-like area while Mer patiently listened. There, we had a view of the mountain against twilight, and the moon rising. Bats flitted. We heard their calls, but then we also heard one of the snorting sounds, frighteningly close (or so it seemed). I got rather freaked out, and we went back to find Mer. She came back with us, and we kept hearing the noises. Later, we got Tim's confirmation that we'd had a real bear experience! Probably two or three were ranging about, eating huckleberries and locating one another. We decided to come back in the morning, as Mer was shivering with cold and it was getting late. Back at the campsite, we had a roaring fire (Mum had brought more firewood), and we roasted many marshmallows and ate s'mores. Finally got to bed.

Thurs. we got up earlier, had more yummy pancakes thanks to Andrew, and set off to the Turner Rd. area again. We hiked along it quite a while, mainly due to my curiosity. It seemed we were in forested area -- saw an anthill -- but we eventually heard water & found that the road was emerging over a valley. Quite steep sides down, too. I kept urging us onwards, but Mer at some point turned back. I knew we'd get a view of the mountain soon, as we were rounding the bend... and we definitely got the payoff viewpoint. Picture perfect view of Mt. Hood, the sides of hills, and the valley beneath. Andrew & I took pictures. Headed back then, and caught up with Mer. Andrew & I took another exploring trip up a gravel road, stopped when it got overgrown and didn't seem to be going anywhere. I picked some more berries, and then we rounded up Mer and headed back to camp. We got out of our site right before 2 pm, as directed. And lucky, as another van-load of campers wanted to claim our place. So we took our tuna fish sandwich makings (round 2) over to the day use area, and claimed the lovely site with Mt. Hood over the lake, and flat rocks and a bench to sit on. Ended up floating a bit, and I swam. Deliciously cold. A pine squirrel tried to steal our cookies. Mer and I yelled from the water for Andrew to defend our baked goods. Andrew packed up the edibles, but the squirrel came foraging back. Incorrigible rodent.

Drove back home... We took turns taking showers. I sat on a blanket by the garden reading a bit, Andrew joined me. Then, we went to Crazy Pepper for dinner... Mer and I were quite strong against the chicken fajita burrito, and had the vegetarian version. Andrew alerted us to the yumminess of his chicken, and we were like, "we know." But I will relent and have a free range turkey when I come home for Thanksgiving. Somehow we all finished our dinners, and then staggered about Hood River trying (pretending) to work it off. Then another shopping trip, and home to watch V for Vendetta (which was awesome).

Friday we packed, and kept busy, as we were also leaving. Took a drive with Mum & Tim up to Umbrella Falls & Teacup Lake (Andrew was none too impressed with our scummy lake, but it was fun to visit the old berry picking grounds). Then Andrew, Mer & I went floating, from Hess Rd. down to our house. Quite cold! Showered, and dressed, we headed down to Hood River for First Friday. I purchased some lotion, soap, & face mask (pumpkin and apple, it smells so good I want to eat it). We went to Dog River once more, and I quickly finished my chai. Visited the new bookstore -- which had no Norton anthologies I could see. Listened to the homeschoolers' marimba band. Got a great view from the library park of the river w/ windsurfers. Ahh, Hood River.

Back home, we ate Santacroces pizza on the deck with the mountain view, and then listened to our Zombies CD while finishing up with packing.

Very sad to leave! And I didn't remember to properly say goodbye to the Prissy cat, who will undoubtedly remember and act even more haughty when I see her next.

Driving to the airport we had Strawberry Shortcake memories, and Andrew thought we were crazy.

The flights back were rather exhausting. Red eyes -- the first about 3.5 hours, with a break at what, to us, was 3:30 in the morning, followed by another short 1.5 hour or so flight. Very interrupted sleep. Who on earth books a red eye flight with a freaking BABY? Airlines should have a warning when you book a flight between the hours of 11 pm and 6 am: "WARNING: Children 3 and under not welcome on these flights. Consider other options if possible."

Southern WI is indeed the flatlands, after the mountainous NW.