El Barrio or Spa Ha?

"Gentrification refers to the process whereby a low rent neighborhood is transformed into a high rent neighborhood through redevelopment, usually in conjunction with changing demographics and an influx of wealthier residents" (Wikipedia).

The blog of an acquaintance, Bagel in Harlem, was mentioned in a New York Times article this past weekend. The article, "Feeling Settled? Must be time to move," uses her blog, which is about "A Jewish girl from Indiana navigates the maze of New York City real estate and finds herself residing in East Harlem. Her stories reflect upon the notion of ‘home’ and the quest behind finding the right one. This site is dedicated to the search for a Bagel in Harlem," as a springing off point to discuss serial movers- people that frequently change New York City apartments and neighborhoods. Partly because the majority of people have moved in the last year or two, and more or less fit that description, I didn't find the article too intriguing. I was disappointed to see that was the direction the NY Times decided to take regarding "Bagel in Harlem."

To me, Bagel in Harlem is fascinating as a discussion from the perspective of a gentrifier in the serially gentrified neighborhood of East Harlem. A quick look at the history referenced on the website East Harlem Tourism shows an ever-changing ethnic New York City area. Another history account can be found on the Hope Community, Inc. website. From what I can tell, East Harlem started off as the farmland area of New York, provence of the Native Americans. Eventually German and Irish immigrants took over the area, then Italians and Eastern Europeans, to the point that "in the early 1900s East Harlem was home to the largest number of Italians in the country." With World War I and II came settlers of Puerto Rican and African American descent. Throughout the 1900s and especially in the 60s, there were many political struggles waged to determine who would control which aspects (educational, etc) of East Harlem and activists representing the different cultural groups residing in East Harlem became involved in the community. Currently, the neighborhood continues to change as Mexican, Dominican, and South American residents enter the area, as well as artists and musicians, and former Manhattan-ites lured by the real estate deals offered in "Spa Ha."

Newcomers- mostly white yuppies and hipsters, or whatever you want to call them, are just the latest in this chain of influxes, but follow a historical precedent of completely changing the community. The website East-Harlem.com, maintained by Jose B. Rivera, an East Harlem resident and community activist, has plenty to say on this new trend, as he rants about the new name Soho-like name for Spanish Harlem- "Spa Ha"- and "New Residents":

"Spa Ha"
People are moving up here like crazy. Sometimes these newcomers look at us as if saying 'What are you doing here?" Most of the time they just rush on by. But how long will it be before I am the sore thumb, sticking
out and not belonging in my own community because it's very character has changed? It's good to have fresh faces in the community, but this is getting scarry. Am I about to be squeezed out by their ability to pay
higher rents?

"New Residents"
Remember, you are displacing us. If you care at all about us, don't come and together we can show the greedy landlord and real estate interest how not to destroy a community, a lesson they need to learn.

Yet, as reading Bagel in Harlem notes, what looks to be ego and ignorance of the local community can just be fear. In the honest post, "Tough Times," the author describes walking by a bunch of men late at night:

I tell him to stay out of trouble as I walk past him and his posse. It feels good to throw my shoulders back and walk purposefully; to feel tough in a way that extends beyond any mental or physical strength I’ve known. Perhaps it’s part of a reinvention of self that comes with the territory that I find myself living in. Or maybe the badass in me has always been lurking - looking for a place like 125th street to come out. As I make my way home, I pull the belt of my wool coat tighter around my waist, and tug at my ponytail holder to let my hair down.

You Forgot Poland!

We've been living under Bush's reign for so long, and I am so fiercely aligned with the blue state liberals, I don't feel there is much gained in discussing his idiocy further. However, I can't help but comment briefly on this latest tidbit.

First of all, remember how America needs to break its addiction to oil?

The excerpt from Bush's State of the Union address:

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology. Since 2001, we have spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources -- and we are on the threshold of incredible advances.

So tonight, I announce the Advanced Energy Initiative -- a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research -- at the Department of Energy, to push for breakthroughs in two vital areas. To change how we power our homes and offices, we will invest more in zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy. (Applause.)

I would applaud that speech excerpt also. Less oil, damn good idea. However, an illustration of how little Bush's administration actually means those sweet-sounding things he reads to the camera becomes apparent when you come across the article "Bush Admits to 'Mixed Signals' Regarding Laboratory on Renewable Energy" from the New York Times.

Basically, this article states that right after Bush talked up looking into different energy sources, his administration cut the budget for it, which resulted in the firing of a bunch of researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. They fired the people that, to quote the president's goal, "develop cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources." The administration didn't even have the courtesy to wait a few months before letting them go. Bush just said one thing and fired another.

Nobody may have bothered to note this discrepancy until, as a public relations stint, Bush decided to go to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to promote his Advanced Energy Initiative. I guess that was the point when the administration realized they had to hire the staff back-- so Bush would have someone to talk to about this great new energy plan that obviously- in reality- means nothing to the administration.
But my favorite is what Bush had to say about this whole thing. His explanation on the budget cut and subsequent firings:

"The issue of course is whether or not good intentions are met with actual dollars spent. Part of the issue we face, unfortunately, is that there are sometimes decisions made as a result of the appropriations process, where money may not end up where it is supposed to have gone."

And an excerpt from his speech to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory employees:

"My message to those who work here is, we want you to know how important your work is," Mr. Bush said. "We appreciate what you're doing. And we expect you to keep doing it. And we want to help you keep doing it."

Of course, the 32 researchers that were fired as a result of the budget cuts were just being rehired and not even back to work yet (paperwork confusion) by the time Bush gave the speech. I hate to tell you, Mr. President, but those words would have sounded a lot better if you had 32 more employees to "encourage" at the lab.

Winter of Our Discontent

First Panel:
Calvin: I wonder why people are never content with what they have.
Second Panel:
Hobbes: Are you kidding? Your fingernails are a joke, you've got no fangs, you can't see at night, your pink hides are ridiculous, your reflexes are nil, and you don't even have tails! Of course people aren't content!
Third Panel:
Calvin: Forget I said anything.
Hobbes: Now if tigers weren't content. That would be something to wonder about.

Wikipedia link on Calvin and Hobbes- some good long reading.

Also off wikipedia- Horrendous Space Kablooie entry in full:

The Horrendous Space Kablooie is an alternate term for the Big Bang, coined by Bill Watterson in his comic strip Calvin and Hobbes.

In one strip, Calvin says to Hobbes, "I've been reading about the beginning of the universe. They call it 'The Big Bang.' Isn't it weird how scientists can imagine all the matter of the universe exploding out of a dot smaller than the head of a pin, but they can't come up with a more evocative name for it than 'the Big Bang'? That's the whole problem with science. You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder."

Hobbes asks, "What would you call the creation of the universe?"

Calvin replies, "The Horrendous Space Kablooie!"

This term enjoyed a brief popularity in the scientific community and was widely used in informal communications (often abbreviated to "the HSK").

Flirting with danger ooh oooh

The last post has got me (and many other news outlets, as the lawyer story continues to get picked up) thinking about email blunders. There has been some fantastic stories of the havoc that electronic communication can wreak. Email me if you have one.

Unfortunately, I have been a part of one or two examples.

A particularly traumatizing email incident occurred my sophomore year of college. It was finals week, and I was, to say the least, stressed the fuck out. It was late in the (dark & stormy) night and I was glued to the computer chair with the faulty beginnings of a final paper, that was due the next day, taunting me on the screen. I was at that point in finals week when you are just plain desperate, and you do- to the utmost- the tasks you normally avoid (cleaning your room, doing laundry, reading your high school yearbook, flossing and brushing your teeth for a solid five minutes...). Needless to say, I was checking my email approximately every two and a half minutes.

As I indulged in distraction, desiring only the small oasis from stress a good email can provide, I found another sort in my inbox; an email from my Spanish professor. My professor chose that moment to email the class a long list of what would be on the final exam, which was slated for the next week. She also chose to put everything there was on the final exam (as far as I could tell), and made the list in CAPITAL LETTERS. It was an intimidating list no matter how you looked at it, but with the capital letters, the list appeared to rage at me and to belittle my every effort in the Spanish language. I couldn't take it and I absolutely had to comment on its awfulness by forwarding it to my friend that was in the class and stating that capital letters were mean and the professor was annoying. I have to admit using a perhaps excessive amount of exclamation points after both these statements. Anyway, the email whisked away into cyberspace and I got back to my dismal paper.

It was a long night of writing, but I finished the damn thing, handed it in, and went about my day. It was late afternoon by the time I returned to my room and checked my email again.

I can still clearly recall the frozen moment of fear that jolted me as I spied an email from my Spanish professor awaiting me in my inbox, an email titled: Re: Re: FINAL EXAM. I dialed my friend's number as I opened the email, hoping against hope it was an elaborate joke. However, upon reading it, I realized it was no joke, that I had in fact emailed directly back to my professor and unleashed my final exam frustration on that unsuspecting woman. She said, in full lowercase, she "didn't know capital letters were mean." I left my friend a message, of myself screaming. And screaming. At least I knew I got the right phone number.

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

...Even telling this story has got me thinking about the ease of creating new verbs the internet has wrought. The internet is so new it requires a whole new set of language. Crazy. I mean, television changed everything and it can't begin to claim all those new verbs!
To google. To friendster. To blog. To tag.
The longer we live with The Internet the more it becomes the stuff of science fiction.

Another thing I've been considering lately is the professional consequences of having an online self. For example, a friend of mine got a writing job recently, and her new employer told her that there were many qualified candidates, but he googled them all and she had the most impressive results. This, though positive, also brought chills down my spine. It is a smart thing for an employer to do. But eventually, a new version of padding the resume will be creating a false online self for employers to stumble upon. Then how will you separate the successful doppelgangers from the actual online selves, if those can be called actual?

Furthermore, if you are relatively young and living in the fully blogged area of New York City, there's a good chance at this moment, and an ever increasing likelihood, that your prospective employer would, if they looked hard enough, stumble upon a tale of some drunken exploit or revealing photo or hookup story or -something- regarding their candidate- which would negate all the trouble you took with that fancypants suit, obsequious attitude, and smooth hairdo.

I guess the moral of the story is that this is some dangerous territory being created. Beware!

You can e-mail this to whomever you want.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dianna Abdala [mailto: dabdala@msn.com]
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 9:23 PM
To: wak@kormanlaw.com
Subject: Thank you


Dear Attorney Korman,

At this time, I am writing to inform you that I will not be accepting your offer.

After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the pay you are offering would neither fulfill me nor support the lifestyle I am living in light of the work I would be doing for you. I have decided instead to work for myself, and reap 100% of the benefits that I sew.


Thank you for the interviews.


Dianna L. Abdala, Esq.


----- Original Message -----

From: William A. Korman
To: 'Dianna Abdala'
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 12:15 PM
Subject: RE: Thank you


Dianna -

Given that you had two interviews, were offered and accepted the job
(indeed, you had a definite start date), I am surprised that you chose
an e-mail and a 9:30 PM voicemail message to convey this information to
me. It smacks of immaturity and is quite unprofessional. Indeed, I did
rely upon your acceptance by ordering stationary and business cards with
your name, reformatting a computer and setting up both internal and
external e-mails for you here at the office. While I do not quarrel
with your reasoning, I am extremely disappointed in the way this played
out. I sincerely wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

- Will Korman


-----Original Message-----
From: Dianna Abdala [mailto: dabdala@msn.com]
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 4:01 PM
To: William A. Korman
Subject: Re: Thank you


A real lawyer would have put the contract into writing and not exercised
any such reliance until he did so.

Again, thank you.


----- Original Message -----

From: William A. Korman
To: 'Dianna Abdala'
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 4:18 PM
Subject: RE: Thank you


Thank you for the refresher course on contracts. This is not a bar exam
question. You need to realize that this is a very small legal community,
especially the criminal defense bar. Do you really want to start
pissing off more experienced lawyers at this early stage of your career?


-----Original Message-----
From: Dianna Abdala [mailto: dabdala@msn.com]
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 4:29 PM
To: William A. Korman
Subject: Re: Thank you


bla bla bla


-----Original Message-----
From: William A. Korman [mailto: wak@kormanlaw.com]
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 7:59 AM
To: 'David Breen'
Subject: FW: Thank you


Did I already forward this to you?



-----Original Message-----
From: David Breen [mailto: dbreen@bu.edu]
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 9:47 AM
To: 'William A. Korman'
Subject: RE: Thank you


OH MY GOD!


Where to begin?


First of all, how unprofessional.and secondly, it is "reap what you
'sow,'" now "sew".if she is going to use a clich?, couldn't she at least
spell it right? And WTF is with her "blab la bla"? Does she not read
your e-mail about it being a small community?! So, finally, can I
forward this along to some folks? I am sure they would love to see how
the up-and-coming lawyers are comporting themselves! (Clearly she did
not go to BU!!!) J


-----Original Message-----
From: William A. Korman [mailto: wak@kormanlaw.com]
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 9:55 AM
To: 'David Breen'
Subject: RE: Thank you


You can e-mail this to whomever you want.

I received this email exchange in a forward yesterday. It was first forwarded February 10th, and on February 15th, when it got to me, I could track the path of forwards to put myself at 38th remove. That is astounding. 38 people forwarded the email exchange on, most to multiple people, the majority on the same day it began to be emailed. If I, someone at a remove from the law world, received this in 5 days (which included a weekend in which it was only forwarded on twice), and the email was headed in a myraid of other directions, through law firms, law schools- the entire legal community I'm sure,- hey I sent it to someone at UCONN law school- it is insane to speculate how many will come to know the sad tale of the spoiled Dianna Abdala.
How do I know she is spoiled? This whole thing was on the front page of the Boston Globe today. Check it out.

An excerpt from the Globe article:

"Abdala, who described herself as a ''trust fund baby," was admitted to
the Massachusetts bar last year and said that since then she has ''just
been taking it easy" because ''I worked hard in school." She decided to
respond to Korman's job posting because ''I wanted to establish somewhat
of a career for myself," she said. ''No one wants to be living off daddy."
Abdala's father, George S. Abdala, is a Springfield lawyer."

Also, for the record, I think "a real lawyer" as Dianna Abdala so eloquently puts it in her email, would sue over this whole proliferation of forwards. What has she got to lose at this point?

The Gates Nostalgia

From an interview with Christo & Jeanne-Claude on The Gates:

"Question: The Gates, like all of your work, is temporary and public. Why do you choose to create temporary public art?
Answer: The temporary quality of the projects is an aesthetic decision. Our works are temporary in order to endow the works of art with a feeling of urgency to be seen, and the love and tenderness brought by the fact that they will not last. Those feelings are usually reserved for other temporary things such as childhood and our own life. These are valued because we know that they will not last. We want to offer this feeling of love and tenderness to our works, as an added value (dimension) and as an additional aesthetic quality."

Yesteryear, before I knew I would count myself among the residents of this metropolis, I came in to see The Gates in Central Park the day it opened. I met up with a group of friends from college, and we walked, for hours, starting at Bethesda Fountain and winding our way through the saffron-bannered crowded paths of the park. It was beautiful. The amazing thing then, and still now when I think of it, was the sheer mass of people experiencing this public art. With the banners flapping over our heads, it felt like a parade. Whether people liked it or not- and there was plenty of both reactions- it was something people felt a need to see, to consider, and to feel for themselves. To me this attitude defines a part of New York City; people here feel a personal right and an ownership to cultural events that is unique. The Gates could have been about creating this compulsion, or appreciating it. Or it could have been about rediscovering, in a dreary month, the most anachronistic and beautiful part of the city, Central Park- or it could be a celebration of artist's obsession- or it could be an aesthetically pleasing array of color in a beautiful setting. Whatever it may have been, I am finding myself missing it a year later, so it was certainly something.

Chiaroscuro Ski

This past week has been so crazy-busy that I feel like I crashed headlong into a wall of pillows now that I've got nothing to do. Arriving in Connecticut with a snowstorm in tow is a pretty effective change of pace. Most nights last week were spent literally dashing downtown to uptown and vice versa and now I am finding myself just plodding up and down the stairs, mulling over which hot beverage best suits the hour (coffee, tea, cocoa, tea), and trying to lure the dog onto my lap.

Earlier this evening my Dad and I went skiing, after the sun went down, on the airline trail. The moon had lit the sky to a suffused orange point, and it reflected off the snow enough to silhouette his figure and exposed parts of tree branches; the only other things out there as far as I could tell. I don't imagine there is any better way to clear your head than glide through a cold still trail layered with silence and whiteness.

The picture above is from this website, which has years of beautiful pictures from the Hebron section of the Airline Trail.

it's... Candlemas!

I had both tea & coffee this morning and now my brain is working overtime, in a strange way. I'm at my desk trying to focus on a monotonous task and I am getting irrepressible urges, approximately every 2 minutes, to google something new. Groundhog day (fuck you Phil, you rodent! you're wrong!) Metropolitan opera! Fred's got slacks! the Monkees! the Irish governmental system! Swedish fish!
This is not producing neat stacks of properly stapled papers in a timely manner.
Also, i am wearing a new pair of sneakers (half-price, yay!), and they are all awesome and cushy and new-feeling, like what i imagine moon boots to be like. (Hyper brain says: google moon boots! do it now!) The sneakers are making me want to skip around the office, and break out into a brisk trot in the hallway.

So I've been giving some thought lately to Secret Food. I moonlight (not entirely accurate, but sounds good) as a receptionist, sitting at the front desk while the other person goes to the bathroom or eats lunch. So the last two times I've noticed, and this is with two different people, each individual had a candybar stashed under the lip of the desk. One, a butterfinger, the other, a Cadbury's fruit and nut bar. Myself, I like to keep a York peppermint patty around. And my sister was telling me about interrupting a guy eating mini rainbow sprinkled Krispy Kreme donuts in his office. So all of this brings me to the hypothesis that people have secret foods, often times, candybars. I mean, candybars are obviously sold in New York- they are plentiful- but you never actually see people eating them.
My friend and I realized this one fateful day not long after I had moved to the Big Apple. We decided to eat some lunch, head over to the Strand bookstore, and then go to this candy store I had heard great things about, called Economy Candy. Unfortunately, as I said, I had just moved to New York, and therefore had no concept whatsoever of the Lower East Side (now I have a concept, but not yet real directional knowledge). But anyway we ended up wandering for hours trying to find this place, walking from the East River to the Hudson River and back in pursuit of candy. I can think of few times I have felt so determined in my life than I was to get to this place. I can empathsize more with crack addicts now, and their desperation. So, the long and short of it is, Economy Candy was closed by the rather late hour we reached it, and we were weak with hunger and physically sore from the exertion of attempting to locate it. So, desperate times call for desperate measures, and we ended up buying Snickers bars at a drug store, and tearing into them on the street. We then noticed we were getting some weird looks, which are not the easiest things to get in New York. There we were, unabashedly and simultaneously practically gulping down chocolate, right out in the open!
It's secret food! Keep that in the privacy of your own home, or at least, hidden in your desk!

more espionage; mystery photo

Mermen, Monsters, or Cephalopods?

I think I liked the world better when no one could prove they had seen a live giant squid.

Calculated Gloom

Getting out of bed this morning produced sound effects not unlike velcro, I wanted so much to stay in it. After getting up and glancing out the window, I actually did crawl back in, effectively choosing sleep over breakfast this wet Monday. Yep, so bad it's a cliche of bad- a wet Monday; rainy but cold. New York umbrellas (a whole different species of umbrella) were out this morning and people were not afraid to knock each other around with them.

As you can tell, I was feeling low, but I made it to work and figured I was just tired until I stepped into the elevator. The fancypants elevator at my workplace has a little screen which flashes various (random) headlines, usually pertaining to the odd celebrity tidbit, but today it had another announcement: today is the Gloomiest Day of 2006, as determined by "scientists" based on a calculation having to do with weather, debt, days after Christmas, and some other factors. Who exactly are these scientists that woke up this morning and said "yes! This is it!" Those are the people I'm going to worry about the rest of today.

So this may seem far-fetched but apparently this news does NOT only exist in my elevator: there is an article on a website called Scotsman.com titled "It's 23 January... have a bad day." Long excerpt from said article below:

But, wait for it, the worst is yet to come, and it falls today: not a blizzard, a financial crash or even a rogue asteroid, but the dire convergence of all our seasonal woes, the most depressing day of 2006, as identified by psychologist Dr Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University's Centre for Lifelong Learning, an expert in seasonal disorders and a man who likes his formulae.

Last year Arnall created a formula enabling those rash enough to do so to calculate their life expectancy (involving factors such as genetic inheritance, optimism, nutrition, and relationships). We don't know what percentage of the population decided not to bother getting up this morning as a result, but expect a rash of absenteeism today, as another formula he has made up identifies it as the most miserable day of the year (last year he similarly predicted 24 January as Day of Gloom).

Taking into account factors such as foul weather, Christmas debts, the lingering effects of seasonal overindulgence, failed New Year's resolutions and generally reduced motivation, Arnall's worst day "formula" is ([W + (D-d)] x TQ) ÷ (M x NA). (W: weather, D: debt, d: money due in January pay, T: time elapsed since Christmas, Q: time since failed New Year's resolutions to quit smoking, drinking etc, M: general motivational levels, NA: the need to take action.)

...and they called him Meal

Hamster and Snake Forge Unlikely Friendship

TOKYO (Jan. 19) - Gohan and Aochan make strange bedfellows: one's a 3.5-inch dwarf hamster; the other is a four-foot rat snake. Zookeepers at Tokyo's Mutsugoro Okoku zoo presented the hamster - whose name means "meal" in Japanese - to Aochan as a tasty morsel in October, after the snake refused to eat frozen mice. But instead of indulging, Aochan decided to make friends with the furry rodent, according to keeper Kazuya Yamamoto. The pair have shared a cage since.
"I've never seen anything like it. Gohan sometimes even climbs onto Aochan to take a nap on his back," Yamamoto said. Aochan, a 2-year-old male Japanese rat snake, eventually developed an appetite for frozen rodents but has so far shown no signs of gobbling up Gohan - despite her name.
"We named her Gohan as a joke," Yamamoto chuckled. "But I don't think there's any danger. Aochan seems to enjoy Gohan's company very much." The Tokyo zoo also keeps a range of mostly livestock animals, and promotes "cross-breed interaction," according to Yamamoto. But Gohan and Aochan's case was "was a complete accident," Yamamoto said.

Why I'm Not Cut Out For This Job

I just had a just-barely-resistable urge to go over to my coworker's cubicle- where he sits silently, patiently hardworking- and start shaking him and yelling, in his face, "aren't you excited about numbering these pages? Aren't you?!!!" This is sick. Even writing it makes the muscles in my arms clench longingly to go & do it.

Child Abuse, Removal

So for the past week the story of Nixzmary Brown, a seven year old child, and her death and abuse (see today's New York Times article) at the hands of her stepfather has been all over the papers in New York; on the cover of each one this past week. It is a tragic story, a story made more terrible the more you read about it. It has people up in arms over the child protective services, and even the mayor spoke out against the state system for failing to protect this child. Some of this attention may result in positive change, but there is also a likely result of encouraging social workers to pull children from their homes prematurely. Which is also a hard concept. On one hand, if it may prevent death and abuse like in the case of Nixzmary Brown, how can one not take a child from a home? On the other, abuse is not always easy to prove, not always cut and dry, and to take children from homes which may not, in the end, be considered abusive, can be far more traumatic than allowing them to live at home, with ongoing services.

It should be recognized that taking a child away from their home is perhaps the most incredibly violent well-intentioned act that exists. Imagine you are five years old, sitting around watching T.V. with your mom, and some person walks into your home, tells you to pack a suitcase and grab your favorite teddy bear, and leave for an undetermined amount of time. You are five and have no idea when you will see your mom again, and no one will give you any answers for the million questions you are too confused or afraid to ask. A social worker can rip a child away from every single thing they know and have ever known: their parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, neighbors, pets, possessions, culture, daily routines, school. Then, when the child is taken out of the home, there is no magic place to bring them. Foster homes may be hard to come by, may be temporary, may be terrifying and strange. A lot of times children that have been removed bounce around, to eventually land back where they started.

Child protective services (ACS, as they are called in New York) did fail Nixzmary Brown; child protective services in an inherently flawed system. Having worked in a similar child protective state system, reading the various details of the case provokes odd realizations of understanding, resignation, fear, disgust, and anger. I have been the worker that could not get access to a home in which there was abuse going on. Firing a few people involved and hiring a few more is not, unfortunately, the solution.

I take birthdays seriously.

I wake up with a strange feeling on friend's birthdays, especially when they live elsewhere. On their birthday, absent friends get on my mind like that thing you walked from the bedroom to the kitchen to get and then promptly forgot. Sometimes it takes me most of the day to figure out where that feeling is coming from, but usually the birthday person's countenance will come floating to my brain and I will think of the date and say, aha, the feeling has an origin. I am starting to think of this feeling as the Observation of the Missing Celebration; a day that should be and yet is not a celebration in your life. Like the experience of being in another country on the 4th of July. You're walking around missing things you generally don't need or want- missing fireworks, hot dogs, beer, Lays potato chips- with a vengeance.
So, happy 25th birthday to Myla, who is somewhere in Utah(?)!

A Birthday Poem
by Ted Kooser

Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.

...also, speaking of birth, how wild is this?

From Ireland On-Line:

After a decade parents discover babies switched at birth
10/01/2006 - 13:13:29

Two babies born on the same day in the same hospital in Thailand were accidentally switched at birth, but nobody knew about it for a decade.

The parents of the children, now 10 years old, learned last month they had been raising children that biologically were not theirs, doctors said today.

Doctors at the hospital in the southern Thai province of Trang where the children were born said it was still a mystery how the mix-up occurred, but noted that the pair shared certain traits.

“They were (born) in the same room, had the same weight, and were delivered at the same time,” said Sinchai Rongdet, the current director of Yantakhao Hospital where both babies were delivered. “The only difference is their gender.”

Doctors typically tell a mother her baby’s sex as soon as the child is born and tag the baby’s wrist with his or her particulars.

The children – Orawan Chanthong, the girl, and, Cherawut Bunyu, the boy – grew up in neighbouring villages and went to the same school.

Neighbours constantly told the parents that their children bore close resemblance to the other child’s family.

To end nagging curiosity, the parents and children went for DNA tests, Sinchai said.

“DNA tests confirmed that the children were switched,” he said, adding that the families have not yet decided how to handle the news.

A senior Health Ministry official, Prat Bunyawongwirot, said the ministry was investigating the incident and assigning psychologists to speak with both children.

Havana Bourgeois

I saw the play Havana Bourgeois this past Sunday; it was the first night it played, so it was a little rough around the edges (the play started and immediately someone sprinted out of the room to turn out the audience lights) but very well done all the same, with some amazing actors. The play concerns someone embarking on their career, on the verge of achieving "the American Dream," when the Cuban revolution gains power & eventually upsets the country and notion of the Dream itself. The play was made more interesting when Sharyn and I talked to the director afterward and found out the play is the playwright's father's actual story.

Also, if you are in the mood to contemplate some philosophical conundrums on the order of angels on a pinhead, check out this wikipedia entry on the omnipotence paradox (Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even that being could not lift it?). The highlight of the wikipedia entry being the Simpsons' reference: On the TV Show "The Simpsons", while Homer is using medicinal marijuana, he asks the question, "Can Jesus microwave a microwaveable burrito so hot, that even he himself could not eat it?"
Now THAT provokes some thought. It also bring to mind a classic Deep Thought by Jack Handey:
"If God dwells inside us, like some people say, I sure hope he likes enchiladas, because that's what He's getting!"
Also, apparently the Simpsons and Philosophy are so entertwined they teach a course about it at Berkeley.

"If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled." -P.G. Wodehouse

This poor woman in the other room keeps sneezing, and she has one of those unfortunate loud sneezes that sounds like screams. So every time she sneezes the woman sitting closest to her reacts with a surprised noise. From this room it sounds like a fight.

I just spent a pleasant lunch hour reading P.G. Wodehouse. He writes with all this great 1920s English Oxford chap slang. Dialogue from the book I'm reading, Very Good, Jeeves:

"I found a difficulty in boosting along the chit-chat. He was not a responsive cove.
'Nice day,' I said.
'Quite.'
'But they say the crops need rain.'
He had buried himself in his paper once more, and seemed peeved this time on being lugged to the surface.
'What?'
'The crops.'
'The crops?'
'Crops.'
'What crops?'
'Oh, just crops.'
He laid down his paper.
'You appear to be desirous of giving me some information about crops. What is it?'
'I hear they need rain.'
'Indeed?'"

Wanderlust

It was this time two years ago I was preparing to leave for my journeys in South America, and this time 2 years before that I had just arrived in Oaxaca, Mexico, and, as much as I like my life in New York, it is painful to break that streak. There's nothing in the world like walking out of the airport in January into weather that was previously inconceivable, carrying all the belongings you will have for the next few months, ready to see what it is you want to do now.

One time when traveling in Europe my friend Roxy and I got on a train going to Geneva, Switzerland by mistake. We got onto the train and sat down, pulled out our snack (croissants- we were coming from France) made ourselves comfortable, and barely managed to get off right before it pulled away. We were amused and relieved when we finally got on the right train, going to Genova, Italy, but the strangest moment was when we
realized it would have been no catastrophe had we gone to Switzerland instead. A little more pricey, maybe, but we'd heard they had pretty mountains and tasty chocolate, so we would have managed. The possibilities that rule you and your life while traveling are just infinitely more probable. I think some of the best times Myla and I had traveling in South America was when we were not where we expected to be; but then again, we often forgot to expect ourselves to be anywhere.

Also, I searched the term wanderlust and found the work of this incredible photographer, Howie Garber. You must look at his wilderness photos.

Hogmanay

Hope you had an enjoyable Hogmanay (Hogmanay \hog-muh-NAY; HOG-muh-nay\, noun: The name, in Scotland, for New Year's Eve, on which children go about singing and asking for gifts; also, a gift, cake, or treat given on New Year's Eve.)

I greeted the New Year on a lower east side rooftop with good company and bad champagne. It was swell.

"New studies suggest that cute images stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain aroused by sex, a good meal or psychoactive drugs like cocaine, which could explain why everybody in the panda house wore a big grin."

As you can see, I have been ruminating on cuteness this morning, inspired by this New York Times article. I especially liked the line above, as I happen to know a couple people beyond obsessed with the baby panda at the National Zoo. They are not, apparently, the only ones with this interest: "And though the zoo's adult pandas have long been among Washington's top tourist attractions, the public debut of the baby in December has unleashed an almost bestial frenzy here. Some 13,000 timed tickets to see the cub were snapped up within two hours of being released, and almost immediately began trading on eBay for up to $200 a pair."

Anyway the article talks about the Darwinian tie to cuteness- the fact that our concept of "cuteness" is based on babies' physical characteristics, the characteristics of which are based on babies' helplessness and need for protection- and therefore our strong reaction to cuteness makes sense. For propagating the human race and all. It gets more interesting as researchers look at how much we find cute because of this ("The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession."), and how different cultures respond more to cuteness than others. Cuteness is a cultural taste- i.e.- let's add some cuteness to this product and it will sell like wildfire in Japan. That's some weird shit. -) -) -)

Also, this article corresponds to a heavy theme running through the New York Times recently- they just can't get enough Darwin. I guess this is liberals fighting intelligent design- bringing evolution to every section of the Times. I bet people with really impressive opposable thumbs are going to be on the Sunday Styles page next week. And Arts and Entertainment will have some article on how the cowboys in Brokeback Mountain represent the pinnacle of evolution somehow.

Lifted from The Onion:

Hopes For 2006

December 28, 2005 | Issue 41•52

What are your biggest hopes for 2006?

Nick Del Mar Waiter

"A pair of novelty 2006 spectacles. At first, anyway."

Jim Sclavanous Package Delivery Man

"I just want to stay on that bull for eight seconds. Eight goddamn seconds. Is that too much to ask?"

Nicholas Knox Chemist

"Settle down, man. We're not even sure if Congress is going to approve funding for 2006 yet."

Miriam Bateman Tax Preparer

"I hope they come out with a third, better Hilton sister."

William Linna Career Counselor

"I just want to spend quality time watching my baby grow up. Of course, I guess I'd have to impregnate some sort of woman first.

Kate Alexander Produce Manager

"Next year? But...but I only just finished this one! When may I finally rest?"