Travels to the Osage

I just returned from a 9-day trip to the United States. My stepfather, Bob Daniels, passed away on August 22, so I went to Ponca City, Oklahoma to be with my mom for a week. Bob and my mom got together well after I had left home for college, so I never experienced him as a member of the family in the same way my younger siblings did. Still, I'm going to miss this talented and stubborn man who really had a heart of gold.

My mom faced a rough week while I was there, both as a result of the things that you would normally expect in the wake of the death of a spouse, as well as things that you would not. She's a remarkably strong person who reminds me of the 'Pioneer Woman' represented in a famous statue in Ponca City. After one particularly long day, I headed back to my room at 10:30, completely exhausted, but left my mom still carrying on with her household chores (caring for the many dogs and cats she has rescued over the years) well after midnight. She has a resilience that I'm afraid that I have not yet developed. I hope that her resilience continues to serve her, however, as she is now facing several enormous challenges as she adjusts to a life without her husband.

In Ponca City I ran into other people facing plenty of hardship as well. A jar sat on a counter of a pizza place in an attempt to raise money for an employee's medical attention. I watched two young women trying to come up with just $4 between them to pay for a prescription co-payment at the Walmart pharmacy--they ended up walking away because they didn't have the cash. I saw several young teenagers with babies, including a 15-year-old daughter of one of my mom's former employees. How they survive in an economy as bleak as Ponca's is a mystery to me. I also spent a lot of time listening to and watching CNN and the other cable news stations while I was there. Though I was already aware of the growing animosity to Obama and his plans for healthcare reform, I was shocked by how truly vicious some Americans have become in their opposition. There has never been this much division in American society during my adult life, and I worry about where it's all going to lead.

On my flight back to Australia I felt a little like I was escaping both my family's problems and the nation's. Life here in Brisbane is very good on many levels. And, I guess the price I'm going to pay for this good life is living with the guilt.

The Camel Cull

Wow! I have been so terribly busy with work during the last two weeks, I haven't been able to write a single post here. But, when I saw this story a few minutes ago, I nearly blew a gasket! Sometimes Americans can look so stupid!!

Some background: Australia is home to nearly a million feral camels that roam across much of central Australia unchecked. In fact, V. and I saw quite a few on our train and bus trips across the Northern Territory and South Australia in 2003. Camels are NOT native to Australia. Like many other introduced species, they came over with 19th century settlers who thought they would be ideally suited for Australia's environment. They were right! In fact, their population is doubling nearly every 10 years.

As stated in an excellent piece in The Australian a few weeks ago (and quoted in the article at Punch), camels

maraud Aboriginal communities, trample fence lines, attack standpipes, destroy water tanks. They roam unchecked across the plateaus of the Western Desert, fanning out from creeks and riverbeds, creating a wasteland inside the wilderness, eradicating native plants, leaving nothing for the remnant wildlife. They are hardy and perfectly adapted to their new environment.

So, the Australian Federal Government is going to spend $18 million on a program to control the camel population, at the same time recognising that it is practically impossible to completely eradicate them from the continent.

This is all seems quite reasonable...except to a few 'journalists' back in the USA. On a recent segment on his CNBC show, Jim Cramer (the buffoon whom Jon Stewart so masterfully handled earlier this year) and Erin Burnett went on a lengthy rant about this supposed 'genocide' of camels. In the process, they called Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a 'serial killer,' and claimed (incorrectly) that Rudd is launching air strikes against the camels (to which Cramer chuckled something like, "does Australia even have an air force?").

To put it mildly, Australians are outraged by this story, particularly because it comes from a couple of American 'journalists' ranting about something that they clearly don't understand. I have to say that I join them in this outrage. I do wish more of my fellow countrymen would get it together and begin to gain a better understanding of other nations and cultures.

Chigger Redux

Sure, we get all sorts of nasty bugs down in Australia. And, sure, we don't have window screens (a.k.a. "fly screens") on our house in Brisbane, thus making it that much easier for various antipodean insects to come bother us in our pajamas. But, none of those bugs are as irritating as chiggers in Arkansas! Amazingly, I mentioned this in a blog entry during our last family visit to Hot Springs two years ago, and here I am again scratching away as I write this.

Chiggers our particularly bothersome because you never see them. They lie in wait in the grass, in bushes, or benches, ready to leap onto your body undetected. They then lay larvae on your body, which crawl around until they find a cozy place to take hold. This description from an Ohio State website says it best:

The preferred feeding locations on people are parts of the body where clothing fits tightly over the skin such as around the belt line, waistline, under girdles and under socks, or where the flesh is thin, tender or wrinkled such as the ankles, in the armpits, back of the knees, in front of the elbow, or in the groin.

Chigger larvae do not burrow into the skin, nor suck blood. They pierce the skin and inject into the host a salivary secretion containing powerful, digestive enzymes that break down skin cells that are ingested (tissues become liquefied and sucked up). Also, this digestive fluid causes surrounding tissues to harden, forming a straw-like feeding tube of hardened flesh (stylostome) from which further, partially-digested skin cells may be sucked out. After a larva is fully fed in four days, it drops from the host, leaving a red welt with a white, hard central area on the skin that itches severely and may later develop into dermatitis. Any welts, swelling, itching, or fever will usually develop three to six hours after exposure and may continue a week or longer. If nothing is done to relieve itching, symptoms may continue a week or more.

I'm scratching in all sorts of difficult-to-reach places. Won't I have a fun time on our long plane ride back to Oz on Thursday night?

My Daddy Hung It

Our current stop on the Great Midwest Tour of 2009 is Hot Springs Village, Arkansas. For the past week we have continued to experience a wide range of severe weather wherever we go. On Friday morning, while we enjoyed our Holiday Inn Express breakfast, a huge thunderstorm went over us in Ponca City, Oklahoma. That same storm eventually found its way to Arkansas. In today's Arkansas Democrat Gazette, an article on the storm contained the following delightful passage on American patriotism and the weather:

A quick-moving Friday storm shook the [Chrysler] dealership and demolished one of the building walls, however, leaving no chance of sales Saturday.

"I just had a complaint the American flag was displayed the wrong way," co-owner Ethel Cook said. "It's insanity. I said, 'My daddy hung it for the people on the inside. We didn't know the wall was going to be blown out.'"

It must have been one of those foreign storms messing things up.

A Whirlwind

The American ex-pats who live in Oz will greatly appreciate this picture. It was taken at a Kohl's in Coralville, IA, where V., Will, and I had a spontaneous orgy of shopping after discovering the store directly across from the gas station where I was filling up the rental car. It was nearly 6:00 on a Monday, and I said, "I bet that store is open until at least 7." Of course, we nearly went crazy when we saw the generous opening hours--and it was only Monday night! Back in Brisbane, there's usually only one evening any store is open (Thursday, in our neck of the woods), so we don't even think about shopping after 5 anymore.

My friend Diane will want to kill me when she reads this entry. You see, she lives very close to the location of this photo, and I had just told her a few days before that we weren't planning to drive through Iowa. Well, I had a very sudden change of plans, as I was really desperate to see Iowa again. We stopped briefly in beautiful downtown Iowa City for a cup of coffee at the Java House and a loud tantrum next to the Englert, and then we drove out to the City Park so that Will could have some time at the playground. And then we were off again...a total of 60 minutes in I.C., maybe, until we were detoured in Coralville. After saving nearly $250 there, by the way, we drove to a Des Moines surburb to stay at a Holiday Inn Express (how utterly luxurious!). Today we proceeded south on I-35 through Madison County (home of the "Bridges Of..."), across the border to Missouri, and straight on to Kansas City. Unlucky for us, we endured severe weather, complete with tornado watches and warnings, for the next six hours. We briefly stopped off in Lawrence, KS, to see the University of Kansas, and then it was on to Topeka (where there's actually a National Historic Site for the Brown v. Board of Education decision), and south to Wichita, and finally Ponca City, Oklahoma, where we rest now.  There were moments during the final hour of the drive that were utterly terrifying as the visibility dropped to about 10 feet in blinding rain. V. said it was the scariest 10-minutes of her life.

Next time, Diane, we will definitely stop by your ranch, I promise!

Courage

I hope that one day George Tiller will be recognised by most Americans as the courageous hero that he was. His strong convictions to help others, even when he was shot at, repeatedly harassed and threatened, and finally, murdered, make me realise me how scared and selfish most of us really are.

Tables

Your erratic blogger is in San Francisco attending the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. As has become the custom during my visits to the U.S., I have been shopping like a maniac and eating Mexican food every day. This is also the shortest trip that I've made to the States, as I fly back tonight after just five days. I have enjoyed walking among my countrymen, and it's very nice having conversations without having accents get in the way. On my first day here I did risk death when I started to cross a street looking in the wrong direction because of the whole drive-on-the-left thing back in Oz, but I quickly corrected that habit.

Last night I went to dinner with some colleagues from Brisbane. We had an 8:15 reservation for a party of 7 at a loud, busy, upscale restaurant. I was on time, but the Aussies (as usual!) were late. The first three arrived at 8:25. As we stood waiting, someone said, "should we go sit at our table now?" When I replied that I didn't think the restaurant would seat us until our entire party arrived, they looked at me quizzically. Just then, the rest of the group arrived, so someone went to tell the hostess that we were ready. We then waited at least another 10 minutes for our table. This was all a bit irritating to my group. You see, in Australia (at least in Brisbane), restaurants will hold tables for people who make reservations for nearly an hour. I often turn up at Brisbane eateries (for lunch, for example) where half the tables are empty, but they have little "Reserved" cards placed on them. I am usually forced to find another place to eat. Yes, an Aussie restaurant will turn you away even though they have plenty of empty tables at the moment. In contrast, busy restaurants in American cities will never let a table sit empty for very long. The Australians who were with me last night said that if we had been in Brisbane they would just have walked out if their table wasn't ready as soon as the first person arrived.  

April 29, 1992

I have been following the news about the riots in Greece, which have gone on for about four days now. The Greek government has been largely ineffectual in stopping the mayhem, and the reporters have noted how it seems that no one is in control. The riots seem to have been brought on by the effects of the collapsing world economy, so we might witness more of this in other countries in the months ahead.

What is happening in Greece reminded me of a horrible event that I experienced firsthand--the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. I was then working at the University of Southern California, which is situated next to the neighborhood where the riots first broke out on Wednesday, April 29th. When the verdicts of the "Rodney King" trial were announced that afternoon (four White officers were found not guilty of using excessive force to arrest a Black suspect), many of my co-workers and I went home early in anticipation that there might be some trouble as the news of the verdict spread. By rush hour, the first major incident started when a group of young men began ruthlessly attacking White and Latino motorists at the corner of Florence and Normandie. I had made it home by then, but I watched live television as Reginald Denny was pulled from his big-rig truck and beaten to unconsciousness by a gang of thugs as a news helicopter flew overhead.  The L.A. police were ordered to keep away from the intersection, so they waited around a few blocks away. One of the thugs, Damian Williams, danced around as he kicked Denny and held his fists in the air, taunting the news helicopter. Denny was finally rescued when an African American truck driver, Bobby Green, Jr., who had watched the beating on his television, decided to go to the intersection, pull Denny to safety, and drive him to an emergency room in Denny's truck. That live news coverage of the events at the intersection certainly contributed to the mayhem that occurred for the next six days. It was clear that no one was in charge. Looting began in earnest. That first night I even saw a group of USC students loot a shoe store on live TV. Over 1000 buildings were set on fire. Fifty-three people were killed, most of them murdered. The Los Angeles area was shut down. I stayed locked up in my apartment for three days, smelling the smoke of fires burning 10 miles away. It felt like the end of civilization.  

Finally, after days of little action, the state and federal governments sent National Guard units, marines, and soldiers to Los Angeles. One of the command posts was at the Coliseum, a large sports arena (and site of the '84 Olympics) next door to USC. On Day 4, a Saturday, we started to drive around again, and I remember feeling somewhat safer when I saw troops patroling the perimeter of the USC campus. When we later returned to work we discovered that a group of shops about a block away from the psychology building had been burned to the ground. These included some Korean businesses, which were favored targets during the first 24 hours of the riots. As the days and weeks passed, life finally returned to normal. A year later, there was little mention in our everyday conversations about how the world had seemed to fall apart so quickly. To this day, however, I am still aware of the fragility of our social institutions. I sometimes grow nervous that I'll once again have to experience the kinds of riots that are now going on in Greece. It might seem highly unlikely here in Oz, but don't forget about those riots in the Sydney suburb of Cronulla just three year ago.

On My Way Home

I am writing this entry on Saturday morning. I am still in Atlanta, but soon I'll begin my journey back to Brisbane, where I'll arrive in about 32 hours. My first twelve days here involved visiting family members in the Midwest. I drove over 1400 miles (2200 km) on that part of the trip, which included a tense three hours dodging the cars in front of me that were sliding off the road during a snowstorm. I then spent four days in Atlanta because I needed to work on some research projects here. I also wanted to see quite a few of our old friends, so I ended up scheduling little two-hour visits with as many people as possible. I met five babies who were born since we left the country. I had dinner twice one night. I stayed up late each night talking with different friends, but then woke up early the next day to have breakfast with someone else. I am now exhausted and hope that I can enjoy my two long plane trips without having to engage in conversation with anyone but the flight attendant about my drink choices.

Besides seeing all these friends and family members, I did get to experience things that are hard to come by in Australia. These included Jiff peanut butter, Taco Bell and Chilli's (but also some real Mexican food too), very hot chicken wings (labelled 'Death' at one restaurant), Walmart, hours of listening to CNN and NPR (mainly on my rental car's radio), American television commercials, chicken fried steak, USA Today, Hampton Inn, cheap shopping, and much more. Yes, I enjoyed all of this, but I have had my fill of "America" for at least another year. I now look forward to the heat and humidity of a Brisbane summer, the inane Mel and Kochie on "Sunrise," flat whites, buying fresh fruits and veggies (and the rest of our groceries) at our local shopping mall, Aussie accents, high toilets and bathroom counters, driving (and walking) on the left side, expensive books, my friends, and, most of all, V. and Will.

The First Day of Summer

December 1 is the first day of summer in Australia. It seems appropriate then that today I am getting to experience the first snowstorm of the season here in northern Illinois. Right now my nieces are frolicking around in the first couple of inches that have fallen, but I am worrying about how this will affect my travel plans of driving 11 hours to Arkansas tomorrow. Tonight the wind is supposed to pick up and cause drifting on the roads. Lucky me.

Arrival

I'm in the midst of a six-hour layover in Denver. My journey from Australia to Arkansas began 24 hours ago, and I still have five hours left. I'm beginning to feel a bit punchy as a result. Perhaps that explains why I've seen so many angry people in America today. Or, perhaps that's because the number of travellers has picked up in advance of next week's Thanksgiving holiday. Or, perhaps a lot of people aren't as happy about Obama winning as I thought. Or, perhaps Aussies are even more mellow than I realized.

I did manage to see my old friends, Tiffany and Dave, and their beautiful son, Ryan, for 30 minutes at a gate here, just before they boarded their flight. And I managed a garbled conversation with V. and Will back in Brisbane via Skype and free Wi-Fi, courtesy of the Denver airport. I also got to eat a bagel (Einstein Bros.) and a cinnamon roll from Cinnabon, and I'll be eating Mexican tonight for dinner (sorry, Mooselet!). Travelling isn't so bad.

International Contrast

I was looking through the news feed on my Facebook account this morning. It updates me about any changes to my Facebook friends' profiles in the past 24 hours. Among my FB friends are PhD students back in Atlanta and here in Brisbane. Over the weekend the temperatures dropped below freezing in Atlanta, whereas here the max was over 30 C (86 F). According to the Facebook news feed, graduate students in both places hosted an outdoor social event. 

In the picture below, you can see the UQ "post-grads" playing barefoot lawn bowls. Note that everyone is barefoot and several students are holding a drink while they bowl. I think this looks like a lot fun, especially as I'm an old ten-pin bowler from way back, but I haven't had a chance to try this yet.

In the next picture, you can see some GSU grad students celebrating "Fakesgiving," complete with a turkey and all the side dishes. I don't know the origin of this little feast, but I guess it's a way for them to have a Thanksgiving dinner together before they all leave town for the holiday. Such cold temperatures in Atlanta are pretty unusual this early in the season, but that didn't seem to deter anyone from eating their meal outside.

That reminds me...in just a few days I'll be donning my own coat, hat, and scarf to face the chill of North America. Brrrrrrrr!

Where Did I Put My Fascinator?

Australians are following two big races today. The first is the Melbourne Cup, which is the premier horse race of Australia ("the celebration that stops the nation"). In Melbourne this means a day off from work. For everyone else it can mean a very long lunch hour. Restaurants all over Brisbane have been for weeks advertising Melbourne Cup special events, including champagne and a chance to dress in fancy clothes. I just walked by a conference room in another building and saw it was full of people dressed up, eating a catered lunch, and watching the race on a big screen television. The women were even wearing fascinators. This race has far greater meaning for Australians than, say, the Kentucky Derby has for Americans. I heard someone explain this morning that an appreciation for the Melbourne Cup in Australia begins in the pre-school years. In fact, Will's day care was decked out with pictures of horses this morning. 

Interestingly, the other big race today that Australians are following is the U.S. election. It has almost overshadowed the Melbourne Cup in coverage. Several television stations will be devoting most of their broadcasts to the election returns all day tomorrow (starting at around 7 pm Eastern time in the U.S.). I have heard of many plans for parties, including one that will be taking place in the School of Psychology. Most Australians are eager to see Bush go. What's more, Obama is really popular here. I saw a morning news poll of viewers (not a scientific one, mind you) in which 89% of the callers said they would vote for Obama if they had the opportunity.

UPDATE: Well, it turns out that Viewed was this year's Melbourne Cup winner, and he won in a thrilling, photo finish. I am hoping that the other race today won't be as close...

 

Robot Love

I spent a large part of yesterday at the local Indooroopilly Shopping Centre...by myself.  I desperately needed to expand my summer wardrobe.  After spending way too much at Myer, I headed over to Target (which isn't the same as the American store) to find some really cheap clothes.  I found a nice display of $25 denim jeans that were sorted by metric size.  My iPhone's unit converter rescued me here, but I was then horrified to see that these jeans didn't independently vary in length.  That is, they are designed for some "average" man's body where the waist and length perfectly correlate.  I happen to be an outlier on this little regression line, so I had to go for a slightly smaller waist in order to get some pants that were slightly too long.  Everything was fine in the changing booth, but I discovered this morning that I couldn't put anything in my pockets because the jeans were too tight! (Wasn't there a "Seinfeld" episode like this?) Awwwww!

So, after several hours of agony in this rather limited 

Australian retail scene, I was really missing all those huge stores back in America.  Do you know the kind--where you have to drive across a giant parking lot just to get to the next store over? And then you have to consult a map near the store's entrance to locate the specific items you're seeking?  And everything always seems to be on sale.  Well, due to the melancholy brought on by these memories of gluttony, I decided to take a break and watch "WALL-E," which opened up in Australia just a few weeks ago.  I spend a lot of time watching Pixar films (over and over) with Will, so it was a pleasure to get the chance to see a new one.  I think it's another masterpiece.  And, interestingly, it really is another example of the speculative fiction genre that I wrote about earlier.  Briefly, the future of the Earth depicted here is one in which there has been so much pollution that the population has had to leave the planet (around 2100) while robots are left behind to clean up the mess.  The story in the movie begins 700 years later, in which WALL-E appears to be the only robot still working on the mess.  The descendants of the original humans who left the planet on a gigantic cruise ship are now all rolly-polly and incapable of getting out of their floating lounge chairs.  They just eat and drink and lay about all day long.  Meanwhile, back on Earth, we see many shots of enormous mountains of trash interspersed with views of vacant humongous box retailers where the trash was originally purchased.  Yes, exactly the same stores that I was missing back in the States just moments before I went into the theatre were now shown as one of the causes of an apocalyptic future.  The message about rampant consumerism leading to our eventual demise is abundantly clear in this movie, and I soon felt guilty about my own wasteful ways.

What is also interesting about the movie, however, is how America-centric it is.  That is, the film suggests that Americans single-handedly destroyed the Earth with their pollution, and it was only Americans who fled in their cruise ships.  Moreover, it's an American captain 700 years later who comes to realise that "the humans" need to go back and take care of the planet. In fact, the later re-habitation of the planet starts in New York with a bunch of Americans.  Not one other nationality is ever mentioned in the film.  Now that I live abroad, I am particularly sensitive to this American-centrism, so maybe I am over-analysing things here.  Indeed, another blog I found talks about the gender, racial, and anti-fat aspects of the film, but neither the original post nor the comments that follow it mention anything about the Americanism of this film. But, perhaps it is intentional.  Maybe the film's creators were trying to speak directly to Americans because they are such huge polluters compared to everyone else.  Then again, it does seem like the future of our planet shouldn't be determined by one country in particular, although many films, including "Independence Day," have depicted America saving the day.  Often we Americans get to play both the villain and the hero in these narcissistic fantasies.  It's pretty easy then to understand why some people elsewhere in the world might resent us--they only get to play the extras. 

Global Changes

V. and I attended special public lectures last night delivered by two of the University of Queensland's most eminent professors, Paul Burn from the School of Molecular and Microbial Sciences, and John Quiggin from the School of Economics and Political Science.  They both conduct research on issues related to climate change.  Burn is developing cheap plastic solar panels and light displays, and one of his messages was that we need to set aside some of our non-renewable energy sources (e.g., oil) now to develop renewable energy ones.  Quiggin is focused on the impact of global warning on the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's most significant agricultural area, which is quickly drying up.  One of his messages was that, although there's a lot of uncertainty about the future of the basin, it's no excuse for inaction now.

Since arriving in this country I have been repeatedly confronted with Australians' concerns about global warming.  Early last year the Howard government passed legislation to ban incandescent lightbulbs, which Quiggin referred to in his talk as a stupid purchase for a consumer to make, as their efficiency is woefully smaller than nearly all the alternatives.  Thank goodness, he implied, that the government decided to take away this decision from the consumer.  A great majority of grocery shoppers bring their own 'green' reusable bags to the stores here, rather than using plastic bags, and there's still a lot of discussion about whether plastic bags should just be banned outright.  At first V. and I were skeptical about reusable bags because we liked to use the plastic ones for nappies (diapers), but we have now changed our ways.  Recycling is much more extensive in Australia as well.   In Atlanta we sorted just our cans, bottles, and newspapers from the rest of the garbage, although most of our neighbors didn't even do that.  Here one can also recycle cardboard, jars, junk mail, and packaging, which really starts to add up.  As a final example, there are widespread public campaigns here to get people to reduce their energy and water consumption that I rarely, if ever, saw in the United States.

It might seem 'cute' that such a small country with a relatively tiny footprint on the world's greenhouse gas emissions is much more obsessed with global warming than the U.S., which is a much larger contributor by far.  My guess is that the typical Australian would in fact be shocked if they spent a week in an American home and saw how comparatively little concern there is for the environment there.  Not surprising, Australians are highly concerned about the American elections.  There are several reasons they should be, including the impact of the current financial crisis on their own markets, but Aussies are also watching what the next administration is going to do about developing renewable energy and reducing greenhouse gases.  A few sensible changes in America's energy policy, for example, would have a far greater impact on the future than if Queensland decides to ban plastic bags at the grocery store.

I believe that Australians are 'ahead' of the game on all this because they live in a place that is terribly susceptible to changes in the environment.  I think this entry from Wikipedia says it best:

By far the largest part of Australia is desert or semi-arid lands commonly known as the outback. Australia is the flattest continent, with the oldest and least fertile soils, and is the driest inhabited continent. Only the southeast and southwest corners of the continent have a temperate climate. Most of the population lives along the temperate southeastern coastline. The landscapes of the northern part of the country, with a tropical climate, consist of rainforest, woodland, grassland, mangrove swamps, and desert. The climate is significantly influenced by ocean currents, including the El Niño southern oscillation, which is correlated with periodic drought, and the seasonal tropical low pressure system that produces cyclones in northern Australia.[29] In June 2008 it became known that an expert panel had warned of long term, maybe irreversible, severe ecological damage for the whole Murray-Darling basin if it does not receive sufficient water by October.[30] Water restrictions are currently in place in many regions and cities of Australia in response to chronic shortages resulting from drought.[31] The Australian of the Year 2007, environmentalist Tim Flannery, predicted that unless it made drastic changes, Perth in Western Australia could become the world’s first ghost metropolis, an abandoned city with no more water to sustain its population.[32]

Of course, global warming is going to adversely affect everyone, but American politicians have been slow to realise this.  Here's hoping that they don't become too distracted by the screams of Wall Street so that they can begin to make a real difference sooner rather than later.

Because I CAN Vote

Update: My favourite blogger, Audra, has corrected a huge mistake I made in the original posting of this entry.  It turns out the Oct. 6 is the deadline for registering overseas absentee ballots, and 180 days before the election is when one can begin to apply for the ballot!  I can vote after all!  If any other American ex-pats are interested, check out this site, the Overseas Vote Foundation, where you can get all the (correct) details.

Stupid me.  I waited too long to look into how to register for an absentee ballot to vote in the upcoming U.S. election.  It turns out that the deadline for the application for registration is 180 days (6 months!) before the election, which I clearly missed.  Why so much time is required to process these applications makes little sense to me.  To make amends, however, I will continue to use space in my blog to broadcast sensible information and opinion about the election, in hopes that some of my far-right relatives decide to read it someday.

Today I want to point you to a blog entry that V. forwarded to me from an email from our friend Donna.  It's written by Deepak Chopra, a man I know little about, but I sure do like his blog.  Here's part of what he wrote on Sept. 4 about Sarah Palin, titled "Obama and the Palin Effect:"

I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin’s message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.

Look at what she stands for:

–Small town values — a nostaligic return to simpler times disguises a denial of America’s global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.

–Ignorance of world affairs — a repudiation of the need to repair America’s image abroad.

–Family values — a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don’t need to be heeded.

–Rigid stands on guns and abortion — a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.

–Patriotism — the usual fallback in a failed war.

–”Reform” — an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn’t fit your ideology.

Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from “us” pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of “I’m all right, Jack,” and “Why change? Everything’s OK as it is.” The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness.

I am trying to stay optimistic about the future, but I am afraid that John McCain's crafty choice for VP is going to lead us all down the wrong path.

Another September 11th

As I finished the day in my office at work, I listened to the tracks of "America: A Tribute to Heroes."  These songs were recorded during that mysteriously produced show that appeared on all of the major American TV networks ten days after the 9/11 attacks.  I am not normally a patriotic person, but those weeks in 2001 deeply affected me and watching the concert that night while visiting my brother in Illinois did a lot to reduce the internal chaos I was experiencing at the time.  The album itself starts off with Bruce Springsteen's chilling "My City of Ruin," the lyrics of which were hauntingly appropriate for the moment, although Springsteen had written it months before.  Other highlights include Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" and U2's "Walk On." In both of those tracks you can clearly hear Joel's and Bono's voices crack with the emotion that tainted everything that night.  The album ends with Willie Nelson leading a bunch of all-stars through a somewhat sad rendition of "America the Beautiful."  Listening to these songs on the seventh anniversary of that horrible day has left me with an overwhelming sense of homesickness.  I do miss the U.S.A.-- from sea to shining sea.

Choices Speak Louder than Words

Whenever I call either of my parents back in the U.S., both of whom are supporting Barack Obama but live in different states, I am amazed by their stories of people they know who just "hate" Obama.  That is, they don't just disagree with his policies, they LOATHE the man.  By contrast, as much as I think Bush Jr. has screwed up so many things, I can't muster enough emotion to hate the guy.  Nevertheless, I have a relative who regularly forwards email racist rants about Obama that have just horrified me (most seem to originate with those same idiots behind the Kerry swift boat scam, but that doesn't seem to matter).  When I sent a reply countering many of the ridiculous untruths in her one of her emails, I received a terse "Thanks for your opinion, Eric," and I was immediately taken off her mailing list.  All this vitriol is another sign that America has become terrible polarized in the last decade, and it makes me worry about the future.  I suspect that the basis of these reactions has to do with race and the misperception that Obama is somehow tied to radical Muslims, but most of these Obama haters tend to deny their implicit racism, and they feel justified about hating Muslims anyway.  

And, to add to my worries, McCain has now made a terrible choice for a VP candidate that says much about his (a) mental state, (b) low regard for the presidency, (c) beliefs about affirmative action, and (d) lack of concern for the rest of the world.  Even the fairly conservative The Australian ran a column today titled "Reckless pick bad news for Australians."  Geoff Elliott writes: 

"What McCain has done in selecting Palin is an entirely political decision to win him the general election, which proves again that self-interest always triumphs in politics.

But in terms of foreign policy, in which Australia has most interest, this is a reckless move and potentially stressful to our alliance in the event that early in the next administration Palin were elevated to the presidency."

What gives me comfort, however, is reading the twice-weekly columns of one of the last sensible people in America, Maureen Dowd.  Her words are always laced with irony and wit, and today's column is no exception.  In "Vice in Go-Go Boots," Dowd suggests that the very people who staunchly oppose affirmative action will have no problems with the way that McCain has picked someone who is so utterly unqualified for one of the most important jobs in the world. Here's an except, but please read the entire column if you have the time:

The guilty pleasure I miss most when I’m out slogging on the campaign trail is the chance to sprawl on the chaise and watch a vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick.

So imagine my delight, my absolute astonishment, when the hokey chick flick came out on the trail, a Cinderella story so preposterous it’s hard to believe it’s not premiering on Lifetime. Instead of going home and watching “Miss Congeniality” with Sandra Bullock, I get to stay here and watch “Miss Congeniality” with Sarah Palin.

Sheer heaven.

It’s easy to see where this movie is going. It begins, of course, with a cute, cool unknown from Alaska who has never even been on “Meet the Press” triumphing over a cute, cool unknowable from Hawaii who has been on “Meet the Press” a lot.

Americans, suspicious that the Obamas have benefited from affirmative action without being properly grateful, and skeptical that Michelle really likes “The Brady Bunch” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” reject the 47-year-old black contender as too uppity and untested.

Instead, they embrace 72-year-old John McCain and 44-year-old Sarah Palin, whose average age is 58, a mere two years older than the average age of the Obama-Biden ticket. Enthusiastic Republicans don’t see the choice of Palin as affirmative action, despite her thin résumé and gaping absence of foreign policy knowledge, because they expect Republicans to put an underqualified “babe,” as Rush Limbaugh calls her, on the ticket. They have a tradition of nominating fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West, like the previous Miss Congeniality types Dan Quayle and W., and then letting them learn on the job. So they crash into the globe a few times while they’re learning to drive, what’s the big deal?

Obama may have been president of The Harvard Law Review, but Palin graduated from the University of Idaho with a minor in poli-sci and worked briefly as a TV sports reporter. And she was tougher on the basketball court than the ethereal Obama, earning the nickname “Sarah Barracuda.”

The legacy of Geraldine Ferraro was supposed to be that no one would ever go on a blind date with history again. But that crazy maverick and gambler McCain does it, and conservatives and evangelicals rally around him in admiration of his refreshingly cynical choice of Sarah, an evangelical Protestant and anti-abortion crusader who became a hero when she decided to have her baby, who has Down syndrome, and when she urged schools to debate creationism as well as that stuffy old evolution thing.

Ranting on Meth

Well, here's my vote for the most under-reported story of the year. According to this LA Times story titled, "Men's threat to kill Obama is downplayed," the three men pictured above had vague plans of killing Barack Obama during his trip to Denver for the Democratic National Convention. Interestingly, the U.S. Attorney's Office has decided that their 'plans' were just the "racist rants of drug abusers," as at least one of the men, Nathan Johnson, was arrested with small quantities of meth in his possession. Apparently the media have also downplayed the story, as I haven't seen much about it on any of the major news sites. This is especially puzzling, given that the U.S. Attorney, Troy Eid, "acknowledged that many questions had not been answered, including why the men had high-powered weapons, body armor, two-way radios, wigs, and camouflage gear. It was also unclear why they decided to base themselves in a suburban Hyatt hotel where they believed--erroneously--Obama was staying."

I guess the message here is that no one can take a meth addict seriously.

Twisted

From today's CNN website comes a story that sadly demonstrates how religion and politics and the law and can become so twisted together back in the States:

BALTIMORE, Maryland (AP) -- A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals in the belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.

A member of Westboro Baptist Church protests outside a veteran's hospital in Maywood, Illinois, in April 2006.

Albert Snyder of York, Pennsylvania, sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified damages after members demonstrated at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.

The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned later in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.

U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett noted the size of the award for compensating damages "far exceeds the net worth of the defendants," according to financial statements filed with the court.

Church members routinely picket funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, carrying signs such as "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "God hates fags."

A number of states have passed laws regarding funeral protests, and Congress has passed a law prohibiting such protests at federal cemeteries.

But the Maryland lawsuit is believed to be the first filed by the family of a fallen serviceman.

The church and three of its leaders -- the Rev. Fred Phelps and his two daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebecca Phelps-Davis, 46 -- were found liable for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.

Snyder claimed the protests intruded upon what should have been a private ceremony and sullied his memory of the event.

The church members testified they are following their religious beliefs by spreading the message that the deaths of soldiers are due to the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.

Their attorneys argued in closing statements Tuesday that the burial was a public event and that even abhorrent points of view are protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and religion.

The judge said the church's financial statements, sealed earlier, could be released to the plaintiffs.

Earlier, church members staged a demonstration outside the federal courthouse.

Church founder Fred Phelps held a sign reading "God is your enemy," while Shirley Phelps-Roper stood on an American flag and carried a sign that read "God hates fag enablers."

Members of the group sang "God Hates America" to the tune of "God Bless America."

Snyder sobbed when he heard the verdict, while members of the church greeted the news with tightlipped smiles.