Nothing But Red

A few months ago I forwarded to a few friends a speech/blog by Joss Whedon, creator of the popular Firefly series and the movie sequel Serenity. Whedon spoke of his horror of the stoning of a young Middle-Eastern woman, a stoning that was captured by camera-phone and flashed around the world on the Internet. In that speech, Whedon calls for activism, for doing more than tsk-tsking about the horrors in the world. A group of folks have done just that at Nothing But Red. Check it out. Write a story, a poem, an essay; create a work of art and submit it to Nothing But Red. And stand up for women's rights and equality around the world. Read Whedon's speech, of which this is just an excerpt:

Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.

Letting Go

Photo from the future (2015) before another move: what we kept

One of the most difficult tasks of this move is deciding to let go of things we have collected or inherited over the years. Ever since Tom's parents, a great-aunt, and a great-uncle died within four of five years of one another, we have been carting around with us large and small pieces of antique furniture, silverware, dishes, photographs, letters, and ephemera, all reminiscent of a lifestyle Tom has laughingly described as one we can't afford to live. Tom's great-grandfather was a pharmacist, oilman, and land speculator in Houston at the turn of the century. Tom and our children are the ragtag end of that line of Armstrongs who migrated from Virginia to Texas near the end of the nineteenth century, and we carry with us evidence of that uppercrust life.

In the last fifteen years of our marriage, we have purchased homes (or renovated homes) that could contain and showcase the partial remains of several households. Now, however, we are moving from a 3300-square foot house to one that is barely 1300-square feet, and all our belongings will not fit in this house built in 1946, with three small bedrooms and two tiny baths. I am finding it difficult to let go of all the stuff we own.

It's easy to say one wants a simpler, less cluttered life. It's much more difficult to cut the clutter from one's life. To help decide what will go into this smaller house and what items will go into storage until we can sell them, I am mentally going room by room through our former house in Texas to help me visualize our belongings, and I am making a list of all the large or important pieces of furniture, lamps, antiques. I've drawn sort-of-to-scale diagrams of the 1300-square foot house we are planning to purchase, and I'm trying to place within those diagrams the pieces of furniture we really want to keep.

Should we break up the large pieces of Tom's grandmother's diningroom set, keeping only our favorite pieces such as the heavy buffet, dining room table and china cabinet? Where is Mary's travel trunk going to fit, with its contents of family photographs spanning several generations? Where will the lawyer's bookcases go, with their nineteenth century books? Should we sell the grand piano, a Steinway built in 1907, with its cracked sound board? Or should we invest a few thousand dollars to have it repaired and restored to its former glory? Where will we put that huge art-deco desk that was Tom's paternal grandfather's, a grandfather who was a heart surgeon in Houston? Or how about Tom's grandmother's treadle New Home sewing machine? Or those heavy metal file cabinets?

But most of all, it's difficult to let go of one's children. With this move, Benton will no longer have a room of his own; he will have to sleep in a study on a sofa bed when he comes home from UT-Austin on holidays or during summers. Reconciling myself to the fact that Benton is essentially on his way out of our everyday lives has been the most difficult side-effect of this move.

All of Benton's belongings--the bedroom suit that was Tom's when he was a child, the books, the bookcases, the toys from Benton's childhood, the love seat that was Benton's great-great aunt's and that we had recovered for Benton--are all heading for storage until Benton moves out of his dorm room into an apartment of his own, the next stage in leaving childhood. It's a bitter joy watching one's child become an adult.

Letting go. . . . easier said than done.

Story of a journalist

The Columbian Journalism Review has an article about an Al Jazeera cameraman who has been held in Guantánamo Bay since 2002, without access to legal aid until 2005. The story of Sami al-Haj should make the blood boil of every American who truly believes in the ideals of democracy. And yet this is a story repeated over and over again at Guantánamo Bay: someone gets picked up in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq and is handed over to the American military and assumed guilty. Sometimes the person is mistaken for someone else. Sometimes the person just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes the person is an "enemy combatant" with no real military threat. Sometimes the person is indeed a member of Al-Qaeda. But none of these people, no matter what their level of guilt or innocence, has had access to adequate--if any at all--legal aid. They disappear into the black hole of Guantánamo Bay, and most Americans don't seem to care.

Why should we care? Because what happens at Guantánamo Bay reflects on us, on our legal system, on our sometimes indignantly righteous claims of freedom. Over 300 detainees from Guantánamo Bay have been released or transferred to prisons elsewhere. Do you think they are returning to their countries with stories of the greatness of democracy, of their fair treatment under a just legal system? How do the practices of Guantánamo Bay differ from any dictatorship?

Here's something that really struck me, as it also struck Glenn Greenwald: Although al-Haj was a journalist with Al-Jazeera, the Arab news organization didn't press the U.S. much for release of its employee at first. A spokesman for the organization said that right after 9/11, a great number of people thought that the horror of the terrorist attacks gave the U.S. some justification for detaining people. Also, people just didn't believe at first that the U. S. would torture prisoners. The rest of the world understands what democracy is; the rest of the world understands what the Statue of Liberty represents. As Ahmad Ibrahim, a producer for Al Jazeera says, ". . . in the Arab world, the situation at Guantánamo was difficult to comprehend or believe, even—that any kind of torture would be perpetrated by the U.S. A lot of people didn’t comprehend what Guantánamo stood for, and the legal arguments that were used to justify it."

That naiveté is long gone. With Guantánamo Bay, the Bush administration has voided the democratic ideals that this country has long represented. And I can't help but wonder: if the administration can get away with suspending legal rights of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay with little outrage from ordinary, voting Americans, when will our government realize that it can import those practices for use against American citizens? Oh, wait. . . .that's already happening. . . .

Morris, Rachel. "Prisoner 345." Columbia Journalism Review. July/August 2007. Online: http://www.cjr.org/cover_story/prisoner_345.php?page=1

Why Would You Want to Help Those People?

“Why Would You Want to Help Those People?”

The title of this blog is a quote from former Surgeon General Dr. Richard H. Carmona, who appeared before a Congressional panel on Tuesday of this week. He attributed the quote to administration officials who encouraged him not to attend a Special Olympics event because the Special Olympics have long been associated with a prominent family—the Kennedys.

That quote just about sums up the divisiveness and partisanship of this administration. Promising to be a “uniter,” President Bush has been anything but. A leader sets the tone for a nation, and the tone that this administration has set has been one of division, hostility, and a perverse rejection of reality.

Carmona, a Republican-appointed official, described how the administration had insisted he water down scientific findings in order to protect business or radical Republican ideology. This hostility toward facts has long been a characteristic of the Bush administration. Carmona described how a report on second-hand smoke had been delayed by the administration for years because the report revealed how “even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm” [New York Times, 10 July 2007]. He described attending a meeting with government officials who dismissed global warming as a “liberal cause.” Although scientific reports show that the best sex education includes a discussion of contraceptives, the government again told Carmona not to speak on the subject because of its narrow policy of “abstinence only” sex education.

Again and again, this government has twisted arms to make research reflect its own radical agenda, its own fantasy, its own ideology.

Vice-president Cheney used his power to undercut environmental practices that were supported by scientific research and by the Republican appointees who would enforce those practices. Christine Todd Whitman, Republican appointed Environmental Protection Agency administrator, resigned from her position because of Cheney’s insistence that the agency adopt more pro-industry policies that were detrimental to the environment and to the health of the nation.

What I don’t understand is this: Why would anyone want to vote for those people?

Harris, Gardner. “Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised.” New York Times. 11 July 2007. Online: www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11surgeon.html

Becker, Jo and Barton Gellman. "Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Leaving No Tracks." Washington Post. 27 June 2007: A01. Online: blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/chapters/leaving_no_tracks/

Atlanta: Fernbank, Dead Batteries, and Good Samaritans

I look forward during this move to a day with no emergencies or anxiety. This day had all the hallmarks of being such a day until a little after 4 p.m., when we found ourselves stranded in Decatur. But that’s the end of the story.

The story begins at Fernbank Natural History Museum where Benton, M-M, and I drove a little after 11 p.m. We spent hours in the place, going carefully through each exhibit and watching the IMAX movie about coral reefs. Throughout the exhibits, I was reminded again and again of the interconnectedness of all life on earth and of the importance of the most insignificant creatures.

I remember sitting in Kings Daughter’s Hospital in Temple, Texas, a couple of years ago while Tom was having knee surgery. The hospital has hosts and hostesses who welcome visitors to the waiting room, and the hostess this day was a woman in her sixties with teased hair and carefully applied makeup. She struck up a conversation with a young couple in the waiting room and somehow the conversation turned toward endangered species. The possible sighting of an Ivory-billed woodpecker was in the news, and this woman voiced very loudly her opinion that she didn’t understand all the fuss about a little old bird. What was one little bird?

I thought of this woman as we went through the exhibits at Fernbank and as we watched the film on the possible extinction of coral reefs within the next thirty years. At the glass case of Gila Monsters in the Lizards and Snakes Alive exhibit, the accompanying display panels claimed that Gila Monsters have provided researchers with information that can help diabetics. Gila Monsters go a long time between meals, but when they do eat, “a substance in [their] saliva helps [their] systems adjust to the sudden rush of sugars and nutrients. Drug researchers have copied that protein to help treat diabetes in humans.”

Studies of Fence Lizards have also revealed information that can help humans: “When ticks that transmit Lyme disease feed on Fence Lizards, a protein in the lizard’s blood kills the Lyme bacteria. If that tick then bites a human, the human won’t get sick.”

Science and research provide us with information such as this, and yet many people just don’t realize the importance of basic research and of one little bird or one little lizard or one little insignificant plant. They are like that woman sitting in the waiting room of Kings Daughter’s Hospital, making fun of people who mourn the loss of a species or of the degradation of a watershed or habitat.

The IMAX movie on coral reefs illustrated how we are part of—not separate from—nature and how we depend upon other creatures for our survival. The warming of global waters is threatening coral reefs which provide food for millions of people and which help dissipate the force of violent waters for those who live on sea shores. The film described one place in the Fuji Islands where a coral reef was dying. The smaller fish that feed the larger fish that feed people no longer had a habitat, a habitat that was destroyed by two degrees of warming, by deforestation which caused silt to muddy waters that needed to be clear for the coral to grow, and by over-fishing by foreigners.

Having gutted the Environmental Protection Agency in favor of business, the leaders of our current government don’t understand this kind of interconnectedness—or maybe they just don’t give a damn, just like the woman puzzled and dismissive of the possible sighting of the long-thought-extinct Lord God Bird.

Today’s experiences not only reminded me of how we depend upon other creatures but also how much we depend upon one another and how we are connected in surprising ways. Benton, M-M, and I drove to the post office in Decatur after 4 p.m., and when I turned the key to start the car and head back to our apartment in Atlanta, the engine didn’t even turn over. Dead. Nothing. So I went back into the post office to borrow the Yellow Pages in order to call a tow service. Tom was in Killeen, giving tips to the successor to his old job, so he wasn’t available to give us back-up support.

Flipping through the Yellow Pages, I looked for wrecker services in the Decatur area. One service had a recorded message that directed the caller: “If you need the towing service, hang up and call again. Otherwise, leave a message.” Hanging up and calling again, however, elicited the same recorded message. The number of another local towing service had been disconnected. Someone answering the phone at a third towing service said he had a bad leg and wasn’t taking any work for the next two weeks, but he gave me the number of some other guy—who I didn’t call. Instead, I called another business listed in the Yellow Pages. The receptionist said that she needed a destination to which the car was to be towed. I hadn’t figured the destination yet. And the tow truck wouldn’t arrive for another hour to ninety minutes.

I called our real estate agent to see if she could recommend a wrecker service, but she didn’t know of any, either, perhaps never having had the wonderful experience of requiring such service.

The post office parking lot, completely full when we arrived, had emptied of cars. The post office personnel were closing and locking their office doors. And then a Good Samaritan drove up, an insurance salesman who lives in Atlanta but works in Decatur. He asked us if we needed help, and I asked him if he could recommend a local auto repair shop to identify as a destination to the tow truck driver who might be showing up in an hour-and-a-half. Gary Lobby, as he identified himself, did better than that. He called up the owner of Medlock Marathon on Scott Boulevard, who arrived about twenty minutes later to jump start the Honda and to lead us to the service station where his son Eddie provided us with a new battery.

While waiting for the repairs to be completed, Randy, the owner of the station, and I talked and discovered some possible family connections. His wife is from Louisiana, and her father was a Cole. “Hey,” I said, surprised. “My grandmother was a Cole, and her father’s family had migrated to Texas from Louisiana.” Randy himself was from Kentucky, but he had ancestral connections to Opelousas, Louisiana, where Tom’s ancestor Seth Lewis had been a judge in the 1800s. Then he mentioned a family connection to Rob Roy [MacGregor], whom Tom's mother had often mentioned as being an ancestor of her family, the Robbs.

We’re all connected in sometimes unexpected ways.

In Atlanta: the surprise inside

To celebrate our move to the metro Atlanta area, I am starting a new blog here on this site. I'll try to describe our experiences as honestly as possible--without totally exposing myself to ridicule--and changing names or omitting names to protect the innocent and to prevent lawsuits.

I've described our move on MySpace, so I'll begin here where I left off there, with a clean slate, so to speak, looking not back toward our old home in Texas but forward to whatever home and life we re-establish here in Georgia (having lived here before, near Columbus).

We are still looking for a home here, having chosen the school district/neighborhood/metro city in which we want to live. What we knew before we moved was how much more expensive are homes here than in the small Central Texas town from which we moved. So we're trying to buy a home that meets our needs, our sense of style, and our budget: no small order. We've made an offer on a ranch style house that partially meets our desired location, that meets our space needs, that suits our style on the inside but is rather boring on the outside. But then, there's something appealing to having an outside that's unprepossessing and an inside that's full of surprises and beauty, like one of those homes in the French Quarter of New Orleans with the blank brick facade that opens up to an iron gate beyond which there are fountains and gardens: the richness of the interior life.

If the owners do not accept the final offer we have made today, we will begin again with a list of homes to view and review that I have here in front of me. At least half of the houses on that list are empty, an important point since as of July 27th, we will be without a place to stay. We are currently staying in a two-bedroom apartment that Tom's organization paid for from the last week of April through June; now we're paying for this final month, and the rent is exorbitant.

So this is where we are now, still in-between our lives in Texas and our lives in Georgia.

Meanwhile, we've been entertaining ourselves with a few outings. Yesterday evening we took M-M to see Ratatouille, an animated film that has received rave reviews in Salon and The New York Times. Judging from the audience's reaction, the film has not been over-rated. The film provoked loud, delighted laughter from the audience (including from me and M-M), and at the end, spontaneous applause. I've seen only two or three films in my life where the audience applauded at the end. Another illustration of the effectiveness of the animation is that Tom got motion sickness. He said that he had to close his eyes several times during the film, particularly during the scene where Remy goes barreling through tunnels of underground water. Now, Tom is easily beset by motion sickness. Yes, the movie was cute, the animation was absolutely stunning, and the story was good, too.

On Saturday, the three of us got up early to drive to the Georgia Aquarium, arriving before 8 a.m. We finished viewing all the exhibits in a little over an hour, even though we tarried at the tanks with the Beluga whales (my favorites), and M-M paused to take pictures at many of the exhibits. The hour passed wonderfully, and we picked up a few facts along the way. The piranha exhibit exclaimed that HUMANS eat piranhas; piranhas do not eat humans. A guide told a group of people gathered around that whale sharks may be able to grow up to 66 feet long; at least, there's an unconfirmed report of such length. Of course, those are whale sharks in the wild, not in an aquarium--even the huge 6-million gallon tank at the Georgia Aquarium. Two of the aquarium's whale sharks died within the past few months, the first whale sharks on display outside of Asia.

We also learned that Japanese spider crabs can get as big as a car and live to be 100 years old.

After our stroll through the Georgia aquarium, we stopped for several minutes at a nearby coffee and tea stand and ordered three cups of hot tea. Then we walked over to Olympic Centennial Park. As we walked, I noticed a helicopter overhead; the "whop-whop-whop" of its motor became a continuous background noise as it hovered overhead, and I wondered why the park required such diligent, such visibly vigilant security. Then the mystery was solved as we walked back across Centennial Park toward World of Coca-Cola. About thirty protesters were holding up signs protesting the corporation's overuse of ground water in India, the dumping of industrial sludge in canals, and the corporation's hostility toward union organizers. Several union organizers of Coca-Cola workers were killed in Colombia, and some have claimed the corporation's complicity in the murders.

Ten or twelve Atlanta Fire Rescue personnel stood across the street, dressed in red shirts and blacks shorts, their bicycles lined up with them, and eight or nine police motorcycles were parked in a line behind them on the sidewalk. Several policemen and negotiators in black uniforms hovered nearer the protesters, who were mainly college-aged young people. The protesters were led by a man dressed in traditional kurta and pants.

Several of the protesters arranged themselves on the concrete, posing as dead, while another protester outlined their bodies with chalk. A very polite young woman and young man asked us if we wanted an informational leaflet, and we said, "Sure."

The scene wasn't threatening nor the protesters loud and angry. Why was there such a show of police force? The helicopter overhead seemed particularly gratuitous, with its suggestion of menacing military power. "Do we live in a police state?" we wondered aloud to one another.

As we walked away, I overhead an onlooker say, "This makes me want to buy a coke."

More surprises are to come, I'm sure.