"One More Good American"

Perhaps it's old news that the U. S. Department of Justice politicized the hiring of career attorneys under the management of Monica Goodling, the DOJ's White House Liaison and Senior Counsel to the Attorney General, but the recently released investigative report on improper hiring procedures puts the story in headlines again today. As the U. S. Dept. of Justice's investigative report describes:

It is not improper to consider political affiliations when hiring for political positions. However, both Department policy and federal law prohibit discrimination in hiring for Department career positions on the basis of political affiliations. (p 12)

The report reminds us once again of the lawlessness of the Bush administration and the political hackery found throughout that administration. As the report indicates, Goodling broke the law in using political affiliation to make decisions on hiring career attorneys. In one instance, Bradley Schlozman, then interim U. S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, asked for waivers to hire an Assistant U. S. Attorney, and he described some of the candidates in conservative political terms, calling them, "rock-solid Americans." The e-mail interchange between Schlozman, EOUSA Deputy Director John Nowacki, and Monica Goodling indicates that the three equated "Good Americans" with Republicans:

That same day, Nowacki forwarded the three résumés by e-mail to Goodling in the OAG. Later that day, Goodling sent an e-mail to Nowacki saying, “Tell Brad he can hire one more good American.” Shortly thereafter, Nowacki sent an e-mail to Schlozman saying, “You can go ahead and hire one more good American.” Nowacki acknowledged to us that he understood the phrase “good American” to refer to someone with Republican credentials. (p 30)

I am so disgusted with this whole idea that Democrats and liberals are not "rock-solid American" or "Good Americans." This whole idea that one's political affiliation indicates one's true patriotism is downright un-American.

How do we combat this pernicious attitude? It is not only un-American, it undermines the effective workings of our government. Kevin Drum points out how one highly qualified candidate was dismissed because of his wife's political party affiliation! The individual who was subsequently placed in the position was very un-qualified, lacking the counter-terrorism experience required of the position as well as the minimum years' experience as a federal criminal prosecutor.

Oh, just read the whole report and weep! Monica Goodling's political vetting was not an isolated event. Candidates for positions with the Coalition Provision Authority were also vetted politically, and many young and inexperienced people were sent to Iraq unprepared, having met the administration's requirement that they be Republican but knowing little or nothing about the country they were to help lead. The consequences were disastrous. As "one more good American" AND a Democrat, I'm saddened and outraged by this incompetency--and lawlessness.

Metamorphosis and One Forgotten Woman

I just finished reading Kim Todd's book Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, another one of my sales purchases at BookPeople in Austin. Merian, the daughter of a man who owned a thriving publishing house in Frankfurt, Germany, lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and she was among the first to realize the importance of studying insects in their environment. She spent a lifetime studying caterpillars, pupa, and butterflies; observing them in their natural habitat; identifying the food they ate; preserving their stages of development through her drawings and paintings; publishing her works to great acclaim. Well-known and respected during her lifetime, Merian's work fell into disfavor as science pushed toward professionalism, away from the dedicated amateur, and as her works were misinterpreted and misrepresented in successive translations and publications.

However, in the 1970s, original volumes of Merian's works re-surfaced from where they had been buried in St. Petersburg. (Peter the Great had purchased many of her drawings and paintings and beautifully published portfolios immediately after Merian's death in 1717. Also, one of her daughters had settled in St. Petersburg with a second husband and children.) Kim Todd's book re-examines Merian's work in order to honor Merian's contributions to science and her influence on naturalists who immediately succeeded her.

Reading this book reminded me once again of the many contributions of women to science and other fields of study, contributions that are too often overlooked, disregarded, or otherwise forgotten. Merian was working during a time when women didn't have much power in society, but she lived where there was more tolerance than one found elsewhere in Europe: Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and in the province of Friesland in the Netherlands. And she was also possessed of a strong will to go her way within the constraints of the time in which she was born. When she was fifty-two years old, she traveled to Surinam to study caterpillars and moths and butterflies there.

Yet, as Todd points out

. . .most books detailing the history of science and insect studies leave [Merian] out entirely. John Ray's biographer writes that "he grasped, as no entomologist for more than a century after him succeeded in grasping, the necessity of studying not merely the imago, but the whole metamorphosis of a species." Merian's first caterpillar book had come out twenty-six years before Ray's History of Insects.

Todd also notes, ironically, that

[t]he second edition of the 2004 textbook Forest Canopies covers the ecology of treetops, from rotifers to orangutans, as well as the history of canopy biology and the biologists who breached this new frontier. The text doesn't mention Merian, offers no hint that she was the first European to observe the life in the canopy, the first to provide the images of tree-top dwellers, to know that life was different up there. It does, however, have an image from her Surinam book, a giant silk moth hovering near a coral tree, uncredited, on the first page.

So here's to Maria Sibylla Merian--and women everywhere who do not get the credit they deserve in fields of study dominated by men.

Along those lines, my son sent us all an e-mail this weekend linking to a podcast that describes a study challenging the idea that men are better at math than women. Spread the word!

Quotation of the Year

On Tecumseh, Shawnee Chief:

Another distinguished aspect of Tecumseh's moral fiber was his aversion to the mistreatment of prisoners of war. In a culture that regularly practiced the torture and burning alive of captives as a religious rite, he was outspoken in his opposition to such barbarity. According to [Stephen] Ruddell [a white captive who had been Tecumseh's close friend as a child and young warrior], 'when prisoners fell into his hands he always treated them with as much humanity as if they had been in the hands of civilized people. No burning--no torturing.'"

from Jay Feldman's When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes (2005)--another fine book from the sales tables of BookPeople in Austin, Texas.

Ummmm..... George Bush et alia--and all such so-called civilized people--, please take note.

The "Blame the Environmentalists" Game

When the story of the White House's manipulation of the EPA's report on fuel emissions first came out in June, I thought of writing a post about this unscrupulous behavior. However, this administration has taken unscrupulousness to such a high level that one chances becoming fanatically obsessed with repudiating that behavior. I have to take a break now and then, to go outside and pull some weeds in my herb and vegetable garden, to take a walk, or to read a novel.

Then a conversation with my father in Texas reminded me of just how perniciously and successfully Fox News and the Bush administration communicate their version of events. My father complained over and over about how environmentalists have prevented efforts to find alternative sources of energy. Yes, that's right: our reliance on foreign oil is all the fault of environmentalists.

Okay, I can see his point (though I don't agree) when he complains about environmentalists' resistance to opening up ANWAR (Alaskan National Wildfire Refuge) to drilling. But he blames environmentalists for our not harnessing wind power or solar power effectively and soon. My father bitterly complained that Democratic senator Ted Kennedy was against the first proposed offshore wind farm near Cape Cod, but he didn't seem to know that Republican senator John Warner was also very much opposed to that project. In fact, in 2005, Republicans John Warner and Lamar Alexander introduced legislation (which has yet to pass) that would greatly restrict the building of wind farms. As Tom reminded me, it's also true that wildlife conservationists are concerned about the placement of wind farms, which could have a very devastating impact on migrating birds. The fact is that these issues are nuanced, and Fox News doesn't do nuance. [For another viewpoint, see Clean Edge.]

What so many people seem to have forgotten is that President Jimmy Carter promoted solar power and even had solar panels installed at the White House. He also offered legislation to promote research in solar power. However, when Ronald Reagan was elected, Reagan gutted support for research in alternative fuel sources. (And the solar panels were removed from the White House.)

My father also wonders why we don't have automobiles that are more fuel efficient.

In 2005, the Bush administration proposed very modest fuel standards for automobiles (while ignoring the biggest gas guzzlers), and these standards would not have to be met until 2011. Environmentalists complained that "the requirements were disappointing because automakers who used the old system through 2010 would only have to boost fuel economy an average of 1.3 mpg, less than the requirements from 2004 through 2007." And this was back in 2005 when gas was about $2.60 a gallon.

Government support for better gas mileage in vehicles and for improved fuel emissions is tepid; the automobile industry has just too much clout. I'm going to learn just how much clout when I read Edwin Black's Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives (2006), a book I purchased (on sale, as I've committed myself to doing lately since I buy too many books) at BookPeople in Austin, Texas. I'll share later.

Goat Island Journal--July 22, 2008

This past week, Tom and I headed to Caddo Lake, Texas, for a few days of camping and paddling. We had planned the week in Texas to coincide with activities of our children, one on a mission trip with her best friend from Temple, Texas, and the other working on a solar car at the University of Texas. Here is my journal of our Goat Island experiences. Goat Island is part of the Wildlife Management Area of Caddo. Note: Click on each picture for a full-screen view.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008
We have arrived at Goat Island, have unloaded the boats [kayaks] and have eaten lunch. Tom is digging a latrine. He found a large, forked tree limb at the campsite which he is using for a seat to set above the latrine. A crow calls very loudly nearby, and another answers him in the woods of Goat Island. The two crows seem to be communicating. Then, with a sudden squawk, the crow nearby flew across the clearing toward the middle of the island, cawing as he flew. I now hear his distinctive call again, cawing, then pausing as another crow answers.

Two red-shouldered hawks began crying loudly; I watched as they flew, silhouetted against the afternoon sun, and settled in the top of a cypress tree near the campsite. Maybe they have a nest nearby; they're very screechy. Now the hawks are communicating with one another. One is right behind me in that cypress tree. They sound uncannily like those scary dinosaurs-- velociraptors--in Jurassic Park.

I can also hear Tom digging away at the latrine.
   By the sound, I suspect he is now scraping bark off the tree limb to make a smoother seat He is so thoughty. Or at least he is thoughty in the matter of woodsman latrines.

After we pulled our kayaks ashore and checked out the campsite, the first wildlife Tom encountered was a water moccasin. Tom walked from this designated campsite--with its iron fire ring--to the campsite where we had camped last time [June 2005]; the two campsites are within sight of one another. 


On his way back to the first campsite, Tom saw the water moccasin, looking at him from under a stump.

We had a little difficulty locating the campsite. We had a nice paddle down Cypress Bayou, and then we took the Carney Canal cut-off which takes you back to the island and then around, north of the island.

We turned too quickly, at the C26 or C27 marker, when we should have continued on to the C31 marker. Tom tried to find a way through water hyacinth to what looked like might be the island. The water hyacinth has expanded rapidly since we were here in the summer of 2005.

4:15 p.m. Central Daylight Savings Time

Tom has just taken my kayak out to the water, loaded down with what fishing paraphenalia he brought with him. He paid $30 for a fishing license, so he's hoping that he will catch some fish.

Anyway, back to the water hyacinths. The flowers are beautiful; I paddled close to a couple of flowers to observe them. However, the plants form dense mats that cover the water, making navigation through them almost impossible. Someone--the park service or those associated with the wildlife management service--has undertaken an eradication program that includes spraying the green mats of water hyacinths, leaving behind a brown soggy mess [more] difficult to paddle through. Tom got bogged down a couple of times in these stinking brown mats and had to curse his way out. . . .

The sun is slowly setting--it's mid-afternoon, actually--past a tall pine tree, and peeks through [its] limbs...and the large drapings of Spanish moss. My head and shoulders are bathed in the sunlight; my legs and feet are in shadow. A breeze cools the hot air, and cicadas sing loudly in the trees. The sky is clear and blue.

A barred owl calls in the woods: hoo hoo hoohoo hoo hoo hoohooaww--I cook for me; who cooks for you all? The hawks have started up again with their strident, imperious calls. They sound quite tetchy. Maybe there are young ones in the group. The air is now still with only the faintest of breezes stirring loose ends of moss hanging in a huckleberry tree on the other side of the tent.

Wow. I just saw one of the hawks flutter down from a tree limb and land in the tall green grass. It then flew up to a neck-high hollow tree stump where it seemed to eat something, wait a moment, and then fly again into a tree, hidden from my view. A few minutes later came that call that reminds me of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park--then a loud, kind of clucking noise--then the velociraptor call again. We may have invaded their hunting space by camping here in this clearing.

Thursday, July 17, 2008
morning
The sun is just above the trees, but we are still shaded by trees at our campsite. Soon the sun will cast hot patches of light in the camp. Now, however, I am enjoying the beauty of Spanish moss illumined by morning sunlight.

The morning is almost silent compared to the cacophony of night when all the cicadas [or katydids or crickets--I always confuse which ones call at night and which ones drone during the day] tune up. I also heard a few bull frogs, with their deep voices, and the higher-pitched calls of other frogs. Barred owls hooted for hours in the woods, and one lit for a while here in camp, hooting a few times before flying off to hunt elsewhere. I was disappointed, however, not to hear the large numbers of frog calls we heard last time. Tom thinks that since we were here a month earlier last time, that perhaps the breeding season is now over--that would account for the fewer frog calls.

Tom also said that frogs are declining world-wide, as are most amphibians. People have theories as to why this is happening, but no one knows for sure. Some suggest the causes may be chemicals in the environment that mimic hormones, chemicals in the environment that are toxic, and increased temperatures. There is also a disease that causes amphibian die-out. Perhaps the decreasing numbers of amphibians are due to a combination of these reasons.

Even though it took us two hours to paddle here (subtracting the 45 minutes we lost getting stuck in water hyacinth and trying to locate the campsite), we are really not far from civilization as the crow flies. We can hear traffic on a nearby highway and the whistle of a train. We also hear dogs barking in camps on the mainland. Last night we heard the pop-pop-pop of fireworks. I thought the sound was a gun at first, of someone hunting, but it's not hunting season now--not that that means anything in East Texas--and Tom identified the sound as fireworks. After several pops, it was apparent to me that someone was shooting off fireworks. Oh, and add to the sounds of civilization the occasional roar of jet engines overhead.

There's one of the barred owls again, singing a single "hoooo" in the woods, and the staccato-call of a woodpecker, probably a pileated woodpecker, Tom says, since there are pileated woodpecker holes in all the trees around here.

Add to those sounds of civilization the sounds of motorboats on the lake and bayou.

Recently I watched a television news piece about a man who was searching for a place of complete silence--by silence, I think he meant silence absent of any of the sounds of civilization, of motors and airplane jets and such. He had been tramping around woods in search of such a place, which he thinks should be maintained for all who wish to experience it. He finally located such a place, in some park in California, I think. Now people can go there and experience the kind of silence that was once available everywhere on this continent where there wasn't an Indian settlement.

There is no such place here at Caddo Lake though at least the sounds of the motors are diminished. 

Now we have the sound of the camp fuel stove on which Tom is preparing a breakfast of biscuits.

9:25 a.m.
First sighting of the day of one of the hawks that obviously nests near camp. I first saw movement out of the corner of my right eye--a sudden movement of Spanish moss on a tree near the place where we camped in 2005. I turned and looked closely but couldn't see anything unusual. Then a few minutes later, the hawk flew from that tree, low over the cleared space and into the shadows of hardwoods here on Goat Island. 




Sitting here at the camp, Tom identifies:
black gum
water oak
live oak
mulberry
hawthorn
bald cypress
loblolly pine
shortleaf pine
sweet gum
yaupon
water oak
vibernum
sparkle berry

 We think about Mary-Margaret as blue and green dragonflies dart through the campsite, settling for a few minutes on the bare ground and on the edge of the biscuit pan. Mary-Margaret spent hours photographing dragonflies when we camped on Goat Island in June 2005. Benton may have taken a couple of pictures, too, but Mary-Margaret was most interested in getting as close as she could to capture the best pictures. She maintained a scientific interest in dragonflies for a while, learning how to identify them from a handbook we gave her and accompanying Gill Ekrich, an environmental educator on Ft. Hood, on jaunts where they located and identified dragonflies. Gill is also an amateur dragonfly enthusiast. Tom would accompany Mary-Margaret on these excursions, too.

Now her passion has cooled, but Mary-Margaret retains an interest in anything related to dragonflies. I had hoped that her interest in dragonflies would lead her to become a scientist or naturalist or environmentalist, but, no, she wants to be a high-school English teacher.

about 12:45 p.m.
"There have to be fish in this lake," Tom complains as his kayak drifts past, "but I'm damned if I can catch 'em!"

We've been paddling Carney Canal north of Goat Island. Some of the pleasant sights have been some fairly close observations of a woodstork, whose wing noise alerted me to him as he flapped up from some nesting or resting place closer to the island. He perched on the limb of a cypress, eyeing us as we eyed him. 

 The loud percussion sound of wings hitting air alerted me to the second bird, which flew up and then perched out of sight.

Just a few minutes ago we spotted a "fish hawk," an osprey, and both Tom and I got good looks at him through our binoculars.

The much less pleasant sight has been the acres of water hyacinth that has pretty much taken over the water since we were here three years ago. The hyacinths have drowned out the native water lilies and yellow lotus. From where I sit in my kayak, tied up to a cypress tree near the canal, I do spy some blooming lotuses across this open lake and nearer the shore--but between me and them are acres of these exotic water plants. Their flowers are beautiful but their presence toxic to native flora. Whoever is "managing" the Wildlife Management Area has made some attempt at eradicating the hyacinth, but it seems to have been a losing battle.

"As long as the duck hunters can get to their blinds, damn diversity," was Tom's comment. Carney Canal, which is dredged through the lake, has been kept fairly clear of the weeds. By the map, we're at Gravier's Slough, and Goat Island is still south of us.

5:50 p.m. Central Daylight Savings Time
About ten minutes ago a motor boat traveled north of Goat Island, toward Cypress Bayou. It was going fast [and loudly!]. Now I hear another boat--maybe the same one, traveling on Carney Canal from the bayou; another follows it. These are the first boats I've heard today near the island.

Tom is walking around the island, with my binoculars in hand. He said he was going to see if he could find the nest of hawks that screech so frequently near this clearing. He has now been gone about thirty minutes; oh, here he is now. He said he got a good look at a red-shouldered hawk, but he didn't find the nest.

The boats were jet skis--"three idiots on jet skis," to quote Tom. The motors of those vehicles are very loud.

"Did they see you?" I asked.

"Nah--they can't see anything but what's right in front of them," Tom replied. "I was standing behind some trees. But I could have been wearing a bright orange vest and waving flags and they wouldn't have seen me."

Later, he added: "To people like that a lake--or any wild place--is nothing more than a roller coaster. Just like the people who snowmobile through Yellowstone. They are just seeking thrills. They may as well ride a roller coaster. I don't have any use for them. If that sounds uncharitable, I'm sorry."

I understand Tom's attitude. Those people on jet skis will not have noticed anhingas flying overhead, the woodstork or osprey, the beaver dams that dot Caddo Lake and its sloughs.



















Nor would they notice the water lily or the yellow lotus. Nor would they notice the green expanses of water hyacinth clotting the water and burying the lilies and lotus in their green, choking embrace. Nor would these jet skiers care. They are most concerned that the water lanes on which they race are free of such debris.

It's not that every person who ever rides a jet ski or a snowmobile is mindless of nature or the encroachments upon it. I've ridden a snowmobile. It's fun--but the bike is too damn loud, and it encourages a mindset focused on speed and daring.

And a mind thus focused and nurtured is not conducive to the slowness needed to observe and to analyze. The trick, however, is to get the jet-ski mind to care about the environment in which its desires for speed and daring are attained. Saving the last bits of wildness in the world--too often and unfortunately, perhaps--depends upon getting the attention and maintaining the interest of the jet-ski minds.

Paddling back from Clinton Lake this afternoon, I imagined an idea of hell: a long canal cut through a swamp with green, impenetrable vegetation on each side of the canal. In this watery hell, there would be no potable water, just the moldy stew of swamp water. Each day would be clear and hot. The channel, too, would be clear of weeds and stretch interminably ahead, with those little white markers on posts suggesting a destination that would never arrive. No bird would call across the waters. No drum of wings would be heard as woodstorks startled up from the water's edge. No beaver lodges would be built between stands of cypress. No hawks or anhingas would fly overhead. No Great Blue Herons or other water birds would stalk the shadows along the banks. No fish would disturb the placid surface of the water. Only the loud motors of jet skis would inhabit sound in this place, a jet skier's paradise with sunny days and a clear sky. Only there would be no rest at the end--and no end to the watery lane.

Friday, July 18, 2008
7:15 a.m.
Last night was miserably hot. Mosquitoes are more active here at dawn and at dusk, so we crawled into our tent before the last light had faded from the sky.

After two days of paddling in swampy water, we were musty and fragrant. I longed for a nice hot shower. We had two liters of water left at evening, plus what remained in our water bottles. Thus, Tom had filtered some lake water--swampy stuff--about two liters, all told. So we were going easy with the water, using just a little to brush our teeth and to wash our faces and hands.

But the tent was hot--our skin sticky with humidity and grime. We each claimed our side of the tent and crawled in on top of our blue mats and sleeping bags.

If it hadn't been for the heat, the night would have been entertaining. All kinds of critters rev up their sound boxes at night. A couple of barred owls perched in a tree at the campsite and hollered loudly a few times. Crickets or cicadas built a wall of constant sound in the tree canopy. A bull frog "hooomed" loudly at the water's edge a few times, and soprano frogs chimed in. We also heard sounds we couldn't identify. The moon rose and bathed everything in a silver wash.

2:09 p.m.
We're back in the Prius, with the kayaks tied down on top and the air-conditioning cooling off a rather ripe-smelling interior. Although both of us washed off at camp this morning--I even used soap!--we had to don dirty clothes in which we sweated again on the paddle from Goat Island to Caddo Lake State Park.

The swamp water Tom filtered last night became our hot tea this morning. I wasn't very hungry, so I munched on some dried apricots and papaya. Tom packed enough food to last another four or five days. We will probably unload some of our trail mix on Benton when we visit him in Austin tomorrow. We will make it sound like a treat.

We piddled around camp this morning, not leaving until 10 a.m.. As we carted the kayaks to the edge of the water, I noticed raccoon footprints in the muddy ooze. I had also noted some recently upturned earth in the mossy shade of some small trees near our camp, so the area might have also been visited by armadilloes. The only mammal we heard was a dog barking, probably at one of the camps on the nearby mainland.[Actually, I did hear a startled beaver in one of the beaver lodges we observed up close.]

We leisurely paddled away from Goat Island, stopping to take photographs along the way--of each other against the backdrop of Spanish-moss-covered cypress and duckweed-covered water; of water lilies; of lotus flowers. At times we stopped paddling just to sit in the cypress shade and look around. Herons would startle up, honking loudly.

In the last stretch of Carney Canal, approximately half a mile before the canal ended at Cypress Bayou, we met a sight-seeing boat motoring up the canal, with about ten people on board. We paddled to the side of the canal, near a sand bank, to let the boat pass.

"Are you sitting on the bottom?" one woman asked, eyeing our boats. "The water doesn't look deep enough."

"No, we're right on top," I replied.

"But the water seems so shallow."

"It doesn't take much," Tom added.

The boat continued on, and we detoured into the swampy area behind the sandbar where acres of lotus flourished, their big fan-like leaves shining bright green in the morning sun.

I entertained myself for a few moments by rolling a large bead of water around and around in the bowl of one of the leaves. Tom paddled around taking photographs of the flowers. 

Because we spent so much time here, the pontoon boat passed us again on its return trip before we reached Cypress Bayou.

Seeing someone on the boat taking pictures of us in our kayaks, I remembered that we are probably on someone's home video now, too. When we first paddled to Goat Island, we were passed by another boat with four people, a man, two teenage girls, and one rather lumpish teenage boy. One of the girls was standing in the boat, aiming her video camera toward the passing scenery. She was taping us as she went past.

The only other non-motorized vehicle we saw was a canoe painted in camouflage colors and paddled by three young kids, the oldest maybe twelve or thirteen years old, at the most. We passed them on Carney Canal this afternoon, right before we entered Cypress Bayou.

Now we are back in our motorized vehicle, heading toward Carthage and then to Mama's and Daddy's farm in Chireno, where Mama has promised to prepare us a nice hot dinner.

Goodbye to Goat Island. If we ever camp there again, we'll choose a cooler month!

Criminal History: best predictor of future behavior

In 2005, having been kidnapped and then released by insurgents in Iraq, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was wounded when U.S. soldiers fired upon her car on its way to the Baghdad International Airport. One of Sgrena's bodyguards was killed. The incident caused an international outcry, with Italians turning against the war in Iraq and influencing their government to pull out of the war.

I remember listening avidly to news reports of this event. The U.S. soldiers said that they had warned the occupants of the car, that they had a legitimate reason to shoot because the driver of the car did not respond. Sgrena and the surviving witnesses disputed the military's claims. What news media did not discover--or just did not report--was that the soldier who fired the fatal rounds, Army Spc. Mario L. Lozano Jr, had a criminal record in his civilian life. He had a record of domestic violence, of writing bad checks, of non-payment for child support, and of violently threatening other people--a record that ordinarily would have made him unfit for service in the military.

Because the U. S. military has a need for "bodies" in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has lowered recruiting standards. The Sacramento Bee has researched the records of military recruits with criminal backgrounds and has uncovered numerous consequences of these lowered standards. Many recruits with such records have continued their criminal behavior in the military, murdering Iraqis, their fellow soldiers, and other civilians and inflaming international ill will toward the United States.

I don't remember anyone being held responsible for the death of Sgrena's bodyguard; what I do remember is the military's firm statement that the firing on the car was justified. Nothing of Lozano's background was included in the subsequent news reports of the event. Lozano himself, in the great tradition of covering one's ass, blames the victim:

"If it wasn’t for her, it wouldn’t have happened," he said. "It was her [Giuliana Sgrena's] idea to go over there and mingle with terrorists."

My God! This is what we have representing us in the "war on terror." Read the entire story.

Home Again from Travel

I just returned from another trip to Texas and thus missed the rain in Atlanta that left my water barrel filled to the brim and over-flowing. The habanero pepper plants grew bushier, the native sunflower near the door grew a couple of feet taller, the basil is glossy and saucy looking, and a mushroom has sprouted in the driveway. And now it's raining again.

Of course, it will take more than a few afternoon thunderstorms to propel central and northern Georgia out of the drought, but any rain is welcome in the meantime. My drive through Mississippi and Louisiana reminded me of what naturally-irrigated landscape looks like. I can't seem to get anywhere near McComb, Mississippi, without going through a thunderstorm, often accompanied by a tornado alert. The rice fields along US Highway 190 through Beauregard Parish were lush and green, reminding me of the Chambers County, Texas, of my childhood, when the the land, now covered with suburbs or weedy plantations of Chinese tallow trees, were once irrigated for rice.

I drove to Texas with Mary-Margaret and returned home alone. In Austin, we stayed a couple of days with Benton, who was working with other members of the University of Texas Solar Vehicles team to meet a deadline in building a solar car. (They missed the deadline by three days but finished the car.) Mary-Margaret stayed behind visiting family and friends and will soon be on her way with her friends to a group work camp in a northern state, where teenagers and adult supervisors from around the country will spend a week painting and repairing houses. On the way from Belton to Baton Rouge, I stopped in Huntsville, Texas, and visited a few minutes with one of my good friends, Virginia Owens. I didn't decide to stop until I reached College Station, where I made the phone call to Virginia to see if she were home. We spent a little over an hour talking about all the changes in our lives and the aches--heart aches and body aches--of growing old.

My best friend and her husband are moving from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to California, in just a few days, so I stopped for two nights and a last visit in Baton Rouge with Chris and Jon. The day after I arrived, Chris and I drove to Denham Springs, Louisiana, where Tom and I had lived for four years while Tom completed his Ph.D. (I taught in the English Department at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge during those years.) Chris has lived all of her life--except a short while at the beginning when her father was in the military--in the Baton Rouge/Denham Springs/Hammond, Louisiana, area. She has been saying goodbye to her childhood haunts, and there was one last farewell ritual she wanted to perform. She and I drove east to Denham Springs and then north on LA 16, looking for access to the Amite River, where Chris spent many summer months as a teenager and young adult swimming and looking for Louisiana agates on the gravel bars in and along the river. We found that access through the gate of a gravel pit company, and though the sign said "Posted--Keep Out," the gate was open, so we drove in.

The day was hot and humid. Thunderstorms had been popping up every afternoon. A man in a passing gravel truck gave us nodding permission to park on a small bluff overlooking the river. We two white-haired friends carefully traversed the weedy and gravelly slope to the river, remembering other times we had looked for river agates. We were younger then, slimmer, brown-haired, and tanned. I found a couple of big agates; Chris found some smaller, pretty ones. We didn't stay long. The water was oily at its edge. The afternoon was very hot. We said our goodbyes and left for the cool interior of Dim Sum in Baton Rouge and a lunch of har gau, rice noodle rolls with shrimp, and coconut snowballs.

I arrived home last night at about 10 p.m.. Because Tom was in Savannah attending meetings, only the cats (and the green lawn and much taller herbs and vegetables) were here to greet me. I spent today recuperating from travel. Driving alone for eight hours is really no fun, especially along interstate highways where thunderstorms and poor visibility do not seem to slow down traffic enough for safe traveling. Driving from Baton Rouge to East and Central Texas, I usually opt for U. S. 190 and avoid Interstate-10 altogether. Yes, the travel time is longer because one has to stop at traffic lights in small towns with names like Opelousas, Singer, Merryville and Bon Wier and to slow down behind loaded pick-up trucks (such as the one full of fifty-gallon drums and a large leather saddle).

But I like the backroads; I stay awake more easily on these drives, remembering other times I've traveled through these towns and the family history connected with them. An ancestor of my husband's--Seth Lewis--was a judge in Opelousas. I've taken this route many times, opting for a detour from U.S. 190, north on U.S. 171 and then east on LA 110, which cuts through cultivated pine plantations, passes ranches with "Bobby Jindal for Governor" signs on their gates, and speeds by Buck and Nanny's Deer Processing business. Thus I avoid DeRidder, near where my Cole and Simmons ancestors settled before some of the families moved on to Texas, and reconnect with US 190 again near Bon Wier.

But yesterday's drive from Baton Rouge to Interstate 95 to Jackson, Mississippi, and then Interstate 20 to Atlanta, was not easy. Traffic was heavier than I have encountered on these highways recently, there were a lot of eighteen wheelers, sometimes grouped together in long convoys or across three lanes of the highway, and everyone drives too damn fast. But I'm glad we have a Toyota Prius, with its great gas mileage. This is our first new car in thirty years of marriage; we always purchased second-hand cars. I may have been surrounded by aggressive SUV drivers, but at least I was getting better gas mileage. One takes comfort where one can, I guess.

Two of our cats have entered the study where I am; one is right at my elbow. I know what he wants: tinned cat food instead of the dry cat food left out for him while I was gone. The cats are glad I'm home, too.

Today's Quotation

"It's all about homage, isn't it? Listening to the ghosts....You need silence to listen to your ghosts. As a great man almost said, attention must be paid to our ghosts." --Alan Bates, playing the character of Oliver in Oliver's Travels, a British mystery mini-series; also starring Sinead Cusack and Bill Paterson)

Why Not Just Call It LYING?

Steve Benen, writing for Salon's "War Room," points out that President Bush has praised the expansion of the GI bill after he had publicly opposed it. He had to sign the bill because it passed by a veto-proof margin. Now he's praising it as if he had never opposed it. In addition to that, Benen points out, Bush praised Republican leaders who opposed the bill and even voted against it--in such a way that an unwary public (a group in which many Americans hold membership) would draw the conclusion that these leaders approved the bill. Bush also praised John McCain for his "hard work" on the bill--when John McCain also had publicly opposed the bill.

Bush had no words of praise for one of the actual Republican sponsors of the bill: Chuck Hagel.

Down is Up and Up is Down in this administration. Yes is No and No is Yes, too, I guess. (And torture is just enhanced interrogation procedures). I just think it's lying. But that's what this administration seems to do best.

In other news, the media are jumping on Wesley Clark for some comments he made about John McCain. Evidently, Clark said that flying a plane does not make one qualified to be president--but critics have taken Clark's comments out of context and are accusing Clark of attacking McCain's military career. I've read two good responses to these criticisms in the last few minutes. Here is Billings Outpost editor David Crisp on the brou-ha-ha, at his Billings Blog. And here is Steve Benen's response on Salon: "Media Mischaracterizes Clark Comments, Obama Backs Away."

Update:
Via Kevin Drum, I am reminded of earlier, truly nasty attacks on John McCain during the 2000 presidential primaries, attacks that are being echoed again among some lefties and some far-right conservatives. I remember receiving a forwarded e-mail from an uncle, in which John McCain's patriotism was questioned and in which McCain was described as a scary "Manchurian Candidate." I reacted negatively to those nasty innuendos and lies then, as I do to the resurrection of them today. Clark's comments, however, do not fall in that category.

Grim Reading

My favorite bookstore in Austin, Texas, is BookPeople. When I'm in Austin visiting my son, I usually take time to drop by BookPeople and pore over the store's sales tables and shelves. By doing this, I've discovered some winners, including Caroline Elkins' book Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (2005), an examination of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya in the fifties and the British response to that uprising. This book won a Pulitzer for General Non-fiction in 2006. It's very grim reading.

The book interested me because I know so little about colonialism in Africa outside of what I learned in general history classes, what I've read over the years in book reviews and the passing article or two, and what I've caught in news stories on current events in Africa. And Africa is much in the news today, with genocide in Darfur, Sudan, the disputed elections and violence in Kenya and in Zimbabwe, and post-election violence in Nigeria.

Elkins' book is an eye-opener, and a must-read for anyone who wants to understand more fully the consequences of imperial powers' exporting their world view, their sense of superiority, and their military might. The Mau Mau conflict in Kenya arose out of years of native subjugation to British rule. The most advantageous land was wrested from tribes and given to white British settlers. The Kikuyu were relegated to reserves, as were other tribes, to land that was less fertile and to areas that were too small to provide for their growing populations. According to Caroline Elkins, the Kikuyu "was the ethnic group most affected by the colonial government's policies of land alienation, or expropriation, and European settlement" (12). Agriculturalists, the Kikuyu "lost over sixty thousand acres to the settlers, mostly in southern Kiambu, a highly fertile region just outside of Nairobi that would become some of the most productive European farmland in the colony."

Over the years, tribes brought their grievances to the British government, but the government favored white settlers and British needs over that of the natives. And, of course, racism was rampant. The British ruling class lived leisured lives supported by native servants. In the fifties, thousands of Kikuyu--and some from other tribes--took oaths of allegiance to fighting British colonialism and to evicting Europeans from Kenya. Thus began a bloody guerrilla war. The colonial government's response was to create "transit" camps in which tens of thousands of Kikuyus (and some other tribal members) were incarcerated--and creating a detainee population of over 52,000, scattered in various camps and militarily-confined villages.

As I read the descriptions of these camps and of the treatment of men, women, and children in these camps, I could not help comparing what happened here, at the hands of the British, to what happened in Nazi concentration camps. The numbers might have been smaller, the eventual dead less numerous, but the torture as horrendous. And this was governmentally-approved torture, official torture.

The goal of the British colonial government was to get Kikuyus to confess their Mau-Mau affiliations and to provide intelligence of any Mau Mau movements and plans. In addition to using British settlers and soldiers, the colonial government used loyalist Kikuyus and members of other tribes to subjugate those resisting--thus ensuring hatred between these groups for generations to come.

In Operation Anvil, the Kikuyu living in Nairobi were rounded up, Gestapo-like, by British soldiers. Many of these detainees were strip-searched, relieved of their valuables, packed in enclosed rail cars for the trip to one of the camps, forced through a cattle dip of disinfectant, forced to strip and were provided with little clothing in exchange (for men--a pair of shorts and a couple of blankets). And they were given identity bracelets with a number on them. These people were "screened" to get them to confess their Mau Mau sympathies, screenings which included being whipped, beaten, sodomized, burned, and forced to eat feces and drink urine. Life in the camps was horrific, where diseases such as typhoid spread. Women were raped. Men were castrated. Others were summarily executed. Thousands of children died. Truly brutal people were put in charge of many of the camps.

One Labour MP, Barbara Castle, became a public critic of British policies in Kenya, but Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd maintained these camps by outright lying to the British people--all in the name of national security. High-level British officials knew that they were violating international human rights treaties but used "national security" (as well as lying) to side-step those legal issues. Detainees were held without the right to a fair trial or legal help. The government often fabricated charges, but the detainees could not even find out what those charges were in order to address them. Charges were unspecified for "security reasons." Detainees who smuggled out letters describing their horrific circumstances were punished if caught. Sometimes the entire camp was punished. And, of course, people who had only slightly supported the land and freedom movement became radicalized by their treatment in the camps.

Many British records of this time have disappeared, been purged. But people who suffered in these camps still live. As I read this book, I couldn't help draw parallels with the atrocities associated with the war in Iraq, with the mind-set of people who think they are above international and even national law.

For more information:
"British Brutality in Mau Mau Conflict", by John McGhie, in The Guardian
"10 Downing Street's Gulag", in Harvard Magazine
"What's Tearing Kenya Apart? History, for One Thing," by Caroline Elkins, in The Washington Post
"Who are the Kikuyu?" by Michela Wrong, in Slate
a book review by R. W. Johnson, in the Times Online
another book review, by Richard Dowden, in The Guardian

Techie Fun: Wordle

My son sent me and other family members a link to Wordle, a program created by Jonathan Feinberg, that turns text into "word clouds." I took the text for my postings in June and created a Wordle. Here is the link: A Wordle of June's postings

Update:
And here is the link to Benton's Wordle of Samuel Butler's translation of The Iliad of Homer.

Today's Quotation

from John LeCarre's The Constant Gardner:

She would never, as she thought of it now, have put herself in the firing line where she was determined to remain, fighting for the things she was determined to be loyal to--even if, boiled down, they made pretty simplistic reading: truth, tolerance, justice, a sense of life's beauty and a near-violent rejection of their opposites--but, above all, an inherited belief. . . that the system itself must be forced to reflect these virtues, or it had no business to exist. . . And the fact that she was working for the system did not oblige her to accept the system's lies. . . On the contrary, it obliged her to reject them, and put the system back where it belonged, which was on the side of truth.

Promote Torture? Don't Travel!

Scott Horton has two pieces online this morning ["Travel Advisory" and "Torture from the Top Down"] that address the subject of war crimes, of whether or not our leaders will be held accountable for condoning and even actively promoting torture of prisoners in pursuit of information after the attacks of 9/11. Not only did our leaders discuss and direct particular torture techniques, but they also attempted to ensure that those directives would not be traced to them but would seem to appear to be instituted because of requests from Guantanamo.

In his article for The New Republic, Horton refers to a recently-released report by Physicians for Human Rights which details the abuse. That report is led by a quote from Major General Antonio M. Taguba, who was assigned to investigate the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and who authored the consequent report on that investigation, known as the Taguba Report: "

After years of disclosures by government investigators, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held into account.

Horton writes that only in very unusual circumstances will a country prosecute its own leaders for war crimes; to do so requires a political will that Americans just don't have. [We're distracted now by high gas prices, the increasing costs of food, flooding in the Midwest, and drought in the Southeast. Will the presidential campaign just add to the distraction or focus our attention on the previous administration's disastrous leadership?] But foreign countries have no such restrictions. Investigating magistrates for at least two European countries ("pro-Iraq war NATO allies," according to Horton) are assembling a case for war crimes, focusing on American policymakers. Horton suggests that certain of these policymakers should be mighty careful about traveling outside the United States.

Gardening and Conservation

The drought continues in Atlanta, where the watershed doesn't meet the needs of a metropolis that continues to grow with little restrictions. Sally Bethea, executive director of Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, claims that "Georgians use more water and more energy per person than the national average" and that "you can never 'drought-proof a metro area that grows by a million people every decade while repeatedly failing to plan for sustainable growth and invest in measures to use water more efficiently."

Yet, despite the continuing drought, water restrictions have been eased in some counties in metro Atlanta. Here in Dekalb County, we are under a level four drought declaration which allows citizens to irrigate personal food gardens and to water plants with a hand-held hose for 25 minutes on designated days. In fact, I just read the updated restrictions and realized how conservative I have been with my water use the past few months.

I have gardened all my life, beginning with the vegetable garden in which I was required to hoe weeds when I was a kid. I love gardening. My favorite memories of both of my grandmothers are connected with gardens: my short and fat grandmother Ruby Benton, flat on her back like a June bug, having fallen over when trying to straddle a row of crowder peas, holding up her hands and laughing as I reach to pull her up from the ground; my grandmother Margaret Cole Dugat hiring me as a teenager one summer to help her re-shape all her flower beds and all the years thereafter sharing seeds and plants with me as I moved around the country, far from Tarkington Prairie and Old River, where Coles and Dugats first settled in Texas.

Here in metro Atlanta, in our little urban yard, my husband and I have ripped out traditional plants such as boxwoods and have planted blueberry bushes, strawberries, herbs and vegetables (lemon grass from a friend in Louisiana, a chilipiquin--also known as chiltecpin, chiltepin, bird eye pepper--from my father, basil, dill, cilantro, rosemary, lemon balm, serranos, Sungold tomatoes, etc.), flowers and native plants from Georgia Perimeter College Botanical Garden.

To care for these plants, we've connected a rain barrel to a downspout behind our house, we've mulched the plants, and we have become more careful conservators of the water we use in our house.

I first started paying attention to the length of my showers, limiting shower time to 3-5 minutes, and I never take real baths anymore. How I miss those long, hot soaks in water perfumed with bath salts. I don't let the water run while I brush my teeth or wash my hands. For a while, we kept a bucket in the shower to catch gray water. More recently, I've begun to conserve the cold water that usually runs down the drain while the shower water is warming. Unlike my daughter, who claims she immediately jumps into her shower, no matter how cold it is at the beginning, I have always let the water run until the water turns tepid. Now I keep an enamel bowl in the bathroom, in which I catch the cold water. I put the bowl of water aside when the water just begins to warm. After my shower, I pour the cold water into two-liter soda bottles that we now keep at-the-ready in the bathroom.

The first time I did this, I was shocked to discover that almost 2 liters of water go down the drain while my shower is warming up. That water now goes on my garden, on whatever plants seem to need it the most at the moment.

I am trying to see how I can sustain my vegetables, herbs, and flowers with these measures: collecting rain water and conserving household water that would otherwise go down the drain. By the time I give in to the more liberal level-four restrictions, irrigating food gardens with no restrictions and watering other plants with a hand-held hose, even those watering techniques may be banned. By that time, then, my garden will be dead. As will all our gardens if we do not become better stewards of our diminishing resources.

Predators: An Essay, a Moral Story, a Poem

We live in a leafy neighborhood in a fairly enlightened city in the metro Atlanta area. By "enlightened" I mean that the city, with the support of most of its citizens, has instituted practices that indicate a care for the environment and a desire for a quality of life that promotes community: a recycling program that includes composting leaves, clippings and tree limbs for free distribution to anyone who wants to fill up her truck-bed with compost; and community activities such as art festivals, downtown music, Community Supported Agriculture, a community garden, etc.

And the city has a leash law that includes not only dogs, but cats, too. Any pet must be collared and restricted to one's own property or on a leash if off the property. This law caused us the most problems when we moved to our leafy neighborhood, for while our dog stayed behind in Texas, we brought with us three cats, cats that were used to going in and out of our house and over fences in more lawless Belton, Texas.

The two female cats seemed fairly content to stay in our fenced-in back yard here in metro Atlanta. But Pluto, the male cat, was not so sanguine about his diminished domain. First, he lost the collar we put on him when he had his shots updated. Then he started going right over the privacy fence.

Some of our neighbors are more militant than others about encountering wandering cats. One neighbor keeps a trap in her yard, a humane trap, but a trap that has caught other neighborhood cats that ended up in the pound until their owners showed up to pay the hefty fine. We know this because neighbors whose cats disappeared told us as soon as we moved in to beware the cat trap across the street. I know this because the first community forum I attended, the cat trap was the topic of discussion. A local policeman was brought in to remind us of the law: Pets must be restricted to one's property or leashed.

Now, I'm a woman of peace, so I did what I could to keep the cats contained. I failed. Spring came. Birds were singing and nesting. A couple of neighbors began worrying about the black cat eyeing their bird baths or casing the bushes in their yards in the early morning hours. E-mails were sent on the neighborhood listserv describing the nurturing antics of the parent birds and the criminal cats that threatened the lives of baby birds.

How was I to keep the peace and keep Pluto out of neighbors' yards? Tom and I finally came up with a workable plan for our own little cat Alcatraz. It was a simple plan, really: chicken wire. We stapled chicken wire all along the top of the privacy fence in our back yard, about two feet of chicken wire that flops over and prevents the cats climbing to the top of the fence. At a distance, the chicken wire is barely visible. Up close, well. . . . it works. Or rather, it worked after Tom plugged up all the other holes Pluto found to escape the back yard.

Now the neighborhood birds are safe from our cats (except for, of course, the birds that seem determined to nest in the trees in our back yard--but they seem a scrappy lot).

But this morning, as Tom, Mary-Margaret, and I sat in our back yard, I wondered if our neighbors realize that--with hardly a cat on the streets--their bushes and bird baths are still not predator-free. Ten to fifteen squirrels played chase in the sweet gums and water oaks above us. A rattled robin came fiercely down a limb of a sweet gum toward the squirrels. All around us this morning we could hear birds defending their nests. Oh, yes, squirrels eat birds. We've seen a video that proves it. An ornithologist Tom knows focused a camera on the nest of an endangered bird in Texas (a golden-cheeked warbler or black-capped vireo--we can't remember which one) and caught quite a murderous sequence on tape. The video of a squirrel eating the baby birds in their nest is really compelling; local school children who were shown the video in a nature workshop were very impressed.

Or what about the red-shouldered hawk that haunts these trees? Or the crows that also will eat baby birds of other species, given the chance? Do our neighbors think mockingbirds chase crows because the mockingbirds are ill-tempered?

Cats, I know, are hell on songbirds, but, really, feral cats in the countryside do the most damage. Removing one predator in an urban setting will not much impact the songbird population. Or so says Dr. Kevin J. McGowan, in defense of crows.

And now, our daughter's story:
One afternoon in late winter, our daughter was walking home from school. When she was less than a block from the house, she noticed a little striped ground squirrel being chased by a cat. The ground squirrel had obviously been trying to evade the cat for a while and was losing energy. It would be captured any moment. So our daughter scared off the cat with a loud "shushing" sound and some swift hand movements. The cat ran off. The little ground squirrel took a thankful breath. And then, from a limb in a large tree in one of our neighbors' front yards where this life-saving mission was taking place, a hawk swooped down and picked up the ground squirrel. Open-mouthed and speechless, daughter watched the hawk fly away with its prey in its claws.

And Anita's poem:

The Darkness that Haunts their Dreams

Flat on its back, beak bitter
and still, feathers lank and close,
a sparrow lies under the ironing board
like a drunk in a stupor--
But even a drunk has breath,
heavy, malodorous, humid
exchange of air for air.
Not this bird
placed with such poignant domesticity,
a gift from Pluto,
cat of the underbrush,
pre-dawn shadow among shadows,
connoisseur of bird baths and dodgy bird dives,
cartographer of neighborhoods.
Scofflaw, he stalks where city laws
forbid the unleashed.
Neighbors mourn the feathers they find,
curse the cat and plot revenge.
What do they know?
The darkness that haunts their dreams
has other forms.
It sits with watchful eyes,
it glides with silent wings.
It preens in the sycamore at the edge of their lawns,
perfectly at home,
perfectly at ease,
perfectly prepared for darkness or dawn.

Bolstering the Constitution

One of my sisters recently checked this blog and asked "what was up" with my not having any recent postings. There are a number of reasons: travel to Texas to help my son finish moving into an apartment and to visit with some friends and relatives there; general malaise due to some health issues; time spent doing other activities, such as gardening and reading; and such a disappointment in our country's leadership that I just don't have the heart to post!

However, I've been cheered by the Supreme Court's recent decision in Boumediene vs. Bush, rejecting the Bush administration's assertion that enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay do not have the right of habeas corpus. Of course, the reaction to this judgment seems to fall along political lines. Here are links to editorial responses on the Real Clear Politics (conservative-leaning) website: "Editorial Roundup".

I particularly recommend reading Scott Horton's clear and interesting discussion of the ruling on his [recently retired but occasionally updated] blog at Harper's Magazine: "A Setback for the State of Exception."

Update
I'm with Juan Cole on John McCain's response to the Supreme Court's decision on habeas corpus. And why can't those on the far right not see that people who have been abused by power can be radicalized by that abuse?