Nouveau Northwesterner

Our New Website

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:12:14 GMT

We finally got our business website up. If you have some spare time, take a look and let me know what you think. Feedback is welcome. It's always good to get an extra set of eyes and opinions. Plus, since I wrote all the content myself, it may not be perfect. If you find a mistake, let me know. I will be grateful because I can still make changes to the text. There's not much more I can do about the visual design, but I'd still appreciate hearing reactions.

The web address is:

http://www.bettergradestutoring.com/

There are about 12 pages total, I think. The testimonials have been adapted from notes and emails we've received from parents in the last few years as teachers. (Notice the Nigerian name.) It will take a while to get indexed on the major search engines. If you have a family-friendly website or blog and are willing to link to our site, that would be a great help. I am also writing a monthly education blog and posting to many blogsites to help get us higher in the ratings. We got our first client this summer and are looking forward to the new school year - for the first time ever.

The LJ blog for our business is at bettergrades.

Townes Van Zandt clip from Heartworn Highways

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:14:49 GMT

Various & Sundry

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 20:43:57 GMT

I've been discovering Townes Van Zandt lately. You may know him. Folk/Alt country songwriter of the 60's and 70's, who self-destructed in the 80s, or whose self-destruction caught up with him in the 80s. I always thought Willie Nelson had written "Pancho and Lefty," so when I discovered it was Townes Van Zandt I started studying up on him. I've been learning lots of his songs. One of my favorites is "If I Needed You," which was made famous by Emmylou Harris.

I bought these two DVDs, one called Heartworn Highways and the other called Be Here to Love Me. They show lots of Townes, as well as Guy Clark (another great songwriter) and folks like Rodney Crowell and Steve Earl when they were in their 20s. Steve Earl once said, "Townes Van Zandt is the greatest songwriter who ever lived and I will stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table with my boots on and say that."

When Townes heard Steve Earl had said that, he responded, "I've seen Bob Dylan and his bodyguards, and I don't believe Steve Earl could ever get anywhere near Bob Dylan's coffee table."

So I'm going to be singing a few Townes songs at my 5th Annual Going-Away party this summer. I've never mentioned my going-away parties in my journal(s) before I don't think. I had my first one of course before I left for Africa and then I had one every time I came home for summer, and now they have just become kind of a tradition there in Texas for my fam and friends. They're fun. For this one, my friend Troy and I have rented some mics and speakers and a soundboard. So we are going to put on more of a proper show rather than just a campfire sing-along. We even got a set list.

I played at that wedding last weekend. It went well. Everyone liked it. Or pretended to. It was fun.

We leave for Houston on August 7. The party's on Aug 11, and the following week we drive to Oklahoma to visit Heather's parents. I did mention before that they moved to Tulsa? Well, they did.

I'm kinda looking forward to it and I'm kinda wishing to just just get it over with and get back here so that we can fully start the tutoring business and see whether we can make a go at this or not. I think it will be successful, but it will take a while to build referrals. I'm trying to advertise, but there are 4 fucking yellow pages directories in my area. I bought ads in 2.

The website is supposed to go live next Wednesday or Thursday. We'll see. I'm dealing with these German guys in British Columbia. They have strong accents, so our communication is not optimal.

My business cards also are supposed to be getting finished this week. I'm getting rack cards made as well. Got everything else ready I think. Established an LLC, registered with feds and state and city, got a business banking account, a business phone and fax, a home office, tax ID, Quick Books Pro, et al. It really was surprising how much I had to go through just to set up the smallest of small businesses. Anyhoo, wish me lucks.

I'll post a link to the site when it's ready o you can make the clickies.

Heather's in California the past few days. Back tomorrow.

Anything else? . . . Nah, that's it. Hope all is well with you.

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:11:07 GMT

Okay. Seriously. I'm putting AC in my house by next summer. This is ridiculous.

"Oh, you don't need AC but for a few weeks here, anyway. It's waste."

You lie, Northwesterner. You lie.

Crocs and Birkenstocks do not the genius make.

A List of Happenings Past & Future

Fri, 06 Jul 2007 07:42:11 GMT

1. Saw a bald eagle perched atop a tree branch while floating on the Kalama River yesterday.

2. Also saw the largest steelhead salmon I've seen swim right beneath me.

3. Spontaneously decided to dedicate and play the Bob Dylan song "Forever Young" to Heather's grandparents at their 50th wedding anniversary. Felt awkward following perfunctory applause.

4. Am going to see Willie Nelson on Saturday in Bend, Oregon.

5. While sleeping on a wood floor in a year-round tent in the woods, had the most vivid and strange dream about never being able to go outside because every time I tried people would shoot guns at me from their cars.

6. Had not heard from my business website designer this whole week or last week. Cursed at his boss through an email. Then found out he has been very ill.

7. Re-landscaped the front yard and garden.

8. Lost five pounds in two weeks. Gained it back in two days.

9. Going to Houston and Tulsa in August.

Cormac McCarthy on Oprah

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 06:17:06 GMT

Cannot believe it. Flabbergasted, I am.

The man has done, what, two interviews in the last 25 years. Both in print. Both done reluctantly. Now I turn on my TV and see Oprah asking him what it feels like to be a septuagenarian father of an eight-year-old and why women are a mystery to him.

Oy vey.

Branded as a Criminal. From Birth. Literally.

Fri, 25 May 2007 02:21:13 GMT

While subbing today, I was in the middle of a 6th GRADE class in which a student walked in late. His pants were sagging. He wore a puffy jacket despite 80 degree temperatures outside. He walked with a limp. He was rocking the jeri curl.

As he sat down, the other students started whispering. "Was he in juvey? . . . What'd he do?" The kid had apparently been out of school for a while, for I heard one student ask, "Is he a sixth grader? He looks too old." Jeri Curl was a big kid, indeed.

It was one of these double classrooms where two teachers "team" teach. The class was in the middle of a quiz, and when Jeri Curl saw that he sat down, looked at the quiz, and attempted to leave for the bathroom. The teacher saw him and called to stop him.

"Felony. Felony!" she cried. "You just got in here. You can't leave class just yet."

I wasn't sure that I heard it right, so I cruised by to look at his paper. Sure enough. F-E-L-O-N-Y.

After class let out, I asked the other teacher: "Was that young man's name really Felony?"

"Yes," she said. "And he lives up to it, too."

"That's his legal name? Seriously?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "He took a swing at a cop this past weekend, so he's been out of school. When he told the cop his name, the cop didn't believe it. 'Not your street name,' the cop said. But it was. It is his real name."

"That's child abuse," I said. "If I were his regular teacher, I would refuse to call him that."

She looked at me like I had offended her. Or that I had said something wildly unreasonable.

"Well, that's his name," she said.

I may be getting too old. Or too out of touch. Call me intolerant. Whatever. But that shit ain't right. Those parents should be arrested for child abuse. Plain and simple.

Would I be allowed give my child a legal name of "Criminal" or "Idiot" or "Faggot"? That is not individual liberty. It's child abuse.

Sat, 21 Apr 2007 23:40:50 GMT

A Sinner’s Pride

Driving through vales
where oceanic rivers
once swayed toward the sea,
I feel the weight
of water’s ghost
heave on top of me.
In so lush a land
where no one lives
I hope no one shall ever be
more than a kindly visitor
en route to Innisfree.

The waters, more humble now,
more peaceful and more still,
inspire no less awe than then
and have no less strong a will.
From so lush a land
we have been cast
out to bear the chill,
let no man more than lightly tread –
no intruder but the sill.

So arduous the years and work
to say that we are free
So broad the strokes we had to use
to paint our gloom with glee.
So long the years we had to labor
as sinful Sheol shills
So why should we, for Heaven’s sake,
return of our own will?

April 2007

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:22:33 GMT

Easter Brunch

While dining at an eatery
at a table set for one,
a gentleman and family
came in from spring day sun.

Boys so smart in Easter suits,
girls in ribbon and pastel,
clicking by in heels and boots
like tolling Easter bells.

They took their seats quite gracefully
with postures all erect.
The waiter served them faithfully,
with more pomp than you’d expect.

The man’s requests were within reason,
good breeding on display.
He gave best wishes of the season
on this Easter day.

And as I studied all about
this kind good citizen,
I could not, for blazes, figure out
why I hated him.

April 2007

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:56:15 GMT

A Limited Time Offer

Tell you what I’m gonna do.
I can tell you’re sad.
Nah, you don’t look it,
but I can tell.
Your dreams, your deep desire,
did not come to pass. It happens.
The man you once were,
full of moxie,
is no more. People change.
You have lost all capacity
for boyish
insouciance. All for the better.

You are a family man now.
You have promises to keep.
The harness bells have shaken
you awake to the quiet devastation
of acquiescence.
But it gets better from here,
I promise.
You can finally end your struggle upstream
And drift into the tepid pools
of pulchritudinous platitude.
Does that phrase not satisfy you?
But you like lilting alliteration –
Hell, you love that shit.

Tell you what I’m gonna do.
I’m gonna get you things.
Material things.
I’m gonna get you a job.
A real job.
All you gotta do is
talk sports with other men.
Throw in a few words
on market or real estate development.
Admire movers and shakers,
though with manly restraint.
Chuckle knowingly
at clichéd anecdotes on married life.
Mow the lawn.
But for godsakes,
stop reading those fucking books
and stop writing those fucking manuscripts,
ejaculating all over
perfectly good typing paper
like a teenaged girl
whose already embattled reason
is flushed away entirely
through her urethra
in a fit of blinding ecstasy.

Look, I do not dislike you.
I’m not angry with you, even,
but I refuse to pity you.
You just gotta let that shit go, man.
Tell you what I’m gonna do.
I’m gonna let you keep poetry.
How’s ‘at? You can have it.
I mean, the shit is harmless anyway, right.
Like locking a crazy man
in a padded room
and saying, go ahead, knock yourself out.
So go ahead. As hobby only.
Don’t turn the innocuous
into the ridiculous.
And in the meantime,
the in-between time,
I’m ‘a hook you up.
What do you say to that?
Don’t start thinking now –
that’s what got you
off-track
in the first place.

This could be big for you.
I’m ‘a do right by you.
Good things are coming your way
if you just chuck
that other shit to the curb.
Don’t test me on this.
I threw you a bone.
You ain’t got forever
to mull this over.
Tell you what I’ll do.
I’ll give you a few minutes alone,
but don’t pass on this opportunity.
This is a limited time offer.

March 2007

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:36:09 GMT

Good Teacher, Bad Teacher

There is a girl
in my class
with a wrinkled forehead.
She struggles with me
in the language and voices
of the dead and far away.
We think out loud
and nod and squint and say "Hmmm" together.
She will struggle the rest of her life.
She is why I am a good teacher.

There is a boy
in my class
with smug in his smirk.
He doesn't struggle.
Not with me.
He knows the language and voices
of the new and close at hand.
He knows what he wants in life.
He is seventeen.
He does it and gets it. He gets an A.
He will succeed the rest of his life.
He is why I am a bad teacher.

Spring 2001

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 18:28:52 GMT

There's No Such Thing As Rock 'n' Roll

Nietzsche and Lenny Kravitz said
that God and Rock 'n' Roll are dead.
And this I say is quite absurd,
for those cannot be that never were.
And to further questions again I give,
those cannot die that never lived.

By "those" I mean the silly names,
to label is a human game.
A silly game at that, indeed.
A game? Nay, a silly need.

There's no such thing as rock 'n' roll,
only that which sparks the soul.
There's no such thing as God above,
only that which lives in love.
There's no such thing as love and sin,
only that which lies within.
No such thing as history,
naming masks the mystery.

So put another dime in the jukebox, baby,
Doo wop, doo wop, doo wop.

1998

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 04:45:10 GMT

Birth of a Memory

Putting away paper
in dusty files
atop a broken teacher’s desk
with handles hanging loose
on its too often-jarred drawers
I saw, briefly,
from my third story window,
the flutter of green and brown,
of West African fabric,
made by the Nigerian tailor
who came so often to our flat
that year in Lagos.

You disappeared
behind the adjacent building
in one second or two,
dragging the colors
not far behind,
and I mourned its passing
to memory.
Though I would remember it
a half century more,
I mourned.
And when my melancholy asked
if I should set it down
to verse,
I returned, perfunctorily,
to the putting away of paper.

Spring 2006

Pomes and Poeems

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 19:34:40 GMT

Kids up here make fun of me for the way I say the word, "poem".

The way I say it rhymes with "coin".

Most people, I guess, pronounce it as rhyming with "tome".

But, also, kids in Texas made fun of me for saying it the way I do, so I don't know if it's a southern thing.

I was listening to Stoney LaRue doing a Guy Clark song, and he says poems the same way I do. So I'm not self-conscious about it.

I'm gonna start writing a poem a week. Just for the hell of it. Just because I need to be writing something. And I'm gonna start posting them here, just because knowing a few people might glance at one now and then will help me keep consistent and regular about it. Maybe I will even submit some if I turn a good one or two. It will also help me keep a database. I've lost dozens of poems in the last ten years or so. Like Willie Nelson said, I let the words of my youth fade away.

Here's a poem I dug up today. I wrote it in February 2003 from a hotel window in Tacoma, Washington. But I changed it to Seattle.

Three Meals for the Day

In Seattle, there’s a seagull
that floats above a dock.
Gliding at a stand-still,
he uses what he’s got.
Below there is a fisherman,
who fights against the chill.
The wind chops on the waters,
dragging waves ‘til they keel.
The seagull soars away,
the fisherman leaves the dock,
the waves rush to the shore
and crescendo on the rocks.
Night falls on the land
and darkens all the bay.
I pull the shutters closed,
three meals for the day.

Doggie Facelift

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:37:49 GMT

One of my pups, Larry McMurtry, had to have surgery on his eyes. Not his eyeballs, per se, but the skin around his eyeballs. It was foldnig under and irritating his eyes. Now he looks kind of scary. His eyes are all swollen and red. Hope that goes away soon.

He had to wear one of those cones around his neck the first day home. Our other pup, Cormac McCarthy, did not recognize Larry with the cone and started barking at him and sniffing his butt. I dropped Larry off during my lunch break, and when I got home he, with the help of Cormac (I suspect), chewed the cone off his head.

Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 16:40:08 GMT

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.

Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.

So, if you are really an environmentalist - ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available - a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage - buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.

http://clubs.ccsu.edu/recorder/editorial/editorial_item.asp?NewsID=188

No Miller Light Tonight!

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 01:45:40 GMT

Dinner with friends tonight (Heather's friends), and so I splurged on some Chimay Red. Mmmmm. I used to drink this in Rice Village when I used to go to The Big Easy and listen to old blues and jazzmen.

Ever had it? It's Belgian. It was originally brewed by Trappists monks. They also make cheese.

Check it:

http://www.chimay.com/en/chimay_red_218.php

Happy St. Patty's Day

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 20:22:49 GMT

My first year in Lagos, I dated an Irish girl from Limerick. I told her my last name, Curry, was an Irish name.

"Is it?" she said. (This was not a question.)

"Yes," I said. "Haven't you ever heard that name in Ireland?"

"Maybe Northern Ireland," she said.

"That sounds vaguely like an insult," I said.

She paused, puffed on her Rothman, never turning to look at me, and said, "Well, it's not a compliment."

Enjoy your green beer or whatever it is you do.

Molly Ivins

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 04:10:29 GMT

I just found out about this today. Molly Ivins was a writer I admired very much. She proved that Texans can be witty, brilliant, and hilarious. She also wrote continually about what I have to explain to people all the time - that George Bush is NOT a Texan. She said that true Texans don't use the word "summer" as a verb. I say that someone who was born in Connecticut, went to high school in Massachussetts, then to Harvard and Yale, couldn't possibly be truly Texan.

Molly Ivins. May she rest in peace.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/washington/01ivins.html?pagewanted=1&ref=obituaries

They're catching on. Dammit. Must. Stop. Them. . . .

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 18:36:46 GMT

before it's too late!

"51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/us/16census.html?hp&ex=1169010000&en=47985bda8ea9f048&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Songwriting

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 11:26:41 GMT

Heather's mom is back in town from Tulsa. (They moved there 'cause her dad got a job paying double what he was making here. He could solve all their problems, so they paid him to move there. Apparently, Oklahoma newspapers are much farther behind in technology and such than on the West Coast. What a shocker.)

Anyway, so we took the dogs out to Heather's parents' place in Kalama, on the Kalama River. We let them run around in the snow. Heather and her mom went to the dump to get rid of some trash. When they came back, a truck pulled up in the driveway. A man said, in a huffy puffy tone, that our dogs were chasing his sheep down the road and that one of his sheep is pregnant and that our dogs are "stressing out" the pregnant sheep. Then he says to Heather, "By law, I can shoot those dogs if I want!" So we had to lock the dogs up. I wish I had been there when he said that. Motherfucker.

Part of going out there was so the dogs could run around. Since that wasn't going to happen, I left Heather there for the night and came home with the dogs. I left the book I was reading out there, so I didn't have a lot to do when I got home. I was [occupied in the lieu] when I started humming a song in my head. Lyrics just coming from nowhere. I went to my closet, and, for the first time since June, I took my guitar out of its case and started playing.

Then, for the first time in two years, I started writing a song. I finished it in about an hour. It's really weird how that happens. I've picked up the guitar plenty of times and tried to write a song and it never happens. Then one day I'm ~~sitting~~ in dispose ~~on the commode~~ in the lieu and weird folk music just occupies my head.

So I wrote this song. It may suck horribly, but I actually like it. It looks cheesy as just a text (most songs do), but here are the lyrics. Think Marshall Tucker Band Meets John Denver. Can you do that? The music is sort of a mellow-but--groovy-knee-slappin' "Can't You See" (which I actually steal lyrics from at the end) and a slow, creeping "Thank God I'm a Country Boy." Does anyone on my friendslist get those references at all? Maybe not.

Whatever. It was fun. A good way to spend a Sunday night.

Crumbs From the Pie

3 cups of coffee in the mornin'
3 cans of beer in the night
Then off to bed to snuggle
the one who treats me right.
But between all that I have to scratch, kick, and fight
for a dollar and some crumbs the pie
...for a dollar and some crumbs from the pie.

When I was just in high school
I heard from Uncle Sam
He wanted me to go and fight
in a faraway foreign land
But I remembered Uncle Tommy coming back from Vietnam.
They gave him a medal and some crumbs from the pie.
...gave him a medal and some crumbs from the pie.

If my grandpappy heard these words
he'd surely tan my hide
He'd say you got work, God, and family -
you should be satisfied.
But he worked all his life and all he had when he died
was a dollar and some crumbs from the pie.
. . .was a dollar and some crumbs from the pie.

So I'm gonna grab my bootstraps
and strengthen my resolve.
I'm gonna climb that ladder
and live high on the hog.
But when I fill my belly and throw a bone to my dog
I'll leave you the innards and some crumbs from the pie
...leave you the innards and some crumbs form the pie.

When I make all the money,
when I get all the gold,
The history books will be filled up
with what I bought and sold.
But I'll be kind and gen'rous to the little man below-
I'll throw him a dollar and some crumbs from the pie.
...throw him a dollar and some crumbs from the pie.

Can't you see, can't you see
what equality done for me.
Can't you see, ohh, can't you see
my democracy, meritocracy, meant-to-be, Ma-ni-fest Des-tin-y.

Don't y'all go stealin' this now and makin' a milllion dollars off it.

This is my wife . . .

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 03:09:20 GMT

. . . after watching the conclusion of the 1997 National Spelling Bee, she cried tears of joy for the 13-year-old girl who won. That's right. Cried. That's right. Spelling Bee. That's right. Nineteen. Ninety. Seven.

Happy holidays, y'all.

Stuff I Read

Thu, 21 Dec 2006 08:33:27 GMT

Here's some stuff I read:

I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.

In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign to her newborn.

Baby, drink milk.
Baby, play ball.

And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby, come hug, fluent now in the language of grief.

-from "In the Cemetary Where Al Jolson Is Buried"

Dr. Diamond told a story about the young daughter of a friend. The little girl had found a frog in the yard. The frog appeared to be dead, so her parents let her prepare a burial site - a little hole surrounded by pebbles. But at the moment of the lowering, the frog, which had only been stunned, kicked its legs and came to.

"Kill him!" the girl had shrieked.

[. . .]

The dreams came back and back until they were just - again. I wished that things would stay out of sight the way they did in mountain lakes. In one that I know, the water is so cold, gas can't form to bring a corpse to the surface. Although you would not want to think about the bottom of a lake, what you can say about it is - the dead stay down.

[. . .]

The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss - you have gone and lost something else. But the body moves toward health. The mind, too, in steps. One step at a time. Ask a mother who has just lost a child, How many children do you have? "Four," she will say, "-three," and years later, "Three," she will say, "-four."

-from "BEG, SL TOG, INC, CONT, REP"

That's some stuff I read from Amy Hempel short stories. I like it. I present it as examples of good fiction writing. I like words that make my heart sink. It's raining outside my window now. I like that, too.

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 06:46:23 GMT

In 1991, which is also the year when the present crisis in Iraq actually began, it was Saudi influence that helped convince President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker to leave Saddam Hussein in power and to permit him to crush the Shiite intifada that broke out as his regime reeled from defeat in Kuwait. If, when reading an article about the debate over Iraq, you come across the expression "the realist school" and mentally substitute the phrase "the American friends of the Saudi royal family," your understanding of the situation will invariably be enhanced.

Many people write as if the sectarian warfare in Iraq was caused by coalition intervention. But it is surely obvious that the struggle for mastery has been going on for some time and was only masked by the apparently iron unity imposed under Baathist rule. That rule was itself the dictatorship of a tribal Tikriti minority of the Sunni minority and constituted a veneer over the divisions beneath, as well as an incitement to their perpetuation. The Kurds had already withdrawn themselves from this divide-and-rule system by the time the coalition forces arrived, while Shiite grievances against the state were decades old and had been hugely intensified by Saddam's cruelty. Nothing was going to stop their explosion, and if Saddam Hussein's regime had been permitted to run its course and to devolve (if one can use such a mild expression) into the successorship of Udai and Qusai, the resulting detonation would have been even more vicious.

And into the power vacuum would have stepped not only Saudi Arabia and Iran, each with its preferred confessional faction, but also Turkey, in pursuit of hegemony in Kurdistan. In other words, the alternative was never between a tranquil if despotic Iraq and a destabilizing foreign intervention, but it was, rather, a race to see which kind of intervention there would be. The international community in its wisdom decided to delay the issue until the alternatives were even fewer, but it is idle to pretend that Iraq was going to remain either unified or uninvaded after the destruction of its fabric as a state by three decades of fascism and war, including 12 years of demoralizing sanctions.

The disadvantage of an American-led intervention, it might be argued, was that it meant the arbitration of foreigners. But the advantage was, and is, that these foreigners at least have a stake in the preservation of a power-sharing system. Iraq has only three alternatives before it. The first is dictatorship by one faction or sect over all the others: a solution that has been exhausted by horrific failure. The second is partition, which would certainly involve direct intervention by all its neighbors to secure privileges for their own proxies and would therefore run the permanent risk of civil war. And the third is federalism, where each group would admit that it was not strong enough to dictate terms to the others and would agree to settle differences by democratic means. Quixotic though the third solution may seem, it is the only alternative to the most gruesome mayhem—more gruesome than anything we have seen so far. It is to the credit of the United States that it has at least continued to hold up this outcome as a possibility—a possibility that would not be thinkable if the field were left to the rival influences of Tehran and Riyadh.

http://www.slate.com/id/2155721/nav/tap2/

Stuff I Did

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 03:31:16 GMT

Here's some stuff I did:

*went to Odell Lake, Oregon, at the foot of Willamette Pass in the Deschutes National Forest, up in the mountains
*watched a foot and half of snow fall during my first day there
*eschewed snowboarding at all costs
*went sleding with nieces and nephews
*read 5 Amy Hempel short stories and liked only two of them
*played two games of poker and five games of cribbage
*removed my Subaru Legacy from under two feet of snow
*came home and picked up dogs from Mind Your Manners dog boarding
*brought dogs home and put them in kennel, which leads to backyard
*did not realize that over the weekend, 50 mph winds had tore down backyard fence
*went to mall
*returned from mall, went outside to look for dogs
*found fence down, found dogs gone
*went looking for dogs
*found one dog when lady (who had picked up Cormac after almost running over him) took him into Pet Smart lost and found only to be told by another lady, "I recognize that dog - he's at the dog park all the time"
*got phone call, went and picked up Cormac
*drove Cormac and wife, Heather, home
*went back out to look for Larry
*after an hour's search, was about to give up when I spotted a man walking his dog
*drove up to man to ask him if he's seen Larry
*before I can ask, man asked, "Are you looking for a dog?"
*said yes and he says "My neighbor's got him"
*picked up Larry and drove home
*went to Pet Smart to buy doggie name tags
*went to neighbor's to discuss fence
*heard neighbor say, yes, we need to fix fence, but maybe wait to it gets warmer
*thought, "so . . . March?"
*went to craigslist.com to find electric dog fence to replace blown down wooden fence
*took dogs to dog park
*stayed extra long since they will be locked in garage for a couple days
*came home and typed stuff I did on LJ
*got ready to watch An Inconvenient Truth father-in-law got me for gift

So how was your weekend?