- Saw a horror movie last night called Food, Inc. OK, it's actually a documentary about how food is produced in America. It's truly astonishing how much power the food companies wield. It's not too gross as far as showing animal abuse but it is frightening.

- Article in TIME about getting paid to tweet. Reminds me of when it was the new thing to put ads on your blog. Says one woman interviewed for the article: "'I do understand the arguments against Sponsored Tweets,' says Dance, the Tennessee blogger, who plans to take fuller advantage of the service (she won't disclose her price). 'But ... there's nothing subversive about it. It's just a little payback for the four years of my life I've invested in my blog.'" I would have to disagree...

Review: Lost in Translation

I finished a book called Lost in Translation: A Life in A New Language by Eva Hoffman. The book is a memoir about Hoffman’s emigration from Cracow, Poland, to Vancouver, Canada, in the late 1950s and her struggle to adapt to a new culture and language.

Hoffman writes lovingly about her childhood in the first part of the book, which she names “Paradise.” She details playing in the countryside with her friend Marek, burrowing into haystacks and standing under waterfalls. She learns to play the piano from various teachers and eventually goes to music school to train to become a professional pianist.

It’s the little moments she describes that stand out to me. I think it’s only in childhood that you have those moments that are so overcome with feeling, that are completely new and as a child you are incapable of describing, and I’m glad she does take the time to go back and try to capture them in words:

The Planty are another space of happiness, and one day something strange and wonderful happens there. It is a sunny fall afternoon and I’m engaged in one of my favorite pastimes—picking chestnuts. I’m playing alone under the spreading, leafy, protective tree. My mother is sitting on a bench nearby, rocking the buggy in which my sister is asleep. The city, beyond the lacy wall of trees, is humming with gentle noises. The sun has just passed its highest point and is warming me with intense, oblique rays. I pick up a reddish brown chestnut, and suddenly, through its warm skin, I feel the beat as if of a heart. But the beat is also in everything around me, and everything pulsates and shimmers as it were coursing with the blood of life. Stooping under the tree, I’m holding life in my hand, and I am in the center of a harmonious, vibrating transparency. For that moment, I know everything there is to know. I have stumbled into the very center of plenitude, and I hold myself still with fulfillment, before the knowledge of my knowledge escapes me.

But Hoffman’s childhood wasn’t altogether easy, and her account is quite dark in places as she writes about her war survivor parents, and the increasing influence of the Soviet Union in Poland and oppression of Jews, which leads to her family’s emigration to Canada.

I suppose I’ve never really grasped what an intensely painful experience it must be to lose your language and culture and be forced to learn entirely new ones. The next section of the book is called “Exile,” and clearly the teenage Hoffman is not happy to be in North America, where her family goes from a middle-class existence to struggling to make a living, and she feels extremely alienated from her peers at school. Even the houses seem to offend her Polish sensibilities:

The spaces are so plain, low-ceilinged, obvious; there are no curves, niches, odd angles, nooks or crannies—nothing that gathers a house into itself, giving it a sense of privacy, or of depth—of interiority. There’s no solid wood here, no accretion either of age or dust. There is only the open sincerity of the simple spaces, open right out to the street.

But it’s the loss of a language that hits her the hardest:

The worst losses come at night. As I lie down in a strange bed in a strange house—my mother is a sort of housekeeper here, to the aging Jewish man who has taken us in in return for her services—I wait for that spontaneous flow of inner language which used to be my nighttime talk with myself, my way of informing the ego where the id had been. Nothing comes. Polish, in a short time, has atrophied, shriveled from sheer uselessness. Its words don’t apply to my new experiences; they’re not coeval with any of the objects, or faces, or the very air I breathe in the daytime. In English, words have not penetrated to those layers of my psyche from which a private conversation could proceed. This interval before sleep used to be the time when my mind became both receptive and alert, when images and words rose up to consciousness, reiterating what had happened during the day, adding the day’s experiences to those already stored there, spinning out the thread of my personal story.

Now, this picture-and-word show is gone; the thread has been snapped. I have no interior languages—those images through which we assimilate the external world, through which we take it in, love it, make it our own—become blurred too.

In the last part of the book, named “The New World,” Hoffman writes about her life as an adult, navigating through Rice and Harvard and forming a professional life as an author and “New York intellectual.” Years after she arrives in America, cultural barriers still stand between her and her “American Friends.” According to Hoffman, we’re a young and too open culture that is continuously “trying to reinvent the wheel.”

My American Friends and I are forced to engage in an experiment that is relatively rare; we want to enter into the very textures, the motions and flavors of each other’s vastly different subjectivities—and that requires feats of sympathy and even imagination in excess of either benign indifference or a remote respect.
...I have to translate myself. But if I’m to achieve this without becoming assimilated—that is, absorbed—by my new world, the translation has to be careful, the turns of the psyche unforced. To mouth foreign terms without incorporating their meanings is to risk becoming bowdlerized. A true translation proceeds by the motions of understanding and sympathy; it happens by slow increments, sentence by sentence, phrase by phrase.

I didn’t like this section as well as the earlier two. Perhaps the struggle to find your way in American culture is all too familiar to me. By this time Hoffman has taken the American psyche into her own, along with its neuroses. Stylistically, I thought this section was too weighted down with words, too academic, like she’s trying to form a complicated diagnosis of American culture. The cloud of words does eventually work in getting Hoffman’s point across, but it’s a bit much.

Hoffman returns to Poland as an adult, but she realizes that there can be no alternate self, no person she would have been had she stayed.

“Of course, your life is so much more interesting there,” she says.
“No, that’s not it,” I say, and truly, I don’t know how to compare the interest of our lives. “It’s just that it happens to be the life I happen to have lived.”
“Ach, darling,” Danuta says ruefully. Of course, she understands—the poignancy, and the inevitability of having only one, peculiar version of a life, and living it within the confines of the first-person singular.

I suppose I was particularly interested in Lost in Translation because it is very much about language. As was hammered into me in grad school, language forms our reality. After reading this book, I realize that having to relearn something so fundamental as the way you express yourself, even the way you talk to yourself in your mind, is basically like having to relearn who you are as a person. Hoffman succeeds in bringing us with her on that difficult journey.

Jon Stewart interviews Rod Blagojevich. Not what I expected--Stewart actually wonders whether Blagojevich could be the next Richard Jewel. Hmm...

Is it such a great thing to be human? Some people glorify the "human experience." But I think I'd give it up if given a choice.

My dog seems so much happier than I am, wouldn't it be better to experience life like that? Or it might be nice to be some sort of sophisticated robot that could only think beautiful, amazing thoughts but not feel. Or to be a supernatural being, an angel, maybe, where there is no choice but to do God's will. (Or is there? I've never really understand about fallen angels).

But instead, muddling through a soup of feelings, thoughts, and desires is the plight of the human. No choices offered. I can't help wishing it were different. I wish life made sense, I wish it made sense all the time, not only some of the time, and even then only partway. I wish it wasn't up, then back down, then back up, then back down yet again. Sometimes I wish there was only one way to see things and one way to go.

Uninspired

So I'm a little out of inspiration. I was going to only link to this story from the Today show since I thought it was cute (Wow, you and I do look a lot alike. Wait a minute, are you adopted?). But I'm not sure I could post it without sarcasm.

Then it occurred to me to find something interesting on YouTube, but that turns out to be as easy as finding a needle in a haystack. It might take me all night to find just the right thing.

I read a bunch of news stories today at work, but none of those will work. Too serious.

When did I become so picky with what I post on my blog? I think hardly anyone clicks on the links, anyway. So therefore it really doesn't matter what I post, right? Once I posted a clip of Presidential Jeopardy from the old Tonight Show and I got lots of referrals from Google searches that week. Maybe I should post something like that everyday.

No, I think there is an art to linking. It has to be something that interests me, but not only me. It can't be the straight news, because, well, who needs a blog to point that out? And something with a nice juicy quote in it is always good.

Posting every day is turning out not to be easy.

The Onion is funny.

Five things I am grateful for today:
1. I got to sleep in until past 8:00.
2. Warm, sunny weather.
3. Turkey, Swiss cheese, and spinach sandwich with Dijon mustard on Italian bread.
4. "Dancing with the Stars" followed by "Castle."
5. Crickets chirping on the upstairs balcony.

More newspapers are going to start charging for online content, according to the AP: "Separately, more than 1,000 newspapers and magazines have signed nonbinding letters of intent to join an Internet fee system being assembled by Journalism Online LLC. It intends to begin collecting money on behalf of publishers before winter."

I also find this very interesting: "Preserving the value of their print franchises is one of the main reasons for publishers to charge for Web access. That's because newspapers still get most of their money from print ads, which accounted for $35 billion of the industry's revenue last year. Newspaper print ads are on pace to fall below $30 billion this year. Online ads, in contrast, contributed just $3.1 billion in revenue last year."

Mistaken for a daughter-in-law

Something that happened this week that I forgot to write about:

I walk into work one morning and the receptionist tells me, "Your mother-in-law left this for you."

It's a rectangular block wrapped in Saran Wrap and on top is a burrito wrapped in foil and a plastic bag. She puts it on the counter and answers the phone and holds up her hand to "Wait" before I can try to explain that this must be a mistake.

Could my own mother have dropped this off? My mom hasn't dropped off my lunch for me since I was in the ninth grade. I remember sitting in the Math Lab one morning (which, of course, was where all the cool kids hung out before school) and my mom walked in with my bag lunch, which I had forgotten at home. I admit I was much more embarrassed than grateful at the time.

But my mom wouldn't do that now, especially considering that she leaves for work about three hours earlier than I do.

I take another glance at the food. I'm sure whatever is inside the Saran Wrap is tasty and homemade, and I haven't had a burrito in a while...

"I don't think you have the right person," I told the receptionist when she hung up the phone.

"Are you sure? She came by just right now and said, 'Soy la mama de su esposo'," she said.

"Well, see, I'm not married, so it can't be me."

"Oh, um, OK."

I go further into the office to clock in, leaving the food behind on the counter with regret. What a sweet mother-in-law. I hope whoever the food did belong to realizes how lucky she is to have a mother-in-law like that.

Rivalry game

My enjoyment of football tends to range from "slight disgust" to "tolerance" to "moderate enjoyment." But even though I'm not a huge football fan, every year it's a tradition to go to the UTEP-New Mexico State game.

I'm a proud UTEP graduate. My dad is a proud NMSU graduate. It definitely makes things more interesting when one of us is guaranteed to end up gloating at the end of the night, the other one guaranteed to end up disgusted and a little sad and forced to endure some good-natured ribbing.

The EP Times makes it out to be a "do or die" game this year. All I can say is the Miners better not lose. I really don't want to see that smug smile on my dad's face at the end of the night, as has happened the past two years.

Game starts at 6:30 p.m. in Las Cruces. I'll update the blog with the results.

UPDATE: So the game went something like this: We get there, and the stadum is packed. The game starts (at 6, not 6:30, oops), and shortly thereafter UTEP scores a touchdown. Go Miners! This is going to be awesome!

However, the dark clouds in the background of the stadium are looming closer, though there is no rain, only lightning. With about 12 minutes left in the first quarter, a lightning delay is called.

Then a few minutes later it starts pouring down rain and it will not stop. To make a long story short, the game resumes at 9:10 p.m., about three hours later. I spend most of the delay in the women's restroom of Aggie Memorial Stadium. Not fun. But, hey, I'm taking one for the team, right?

Finally, the game starts again. At this point there are now only a scattering of people left, the bleachers are soaked, the air is cold and damp. But at least the Miners are on top of their game and score touchdown after touchdown. Woo hoo.

A few minutes after this picture was taken in the fourth quarter, the score is 37-6 favoring UTEP. Tired of the damp night and satisfied that the Miners have it wrapped up, I ask, "Are you ready to go?"

"I was ready to leave about 20 points ago," says my dad. Poor Dad. It has been a wet, miserable night AND he doesn't have the consolation of his team winning. UTEP wins the game with a final score of 38-12, but I don't have the heart to give him any grief about his team losing. Still, I'm ecstatic the Miners did so well. Their first win of the season, against their arch-rival. Yay, yay UTEP.

My blog friend Stu (who I met) has an excellent post about storytelling and, well, life.

A productive day as far as my Fridays typically go. I got a hair cut at a "salon and spa." Nothing too wild, just about three inches shorter than it was. I don't do colors or bangs:

I sent some e-mails and warmed up some leftover soup for lunch before going to my Spanish class. Yes, I'm back in Spanish classes. My teacher was impressed with my vocabulary. I can name all the body parts in Spanish: la cabeza, la mano, los pies, las piernas, las rodillas, el cuello, los brazos, el estomago, etc., etc. Vocabulary is my strong point. Having an actual conversation is not.

Fridays off definitely make life easier.

I'm wondering if other human beings feel as insecure as I do on a daily basis. I wonder if anyone out there just wakes up and thinks they are great and doesn't worry at all that they are failing in life and doesn't worry about people liking or not liking them.


Is life a test? I think it is. I think it's a hard test, and that we all will have to answer for our choices one day or other. Somehow I think sitting in front of the computer eating chocolate bars is not going to make the grade.

But what will? Feeding poor children? Working extra hard at my job? Being kind to others?

Happy 16 de Septiembre

Happy Mexican Independence Day! Kind of unfortunate that it's not a holiday I ever celebrated, even growing up in a Mexican American family on the border. I didn't even know what "El Grito" was until yesterday. From Wikipedia:

Just before midnight on September 15, 1810, [Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Castilla] ordered the church bells to be rung and gathered his congregation. Flanked by Ignacio Allende and Juan Aldama, he addressed the people in front of his church, encouraging them to revolt. The exact words of the speech are lost; however, a variety of "reconstructed versions" have been published. Hidalgo is believed to have cried: "Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe [a symbol of the Amerindians' faith], death to bad government, and death to the Spaniards!"

The celebrations looked like a lot of fun. Here's more on the Mexican War for Independence, which I confess I am also woefully ignorant about.

Yet another reminder of how cruel cancer is. The release of "Dirty Dancing" coincided with the rise of the VCR as a new technology, and I ended up watching our VHS copy of "Dirty Dancing" over and over (and over) again as a kid. Patrick Swayze is the reason I'll always dream about finding a man who can teach me to dance.

The girls

I have a fondness for movies and TV shows about families of women. "Mermaids", "The Upside of Anger", "Gilmore Girls", "Little Women", and even "The Facts of Life" remind me how I grew up as a teenager, with the template of the world-weary mom and the fun-loving, wise-cracking daughters seeking their independence but also guidance and support.

It's inevitable that a mother's authority becomes diminished when her children reach adolescence, but I think it was even more so living in a house with three teenage girls. Mom became less of a mom and more like one of us. As my sisters had their first boyfriends, my mom was making her way back into the dating scene after her divorce. I'll admit we had a pretty good time poking fun at some of her dates who took themselves a little too seriously (i.e. Jim the Corvette guy). But I didn't feel too bad since my mom would laugh along with us.

Our house became one of pretty, feminine things. My mom's bedroom was her sanctuary alone, so clean and neat with a brown lace comforter on the bed and delicate antique furniture, and not a man to be found among the pictures on the wall. Going into the bathrooms you'd find make-up bags and hair straighteners and long strands of brown hair covering the floor, no more of my dad's shaving stuff or deodorant or strong soap. Even the backyard was small and filled with flowers, perfect for a single mom.

Looking back, our family bond wasn't exactly that of the March sisters or Lorelai and Rory. My sisters and I became more and more separate over those years, especially when we got cars and could come and go as we pleased. We got our first real jobs, places like Wal-Mart and Village Inn that would work you into the ground. We sometimes ate and sometimes didn't eat Mom's quick, microwaved dinners featuring canned vegetables, the only kind she made since she was always working, trying to keep the family afloat financially. My mother couldn't do everything, couldn't be everywhere, and so I'd fill in for her sometimes, and I became sort of a second mother to my youngest sister. I drove my sister to school and work and would generally keep tabs on how her life was going. Women, admittedly, can be emotional, and you could feel the angst in the air many times. My sisters fought each other like cats and dogs, with me the neutral one.

I think those years were more drama than comedy, more "Mermaids" than "Facts of Life." But it wasn't always tense. When we all did spend time together we could always make each other laugh (if all else failed, just bring up Jim's Corvette). Mom (who is nothing like Cher, really) made responsible choices when it came to our family, and we respected her for it. And there was always the unquestioned knowledge that we would be there for each other when we needed it.

Out of those years four smart, independent, beautiful, achieving women have emerged, which is what you see in the picture. It's been seven years since we've all officially lived under the same roof, though both my sisters have come home to live for periods of time since they graduated from high school. I think it's been good for our family to live our separate lives. Rather than tearing us apart, living apart has lessened the tension and allowed our bond to shine through more brightly.

Experiment

For the next 30 days, I'm going to post at least one item per day to the blog. The blog could use a little more creative juice these days. Links are great, but don't I have anything to say for myself? I'm curious to find out if giving myself a daily requirement will by itself result in more readers and better quality of posts. Maybe I'll find that more posting isn't necessarily better posting, but I think more posts, at least some of them interesting, will be better than the few mostly unoriginal posts I come up with most weekends. The experiment begins tomorrow...

I'm liking the Regina Spektor album I bought. "It's like forgetting the words to your favorite song..."

So I have my first silver tooth filling. I've had a couple of small fillings before, but the dentist said this one was deep. He even took an X-ray to make sure I didn't need a root canal. A root canal?! Oh no. I also needed another, smaller filling on the adjacent tooth.

There's nothing like the sound of that dentist drill and seeing little bits of tooth come flying out of your mouth. It's pretty horrifying, even if the right side of my mouth was fully numb and I didn't feel a thing. The dentist put some metallic stuff onto the teeth and I waited for about ten minutes and it was all over. I rinsed in the sink and saw the right side of my face drooping down in the mirror, and that really scared me, too. Is that how it would look if I had a stroke?

My tooth doesn't look silver. The inside of the back of the tooth with the big filling actually just looks black. I ate hot food and drank cold soda and it didn't feel too bad. The cold felt kind of strange, I guess.

I tend to see cavities as personal failures, as in why didn't I floss more? But today it occurred to me it's something else: it's yet another sign that I'm getting older. No one's teeth improve with age. I think of my parents with their multiple root canals, my grandparents with their dentures, and it is not a pretty dental future. Not pretty but something I will have to deal with, one procedure at a time.

Another reason why I love our President:

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.
...
You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

What a great idea. I really can't understand why anyone is criticizing this speech rather than applauding it when we so desperately need students to take more responsibility for their education in this country.

This week's TIME cover story points out the multiple ironies of NBC's decision to put Jay Leno in primetime. It's also a good snapshot of the TV business as it is today:

But the difference between Conan's and Jay's Tonight is not just about personal style; it's about two different philosophies of TV.

The idea behind giving Conan Tonight is that there are no more Johnny Carsons. No one is going to unite a mass audience of all ages and persuasions and from all walks of life every night.
...
And yet few entertainers are more antithetical to this idea of niche programming than Leno, Mr. Big Tent...

Leno grew up when mass media were mass. He recalls how "comforting" it was to watch Eric Sevareid with his parents, before kids had TVs in their rooms and a different network for every stage of childhood.

After reading the article, I don't find the decision too surprising, more like, why didn't they do this years ago? And I'm really glad Jay Leno is going to be back on TV. Somehow Conan just doesn't do it for me.

Christopher Rosen on the hiring of Diane Sawyer to anchor ABC's "World News":
"The hiring of Ms. Sawyer is a nice story — two of the three broadcasts being anchored by women is nothing to sneeze at — but in the grand scheme of things, it amounts to the adjusting of an armoire in a stateroom on the Titanic."

Gmail Quote of the Day

"Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are." - Kurt Cobain

Should teachers let students pick the books they read in middle school English classes? YES.

I just finished the last disc of "In Treatment" Season 1. I saw it was the last disc, so I rushed to add Season 2 to Netflix, but it hasn't been released. No!

I wasn't too familiar with Gabriel Byrne before this, but now I can't even imagine that he could be different from his therapist character Paul Weston, he's that good of an actor. I like how the series doesn't just stay on personal intrigues a la "Grey's Anatomy" but seriously explores some philosophical topics, like what is the real value of therapy, or can you really know a person just by talking to them. One character even compares therapy to prostitution, in that you are paying a person for intimacy.

Watching the series play out, it's not always clear what the creators want you to think. Sometimes it seems like there is a moment of unbelievable insight into these characters, that Paul really nailed down why the teenager tried to kill herself, or why the couple can't make their marriage work. But other times, you're thinking, this is just a bunch of therapist BS, they should stop talking and get their money back because it's not doing any good. And then therapist Paul can't even handle his own emotional life and goes to another therapist, casting even more doubt on the value of analysis. At its root the show is about how human behavior defies explanation, even for a so-called professional.

I successfully made it to my dentist appointment yesterday. Too bad I have two cavities that need to be filled :-(. Time to banish the soda and candy from my diet.

Leaving

So C. is leaving.

"By the way, I'm moving next week," she told me last Saturday over lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant.

By the way, I'm moving? If I was moving, I'd tell people months in advance. I'd have a job lined up and money saved, and even then I'd still be freaking out about it. But I know that's not her style.

I always knew El Paso couldn't hold her, not someone who has lived in Abu Dhabi and visited Paris twice and wants to make films for a living.

I'll miss our adventures. "I'm up for anything," she once said, and it was definitely true. Film festivals, salsa dancing, trendy restaurants, protest marches, we turned this town upside down and did a lot of amazing things together.

But there's another side to C. besides the cosmopolitan adventurer. This is the same girl who doesn't read the paper and makes a perfect Jell-O salad, and who would invite a nerd like me to parties with her other cool friends. There's a lack of cynicism in her deep green eyes, a Midwestern innocence that I hope she never loses.

Yeah, I know it wouldn't be right for her to stay here, but the selfish kid in me wants to beg her to stay, because I am going to miss her terribly.

"Saving the World's Women" is this week's topic in the NY Times Magazine:

Women hold up half the sky,” in the words of a Chinese saying, yet that’s mostly an aspiration: in a large slice of the world, girls are uneducated and women marginalized, and it’s not an accident that those same countries are disproportionately mired in poverty and riven by fundamentalism and chaos. There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism.

...

Why do microfinance organizations usually focus their assistance on women? And why does everyone benefit when women enter the work force and bring home regular pay checks? One reason involves the dirty little secret of global poverty: some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes but also by unwise spending by the poor — especially by men. Surprisingly frequently, we’ve come across a mother mourning a child who has just died of malaria for want of a $5 mosquito bed net; the mother says that the family couldn’t afford a bed net and she means it, but then we find the father at a nearby bar. He goes three evenings a week to the bar, spending $5 each week.

Here's the full article.

Update: I realized after posting yesterday that my dentist appointment is actually for next Thursday, so I didn't miss it. Yay. But I think not missing it actually proves me more absentminded, not less, since I both mixed up the date AND forgot what I thought was the right time for the appointment.

- I completely forgot about my dentist appointment yesterday despite writing it on my calendar and thinking about it several times earlier in the week. Can memory loss start at 27? How is it going to be 20 or 30 years from now?

- I bought two new CDs off Amazon today. It has been so long since I've bought any real new music (as opposed to old albums I buy used). I have no idea what's popular, which is scary. I consider myself a Moby fan but didn't even know he released a new album earlier this year. And ever since hearing a piece on NPR about Regina Spektor I've been meaning to order her newest album. I finally got around to it. I am so old-fashioned when it comes to music technology. I still have my old CD player that is at least 10 years old, and I don't do MP3 downloads or iPods or anything like that. Perhaps that should change. Maybe when I start making more money.

Saw this short film last night. It was great to see a project filmed entirely in El Paso and Juarez. It was also really refreshing to see a movie about the border that's not about illegal immigration and/or drug smuggling.

Yet spending on health care, by families and by the government, is crowding out spending on almost everything else. As a nation, we now spend almost 18 percent of our GDP on health care. In 1966, Medicare and Medicaid made up 1 percent of total government spending; now that figure is 20 percent, and quickly rising. Already, the federal government spends eight times as much on health care as it does on education, 12 times what it spends on food aid to children and families, 30 times what it spends on law enforcement, 78 times what it spends on land management and conservation, 87 times the spending on water supply, and 830 times the spending on energy conservation. Education, public safety, environment, infrastructure—all other public priorities are being slowly devoured by the health-care beast.

From "How American Health Care Killed My Father" in The Atlantic's September issue. Worthwhile reading as the issue of health care reform comes to the forefront.

It was a bummer of a Friday night. I debated for a long time whether to go out or not. I woke up around 5 a.m. that morning and stayed awake for an hour and a half before finally falling back asleep. I was tired all day at work thinking about car wrecks and executions. But my friend texted me. "I'll be at the Plaza around 8:30 if you want to meet me." OK. "Rocky Horror Picture Show" at the Plaza or sit alone in my bedroom and watch "In Treatment"? Tough call, but might as well DO something, right?

As I headed out to Downtown I was kind of pumped up seeing the last remants of the sunset. It was beautiful, as always, and the creeping darkness promised excitement. By the time I parked in the underground garage it was dark. I drove around and around the garage trying to find a parking space. Garages have a way of making one claustrophobic. Finally I parked in the last row.

I crossed the street, looking at the groups of people going by. When did I become so much older than college-age? Hipsters, ugh. I stood on the outskirts of the melee. Some overweight people in portable lawn chairs. A guy break-dancing to an oldies/funk band. He was pretty good. Some people who sounded like they were from Austin. Do they stage a lot of these events in Austin? Probably. It seems like outdoor movies are exactly what progressive cities are supposed to do. I thought I saw my social butterfly (though unusual) cousin with her friend (boyfriend?) but I lost them in the crowd before I could say hi.

I saw a girl I recognized. "Lisa?" (Her name isn't really Lisa.)

"Oh hi."

"I'm here waiting for C."

"Oh, yeah, she said she'd be here."

She said something I couldn't hear.

"Good turnout, don't you think?" I said. Was there a more pointless thing that I could have said?

"I'm going to get a beer, you know always gotta have my beer," she said, turning away and then speedwalked away from me before I could follow her.

I think I'm better about rejection these days, but yeah, it hurts not to be liked.

So it was Alone for some more, watching the screen slowly get set up, a couple moved in beside me, the guy surrounding the girl with his arms (gross), some guy talking about getting spam e-mail from a musician (must be annoying).

I have mixed feelings about going to events Alone. I don't usually do it because people tend to think it's socially unacceptable, so I do the socially acceptable thing and go with another person. But I don't feel that uncomfortable about it. Especially at an event like this, I didn't feel that out of place just people watching, soaking up the ambience, enjoying the warm night. A shy person gets used to these things. Most of my freshman year of high school, I spent lunches eating outside in the courtyard, then going to the library, and I wasn't really sad about it. I liked the sunshine and the books.

Still. I feel like I try so hard. Try to meet people, try to make conversation, try not to be such a loner, but here I am yet again, alone on a Friday night.

My friend texts me: "FYI won't be there until about 9:30."

At this point I'm finding it hard to find a reason to stay here. My feet are tired from standing. I'm tired. I realize "Rocky Horror Picture Show" is not a movie you watch alone, and it sounds crude and offensive anyway. The operator presses the DVD to start the movie. A huge cheer erupts from the crowd. Meanwhile, I start walking back to my car. Fine, I was upset and near tears at that point. I'm disappointed the night didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.

"I'm tired and going home," I text to my friend. I don't feel too bad about it since I know "Lisa" is still there.

So that's how I ended up back home at 10 p.m. I guess social life has its ups and downs and not all experiences can be positive. I remind myself that I've had a lot of good experiences, too. Still, last night makes me want to spend more nights watching "In Treatment."

Three days off from work and I feel rested and ready to go back to work the next day. Four days off and I forget all about work and go into summer vacation mode. I think I can feel the crease lifting from between my eyebrows. I feel ready to watch some daytime TV and then take an afternoon nap.

It's just after 3 a.m. and I just finished watching Stu on the One & Other project in Trafalgar Square. You stand on a platform in Trafalgar Square in London and do, well, pretty much whatever you want for an hour, and it's broadcast live on the Internet. Much more engaging than I thought it was going to be, a combo of art and live blogging and confessional reality TV. Stu read a blog post about clay figures and also a post I remembered as the mud story which I really liked, and even read aloud a blog post he penned in a notepad on the spot. Also waved to the crowd a lot and talked about his latest haircut and how he lost his phone in the cinema. Yes, the microphone most definitely was on. Anyway, it was an interesting hour. I'm glad I stayed up for it (and definitely glad I don't have to get up for work tomorrow). You can watch happened for yourself here. UPDATE: Here is what Stu had to say about the experience.

Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but I think being up there has a lot of parallels to blogging -- one part seriousness and another part confessional mundane stuff about things like backpacks and lost cell phones, and you're both trying to connect with strangers passing through and saying hi to the friends who stop by, which can get weird. In both situations, above all, the person on exhibit, a not quite natural position to be in.

Taken yesterday at White Sands National Monument, New Mexico

A Nun's Life's Sister Julie writes about celibacy. Hmm...

No lightning this week, just the kind of lull that makes you think it's about time to start something new. I wrote for over an hour last night in an attempt to analyze myself, my behavior, my motivations. Funny how definite patterns emerge. It can be hard to try to look at your own behavior from a distance, but it's worth the effort, even if you can never really understand why you do what you do.

Lately I've been realizing how idiotic it is to just crave people's attention and acceptance all the time and use that as some kind of measuring stick. So much better to set a course, any kind of goal, even if it is something simple. I challenged myself not to eat a chocolate bar for the whole month of July, and I have actually done it. I haven't touched the vending machines at work, and I finally stopped prowling the candy aisles at Wal-Mart. Mastery over chocolate, it's quite an accomplishment for me. I've been working out with weights twice a week, and I notice my arms getting stronger, and I can't help but get a boost of pride from it. I spend time reading the Bible and about physics, instead of checking my e-mail incessantly or reading women's magazines, and I feel smarter for it. These micro-accomplishments make me think, what else could I do, if I just set my mind to do it? It's gratification via accomplishment, versus other things like food or people's attention. It's the feeling of control.

I officially call this July "the month I finally stopped being an idiot and got a life."

Article about how to outsmart Facebook (via kottke.org). I loathe Facebook but I still use it because I feel like I have to. Actually, I think I am averse to all social networking sites. I don't think Blogger counts.

More than ever.

Lightning storm

It's rare that a storm really scares me. Even as a child I was never scared of thunder. Only when I'm out driving and the road is covered in two feet of water, and the windshield wipers can't move fast enough to keep up with the rain, OK, then I get anxious. But this week I was like a scared kid.

It was the thunder, not the rain or lightning, that woke me up early Wednesday morning. The thunder was so loud I knew I'd never get back to sleep. When I opened my eyes I saw white lightning zoom through the air in a circular motion, spirit-like, maybe 20 feet away from my bedroom window. Then the angriest thunder I've ever heard ripped through the night not a second after the light disappeared. The smoke alarm in the upstairs hallway went off for a few long seconds, further scaring the hell out of me. I had never been in the middle of an electric cloud before, and I had no idea what was going to happen next. My thoughts ran to God and death. In my dopey, half-asleep state, I thought, this is it, God's wrath unleashed, the power that has come to take me home. I wondered if the next lightning bolt would set the house on fire. The rain pounded furiously and I imagined water could come pouring through the roof any second. I imagined all the household appliances being rendered useless. But of course, there I was still lying in bed in my pajamas. Way to prepare for a crisis, I know.

The thunder and lightning continued like that a few more times, though not quite as bad as the first I saw. It still seemed close, but the thunder wasn't as loud. Gradually, there was a space of a few seconds between the lightning and the thunder, which means the storm is moving away. I stayed awake until I was sure the storm was far away and not coming back.

The house held up, nothing was set on fire, the power didn't even go out. We were lucky. But the display stunned me, and the powers greater than you or I made their point about who's really in control. One electrified moment and we're done for. I got it.

Excellent article in Mother Jones about a Mexican journalist seeking political asylum from the Mexican military in the U.S. Mother Jones lives up to its promise of "smart, fearless journalism":

There are two Mexicos.

There is the one reported by the US press, a place where the Mexican president is fighting a valiant war on drugs, aided by the Mexican Army and the Mérida Initiative, the $1.4 billion in aid the United States has committed to the cause. This Mexico has newspapers, courts, laws, and is seen by the United States government as a sister republic.

It does not exist.

There is a second Mexico where the war is for drugs, where the police and the military fight for their share of drug profits, where the press is restrained by the murder of reporters and feasts on a steady diet of bribes, and where the line between the government and the drug world has never existed.

Thanks to Intersections for the link.

As a side note, I attended the press conference at UTEP mentioned here and heard from Emilio Gutiérrez Soto in person. At the time I didn't know what to make of the accusations. I thought it was strange for journalists to be fleeing the military rather than the cartels. This article sheds some light.

Vocabulary

sedulous - diligent in application or pursuit

Dictionary.com's Word of the Day, three days ago, according to Gmail

- Parties are exhausting. Is that how it is for most people, or is it just me?
- I missed the Plaza Classic Film Festival last year, but I am going to have to go this year. I saw the schedule for it yesterday in the newspaper and thought, I want to see ALL of these.
- I went outside before 8 a.m. and it was already hot. Another sweltering day. I'm ready for some relief.

I was invited to three parties this weekend. When did I become such a socialite?

15 books meme

Not tagged with this meme per se, but decided to answer it anyway. Fifteen books that have have been memorable for you or have impacted you in some way:

Cosmos Carl Sagan
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers
Into the Wild Jon Krakauer
Traveling Mercies Anne Lamott
A Solitary Blue Cynthia Voigt
Jacob Have I Loved Katherine Patterson
The Bible (especially Ecclesisastes, Psalms, Romans)
A History of God Karen Armstrong
On the Road Jack Kerouac
Shyness: A Bold New Approach Bernardo Carducci
Little Women Louisa May Alcott
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix J.K. Rowling
A Grief Observed C.S. Lewis
One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Blue Highways William Least Heat-Moon

It was tough to narrow it down. To decide, I asked myself, would the book be worth reading again?

If you're reading this, I hereby tag you with the meme.

A couple of good interviews on Film in Focus: Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida on writing the screenplay for "Away We Go" and Cary Fukunaga on the making of "Sin Nombre".

Caitlin Flanagan on the future of American marriage:

The fundamental question we must ask ourselves at the beginning of the century is this: What is the purpose of marriage? Is it — given the game-changing realities of birth control, female equality and the fact that motherhood outside of marriage is no longer stigmatized — simply an institution that has the capacity to increase the pleasure of the adults who enter into it?
...
Or is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function — to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation's own safe passage into adulthood? Think of it this way: the current generation of children, the one watching commitments between adults snap like dry twigs and observing parents who simply can't be bothered to marry each other and who hence drift in and out of their children's lives — that's the generation who will be taking care of us when we are old.

I consider myself pretty liberal in most respects, but I tend to agree with her traditionalist argument. Probably because I saw my own parents' divorce up close. For the other side, see this column in The Atlantic.

Argument Starter from Reader's Digest: "Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women … A wife saves men from about an hour of housework a week. Source: University of Michigan"

Sounds plausible to me. Seven other Argument Starters are included on the slide show.

More thoughts on the value of an M.A.:

When I think back on the things I used to mull over on a daily basis in graduate school -- the future of education, the definition of writing, postmodern philosophy, literature, feminism, class issues, race issues -- I'm delightfully shocked that at one point my occupation was to think about those things. I'm very jealous of my former self. A little over a year ago, my whole world was writing paper after paper, the prof hands out the assignment sheet and the paper's due in one month, start thinking about it now. Decide on a fabulous topic and read 10 books from the library, write your notes into Microsoft Word and cut and paste and delete and expound until you were sure you'd get an A.

I like to think that I'm still that idealistic person that questioned the status quo in paper after paper. I was going to change the way students learn to write, and set the academic world on fire with my theory on feminism and technology, and form my own resistance movement against hegemonic forces. I would like to believe the notion that an education stays with you, that it forms your mind forever and shapes all your future work. But the truth is, none of the things I studied tends to be on my mind on a daily basis right now.

Ugh, the real world. It is SO different from my life back then. My world is now a world of lists. Every day I make lists and check the items off one by one. The working world seems to reward doing over thinking, so "doing" has become my specialty and thinking gets left by the side of the road. My motivation is statistics, a measure of whether what I'm doing is effective, and underlying that, of course, is money. Money, ugh.

Where did my education go? I feel like I locked it away in the back of a closet in my mind, just like all my school notebooks are now sitting next to my shoes in my bedroom closet, most likely never to be looked at again. Did I forget everything? Who has time for the revolution these days?

But once in a while I'll take a deep breath and take a step back from my work, the clouds will part and it will come through clearly, oh, this is an example of what I learned in school. This is exactly how technology is changing how we communicate. That is how women are still being objectified. That Foucault guy was totally right about a lot of things. The things I learned during my M.A. don't help much with the lists, and that's frustrating, but once in a while I'll think about things in a "meta-level" way and see that the theories are based in reality.

It begs the question, What is the point of an education anyway? At the most basic level, the point of school is that you're supposed to get out of it eventually and apply what you learned. Sure, you hope school can help you with the day-to-day grind, but can't it also include those meta-level moments, so you don't just see exactly what is in front of you and nothing beyond that?

On reflection, the price was steep for it. Not so much the tuition money itself (though it was not cheap) but two and a half years of my life, isn't that a bit much time to have spent in the library reading about philosophy of language? Wouldn't it have been better to have started on a career earlier? I have four years less experience than most people my age.

I wish I could end all this with a triumphant conclusion that *of course* an M.A. was worth getting but I don't know if I can say that. Maybe the biggest problem was my mindset, not taking school more seriously, not having a goal with it, which made it not as useful as it could be. I approached my M.A. the same way I did piano lessons -- nice to know how to do, I put in a decent effort but didn't go all out, knowing I wasn't exactly going to be playing a Chopin concert anytime soon. Maybe it was an impractical thing to do, something that shouldn't have been Number One on the life to-do list if I really wanted to get ahead. But does everything have to lead up to a predetermined goal? The listmaker in me says yes, but the student revolutionary doesn't seem to think so, and well, you know which one has my heart.

Sometimes I think my biggest problem is that I think about things too much. Other times I think the problem is I don't think about them enough.

The NY Times asks, "What is a Master's Degree Worth?" I'm asking myself the same question. In monetary value, the consensus seems to be an M.A. is not worth much :-<.

I tend to agree with the third writer's take, though:
"Earning an M.A. degree can be fun; it can provide knowledge; and can stretch the imagination. A cynic might conclude that the M.A. degree is the stepchild of the university community, is increasingly a commodity offered by universities in order to earn tuition dollars devoted to the Ph.D. programs. But in the marketplace, it adds to one’s personal narrative. It makes one more interesting."

I went out to a trendy restaurant yesterday, the type of restaurant where maybe 200 pieces of silverware were suspended from ropes tied to the ceiling. I ordered an ahi tuna and pineapple sandwich and a ginger lemonade. A stand-out meal, really. While I was eating it I was thinking, maybe this is exactly what I want my life to be, going out to a stylish cafe and ordering odd food while discussing travel and jobs and movies with my most interesting friend. It does make one feel automatically trendy, even me in my ancient jeans and sandals and pulled-back hair.

No such experience today. I thought about going out but convinced myself otherwise. Laundry is done and the bathroom is clean, I made my own dinner. Funny how satisfied I am with the mundanity of it. Like there's nothing else I want, nothing I need from out there.

From a great interview with Toni Morrison in O Magazine:

Everything I saw or did was potentially data, a word or a sound or something for the book, and then I really realized that for me writing meant having something coherent in the world. And that feels like…not exactly what I was born for, it's more the thing that holds me in the world in healthy relationship, with language, with people, bits of everything filter down, and I can stay here. Everything I see or do, the weather and the water, buildings…everything actual is an advantage when I am writing. It is like a menu, or a giant tool box, and I can pick and choose what I want. When I am not writing, or more important, when I have nothing on my mind for a book, then I see chaos, confusion, disorder.

Some provocative posts in the past couple weeks on one of my new blog faves, Living El Paso. El Paso newcomer/blogger David's enthusiasm is infectious, and he offers up some great suggestions on how to improve the city. In this post, he brings up El Paso's isolation as both a good and a bad thing. "Isolation has actually benefited El Paso in a few ways. Since it acts as a buffer, our economy hasn’t suffered like cities on the West & East Coasts." Hmm...good point.

Comments for another post center around El Paso's "brain drain" problem. A commenter writes, "...The reality is that if you can find a job, the city can be very good, but I’m meeting way too many people who have been sitting here 1-2 years, living with their parents, looking for work, and when your student loan comes due, well- people start moving."

Writes David: "I guess you could compare El Paso to gambling. When you are winning, you are feeling great and anything is possible, however, a few bad hands and all you want to do is get up and leave." Well put.

Lucky me, I guess I drew a good hand. I haven't had problems finding jobs and I'm not saddled with debt, so my view of the city tends to be sunny. I like El Paso's relaxed feel and I don't want it to turn into a clone of Austin, Dallas, or San Antonio. But I know economic growth has to be a priority. For me the question is, how do you balance El Paso's easygoing attitude with creating more opportunities for people who grow up here and for talented people who might want to move here?

A little analysis to prod El Pasoans in the right direction is definitely worthwhile, especially from people who have lived in other cities. Hopefully Living El Paso will be around for awhile with more insightful posts.

I'm working this summer, so no more trying to occupy three vacant months for me, but the pace at work does seem slower these days. More people are gone for vacations, there are slightly fewer newsworthy incidents. Some space to breathe, finally.

My so-called social life has slowed to a crawl, too. Zero messages in my inbox, do I care? I feel like I'm at a point where I feel more lonely when I'm with people than I am actually being alone. Does that make any sense? I'd rather cocoon myself in my bedroom watching "In Treatment" or "The Wire" than make uncomfortable small talk with people I kinda know but not really.

Bitterness talking? Maybe, but I think summer is a time to lose people. For awhile at least, expecting you'll get them back later. Yeah, like school, knowing you'll have that first day when you get back to scope out who grew a few inches or got a new haircut or has a new boyfriend. In the meantime experience solitude, forget everyone, dig your toes in the dirt and wear ugly shorts and watch the sunset all by yourself.

The perfect summer song: "in your eyes/the light the heat/in your eyes/I am complete/in your eyes/I see the doorway to a thousand churches/in your eyes/the resolution of all the fruitless searches."

I think vacuuming is my new hobby.

No freakin' way, this is too awesome.

UK Holiday, Part 3

Actually, Part 2 was pretty much the end of my holiday. I mean vacation. It was another long plane ride back during which I watched “Marley and Me” and tried to explain to the English guy sitting next to me about the death penalty and why Texas executes so many people each year.

I don't think that after only a week you can really say you've really experienced another culture, especially if you pretty much just hung out with your sister and went to tourist sites on your own during the day. But I suppose the thing that stood out to me most in the UK was the sense of history and tradition. At the Tower of London I saw a group of young students there on a field trip, and I wonder what it’s like growing up with that long history of kings and queens and castles in your consciousness. And being surrounded by so many old buildings, how could you not constantly be thinking of what came before? In America, history starts in 1776 and you can go weeks without seeing a building that’s more than 30 years old.

It surprised me how relieved I felt being back on American soil. Getting off the plane at the Chicago airport where I had a connecting flight, a customs agent checked over my paperwork and then said in a bright Midwestern accent, "Welcome home." And Chicago isn't much at all like El Paso, but I did feel like I was home.

I don't know exactly how to explain the feeling of being back in the US after being in the UK. The word that comes to mind is spaciousness. The airports are bigger, the houses are bigger, the cars are bigger, in places like El Paso there’s empty land as far as you can see. The day after I came back I was driving on the highway in the desert heat and a Guns ‘n Roses song came on and I found myself appreciating just how American that moment was.

This trip was a big deal to me, even just proving to myself and everyone I could handle the planning and finances and getting from one place to another. Travel turns out to be a mix of luxury and personal edification and accomplishment. “You’ve been to Europe?” Yes. For months I held off on starting on new things until after I had done this. I wonder what's next. More new places, more meeting new people, more adventures, I hope.

The highlight of my day: trying Strawberried Peanut Butter M&Ms from the vending machine at work.

UK Holiday, Part 2

The next-to-last day of my journey I boarded a (short) flight from London to Manchester, then bought a ticket at the Manchester rail station for Liverpool. I had said good-bye to V. earlier that morning before she flew back to New York. I was now traveling solo. That scared me a little.

There were only about five people on the train when I boarded it. Maybe that was the first sign that I wasn’t in London anymore, that there wasn’t a huge crowd of people everywhere I went.

I began to get more nervous as the train got closer toward Liverpool. I put away the copy of the Guardian I had been reading and stared at the steep walls of rock near Lime Street. I tried to think of interesting topics of conversation to bring up. What do you say to a person whose blog you’ve been reading for six years? A person you know both everything and nothing about?

I got off the train and didn’t see him. Oh crap, he forgot. But I also remembered I hadn’t checked my e-mail in a week. I imagined the e-mail waiting there in my inbox, canceling the whole thing.

I walked around the terminal some more, looking for some place with Internet access, then saw a guy in a black sweater and jeans that I thought I recognized. “Stuart?” Luckily he looks just like his picture on Facebook.

He was taller than I expected and had a thicker accent than I expected. I think like a lot of Americans, I’m not too familiar with northern English accents.

A true gentleman, he took my bag so I could drop it off at the hotel I was staying at. Our agenda for the day was a tour of the city: Liverpool’s two cathedrals, Penny Lane, the Cavern Club, etc.

To be honest, I didn’t expect to be very awed by the cathedrals in Liverpool, not after what I had seen earlier that week. But the Catholic cathedral was amazing. I imagine this is what the Catholic Church had in mind in issuing Vatican II. It’s a very modern place of worship with its non-traditional stations of the cross and stained glass that seem out of an abstract painting.

Right afterward we went to the Anglican cathedral, which was much more traditional. I was more than happy to see some more Gothic architecture. Stu informed me it took 100 years to finish. 100 years? He said he used to have school performances there, and I couldn’t imagine that.


And then it was time to see some Beatles landmarks. It was a fairly long bus ride to see Penny Lane where the landmarks from the Beatles song are—the banker and the barbershop, the "shelter in the middle of the roundabout."

On a walk down the “real” Penny Lane, I saw the Penny Lane street signs all covered with graffiti that Stu said often get nicked (er, stolen in American).

I love landmarks that aren’t all tourist-ed out, and such was Penny Lane.

Then back to the city center to see the Cavern Club where the Beatles were discovered. The real club was demolished and is now replaced by a power substation, which I thought was funny. The “new” Cavern Club really does seem like a cavern given that it’s underground and very dark. Over glasses of Pepsi I remarked it was a lot smaller than I expected. A young folk rocker was playing on the tiny stage and an American singer was set to go next.

The weather had been really bright and sunny that day, “blue suburban skies”, but after the Cavern Club a downpour began and I didn’t think to bring an umbrella. My sweater got soaked as we headed to the Albert Dock. Stu assured me it was “Liverpool rain” and would be over fast. Fortunately he was right.
As we walked through the city, I got the feeling Liverpool would have been quite a different place had I visited even ten years ago. The Liverpool I saw was bright with upscale shops and restaurants that Stu readily noted were recent additions. It seems like the sort of city that’s always been a gem but only now is getting the polish it deserves. The European Capital of Culture 2008, woo hoo…

I found out what a Superlambanana is and saw the gate to Liverpool’s Chinatown. Liverpool has a Chinatown?

I have to say I really enjoyed the half-tourist, half-autobiographical tour. It seemed every block held a story (There’s the FACT Centre!…There’s where the Beatles used to go drinking…There’s where I went to secondary school).

Dinner was at the Everyman Bistro, which is attached to the Everyman Theatre playhouse. The underground bistro had gourmet food served cafeteria-style, something I hadn’t really seen before. I took a bowl of pasta with roasted vegetables, very tasty, especially since I hadn’t eaten all day.

We sat down and the inevitable conversation about blogging began (and later Twitter and Facebook and Spotify). The conversation meandered to writing and school and our respective futures. Stu told me I seemed like a laidback person, which I thought was funny since I tend to think of myself as the queen of anxiety.

But I think the day went by with a minimum of awkwardness. We reached my hotel and I thanked my host for the tour. “This is a very nice place,” I said. And I really meant it. There was definitely a cheerful vibe to Liverpool that wasn’t there in London. A different side of England and I liked it.

And, of course, meeting one of my blog heroes was pretty amazing, even though to be honest, it almost doesn’t seem real to me now. But there are my pictures and this, so I guess I can’t question it, just say it’s one of those rare moments in life I’m really glad to have experienced.

I'm slowly but surely working my way through weeks of old TIME magazines. "The Meaning of Michelle" was on the cover a few weeks ago. What a title. I doubt that Michelle Obama reads anything about herself in the media, but she seems like the kind of person who would laugh if she saw an article like that. Amid all the attempts to probe her psyche, there was one part that I especially liked:

So on a cool day in March, she dispatched a regiment of role models to schools across Washington, including singers Alicia Keys and Sheryl Crow, Ann Dunwoody, the first female four-star general, and Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman to travel into space...

"There are so many kids like that," she observes, "who are living inches away from power and prestige and fame and fortune, and they don't even know that it exists."

Which is why that night, the women leaders reassembled at the White House for a dinner with more than 100 students from schools across the city to celebrate Women's History Month. Tonight is your night, Michelle told the girls. So don't be shy. "Poke and prod and figure out how [these women] got to be where they are and what you can do in your lives to get yourselves ready for that next step. Tonight we just want to say, Go for it! Don't hesitate. Don't act with fear. Just go for it." Because all the women in the room, she told the girls, see a little bit of ourselves in you.

"It's one of those events," she says looking back, "that stand out in my mind as, This is why I'm here."

Yes, we do have a very cool First Lady.

UK Holiday, Part 1

I imagine that if I were an English literature, history, soccer, Shakespeare, or Beatles fanatic, going to the UK would have felt sort of like going home. But I’m none of the above, the truth is I just wanted to go somewhere different and far away, and plane tickets to London were cheap and I knew it would be the perfect place for a vacation. I went to England not really knowing what I would find. It would be something new, a place to discover. Accompanying me on the journey was my younger sister V., the New Yorker.

A vacation is supposed to be relaxing, right, but in the weeks before I left vacation planning started to feel like a second job. I had never planned a trip before, much less an international one. My copy of Fodor’s was dog-eared by the time I got done. I spent hours combing through reviews of hotels and hostels. I bought a voltage adaptor. I memorized the approximate dollar-pound exchange rate and looked up train schedules and Tube fees and museum opening and closing times. I typed out itineraries and e-mailed them to V., what do you think? It was like I was back in school doing a complicated group project.

The day finally arrived. I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple in my car outside the airport. What the heck am I doing? What if something goes wrong?

The nine-hour plane ride was not nearly as fun as I expected. Sleeping in such cramped quarters was not easy and I ended up losing my headphones.

After getting off the plane V. and I stood in line for immigration.

“Where are you staying?” a dark-skinned woman with a British accent asked after she had scrutinized our passports and immigration cards.

I named the hostel we were staying at. She eyed us suspiciously. “What is the address?”

I stated the address on my reservation printout.

“What area of town is that in?”

Ummm…the South Bank? I really did not know exactly where this place was other than what I had read on Hostelworld.com. She probably thought my sister and I were running away from America with no place to stay. Oh no.

“How long are you staying?”

“A week,” I said.

Finally she stamped our passports and handed them back to us. We were in.

First impressions of London: busy and diverse. The racial diversity surprised me, even starting at Heathrow Airport. Workers at shops and hotels were more often than not Indian, African, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European, and tourists from America, Germany, Australia, Japan, China, France, etc. lined the streets. In America, racial diversity is kind of a given, but I was surprised that it is also the case in London.

It was a mob at the ticket line at the Tube station where we bought our all-important Oyster cards and we were off.

It was a 30-minute ride through the suburbs of London to where we were staying. A British woman’s voice announced the stops and reminded us to “mind the gap” between the train and the platform. People read tabloids and I stared out the window and was amazed at how vines grew on walls and wild flowers grew between the train tracks.

Our hostel was above a café on a street with lots of little shops and bars and restaurants that V. said reminded her of NYC. I thought so, too, except for a few unmistakably old and English buildings and the red double-decker buses that ran up and down the street. We checked in and lugged our suitcases up about five or six steep flights of wooden stairs into the girls dormitory.
My first thought was to collapse on the bed and go to sleep after the long international flight. The perils of jet lag. But sleep could wait. We were in London. I thought about how far away from home we were, the seemingly never-ending miles of ocean traversed on the plane. We were on the other side of the world.

We went for a walk on the London Bridge, walked through the financial district, saw about a million more red double-decker buses drive by.

Eventually, we encountered Millennium Park and the London Eye and had to take a ride. The Eye feels like you’re in space pod, but I suppose that’s the idea.

The next day was the Tower of London, which to me is THE haunted castle, complete with thick walls and dark chambers, narrow stone spiral staircases and history of executions, murders, and dungeon imprisonments. You can feel the ghosts even when it’s broad daylight outside. I think it would be a scary place to be at night.



In one area, a moving sidewalk takes you past the Crown Jewels, which are too opulent to be believed. The U.S. has no equivalent, which I have to say I’m glad for.

The grandest cathedral I’d been to before London was the cathedral at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and I didn’t see how anything could be any grander, but of course St. Paul’s Cathedral trumps it. Princess Diana married Prince Charles there. John Donne is buried there. ("No man is an island, entire of itself..."). I ask myself now, how did I not get a picture of St. Paul's? Here's a good picture.

It was V.’s idea to see the National Portrait Gallery, Britain’s "Hall of Fame" where countless royals are immortalized. I loved it. I got misty-eyed in the 20th century portrait exhibit because it reminded me of me and my friends, the people I’d read E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf and James Joyce with. I thought about our conversations, our desires to achieve, our attempts to see the world differently. Would they ever amount to anything?

On Saturday V. and I decided to escape the crowds and go to a place called Blenheim Palace near Oxford. It was here where I felt like we could be at Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley in “Pride and Prejudice.” A very proper elderly man greeted us at the door, and I realized later his picture was also in the tourist pamphlet for the palace. I wonder how he must feel showing off his family home to busloads of tourists.


We bought sandwiches and sat outside overlooking the gardens. I tried to imagine living at a place like this but couldn’t. “Now do you feel like you’re in England and not New York?” I asked V. She nodded. I think she enjoyed that part of our trip the most.

Saturday night V. and I stayed in a real hotel rather than a hostel. I loved our hotel room, which was small but very continental with the most comfortable bed you can imagine. Thank God for a private bathroom. We ran out to a store and I bought pretzels claiming to be made with a “Genuine American” recipe (chuckles) and a 7-UP. Did you know that 7-UP tastes totally different in Britain? V. bought some yummy ginger cookies to bring back to the hotel. Once I figured out how to turn on the TV we watched part of a documentary about British music and watched a panel of comedians take apart the week in UK culture, which we laughed at despite our lack of cultural context. I decided I like the BBC.

On our cloudy last day in London we took in Westminster Abbey. It’s beyond majestic, everything I’d imagined it to be and more. I have a thing for Gothic architecture, which up to this point I’d only seen in history books and in movies.


The abbey is lined inside with chapels that contain tombs of notable people. It gave me goosebumps to see where Elizabeth I is buried. The coronation chair dating from 1300 is there. It looks old and wooden, somehow I was expecting something grander. The throngs of tourists with their audio guides kind of killed the reverential ambience, but I stayed a long while at Poets' Corner, where T.S. Eliot, Ben Jonson, John Milton, William Shakespeare, etc. are memorialized. Somehow I had always imagined Poets' Corner to be a real graveyard with gravestones and tufts of grass growing between them, but instead the poets are memorialized on tiles beneath your feet or with monuments on the walls inside the abbey.

A priest offered a prayer for world peace at the top of the hour. V. bought a coffee in the cloisters, the quietest part of the abbey.

Like at St. Paul’s, it struck me that Westminster Abbey was as much about power on this earth as reverence for God. Why so much effort into a building when there are poor people living to be helped? But it’s hard not to feel that God dwells among us in Westminster Abbey.


There was no changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace on Monday due to the Bank Holiday. Darn, my planning had failed.


But we did see Big Ben.


I decided we couldn’t leave London without seeing Trafalgar Square.


Near Trafalgar Square V. and I tried the obligatory fish and chips at 10 pounds a plate. Tasty, especially soaked in malt vinegar, but I kind of felt like we were at Applebee’s. I think the stereotypes about British food are true, unfortunately.

Our last stop in London was Kensington Gardens, where I promised a friend I’d take a picture of the Peter Pan statue.


Maybe I didn’t know much about London, but I know I expected it to be old and beautiful. Which it was. I loved all the antiquities among the new buildings, the bridges, the narrow staircases, the endless monuments, the grassy green squares where people lay out on blankets to enjoy the weekends.

What I didn’t expect was for London also to be hyper-charged, tough, and crowded. I think I spent as much time in the Tube as I did seeing the sights, the dark and dank Tube with its constant streams of people rushing in and out of the stations, the hardened faces in train cars where standing room only is the norm. Tourists just like us were everywhere. Traveling through the city exhausted me, and I know I could never live in a place like that. But it’s the beautiful London I’ll remember, the London that exists in my pictures.