a great, if cutesy (in a man way), article about painless ways to reduce CO2 emissions around the house

From today's New York Times:

The Energy Diet
By ANDREW POSTMAN

I’VE tried to be responsible.

I’ve thought pro-green thoughts and occasionally even done pro-green things. I’ve run the dishwasher and washer-dryer only with full loads. I’ve recycled, as ordered, though like every New Yorker I’ve ever met, I suspect the system does more good for our feelings than for the environment. I’ve shaved while showering, although I can’t remember anymore whether that’s a good or a bad thing.

I’ve been too busy to do much more, though, and too confused and overwhelmed by all the eco hype out there, and too inflexible to seriously change my lifestyle. No way am I hanging clothes out to dry on a clothesline. I won’t drive more slowly — as President Bush, like past presidents, has urged Americans to do to save gas — and neither will you, and neither will anyone. And I recently bought a flat-screen high-def 37-inch TV, an energy-Hoover you’ll have to pry from my cold, dead hands; if you haven’t seen an N.F.L. game on something like that, my friend, you might as well watch curling.

But the morning after I saw Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” I was spurred to action. I bought 50 compact fluorescent light bulbs — 50 — intent on replacing every incandescent one in my home. The new bulbs were supposed to be 67 percent more efficient and last up to 15 times longer. Unfortunately, the ones I bought also cast a considerably colder light, so I aborted my plan after just two bulbs when I realized the quality of light they emitted reminded me of a bus station bathroom.

In the weeks since, I dispatched the six cartons of unused C.F.L.’s to the basement, and my guilt grew alarmingly. As the father of three very young children, I had to do something — but something I would actually follow through with, something that would take minimal effort. Then, two weeks ago, while eating a doughnut and watching the scintillatingly clear images of Mets and Yankees scampering across my TV screen, I saw what I needed to do.

Flipping channels, I came across the news that Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative had just ended with Richard Branson, the British mogul, pledging $3 billion to fight climate change over the next decade. On another channel, Mayor Bloomberg stood at a podium in California and announced, to my pride and delight, his sweeping eco-initiative for New York: the city’s carbon emissions would be measured, an Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability would be created. Meanwhile, the man standing next to him, Governor Schwarzenegger, was set to sign legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for his state — the world’s 12th largest contributor of such gases — at a level the federal government had continually rejected. Everyone was chipping in, even Arnold, the first civilian ever to drive a Hummer. I took another bite of doughnut.

And that’s when it came to me. I should go on a diet.

A half-ton diet.

I knew, having taken the “Calculate Your Impact” survey on climatecrisis.net, the companion Web site for the Gore movie, that our household produced some 19,100 pounds of CO2 last year, 4,100 pounds more than the national average. (The concept of a “pound” of gas is a nebulous one — depending on the pressure and temperature, it can fill a thimble or a stadium — so maybe it’s best portrayed this way: one pound of CO2 is what’s released per each mile driven, or each mile flown per person; it’s what’s produced to heat five gallons of water.)

For easier math, I rounded my number to 20,000 pounds, or 10 tons. As a family, as a household, couldn’t we drop a half-ton, a mere 5 percent of our weight? That’s 10 pounds for a 200-pounder to lose, 6 for a 120-pounder.

Absolutely. It was a goal, one I could stick to. Ambitious as it sounded, it was, amazingly, not excessive. I could keep living generally the way I wanted. I gave myself eight hours, no more, to lose the weight. In a world where texting passes for conversation and hooking up for a relationship, perhaps I’d just defined the new activism. Very little pain, not insignificant gain.

Mindy Pennybacker, the editor of The Green Guide and thegreenguide.com, was also enthusiastic about my plan. “Americans have too much weight in many ways, so it’s a metaphor that makes sense,” she said when I called her. “If it motivates you because it’s familiar and part of your everyday life, that’s terrific.”

“It’s all about attitude,” said Laurie David, the founder of the Stop Global Warming Web site (stopglobalwarming.org) and a board member of the National Resources Defense Council. “Change one or two things, you end up changing four or five things. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Before you know it, you start influencing people around you.”

Like most dieters, I cut deals with myself. If you’re trying to lose real weight, you vow, say, to give up beer and ice cream but retain your pizza rights. Since I was trying to emit less CO2, I vowed to lower the thermostat at night by one degree — not two, as often recommended by tree-huggers — a tweak I expected none of us would notice. (That saved 79 pounds; each degree equals approximately 315 pounds of CO2; turning it down only at night, for the six colder months, or ¼ times 315). In return? No more guilt over TV size.

Friends I called for suggestions understood my deal-making. Judy said she never used electrical kitchen appliances — “Opening a can is something I’m able to do” — but was still not ready to swap Vaseline for non-petroleum eye-makeup remover. Victoria said she saw a young mother with her baby in some sort of recycled paper diaper that did not look at all absorbent. “My baby is wearing Pampers, probably one of the most wasteful things I do,” she said. Then again, as much as she loves S.U.V.’s — the way they feel and handle — she and her husband realized that if they bought one they would be ostracized by half their circle. They bought a station wagon that gets three times the mileage.

I vowed to quit my profligate morning habit of turning on the shower and leaving the bathroom, not returning until several minutes after the water was hot. On the flip side, once I stepped into the shower I was not going to turn the experience into a 60-second spasm of sudsing and rinsing. Two minutes shower going unnecessarily times 2.5 gallons per minute times 365 morning showers times three ounces of CO2 produced per gallon of hot water equals 342 pounds. (My calculations, here and elsewhere, were made with the help of experts at the National Resources Defense Council and The Green Guide, several credible Web sites and a few smart relatives who grew up to be physicists and engineers.)

When washing white loads, I’d switch from the warm/warm cycle to warm/cold, comfortable that neither I nor my wife would notice the difference. (We didn’t.) Sixty-two pounds saved.

Four hundred and eighty-three total pounds, 30 seconds of effort to reprogram the thermostat, two no-brainer decisions. Maybe my diet was riddled with compromises, but it was working.

I found further validation for my lack of rigor. “When people equate efficiency with discomfort and sacrifice — like when Jimmy Carter put on a sweater and encouraged Americans to lower the thermostat — they shy away from it,” said Bill Prindle, the deputy director of the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. “A month later they’re back to their old ways. We need to ask people to act from their values” — meaning fundamentals like “physical security, clothing, food and shelter, including thermal comfort.”

I felt certain I could unearth more savings in what Danny Seo, an eco-expert with a TV show, a Sirius radio show and a series of books all titled “Simply Green,” described to me as “bad habits we don’t even realize are bad habits.” For example, was it really energy-wiser, as I’d often heard, to leave a light or computer on for the few minutes you’re out of the room, rather turning it off and then on again?

“Total myth,” Mr. Prindle said. “Actually, I think that’s a projection. Because it takes me more work to shut it off, people think, then it must generally require more energy. It’s like the better-to-leave-the-car-idling theory.”

There were other bad habits that were just as easy to break. A friend suggested this quickie: Call retailers to get them to stop sending the print catalogs to which our house had become addicted. I chose 10 — L. L. Bean, Crate & Barrel, J. Crew, Eddie Bauer, Garnet Hill, Design Within Reach, Lands’ End, Restoration Hardware, Hammacher Schlemmer and the Company Store. (Originally I’d included Williams-Sonoma, but my wife vetoed that idea.) It took me 22 minutes total to cancel them — eight phone calls and two e-mails. Ninety (the average number of pages) times 12 (number of issues per year we seem to get) times 10 (retailers) equals 10,800 pages. Since my research shows that one tree produces about 25,000 pages of the coated, lower-end virgin paper used in most catalogs, I’d just saved 43 percent of one tree. One tree produces 260 pounds of oxygen, 43 percent of that is 112 pounds, which converts to 154 pounds of CO2 saved.

Everyone but me seemed to know about “vampires” — those energy suckers plugged into the wall when not in use (toasters, coffeemakers, hair dryers, cellphone chargers), consuming energy in standby mode. The easiest solution? Pull out individual plugs or, particularly for areas near computers and home entertainment equipment with lots of components, plug everything into a power strip (with surge protector) and, when done for the night or weekend, flip off the illuminated switch. Doing that would save me about 115 pounds annually on the computer, about 200 pounds on the TV, DVD and VCR. (Cable and satellite boxes draw huge amounts of energy, but turning them off may result in considerable reboot delays. I’m not going to turn mine off every night, but I might when I go on vacation.)

My boys and I drove to Lowe’s for surge protectors as well as a thermal insulating blanket for our 75-gallon hot-water heater; wrapping it, every expert I spoke with told me, significantly reduces the massive heat loss, especially in winter. (Newer water heaters tend to have higher levels of insulation built in.) The largest blanket they carried, though, was for a 60-gallon tank, and a check of their Web site (and, later, of Home Depot’s site) showed no blanket for a tank our size. Forget it, then; this was the lazy man’s diet: minimum effort.

On our way to the cashier, we passed an aisle with motion sensors, and I remembered my brother had them in his bathrooms, where they shut off the lights soon after people left. They seemed an easy enough item to buy and install. I called my brother, Marc. “Be honest,” I said. “Will there be re-wiring?” My brother, an astrophysicist, said no, there wouldn’t be; then something to the effect that, unless I was too stupid to remove a light switch plate and put another one on, I was fully capable.

“Wait,” I said. “Why does anyone need a motion sensor in their bathroom? Don’t people turn the light on when they go in and turn it off when they leave?”

“Ah,” he said. “You don’t have teenagers yet.”

Scratch the motion sensors, at least for six more years.

I was now up to 952 pounds, more than 90 percent of the way to my goal. Okay; I was ready to turn back to the C.F.L.’s. I decided I could tolerate the cool white ones in two places only: our outside vestibule (60 watts replaced with 13 watts, with the same number of lumens, or brightness), and one overhead fixture in my office (75 watts replaced with 19), where its effect was neutralized by incandescent track lighting. They were lights that were on much more often than most. Together, they would save me, annually, about 300 pounds in 20 minutes, including shopping time.

Three hundred pounds. No typo. Two bulbs.

I wasn’t done, though — soon but not yet. I learned from Laurie David of Stop Global Warming that it makes almost no sense to rinse dishes in very hot water when they’re going into a dishwasher to be rinsed in even hotter water. I would hereby skip that step, plus I’d also hand-wash dirty dishes created after 10 o’clock (no real chore since I find it relaxing). Should buy us two loads weekly, down to four instead of six — or 200 pounds saved for the year.

And I would have to give up my screensaver habit, much as I loved images of my children floating across my line of sight while I thought up sentences. In screensaver mode, my computer still draws a lot of power, according to David Goldstein, the energy program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He advised that by changing my settings so that the computer and display both go to sleep when inactive for 10 minutes (as opposed to my original setting of three hours), I would save about 250 pounds annually. It took me 30 seconds to click on the Apple icon, then “System Preferences,” then “Energy Saver.”

Seventeen hundred pounds dropped in 68 minutes — a little more than one of the eight hours I’d allowed for. All that would be required of me in the future was 10 seconds nightly to shut off two power strip switches and five to 10 minutes, every now and then, of pleasant dishwashing.

I ought to be done with it now — even if my numbers were a bit off, I’d blown past my goal, a dangerous thing to do early in a diet. But maybe Ms. David is right: make one change, soon you’re ready to make three. Maybe one day soon I’ll be ready to change a whole floor’s worth of light bulbs; I learned after buying my 50 bulbs that it’s possible to find C.F.L.’s that cast a warm glow, and the Green Guide’s helpful light bulb product report suggests that C.F.L.’s have been improving. Danny Seo says that Ikea carries lighting fixtures that handsomely mask the shortcomings of C.F.L.’s, with tinted glass or a strip of wood veneer. Maybe we’ll replace a roll or six of virgin toilet paper with post-consumer waste napkins — maybe. This is all I’m willing to do right now. Don’t look for me to carpool at elevators.

Then again, I can’t help but wonder how much I might accomplish if I actually put in more effort than a garden slug. I’m intrigued by what a friend, an architect, told me: That if just one teensy change were made to New York City — if all black roofs were painted white or silver, a simple, surprisingly inexpensive fix — the financial and energy savings would be jaw-dropping, not to mention that it would severely reduce the possibility of blackouts and brownouts. Relatively meager effort, monster bang for the buck.

So, like, I don’t know, maybe some weekend soon we all just get brushes and roof paint, fan out across the city, and just do it and get it over with? And afterward everyone comes by my place to watch the World Series on my big old flat-screen?

another reason why yesterday was fabulous

it was also my brother's birthday. Happy Birthday, Shum!

. . .

in which I explain why I deserve lots of presents, love, and financial support

it's my birthday

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my, the world is a pretty place

Tonight's my last night of 27, and I've recorded its sunset and a homeslice of Brooklyn here.



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p.s. you have to log in, etc.

my two favorite newish-to-me websites

www.overheardinnewyork.com
www.cuteoverload.com

Two great things about both of these sights: they are funny; new stuff is uploaded to them at least once a day and usually more often than that.

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timo says

"this [Professionally choreographed treadmill hipster band antics] needs to be seen!" Yep. It's pretty much better than reading tax (kind of a straw man, I know).

Also, HB, TJC!

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photo fizz!

So.


The T&R Train rooooooolls through town and things start happening! New Coke gets a second chance, we walk the the Brrrrrrooklyn Appreciation Tour of America, and, in my apartment, a brave new world of fish embellishments grabs the limelight and it's out with the blue, in with a new old coffee table.


These are some beautiful peppers.



Here's Tim looking like a little Ghanaian market lady, selling his beautifully stacked pillows.



And Rachel at Greenmarket Market, trying on a new color of yarn.



and Brooklyn.



Oh yes, and a tearful, chest-bumping reunion with Michael George at SKP & JPK's final wedding finale.



The new table, boldly bargained for by me.



And the fishes. The school on the table hails from Accra, Ghana, the ones hanging in the air, from someplace in India, c/o Michael & Seemee.

Oh yeah, and today there were Polish parades in Greenpoint. And by "parades" I mean about 5 cars driving by periodically with red and white flags honking a lot.

This is not Greenpoint. Rather, it is the Vatican.

More pictures of recent events at a webgallery near you:
the apt: http://annescanon.rhymm.com/digipics/nyc/1018man/year3/
about town with the yung-cherrys: http://annescanon.rhymm.com/digipics/nyc/lhsnyc/trtrainsept06/
the SKP/JPK PTY: http://annescanon.rhymm.com/digipics/nyc/nyusol/0607/skpjpkpty/
and the nighttime approach to NYC: http://annescanon.rhymm.com/digipics/nyc/citylights/flysept06/


The pictures are password-protected, so in order to see them, you have to register and be approved by me. Approval usually happens within 24 hours, check back to view later. Thanks.

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flavors of the past(e)

I tried Honest T brand Mint White tea this morning, and it takes like...paste! It's been decades since I tasted that strange minty goodness, and boy is it better when it has that good pasty texture. On a whim, I googled "i eat paste" (weirdly, one of the google suggestions for a noun to fill out "i eat" was "people"), and found that www.pasteeaters.com exists! but it's stupid, as are the "i eat paste" t-shirts available for personal consumption. there's also a letseatpaste blog, but it's really not about eating paste. I'm not sure what the message is here, but I guess eating paste isn't really funny and unless you like paste you should stay away from that tea.

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i am interviewed

and back in New York City. And I seem to like the sentence divided between the title and the post itself. I don't find out about the job for 2-3 weeks. The interview went ok. It would be the most fantabulous 1-2 year job ever, I think. It will remain undescribed in this semi-public forum until I get the call.

In other news, my brother Shum's wife, Diana, is pregnant (have I mentioned this already?), and due in March! And my sister Jeanne has invited me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding to Kim in February! And I get to wear wine and/or chocolate! I think she means those to be colors, but I don't care, I'm going wear a gooey sticky tobleroney merloty mess. Mmm. Maybe with sprinkles. And my brother Michael and sister-in-law Seemee are doing a 100-(one HUNdred)-mile (!) bike ride, next weekend, I think. And my sister Mary-Ei has gone back to work, getting two kids out of bed and to school, and driving herself to work, all before 7:30am (I'm sure Jadd, my bro-in-law, has some role in all of that too). Really, they're all so impressive. Good work, people!

. . .

ha!

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/lists/21StephenThompson.html

well, I tried freshdirect

and it's fine, I especially like the cook & eat stir-fry. but they should have some warnings/advice for the stupid (e.g. me), three that I can think of thus far:

1. Don't forget you ordered it and go to grocery store anyway. I now have four (4) containers of roasted red pepper hummus in my fridge.

2. Don't order a lot of fruits and vegetables right before you're about to leave your apartment for four (4) days.

3. Crap I forgot number three (3). Oh yeah. Baby bananas offered for sale are not likely to be green, like you (e.g. me) like them.

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yes

I love this man.

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bust travel guide

it is what it is.

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!!!

http://www.experiencewonderyou.co.uk/

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al gore and daniel lewis

One of the perks of going to a school like NYU is that folks like Al Gore drop in to deliver major policy speeches. I snagged a ticket to sit in the auditorium to hear him speak on Monday, and it was really a great speech. He knows his stuff. It was particularly interesting to hear him speak in contrast to the dudes (3 of them--couldn't find a woman to save their lives) that introduced him. Two of them were policy wonks and a third was John Sexton, president of the university and formerly dean of the law school. The wonks clearly knew their stuff too, and were both pretty good speakers, laid back and interesting. John Sexton was your typical university president, pompous and what-have-you, political too but nothing on the level of Al Gore. Al Gore is a big man. He's muscly, which he always was back in the day, but he's tall too, which one doesn't get such a great feel for on tv, and he's put on quite a bit of weight and let his hair go gray. So, essentially, when he speaks, everyone listens. Here are some things I learned:

He's willing to admit his mistakes: he thought freezing nukes in the 80s was a bad idea, too simple and naive; now he realizes that it's a policy people could get behind. This of course led to the "freeze CO2 emissions" part of the speech.

90% of the energy produced by internal combustion engines is wasted, and only 1% is used to transport the people (I guess the other 9% are for transporting the car itself). This was to suggest we need more efficient transport, and that the U.S. can make $ by producing more efficient, heat-capturing and -using technologies.

Of the 10 trillion tons of C02 emitted every year, 2.5trillion are from burning forests. Heating and cooling buildings is a bigger source of pollution than cars. Coal is the biggest problem of all. In Norway, there are big CO2 taxes, so oil producers (big sources of CO2 emissions, I guess) use a lot of carbon capture and sequestration techniques. From this point, Gore went on to say that for the last 14 years he has been advocating replacing payroll taxes with pollution taxes! And that this is, from the government's point of view, revenue-neutral (meaning they would raise the same amount of money with pollution taxes as they do with payroll taxes). This, he says, would penalize pollution, rather than employment (although some trickle-downers would probably argue that the more taxes the businesses would pay, the less they'd be able to hire and pay their workers).

In part this was a great speech because it didn't leave everyone in the audience looking to find the nearest crackpipe. He cited lots of different groups that are coming together to deal with climate change, including some surprising ones: religious groups, Walmart, the steelworkers union.

It was also fun to listen to someone talk who quite clearly could be launching a bid for President. It was cool and I was glad to be there.

I also learned a few things about Denmark on Monday, from my friend Daniel, who's spending a semester abroad. Here's what he had to say:

Interesting factoid#1:

Someone told my friend Chris there is a Danish expression people use if someone asks them what they do for a living and they are unemployed or do something they don’t really want to talk about.

It goes like this:

Q: So what do you do for a living?
A: I drill assholes in rocking horses.

I think it can be used whenever someone asks you what you’re doing and you don’t really want to tell them.

And, Factoid #2:

[M]y friend tells me that the Viking heaven, called Valhalla, was a place that only warriors could go to. Everyone else in Viking society went to hell (which might have been just kind of like normal life, not necessarily worse, I’m not sure), which was not hot but cold, I think because the Vikings couldn’t imagine any place that was hot as being bad. Anyway, the Viking Warriors who went to Valhalla lived in a world where they would fight and kill all day, and then at night they would come back to life and eat pork from a giant pig that regenerated when you cut the pork off, and drink ale from the teet of a goat (a goat that gave ale rather than milk).

You might not like it, but you’ve got to respect it. Those Vikings were a rough crowd.

It's me again. Arrr!

. . .

arrr!

arrrrrrr!

. . .

from today's NYT

Tales of the City: Dog on the Track

By JOE SEXTON, the New York Times
Published: September 19, 2006

The Q train announcement was, actually, decipherable. That’s not to say it was easy to comprehend.

“This train is being delayed. There is a dog on the tracks.”

That got the attention of the folks in the front car of the subway train. Cell phones popped open. Calls were made to work. Doubts were expressed as to whether this excuse would be accepted.

“There’s a dog on the tracks.”

“Hi, I’m at Parkside Avenue. I’m going to be a while. There’s a dog in front of the train.”

“I don’t know what kind of dog it is. But it’s been running in front of the train, and it does not look tired.”

It was nearly 8:30, the height of the morning commute, the train at a halt along the outdoor tracks in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. The dog, which one passenger said had been seen on the Newkirk Avenue platform before it took up the next stage of its adventure, had led the Q train in a weird sort of herding exercise for several stops, striding unfazed in front of the train as it inched along cautiously behind the dog. The dog — with a visible collar and estimated by one passenger straining to look out the front car at no more than 2 years old — hardly looked up on its trek. It stuck inside the two rails, stayed clear of the electrified third one, and appeared, for quite a while, well, headed to a breakfast meeting in Manhattan.

But now the dog, and the train, had stopped — a standoff of understandable, shared confusion.

“Lord,” said one passenger..

Track fires; sick passengers; terror scares. The routines of subway delays had conditioned the people in the front car to most anything. But this seemed different. Someone called 911 — which said call 311. Of course.

“Is a transit employee doing something,” the 311 operator asked the caller.

It was hard to tell. But seconds later, a transit worker emerged from the motorman’s cab. He smiled, but did not seem to have a plan.

“Is there anyone here who has a familiarity with dogs?” he asked.

The question provoked general astonishment. The man seemed to be asking if there was anyone willing to drop down onto the tracks and corral the dog.

“He could have rabies,” said one passenger.

“Honk the horn,” said another.

“Call the cops,” said another.

“Yeah,” offered a third, “they have a K9 unit.”

People smiled. Sort of.

Chastened, the transit worker stepped out of the train’s front, scooped up the dog without incident, and the Q train lurched back into action.

Someone had taken a picture with a cell phone. Good, it was agreed. Evidence. Otherwise, who would believe it.

swimming and cornnuts

Yesterday was a good day. I cleaned my apartment, did my laundry, and took my first swimming class since probably 1987. I cannot tell how many hundreds of meters I swam in that hour. But it felt good, and I felt like I was a better swimmer after just one class. There's only 3 other people in the class (Angela, Aneek, and Yuli), so Sammy, our instructor, gives us fairly personal attention, which is nice. The great thing about classes, as opposed to exercising on one's own, is that one can't really rationalize stopping until the end of the class. While it's fun to imagine just saying, No, I Don't Feel Like It Anymore, Swim The Next 200 Meters Yourself If You're So Keen On Someone Swimming Them, this is sort of a dumb thing to do if you've signed up for the class for any purpose whatsoever.

I am also now a firm believer in the beauty of swimming goggles. They Keep the Water Out! That's the whole point, right? I'd never worn them long enough to really figure out how well they work. For some reason, when you're not underwater, they're really foggy. But under the water, wow, the clarity! You can see those lines on the bottom that help keep you going straight! I swam the first 100 meters without them, crashing into both sides of the swimming lane, feeling ridiculous, and ended up with sore eyes. Sammy handed me a pair of goggles, and presto-chango, straight swimming and relaxed, pain-free eyeballs. Swimming caps, on the other hand, still need some work. Mine was continually coming off, pulling my hair, and my hair ended up all wet anyway. Apparently the point, from the point of view of the gym, is to keep hair out of the pool--I thought it was to keep my newly-washed hair from getting all chloriny. I should just get a haircut.

And, in sadder news, LWT and I joined the Nebraska Society of New York at the Irish Rogue, in midtown, to watch the Cornhuskers lose to the University of Southern California Trojans. For some reason ol' Coach Callahan decided to restrict our passing game to the fourth quarter, by which time it was too late for Husker Quarterback Zac Taylor's cannon to save us from J.D. Booty's 3 touchdowns (I think some other Trojan scored once too). But the wings and the burgers were good, there were over 200 lively Nebraskans in the house, I got some QT with LWT, and I chatted for a while with a former member of the UNL marching band (alto sax).


Go Big Red.

. . .

Bob, Bob, Bob. What does this mean? Girls want to know.

"I love those things [the red magnetic containers?], too! I wish they did better in the cold but otherwise they're awesome.
--bob in ak"

What do they do in the cold? Do things get less magnetic when they're cold? (I'm guessing not, but I enjoy speculating.) Does the red just not look as cheery with all that frost on it? Plus, how cold is your house, anyway? If my fine new red magnetic containers don't do well in Alaska, maybe I don't either!

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p.s. I highly recommend picking up a copy of this week's New Yorker so you can read all about neuroeconomics. Just kidding. I mean, yeah, that's fine, but David Sedaris has a terrificly funny piece in it too.

hey, take a quick minute and vote for Bill Whitney, Volvo For Life Award

He runs a good prairie-protecting organization, is a good uncle, and deserves your vote, $50K for his NGO, and a Volvo for life (and it won't take you any time at all).

Go to: http://www.volvoforlifeawards.com, click on "Vote for Your Hero Now," then on the state of Nebraska, then on the word Nebraska, then click on the box next to Bill Whitney's name and click submit vote. I just did it three times, actually.

Here's the background info:

"Prairie Plains Executive Director Bill Whitney is one of the top five semifinalists in Nebraska for the 5th Anniversary Volvo for life Awards, Volvo's national search for everyday heroes that gives out nearly $1 million in awards and funding each year. John Heaston of the Nature Conservancy nominated Bill for this program because of the extraordinary work Prairie Plains is doing to create opportunities for education, land stewardship and community development -- and this year Volvo has selected Bill as one of the top five nominations from Nebraska -- out of more than 16,000 nominations they have received over the past five years.

"This year, YOU have a chance to vote in the awards -- and your vote could help Bill become eligible to receive up to $50,000 in funding for Prairie Plains -- a chance to attend the 5th Anniversary Awards Gala in New York City -- and maybe even a Volvo for life!

Please go to http://www.volvoforlifeawards.com to vote. You won't be asked to provide any personal information; all it takes to vote is to check a box and click a button. I hope you'll take the time to visit the site -- and please pass the link along to anyone in your address book that you think would be interested. It's a great way to support the Institute and to share a little info about what we do with folks that may not know about Bill's work.

Thanks so much for your support!

Amy Jones
Prairie Plains Resource Institute
402-694-5535
www.prairieplains.org

Mission: Maintaining and restoring Nebraska ecosystems - creating opportunities for education, research, stewardship, and community development."


. . .

more good news

I got a clerkship interview!

the good news

my digicam is allegedly fixed and on its fedexed way back to me. thanks be for warranties. come on home, baby girl.



. . .

The Internet: It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes.

My buddy Lewis sent me this link to an explanation of what the internet is, and how people use and should be using it, by Senator Ted Stevens. It is unspeakably funny.

. . .

bonnyfeathers/condolence shortfall

Best new piece of spam in a while:

Subject: condolence shortfall From: a spammer Date: Tue, September 12, 2006 10:03 am To: me

I mean take your own part anddont be afraid of anybody. Outside the last of the ships bells had just ceased to ring asdrowsiness fell upon him.

The one spot in the place exempt from all authority was thepurlieus of the kitchen. There was aripple of laughter from the door.

The merchant took a deep breath of relief.

Hewaved confirmatively toward a Bacchus just above him.

It fellin a dense black mass about her knees

It was the big room where Anthony had first met Mr. The walls which hadonce been the scene of dithyrambic landscapes had also been paintedover. In one corner there was a painted bed with acanopy over it.

She, Eliza McNab, was one of several who had followed the fortunesof the Bonnyfeathers into exile. She placed the candles on the table andsat down.

Both of them sat at breakfastthinking of this. Suddenly the shiphesitated, the sails fluttered, and then filled out on the othertack. Acloud of mist seemed to cut off his view on a clear day. It was the big room where Anthony had first met Mr. From the cellar belowthe odour of tea and spices permeated his room.

Then she took the candelabrum and tiptoed into her ownroom. This was more a matter of business acumen than anythingelse.

Nevertheless, she felt herselfbalked in some way or other. This is just another orphan to whom we aregiving a start.

Faith had been glad to see her leave the house. But he has alreadytaught you other things, I suppose? Instantly, all those who were still lingering arose. Then as if to himself, FatherXavier said faith was the evidence of things unseen. But not so high as that, he cautioned, shoving theboys nose down with his thumb. She, Eliza McNab, was one of several who had followed the fortunesof the Bonnyfeathers into exile. The walls which hadonce been the scene of dithyrambic landscapes had also been paintedover.

I might have known it would come back to haunt me. I thought I saw her here, last night, he said.

. . .

salad

baby lettuces & herbs


tomato


carrots


dried cranberries


chopped walnuts


crumbled goat cheese


half a lime's lime juice


olive oil


salt n pepa



mmhmm.


. . .

p.s. those are two pictures that I found when I googled "salad."

today is the perfect crisp fall day

the kind that calls for apple and pumpkin pies, basking in the afterglow of spicy thai food with RCS, walking and walking, and sitting and sitting in the p-a-r-k park listening to my burkinabe friend truckling endlessly away on his big round guitar, and of course wee-oh, wee-oh, wee-oh, wee-oh-woh-wohing. If I had a roof and some big Stone beers and my Ghana buddies I'd watch a sunset with them and drink the beers. I miss them and that.



also: are these not the most genius inventions? red, round, see-thru, shakeable, containing containers! for stamps! for rubber bands! for monopoly houses! for hot pepper! for beads! for salt! for eraser pencil tops! for two rolls of film! for keys! for buttons! for tape measures! for everything good (and small)!


. . .

this

is awesome.



. . .

Cousin Link

has a website! Who knew? She told me today that she's hired someone to design a website all for her, but in the meantime this one will do.




This is Arches #7. Terrific, no?

. . .

today I learned about:

dadaism & Sticky Dunkel. Guess which is my favorite.

Right. But dadaism is cool too. For instance: L.H.O.O.Q., the name of this painting, when you read it in french, sounds like elle a chaud au cul, which is DIRTY! woo! I would have especially enjoyed this in junior high. There should be more art history in junior high.









. . .

in the word of joey from blossom: wo!

isn't this picture of me from SKP's wedding fabulous? I like how the background's all faded. And the hype is true: yes, I'm wearing a chair bow. And doesn't it match my glasses perfectly? Plus check out those beautifully long arms! Man! Monkeys are hot!


. . .

& I'll Marry You, Brad Pitt, when Everyone Can!

(the title is a link)
. . .

an argument for why market distributions of wealth aren't necessarily just and therefore why progressive tax rates aren't necessarily unjust

from my income tax textbook:

"First, even when the market is functioning perfectly, returns to both capital and labor inputs depend upon the demand for the product or service being produced. People who supply capital or labor to endeavors where demand proves strong will do very well; people who work or risk their capital in endeavors where demand proves weak will do badly. These rewards depend on factors outside an individual's control. For example, the enormous demand for Britney Spears to sing has made her a very wealthy woman. If public tastes were to improve and demand for her services were to decrease, her income would decline dramatically without regard to any change in her ability or effort."

while jessie's whizzing...

I met a man yesterday from Burkina Faso while on a walk with Big Bert Stillwell. His name is Adama Dembele and he plays a big string instrument he constructed himself out of a calabash. It was a cool mixture of pretty (lots of brass tacks) and wonkily-unfinished-looking. He was busking in Washington Square Park and his music reminded me of some I'd heard in Ghana, but he was singing in French.

Here are some pictures of calabashes:




Calabashes are used for bowls and toys as well as musical instruments. I really like them but I couldn't figure out a good way to get some home.

Adama and I had a nice chat about how he was originally from Bobo, but worked in Ouaga, and is trying to build a center of some sort back in Ouagadougou. Then I bought his cd and Bert and I moved on.

. . .

H.H.H.

Here's some hedgehogs + penny for Harris:




. . .

no pie on de plane

Another terrific celebration of Aaron's (29th) birthday (!) in Albany Twip!, Maine. Deep-fried turkey, Nick's Ribs, lobster, Reese's Pieces, Oreos, Dominoes, candy corn, Pink Flamingo at Rest Anniversary Cake (Happy 10th A to Pam & Paul), Birthday Cake, Trivial Pursuit for Young People, Horseshoes, 'Smores, Donettes, bagels, wood choppin, garden argula salad, the New Balance store, and 11 pies worth of good weekend. By Monday afternoon, two pies (blueberry and mixed) remained uneaten (a testimony to the sheer bulk of other fabulous food to eat). Aaron, Liz, Megan T., Jed and I were flying back to New York, and we wanted the pies to fly back to New York too. Alas, like Leathermen, pies are too dangerous for air travel, so we were forced to consume both pies right there at security. Happily, friendly airline people gave us plastic forks, two of Liz's pie-eating friends also happened to be flying through Portland, and the Swedish Boyfriend Store Attendant was selling milk. The 7 of us, plus Swedish Boyfriend, managed to polish them both off with no undue alacrity. I felt it really put the cap in the weekend.



Props to the United Airways Portland employees for putting my wicked-evil leatherman into my checked suitcase after it had already disappeared behind the iron curtain. Props also to Paul, Aaron's step-father, builder of the birthday party home, grower of a great beard, and cleaner of fecal flooding; Pam, Aaron's mother and hostess extraordinaire; and Aaron, for everything else.


Here's a long, silly movie of Aaron deepfrying some turkey. You have to register with www.yousendit.com to download the video, I think. It's worth it.
And a bunch of other pictures from the weekend are uploading right now. Should be done in an hour or so? without labels, but those will come.

. . .

the ring of fire

rehearsal-baseball-game-dinner-fireworks videos: the ring of fire and the final bang (download and view). I recommend watching them at night with the lights off.

. . .

ouroboros: back to school

"The Ouroboros (also spelled Oroborus, Uroboros or Uroborus) is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle. It has been used to represent many things over the ages, but it most generally symbolizes ideas of cyclicality and primordial unity. The ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations. In the last century, it has been interpreted by psychologists such as Carl Jung as having an archetypal significance to the human psyche. The name ouroboros (or, in Latinized form, uroborus) is Greek (οὐροβóρος), "tail-devourer". The depiction of the serpent is believed to have been inspired by the Milky Way, as some ancient texts refer to a serpent of light residing in the heavens." (Wikipedia)


I love the internet. Somebody made a banana ouroboros. Not ever having eaten snake ouroboros, I can't say that banana ouroboros is tastier, but it would probly go better with cheerios.



. . .

polka ... goes international

My statcounter tells me that I now have or have had readers in Canada, France, the U.K., Austria, Switzerland, and Spain. This is cool. It also makes sense. I think that maybe Ghana is the five places without any location. But why on earth do I have the most hits in the past month from people in El Reno, Oklahoma? Okies, speak up! I can't think of a single person I know there, so: who are you and why are you reading this? I'm also curious to know who's in Independence, Missiouri, Norwalk Connecticut, and Boca Raton, Florida (Piroska? Is that you?). Please do share.

In less meta-blog news, school starts tomorrow. Not so much to say about that at the moment, except it will be nice nice nice to see my peeps again. I no longer have a fever, although things are still awry down south. I'm hoping I don't have the awful parasites Kristin has been hosting. My apartment is slowly returning to A-apartment order, though I think it will be a few weeks before all is put right again. There was a plant massacre in my absence, which is sad, but happily almost none of the plants to which I was most emotionally tied died. The worst loss was a pretty little petunia growing out of a can! that I received from my sister Jeanne for Xmas and kept alive for a year and a half. I hope that another one finds its christmas way to me again this year.

Part of my slow-moving apartment-putting-to-rights was an olde time favorite of mine: online shopping! I bought a rug, some buttons by marimekko (a terrific Finnish design company), and a postcard album. I'm especially excited about the postcard album because I have a huge number of postcards that have long been needing a permanent home. In Annapolis, they sat on a ledge on the wall, and often fell off; most of the time since then they've been in a box or in a pile.

It was terrific seeing the family last weekend; I just wish I'd been less exhausted. I don't regret all the other travelling, but I wish it could have been more spread out, with perhaps some downtime in New York before it all began. But I got to see some law school people, some high school people, and a buttload of family people, and it makes me happy.

Here's my new rug:

















I hope it looks as nice in person. or in rug.
Time to sort thru the suitcases. Oh yeah, and tomorrow's Aaron's birthday. Happy birthday Aa!

. . .

smooch!

My brother Shum and sister-in-law Diana are married. that's the big news. I don't have the pictures to prove it because I was using a manual camera, but I swear it's the truth. Instead, I will just have to salute them with New York's Finest:



congrats, family!


please return your seat to the full upright and locked position
I stepped today off the sixth plane I have taken since I got back from Ghana exactly 16 days ago, and the 8th in 17 days. And we're not done yet, folks! Aaron's Maine Birthday looms brightly next weekend. I was very nearly run right over today by a young woman racing to offer herself to be bumped for a free flight. She smiled at me and said, as if it excused her shocking behavior, that she especially needed it because she, a pesky med school applicant, was going to have to fly all over for her interviews and didn't get reimbursed. I started to explain that I, too, might have such flights in my future, but it wasn't worth explaining what a clerkship was. Her elbows would fit right in in Ghana, though. And in med school, probably. This is starting to sound a little like a medical school rant, which is unnecessary (but maybe a little bit funny?), and dumb, since I really have nothing against med school or med school applicants. Let's explain it away with the confession that I'm feeling feverish, and not from excitement. Hopefully just exhaustion. But that isn't allowed to stop me from stuffing my clerkship applications tomorrow. School starts Wednesday. Thank heavens above Jessie will be here to help ease the pain.


. . .

p.s. neither the elbower nor I received a free flight.

tastier spam

I got an email today that claimed to be from someone named SCIENCE. It's good to finally communicate one on one, without the mediation of those pesky SCIENTISTS. Maybe we will understand one another at last.

Also, "Kyle," another spamslinger, served this up to me:

It has been since we've gossiped.
just wanted you to hear about the project, that has been advising me lose
my gut.
You should stop by at [website]

give them 11 sec and that's it to begin.
It was super decisevely having someone to support me out.
I apologize I have been so overdue with it. Call me

escarpment as though some all disagree powerful hand had
I kill integrated if you do not let
sleepy that they must have dive already


Are YOU sure? Who comes up with this stuff? Kyle's a genius! Spam is entertainment!

In other news, my time in Nebraska is finished and we roll to Kansas City. Look out, nephews! buh-BLAM! auntie me's coming to town.

. . .

goodbye 475-3981

you were good to me. you were the number i could remember best for a while after my parents moved. you can leave a message if you'd like to. sayonara, 475-3981.

. . .

psssst

Ghana wasn't big enough to contain Timo ten Feld's blog. Now you shall know his velocity here.

. . .

thug life

is nothing like the Good Life they celebrate here in Nebraska. Or so I imagine. Nebraska is plenty* rainstorms viewed from the porch, garage sales, farmers markets, and thrift stores rich in Americana, family love, hair cuts, laundry on the line**, fresh tomatoes, sweet corn, and basil, and noisy-ass crickets***. I've been kicking it high time with Sarah W. Thompson, Harris P. Lehl, Tc (also shaking down America for a few short weeks till the bro gets hitched), and the folks. Lots of time being spent on clerkship applications, but they'll be done soon.

Sarah Keene Parady's Wyoming Wedding was tres beau. She was iconoclasticly lovely in copper, and Jeff looked great too, in dress jeans and cowboy boots. I think that Jeff's mom gets kudos as my favorite local wyominger. Plus I got to chill with my NYU girls Navneet and Susanna, who taught my a great new car game, Chuck, F%*& or Marry. And many thanks to Cameron and Daphna, who drove me from Salt Lake City, UT (possibly my all-time favorite city to fly into, for the views, topping even NYC) to Rock Springs, WY. I Like Them. They R Kool. Daphna lives in Rome most of the year. We bonded. And even if Rome wasn't enough to do it, she and Cameron and SKP's friend Rachel and I were all in a minor car accident together. Everybody's fine, except the cars, but it added some flava flave to the weekend. My whiplash was temporarily enough make SKP's mom give me a muscle relaxant to chew on, though. That was great. It scored me some quality shut-eye, which I needed, cause of the whole jetlag + getting up at 3:30am to get to the NYC airport to fly to SLC bizniz.

Next week Mom, Tc, and I will chug on down to Kansas City to visit the KC McShanes (starring my nephews! Mark! and! Ian!), then we'll all (incl. them and Dad) will fly to Pittsburgh for Shum-Dude & Diana's wedding! woo! then school starts. boo! But really, it will be fine. And it looks like the year will yield lots of zippy trips--hope to see SWT & HPL in NYC, TJC & Dr. RLY in Boston, Dr. JEC in Alaska AND NYC, Adelle getting married in Mexico + me visiting her in Portugal, the fam at Thanksgiving, and maybe even Zach & Timo's wedding in Oh Canada.

hearts to all,

. . .


*plenty is a good ghana word. work it! we are plenty handsome!
**This does not always coordinate well with the rainstorms. Nor with the very proximally located birdfeeders.
*** no. not noisy ass-crickets.

p.s. I don't know that person in the Good Life picture. But maybe you do.

i'm going back to new york city i do believe i have had enough

The title is my favorite new york homecoming song lyric (bob dylan). Alternative title: hot showers, sushi, and green tea ice cream all have their times and places. none of which times or places seem to be in Ghana.

I left Ghana under a cloud. My good friends Zach and Timo were mugged/attacked one night after they left a club literally around the corner from our house. Timo sustained a big knife wound on his face, requiring stitches, dentistry, and drinking straws. This happened while I was travelling in Burkina with Tc. Just after I returned to Accra, another friend, Jessica, fell victim to an alleged Nigerian taxi scheme, wherein the culprits lure unsuspecting whiteys into taxis and then whisk them away to dark places to steal their money and cause other harm. Jessica wasn't hurt, but her purse was stolen, and when she noticed that they were driving the wrong way, she had to jump out of the car. You can read further descriptions of these incidents on their blogs: http://zachinghana.blogspot.com, http://timoinghana.blogspot.com, http://fierceinvalids.blogsource.com/ (guess which is whose). These and other, similar incidents reported in the expat community pretty much did away with any complacency we had about our safety in Accra. The last day or two, we were all quite nervous in taxis, around motos, and in the night. It was a sad way to leave. I don't like and resent feeling threatened, especially in a place where I otherwise experienced little other than goodwill.

However, my departure was otherwise lovely. Free mornings with Timo and Jessica, drinking tea and eating Hot Lime Pepper and groundnut paste (not at the same time) on whatever's at hand. Lots of sweeties came to the buy-one-get-one-free-pizza-on-my-last-night dinner at the Osu Food Court (sounds worse than it is, although it does have its own fake McDownalds Playland area, complete with screaming kiddos). The pizza is good though.

The next day, my last, my core crew came out to lunch with me at Haveli, a terrific indian restaurant. Happy eaters included Zach (newly back from Kenya, which was too fresh for him), Timo (healing nicely, though it still hurts him to laugh [they stole his smile: a new after-school special]), and Kris (our droll German roommate, very liberal with the antibacterial spray), plus Jessica, Candace, and Mark (all work at CDD, where Kristin worked, and terrifically likable; Jess and Mark are Obruni House staples; Candace doesn't live there but she might as well), as well as Simon, another German who used to live at Ob.H. (Kristin was still travelling in Mali.) Then we hauled my stuff to a taxi (no small job; kudos especially to Zach) and then to the airport.

I had too much stuff. Too much stuff in my checked luggage, too much stuff in my carry-ons. The fee for the too-heavy checked luggage was only $25 per bag, which is great b/c it's much cheaper than mailing it (I assume). However, I didn't have any cedis left, there are no cash machines in the airport, and they wouldn't take credit cards for less than $400. I had to put in a frantic call to Zach, who, with Jess, heroically chipped in 600,000 cedis (approx. $60) and brought it to me at the airport (Zach, Jess, Candace, and Timo were waiting for me, along with one of my carry-ons, at the hotel bar). This maneuver was successful, and I finally managed to check my bags. However, I didn't want to wait for the receipt for the $50, so I just said I'd come back for it when it was time to board the plane, and went off to join my comrades at the bar. This was a strategic error. When I came back for the receipt, they noticed my too-heavy carry-on luggage. For some reason, the fee for this was $150, and this was a fee I was not willing to pay. In part because my friends had already left and there was no way they were going to have another extra 1,500,000 cedis on them, and in part because I had none left myself, and in part because I still couldn't use a credit card or access a cash machine. However, I had heard of other ways to deal with big fees at the airport. People in Ghana do NOT like crying girls. No. Not at all. So, if sufficiently convincing, this is a very nice, if shameless, way of getting people to do what one wants. But, alas, I cannot cry on command. Instead, I discovered, I can fake the noises and the face-scrunching and the face-wiping of tears, especially with the help of a large part of a large beer, and, accompanied by moaning about my student/volunteer status, and my ruse seemed to do the trick. I wasn't sure what I was going to do if they called me out on the faking. Maybe laugh. Don't know. But in any case it worked, the lady told me to dry my tears (check! already dry!) and that I wouldn't have to pay.

The flights went by without incident, which is surprising, giving the liquid-bombing scare going on in England at the moment. I carried on plenty of shampoo and soap and what-have-you, and I was coming from Dubai, for goodness sakes, but no one said anything at all (I was ignorant of the situation anyway). I did almost miss the second flight, even though I was sitting right next to the gate, just because I didn't happen to hear any of the boarding announcements (was reading). But then I looked up and saw "Final Call," so I made it just in time and so it really isn't too great a story. All my luggage also made it, nothing even broken, I got home within a reasonable amount of time, my subletter did not abscond with all of my things, and only 6 plants are dead. Not too terrible.

I am so tired and my head so heavy and my neck so jellied that ... I am tired. I think it's around 4 am in Ghana. And I will arise again at 3:30am, NYC time, to fly to Rock Springs, WY, via Salt Lake City, Utah, to witness law student extraordinaire Sarah Jane P.'s metamorphasis into Sarah Keen P. by means of happy nuptials with one quiet Jeff.

I can't even finish all the green tea ice cream. I hope to write more about my travels with the Burkinabe Americanos, and post my photos sometime, sometime. I'll be in Rock Springs for 2.5 days, then Nebraska for 9 days, then Pittsburgh for 3, then back to New York for a week, we train our new Environmental Law Journal Rookies, school starts, and I retire with Aaron & Co. to Maine for birthday pie. then somehow the rest of the year follows along, I graduate, pass the bar, and do good work. can I get an amen, sistah?

i wonder where my checkbook is. hmm.

good night,
. . .

jiggety jog

I'm in the middle of a googlathon of buses and planes. Things are fine, I'm coming home.
. . .

i hate the friend

hello! I'm briefly on a computer in the Peace Corps office in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. There are movies to watch and dinner to make, but I just wanted to stop in and say that we've been having just the best time. Kristin and I met Tc and Josh (PCVs) at the Green Turtle and maxed and relaxed for four days. Then we went back to Accra, ate indian food, tofu and mint salads, steak, and terrific spaghetti, biked through mountains, and painted nutrionally informative pictures of anthrpomorphic vegetables on the walls of a nutrition center in a Liberian refugee camp an hour outside of Accra. Tomorrow Tc, Kristin, Cary (another PCV) and I will be going to her village, and then down to another Josh's village for a party. sweet. I'll be back in Accra on the 8th, and leaving for home on the 9th. suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuushi!

. . .

I like cheese

It’s been about two weeks since my last confession. Oh my many sins!
Evenings, when I usually compose my bliggity blogs, have been occupied recently. We have a permanent porch-party ongoing, plus all the usual school stuff, choosing classes and applying for clerkships and loans and whatnot, plus errands and goodbye parties and what-have-you, and then there’s work, both from CHRI and from other sources that I sometimes do in the evenings. Tonight was a wine and European cheese party on the roof of one of the buildings in the compound, the cheese brought back from Germany by a returning German obruni. I have never loved goat cheese so much.

So anyway, here’s what’s new:

Home
There’ve been some presto-change-o’s here at home. A swarm of Kristin’s young colleagues have taken root (can swarms take root?) at Obruni House, including Carolyn, Jessica, and Agustin (Gus (pron. Goose=my new favorite nickname)) (Gus has actually come and gone. Bye Gus.), and some more Germans have moved in. Have I mentioned the many Germans? One of them is our new roommate, Chris, and then there’s the Rather Dopey Dutch Duo, Dirk and No, The Other Chris, and Timo, Rugged Man From Nowhere and Everywhere. Others moving in and around the compound include Simon and Reuben, the Stefans, a Mathias, that Married Couple that Live Up There, and, um, I’m sure there’s others I’m forgetting at the moment. Kristin and Zach are still staples; I spend all my weekends traveling with Kristin and all my weeks working with Zach, so I see a lot of them.

Timo has a blog: http://timoinghana.blogspot.com. He's designed obruni house t-shirts for us, which you can check out on his blog.

I’ve been making mad additions to my wardrobe with the help of Auntie Vera, the seamstress who lives in a blue wooden largeish rectangular box on stilts in our driveway, and also the Man Tailor Across the Street, as well as Bernice, another neighborhood clothes constructor. Every Friday is Official Wear Your Traditional Clothes Day in Ghana, and I think I will continue this custom in New York City.

Work
I’ve been slaving away at a comprehensive document that “identifies the gaps” (this is a phrase I hear about a hundred times every time I discuss my draft with my boss) between Ghana’s international legal reproductive health obligations and existing laws and policies. It’s waxing on 80 pages now. Heaven help those who have to read it. I hope I never do. It has been interesting, though. Homosexuality is not mentioned in any international covenant that touches on reproductive health that I have read. This is convenient for Ghana, because “unnatural carnal acts” are illegal here. There’s no law on sexual harassment, and contraceptive use is startlingly low.

Tomorrow my boss is taking us to her aunt’s funeral, just as a cultural experience. I’m really looking forward to it, which sounds pretty morbid, but funerals are big deals here (if you ride around the country on Saturdays, you’ll see heaps of people dressed up in fancy black and red funeral get-up) and it should be edifying.

Thursday is my last day of work! This is hard to believe. The past few months have zippered right on by. While I’ve been here several people have come and gone, staying for just a month at a time. The latest is Nimmi, who’s cheery and pleasant to have around. She also holds the distinction of being the only obruni (well, honorary obruni—she’s ethnically Vietnamese, but hails from Chicago) I know to have gotten malaria since I’ve arrived. Ghanaians get it all the time, I assume b/c they don’t take malaria medicine all the time. Contracting malaria seems to be pretty routine here; no sweat, just go to the clinic and get a pile of drugs. Colleen is still around, too, though she’s leaving next week. She was a trooper today, bearing up under my cantankerous hungoverness (gin-and-juice party last night on the beach, fabulous by any measure—I peed outside three times, plus got soaked by surprise waves). Colleen went up to Mole, a big park with lots of big animals in it, and saw elephants and got charged by a baboon and had to hitchhike home in the rain. Ghana is Great. (And Colleen too, of course.) This seems to be only nominally about work anymore. I’ll move on.

OH, except Zach and I tried fufu last week! (Technically this is still about work, since it was during my lunch break.) Fufu is a starchy gooey mushy (I just learned that mushy is also a slang german word for vagina!) lump without much flavor that comes swimming in a variety of soups (I got light soup—lighter than palm oil soup, but not much else), with a big chunk of meat (goat, in this case) plunked in. You eat it with your hands. You don’t chew the fufu, you just swallow it. Maybe if I was going to be here longer, I would try a little harder to like it, but as it is, the whole bizniz was just too foreign for me (and Zach too), and I gave up and finished Nimmi’s spaghetti. Anyway, at the end you get a bowl full of water to rinse your hands in and some dish soap and ta daa! clean hands.

American Embassy
The Fourth of July party at the Ambassador’s residence was fab. Terrific army cover band (they sang a song by the Black Eyed Peas! and Sweet Home Alabama! and Message in a Bottle! and other Popular Favorites), decent attempt at American food (the “hamburgers” were more like “bunburgers”), free booze, and lots of bureaucrats! I introduced myself to an Alcoa executive and his wife (Australians! they like to party!), a guy from an NGO focusing on reproductive health (strangely), and some boring american dudes. But best of all, I ran into the chairman of the board of CHRI (not just the Ghana office, but all the Commonwealth), who is a partner at a law firm across the street from our office, and where one of our two lawyers also works. I’ve met him a couple of times for office stuff, and recognized him and went up to say hello. But the best part about all this is: his name is Uncle Sam! Uncle Sam came to the Fourth of July party!

All throughout the party the band was playing just great music, and nobody was dancing. Nobody! And nobody was even clapping when they finished songs! and the vocalists, especially the young woman, were really great! so there I was, all dressed up, and feeling a little young and out of place, and you, my dear readers, can just imagine that I was itch itch itching to shake it all about. A couple hours into the reception, I was talking to the Alcoa couple again, and I looked over and saw 2 women dancing! so that was that—I joined them and we danced, just the three of us, for like 40 minutes, when finally other people started joining in—some important chiefy people, some snooty folks, and finally the Ambassador! It was great. Best Fourth in a while.

Travel
Cape Coast
Two weekends ago, Kristin and I went to the Cape Coast region for the weekend. The coast of Ghana, especially, is known for its old slave-holding castles, and there’s a big one in Cape Coast, and another in Elmina, right next to Cape Coast. We’d heard “good” things about the Elmina one, so we toured that castle. It’s very similar to going to Holocaust sites in Germany, or museums—weird to feel touristy in, revulsion-producing, hard to understand. I have some pictures. One strange thing that I learned was that not only did lots of Africans die in those hell-holes, but Europeans too—governor after governor would come and die of malaria, yellow fever, etc., living only for a couple of months at a time, some of them. Partially because of this, no European women lived at the castles, so of course there was constant rape of the African women being enslaved. Ugly place.

After the castle, we walked around Elmina a bit, a cute little town. They were celebrating their yearly festival, the origins of which Kristin and I completely failed to understand. Something about swimming out to ships to get stuff. Really, no idea. There was no evident commemorative swimming, either.

From Elmina we went back to Cape Coast (sort of a transport hub) and caught a tro-tro to a town a little north of CC. That town (I forget its name at the moment) was useful because it was walking distance from Kakum National Park, where they have a suspended walk through the canopy of the rainforest. So we got up tres early the next morning (5, I think?) and walked with our guide to Kakum, where we hiked up to the canopy walk. The canopy walk itself was pretty terrifying (I think the guide said it was like 400 feet up? maybe?), but the platforms on the trees connecting the suspended bridges were lots more safe-feeling. And we actually got to see some monkeys! running up and down trees, pretty far away, but close enough to know they were monkeys. There were lots of pretty butterflies, too. We saw the sunrise from the platforms, gazed our last at the monkeys, and then our guide took us on a short medicinal-plant-and-tree hike. If he really knows what he’s talking about, there’s some serious pharmaceutical cash to be made in that forest. Except it’s hard to imagine PharmaCorp stripping naked and performing the necessary ceremony in front of this one particular tree—our guide told us, quite seriously, of one man who worked at the park who had cut the tree without the ritual and lost his son as a result. It was hard to take this seriously, but dying children are not the sort of thing that invites jokes, so Kristin and I just nodded and oh no’d.

After Kakum, we had brunch at Hans Cottage Botel (don’t ask, I don’t know), saw a “tame” crocodile (they “tame” them by feeding them meat)! and randomly ran into Colleen. I think that was the last of our adventures for that weekend—we wound our way back to Cape Coast, and found a tro-tro homeward.

The Volta Region
This past weekend, Kristin and I took Friday off and went to the Volta region, which is northeast of Accra. It encompasses Volta Lake, which is the largest manmade lake in the whole wide world! I think over the course of the three days we took a total of 11 tro-tros and probably about 10 shared taxis. First we went to Akosombo, where there was a textile factory we wanted to tour. That didn’t work out—apparently one has to apply in writing, 3 months in advance, to get a factory tour. And even offering to pay them a little something something gained us nothing but more shaking heads. This was very disappointing. But we shook it off, and took a tour of the dam that makes the lake. That was cool—it’s pretty big and impressive, especially in a country not exactly famous for its terrific infrastructure. Lots of power lines in view. Also, apparently the Ghanaian version of Camp David overlooks the dam. The dam project was the pet of Nkrumah, one of the big independence heroes around here (half of everything is named Nkrumah). Interestingly, Kristin and I ran into a woman when we were in Ada Foah who was researching big dams and their environmental impacts (I think?), and she was developing a thesis that while everybody always blames the WTO etc. for big unworkable money-sapping projects like dams, documents from the era seems to indicate that it is in fact the African leaders who push the projects, rather than the WTO. But she thought this would probably not be a very popular hypothesis. Apparently critiquing the WTO is a more fashionable activity.

After Akosombo, we lunched overlooking the Volta River below the dam, and then, crossing the river and continuing northward along the lake, we tried to go to what was supposed to be a great market in a town called Dzemeni (pron. like a British person saying “Germany”). But the market was kaput for the day, so we just wandered down to the lake and played with the kids a bit. The lake is very beautiful. Beautiful. yep. It’s also filled with lots of gigantic treacherous stumps from when they flooded the area with the dam ~40 years ago. I have pictures of this too.

Our next destination, where we would spend the night in the Freedom Hotel (me to taxi driver: “Take me to Freedom!”), was Ho. It is impossible to recount them all, but let me assure you, my readers, that there were copious Ho jokes. My favorites include the Ho Academy, the Ho Rehabilitation Centre, and our imaginary new store there, Ho Bags R Us. Anyway, before I got to Ho, I had another unpleasant run-in with a crazy person, who made gestures toward my breasts and announced very loudly that he could see them (I doubt this). I informed him that this was a very rude thing to say. Kristin and I went back to our chatting with the tro-tro driver, and the crazy man reappeared, this time angry and shouting even more unpleasant things, but he was very kindly borne off by some other fellows with nothing else to do than watch the obrunis discuss transportation with a tro-tro driver. Anyway, we were Ho-bound.

The Freedom Hotel in Ho is great. For I think $12 a night, we got a bed, a shared bathroom (with toilet paper and shower head!), breakfast, and a rooftop bar. Saturday morning, we checked out some of the local shops (not worthwhile), then grabbed a tro-tro to Tafi Abuip/fe, a kente cloth-weaving village. The tro-tro dropped us off at the junction to Abuipe, and we walked 4 km in the hot hot hot sun, with backpacks, till we finally hitched a ride with some dudes in a 4x4 into “town.” The village was pretty much as it was billed to be, a bunch of Ghanaians weaving cloth. It was cool, and yes, I have pictures. From there we went to Kpando (pron. Pando), and Fesi to see some pottery, mostly small animals (anteaters, rams, elephants, guinea hens, etc.). Yep. From there we got caught in a rainstorm (mostly Kristin, as I was especially well protected by my emergency secret backpack poncho), and discovered that we couldn’t go to Amedzofe (pron. A-mAY-jo-fay) that night, so it was back to Freedom (Ho). They were surprised to see us, at the Freedom, because we had left so definitively in the morning, and so they had given away our room, too, and had none left at that rate, nor the next rate up, either. It seemed as if we were going to have to pay 250,000 ($25) for a luxury room that we didn’t want, when suddenly a window opened that I hadn’t noticed, and a man appeared in it, and said, “What do they want? What do they want to pay? Give it to them!” So just like that, for no reason I can understand, they rented us a room with its own bathroom, TV, air conditioner, gigantic bed, and pool-overlooking balcony for the same low low price of $12! It was really nice of that man, but I really don’t understand why he did it—it was like he didn’t understand capitalism or something. He had the room, we had the money, Q.E.D. But not, as it turns out.

Sunday, we explored the Ho Market a bit, then tro’d off to Amedzofe, which is up in the mountains, so far up that it was actually chilly (=great). Amedzofe wins the prize for Best Wack-o Ghanaian Town. It had maps of the world and the U.S., with only Ghana, Brazil, and Portland Oregon labelled. It had a Ghanaian guy who had been married to a North Carolingian, and who therefore spoke with a nutty Ghanaian American accent (he said “you guys” a lot, and told us he knew the SHIT out of New York). It had a seemingly pleasant old man who laughed when we said we work for human rights NGOs and bragged about beating his wife and cackled about how he would punish me were I his wife. It had its crazy drunk man quota, who told us he was a doctor, a lecturer, owned a hotel, a VERY nice house, and ALL THIS LAND. And it had a ridiculously difficult hike involving hoisting oneself up and down a mountain by ropes, all to a pretty little waterfall.

I dug Amedzofe. It was really hard to get out of, though—we caught a taxi along with two large women, one large man, the driver (a pastor; I asked him if he prayed every time he drove up and down the mountain and he said: Yes. I pray.) and a little girl named Solace, who managed to sleep throughout the whole harrowing, beautiful ride. Kristin and I were crammed into the passenger seat; this did not work very well. So down the mountain we went, on horrid bumpy roads, unpaved, roller-coaster-like, 4x4-demanding. The views were spectacular, though. In some other little town, we caught a tro-tro back to Ho, picked up our things at the Freedom, and nabbed our final tro-tro to Accra.

In the taxi ride home, the taxi man rather abruptly and entitled-soundingly demanded that I marry him. I said I was married (false), and he said then that he’d like to marry my daughter. This of course won’t work, as I don’t have one (true), so he said he would marry Kristin instead, then. She exclaimed that she, too, was married (false). There was some silence, then he just announced “You hate the black man.” Kristin quickly reassured him that she was in fact married to a black man (false), and this seemed to pacify him on that score, although he still insisted that I should bring one of my friends to marry him. At this point, I tried to convince our taxi man that he should woo women with his charms, make them fall in love with him. He thought about this for a minute or two, and then said, just as abruptly: “Love me.” (Charming, but not the sustained effort a girl really wants.)

The trip to the Volta was great, but not relaxing. The Green Turtle should do the trick.

Tc
I get to see Tc on Friday! [Junior Sister (as they say here), Peace Corps Volunteer, Burkina Faso.] Kristin and I will meet her and bf Josh Post [PCV, Burkina] at the Green Turtle for 5 days of Green Turtle. We’ll be camping on the beach, playing cards, writing postcards, eating fresh fish, drinking Green Turtles, bodysurfing, and not bargaining about anything at all. Next week we’ll return to Accra for a few days, then zoom up to and around Burkina for a week or so, and then it’s time to come home. home! Half the time I am quite ready to come home, the other half the time I want to stay here for a lot longer. I think if the prospect of law school weren’t looming going home might be a little more attractive. But I really do love it here, most of the time, so it will be sad to leave.

. . .

'round the outside, 'round the outside

hey leaping lords and ladies. It's been a while since I rapped atcha. Hope to post a nice long one this evening, but until then, you will have to make de do do do, de da da da with this sparkling slice of filla:
__________________________________________________________
[From the Cornelia Street Cafe, near NYU School o' fLaw]

Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia Street
Between Bleecker St and W 4th St
New York, NY 10014
(212) 989-9319

Dear Reader,

We're very happy you have agreed to participate in our marathon
reading of Homer's Iliad at Cornelia Street Café, July 17 - 20. There are twenty
four of us, one for each book of the Iliad. Here are some details about your
reading, which you will need to know in order to prepare for the event:

Please check the schedule below to confirm which book you are reading,
and on what night. We ask that all readers arrive at Cornelia Street Café
a few minutes early (no later than 6 PM) and check in with me (Kurt) so I
know everyone is present and ready to go. I'll either be upstairs at the
bar, or downstairs in the performance room. You'll know me: I'll be the one
with the anxious _expression on my face. If you can't find me, find Angelo, or
ask one of the bartenders who I am.

________________________________________________


Jessie and I went to a more hard-core all-night reading of the Odyssey last year, and it was amazing: great greek food, a beautiful space, and hearing 80% of the Odyssey in about 14 hours was spectacular. You can see pictures here (but you have to sign up first): http://annescanon.rhymm.com/digipics/nyc/out/odyssey/

word.

. . .

more mentos

For some reason, Mentos candy are cheap and plentiful here. But they have lots of arabic on the wrapper, along with the english, and are billed as "Chewy Dragees." mmm, dragees.

we want a picture, not a belly-itcher

Here's the video that I meant to upload last week, with the people celebrating their victory over the U.S. YOu follow the link, download the file, and then watch it on your computer.

I did successfully scam the invite to the big party last night, and there, was, indeed, dancing--more on this later.

cheers.

. . .

jose can you see?

happy fourth of july! I'm working on getting into the US embassy's party today. It's invite only, but they sent an invite to my boss (not even American! sheesh!), but she can't go, so I want to go instead. We will see.

Ada Foah was beautiful. I popped the cherry on my new tropical tent with all its breezy screens. It wasn't exactly restful b/c it was super windy and it starting sprinkling in the middle of the night. But it was fun and that's what counts. Ada Foah is a long spit of sand between the mouth of the Volta (Kristin: Georgia O'Keeffe would love it here.) and the Atlantic. It isn't very wide--you can walk across it in five minutes. From where we were, we walked all the way around the tip of the peninsula, and it took about an hour and a half. I took lots of waving-palm-tree pictures. It rained on the second day, but it was still nice enough.

On our tro-tro home, Kristin and I nearly died a few times in quick succession--it's not exactly clear what happened, but I think our tro-tro got cut off very dangerously by another tro-tro. This pissed off our tro-tro driver and the mate (the guy who takes the money and yells where the tro-tro is going to attract passengers), so we had to pass them very dangerously. Then, while we were passing them, the other driver made a rude gesture, which incensed our mate enough to make him think that throwing a big bucket of oil at the other tro-tro was a good idea. Then everyone on the bus started yelling at our mate for doing such a stupid thing for the next 10 minutes. It was all very dramatic. This made me start thinking about whether I was wearing clean underwear (check!) and then what if I had an autopsy and that the autopsifier could check if my teeth were brushed (check!) and if I was wearing deodorant (check!) and see what my last meal was (cookies and instant lemonade) and really what my meals were for the last four days (yes, it's true. sometimes I poop all the time and sometimes not at all. kind of a digestive rollercoaster). This amused me and made being terrified not so terrible.

Back to work.

. . .

ahoy

Today Kristin and I are off to a tropical paradise--a beach with the beautiful name of Ada Foah (pronounced "Fo," I think), so remote that there are no roads to it and someone has to take you there on a canoe. It's right between the Volta river delta and the ocean. I'm going to camp there.

My buddy Zach has a photo site to which he has uploaded pix. I think if you scroll around you'll find pictures that look suspiciously like a tropical paradise--that's Ada Foah. He also has pictures of our Obruni House and Kumasi. I need to find a way to upload my photos. yep.

Yesterday Kristin and I went on a marathon shopping trip. We got up pearly early and took a tro-tro (cost: less than $1) (I got to sit in the front--great b/c you can see everything, but also hard not to imagine your gruesome death in a not-too-improbable vehicular collision) to a town called Aburi, about 90 mintues away. Aburi is up in the mountains, and has an incredible view of Accra, which is on flat land near the ocean. And they have a gigantic wood market there, to buy all those African masks that everybody (except me) brings home from Africa. There are lots of other pretty little trinkets there too, and they make them right there, in ramshackle little huts. There were wood shavings everywhere. I cannot understand how they make money, since they all sell basically the same stuff (although I did see a unique giant wooden statute of a Sixers basketballer) and are all clustered together in the same little place. The ones on the road and at the ends of the rows must make the most money. After our wood curio shopping, we had hiked up the road into Aburi proper and had us some lunch--our favorite fried chicken and jollof rice (spicy tomato rice). People in Ghana generally really enjoy playing their stereos very loudly, but this was taken to an extreme in Aburi. We were really hungry and tired, but we had to turn away from a couple of different little restaurants because the music was SO loud. Anyway, the fried chicken was great.

From Aburi, we took a shared taxi (cost: about $1) (shared taxis are taxis that go to and from specific places, and they fill all the way up before they go with the various people who want to go there) about half way to our next destination, the other half done in a tro-tro. Outside a town called Somanya is Cedi's Bead Factory, which has been operated by one family for several generations. To find it, you have to walk about half a mile down a little dirt path, where every once in a while you are reassured by a sign (Cedi Bead Industry: A Place Where Beads Talk) that you are indeed coming to the factory. It's less a factory than beautiful grounds with open air buildings (roof and walls that go half way up--don't ask me what holds up the roof) in which they hang out and make zillions of beads. Mr. Cedi himself gave us a tour of the premises, showing us the five different kinds of beads one can make with recycled glass bottles, how he designs them, fires them, polishes them, and strings them. The tour of the place was just delightful. Everybody was so nice and the grounds so relaxing and the activity so productive and pretty! At the end, we each bought a few strings of beads from the showroom, and then he gave us a another string each for a present. This is easily one of the nicest ways I have spent an hour here. And Mr. Cedi also volunteered a few people to drive us out to the main road, and then, when we told them that we were going to a nearby market, they drove us all the way there! very sweet.

The Agomanya market was our last destination. It's famous for being a bead market (MUCH cheaper than Cedi's) but it has all the other market stuff too, food and fabric, as well as some gigantic ceramic pots (beautiful but too big to take anywhere). Kristin and I went nuts with the bead-buying (and some cloth, too, of course). It was a buying day, for sure--but it was also my day-t0-buy-beads-and-wood-stuff, so I don't think it will be repeated. We were quite exhausted after the bead market, so it was time to go home again home again jiggity jog. From Agomanya we were able to catch a tro-tro straight back to Accra (again in the front seat), and along the way I saw my favorite sign ever. In order to understand it, you have to know that ueenmothers are female chiefs--the British called them Queenmothers, instead of Queens, or just Chiefs, so that they wouldn't seem to disrupt patriarchy so much (according to somebody at the abortion conference last week). So here it is:

Lover Boys Undertakers: We Take All Corpses, including QueenMothers and Chiefs!

ok, thanks, bye!
anne