Entries categorized "The World Writ Small"

August 05, 2007

Yankee, Go Green [When You Remodel]

Today's Washington Post has some tips on going green during home remodeling projects, which is fairly useful for those of us unable to build a brand-new, ultra-green home. Not to mention the ecological sense of continuing to use existing construction. The interview with architect Kelly Lerner starts off by naming the three big ecological threats -- "global warming from the rampant emissions of carbon dioxide, peak oil and dangerously high levels of bio-accumulative toxins in our environment that threaten human health and the health of ecosystems."

When it comes to prioritizing, Lerner says:

I see two top priorities. One, saving energy and reducing emissions from burning fossil fuels -- insulate, improve air seal, upgrade to a more efficient heating or cooling system, use compact fluorescent bulbs, upgrade to more-efficient appliances, add a solar water heater, or add photovoltaics. Second, developing indoor/outdoor spaces that help you reconnect to nature. We evolved living mostly outside; we now spend 90 percent of our time indoors. Human health is fully dependent on natural systems; for our health, we need to spend time in close contact with nature.

The Death of an American Icon: Oliver Hill, 1907 - 2007

The Times-Dispatch reports that Oliver Hill has died; the civil rights lawyer represented students from Prince Edward County schools in one of five cases that were decided in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka case, and was the first black since Reconstruction elected to Richmond's City Council. The HistoryMakers profiled Hill in 2003:

In 1951, Hill heard that the students at R.R. Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia, had walked out of their dilapidated school. The subsequent lawsuit, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County later became one of the five cases decided under Brown v. the Board of Education. During these years, Hill's home life was under constant threat. He did not allow his son to answer the telephone because so many threats were coming in, and a cross was burned on his lawn. He persevered, however, and today Hill and his partners have filed more civil rights cases in Virginia than were filed in any other Southern state.

Hill also broke the mold when he and several other Virginia lawyers formed the Old Dominion Bar Association in 1942 and with his successful run for the city council of Richmond in 1948, becoming the first African American to do so since Reconstruction.

Hill has been the recipient of numerous awards over the decades, including being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on August 11, 1999. Students at the University of Virginia also honored Hill when they founded the Oliver W. Hill Black Pre-Law Association. Hill retired from his legal practice in 1998, and today a bronze bust of him is visible at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia.

Hill represented much of what is good about our nation at a time when much that was wrong with our nation was on full display.

July 27, 2007

THE CAT COMES BACK

It's either creepy or a real heartwarmer -- a cat at a hospice in Rhode Island who senses when a resident is about to die, and curls up and comforts them. The New England Journal of Medicine reports on "A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat." Oscar has intuitively presided over every death at the nursing center since he arrived -- more than 25.

Making his way back up the hallway, Oscar arrives at Room 313. The door is open, and he proceeds inside. Mrs. K. is resting peacefully in her bed, her breathing steady but shallow. She is surrounded by photographs of her grandchildren and one from her wedding day. Despite these keepsakes, she is alone. Oscar jumps onto her bed and again sniffs the air. He pauses to consider the situation, and then turns around twice before curling up beside Mrs. K. 

One hour passes. Oscar waits. A nurse walks into the room to check on her patient. She pauses to note Oscar's presence. Concerned, she hurriedly leaves the room and returns to her desk. She grabs Mrs. K.'s chart off the medical-records rack and begins to make phone calls. 

Within a half hour the family starts to arrive. Chairs are brought into the room, where the relatives begin their vigil. The priest is called to deliver last rites. And still, Oscar has not budged, instead purring and gently nuzzling Mrs. K. A young grandson asks his mother, "What is the cat doing here?" The mother, fighting back tears, tells him, "He is here to help Grandma get to heaven." Thirty minutes later, Mrs. K. takes her last earthly breath. With this, Oscar sits up, looks around, then departs the room so quietly that the grieving family barely notices.

The Washington Post's online discussion section has the transcript of an interview with an assistant professor of medicine who works at the center where Oscar lives. His key point:

I've come late to an appreciation of Oscar----I think his caring for
those at the end of life is truely remarkable. Again he allows for
those that die alone to have companionship at the time of death and
allows us to notify those that have family so that they may have them
present.

July 25, 2007

BABY YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR

The planning and land use geeks at Bacon's Rebellion caught my attention with a recent post about cool, new technologies in the world of autos:

First, the Air Car, a mini-car that runs on compressed air. The vehicle reaches top speeds of 68 and has a driving range double that of the most advanced electric car, making it ideal for city driving. The cost of re-filling the "gas" tank is about 1.5 Euros (less than $3). Oil changes are needed only once per 50,000 kilometers. Oh, and did I mention that it has zero pollution? Watch out, Detroit (and Tokyo), the car, designed by a small French firm, will be manufactured by India's Tata Motor. (Read the BusinessWeek article.)

July 10, 2007

EVERY DAY IS LIKE MONDAY

Laura Zigman's article, "Coping Outside the Box," in today's Washington Post is a revealing glimpse into one person's struggle with depression -- and the relief provided by medication.

Describing what depression feels like is a little like trying to describe what chocolate tastes like or what classical music sounds like or what red looks like. But for me, being depressed was like being inside a sealed glass box right in the middle of a big huge party: I could see out and people could see in, but that's about as far as it went.

June 30, 2007

THE ICE CREAM MAN VS. THE JUICER

This recent post on the Richmond Craft Mafia weblog describes a face-off between an ice cream man and a juice truck in Brooklyn. It cracks me up every time I read it.

June 26, 2007

I HAD A PEN IN AFRICA...

There are a half dozen people, primarily writers, who have shaped my own dreams of Africa -- including Isak Dinesen, Rosamund Halsey Carr, Chinua Achebe. The Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski has been another huge influence.

As the African correspondent for the Polish News Service during the Cold War, Ryszard Kapuscinski lived by his wits, on a shoestring and always in pursuit of a story. His latest book is posthumous. Tahir Shah reviewed Travels with Herodotus in the Washington Post's Book World this week.

A correspondent for the Polish News Agency, he could hardly afford to file his stories by Telex, let alone hire helicopters or personal security. But unlike his suave competitors at the international networks, he became known for treating the stories he was sent to cover with a gentle sensitivity that was almost unknown in the business. Africa was the cornerstone of his writing life. He considered it his second home. During his long career he observed 27 coups and revolutions and reported from a roll call of hotspots -- among them Uganda, Zanzibar and Ethiopia.

Kapuscinski famously kept two notebooks -- one for journalism and another for his own form of reportage-based literature. His unique style won him many awards, translations and an enormous international following. He died in January of this year, and his last book, published posthumously in English, is called Travels with Herodotus. The Greek's 5th-century B.C. Histories, presented to Kapuscinski by his editor as he stepped out on his first foreign assignment, was his traveling companion on almost all his journeys.

Travels with Herodotus is a work of art: so eloquent, so simple, that you find yourself marveling at its prose, its gentle observation and the rhythm of the words. And you find yourself applauding such good translation as well. Kapuscinski reminisces on his first view of the Nile, back in 1960; on his great love, India; and on the time he watched Louis Armstrong play to a bemused audience in the Sudan.

June 23, 2007

THE WAR ON PLASTIC

Newsweek has a Q&A with San Francisco's mayor about that city's ban on plastic water bottles. First, the city banned the use of plastic grocery bags. Now, plastic water bottles are in the cross-hairs. It's all part of an effort to reduce plastic waste.

NEWSWEEK: Salt Lake City has also banned bottled water for its employees. Why are cities taking the lead in persuading people to stop buying bottled water?
Gavin Newsom: The transportation and distribution, developing the plastic for the water bottles, the cost of the water, has a huge environmental and economic impact. As a consequence of the prolific growth in bottled waters, we in the city feel we have a responsibility to address its cost and its environmental impact. We are looking to eliminate completely all of bottled water consumption supported by city money but also to begin an educational campaign to convey the real cost of bottled water, transported half way around the world. We are looking at a marketing campaign showing bottled water compared to a barrel of oil, that shows it takes far more energy to transport the water than the oil.

Representatives from the bottled-water industry say it’s unfair to single out their product. Thousands of food and beverage items come in plastic packaging, they point out—and consumers like having a healthy choice of water, instead of buying drinks containing sugar and calories.
Yes, but the difference between bottled water and Diet Coke is that you can’t get Diet Coke from the tap. It’s not like any other bottled liquids. These people are making huge amounts of money selling God’s natural resources. Sorry, we’re not going to be part of it. Our water in San Francisco comes from the Hetch Hetchy [reservoir] and is some of the most pristine water on the planet. Our water is arguably cleaner than a vast majority of the bottled water sold as "pure."

June 15, 2007

IMAGES OF MATCHSTICK MEN

Matchstickgarden

I stumbled across the cutesy/clever Matchstick Garden idea during a recent ramble through Boing Boing's idea-crazy site. If only we had found this site before our wedding, we wouldn't have had to design our own version! The Mixed Herb Matchstick Garden contains Basil, Chives, Parsley, and Thyme. The Wildflower Matchstick Garden contains Cornflower, Shasta Daisy, Corn Marigold, and Field Poppy.

June 03, 2007

GET HOODWINKED

They call it 'community blogging' or 'micro-journalism' or 'neighborhood blogging.' I prefer the term 'community journalism,' because at its best it captures the spirit and personality that define a community even as it chronicles the news and events that impact it. (At its worst it simply regurgitates crime stats.)

In Richmond, John Murden is well-known as the Johnny Appleseed of neighborhood weblogs. In addition to creating the city's oldest -- the veritable Church Hill People's News -- Murden has helped launch West of the Boulevard News, Hills and Heights, the Petersburg People's News and the recent Carver and Jackson Ward News. It's a safe bet that all of this grassroots activity inspired Terry Rea to launch his Fan District Hub. Even the Times-Dispatch tried to jump aboard the local weblog bandwagon earlier this year with their unexceptional community news section.

Murden has even inspired my wife and me to launch a website for North Side -- we hope to have a pretty robust site up-and-running by the end of the month. Because we are gluttons, stalwart perfectionists and passionate about our community, Nikole and I will be joined by a small team of online contributors from Richmond's North Side (which we very roughly define as running up Chamberlayne to Azalea, and from the CVS at Broad and Boulevard up through Lakeside). We're expansive. (By the way, if you live in the Lakeside, Bellevue, Ginter Park, Azalea, Battery Park, Barton Heights, Sherwood park neighborhoods, drop us a note at jsarvay [at] yahoo [dot] com and let us know if you'd like to join the team.)

Today's Washington Post had a great series of interviews with four bloggers who have been chronicling life in Arlington, Laurel, Silver Spring and the District of Columbia. In addition to their own thoughts on this notion of community journalism, each blogger recommended other sites they read and enjoyed. I'll run a complete list -- along with Richmond's growing list of neighborhood sites -- at the end of this piece.

Earlier this week, the 804.com local weblog wrote about a recent spike in referrals from Outside.in, a community news aggregator out of Brooklyn that is working to ride the local news wave -- something they call "placeblogging." 804.com has lots of details on Outside.in and some thoughts on how it could improve -- and rightly celebrates RVABlogs as the place to go for news, gossip and tales of life's sweet miseries from more than 160 Richmond area weblogs.

And if keeping up with the Joneses is your kind of thing, Outside.in also recently took a stab at naming the Top 10 Bloggiest Neighborhoods in America. On the list: Clinton Hill (Brooklyn); Shaw (DC); Pearl District (Portland); Potrero Hill (San Francisco); and Coconut Grove (Florida).

Richmond's Neighborhood Weblogs:

RVABlogs
Church Hill People's News
West of the Boulevard News
Hills and Heights (Stratford Hills and Woodland Heights)
Petersburg People's News
Carver and Jackson Ward News
Fan District Hub
Richmond Times-Dispatch's community news

DC Area Neighborhood Weblogs

Arlington, Virginia: The Buckingham Herald Tribblog
Laurel, Maryland:  Laurel Connections
Silver Spring/College Park, Maryland: Just Up the Pike
Northeast DC:  Stop, Blog, and Roll

Other Sites Recommended by DC Bloggers:

The Green Miles
Blacknell.net

Backfence Arlington
Just Up the Pike
Council member Mike Sarich's blog
Free State Politics
Laurel 2020
Rethink College Park
Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space
Sprawling Towards Montgomery
BeyondDC
Tales of Two Cities
DCist
Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

Frozen Tropics
In Shaw (Now With More Gentrification)
Bloomingdale
New Kid on the Eckington Block

April 29, 2007

33 LIVES. ONE DAY OF SILENCE.

Onedaysilence_sp

Buttermilk & Molasses joins OneDayBlogSilence.com on April 30th in quiet solidarity with hundreds of other websites -- and in the memory of the victims of violence across our nation and around the world. A life lost is gone forever, no matter where it happens.

While we post in whispers, stop by RVABlogs and donate to the Jarrett Lee Lane Memorial Fund. Details:

Jarret Lee Lane was one of the thirty-three Virginia Tech students killed on April 16th 2007. Jarret was Alicia’s (Alicia’s Pilgrimage) brother and Daniel’s (Daniel’s Pilgrimage) brother-in-law. Both are founding members of RVABlogs. Show your support to Alica, Daniel, Virginia, and the RVABlogs community by donating now.

April 18, 2007

QUIET. APRIL 30.

Onedaysilence_sp

OneDayBlogSilence.com is generating a lot of support for its one day of silence in honor of the students and faculty killed this week at Virginia Tech. Buttermilk & Molasses will go silent on April 30th is quiet solidarity with hundreds of other websites -- and in the memory of the victims of violence across our nation and around the world. A life lost is gone forever, no matter where it happens.

TECHIPEDIA

The Wikipedia entry on this week's massacre at Virginia Tech is not only comprehensive, but the huge number of edits in such a short time speaks to the public interest in the tragedy.

On a human note, Jon at River City Rapids alerts readers to one personal loss:

Local blogger Alicia Farrell lost her brother at Virginia Tech and has found the strength to post some pictures of him and their family in what certainly is the worst week of her life.

The loss of the youth, innocence, and future of so many young minds and spirits is hitting too many families this week. Please stop by her site and let her know that her family is in your thoughts and prayers.

April 15, 2007

AFRICA, BY HOOK OR BY CROOK

First Jen Lemen, and then her sister Patience. Now, Boing Boing's Jeni Xardin is kicking around Africa. One of the nicer things she's posted about her West African excursion is this elaboration of an unattributed quote -- "Africa's a continent. Not a crisis." It was written by Ethan Zuckerman:

"That's me, I'm afraid, from Link.  The paragraph it comes from, more or less..."

"Africa's not an issue. It's not a cause or a problem. It's a continent - a complicated, confusing, beautiful continent, with wealth and poverty, peace and strife, success and tragedy. When Africa becomes a cause, we tend to see only one side of the continent - a helpless, dependent, starving side that "needs our help"."

"The post was written during debate over the Bob Geldof Live8 nonsense - the event caused a huge debate in the African and Afrophile blogging community and this was my response to the tendency for the event to blur all the problems and hopes of the continent into a single word."

It's a continent I'm planning to see, to explore. I'd like to see many of its sides when I go.

SURF ON WOOD

Ecobook

Treehugger, one of the better environmental weblogs on the e-block, has details on the new ASUS bamboo laptop computer. Not only is it stylish, but it's significantly more environmentally friendly than the plastic/metal/toxin laden laptops most of us own -- like, say, the Apple iBook I'm currently using. What plastic Asus uses is labeled and recyclable; the laptop is lined with cardboard; it lacks paint and electroplating.

CALLING ALL BEES

Boing Boing posts details from Germany's Landau University, suggesting cellphones are killing off bee colonies. Upwards of 70 percent of the commercial bee population in the United States appears to have vanished in recent months, which could have dire consequences for America's agricultural production -- which has been developed around bees (and not any of the hundreds of other potential pollinators, like butterflies).

It's been long understood that bees respond to electromagnetic radiation. Dr Jochen Kuhn at Germany's Landau University has shown that bees don't return to their hives when cellphones are present. The study doesn't prove that cellphones are responsible for CCD, but it does provide evidence that mobile phones are implicated in the death of hives.

April 10, 2007

GO, COMMUNISM! BEAT THE WEST!

Boing Boing's brief on North Korea's 100,000-person pixel board is proof-positive that Marxism (at least as practiced by our friends in Korea) totally blows. Marx and Engel must be trying their best to claw their way out of their graves in order to drag the entire communist leadership of the People's Republic of North Korea to the depths of Hell.

100knkoreans

100,000 North Korean residents trained for a year to perform at the Arirang Festival (The Mass Games). The state's immense, immaculately choreographed display of culture, one of the rare events to which foreigners are invited. The huge backdrops are made from human pixels, 1000's of performers holding sequences of coloured placards. Timed to coincide with South Korea's Olympic Ceremonies, this was communist precision at its best.

Continue reading "GO, COMMUNISM! BEAT THE WEST!" »

April 02, 2007

ANOTHER ROUND OF 'GET YOUR WAR ON'

Who needs words? Just savor the political satire (click the images to actually read them):

Gywofield_trip_2
Gywonaptional_guard

Plenty more political satire at Get Your War On.

March 23, 2007

HIGHWAY TO HELL

Jim Bacon at Bacon's Rebellion unveils local opposition to the ugly retail explosion that is U.S. 29 North.

I've spent the last 10 years driving up and down Route 29 from Charlottesville to Ruckersville, and it has grown increasingly chaotic, built-up and utterly unfriendly to drivers and pedestrians alike. (For the record, the stretch of Route 29 from Centerville [in Fairfax County] south toward Warrenton is becoming equally wretched, saved only by the Manassas National Battlefeld Park and a few large farms.) Unfortunately for residents of Albemarle and Greene counties, the Wal-Mart planned just north of the 29/33 intersection in Ruckersville will only drag the big-box development further northward.

Here's Bacon on a local move to squash the sprawl:

It's as if Charlottesville/Albemarle took anything that could be remotely ugly or dysfunctional and smooshed it into an eleven-mile strip of state highway north of town Unfortunately, if you live in the region or travel through it, there is no escaping this horror.

Citizens seem serious about doing something, although there doesn't seem to be a consensus about what to do. The Daily Progress has published a lengthy article describing the Places29 initiative and the controversy it is generating.

Places29, the product of local planners, provides what sounds like an attractive vision for the corridor (although the devil is in the details):

Electric lines vanish. New roads appear, giving drivers a way to avoid 29. Some commuters simply avoid the hassle by riding the bus. Walking is encouraged, because residents work, shop and play in coordinated communities.

And all it will cost is some $400 million...

... There are no magic wands for a place like U.S. 29 North. Fixing that monstrosity is going to cost money, and it's going to take doing things differently than in the past. The longer the region delays in implementing a new vision, the more dysfunctional development that will take place. It's critical to minimize future costs by getting landowners and developers to buy into a new vision as soon as possible.

March 21, 2007

WORDS IN A LAND OF WAR

PBS' NewsHour spotlighted the poetry of the Middle East this evening with reflections on Israeli poets Agi Mishol, Eliaz Cohen and Aharon Shabtai. Future episodes will feature leading Palestinian poets Taha Muhammad Ali, Samih al-Qasim and Ghassan Zaqtan. The "Poetry in the Middle East" webpage features profiles of key poets of the Middle East, exclusive video and Jeffrey Brown's reporter's notebook:

Poets in Middle Eastern societies are often held in high regard, and many achieve a level of celebrity and authority not common in the West. Senior correspondent Jeffrey Brown travels to Israel and the occupied territories to provide insight into the lives of Israeli and Palestinian poets, writers in a place of conflict providing a voice for those who feel they don't have one.

Darwish

Missing from the coverage is Mahmoud Darwish, poet laureate of Palestine, whose collection, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, was among my reading material in Beirut last year. It was reviewed at Pop Matters by Andy Fogle:

Why this book is important should be obvious: this region, and this world, is in ever-increasing political, military, economic and emotional turmoil. In world politics, the balance between how much power is in one pair of hands is uncomfortable at best and catastrophic.

One of the more magnificent things about Darwish's work though is how it does not rely on history, biography, or politics. While it gives insight to these affairs, it doesn't "explain" or "solve" them either, and he is far from a pedestrianly political-protest poet lacking depth or nuance, made of nothing but surface (the closest he comes to this is in a line like "I know what the dove means when it lays eggs on the rifle's muzzle"-if only more "political poets" could say that was one of their least compelling statements).

His work strikes me most when it is at the highest point of tension between intimacy and elusiveness. "Mural" is a long poem that seems to be in the voice of a dying man-one might look at it as an eerily elaborated version of the moment one's life flashes before one's eyes. Here are a few of my favorite chunks:

We are left in place as the echo of an epic hymn.

... Like a small jar of water, absence breaks in me.

... My gods are a storm turned to stone in the land of the imagination.

... I only changed my heartbeat to hear my heart more clearly.

... I told myself: I am alive.
And I said: When two ghosts meet in the desert, do they walk on the same sands?
Do they compete to overpower the night?

... I said: I will wake up when I die.

There's little linear narrative to be found, and I bet that's out of necessity, when so much of the work's thrust comes from the slipperiness of memory and language, and the awkward, tenderly haunted position of being an exile in one's own land.

March 19, 2007

GOING BACK TO THE ROOTS

Ethiopia is best known in the United States for the tragic and deadly famines of the 1980s. A few Richmonders know Ethiopia from the Nile Ethiopian Restaurant on Laurel Street near VCU. But as they NYTimes reports, you don't have to stay at home to find great Ethiopian food -- head for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the source of Ethiopian goodness.

This is a country that serves up grass-fed beef and organic vegetables by default. There are no trendy macro-organic-vegan movements; rather, the livestock graze in open fields because there are no factory farms, and vegetables are rarely treated with pesticides because farmers can’t afford the chemicals...

... On a trip to Addis Ababa last year, I became increasingly intrigued with the cuisine. Everywhere — from dingy streets to polished hotels — I saw people of every age, class and occupation eating the same food and embracing the same traditions. The food is a source of national pride, and a daily reminder of this country’s history.

There are no appetizers or desserts in Ethiopia. Chefs do not craft menus to whet the appetite with an amuse bouche. Food has a primal role: to be filling, nutritious and packed with as much flavor as possible, whether it’s spicy chickpea hummus with caramelized onions, or grilled chicken dripping with a sweet yogurt sauce.

Take a tour of Addis Adaba's best restaurants, at least virtually.

March 17, 2007

SAVE THE ROBOTS! KILL ALL HUMANS.

Those edgy research scientists in South Korea are working on a Robot Code of Ethics to prevent android abuse. This comes at a time in history when we've decided that abusing humans is entirely moral.

NUMBERS NUMB COMPASSION

I hadn't thought about writer Annie Dillard in ages. She's cited in a short piece in the March online Foreign Policy magazine, "Numbed by Numbers." The piece looks at how sheer numbers get in the way of compassion -- why an image of a single, starving child elicits more donations than an image of a single, starving child and scrolling statistics about millions more just like her.

When writer Annie Dillard was struggling to comprehend the mass human tragedies that the world ignores, she asked, “At what number do other individuals blur for me?” In other words, when does “compassion fatigue” set in? Our research suggests that the “blurring” of individuals may begin as early as the number two.

If this is true, it’s no wonder compassion is absent when deaths number in the hundreds of thousands. But there is a difference between merely being aware of this diminishing sensitivity and appreciating its broader implications. This is especially true when you consider how difficult it is to create, let alone sustain, the emotional responses needed to spark action.

In light of our historical and psychological deficiencies, it is time to re-examine this human failure. Because if we are waiting for a tipping point to spur action against genocide, we could be waiting forever.

EAT MORE OIL

It's quite the dilemma for the modern shopper -- organic, local, bulk or convenience. What's a good-hearted shopper to do?

Toronto's NOW Magazine lays it all out for us, responding to a recent cover feature in TIME magazine's Canadian edition, "Forget Organic. Buy Local." Guess what? There's no easy answer.

One reason is that shopping isn't just about shopping. It's about civic responsibility and good parenting. It's also about economics and class (as in the income disparity between the rich and poor, though I suppose for some people it's also about style and fashion).

TIME's John Cloud "says he 'cares deeply about how my food tastes' and despairs that 'all our peas could be tasteless pods from far away.'"

He asks whether the organic choice will deliver superior nutrition or protection from disease, and on very limited evidence decides there's no measurable difference. But he never even thinks to ask whether organic inputs might benefit the birds, the bees or children and grandchildren who will inevitably absorb the pesticides that escape into the air and water.

Other species and other generations do not figure in a world that exists only to be bought and sold for the pleasure of the shopper.

Ironically, it's this very narcissism that landed organics in the jam it's in today. Old-style organics was based in the counterculture and relied heavily on shopper commitment to environmental values. Little attention was paid to appearance and presentation of food, and there were virtually no offerings when it came to heat-and-serve processed or packaged food. What is today called "health food" was then often called "natural food."

The new organic buyer, by contrast, will pay more for organic to reduce personal pesticide burdens. This health-motivated customer is usually caught up in the mainstream time famine, however, and demands that organics come in labour-saving formats that require intensive packaging, which undoes any enviro good provided by organic growing methods.

To meet the demands of the modern market, organics went commercial. NOW warns that consumers now focused on locally produced goods will push the local/neighbor market into the mega/corporate market. In Richmond, witness Ukrop's strong marketing efforts to demonstrate the tight farm-to-market relationship; NOW points to Wal-Mart's Salute To American Farmers program that spotlights local growers.

When every choice a consumer makes cascades into a broader range of social, environmental and economic issues, it becomes next to impossible to make clear-cut choices. And it's made all the more complicated, NOW suggests, when you realize that most of our shopping habits are rooted in a lack of meaning in our personal lives.

Nikole and I have managed to combine a handful of the approaches described, a blend of healthy and mindful, of intentional and convenient. We garden; have supported SPROUT! [our local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program]; split our shopping between a handful of local grocers -- including Ukrop's and Ellwood-Thompson's; buy a small selection of ridiculously oversized crates of dry goods from Costco; and try to support our independent neighborhood stores and markets like Fin & Feather, Sammy's Bakery and Once Upon A Vine. It's not a perfect balance, but it keeps us fed, relatively healthy and connected to the community around us.

March 13, 2007

WAR. LOVE.

Marinewedding

Except for the photo, and a link to the full text of "A Picture is Really Worth a Thousand Words by Ron Steinman at The Digital Journalist, I don't think there is anything I can add.

Look at this photograph by Nina Berman. Look carefully. Pause. Think. Realize you are seeing something unique, something rare. It is a photo of war. There is no combat in the picture. Look at the picture taken in a studio before the wedding of former Marine Sgt. Ty Ziegel and his fiancée Renee Kline that took place Oct. 7, 2006. In many ways it is a typical wedding day photo, except the image is less than what one might expect on a wedding day. The young bride is perfect in her beautiful wedding gown. She holds a lovely bouquet of flowers. The groom is, well, nearly perfect in his Marine dress blues, replete with war ribbons from his service in Iraq. But look closely at the photo. There is something wrong. Sgt. Ty Ziegel is horribly mutilated, a victim of a suicide car bomber in 2004 in Iraq. He was in recovery for 19 months at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas. Despite his wounds, he and his childhood sweetheart married in the face of what could be major problems in the future. Does the bride know what she is getting into? Look at her face. I see fear and shock. We cannot tell what Sgt. Ziegel is thinking because his face is unrecognizable. It is impossible to know what anyone thinks, especially in a photo, but do the bride and groom really know what the future holds?

 

 

"Wounded Marine Returns Home From Iraq to Marry" is the title of the photo. We need read nothing more. Nina Berman says she believes her picture "shows how war has crept its way into the most common phase of daily life." Her assessment is right.

 

 

No one can learn about war unless he or she understands its results. By that I mean, the casualties of war, especially from Iraq, where almost 96 percent of the wounded survive -- the highest number of wounded survivors of any previous war.

March 11, 2007

THE U.S. THROUGH A CANADIAN'S EYES

Having been to Toronto and spent much of my adolescence in the Research Triangle of North Carolina, the only counter-argument I feel I can make to NOW Magazine's Rick Mason's recent comparison of the two is that both have utterly disastrous highway systems. On all other counts, I think he's right -- Toronto thumps Carolina.

Yesterday I thought about walking to the grocery store to buy some stuff. The store is physically closer than most people in Toronto are to their grocery stores. I quickly decided against it when I realized there was no way to really walk there safely. No sidewalks, barely even a gravel shoulder and two 6 lane roadways to cross without pedestrian crossings. I'm pretty sure pedestrian isn't even a word here.

If that weren't enough, I am contemplating buying an extra suitcase to bring home the empty glass bottles and other recyclable packaging I've used while here. As far as I can tell there is no recycling pickup. Garbage collection is mostly up to the community area in which you live and not handled by the city. I hear rumours that there are recycling depots you can go to to make sure your glass, metals and plastics are dealt with properly but details on this are sketchy. Throwing out a bag full of "garbage" that is 90% recyclable materials really hurts. Of course another 8% of that garbage bag was also compost.

ANTHRAX UPDATE ON '60 MINUTES'

About five years ago, a handful of letters circulated through the postal system -- killing several postal workers, concerning public and media officials who feared the worst, and handing the FBI one of its most significant cases ever. Five years later, Steven Hatfill, a "person of interest" in that case, is suing the government.

This evening, CBS News' 60 Minutes updated the cases -- both the investigation and the lawsuit.

The resulting depositions of FBI personnel and law enforcement records obtained by 60 Minutes provide an inside look into one of the FBI's biggest investigations ever and raise the possibility that the bureau may have a cold case on its hands.

Correspondent Lesley Stahl's report, which contains revelations from those depositions, will be broadcast this Sunday, March 11, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Hatfill, a scientist who worked at an Army laboratory where the strain of anthrax used in the attacks was stored, is the only "person of interest" named publicly in the case. He has maintained his innocence all along.

Hatfill is suing the government for destroying his reputation by, among other things, naming him "a person of interest." According to depositions taken for Hatfill's suit and obtained by 60 Minutes, the FBI official who oversaw the investigation says the bureau was looking at many more people.

Five years, 53,000 leads and thousands of subpoenas later, and nothing.

March 07, 2007

NEW ORLEANS' NEVER-ENDING STORIES

One small indication of life in New Orleans, more than a year after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, is the Gambit Weekly Newspaper. This week, Ronnie Virgets takes another moment to share another story of a disaster few of us will never truly understand, and begins by explaining why we won't:

          It's been a year-and-a-half now. A year-and-a-half that's taken forever and a year-and-a-half already. 

There are the stories of the storm, and we have been telling them and being told them for a year-and-a-half now. Some parts have been polished and others forgotten, and we may be tired of hearing them, but we will never tire of telling them because Katrina was the chance -- the first for some of us, the last for some others and the only chance for still others of us -- to experience something unforgettable, to know firsthand that your life can be touched and altered irrevocably by something you have no say-so over, none.

And the people who had already run -- to Houston or Arkansas or Virginia or New York -- have no real stories of the storm, no stories of what it was like to stay, only stories of other places and stories of coming back.

February 22, 2007

DON'T GO '0 FOR 3' IN WAR SUPPORT -- GET YOUR WAR ON

Gywofirst_time

In a perfect world, David Rees would have faded away after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, sparked his underground career. But we don't live in a perfect world; we live in the sixth year of the Bush administration. A new batch of Rees' Get Your War On strips is now online.

Worker One: Dude. Someone told me you have a magnetic "Iran War Now" ribbon on the back of your car?

Worker Two: Well, I was always skeptical of the Afghanistan war, and I opposed the Iraq war. I can't go 0 for 3 in war support -- it's unseemly. I figure everybody should back at least one war.

Worker One: I understand. Plus, the Iran war might be the one we get right. You'll look like a total genius!

Worker Two: Exactly. I was just saving myself for the right war. I wanted my first time to be special...

February 11, 2007

INTERROGATION CONCERNS, SO 2004

Yes, yes. Worrying about the slippery slope of interrogation and the moral and legal implications of detaining and questioning potential terrorists is so yesterday. From all indications, the vast majority of Americans just threw their hands up with a shrug and went on with their lives; presumably, the Bush administration took this as permission to continue to build executive power -- implications be damned.

Which makes the timing and content of Arabic linguist and former contract interrogator Eric Fair's Washington Post commentary, "An Iraq Interrogator's Nightmare" all the more relevant. Fair was working with the 82nd Airborne Division in Fallujah, Irag, in 2004; his memories of what he did, what he saw, and what he perceives to be his own failures speaks volumes of the all-too-real impact of bad policies.

The man, whose name I've long since forgotten, was a suspected associate of Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, the Baath Party leader in Anbar province who had been captured two months earlier.

The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.

Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.

American authorities continue to insist that the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident in an otherwise well-run detention system. That insistence, however, stands in sharp contrast to my own experiences as an interrogator in Iraq. I watched as detainees were forced to stand naked all night, shivering in their cold cells and pleading with their captors for help. Others were subjected to long periods of isolation in pitch-black rooms. Food and sleep deprivation were common, along with a variety of physical abuse, including punching and kicking. Aggressive, and in many ways abusive, techniques were used daily in Iraq, all in the name of acquiring the intelligence necessary to bring an end to the insurgency. The violence raging there today is evidence that those tactics never worked.

February 08, 2007

THE BEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF ONBEING

Onbeing

The Washington Post Company's new series, onBeing, not only does what good journalism does best -- it also takes advantage of technology, it follows some of the simpler precepts of good storytelling (get out of the storyteller's way) and it is simultaneously thoughtful and entertaining. In case you were beginning to worry that "old media" would never get "new media," something changes. (Richmond-based publishers: Pay attention already.)

Videographer Jennifer Crandall kicks the onBeing series off with four simple video stories -- a gay Mormon, a hipster nun, a precocious kid and a lactose intolerant cheese-maker. White backdrops, close-up shots, relatively stream-of-consciousness into-the-camera discussion. Three minutes (give or take) focused on each person's passion, dream or struggle. Awesome stuff.

But it's not YouTube quality embedded video, oh no. onBeing not only lets viewers download in four different formats, but can kick those of us Mac users with our saucy iTunes software directly to iTunes' podcast section [from iTunes, follow Podcasts | The Washington Post | onBeing].

One of the best aspects of onBeing, though, is its simplicity -- it creates a space for people to share their quirks and thoughts and stories without a filter, and without complication. Storycorps on film, minus the maudlin moments. (So far.) From the onBeing website:

onBeing is a project based on the simple notion that we should all get to know one another a little better.

Starting conversations. It's what good news publications do best, when they are doing their best work.

February 06, 2007

TWO LIVES TO LIVE

I have a friend who is studying the use of new technologies in the delivery of educational curriculum. He talks a lot about Second Life; I wonder how anyone has time for a second life these days...

The odd thing is that I've tended to be an early adopter -- I was fiddling around with Apple SE computers for newspaper design and publishing in 1989; exploring the use of the Internet (via CompuServe and GEnie) for public relations in 1992 during my stint in VCU's PR office; roaming the virtual, text-centric world of Gemstone 3 for hours in 1994; teleporting small rodents into my mother's refrigerator in 2017. But I just can't bring myself to connect to this potential "killer app" that will potentially change they way I tie my shoes.

Over at Style Weekly, English professor Joe Essid weighs in on the world of Second Life:

Second Life may, like Netscape in the early ’90s, be a “killer app” that will make virtual reality available to the nongaming masses and spawn an array of competitors. This free program gives Windows, Mac and Linux users an interface where they can enter a virtual landscape designed by Linden Labs and, in a revolutionary break with the past, by players. It’s replete with cities, islands, parks, playgrounds and stores — stores where one can spend real money to buy virtual merchandise: new clothing, personal items, cars, even the big pink flying saucer I saw one player using to transport his “avatar,” the custom-designed 3D figure who stands in for the human at the keyboard.

When I last logged on, I checked the program’s statistics: More than 20,000 users were simultaneously connected from around the world, more than a million users in the past month and over $1,000,000 in real money exchanged between players in the prior 24 hours.

[snip]

But should we all be concerned as more and more social interaction moves online? I’d say yes, for a nation where too many unhealthy citizens’ engagement with the natural world consists of walking a few paces from one climate-controlled box to another, then plopping down before a screen. Maybe that’s why Second Life will so easily become a part of our daily rounds. We have trashed our surroundings, turned our commercial areas into vast paved wastelands lined with cartoonish storefronts, wrecked our environment and climate, and hollowed out face-to-face social engagements so thoroughly that an avatar provides a potential too difficult to bother pursing in our first lives.

REDISCOVERING THE BOYS OF SUDAN

Godgrewtired

I'm not especially fond of the term "lost boys," especially when discussing the 17,000 of young men and children who fled Sudan's Darfur region and made their way to Ethiopia, and to relative safety.

National Geographic has a brief video overviewing the tragic, but hopeful, story of many of these young Africans who emigrated to the United States. The video provides a small taste of a new documentary on these young men, God Grew Tired of Us.

Orphaned by a tumultuous civil war and traveling barefoot across the sub-Saharan desert, John Bul Dau, Daniel Abol Pach and Panther Blor were among the 25,000 “Lost Boys” (ages 3 to 13) who fled villages, formed surrogate families and sought refuge from famine, disease, wild animals and attacks from rebel soldiers. Named by a journalist after Peter Pan’s posse of orphans who protected and provided for each other, the “Lost Boys” traveled together for five years and against all odds crossed into the UN’s refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. A journey’s end for some, it was only the beginning for John, Daniel and Panther, who along with 3800 other young survivors, were selected to re-settle in the United States.

February 05, 2007

THE POLITICS OF SCRIBBLING

020507decider

There is very little news that makes me as happy today as word on the street that the Illustrated Daily Scribble has returned! Charles Fincher's political cartoons combine the best of Walt Kelly (minus the talking alligators) and Pat Oliphant.

011507

January 22, 2007

IRAQI CRYBABY THEATRE

In addition to a handful of new Get Your War On strips -- those painfully righteous and foul-mouthed office clip-art comics lashing out at U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan -- David Ree now has a bloody, and moderately less amusing, new strip -- Iraqi Crybaby Theatre. The man still knows how to throw a satirically mean punch.

January 21, 2007

JUGHEAD REVEALED!

The Onion, which recently sold its soul to the Washington Post, scoops America with news from the world of Archie: New Archie Graphic Novel Explores Rich Inner Life Of Jughead:

NEW YORK—Publisher Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. released a new Archie Comics graphic novel Tuesday, Heavy Is The Head That Wears The Crown, an examination of the complex inner workings of longtime Archie compatriot Forsythe "Jughead" Jones. "Readers will be fascinated by Forsythe's agonizing realization that his love of food was really just a substitute for loving himself, something he deems impossible due to his guilt over the premature death of his baby sister, Forsythia, and the predatory sexual overtures he suffers at the hands of Mr. Flutesnoot," author and cartoonist Adrian Tomine said. "The poignancy is further emphasized by the glimpses of Forsythe's future, as a divorced, self-doubting, alcoholic psychiatrist with an uncontrollable weight problem." A Knopf spokesman rejected allegations that the novel is nothing more than an apologia for the character's misogyny, saying that readers "will find the truth is rather more complicated."

January 20, 2007

WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL TAKES ON SOUTH AFRICA

The Rev. Michael Battle of the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria will speak on "Democracy and Reconciliation in South Africa" on February 7. The event is sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Richmond; registration is being accepted by phone (644-0083) or email.

Battle was ordained in 1993 by Desmond Tutu and has written extensively about racial reconciliation in South Africa, as well as the relationship between Christianity and nonviolence.

January 13, 2007

FOR THE REVEREND MARTIN LUTHER KING

On Monday, some Americans will pause to remember the life and work of Martin Luther King, and to reflect on his dreams for a more equal society. In his weekly Washington Post column, Colbert I. King reminds us that we could do worse than to remember a speech King delivered 40 years ago, as his vision expanded from civil rights in the United States to the broader moral obligations of citizens in a democratic society:

King spoke in '67 about "the Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them." Witness the Bush team in Iraq.

Today they have a bloodbath on their hands to show for their labors, and Iran is on the verge of getting an Iraqi neighbor beyond its wildest dreams.

Yet even now, neoconservatives inside and outside of government are counseling Bush to remain in Iraq for years to prevent the Shiite-dominated regime from collapsing. They also are encouraging him to prepare for battle with Iran and Syria if those countries start meddling in Iraq -- as if they aren't now. With what exactly and for how long we are supposed to do battle with Tehran and Damascus, the militaristic neocon noncombatants in Washington don't say. But then again, they have a tolerance for risk and cost that exceeds that of those who actually do the fighting and dying.

Forty years ago at Riverside Church, people of conscience declared that "a time comes when silence is betrayal." They went beyond using their voices and votes when they agreed to break their silence. They responded, as King had urged, by matching their words with actions. "We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest," King preached that day.

Yes, this is a different time and a different world. Global terrorism is a sobering reality. And America is on the right side in that war. To not fight back is tantamount to indulging a death wish.

But the first blow in Iraq, which was not a battleground for terrorism, was struck by Bush. He now, stubbornly and in the face of legitimate opposition, proposes to make matters worse.

Remember King and the words: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."

January 04, 2007

WONKS OF THE WORLD, UNITE

The World Affairs Council of Richmond has posted its calendar of events, including its monthly forum events and its Great Decisions Series. Check out the website for details. A few of the more interesting events on the calendar include:

  • February 14: Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, Adjunct Professor, Virginia Tech, “Planning for Global Warming”
  • February 20: (Schools Program at St. Christopher’s School) Ambassador Reno Harnish, Deputy Asst. Secretary of State, “Global Warming and International Affairs”
  • February 28: Michele Bond, Director for Public Affairs, Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S. Department of State, “How Migration Is Changing the World”
  • March 7: Michael Wessels, Senior Child Protection Specialist, Christian Children’s Fund, “The Global Struggle for Children’s Rights”
  • March 25: Professor (Ambassador) Akbar Ahmed, American University, “How Islamic Societies View the United States”
  • April 18: Professor Paul Pillar, Georgetown University, “Counterterrorism, Intelligence, and the Middle East”

January 01, 2007

THE THINGS THEY LEAVE BEHIND

As the U.S. reaches another milestone in Iraq -- with 3,000 troops killed since the invasion of 2003; and more than 20,000 seriously wounded -- it feels almost macabre to relate yet another story of another soldier who has died and left another significant someone to mourn their loss. The story of First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, related by his wife Dana Canedy and his own journal, is one of 3,000 worth telling. The NYTimes allows Canedy, an editor at the paper, to tell the story well -- From Father to Son, Last Words to Live By. (login: buttermilk.com password: buttermilk) The NYTimes also has a multimedia presentation of King's journal online.

He drew pictures of himself with angel wings. He left a set of his dog tags on a nightstand in my Manhattan apartment. He bought a tiny blue sweat suit for our baby to wear home from the hospital.

Then he began to write what would become a 200-page journal for our son, in case he did not make it back from the desert in Iraq.

For months before my fiancé, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, kissed my swollen stomach and said goodbye, he had been preparing for the beginning of the life we had created and for the end of his own.

He boarded a plane in December 2005 with two missions, really — to lead his young soldiers in combat and to prepare our boy for a life without him.

Dear son, Charles wrote on the last page of the journal,I hope this book is somewhat helpful to you. Please forgive me for the poor handwriting and grammar. I tried to finish this book before I was deployed to Iraq. It has to be something special to you. I’ve been writing it in the states, Kuwait and Iraq.

The journal will have to speak for Charles now. He was killed Oct. 14 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his armored vehicle in Baghdad. Charles, 48, had been assigned to the Army’s First Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, based in Fort Hood, Tex. He was a month from completing his tour of duty.

For our son’s first Christmas, Charles had hoped to take him on a carriage ride through Central Park. Instead, Jordan, now 9 months old, and I snuggled under a blanket in a horse-drawn buggy. The driver seemed puzzled about why I was riding alone with a baby and crying on Christmas Day. I told him.

“No charge,” he said at the end of the ride, an act of kindness in a city that can magnify loneliness.

On paper, Charles revealed himself in a way he rarely did in person. He thought hard about what to say to a son who would have no memory of him. Even if Jordan will never hear the cadence of his father’s voice, he will know the wisdom of his words.

Never be ashamed to cry. No man is too good to get on his knee and humble himself to God. Follow your heart and look for the strength of a woman.

Charles tried to anticipate questions in the years to come. Favorite team? I am a diehard Cleveland Browns fan. Favorite meal? Chicken, fried or baked, candied yams, collard greens and cornbread. Childhood chores? Shoveling snow and cutting grass.  First kiss? Eighth grade.

In neat block letters, he wrote about faith and failure, heartache and hope. He offered tips on how to behave on a date and where to hide money on vacation. Rainy days have their pleasures, he noted: Every now and then you get lucky and catch a rainbow.

Charles mailed the book to me in July, after one of his soldiers was killed and he had recovered the body from a tank. The journal was incomplete, but the horror of the young man’s death shook Charles so deeply that he wanted to send it even though he had more to say. He finished it when he came home on a two-week leave in August to meet Jordan, then 5 months old. He was so intoxicated by love for his son that he barely slept, instead keeping vigil over the baby.

December 26, 2006

MEMORIES OF THE (ALMOST) FOREIGN SERVICE

The NYTimes recently reported on plans to retool the Foreign Service Exam ("The Foreign Service Exam; Rarely Win at Trivial Pursuit? An Embassy Door Opens"), which took me back to the fall of 1999 when I dragged my sorry self down to VCU's School of Business to spend a half-day in a locked room with 100 people willing to wear a No. 2 pencil to a nub in an attempt to receive a job offer from the U.S. Department of State.

The path to the U.S. Foreign Service has always been straight and narrow: The first step is the written test, perhaps the nation's leading smarty-pants exam. Since 1932, hundreds of thousands of applicants have grappled with a half-day of questions on geography, English usage, history, math, economics, culture and more.

"It's like being on a golf course," said Justin Norton, a 26-year-old who flunked the test this year and last, but wants to take it again.

"You've got all the sand traps, the water hazards. I remember I didn't understand the question about economies of scale. I remember something about Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance.

"And sometimes even when I knew it, like a question about George Kennan and containment policy, I got it wrong anyway."

It is not an easy exam to study for. The State Department suggests reading a good daily newspaper for a year. There are prep books, and at places with lots of applicants, like the Fletcher School at Tufts University, maybe even a study group. But mostly, people prepare on their own, looking through a world atlas, the Constitution or the word problems they did on the SAT.

I knew going in that the odds were long -- close to 75% of the 20,000 people who take the written examination flunk. That didn't stop me from anxiously rushing to the mailbox of our apartment every evening in January of 2000, or internally dancing for joy when I was notified that I passed the written and exam and was invited to sit through orals in April. (This was before I knew how to physically dance for joy.)

My first wife and I drove to DC and stayed overnight at a B&B, and I woke early and made my way to Foggy Bottom for what proved to be a nail-biter of a day. There were, I think, 20 candidates in my "cohort" of Foreign Service second-stringers -- at the age of 32, I was the third-oldest person in the group.

Five at a time we were handed envelopes with background information and hustled into interview rooms. We sat at a small round table with four State Department observers sitting quietly in each corner of the room. The scenario: Each of us was an embassy official sitting in a budget discussion. Each of us, based on our information packet, had a particular agenda in the discussion. All I remember, in retrospect, is that I stayed on the edge of the conversation initially, listening as the other four candidates worked to carve their agenda out on the meeting room table. Carve they did -- each other to pieces. As we neared the end of the discussion, I quietly inserted my own agenda -- and worked to weave it among the shards.

Round two found me in a small room with two senior Foreign Service Officers -- one reminded me of Ricardo Montalban, the other of a mature version of Fat Albert. They ran me through some additional scenarios, and answered a few questions that I had. I was beat. I then wandered back to the waiting room to rejoin my equally tired compatriots.

One-by-one, we were ushered out of the room to discover whether we made it through this second hoop. Each candidate left the room, received their news and left through a back door. I was surprised to leave the room and be ushered into a room with one of two female candidates in my cohort; we were joined by Ricardo Montalban, who announced that the two of us were the only two of our group of 20 to pass the oral stage of the process.

I danced for joy, internally again, and went into waiting game mode. My name was placed on a waiting list -- it would remain there for as long as a year, I was told, before I would be made an offer. And exactly a year later, just as my first wife and I were in marital meltdown, the offer came.

I had one week to make a decision. Among the people I talked to was my old FSO buddy from orals, Fat Albert. As we chatted on the phone and he described his "high point moments" from his decades-long career, I mentally put an imaginary gun to my forehead and decided that I might prefer to leap from a tall building than join the version of the Department of State he was describing.

His best moment in his long career was -- no joke, this -- negotiating a new lease arrangement for the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation's residence at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. Visions of sharpening boxes of pencils and ordering shoe polish for ambassadors danced through my head.

I walked away from my dream job as a Foreign Service Officer in April of 2001 to work on my marriage, and to avoid the bureaucratic nightmare painted in my phone conversation with my one State Department point-of-contact. The placid pre-September 11 world of the first George W. Bush administration offered little in the way of enticement for a mid-career professional who had a fascination with the Arab language and the politics of the Middle East. Little did I know how much the world would change in just five short months.

I look back at the process, and my decision, with few regrets -- and at least one tiny touch of polish on my ego. Despite the changes pending in the exam, "the very small percentage we take will still be the smartest, most qualified people representing America," says recruitment director Marianne Myles.