Will Safire has released his annual office pool in which he invites readers to predict how some of the year's biggest news stories will play out in 2009.
Here are my picks:
1. In Demo-dominated D.C., post-postpartisan tension will pit:
(a) lame-duck Fed chairman Ben Bernanke against Fed chairman-in-waiting Larry Summers and Fed chairman-of-Christmas-past Paul Volcker (a k a “The G.D.P. Deflator”) over an “imperial Fed”
2. Springtime for G.M. will lead to:
(b) a “pre-pack bankruptcy” auto rescue sweetened by federal pension protection and guarantee of new-car warranties
3. Toughest foreign affairs challenge will come if:
(a) Afghanistan becomes “Obama’s War” or “Obama’s Retreat,” and
(b) Iraq backslides into chaos after too-early U.S. withdrawal
4. Oil selling below $50 a barrel will:
(c) be the equivalent of a huge U.S. tax-cut stimulus
5. Best-picture Oscar goes to:
(b) “Slumdog Millionaire”
6. The non-fiction sleeper will be:
(d) “Losing the News,” by Alex Jones, and
(e) “Ponzi Shmonzi: The Bernie Madoff Story,” crash-published by a dozen houses
7. The don’t-ask deficit at year’s end will be:
(c) $1,393,665,042,198 and no cents. (Why so specific? A billion is a thousand million, and a trillion is a thousand billion. That’s 10 to the 12th power, or 1 followed by 12 zeroes). I'm kidding about this pick, I would much rather (a) "under $1 trillion, thanks to the new administration’s cutting of waste, fraud and abuse, as well as tax-soaking of the remaining rich" be the case. —Rachel
8. In Congress:
(c) among Senate Democrats, Judiciary chairman Pat Leahy’s influence will rise because Supreme Court nominations will take center stage, while Harry Reid’s clout dissipates because of home-state weakness
9. Post-honeymoon journalists and bloody-minded bloggers will dig into:
(b) suspicion by conspiracy theorists about the unremarked lobbying that led to the expensive renaming, after 72 years, of the Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge just in time for Caroline Kennedy’s campaign for anointment to an open Senate seat
10. The Supreme Court will decide:
(e) that in al-Marri v. Pucciarelli, a legal U.S. resident cannot be held indefinitely at Guantánamo
11. Obama philosophy will be regarded as:
(a) proudly liberal on environment and regulation and
(b) determinedly centrist on health care, immigration and protectionism.
12. Year-end presidential approval rating will be:
(c) sinking but 30 points higher than that of Congress and the news media
Visit http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/opinion/29safire.html to see the options, and Safire's picks.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Righting Journalism
Regret the Error.com has come out with it's yearly round-up of 2008's most embarrassing, egregious, and regretful media mistakes. This site, edited by author Craig Silverman, is really worth checking out!
Here are a few particularly ludicrous errors: (all information is taken from regrettheerror.com)
*Spiegel Online,the website for German newspaper Der Spiege published a "wildly exaggerated" article claiming that furniture manufacturer IKEA routinely named its most inexpensive items after Danish towns, while reserving Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian names for its high-end objects.
*The Washington Post's "Kid's Post" poetry contest published a poem titled "Horrible, Just Horrible" on April 29 and credited it to a child, but it was actually written by acclaimed children's poet Shel Silverstein.
*Jody Rosen of Slate.com exposed the rampant plagiarism of the Bulletin, a weekly Texas paper that regularly reproduced content from other news outlets, such as Rolling Stone and USA Today, supposedly written by staffer Mark Williams. "Uncovering these [plagiarized] sources," Silverman commented, "is a matter of choosing the right phrases to dump into Google, not a difficult feat for anyone moderately attuned to writerly rhythms."
New Year's is as good a time as any to reflect on the harm plagiarism, sloppy reporting and sloppier editing cause, not just to the victims of misinformation or plagiarism, but to all journalists. The press cannot afford to further damage journalistic credibility at a time when internet watchdogs and the public are rightly questioning traditional news outlets.
Here are a few particularly ludicrous errors: (all information is taken from regrettheerror.com)
*Spiegel Online,the website for German newspaper Der Spiege published a "wildly exaggerated" article claiming that furniture manufacturer IKEA routinely named its most inexpensive items after Danish towns, while reserving Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian names for its high-end objects.
*The Washington Post's "Kid's Post" poetry contest published a poem titled "Horrible, Just Horrible" on April 29 and credited it to a child, but it was actually written by acclaimed children's poet Shel Silverstein.
*Jody Rosen of Slate.com exposed the rampant plagiarism of the Bulletin, a weekly Texas paper that regularly reproduced content from other news outlets, such as Rolling Stone and USA Today, supposedly written by staffer Mark Williams. "Uncovering these [plagiarized] sources," Silverman commented, "is a matter of choosing the right phrases to dump into Google, not a difficult feat for anyone moderately attuned to writerly rhythms."
New Year's is as good a time as any to reflect on the harm plagiarism, sloppy reporting and sloppier editing cause, not just to the victims of misinformation or plagiarism, but to all journalists. The press cannot afford to further damage journalistic credibility at a time when internet watchdogs and the public are rightly questioning traditional news outlets.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Sauron in Santo Domingo
What, you didn't know the U.S. occupied the Dominican Republic twice in the twentieth century? "Don't worry," says Junot Diaz, author of The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, "when you have kids they won't know the U.S. occupied Iraq either."
I just finished reading this fantastic novel about the struggles of a RPG-playing otaku Dominican adolescent from New Jersey and the family he swears was cursed during the dictator Rafael Trujillo's regime. The book was number one on Time Magazine's list of the ten best books of 2007, and the New Yorker published a 15-page version in 2000. I've owned the book since September of last year, when a class on Gender and Sexuality in Latin American Literature at UCSD left me craving post-modern works like those of Elena Poniatowska, G. G. Márquez, and Rosario Castellanos, but I hadn't started reading it until winter break. Sometimes I wonder if a college student shouldn't have the time to read more.
Fortunately, this book has exactly the right mix of history (the story is peppered with footnotes detailing the political escapades of Trujillo and his followers ), unrequited love and cheeky, know-it-all first-person narration to keep me far away from my winter quarter course syllabi. It follows the brief life of Oscar de León, "a smart bookish boy of color...weighing in at 245 (260 when he was depressed, which was often)," whom his college dorm-mates nicknamed "Oscar Wao,"( a Spanish corruption of the name Oscar Wilde) for his prodigious bouts of novel writing. The story also pieces together bits of his sister Lola's coming of age and the tragicomedic life of their mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral.
But you can expect a lot more from this book than a fierce excoriation of one Latin American dictator through the lens of a complicated and intensely likeable Dominican-American family, though Diaz does have a lot to say about "Trujillo, also known as El Jefe, the Failed Cattle Thief, and Fuckface." As Díaz describe him in a footnote characteristic of the whole book's tone: “At first glance, [Trujillo] was just your typical Latin American caudillo, but his power was terminal in ways that few historians or writers have ever truly captured or, I would argue, imagined. He was our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid, our Once and Future Dictator.”
What makes this novel truly delightful, and distinguishes it from other Latino novels that get their culture and color from weaving English, Spanish slang and spanglish phrases, is how it takes advantage of an even more mysterious language: the language of fanboys, role-playing gamers and Lord of the Rings buffs—essentially, the world of sexually-frustrated supernerds like Oscar who our narrator, his roommate Yunior, swears will only be getting game from fantasy characters.
What more sci-fi than Santo Domingo? What more fantasy than the Antilles? Oscar asks himself, trying to make sense of how his Dominican identity and not so hombre demeanor fit into the world. In one anecdote, Yunior recalls with sarcasm and affection the time when Oscar informed "some hot morena, 'if you were in my game I'd give you eighteen charisma!'" Qué muchacho, what a guy.
I think it's moments like this that make the novel just magic, and right in-step with the concerns of American-born, globally aware and intensely self-involved children of the twenty-first century like Oscar, Yunior and Lola. I'll add in some of my favorite quotes to this post as I find them.
*"At the end of The Return of the King, Sauron's evil was taken away by "a great wind" and neatly "blown away," with no lasting consequences to our heroes; but Trujillo was too powerful, too toxic a radiation to be dispelled so easily. Even after his death his evil lingered. Within hours of El Jefe dancing bien pegao with those twenty-seven bullets, his minions ran amok--fulfilling, as it were, his last will and vengeance. A great darkness descended on the Island and for the third time since the rise of Fidel people were being rounded up by Trujillo's son, Ramfis, and a good plenty were sacrificed in the most depraved fashion imaginable, an orgy of terror funeral goods for the father from the son."
I just finished reading this fantastic novel about the struggles of a RPG-playing otaku Dominican adolescent from New Jersey and the family he swears was cursed during the dictator Rafael Trujillo's regime. The book was number one on Time Magazine's list of the ten best books of 2007, and the New Yorker published a 15-page version in 2000. I've owned the book since September of last year, when a class on Gender and Sexuality in Latin American Literature at UCSD left me craving post-modern works like those of Elena Poniatowska, G. G. Márquez, and Rosario Castellanos, but I hadn't started reading it until winter break. Sometimes I wonder if a college student shouldn't have the time to read more.
Fortunately, this book has exactly the right mix of history (the story is peppered with footnotes detailing the political escapades of Trujillo and his followers ), unrequited love and cheeky, know-it-all first-person narration to keep me far away from my winter quarter course syllabi. It follows the brief life of Oscar de León, "a smart bookish boy of color...weighing in at 245 (260 when he was depressed, which was often)," whom his college dorm-mates nicknamed "Oscar Wao,"( a Spanish corruption of the name Oscar Wilde) for his prodigious bouts of novel writing. The story also pieces together bits of his sister Lola's coming of age and the tragicomedic life of their mother, Hypatia Belicia Cabral.
But you can expect a lot more from this book than a fierce excoriation of one Latin American dictator through the lens of a complicated and intensely likeable Dominican-American family, though Diaz does have a lot to say about "Trujillo, also known as El Jefe, the Failed Cattle Thief, and Fuckface." As Díaz describe him in a footnote characteristic of the whole book's tone: “At first glance, [Trujillo] was just your typical Latin American caudillo, but his power was terminal in ways that few historians or writers have ever truly captured or, I would argue, imagined. He was our Sauron, our Arawn, our Darkseid, our Once and Future Dictator.”
What makes this novel truly delightful, and distinguishes it from other Latino novels that get their culture and color from weaving English, Spanish slang and spanglish phrases, is how it takes advantage of an even more mysterious language: the language of fanboys, role-playing gamers and Lord of the Rings buffs—essentially, the world of sexually-frustrated supernerds like Oscar who our narrator, his roommate Yunior, swears will only be getting game from fantasy characters.
What more sci-fi than Santo Domingo? What more fantasy than the Antilles? Oscar asks himself, trying to make sense of how his Dominican identity and not so hombre demeanor fit into the world. In one anecdote, Yunior recalls with sarcasm and affection the time when Oscar informed "some hot morena, 'if you were in my game I'd give you eighteen charisma!'" Qué muchacho, what a guy.
I think it's moments like this that make the novel just magic, and right in-step with the concerns of American-born, globally aware and intensely self-involved children of the twenty-first century like Oscar, Yunior and Lola. I'll add in some of my favorite quotes to this post as I find them.
*"At the end of The Return of the King, Sauron's evil was taken away by "a great wind" and neatly "blown away," with no lasting consequences to our heroes; but Trujillo was too powerful, too toxic a radiation to be dispelled so easily. Even after his death his evil lingered. Within hours of El Jefe dancing bien pegao with those twenty-seven bullets, his minions ran amok--fulfilling, as it were, his last will and vengeance. A great darkness descended on the Island and for the third time since the rise of Fidel people were being rounded up by Trujillo's son, Ramfis, and a good plenty were sacrificed in the most depraved fashion imaginable, an orgy of terror funeral goods for the father from the son."
Monday, December 22, 2008
A journalist always takes good [foot]notes...
I was hoping to let this one fly past me, but after listening to On the Media's take on President Bush's shoe attack, I can't help wanting to retread this ground for a bit. (Okay, maybe that was too much even for me.)
Since deftly removing his shoes and hurling them at President Bush during a press conference in Iraq, Muntazer al-Zaidi has been branded both a symbol of Iraqi discontent over the U.S.'s occupation and a disrespectful dissident—no one should throw shoes at anyone's president, whether or not he ushered a period of sectarian violence and civil disarray into the country. Besides his major-league baseball potential, one characteristic of al-Zaidi that has at times been sidelined by the media's coverage and the resulting viral video: He is a journalist, not a terrorist, political activist or lunatic trying to get attention. Simply a journalist.
And where one might expect people in the latter category to leap to action, slinging shoelaces and curses Bush's way, the journalist is perpetually sidelined for impartiality's sake; never quite a part of the fray, even if a tape recorder or notepad is the only thing separating them. Journalists are discouraged from expressing any political opinion in public. Some political journalists choose not to vote in elections at all—especially if they've been covering the candidates involved.
I think most members of the news media will agree that it's okay, if not inevitable, for a journalist to hold opinions. The question al-Zaidi's antics raise, however, is to what extent a journalist owes it to himself to take action when he sees injustice. In other words, when should a journalist put down his pen and pick up his shoe (for lack of a better object, I suppose)? And what to do when this decision becomes a choice between the trust of his readers and his own moral compass?
Bob Garfield:
I want to become a journalist because I think there is little that is more important than the task of informing people. The story is king, even if that means digging around and reporting on the ground, whatever risks involved. But maybe there's something even more risky than reporting a story, and more important that Muntazer al-Zaidi hit on with that shoe last week.
Since deftly removing his shoes and hurling them at President Bush during a press conference in Iraq, Muntazer al-Zaidi has been branded both a symbol of Iraqi discontent over the U.S.'s occupation and a disrespectful dissident—no one should throw shoes at anyone's president, whether or not he ushered a period of sectarian violence and civil disarray into the country. Besides his major-league baseball potential, one characteristic of al-Zaidi that has at times been sidelined by the media's coverage and the resulting viral video: He is a journalist, not a terrorist, political activist or lunatic trying to get attention. Simply a journalist.
And where one might expect people in the latter category to leap to action, slinging shoelaces and curses Bush's way, the journalist is perpetually sidelined for impartiality's sake; never quite a part of the fray, even if a tape recorder or notepad is the only thing separating them. Journalists are discouraged from expressing any political opinion in public. Some political journalists choose not to vote in elections at all—especially if they've been covering the candidates involved.
I think most members of the news media will agree that it's okay, if not inevitable, for a journalist to hold opinions. The question al-Zaidi's antics raise, however, is to what extent a journalist owes it to himself to take action when he sees injustice. In other words, when should a journalist put down his pen and pick up his shoe (for lack of a better object, I suppose)? And what to do when this decision becomes a choice between the trust of his readers and his own moral compass?
Bob Garfield:
Not even the most pernicious media filter, its own triviality, could filter out the real story. The tape told it plainly.
A working journalist – not a Baathist insurgent, not a Shiite cleric, not a foreign Jihadist, but a journalist – was finally so outraged by the blood and chaos visited upon his country that Muntazer al-Zaidi lashed out at the most powerful man in the world at who knew what cost to his career and personal safety.
Maybe he guessed that he would become a hero throughout the Arab world, but he could just as easily wind up a martyr. His family has said he’s already been severely beaten in prison. What would make him risk everything?
I want to become a journalist because I think there is little that is more important than the task of informing people. The story is king, even if that means digging around and reporting on the ground, whatever risks involved. But maybe there's something even more risky than reporting a story, and more important that Muntazer al-Zaidi hit on with that shoe last week.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Journalism for the People: Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders
Good journalists always have their audience in mind, and whether they are writing to businessmen or movie-buffs, they tailor the article's content and tone accordingly.
But some journalism doesn't alert entrepreneurs to the goings on at Google, doesn't point book clubs to the 10 best books of the year or parents toward Shrek: the Musical—sometimes an article really is written for everyone, to remind us in a crisis why it is so important that we care.
This is what T. Christian Miller of the investigative non-profit Pro Publica did on December 13, in collaboration with the New York Times’ James Glanz. their article details a 513-page federal history of America's reconstruction efforts in Iraq, and how the U.S. government released inflated numbers to exaggerate the region's progress.
Like David Carr said today, it takes a scandal to remind us that investigative journalism is here to stay.
But some journalism doesn't alert entrepreneurs to the goings on at Google, doesn't point book clubs to the 10 best books of the year or parents toward Shrek: the Musical—sometimes an article really is written for everyone, to remind us in a crisis why it is so important that we care.
This is what T. Christian Miller of the investigative non-profit Pro Publica did on December 13, in collaboration with the New York Times’ James Glanz. their article details a 513-page federal history of America's reconstruction efforts in Iraq, and how the U.S. government released inflated numbers to exaggerate the region's progress.
Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.
The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed. …
… Titled "Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience," the new history was compiled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, led by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., a Republican lawyer who regularly travels to Iraq and has a staff of engineers and auditors based here. Copies of several drafts of the history were provided to reporters at The New York Times and ProPublica by two people outside the inspector general's office who have read the draft, but are not authorized to comment publicly.
Like David Carr said today, it takes a scandal to remind us that investigative journalism is here to stay.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Finally...
I am kicking myself for leaving this blog silent for two weeks now... Finals Week and the mess of sorting out my majors has me more than bogged down with work, but I promise to resume writing with a renewed fervor as soon as the week is up.
I know life goes on outside of college; for starters, the governor of Ilinois is embroiled in an embarassing corruption scandal, and the Tribune Co. has filed for bankruptcy! It's almost a relief for me to burry myself in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling , fretting over how Abraham could be the father of faith and at the same time intend to murder Isaac, rather than face a world that seems to be breaking down around me.
My current preoccupations are "of peculiarly local concern" as Chief Justice Harlan Stone might say. I'm studying up for a Legal Reasoning final exam on constitutional law, and worrying that I might be turning into a mini Antonin Scalia (talk about fear and trembling). I just finished a 10-pager about radical feminism and violent pornography. I'm dropping one of my majors, Fundamentals: Issues and Texts. Oh, and I made a kick-ass dinner tonight with lentils, couscous and sweet potato soup.
I leave for San Diego on Saturday morning, and I will be spending the weekend of the 18th in Los Angeles with the boyfriend. I miss my friends, and I'm dying to see my little brother, who's been sick for about a month now. It's been raining all day, and my sneakers are soaked because I went running this morning. Outdoors. I hate to say it, but these things are on my mind a lot more than the thought of the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune going up in a pixelated cloud of smoke.
I don't want to make any promises, but hopefully I will be able to share more of my thoughts on some of these issues soon.
I know life goes on outside of college; for starters, the governor of Ilinois is embroiled in an embarassing corruption scandal, and the Tribune Co. has filed for bankruptcy! It's almost a relief for me to burry myself in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling , fretting over how Abraham could be the father of faith and at the same time intend to murder Isaac, rather than face a world that seems to be breaking down around me.
My current preoccupations are "of peculiarly local concern" as Chief Justice Harlan Stone might say. I'm studying up for a Legal Reasoning final exam on constitutional law, and worrying that I might be turning into a mini Antonin Scalia (talk about fear and trembling). I just finished a 10-pager about radical feminism and violent pornography. I'm dropping one of my majors, Fundamentals: Issues and Texts. Oh, and I made a kick-ass dinner tonight with lentils, couscous and sweet potato soup.
I leave for San Diego on Saturday morning, and I will be spending the weekend of the 18th in Los Angeles with the boyfriend. I miss my friends, and I'm dying to see my little brother, who's been sick for about a month now. It's been raining all day, and my sneakers are soaked because I went running this morning. Outdoors. I hate to say it, but these things are on my mind a lot more than the thought of the L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune going up in a pixelated cloud of smoke.
I don't want to make any promises, but hopefully I will be able to share more of my thoughts on some of these issues soon.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
God Between the Sheets, or “How to move from whining about the economy to whoopee!”
Something about sex and marriage, they just seem to go hand in hand...
Texas Pastor’s Advice for Better Marriage: More Sex, More Often: I just think this is a really amusing article: Rev. Ed Young of the evangelical Fellowship Church entreats his parishioners to strengthen their marital bonds by taking the Seven Day Sex Challenge. You guessed it—he told spouses that having sex once a day for a week would bring them closer to each other and closer to God, and "double up the amount of intimacy we have in marriage. And when I say intimacy, I don’t mean holding hands in the park or a back rub.”
Maureen Dowd actually writes a good opinion piece for the New York Times on the new Gus Van Sant biopic, "Milk," the story of the murder of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in American history. He served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors with Sen. Diane Feinstein.
With Same-Sex Marriage, a Court Takes on the People’s Voice: A pretty interesting article published a couple of days ago about more of the legal issues surrounding California's gay marriage ban Prop. 8. The state supreme court will probably rule on Prop. 8's constitutionality early next year. If you don't have time to read it all, atleast read the chunk below:
Texas Pastor’s Advice for Better Marriage: More Sex, More Often: I just think this is a really amusing article: Rev. Ed Young of the evangelical Fellowship Church entreats his parishioners to strengthen their marital bonds by taking the Seven Day Sex Challenge. You guessed it—he told spouses that having sex once a day for a week would bring them closer to each other and closer to God, and "double up the amount of intimacy we have in marriage. And when I say intimacy, I don’t mean holding hands in the park or a back rub.”
Maureen Dowd actually writes a good opinion piece for the New York Times on the new Gus Van Sant biopic, "Milk," the story of the murder of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in American history. He served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors with Sen. Diane Feinstein.
With Same-Sex Marriage, a Court Takes on the People’s Voice: A pretty interesting article published a couple of days ago about more of the legal issues surrounding California's gay marriage ban Prop. 8. The state supreme court will probably rule on Prop. 8's constitutionality early next year. If you don't have time to read it all, atleast read the chunk below:
“The California Supreme Court has never articulated criteria for what makes something an amendment versus a revision,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine. “So I don’t think you can predict anything because there is so little law.”
Supporters of the ban say legal history is on their side. “Whenever an amendment or an initiative has been challenged, almost always the court rejects that and upholds the people’s initiative power,” said Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for backers of the proposition, citing past state bans on the use of race, sex or ethnicity in college admissions and caps on property taxes. “These are major policy changes that the court has recognized are fine,” he said.
But Jennifer C. Pizer, a lawyer with Lamdba Legal, which represents one of the petitioners, said that Proposition 8 “essentially nullifies the equal protection guarantee” of the Constitution and sets a dangerous precedent, something that has been cited by several minority groups who asked for relief from the court.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Code Green: Thomas Friedman puts America on the Alternative Energy Alert
The Midway Review, the journal of politics and culture I edit and design, is out on campus today, and here's a copy of my article. The whole magazine can be found at midwayreview.uchicago.edu as a PDF.
Hot, Flat and Crowded:
Why We Need a Green
Revolution—and How
It Can Renew America
by Thomas L. Friedman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
448 pp., $27.95
If you ask Thomas Friedman, thanks to climate change, globalization and climbing population rates, the earth looks hotter, flatter and more crowded than ever before. It also looks like a self-indulgent scene out of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Hieronymus Bosch’s fifteenth-century triptych of excess and greed decorates the cover of Friedman’s newest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, suggesting that the way the United States has been tearing through global resources is finally catching up with us.
In the first half of his book, Friedman recounts the development of the global energy crisis. In responding to the crisis, he claims, the United States has done more to isolate itself from the rest of the world and deepen its dependency on foreign oil than promote innovation. Meanwhile, Denmark’s booming wind turbine industry, Brazil’s emphasis on ethanol production, and Japan’s high fuel efficiency standards are each propelling their respective nations into the future a lot faster than we Americans can manage, even with the help of our high powered SUVs. And if we don’t pull our heads out of the ground, where no doubt we’ve been poking around for oil.
Friedman warns that we as a nation risk falling hopelessly behind in technological innovation. In particular, Friedman fears the convergence of three global he says, for which he coins the mnemonic “hot, flat and crowded.” In the next fifty years, he claims, the world’s population will swell 45%, from 6.7 to 9 billion. Outsourcing of business will likewise increase, causing the numbers and spending power of the world’s middle class to rise in turn. Meanwhile, fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas will add CO2 to the atmosphere and fuel global warming. These developments together will produce a greater strain on the Earth’s ecosystem than it has ever felt before.
The thesis isn’t new. Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, walked his American readers through the leveling of the economic playing field in his bestseller The World is Flat, and cautioned them not to rest on the laurels of the business and political tactics that served us so well through the 20th century. And writers as diverse as Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Al Gore have been decrying the culture of over-consumption for years. But this time, Friedman is hoping to lure the audience of entrepreneurs he snagged with The World is Flat into thinking about the environment, even if their concerns have more to do with profit margins than polar bears.
So what’s different about Friedman’s solution? First, it does not sound much like “205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth,” or any other magazine features telling consumers what cars to drive or light bulbs to buy. Friedman knows going green won’t be easy, simple, or fun for the nation, and insists that only drastic changes in policy can make a lasting impact.
Second, and perhaps more importantly for Friedman, green is no longer synonymous with Birkenstocks and tofu. In one of the many anecdotes that punctuate Friedman’s arguments, he explains how even the U.S. Army has cause for concern: at one point an officer observed that transporting oil across the Iraqi desert puts men needlessly at risk of enemy attack. As he says, “[alternative energy] is now a core national security and economic interest.”
Friedman is calling for U.S. business and governments, and not just hemp-wearing, hybrid-driving consumers, to lead a “Green Revolution.” In doing so, he hopes the United States can set an example for developing nations like China and India, who tend otherwise to envy the U.S.’s trajectory of industrialization, despite its history of utter disregard for environmental matters. This process would involve imposing serious gasoline taxes like Denmark’s to encourage consumer restraint, building masstransit systems to rival Europe’s, and trading in our present dependence on dirty energy for cleaner biofuels and more efficient power plants.
Friedman borrows a number of suggestions from the “Carbon Migration Initiative” proposed by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, both professors at Princeton University: replace 1,400 large coal-fired electric plants with facilities powered by natural gas; double the output of today’s nuclear power facilities to replace coal-based electricity; increase wind power eightyfold to make hydrogen for clean cars; double the fuel efficiency of two billion cars from thirty to sixty miles per gallon.
Again, not the kind of prescription you’ll read in Working Mother magazine. To accomplish all this, Friedman wants to tap into a history of American ingenuity—the panache for self-reinvention that made Americans the pioneers of global industry, put a man on the moon and invented the Internet. He wants green to mean more to the country than the color of Jay Gatsby’s light, but knows it will take the leadership of an FDR or JFK to make this happen.
But just as Ronald Reagan stripped the White House of Jimmy Carter’s solar panels when he took office, it is doubtful whether twenty-first century Americans will take heed should the government tell them to green up their lives. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, Friedman applauded America for successfully spurring itself to surpass the U.S.S.R. in space- exploration. But after the events of September 11th shook America to attention again, in a way much more immediate and devastating than the threat of communism had ever been, the opposite happened. Americans were encouraged to spend more, travel more, and ignore the fact that their nation was at war.
Friedman mocks the low-impact, consumerist trends that have made Green a glamorous color in niche markets. But there is one central question he doesn’t fully answer: How readily will Americans, so accustomed to free-market-forces, support this dramatic shift in federal policy, when they could just as easily switch from incandescent light bulbs to LEDs and call it a day?
Only the next ten years will tell. I’m going to hold on to that article, “205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth,” just in case.
Hot, Flat and Crowded:
Why We Need a Green
Revolution—and How
It Can Renew America
by Thomas L. Friedman
Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
448 pp., $27.95
If you ask Thomas Friedman, thanks to climate change, globalization and climbing population rates, the earth looks hotter, flatter and more crowded than ever before. It also looks like a self-indulgent scene out of The Garden of Earthly Delights. Hieronymus Bosch’s fifteenth-century triptych of excess and greed decorates the cover of Friedman’s newest book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, suggesting that the way the United States has been tearing through global resources is finally catching up with us.
In the first half of his book, Friedman recounts the development of the global energy crisis. In responding to the crisis, he claims, the United States has done more to isolate itself from the rest of the world and deepen its dependency on foreign oil than promote innovation. Meanwhile, Denmark’s booming wind turbine industry, Brazil’s emphasis on ethanol production, and Japan’s high fuel efficiency standards are each propelling their respective nations into the future a lot faster than we Americans can manage, even with the help of our high powered SUVs. And if we don’t pull our heads out of the ground, where no doubt we’ve been poking around for oil.
Friedman warns that we as a nation risk falling hopelessly behind in technological innovation. In particular, Friedman fears the convergence of three global he says, for which he coins the mnemonic “hot, flat and crowded.” In the next fifty years, he claims, the world’s population will swell 45%, from 6.7 to 9 billion. Outsourcing of business will likewise increase, causing the numbers and spending power of the world’s middle class to rise in turn. Meanwhile, fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas will add CO2 to the atmosphere and fuel global warming. These developments together will produce a greater strain on the Earth’s ecosystem than it has ever felt before.
The thesis isn’t new. Friedman, a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, walked his American readers through the leveling of the economic playing field in his bestseller The World is Flat, and cautioned them not to rest on the laurels of the business and political tactics that served us so well through the 20th century. And writers as diverse as Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Al Gore have been decrying the culture of over-consumption for years. But this time, Friedman is hoping to lure the audience of entrepreneurs he snagged with The World is Flat into thinking about the environment, even if their concerns have more to do with profit margins than polar bears.
So what’s different about Friedman’s solution? First, it does not sound much like “205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth,” or any other magazine features telling consumers what cars to drive or light bulbs to buy. Friedman knows going green won’t be easy, simple, or fun for the nation, and insists that only drastic changes in policy can make a lasting impact.
Second, and perhaps more importantly for Friedman, green is no longer synonymous with Birkenstocks and tofu. In one of the many anecdotes that punctuate Friedman’s arguments, he explains how even the U.S. Army has cause for concern: at one point an officer observed that transporting oil across the Iraqi desert puts men needlessly at risk of enemy attack. As he says, “[alternative energy] is now a core national security and economic interest.”
Friedman is calling for U.S. business and governments, and not just hemp-wearing, hybrid-driving consumers, to lead a “Green Revolution.” In doing so, he hopes the United States can set an example for developing nations like China and India, who tend otherwise to envy the U.S.’s trajectory of industrialization, despite its history of utter disregard for environmental matters. This process would involve imposing serious gasoline taxes like Denmark’s to encourage consumer restraint, building masstransit systems to rival Europe’s, and trading in our present dependence on dirty energy for cleaner biofuels and more efficient power plants.
Friedman borrows a number of suggestions from the “Carbon Migration Initiative” proposed by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, both professors at Princeton University: replace 1,400 large coal-fired electric plants with facilities powered by natural gas; double the output of today’s nuclear power facilities to replace coal-based electricity; increase wind power eightyfold to make hydrogen for clean cars; double the fuel efficiency of two billion cars from thirty to sixty miles per gallon.
Again, not the kind of prescription you’ll read in Working Mother magazine. To accomplish all this, Friedman wants to tap into a history of American ingenuity—the panache for self-reinvention that made Americans the pioneers of global industry, put a man on the moon and invented the Internet. He wants green to mean more to the country than the color of Jay Gatsby’s light, but knows it will take the leadership of an FDR or JFK to make this happen.
But just as Ronald Reagan stripped the White House of Jimmy Carter’s solar panels when he took office, it is doubtful whether twenty-first century Americans will take heed should the government tell them to green up their lives. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, Friedman applauded America for successfully spurring itself to surpass the U.S.S.R. in space- exploration. But after the events of September 11th shook America to attention again, in a way much more immediate and devastating than the threat of communism had ever been, the opposite happened. Americans were encouraged to spend more, travel more, and ignore the fact that their nation was at war.
Friedman mocks the low-impact, consumerist trends that have made Green a glamorous color in niche markets. But there is one central question he doesn’t fully answer: How readily will Americans, so accustomed to free-market-forces, support this dramatic shift in federal policy, when they could just as easily switch from incandescent light bulbs to LEDs and call it a day?
Only the next ten years will tell. I’m going to hold on to that article, “205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth,” just in case.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Aristophanes at the Job Interview
University of Chicago alumnus Scott Sherman's biggest mistake during his job interview was talking about Aristophanes. He majored in Fundamentals four years ago, and wrote his B.A. paper on the function of comedy—Heady stuff to bring up to the producers of The Colbert Report.
Sherman (AB '04) is now a staff writer on the upcoming Comedy Central sketch show, Important Things with Demetri Martin, but last Friday he came back to the University to talk about the job hunt. His trajectory included landing a writing job at the Onion and co-authoring a couple of satirical books, The Dangerous Book for Dogs and a sequel about cats in the same vein.
Sherman brought with him the sobering advice that our first-rate education might not get us anywhere in the writing and publishing world.
"Sometimes your smartness here, and I use the word intentionally, can be a good thing... but to pitch relateable stories, you have to make yourself relateable as well. It made me look stupid that I thought I could talk about Aristophanes and Swift and Cervantes, even sitting in a room with three Ivy-grads."
paid-writing "Is not Proust," Sherman added. "It's not 'I will be inspired to write this book when the tea soaks into the biscuits.'"
But there are some plus-sides to coming from UChicago: "A lot of comedy writing requres fast research, (I didn't know anything about cats before I wrote the book) and I learned how to do that at the U of C."
Sherman (AB '04) is now a staff writer on the upcoming Comedy Central sketch show, Important Things with Demetri Martin, but last Friday he came back to the University to talk about the job hunt. His trajectory included landing a writing job at the Onion and co-authoring a couple of satirical books, The Dangerous Book for Dogs and a sequel about cats in the same vein.
Sherman brought with him the sobering advice that our first-rate education might not get us anywhere in the writing and publishing world.
"Sometimes your smartness here, and I use the word intentionally, can be a good thing... but to pitch relateable stories, you have to make yourself relateable as well. It made me look stupid that I thought I could talk about Aristophanes and Swift and Cervantes, even sitting in a room with three Ivy-grads."
paid-writing "Is not Proust," Sherman added. "It's not 'I will be inspired to write this book when the tea soaks into the biscuits.'"
But there are some plus-sides to coming from UChicago: "A lot of comedy writing requres fast research, (I didn't know anything about cats before I wrote the book) and I learned how to do that at the U of C."
Monday, November 10, 2008
Wedding Bell Blues
"Am I ever gonna see my wedding day?" not to trivialize the gay marriage ban, but I'm sure plenty California residents asked themselves that question after last Tuesday.
Like most California voters I know personally (and 48% of the entire state, actually) I am ecstatic over Barack Obama’s win, but deeply troubled by Tuesday’s outcome on Proposition 8. Prop. 8, which narrowly passed with 52% of the vote, will add a provision to the state constitution clarifying that marriage is only valid and recognized in California if it is “between a man and a woman.”
I rejoiced at the court’s decision to allow same-sex weddings last May as gays and lesbians across the state posed in tuxedos and white gowns, but now it looks like I’ll eventually be attending some weddings in Canada if this provision isn’t challenged.
I can think of a few reasons the ban should not have passed but did:
Last week I read Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the landmark Supreme Court case that made all state sodomy laws unconstitutional, for my gender studies class. We talked about how there were two possible arguments against laws criminilizing sodomy: the right to privacy and equal protection for heterosexual and same-sex couples. But the court’s opinion only discusses the right to privacy, which means there is no precedent for granting the same rights to heterosexual and homosexual couples.
Though it is still unclear what will happen at the level of the state courts in California, I am pessimistic about whether gay marriage—which was also banned in Arizona and Florida, though neither state ever issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the first place—will ever make it to the Supreme Court.
According to an LA Times article published today, opponents of the gay marriage ban may have a case at the state level if they can argue that the constitution’s change"substantially alter the basic governmental framework,” and therefore is a revision that must be passed by two-thirds of the state legislature.
Complicating the issue further are the 18,000 marriage licenses the state has issued to same sex couples since last summer.
Tthe article’s author, Goodwin Liu also addresses a good question I have heard people indifferent to the ban pose: “Why does it matter whether gay couples remain married in a post-Proposition 8 world? One answer has to do with the dignity and stature that marriage confers. Even if marriage provides no greater rights than domestic partnership, a separate-but-equal regime unavoidably signals that same-sex relationships are of lesser worth.
Another answer has to do with the future of gay marriage writ large. Gay marriage is in the cross-hairs of a culture war, and culture wars, both sides know, are won through symbols, examples and personal experiences.”
Thirty years ago, homosexuality was a diagnosable mental disease in the DSM. If this crucial shift in the psychological community and political arena is indicative of a slowly sweeping cultural change, then maybe the gay marriage ban is just a cultural blip on the path to full legitimization, the dying cries of vociferous but transient majority.
As a registered California voter, I’m keeping my eye on this issue.
UPDATE: My favorite memory from the Prop. 8 Protest in downtown Chicago last Saturday:
Tall Man: I can see some anti-gay marriage protestors over there.
Woman: Oh no! Are there very many?
Man: I don't think so; their sign says there's just one man and one woman.
Like most California voters I know personally (and 48% of the entire state, actually) I am ecstatic over Barack Obama’s win, but deeply troubled by Tuesday’s outcome on Proposition 8. Prop. 8, which narrowly passed with 52% of the vote, will add a provision to the state constitution clarifying that marriage is only valid and recognized in California if it is “between a man and a woman.”
I rejoiced at the court’s decision to allow same-sex weddings last May as gays and lesbians across the state posed in tuxedos and white gowns, but now it looks like I’ll eventually be attending some weddings in Canada if this provision isn’t challenged.
I can think of a few reasons the ban should not have passed but did:
- Church-funded initiatives to get out the vote in favor of Prop. 8 framed the issue in terms of legitimizing homosexuality as an identity and practice, rather than an issue simply of whether same sex couples should have the same rights afforded to heterosexual couples.
- This election saw a huge number of new voters turning out for Obama, and several voter misinformation campaigns tried to take advantage of them and the confusing language of Prop. 8.
- This is a stereotype but this time we did see a much larger black and hispanic turnout than in recent past elections.
Last week I read Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the landmark Supreme Court case that made all state sodomy laws unconstitutional, for my gender studies class. We talked about how there were two possible arguments against laws criminilizing sodomy: the right to privacy and equal protection for heterosexual and same-sex couples. But the court’s opinion only discusses the right to privacy, which means there is no precedent for granting the same rights to heterosexual and homosexual couples.
Though it is still unclear what will happen at the level of the state courts in California, I am pessimistic about whether gay marriage—which was also banned in Arizona and Florida, though neither state ever issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the first place—will ever make it to the Supreme Court.
According to an LA Times article published today, opponents of the gay marriage ban may have a case at the state level if they can argue that the constitution’s change"substantially alter the basic governmental framework,” and therefore is a revision that must be passed by two-thirds of the state legislature.
Complicating the issue further are the 18,000 marriage licenses the state has issued to same sex couples since last summer.
Tthe article’s author, Goodwin Liu also addresses a good question I have heard people indifferent to the ban pose: “Why does it matter whether gay couples remain married in a post-Proposition 8 world? One answer has to do with the dignity and stature that marriage confers. Even if marriage provides no greater rights than domestic partnership, a separate-but-equal regime unavoidably signals that same-sex relationships are of lesser worth.
Another answer has to do with the future of gay marriage writ large. Gay marriage is in the cross-hairs of a culture war, and culture wars, both sides know, are won through symbols, examples and personal experiences.”
Thirty years ago, homosexuality was a diagnosable mental disease in the DSM. If this crucial shift in the psychological community and political arena is indicative of a slowly sweeping cultural change, then maybe the gay marriage ban is just a cultural blip on the path to full legitimization, the dying cries of vociferous but transient majority.
As a registered California voter, I’m keeping my eye on this issue.
UPDATE: My favorite memory from the Prop. 8 Protest in downtown Chicago last Saturday:
Tall Man: I can see some anti-gay marriage protestors over there.
Woman: Oh no! Are there very many?
Man: I don't think so; their sign says there's just one man and one woman.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
My New President
I remember when President Bush, the second, won for the first time in 2000. I was in sixth grade, taking American history at a liberal school in conservative San Diego, and I obnoxiously proclaimed every chance I got, "He's not my president."
When Bush won a second time in 2004, I couldn't believe, "my country has done it again. How could we have fallen for that bullshit again?" By then, several of my friends were self-important Republicans short on policy-insight, but high on pomp and pluck. I thought it was all over for the democrats, that thanks to the Electoral College or the Religious Right or someone's fucked up sense of humor, the country was rolling down the face of a cliff, and picking up speed.
Last night, I think the United States proved me wrong. I watched the returns come in on CNN, in the Rec Room of my dorm with 20–30 other students. Many students left to bike to Grant Park, site of the official election night celebration, where Obama was slated to speak, but we were huddled at the University of Chicago, in a corner of Hyde Park where you could sentimentally say it all began. We jumped and cheered and hugged each other when the West Coast came in; CNN and MSNBC declared victory for Obama that minute.
I have a lot of homework (this is the U of C) to worry about today, among other preoccupations, but I stayed in the basement to hear Obama speak. Like always his speech was reserved but inspiring, I'd like to think emblematic of the forethought and care he puts into his words and actions. It showed his commitment to the clarity America needs, and the home-grown diversity America encompasses.
As he said in his victory speech, "That's the true genius of America, that America can change. That our union can be perfected." This statement has been demonstrated in the past, and was equally true today.
Finally, from the New York Times (it gives me chills): This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:
"An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States."
Come back later for a rant about California's Prop. 8, the gay marriage ban.
When Bush won a second time in 2004, I couldn't believe, "my country has done it again. How could we have fallen for that bullshit again?" By then, several of my friends were self-important Republicans short on policy-insight, but high on pomp and pluck. I thought it was all over for the democrats, that thanks to the Electoral College or the Religious Right or someone's fucked up sense of humor, the country was rolling down the face of a cliff, and picking up speed.
Last night, I think the United States proved me wrong. I watched the returns come in on CNN, in the Rec Room of my dorm with 20–30 other students. Many students left to bike to Grant Park, site of the official election night celebration, where Obama was slated to speak, but we were huddled at the University of Chicago, in a corner of Hyde Park where you could sentimentally say it all began. We jumped and cheered and hugged each other when the West Coast came in; CNN and MSNBC declared victory for Obama that minute.
I have a lot of homework (this is the U of C) to worry about today, among other preoccupations, but I stayed in the basement to hear Obama speak. Like always his speech was reserved but inspiring, I'd like to think emblematic of the forethought and care he puts into his words and actions. It showed his commitment to the clarity America needs, and the home-grown diversity America encompasses.
As he said in his victory speech, "That's the true genius of America, that America can change. That our union can be perfected." This statement has been demonstrated in the past, and was equally true today.
Finally, from the New York Times (it gives me chills): This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:
"An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States."
Come back later for a rant about California's Prop. 8, the gay marriage ban.
Jenny Holzer brings truth and truisms to her new exhibit at the MCA
“You are trapped on the earth so you will explode.” “Unquestioning love demonstrates largesse of the spirit.” “You should study as much as possible.”
If you find these statements either thought provoking or confusing, that’s exactly what Jenny Holzer wants. These ambiguous aphorisms are taken from Truisms, one of Holzer’s most famous installation art pieces, and figure prominently in Jenny Holzer: PROTECT PROTECT, her new exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
For the past 30 years, Holzer has been translating language into art, finding new ways to convey old, obscure, and overused sayings via light shows over the ocean, billboards in Times Square, and lots of paper and paste. Like fellow conceptual artists Barbara Kruger and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Holzer uses billboards and electronic signs to present works that are public, completely integrated into the consumer-advertising environment, and utterly impossible to ignore. Her words at once evoke violence and love, morality and depravity, and are rich with the social and political contradictions of our era.
This exhibition is no different. Recalling the anxiety pervading her earlier writings, most obviously “Protect me from what I want,” PROTECT PROTECT engages with one of America’s most well versed protection myths: the Iraq War. On the wall immediately to the left of the exhibit entrance in the MCA’s lobby—a space usually occupied by the curator’s introduction—Holzer has hung several enlarged copies of recently declassified planning documents for the war. The most striking document, titled “Alternative Interrogation Techniques (Wish List),” lists such torture methods as sleep deprivation, white noise exposure, and close-quarter confinement.
Another fraught screen print shows an e-mail message, presumably by a high-ranking military official on the ground in Baghdad, cautioning his fellow soldiers to “take a deep breath and remember who we are. Those [interrogation standards] are NOT based on Cold War or WWII enemies—they are based on clearly established standards of international law…. BOTTOM LINE we are American Soldiers, heirs of a long tradition of staying on high ground.”
Further quotations from U.S. soldiers run throughout the exhibition, conveying feelings of entrapment, desensitization, and sexual deprivation. “It is a hard, hard reality,” her electronic LED display “Monument” reads, “knowing the only ass I’m going to get for the next year is the butt stock of my M16.” Like many of her previous slogans, Holzer’s war quotes have the potential to be both overpowering and trite. To bring the soldiers’ feelings home, Holzer leaves a table covered in human bones in the final gallery.
Other works include pieces like “Thorax” and “Green Purple Cross,” LED displays that zigzag around the gallery walls. The words—taken from “Truisms,” “Survival” and other past works—blink and overlap, flowing between clear blues and indecipherable reds.
It is clear that, in the bomb-littered, bone-dry terrain of Baghdad, Holzer and her subjects find neither protection nor desire. But as another “Truism” reminds us, after every war someone has to tidy up. Holzer doesn't do quite that, but she has swept together some of the most unsightly detritus of the past five years where we must look at them.
If you find these statements either thought provoking or confusing, that’s exactly what Jenny Holzer wants. These ambiguous aphorisms are taken from Truisms, one of Holzer’s most famous installation art pieces, and figure prominently in Jenny Holzer: PROTECT PROTECT, her new exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
For the past 30 years, Holzer has been translating language into art, finding new ways to convey old, obscure, and overused sayings via light shows over the ocean, billboards in Times Square, and lots of paper and paste. Like fellow conceptual artists Barbara Kruger and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Holzer uses billboards and electronic signs to present works that are public, completely integrated into the consumer-advertising environment, and utterly impossible to ignore. Her words at once evoke violence and love, morality and depravity, and are rich with the social and political contradictions of our era.
This exhibition is no different. Recalling the anxiety pervading her earlier writings, most obviously “Protect me from what I want,” PROTECT PROTECT engages with one of America’s most well versed protection myths: the Iraq War. On the wall immediately to the left of the exhibit entrance in the MCA’s lobby—a space usually occupied by the curator’s introduction—Holzer has hung several enlarged copies of recently declassified planning documents for the war. The most striking document, titled “Alternative Interrogation Techniques (Wish List),” lists such torture methods as sleep deprivation, white noise exposure, and close-quarter confinement.
Another fraught screen print shows an e-mail message, presumably by a high-ranking military official on the ground in Baghdad, cautioning his fellow soldiers to “take a deep breath and remember who we are. Those [interrogation standards] are NOT based on Cold War or WWII enemies—they are based on clearly established standards of international law…. BOTTOM LINE we are American Soldiers, heirs of a long tradition of staying on high ground.”
Further quotations from U.S. soldiers run throughout the exhibition, conveying feelings of entrapment, desensitization, and sexual deprivation. “It is a hard, hard reality,” her electronic LED display “Monument” reads, “knowing the only ass I’m going to get for the next year is the butt stock of my M16.” Like many of her previous slogans, Holzer’s war quotes have the potential to be both overpowering and trite. To bring the soldiers’ feelings home, Holzer leaves a table covered in human bones in the final gallery.
Other works include pieces like “Thorax” and “Green Purple Cross,” LED displays that zigzag around the gallery walls. The words—taken from “Truisms,” “Survival” and other past works—blink and overlap, flowing between clear blues and indecipherable reds.
It is clear that, in the bomb-littered, bone-dry terrain of Baghdad, Holzer and her subjects find neither protection nor desire. But as another “Truism” reminds us, after every war someone has to tidy up. Holzer doesn't do quite that, but she has swept together some of the most unsightly detritus of the past five years where we must look at them.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
An Excuse, and an Article
I have been terribly busy this week, but I'm still writing; here's my latest UCSC article. Not the most hard-hitting piece of journalism, I know, but it's about an organization that's very dear to me: The Community Service Leadership Training Corps.
CSLTC: Training the Future Leaders
As an international student from Nepal, second-year Prakriti Mishra came to the University of Chicago wanting to understand American culture better while engaging in community service. Thankfully, she found a program at the University Community Service Center that accomplishes exactly that: The Community Service Leadership Training Corps.
The program, affectionately referred to as CSLTC, has an intensive, two-year curriculum designed to connect its members with community issues and teach them leadership skills that will serve them well in public service-related internships and jobs. Though CSLTC was founded eight years ago as a four-year program by Pamela Bozeman Evans, former director of the UCSC, the program has undergone a series of transformations in recent years that have molded this dual mission.
The program is structured to follow students through their first two years in the college, according to first-year coordinator Caroline Ouwerkerk, who has been a Corps member and program coordinator throughout her four years in the college, while at the same time encouraging them to branch out into the community and put their leadership skills into action.
During their first-year in the program, the twenty first-year students selected each year for the program attend weekly meetings on topics ranging from the problem of food deserts in Woodlawn to effective management and communication skills. Every other weekend the students travel to a different Chicago neighborhood to assist a public service organization with one of their projects.
In their second-year, students will use the UCSC’s resources to connect with an organization and construct a meaningful internship program around it.
“It’s a lot of fun; I really liked our second service project painting Sullivan House because it gave the group a chance to really bond,” said Mishra, who is now interning at La Rabida Hospital for CSLTC.
This quarter CSLTC’s focus is on civic engagement, according to Curriculum Development Coordinator Emma Scripps. “The people we bring to speak to the first-years during meetings often relate what they back to the whole issue of social justice.”
Last week, the first-years and second-years met with Susan Campbell, associate VP for civic engagement to discuss the role the University plays in the surrounding communities. This week students are focusing on the importance of communication in effective leadership.
“We want first-years to think about how being a good communicator has personal implication, and is critically important for a helping your group or civic organization communicate a single, unified goal,” said Scripps.
Scripps is a fourth-year, but this is her first year of involvement in the program. “I’m pretty impressed with the whole structure of CSLTC. It’s uniquely different from RSOs [Registered Student Organizations] because it is directly supported by the UCSC and shares that social network.”
According to third-year Leslie Farland, CSLTC’s second-year program coordinator, the next issue students will focus on his hunger. “We’re hoping to bring people from the Illinois Hunger Coalition and the Greater Chicago Food Depository to speak at a meeting.” This focus was meant to coincide with the upcoming UCSC-sponsored Day of Service, which will also address hunger in Chicago.
For Ouwerkerk, one of the program’s standout features is its student leadership. The program curriculum was designed and implemented by upperclassmen in the college, who played a crucial role in shaping the program two its current form. “I think it’s really cool that the program is so receptive to student involvement. If I come in today and say, “We should do this!” People will want to make it happen.”
“And when a student joins CSLTC, it’s more than just joining a group that does service,” Ouwerkerk added. “They join a network that will support them throughout their time [at the college], and beyond.”
CSLTC: Training the Future Leaders
As an international student from Nepal, second-year Prakriti Mishra came to the University of Chicago wanting to understand American culture better while engaging in community service. Thankfully, she found a program at the University Community Service Center that accomplishes exactly that: The Community Service Leadership Training Corps.
The program, affectionately referred to as CSLTC, has an intensive, two-year curriculum designed to connect its members with community issues and teach them leadership skills that will serve them well in public service-related internships and jobs. Though CSLTC was founded eight years ago as a four-year program by Pamela Bozeman Evans, former director of the UCSC, the program has undergone a series of transformations in recent years that have molded this dual mission.
The program is structured to follow students through their first two years in the college, according to first-year coordinator Caroline Ouwerkerk, who has been a Corps member and program coordinator throughout her four years in the college, while at the same time encouraging them to branch out into the community and put their leadership skills into action.
During their first-year in the program, the twenty first-year students selected each year for the program attend weekly meetings on topics ranging from the problem of food deserts in Woodlawn to effective management and communication skills. Every other weekend the students travel to a different Chicago neighborhood to assist a public service organization with one of their projects.
In their second-year, students will use the UCSC’s resources to connect with an organization and construct a meaningful internship program around it.
“It’s a lot of fun; I really liked our second service project painting Sullivan House because it gave the group a chance to really bond,” said Mishra, who is now interning at La Rabida Hospital for CSLTC.
This quarter CSLTC’s focus is on civic engagement, according to Curriculum Development Coordinator Emma Scripps. “The people we bring to speak to the first-years during meetings often relate what they back to the whole issue of social justice.”
Last week, the first-years and second-years met with Susan Campbell, associate VP for civic engagement to discuss the role the University plays in the surrounding communities. This week students are focusing on the importance of communication in effective leadership.
“We want first-years to think about how being a good communicator has personal implication, and is critically important for a helping your group or civic organization communicate a single, unified goal,” said Scripps.
Scripps is a fourth-year, but this is her first year of involvement in the program. “I’m pretty impressed with the whole structure of CSLTC. It’s uniquely different from RSOs [Registered Student Organizations] because it is directly supported by the UCSC and shares that social network.”
According to third-year Leslie Farland, CSLTC’s second-year program coordinator, the next issue students will focus on his hunger. “We’re hoping to bring people from the Illinois Hunger Coalition and the Greater Chicago Food Depository to speak at a meeting.” This focus was meant to coincide with the upcoming UCSC-sponsored Day of Service, which will also address hunger in Chicago.
For Ouwerkerk, one of the program’s standout features is its student leadership. The program curriculum was designed and implemented by upperclassmen in the college, who played a crucial role in shaping the program two its current form. “I think it’s really cool that the program is so receptive to student involvement. If I come in today and say, “We should do this!” People will want to make it happen.”
“And when a student joins CSLTC, it’s more than just joining a group that does service,” Ouwerkerk added. “They join a network that will support them throughout their time [at the college], and beyond.”
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Shoreland residents revel in dorm's rough edges as closing nears
Here's my latest article in the Chicago Maroon:
By Rachel Cromidas
If you ask Resident Master Lawrence Rothfield, the Shoreland has been falling apart since the University converted it into a dormitory 30 years ago. The hallway and dorm room walls are plastered with student murals, one ballroom has a collapsed ceiling, and the elevators have been known to stop running when students are late for class.
“It looks like the set of A Nightmare Before Christmas,” Rothfield said of the ballroom.
Shoreland Hall, located on South Shore Drive, was built in 1926 as a luxury hotel but is now serving out its last year as a University dorm. In 2004, the University sold the property to Kenard Corporation for $6 million. This year, Antheus Capital, parent company of the real estate company Mac Property Management in Hyde Park, bought the building for $16 million.
Although MAC has not yet announced its plans for the Shoreland, company spokesperson Peter Cassel said earlier this month that MAC intends to maintain the building as an attractive housing option for University students.
But before the Shoreland can reopen its doors, the building will need to undergo significant renovation. According to some students, simply traveling from dorm to class has grown increasingly challenging for Shoreland residents in recent years.
“Last year, a few people in my house [Michelson] got stuck once between the sixth and the seventh floors [in the elevators],” said second-year Eliza Behlen, who now lives off campus.
“I lived on the sixth floor so I could hear them pounding on the doors,” she said.
Rothfield said that over the years, the University has neglected to maintain the aging dorm.
“The University kept [the Shoreland] going and never really bit the bullet and invested the amount of money it would take to fix it,” he said.
Although the University has been unable to maintain upkeep at the Shoreland, that hasn’t stopped residents from revitalizing the building in their own quirky ways.
“Every year, my house has a theme, and then they paint the walls,” said second-year Karl Shum, who lives in Filbey House.
“I think in previous years if you painted the walls, you’d have to repaint them white or pay a fine,” he said, explaining that those rules have loosened since the University sold the Shoreland.
“People put signs that say ’please don’t paint over my mural,’ so a lot of stuff has been preserved,” he added.
Behlen fondly remembers decorating her room last year.
“We had a series of painting parties. We’d have people over, get them drunk, and then let them do whatever they wanted on our walls. Some of it was nice. Some of it looked like Jackson Pollock,” she said.
Despite the Shoreland’s rough edges, Rothfield thinks it’s an ideal place for students.
“Shoreland has the largest rooms of probably any dorm in the country, billion-dollar views, a ballroom that holds up to 300 people and has allowed us to bring in Second City, the Dodos, and other rock bands,” he said. “When you live in a place that is both far away from campus and has much easier access to downtown…I think it helps our students develop a more self-reliant attitude.”
First-year Samira Patel agreed.
“I really feel independent living here. I’ll probably end up getting an apartment off-campus next year,” she said.
For Shum, the Shoreland’s location, about 20 minutes from campus on foot, holds particular appeal.
“You can leave the paradigm of just being a student on campus and what that entails when you come back here,” he said. “There’s a kitchen, and you can paint your walls or put up wallpaper—it’s more like a home than somewhere to sleep after class.”
Rothfield and his wife have their own plans to commemorate the Shoreland’s final year as an undergraduate dorm. On November 1, they will hold the “Shore-Olympics,” a day of athletic games that will include a contest to see who can throw Plato’s Republic the farthest.
The history department has also found a way to commemorate the Shoreland, offering a colloquium this fall that uses the building as a entry point for examining South Side and Chicago history. Student projects may include using video, photography, and audio to record student and alumni accounts of life at the Shoreland.
By Rachel Cromidas
A mural in the elevator bay of Fallers House in Shoreland Hall. The dorm, which is about a mile east of campus, has laxer decoration regulations than other campus housing and encourages returning students to muralize their floors for incoming first-years. (Photo by my good friend Kate Koster.)
If you ask Resident Master Lawrence Rothfield, the Shoreland has been falling apart since the University converted it into a dormitory 30 years ago. The hallway and dorm room walls are plastered with student murals, one ballroom has a collapsed ceiling, and the elevators have been known to stop running when students are late for class.
“It looks like the set of A Nightmare Before Christmas,” Rothfield said of the ballroom.
Shoreland Hall, located on South Shore Drive, was built in 1926 as a luxury hotel but is now serving out its last year as a University dorm. In 2004, the University sold the property to Kenard Corporation for $6 million. This year, Antheus Capital, parent company of the real estate company Mac Property Management in Hyde Park, bought the building for $16 million.
Although MAC has not yet announced its plans for the Shoreland, company spokesperson Peter Cassel said earlier this month that MAC intends to maintain the building as an attractive housing option for University students.
But before the Shoreland can reopen its doors, the building will need to undergo significant renovation. According to some students, simply traveling from dorm to class has grown increasingly challenging for Shoreland residents in recent years.
“Last year, a few people in my house [Michelson] got stuck once between the sixth and the seventh floors [in the elevators],” said second-year Eliza Behlen, who now lives off campus.
“I lived on the sixth floor so I could hear them pounding on the doors,” she said.
Rothfield said that over the years, the University has neglected to maintain the aging dorm.
“The University kept [the Shoreland] going and never really bit the bullet and invested the amount of money it would take to fix it,” he said.
Although the University has been unable to maintain upkeep at the Shoreland, that hasn’t stopped residents from revitalizing the building in their own quirky ways.
“Every year, my house has a theme, and then they paint the walls,” said second-year Karl Shum, who lives in Filbey House.
“I think in previous years if you painted the walls, you’d have to repaint them white or pay a fine,” he said, explaining that those rules have loosened since the University sold the Shoreland.
“People put signs that say ’please don’t paint over my mural,’ so a lot of stuff has been preserved,” he added.
Behlen fondly remembers decorating her room last year.
“We had a series of painting parties. We’d have people over, get them drunk, and then let them do whatever they wanted on our walls. Some of it was nice. Some of it looked like Jackson Pollock,” she said.
Despite the Shoreland’s rough edges, Rothfield thinks it’s an ideal place for students.
“Shoreland has the largest rooms of probably any dorm in the country, billion-dollar views, a ballroom that holds up to 300 people and has allowed us to bring in Second City, the Dodos, and other rock bands,” he said. “When you live in a place that is both far away from campus and has much easier access to downtown…I think it helps our students develop a more self-reliant attitude.”
First-year Samira Patel agreed.
“I really feel independent living here. I’ll probably end up getting an apartment off-campus next year,” she said.
For Shum, the Shoreland’s location, about 20 minutes from campus on foot, holds particular appeal.
“You can leave the paradigm of just being a student on campus and what that entails when you come back here,” he said. “There’s a kitchen, and you can paint your walls or put up wallpaper—it’s more like a home than somewhere to sleep after class.”
Rothfield and his wife have their own plans to commemorate the Shoreland’s final year as an undergraduate dorm. On November 1, they will hold the “Shore-Olympics,” a day of athletic games that will include a contest to see who can throw Plato’s Republic the farthest.
The history department has also found a way to commemorate the Shoreland, offering a colloquium this fall that uses the building as a entry point for examining South Side and Chicago history. Student projects may include using video, photography, and audio to record student and alumni accounts of life at the Shoreland.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Something "New"
This week has turned my journalism job-seeking world upside down, first with a New York Times article my mom e-mailed me about the trouble newspapers are having deriving ad revenue from their websites; second with some unexpected advice from a talk by Chicago Public Radio correspondent Natalie Moore; and third with the news that my top-choice internship site, the Chicago Tribune, might not have the money to hire interns this summer.
Sunday: according to the NYTimes, newspapers that have been experiencing small but steady growths in their online-revenue (money from selling-ad space) over the past five years are starting to see that growth taper. This might be old news for editors like the ones at my hometown paper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, who held two meetings with their crop of college-aged interns this past summer to ask us how the paper could use the internet to make more money. As a reporter who’s job is to share interesting things with a wide audience, sometimes I forget that the chief job of a newspaper is to make money. And, somewhat paradoxically, it will have to resort to whatever non-news-related gimmicks necessary to attract readers in the twenty-first century.
Wednesday: I attended my second Divinity School Luncheon. If you're on campus and free Wednesdays between noon and 1:30, I strongly urge you to attend. Besides the gamut of speakers from around Chicago (last year I saw photographer, blogger and public school teacher Will Okun, whom you may remember from Nick Kristof's Win-a-Trip contest, speak about the challenges high school students in Chicago face) they serve a fabulous and reasonably priced, home-cooked vegetarian meal.
Natalie Moore, the one-woman wonder of Chicago Public Radio's South Side bureau spoke during the luncheon about the importance of covering local issues for the station.
“I grew up on the South Side, and I didn’t really feel like my community was represented [by the media],” she said. Most news stories were about crime.
“There’s Pilsen, Bronzeville, Beverly, all kinds of neighborhoods very rich in their stories. You just can’t lump the South Side into one category.”
“People would ask me,” She continued, “Why does Public Radio need a bureau on the South Side? No one asked me that question when I worked for a suburban bureau!”
Moore shared sound clips from some of her stories on South Side issues, such as the arrival of a Starbucks and other high-end retail to a neighborhood, the complications of affordable public housing, and unemployment.
The chance to bring a more complex perspective to South Side new coverage wasn’t Moore’s only reason for going on air. Before landing her first radio job with Chicago Public Radio, Moore worked for several newspapers and freelanced.
Her best advice to aspiring print journalists, she said, is to “be nimble,” even if that means writing on the Internet or for radio.
“You want to write? Think about what you want to do, not necessarily whom you want to do it for.”
As an antidote to the lack of jobs in newspapers, Moore thinks young journalists should look to radio. “NPR is hiring. It’s not that newspapers aren’t a good product, but the leadership of public radio in the past 10 years has really gone in a different direction. And at some point, you’re going to have to know how to gather audio for a newspaper’s website anyway.”
Thursday: To kick-off the University’s new Careers in Journalism program, Sheila Solomon, the Chicago Tribune job/intern recruiter, shared her advice on finding a summer internship in the changing media climate. The good news according to Sheila, is that “given what’s going on in the world, good journalism is more important than ever.” The bad news is, if I want to cut my teeth at a major daily newspaper in a large city, I should probably look further than Michigan Ave; the Chicago Tribune isn’t sure it will have the money to host paid interns next year.
Sheila’s advice was vague but uplifting. She didn’t want to get our hopes up or sound too pessimistic about the state of an industry we’re trying to jump headfirst into.
“The Tribune is looking for new,” she said. “We want to continually give readers something else to add more value: layers.”
Layering, Sheila explained, is what happens when a breaking story is posted online, but more information and a different spin on things is present in the paper the next day.
What attracts her most about a job candidate Sheila says, is ingenuity.
“You will have to shoot video and audio for [your paper’s] website. And some newspapers will need you to help them develop that site, if they don’t have much. ”
“Look beyond being a reporter; look beyond being a publisher; invent whatever the next medium is going to be.”
Sunday: according to the NYTimes, newspapers that have been experiencing small but steady growths in their online-revenue (money from selling-ad space) over the past five years are starting to see that growth taper. This might be old news for editors like the ones at my hometown paper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, who held two meetings with their crop of college-aged interns this past summer to ask us how the paper could use the internet to make more money. As a reporter who’s job is to share interesting things with a wide audience, sometimes I forget that the chief job of a newspaper is to make money. And, somewhat paradoxically, it will have to resort to whatever non-news-related gimmicks necessary to attract readers in the twenty-first century.
Wednesday: I attended my second Divinity School Luncheon. If you're on campus and free Wednesdays between noon and 1:30, I strongly urge you to attend. Besides the gamut of speakers from around Chicago (last year I saw photographer, blogger and public school teacher Will Okun, whom you may remember from Nick Kristof's Win-a-Trip contest, speak about the challenges high school students in Chicago face) they serve a fabulous and reasonably priced, home-cooked vegetarian meal.
Natalie Moore, the one-woman wonder of Chicago Public Radio's South Side bureau spoke during the luncheon about the importance of covering local issues for the station.
“I grew up on the South Side, and I didn’t really feel like my community was represented [by the media],” she said. Most news stories were about crime.
“There’s Pilsen, Bronzeville, Beverly, all kinds of neighborhoods very rich in their stories. You just can’t lump the South Side into one category.”
“People would ask me,” She continued, “Why does Public Radio need a bureau on the South Side? No one asked me that question when I worked for a suburban bureau!”
Moore shared sound clips from some of her stories on South Side issues, such as the arrival of a Starbucks and other high-end retail to a neighborhood, the complications of affordable public housing, and unemployment.
The chance to bring a more complex perspective to South Side new coverage wasn’t Moore’s only reason for going on air. Before landing her first radio job with Chicago Public Radio, Moore worked for several newspapers and freelanced.
Her best advice to aspiring print journalists, she said, is to “be nimble,” even if that means writing on the Internet or for radio.
“You want to write? Think about what you want to do, not necessarily whom you want to do it for.”
As an antidote to the lack of jobs in newspapers, Moore thinks young journalists should look to radio. “NPR is hiring. It’s not that newspapers aren’t a good product, but the leadership of public radio in the past 10 years has really gone in a different direction. And at some point, you’re going to have to know how to gather audio for a newspaper’s website anyway.”
Thursday: To kick-off the University’s new Careers in Journalism program, Sheila Solomon, the Chicago Tribune job/intern recruiter, shared her advice on finding a summer internship in the changing media climate. The good news according to Sheila, is that “given what’s going on in the world, good journalism is more important than ever.” The bad news is, if I want to cut my teeth at a major daily newspaper in a large city, I should probably look further than Michigan Ave; the Chicago Tribune isn’t sure it will have the money to host paid interns next year.
Sheila’s advice was vague but uplifting. She didn’t want to get our hopes up or sound too pessimistic about the state of an industry we’re trying to jump headfirst into.
“The Tribune is looking for new,” she said. “We want to continually give readers something else to add more value: layers.”
Layering, Sheila explained, is what happens when a breaking story is posted online, but more information and a different spin on things is present in the paper the next day.
What attracts her most about a job candidate Sheila says, is ingenuity.
“You will have to shoot video and audio for [your paper’s] website. And some newspapers will need you to help them develop that site, if they don’t have much. ”
“Look beyond being a reporter; look beyond being a publisher; invent whatever the next medium is going to be.”
Thursday, October 9, 2008
CSRSOs Hit the Ground Running
Here's my first article for the University Community Service Center's newsletter:
Rachel Cromidas
When first-year Tiera Johnson attended the RSO Fair on Oct. 3, she was overwhelmed by the number of diverse community service organizations to chose from.
“I knew I wanted to do a volunteer program that had to with kids,” Johnson said.
In the end, she joined Friends of Washington Park, an after-school tutoring group that works with children in kindergarten through ninth grade at the School of Social Service Administration (SSA).
UCSC advises nearly 50 community service-related Registered Student Organizations (known as CSRSOs), and more than a dozen of them involve tutoring students from around Chicago. Johnson said she chose to join Friends of Washington Park because the program allows volunteers to work with students of many different ages.
Friends of Washington Park is run by Chicago Youth Programs, a non-profit organization serving at-risk youth in Cabrini Green, Washington Park and Uptown. The program pairs each tutor with one student for the entire year to foster a one-on-one learning environment and create lasting bonds between the programs participants. The program meets every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 5 to 6:30 p.m., and often schedules weekend activities, such as a trip to the Midway ice skating rink, for tutors and their students.
For Andrew Seeder, a fourth-year and co-president of Friends of Washington Park Tutoring , the program has helped him stay in touch with the “real world” during his time at the college.
“There’s more to being 18 to 22 years old than studying for your next midterm,” Seeder said. “Even though this might not relate to my class on Nietszche, I still get an education here.”
Seeder, a Tutorial Studies major, joined the program as a first year and immediately developed a rapport with his tutee, Marquis. “He became a part of my life.”
Malika Krishna, also co-president, shares Seeder’s sentiment about the co-curricular value of their CSRSO.
“I’m an economics major, so a lot of stuff I do is quantitative. It’s nice to come here and get in touch with why we’re doing all that.”
Other mentoring CSRSOs include WYSE, a curriculum-based program that pairs female college students with girls in middle school from Little Village; South Side Scribblers, an organization that teaches creative writing to elementary school students in Hyde Park; Peer Health Exchange and Project Health—both of which are branches of national non-profits and mobilize Uchicago students to educate Chicago’s underserved populations about the health resources available to them.
UChicago students with an interest in policy-making and prevention also have a panoply of options, from environmental groups like Green Awareness in Action (GAIA), to the UChicago branch of Colleges against Cancer, which is planning to host the college’s first 24-hour Relay for Life fundraiser for cancer research this Spring.
One such CSRSO is the Partnership for the Advancement of Refugee Rights (PARR). This new student group, formed in winter of 2008, is engaging human rights issues by connecting UChicago students with Chicago’s refugee community.
According to Aruj Chaudhry, the founding chair and president, PARR is a great organization for students in “all facets of refugee rights work.” This is because PARR is organized into three committees: a Committee on Global Vigilance, a Committee on Community Service, and a Committee on Advocacy and Activism, all of which will work on different projects, Chaudhry, a fourth-year, said.
The Committee on Community Service, for example, is planning to partner students with World Relief, a refugee center offering resettlement aid and legal services, and lead visits to refugees’ homes.
“We will also go up north to do some ESL tutoring,” Chaudhry said. “We want to involve the University community in global and local issues.”
One important aspect of the program, she added, is shared leadership. “Everyone has a chance to lead the meetings. Our mission is mutual education.”
Rachel Cromidas
When first-year Tiera Johnson attended the RSO Fair on Oct. 3, she was overwhelmed by the number of diverse community service organizations to chose from.
“I knew I wanted to do a volunteer program that had to with kids,” Johnson said.
In the end, she joined Friends of Washington Park, an after-school tutoring group that works with children in kindergarten through ninth grade at the School of Social Service Administration (SSA).
UCSC advises nearly 50 community service-related Registered Student Organizations (known as CSRSOs), and more than a dozen of them involve tutoring students from around Chicago. Johnson said she chose to join Friends of Washington Park because the program allows volunteers to work with students of many different ages.
Friends of Washington Park is run by Chicago Youth Programs, a non-profit organization serving at-risk youth in Cabrini Green, Washington Park and Uptown. The program pairs each tutor with one student for the entire year to foster a one-on-one learning environment and create lasting bonds between the programs participants. The program meets every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 5 to 6:30 p.m., and often schedules weekend activities, such as a trip to the Midway ice skating rink, for tutors and their students.
For Andrew Seeder, a fourth-year and co-president of Friends of Washington Park Tutoring , the program has helped him stay in touch with the “real world” during his time at the college.
“There’s more to being 18 to 22 years old than studying for your next midterm,” Seeder said. “Even though this might not relate to my class on Nietszche, I still get an education here.”
Seeder, a Tutorial Studies major, joined the program as a first year and immediately developed a rapport with his tutee, Marquis. “He became a part of my life.”
Malika Krishna, also co-president, shares Seeder’s sentiment about the co-curricular value of their CSRSO.
“I’m an economics major, so a lot of stuff I do is quantitative. It’s nice to come here and get in touch with why we’re doing all that.”
Other mentoring CSRSOs include WYSE, a curriculum-based program that pairs female college students with girls in middle school from Little Village; South Side Scribblers, an organization that teaches creative writing to elementary school students in Hyde Park; Peer Health Exchange and Project Health—both of which are branches of national non-profits and mobilize Uchicago students to educate Chicago’s underserved populations about the health resources available to them.
UChicago students with an interest in policy-making and prevention also have a panoply of options, from environmental groups like Green Awareness in Action (GAIA), to the UChicago branch of Colleges against Cancer, which is planning to host the college’s first 24-hour Relay for Life fundraiser for cancer research this Spring.
One such CSRSO is the Partnership for the Advancement of Refugee Rights (PARR). This new student group, formed in winter of 2008, is engaging human rights issues by connecting UChicago students with Chicago’s refugee community.
According to Aruj Chaudhry, the founding chair and president, PARR is a great organization for students in “all facets of refugee rights work.” This is because PARR is organized into three committees: a Committee on Global Vigilance, a Committee on Community Service, and a Committee on Advocacy and Activism, all of which will work on different projects, Chaudhry, a fourth-year, said.
The Committee on Community Service, for example, is planning to partner students with World Relief, a refugee center offering resettlement aid and legal services, and lead visits to refugees’ homes.
“We will also go up north to do some ESL tutoring,” Chaudhry said. “We want to involve the University community in global and local issues.”
One important aspect of the program, she added, is shared leadership. “Everyone has a chance to lead the meetings. Our mission is mutual education.”
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana, Gary Indiana...
The first thing you think of when you hear the sound of Gary, Indiana is probably the jocular song from the Music Man, but for the University of Chicago chapter of Students for Barack Obama, the phrase to come to mind is Yes We Can!
I and about 37 other students (including my boyfriend, who apparently can in fact get up by 9:15 on a Saturday) took the South Shore Metra down to Gary, Indiana to canvas for Barack Obama. We met volunteers from around northern Indiana at the campaign headquarters. We were trained to help residents fill out absentee ballot forms and to direct them to early-voting polls.
According to the coordinator, we knocked on 550 doors in Gary and distributed dozens of absentee ballot forms. SFBO will make more trips to Indiana on October 11th, 18th and 25th.
For someone like me who is excited by Barack Obama's policy ideas, charisma, and of course his hometown of Hyde Park, IL, the trip to Indiana was at times inspiring and disheartening;
I knocked on more than 40 doors, and almost everyone I spoke to was a strong Obama supporter. However, Gary's turn-out rate has historically been close to 15%. This rate is understandable; most residents commute to Chicag to work, and consequently have trouble making it to the polls between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. If you don't know about absentee or early-voting, you're out of luck come election day.
And suprisingly, at least to me, several of the people I spoke to are Jehovah's Witnesses, and therefore cannot participate in government or even vote. One man scanned over my list of households and said, "I don't vote. He don't vote. But Dwight votes. Talk to him."
The demographics of the neighborhood we hit were almost entirely black. The streets and houses, though suburban, looked quiet and rundown, and it was clear that many people didn't live in one place for long. There is probably some prejudice in this statement, but I cannot wondering how the future of my country could be decided behind these broken windows and rusty screen doors, where the complications of religion and jobs may keep residents from viewing voting as the de facto obligation it is for me. I am appalled but unsuprised that our country would make it harder for these working-class citizens to vote.
UPDATE: my Maroon article about University of Chicago students mobilizing to get out the vote is here.
I and about 37 other students (including my boyfriend, who apparently can in fact get up by 9:15 on a Saturday) took the South Shore Metra down to Gary, Indiana to canvas for Barack Obama. We met volunteers from around northern Indiana at the campaign headquarters. We were trained to help residents fill out absentee ballot forms and to direct them to early-voting polls.
According to the coordinator, we knocked on 550 doors in Gary and distributed dozens of absentee ballot forms. SFBO will make more trips to Indiana on October 11th, 18th and 25th.
For someone like me who is excited by Barack Obama's policy ideas, charisma, and of course his hometown of Hyde Park, IL, the trip to Indiana was at times inspiring and disheartening;
I knocked on more than 40 doors, and almost everyone I spoke to was a strong Obama supporter. However, Gary's turn-out rate has historically been close to 15%. This rate is understandable; most residents commute to Chicag to work, and consequently have trouble making it to the polls between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. If you don't know about absentee or early-voting, you're out of luck come election day.
And suprisingly, at least to me, several of the people I spoke to are Jehovah's Witnesses, and therefore cannot participate in government or even vote. One man scanned over my list of households and said, "I don't vote. He don't vote. But Dwight votes. Talk to him."
The demographics of the neighborhood we hit were almost entirely black. The streets and houses, though suburban, looked quiet and rundown, and it was clear that many people didn't live in one place for long. There is probably some prejudice in this statement, but I cannot wondering how the future of my country could be decided behind these broken windows and rusty screen doors, where the complications of religion and jobs may keep residents from viewing voting as the de facto obligation it is for me. I am appalled but unsuprised that our country would make it harder for these working-class citizens to vote.
UPDATE: my Maroon article about University of Chicago students mobilizing to get out the vote is here.
My Weekend in Photos
Friday: Whole Wheat Pasta with White Bean and Sausage Tomato Sauce
Saturday: One-Year Anniversary; roses, sunflowers, orchids, oh my.
Sunday: Clean-up in Washington Park
Saturday: One-Year Anniversary; roses, sunflowers, orchids, oh my.
Sunday: Clean-up in Washington Park
Saturday, October 4, 2008
As fundraising campaign wraps up, building projects accelerate
My first article of the quarter was printed in the Maroon yesterday. It's about the new building initiatives on campus:
By Rachel Cromidas
The University of Chicago may have wrapped up its $2 billion campaign this August, but the milestone marks only the beginning of a slew of building projects that the campaign will fund and that are poised to transform the University’s campus over the next five years.
In an e-mail sent to students over the summer, President Robert Zimmer announced that the money raised by the Chicago Initiative will supplement a variety of University programs including study abroad and financial aid, as well as the renovation and construction of campus facilities.
Over the next five years, the University plans to renovate Harper Memorial Library and the Searle Chemistry Laboratory, expand the Harris School of Public Policy, and create a new graduate-student residence.
The University also plans to complete the David Logan Arts Center by 2011, on 60th Street between Drexel and Ingleside Avenues. According to University architect Steve Wiesenthal, the Center will have a large auditorium, a black-box theater, and upgraded visual arts studios. This project will follow the construction of the new undergraduate residence hall south of the Midway, another effort that promises to enliven the South Campus.
Another building project in its early stages is a new institute for the physical sciences, which the Board of Trustees approved over the summer.
According to Wiesenthal, the goal of the institute will be to encourage collaboration among the chemical, biological, and physical sciences.
“We want to make new facilities that will meet the current 21st century functional requirements of the physical and computational sciences,” he said.
“More importantly, the center will facilitate cross-disciplinary research.”
Stuart Kurtz, chairman of the computer sciences department, said that the institute’s construction is long overdue. “Most computer science departments have buildings that went up in the ’90s, and ours did too—but it was the 1890s. We need to grow to be competitive, and there’s simply not enough room in Ryerson for us to grow.”
Kurtz added that the old facilities make it difficult for the department to attract post-doctoral candidates.
Rocky Kolb, chair of the department of astronomy and astrophysics and professor in the College, is also looking forward to the institute’s construction.
“We have on campus many people who do astronomy and astrophysics, and we are spread around several buildings on campus. We’re lacking a central location to bring everybody together and foster collaboration,” Kolb said.
The eight-story center will extend to the intersection of 56th Street and Ellis Avenue from the Enrico Fermi Institute.
According to Wiesenthal, the Accelerator Building will be torn down, and the Fermi Institute will be renovated and expanded to the spot where Fermi built his sub-atomic particle accelerator.
Wiesenthal is hoping that the construction of this new institute and the addition of the Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery will help define a new sciences quadrangle on campus.
The Knapp Center, a 330,000-square-foot, 10-story building that broke ground in the fall of 2005 on the northeast corner of Drexel Avenue and 57th Street, will house several research programs in pediatrics, genomics, and system biology. The building is slated for completion next year.
By Rachel Cromidas
The University of Chicago may have wrapped up its $2 billion campaign this August, but the milestone marks only the beginning of a slew of building projects that the campaign will fund and that are poised to transform the University’s campus over the next five years.
In an e-mail sent to students over the summer, President Robert Zimmer announced that the money raised by the Chicago Initiative will supplement a variety of University programs including study abroad and financial aid, as well as the renovation and construction of campus facilities.
Over the next five years, the University plans to renovate Harper Memorial Library and the Searle Chemistry Laboratory, expand the Harris School of Public Policy, and create a new graduate-student residence.
The University also plans to complete the David Logan Arts Center by 2011, on 60th Street between Drexel and Ingleside Avenues. According to University architect Steve Wiesenthal, the Center will have a large auditorium, a black-box theater, and upgraded visual arts studios. This project will follow the construction of the new undergraduate residence hall south of the Midway, another effort that promises to enliven the South Campus.
Another building project in its early stages is a new institute for the physical sciences, which the Board of Trustees approved over the summer.
According to Wiesenthal, the goal of the institute will be to encourage collaboration among the chemical, biological, and physical sciences.
“We want to make new facilities that will meet the current 21st century functional requirements of the physical and computational sciences,” he said.
“More importantly, the center will facilitate cross-disciplinary research.”
Stuart Kurtz, chairman of the computer sciences department, said that the institute’s construction is long overdue. “Most computer science departments have buildings that went up in the ’90s, and ours did too—but it was the 1890s. We need to grow to be competitive, and there’s simply not enough room in Ryerson for us to grow.”
Kurtz added that the old facilities make it difficult for the department to attract post-doctoral candidates.
Rocky Kolb, chair of the department of astronomy and astrophysics and professor in the College, is also looking forward to the institute’s construction.
“We have on campus many people who do astronomy and astrophysics, and we are spread around several buildings on campus. We’re lacking a central location to bring everybody together and foster collaboration,” Kolb said.
The eight-story center will extend to the intersection of 56th Street and Ellis Avenue from the Enrico Fermi Institute.
According to Wiesenthal, the Accelerator Building will be torn down, and the Fermi Institute will be renovated and expanded to the spot where Fermi built his sub-atomic particle accelerator.
Wiesenthal is hoping that the construction of this new institute and the addition of the Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery will help define a new sciences quadrangle on campus.
The Knapp Center, a 330,000-square-foot, 10-story building that broke ground in the fall of 2005 on the northeast corner of Drexel Avenue and 57th Street, will house several research programs in pediatrics, genomics, and system biology. The building is slated for completion next year.
Friday, October 3, 2008
You Are Still Here
Hyde Park, the community surrounding the University of Chicago, has a median household income of $44 thousand per year. This is unsurprising for a college town; the University has a history of supporting neighborhood growth and operates a private police force, and its students and staff constantly take advantage local businesses and real estate.
But compare Hyde Park to the surrounding neighborhoods: Woodlawn, whose borders begin where the south campus ends on 63rd street, has a median household income of $21 thousand; Washington Park, the neighborhood to the west of Cottage Grove, has a median household income of just over $15 thousand.
The University tries to remind entering first-year students of the mixed demographics of their new home the You Are Here documentary presentation and speech by Wallace Goode, college dean and head of the University Community Service Center. But few students have an incentive to travel south of 63rd Street, or west of Cottage Grove, especially when the festivities of the Chinatown, the Loop and the North Side beckon.
I have gotten to know Woodlawn by happy accidents: I covered a tour of Woodlawn by the South Side Solidarity Network student group for the Maroon last autumn, and in the spring my art class (Intervention and Public Practice with Theaster Gates) created an installation/performance piece in an empty lot on 63rd and Woodlawn, giving us the chance to collaborate with and learn from residents of Woodlawn, including the Apostolic Church of God, the wealthy mega church on 64th and Kimbark.
These experiences were worthwhile, first in helping get a sense of how Woodlawn came to look like a high-crime ghost-town when it had a bustling population of 80 thousand a century ago, and later to demonstrate just how difficult it is to connect to a community whose demographics are so different from any I have ever inhabited. Still, I don’t credit any specific University efforts for my accidental introduction to civic engagement.
So I was thrilled to bring five first-year students from my dorm to Washington Park last weekend for the University sponsored Experience Chicago Through Service Day. None of them knew that Washington Park (the neighborhood just beyond the expansive community park we spent the afternoon cleaning) was a food desert, with almost no sources of affordable produce within walking distance of its borders, or that half its residents live at or below the poverty level.
But they did learn that Washington Park is a beautiful, historic space with a large base of community supporters. One such group, the Washington Park Conservancy, supervised us in picking up trash and pruning and mulching trees. I will post some photos later.
While we worked we talked with other community members, including a man who works at the notorious Grove Parc Tenement. After or project was finished, a saxophonist and harmonica player from the annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival, serenaded us.
My first-years had a great time, and some might accompany me back to Washington Park this coming Sunday for another beautifying project with the Conservancy. I sincerely hope this isn’t their last introduction to the areas around the University that don’t look like 57th Street. But until the University finds more reasons for students to invest their time and knowledge into the community, they will have to take the initiative themselves.
But compare Hyde Park to the surrounding neighborhoods: Woodlawn, whose borders begin where the south campus ends on 63rd street, has a median household income of $21 thousand; Washington Park, the neighborhood to the west of Cottage Grove, has a median household income of just over $15 thousand.
The University tries to remind entering first-year students of the mixed demographics of their new home the You Are Here documentary presentation and speech by Wallace Goode, college dean and head of the University Community Service Center. But few students have an incentive to travel south of 63rd Street, or west of Cottage Grove, especially when the festivities of the Chinatown, the Loop and the North Side beckon.
I have gotten to know Woodlawn by happy accidents: I covered a tour of Woodlawn by the South Side Solidarity Network student group for the Maroon last autumn, and in the spring my art class (Intervention and Public Practice with Theaster Gates) created an installation/performance piece in an empty lot on 63rd and Woodlawn, giving us the chance to collaborate with and learn from residents of Woodlawn, including the Apostolic Church of God, the wealthy mega church on 64th and Kimbark.
These experiences were worthwhile, first in helping get a sense of how Woodlawn came to look like a high-crime ghost-town when it had a bustling population of 80 thousand a century ago, and later to demonstrate just how difficult it is to connect to a community whose demographics are so different from any I have ever inhabited. Still, I don’t credit any specific University efforts for my accidental introduction to civic engagement.
So I was thrilled to bring five first-year students from my dorm to Washington Park last weekend for the University sponsored Experience Chicago Through Service Day. None of them knew that Washington Park (the neighborhood just beyond the expansive community park we spent the afternoon cleaning) was a food desert, with almost no sources of affordable produce within walking distance of its borders, or that half its residents live at or below the poverty level.
But they did learn that Washington Park is a beautiful, historic space with a large base of community supporters. One such group, the Washington Park Conservancy, supervised us in picking up trash and pruning and mulching trees. I will post some photos later.
While we worked we talked with other community members, including a man who works at the notorious Grove Parc Tenement. After or project was finished, a saxophonist and harmonica player from the annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival, serenaded us.
My first-years had a great time, and some might accompany me back to Washington Park this coming Sunday for another beautifying project with the Conservancy. I sincerely hope this isn’t their last introduction to the areas around the University that don’t look like 57th Street. But until the University finds more reasons for students to invest their time and knowledge into the community, they will have to take the initiative themselves.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
On the First Debate
I haven’t written a post in a while for a number of reasons: I have been working full-day shifts at the UCSC ensuring that we have a great group of community service-minded first-years to work with, and I have been a little sick.
But none of this stopped me from watching the first presidential debate last night in the dorm’s Rec Room. About 50 new and returning students (a third of the dorm) watched the debate together, and it was clear from the group’s laughter and groans that the University of Chicago is, by and large, turning out in November for Obama.
We thought Obama sounded smart and thoughtful, though he should have remembered Jim Lehrer’s name (“Well, Tom… I mean, John…”); McCain was long-winded about government spending, but didn’t address the financial crisis well; and Lehrer—he needed to give up on orchestrating a presidential debate during which the candidates would actually debate.
It was clear that Lehrer would have preferred the candidates to strip down and mud-wrestle to solve the financial crisis—a topic he kept returning—but I’m willing to settle for the candidates’ re-hashing of talking points for now.
My stances on many of the issues discussed are clear: I believe Obama when he says he will open up talks, on his terms, with non-democratic, “terrorist” governments like Iran and North Korea. I also believe that the U.S. needs to set a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq, though I understand that an immediate withdrawal would only further de-stabilize the region.
And there’s the topic of government over-spending—a problem Republicans traditionally like to pin on Democrats, despite Bush’s steely determination to approve just about every spending bill to go before him during his eight years in office. McCain tried to juxtapose his plans to cut government spending on domestic programs with Obama’s intentions to transform public school programs, alternative energy development and health services, but one comment Obama made stood out: “You are using a hatchet where you need a scalpel,” there are some excellent programs in the U.S. that are under funded, such as early childhood education. This is the kind of discerning, nuanced comment that attracted me to Obama in the first place.
But what I really want to focus on is the way the candidates’ talked about energy policy. It’s good. Four years ago energy independence was not such a catch phrase, and I am happy to here candidates from both parties trying to address this issue.
I think Obama made the clearest case for energy independence last night, when he described his 10-year plan to wean America off foreign oil. He wants to raise the fuel efficiency standards of cars manufactured in the U.S. to compete with Japanese makers.
Obama made this point about Wall street, but I think this kind of thinking applies to the energy crisis as well: “We did not set up a twenty-first century framework to deal with these problems… [Instead, we have] a twentieth-century policy that doesn’t believe in regulation.” Again, there’s nuance to his statement that sounds to me like mature policy-making (as opposed to the kind you write with “a pen that’s very old”).
But I’m also glad that McCain emphasized the creation of nuclear power plants, which would in turn create thousands of new jobs. And like me, McCain does not support ethanol subsidies, which encourages farmers to over produce corn, bringing the prices of corn-based processed food down and good, healthy and cheap vegetables harder and harder to come by.
I’m a college student hesitant to enter the working-world because I see all of these twentieth-century systems breaking down, and a nation unsure how to learn from them. I need a president who resists the dichotomies that the U.S. has consistently relied on post-WWII and is unafraid to take a more complicated point of view in foreign and domestic affairs.
But none of this stopped me from watching the first presidential debate last night in the dorm’s Rec Room. About 50 new and returning students (a third of the dorm) watched the debate together, and it was clear from the group’s laughter and groans that the University of Chicago is, by and large, turning out in November for Obama.
We thought Obama sounded smart and thoughtful, though he should have remembered Jim Lehrer’s name (“Well, Tom… I mean, John…”); McCain was long-winded about government spending, but didn’t address the financial crisis well; and Lehrer—he needed to give up on orchestrating a presidential debate during which the candidates would actually debate.
It was clear that Lehrer would have preferred the candidates to strip down and mud-wrestle to solve the financial crisis—a topic he kept returning—but I’m willing to settle for the candidates’ re-hashing of talking points for now.
My stances on many of the issues discussed are clear: I believe Obama when he says he will open up talks, on his terms, with non-democratic, “terrorist” governments like Iran and North Korea. I also believe that the U.S. needs to set a timetable for troop withdrawal from Iraq, though I understand that an immediate withdrawal would only further de-stabilize the region.
And there’s the topic of government over-spending—a problem Republicans traditionally like to pin on Democrats, despite Bush’s steely determination to approve just about every spending bill to go before him during his eight years in office. McCain tried to juxtapose his plans to cut government spending on domestic programs with Obama’s intentions to transform public school programs, alternative energy development and health services, but one comment Obama made stood out: “You are using a hatchet where you need a scalpel,” there are some excellent programs in the U.S. that are under funded, such as early childhood education. This is the kind of discerning, nuanced comment that attracted me to Obama in the first place.
But what I really want to focus on is the way the candidates’ talked about energy policy. It’s good. Four years ago energy independence was not such a catch phrase, and I am happy to here candidates from both parties trying to address this issue.
I think Obama made the clearest case for energy independence last night, when he described his 10-year plan to wean America off foreign oil. He wants to raise the fuel efficiency standards of cars manufactured in the U.S. to compete with Japanese makers.
Obama made this point about Wall street, but I think this kind of thinking applies to the energy crisis as well: “We did not set up a twenty-first century framework to deal with these problems… [Instead, we have] a twentieth-century policy that doesn’t believe in regulation.” Again, there’s nuance to his statement that sounds to me like mature policy-making (as opposed to the kind you write with “a pen that’s very old”).
But I’m also glad that McCain emphasized the creation of nuclear power plants, which would in turn create thousands of new jobs. And like me, McCain does not support ethanol subsidies, which encourages farmers to over produce corn, bringing the prices of corn-based processed food down and good, healthy and cheap vegetables harder and harder to come by.
I’m a college student hesitant to enter the working-world because I see all of these twentieth-century systems breaking down, and a nation unsure how to learn from them. I need a president who resists the dichotomies that the U.S. has consistently relied on post-WWII and is unafraid to take a more complicated point of view in foreign and domestic affairs.
Monday, September 22, 2008
"In my mind, I'm the biggest sex maniac you ever saw."
That quote was first uttered by boy protagonist Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger's iconic portrait of teen angst, Catcher in the Rye, but it also sounds like something Alexander Portnoy would tell his psychologist. Portnoy is the putz-pulling anti-hero of Portnoy's Complaint, Phillip Roth’s 1969 coming-of-age story. And like Holden, he goes to lengths to free himself from the life plan his parents envision for him.
The friend who recommended Portnoy's Complaint to me described the book as “primarily about masturbation,” and if anything that’s an understatement. But I also think this description misses some of the tragedy in Alex Portnoy’s cheeky, indignant 300-page rant—the rant of a self-hating, New Jersey Jew who grows up dreading his perfection-seeking parents and fetishizing every “shikse goddess” he meets.
Now, Roth is “putting the id back in yid,” again, with his newly released novel Indignation, garnering comparisons to Complaint. This time the indignant Jewish boy is Marcus Messner, a sophomore at a conservative Ohio college, but the last place you would find him is waiting in line with Portnoy’s friends for a blow-job. He describes himself as diligent and responsible, “the nicest boy in the world.” But like Portnoy, who is an effortless straight-A student despite his secret obsessions, Messner’s two goals are to become valedictorian and lose his virginity.
Most interesting about the novel to me is that it’s set during the protagonist’s sophomore year of college, and shares his regrets from beyond the grave. (Not much of a spoiler, but you learn around page 54 that Messner is dead.) It gets me feeling a little fatalistic about my second year of college, because there’s still so much to accomplish.
David Gates gave a meandering review of the book in the NY Times Book Review last Sunday, which can be found here.
Here Roth talks with the Wall Street Journal about naming the book:
WSJ: "Indignation" could be the title of nearly every book you've written. How do you view the indignant?
Mr. Roth: I wouldn't say every book, but I get your meaning. I think people are full of indignation. They walk the streets in indignation, ride the subways with indignation. It's a common, human motive. Do you think I'll get complaints from the indignant?
Predictably it is Marcus's sense of outrage to drive the novel forward, and toward his death.
A fantastic quote by the college's dean of students, after a frat-scene gone awry: "Beyond your dormitories, a world is on fire and you are kindled by underwear."
If anyone reads Indignation, please let me know what you think!
The friend who recommended Portnoy's Complaint to me described the book as “primarily about masturbation,” and if anything that’s an understatement. But I also think this description misses some of the tragedy in Alex Portnoy’s cheeky, indignant 300-page rant—the rant of a self-hating, New Jersey Jew who grows up dreading his perfection-seeking parents and fetishizing every “shikse goddess” he meets.
Now, Roth is “putting the id back in yid,” again, with his newly released novel Indignation, garnering comparisons to Complaint. This time the indignant Jewish boy is Marcus Messner, a sophomore at a conservative Ohio college, but the last place you would find him is waiting in line with Portnoy’s friends for a blow-job. He describes himself as diligent and responsible, “the nicest boy in the world.” But like Portnoy, who is an effortless straight-A student despite his secret obsessions, Messner’s two goals are to become valedictorian and lose his virginity.
Most interesting about the novel to me is that it’s set during the protagonist’s sophomore year of college, and shares his regrets from beyond the grave. (Not much of a spoiler, but you learn around page 54 that Messner is dead.) It gets me feeling a little fatalistic about my second year of college, because there’s still so much to accomplish.
David Gates gave a meandering review of the book in the NY Times Book Review last Sunday, which can be found here.
Here Roth talks with the Wall Street Journal about naming the book:
WSJ: "Indignation" could be the title of nearly every book you've written. How do you view the indignant?
Mr. Roth: I wouldn't say every book, but I get your meaning. I think people are full of indignation. They walk the streets in indignation, ride the subways with indignation. It's a common, human motive. Do you think I'll get complaints from the indignant?
Predictably it is Marcus's sense of outrage to drive the novel forward, and toward his death.
A fantastic quote by the college's dean of students, after a frat-scene gone awry: "Beyond your dormitories, a world is on fire and you are kindled by underwear."
If anyone reads Indignation, please let me know what you think!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
My Last Union-Tribune Article
I've been really busy the last couple of days moving myself and all the first-years back into the dorm. Here's an article I wrote for the San Diego Union-Tribune (where I interned last summer), published yesterday:
By Rachel Cromidas
September 20, 2008
DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO – The Clermont Hotel was a celebrated jazz hotspot in the 1930s, frequented by musicians such as Charlie Parker and Nat King Cole. Today it's a halfway house for parolees.
Now supporters of the runner-up proposal by local developer Robert Green, which includes a plan to restore the Clermont, want the CCDC to make good on its promise to incorporate African-American culture into the project.
Green was first solicited to create a proposal for the site by Larry Sidiropoulos, co-owner of the hotel, in 2006. The plan involved restoring the hotel to the way it looked when it was built in 1887, with wooden exterior lining instead of stucco, Green said. They also discussed creating museum space for the Black Historical Society and signed a franchise agreement with a jazz club owned by the Charlie Parker's family.
The CCDC reviewed seven proposals for the space, including Green's, before selecting the 7th & Market project in March 2007. Development was halted in August pending investigations into Graham's ties to Related.
Before Related was selected, Graham said in a statement that “one prominent feature of the project would be a cultural use and/or performance-art space that celebrates the African-American heritage of the block.”
Said Sidiropoulos, who purchased the hotel in 2004 with two friends, Anthony Laureti and Ashley Abano: “We played by the rules, and we were the runner-up in the selection process. To save time, money and effort for us, the city should start talking to us or enter into an exclusive negotiation agreement for the site.”
CCDC spokesman Derek Danziger said the agency's board has not made any decisions about the future of the site, but it hasn't ruled out the Green plan. “There's got to be some time to resolve any of the outstanding issues going on first.”
The Clermont Hotel was almost demolished in 2000, when the city first considered developing the Seventh Avenue property. The original plan was to build a parking garage, Park It on Market, to accommodate the crowds at nearby Petco Park. The Black Historical Society reacted with alarm.
“It was amazing that the redevelopment agency so wanted to demolish the site to put up a gaudy parking lot. The hotel had quite a history of Jim Crow and racial segregation,” said Karen Huff-Willis, president of the society.
In 2001, the society successfully lobbied to designate the hotel as a historical landmark that could not be torn down.
Huff-Willis remembers a hard-fought struggle with the CCDC for the Clermont Hotel, focused around a debate over whether the hotel was actually segregated. The agency “stooped pretty low,” including calling into question whether the term “colored” in the Yellow Pages really meant black.
Huff-Willis said the Clermont once was one of the largest colored hotels in the downtown, providing elegant rooms to well-known entertainers, including Billie Holiday.
The historical society conducts a weekly Harlem of the West Tour of downtown San Diego.
“We like to point out the very front of the hotel, the room on the bottom floor to the right, where Jelly Roll Morton used to stay,” Huff-Willis said of the famous early jazz pianist. “It was quite a social meeting place in the mid-1930s and '40s.”
However, by the 1970s, the Clermont, later renamed the Coast, was run-down and dangerous. “It had become a drug-infested, very violent place,” Huff-Willis said. “It was notorious, thanks to a couple of murders that occurred there.”
Neighbors considered the building an eyesore and disregarded its history, she added. But Huff-Willis is more optimistic today.
“Now that the so-called 7th & Market project is on hold, the hotel's future is very bright,” she said. “This is an opportunity for the CCDC to maybe bring in a developer that will re-think the project.”
Sidiropoulos agreed. “The process didn't seem fair to us over the last couple of years. Absent a developer's help, we really can't improve the building the way it needs to be.”
Once-famous hotel for blacks has new hopes for inclusion in plans by CCDC
By Rachel Cromidas
September 20, 2008
DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO – The Clermont Hotel was a celebrated jazz hotspot in the 1930s, frequented by musicians such as Charlie Parker and Nat King Cole. Today it's a halfway house for parolees.
Now supporters of the runner-up proposal by local developer Robert Green, which includes a plan to restore the Clermont, want the CCDC to make good on its promise to incorporate African-American culture into the project.
Green was first solicited to create a proposal for the site by Larry Sidiropoulos, co-owner of the hotel, in 2006. The plan involved restoring the hotel to the way it looked when it was built in 1887, with wooden exterior lining instead of stucco, Green said. They also discussed creating museum space for the Black Historical Society and signed a franchise agreement with a jazz club owned by the Charlie Parker's family.
The CCDC reviewed seven proposals for the space, including Green's, before selecting the 7th & Market project in March 2007. Development was halted in August pending investigations into Graham's ties to Related.
Before Related was selected, Graham said in a statement that “one prominent feature of the project would be a cultural use and/or performance-art space that celebrates the African-American heritage of the block.”
Said Sidiropoulos, who purchased the hotel in 2004 with two friends, Anthony Laureti and Ashley Abano: “We played by the rules, and we were the runner-up in the selection process. To save time, money and effort for us, the city should start talking to us or enter into an exclusive negotiation agreement for the site.”
CCDC spokesman Derek Danziger said the agency's board has not made any decisions about the future of the site, but it hasn't ruled out the Green plan. “There's got to be some time to resolve any of the outstanding issues going on first.”
The Clermont Hotel was almost demolished in 2000, when the city first considered developing the Seventh Avenue property. The original plan was to build a parking garage, Park It on Market, to accommodate the crowds at nearby Petco Park. The Black Historical Society reacted with alarm.
“It was amazing that the redevelopment agency so wanted to demolish the site to put up a gaudy parking lot. The hotel had quite a history of Jim Crow and racial segregation,” said Karen Huff-Willis, president of the society.
In 2001, the society successfully lobbied to designate the hotel as a historical landmark that could not be torn down.
Huff-Willis remembers a hard-fought struggle with the CCDC for the Clermont Hotel, focused around a debate over whether the hotel was actually segregated. The agency “stooped pretty low,” including calling into question whether the term “colored” in the Yellow Pages really meant black.
Huff-Willis said the Clermont once was one of the largest colored hotels in the downtown, providing elegant rooms to well-known entertainers, including Billie Holiday.
The historical society conducts a weekly Harlem of the West Tour of downtown San Diego.
“We like to point out the very front of the hotel, the room on the bottom floor to the right, where Jelly Roll Morton used to stay,” Huff-Willis said of the famous early jazz pianist. “It was quite a social meeting place in the mid-1930s and '40s.”
However, by the 1970s, the Clermont, later renamed the Coast, was run-down and dangerous. “It had become a drug-infested, very violent place,” Huff-Willis said. “It was notorious, thanks to a couple of murders that occurred there.”
Neighbors considered the building an eyesore and disregarded its history, she added. But Huff-Willis is more optimistic today.
“Now that the so-called 7th & Market project is on hold, the hotel's future is very bright,” she said. “This is an opportunity for the CCDC to maybe bring in a developer that will re-think the project.”
Sidiropoulos agreed. “The process didn't seem fair to us over the last couple of years. Absent a developer's help, we really can't improve the building the way it needs to be.”
Friday, September 19, 2008
Quick Update. Comment Please!
I've successfully moved back into Snell-Hitchcock (more to come). I also fixed the comments feature so you can now leave comments anonymously, which is sweet if you don't have a blogger profile. Please leave your name or at the very least some identifiable writing style, or else I will not publish your comment.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
What I'm Reading, Plus a Rant
I'm actually not reading anything—I'm finishing my notes on the first-year applicants to the Community Service Leadership Training Corp. (CSLTC) before I interview them next week. Busy, busy.
But if I had the time to read, as you clearly do, here are some NY Times articles on food culture from the week I've been dying to take a bite out of (I know, bad).
Instead of Eating to Diet, They’re Eating to Enjoy: Tara Parker Pope shares an anti-dieting trend that focuses on the quality and variety of food rather than counting calories.
Sorting Through the Claims of the Boastful Egg: Catherine Price demystifies the food that made us ask, "What came first?"
Superfood or Monster From the Deep? Julia Moskin on the sardines in your orange juice and the beets in your peanut butter.
And as promised, the rant. It's not mine; it belongs to our dear old constitutional originalist on the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia. He visited Chicago yesterday and couldn't leave without knocking the U of C's law school for offering "easy" and "exotic" classes.
A gem from his speech: "I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes [in law school], not 'Law and Poverty.'"
Yeah, because who wants to argue twenty-first century poverty when he can agree with eighteenth-century language instead?
But if I had the time to read, as you clearly do, here are some NY Times articles on food culture from the week I've been dying to take a bite out of (I know, bad).
Instead of Eating to Diet, They’re Eating to Enjoy: Tara Parker Pope shares an anti-dieting trend that focuses on the quality and variety of food rather than counting calories.
Sorting Through the Claims of the Boastful Egg: Catherine Price demystifies the food that made us ask, "What came first?"
Superfood or Monster From the Deep? Julia Moskin on the sardines in your orange juice and the beets in your peanut butter.
And as promised, the rant. It's not mine; it belongs to our dear old constitutional originalist on the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia. He visited Chicago yesterday and couldn't leave without knocking the U of C's law school for offering "easy" and "exotic" classes.
A gem from his speech: "I took nothing but bread-and-butter classes [in law school], not 'Law and Poverty.'"
Yeah, because who wants to argue twenty-first century poverty when he can agree with eighteenth-century language instead?
ChicaGoing Back to School
I'm in the San Diego airport waiting for the plane that will take me back to Chicago this afternoon. I brought my October Atlantic Monthly to read during the flight, but I still haven't finished evaluating all the CSLTC first-year applications (10 to go; they're in my carry-on). I'm spending the night at I-House, then moving back into my dorm Friday morning. Needless to say I can't wait to get back.
From whay I've heard, the Masters Assistants are already hard at work, making Snitchcock look lovely and lived-in again in time for Move-in Day.
I checked two large duffle bags full of—you guessed it—clothing, and I have two carry-ons; I almost surpassed the luggage weight limit. I have significantly more faith in the plane's ability to hold it all than in my dormroom closet.
Here are a photos of my closet and the rest of my first-year room, S322. Oddly enough, another girl from San Diego will be living in it next year!
From whay I've heard, the Masters Assistants are already hard at work, making Snitchcock look lovely and lived-in again in time for Move-in Day.
I checked two large duffle bags full of—you guessed it—clothing, and I have two carry-ons; I almost surpassed the luggage weight limit. I have significantly more faith in the plane's ability to hold it all than in my dormroom closet.
Here are a photos of my closet and the rest of my first-year room, S322. Oddly enough, another girl from San Diego will be living in it next year!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
What Your G-nomes Say About You
It’s true. You’re lawn sculptures can reveal a lot about of your personality:
Entrepreneurial
Worldly
Industrious
Cheeky
I'm kidding. This post is about how advances in human genetics are helping us better understand the way we behave.
Though genetics research is fairly young, scientists have already isolated the genes that would predispose people to a host of diseases, among them Alzheimer’s and leukemia. And since researchers connected the gene BRCA-1 to breast cancer, some young women who are positive for the gene have chosen to remove their perfectly healthy breasts.
These tests are rightly prompting people to take preventative measures to protect their health, but they also beg the question, how much about ourselves should we know, and how far should we go to prevent the inevitable?
The genetic research is not all health related. Look at geneticist Dean Hamer's research on the so-called "God Gene" that predisposes people to faith. Hamer's conclusions aren't so clean cut, of course. He also tried to isolate a gene determining homosexuality, but the scientific community has widely deemed sexuality too complex to be determined by either hereditary or external factors alone.
Regardless of inconclusive research, as Olivia Judson points out today on a NY Times blog, it won’t be long before we ask scientists to stop being oracles and start playing God.
Several weeks ago the National Academy of Sciences published a new study about a gene that has been linked to monogamous behavior. By asking Swedish men how often they kiss or spend time with their significant other, the researchers found that Men with one particular variant of the gene scored lower on the test and were statistically more likely to have marital troubles and commitment issues.
Well, a gene test for this one certainly could have saved Carrie Bradshaw some trouble. She might at least have spent less time screening her phone calls if she could screen her men for the “Commitment Gene.” Maybe Miranda was right when she announced, “I'm sorry, but if a man is over 30 and single, there's something wrong with him, it's Darwinian.”
At the very least, this study lends a whole new meaning to the phrase, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
But besides weeding men with low-commitment genetics out of the dating pool, Judson shares another admittedly mischievous thought on the gene: “Could such restlessness be cured one day?”
In other words, could a man chose to take—or be coerced into taking—a pill that would alter his brain chemistry and make him less likely to cheat or get cold feet? Now there’s a thought both serendipitous and scary, especially for young singles who might not be looking at marriage as the holy relationship grail it once was.
Actually, I wonder why they didn’t include women in the study—we’re just as prone to serial monogamy and sleeping around.
The idea of being able to predict and even manipulate someone’s behavior based on their genome is compelling, but the ethical implications are significant-—an evolutionary conundrum of “to be or not to be” proportions. It's the Roamin' Gnome in the undiscovered country. Mix in some Frankestein references and you have my 12th grade English curriculum. I’m curious how science and ethics will intersect in the future as more people face the whips and scorns of genetic-dependent decisions.
Entrepreneurial
Worldly
Industrious
Cheeky
I'm kidding. This post is about how advances in human genetics are helping us better understand the way we behave.
Though genetics research is fairly young, scientists have already isolated the genes that would predispose people to a host of diseases, among them Alzheimer’s and leukemia. And since researchers connected the gene BRCA-1 to breast cancer, some young women who are positive for the gene have chosen to remove their perfectly healthy breasts.
These tests are rightly prompting people to take preventative measures to protect their health, but they also beg the question, how much about ourselves should we know, and how far should we go to prevent the inevitable?
The genetic research is not all health related. Look at geneticist Dean Hamer's research on the so-called "God Gene" that predisposes people to faith. Hamer's conclusions aren't so clean cut, of course. He also tried to isolate a gene determining homosexuality, but the scientific community has widely deemed sexuality too complex to be determined by either hereditary or external factors alone.
Regardless of inconclusive research, as Olivia Judson points out today on a NY Times blog, it won’t be long before we ask scientists to stop being oracles and start playing God.
Several weeks ago the National Academy of Sciences published a new study about a gene that has been linked to monogamous behavior. By asking Swedish men how often they kiss or spend time with their significant other, the researchers found that Men with one particular variant of the gene scored lower on the test and were statistically more likely to have marital troubles and commitment issues.
Well, a gene test for this one certainly could have saved Carrie Bradshaw some trouble. She might at least have spent less time screening her phone calls if she could screen her men for the “Commitment Gene.” Maybe Miranda was right when she announced, “I'm sorry, but if a man is over 30 and single, there's something wrong with him, it's Darwinian.”
At the very least, this study lends a whole new meaning to the phrase, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
But besides weeding men with low-commitment genetics out of the dating pool, Judson shares another admittedly mischievous thought on the gene: “Could such restlessness be cured one day?”
In other words, could a man chose to take—or be coerced into taking—a pill that would alter his brain chemistry and make him less likely to cheat or get cold feet? Now there’s a thought both serendipitous and scary, especially for young singles who might not be looking at marriage as the holy relationship grail it once was.
Actually, I wonder why they didn’t include women in the study—we’re just as prone to serial monogamy and sleeping around.
The idea of being able to predict and even manipulate someone’s behavior based on their genome is compelling, but the ethical implications are significant-—an evolutionary conundrum of “to be or not to be” proportions. It's the Roamin' Gnome in the undiscovered country. Mix in some Frankestein references and you have my 12th grade English curriculum. I’m curious how science and ethics will intersect in the future as more people face the whips and scorns of genetic-dependent decisions.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Out of Print
It was 2:30 p.m. Time to get a new profession.
I said goodbye to my editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune and thanked him for having me as a summer intern. I was about to leave after my last day reporting for the paper’s Metro desk. It was an eye-opening 10 weeks; I learned how to make my writing short and clear; I became less sloppy about crucial details like a person’s age or an event’s location and incurred my first correction; I also met some great people both in and out of the newsroom who are working on inspiring projects.
But all that my editor and the other reporters around the newsroom wanted to know was what my new career choice would be. You know, because there’s no way I could ever go back to journalism after this summer.
“Time to find a new job, right?” “Get out while can.” Reporters halfway between sarcasm and sadness, some of whom I had never even met, passed by my desk in the wake of the paper’s most recent buyout announcement to personally warn me. The industry is dying. “I’m going to go down with the Titanic. I even have the sheet music for it.”
During my two months at the paper, San Diego’s largest daily and one of the last privately-owned newspapers in the country, a lot of what I saw disheartened me: I watched the paper go up for sale. I could literally see the investment banker meeting with the editor-in-chief through her office door minutes before the paper announced it would begin to “explore strategic options.”
I also watched dozens of reporters and editors whisper over who would stay and who go shortly after, when the newspaper announced its third round of buyout offers in two years. This time they wanted to cut at least 30 more people from an already dwindling news staff. The man I shared a desk with, who’s been covering legal affairs for the U-T for years, told me he was staying, but, “I don’t even know what’s going to be left of the paper after this.”
The public editor who interviewed me last December and coordinated my internship told me today that she would be accepting the buyout and heading back into the job market. She isn’t optimistic. I tried to sound cheery as I said goodbye. After all, I’m excited to learn about new business models for journalism, like the nonprofit Pro Publica that’s doing investigative reporting.
But I’ve wanted to get into newspapers since the first time I saw my byline in print. I dressed up as Nelly Bly for my 6th grade biography fair! And I think it might be too late for me to get out—Yes, I’ve spent enough time in the asylum to become as crazy as the inmates. I might just break out into a line or two of “My Heart Will Go On.”
Cheap shot at McCain of the day: How can he say the fundamentals of the economy are strong when fewer and fewer Americans can rely on the security of their jobs?
UPDATE: my former editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune quoted me on his blog. Click the link for his take on the buyouts.
I said goodbye to my editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune and thanked him for having me as a summer intern. I was about to leave after my last day reporting for the paper’s Metro desk. It was an eye-opening 10 weeks; I learned how to make my writing short and clear; I became less sloppy about crucial details like a person’s age or an event’s location and incurred my first correction; I also met some great people both in and out of the newsroom who are working on inspiring projects.
But all that my editor and the other reporters around the newsroom wanted to know was what my new career choice would be. You know, because there’s no way I could ever go back to journalism after this summer.
“Time to find a new job, right?” “Get out while can.” Reporters halfway between sarcasm and sadness, some of whom I had never even met, passed by my desk in the wake of the paper’s most recent buyout announcement to personally warn me. The industry is dying. “I’m going to go down with the Titanic. I even have the sheet music for it.”
During my two months at the paper, San Diego’s largest daily and one of the last privately-owned newspapers in the country, a lot of what I saw disheartened me: I watched the paper go up for sale. I could literally see the investment banker meeting with the editor-in-chief through her office door minutes before the paper announced it would begin to “explore strategic options.”
I also watched dozens of reporters and editors whisper over who would stay and who go shortly after, when the newspaper announced its third round of buyout offers in two years. This time they wanted to cut at least 30 more people from an already dwindling news staff. The man I shared a desk with, who’s been covering legal affairs for the U-T for years, told me he was staying, but, “I don’t even know what’s going to be left of the paper after this.”
The public editor who interviewed me last December and coordinated my internship told me today that she would be accepting the buyout and heading back into the job market. She isn’t optimistic. I tried to sound cheery as I said goodbye. After all, I’m excited to learn about new business models for journalism, like the nonprofit Pro Publica that’s doing investigative reporting.
But I’ve wanted to get into newspapers since the first time I saw my byline in print. I dressed up as Nelly Bly for my 6th grade biography fair! And I think it might be too late for me to get out—Yes, I’ve spent enough time in the asylum to become as crazy as the inmates. I might just break out into a line or two of “My Heart Will Go On.”
Cheap shot at McCain of the day: How can he say the fundamentals of the economy are strong when fewer and fewer Americans can rely on the security of their jobs?
UPDATE: my former editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune quoted me on his blog. Click the link for his take on the buyouts.
When Ike Doesn't Like Us Back
Like many Ohio residents living in and around Columbus, my good friend David has lost electricity in his Kenyon College dorm room thanks to Hurricane Ike. The hurricane roared through the Midwest yesterday, leaving 31 people dead in eight states and More than 1M without power in Ohio Valley.
David called me this morning with what little battery life his cell phone has left to tell me he's doing fine, but won't be able to contact anyone. I thought this blog would be a good place to mention it, since we hopefully have some mutual friends reading me, right guys? David is hoping Kenyon will get power back by midnight, but he said it could take up to a week.
Good luck Ohio!
And for those of us either in Chicago or getting ready to head back for another school year, the city was hit with recorded rainfall (up to eight inches in the northern suburbs) and flooding.
David called me this morning with what little battery life his cell phone has left to tell me he's doing fine, but won't be able to contact anyone. I thought this blog would be a good place to mention it, since we hopefully have some mutual friends reading me, right guys? David is hoping Kenyon will get power back by midnight, but he said it could take up to a week.
Good luck Ohio!
And for those of us either in Chicago or getting ready to head back for another school year, the city was hit with recorded rainfall (up to eight inches in the northern suburbs) and flooding.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
The First 79 Stories Down
I plan to review Thomas Friedman’s new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded for the Midway Review this October, so I’m paying attention to what he has to say about “ET,” Energy Technology, this month in his New York Times columns and television interviews.
Here are some highlights from his interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN this morning:
*On the Georgia-Russia Conflict: “I mean, the worst thing about this story, Fareed, is that you have to kind of defend Putin's Russia, which you really don't want to do. But how would we feel if Russia were striking a deal with Mexico to extend the old Warsaw Pact to the U.S.-Mexico border? I mean, you know, why don't we understand that maybe from Moscow that looks a little unnerving.”
*On America’s Role as a World Superpower: “I think the issue for most Americans, Fareed, is nation- building at home. Americans want nation-building in America -- not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, or not only in Iraq, not only in Afghanistan”
Quoting environmentalist Rob Watson: “If you jump out of an 80-story building, from the 80th floor, for 79 stories you can think you're flying. It's just the sudden stop at the end that gets you."
*On Energy Technology: “Have you ever been to a revolution, Fareed, where no one got hurt? That's the green revolution. In the green revolution, everyone's a winner. Exxon's green. GM's green. They've got a little cap now, a yellow cap on those flex fuel cars that they're making for 10 years -- never told anybody, so they could make more Hummers. Yes, everybody's green now. But when everyone's green, Fareed, that's not a revolution. That's a party.”
FZ: “We can put those nice light bulbs in, drive hybrids. The reality is that China and India's growth is going to consume so much in terms of fossil fuels, that the world is going to get polluted, the price of oil is going to stay high. Is this hopeless in a sense?
TF: No. Young Chinese say to me, "Mr. Friedman, you know, you guys got to grow dirty for 150 years. Now it's our turn." To which I say to them, "Absolutely. You're absolutely right. It's your turn. Grow as dirty as you want, for as long as you want. "Because I think in about five years, by then I'll have invented all the clean power technologies you're going to need as you choke to death. And then we're going to clean your clock in the next great global industry -- ET, energy technology, clean power."
*On the Presidential Election: “Well, if you're interested in whether or not you should have an abortion, this is the campaign for you. But, you know, I've kind of made up my mind on that issue.”
“I thought we were going to have two green candidates, but now we only have one, and his name is Barack Obama. McCain supports lifting the gasoline tax, which would increase pollution and gasoline consumption. He didn’t show up on any of the votes on alternative energy and fuel. He missed all eight votes and the senate bill still hasn’t passed.“
Here are some highlights from his interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN this morning:
*On the Georgia-Russia Conflict: “I mean, the worst thing about this story, Fareed, is that you have to kind of defend Putin's Russia, which you really don't want to do. But how would we feel if Russia were striking a deal with Mexico to extend the old Warsaw Pact to the U.S.-Mexico border? I mean, you know, why don't we understand that maybe from Moscow that looks a little unnerving.”
*On America’s Role as a World Superpower: “I think the issue for most Americans, Fareed, is nation- building at home. Americans want nation-building in America -- not in Iraq, not in Afghanistan, or not only in Iraq, not only in Afghanistan”
Quoting environmentalist Rob Watson: “If you jump out of an 80-story building, from the 80th floor, for 79 stories you can think you're flying. It's just the sudden stop at the end that gets you."
*On Energy Technology: “Have you ever been to a revolution, Fareed, where no one got hurt? That's the green revolution. In the green revolution, everyone's a winner. Exxon's green. GM's green. They've got a little cap now, a yellow cap on those flex fuel cars that they're making for 10 years -- never told anybody, so they could make more Hummers. Yes, everybody's green now. But when everyone's green, Fareed, that's not a revolution. That's a party.”
FZ: “We can put those nice light bulbs in, drive hybrids. The reality is that China and India's growth is going to consume so much in terms of fossil fuels, that the world is going to get polluted, the price of oil is going to stay high. Is this hopeless in a sense?
TF: No. Young Chinese say to me, "Mr. Friedman, you know, you guys got to grow dirty for 150 years. Now it's our turn." To which I say to them, "Absolutely. You're absolutely right. It's your turn. Grow as dirty as you want, for as long as you want. "Because I think in about five years, by then I'll have invented all the clean power technologies you're going to need as you choke to death. And then we're going to clean your clock in the next great global industry -- ET, energy technology, clean power."
*On the Presidential Election: “Well, if you're interested in whether or not you should have an abortion, this is the campaign for you. But, you know, I've kind of made up my mind on that issue.”
“I thought we were going to have two green candidates, but now we only have one, and his name is Barack Obama. McCain supports lifting the gasoline tax, which would increase pollution and gasoline consumption. He didn’t show up on any of the votes on alternative energy and fuel. He missed all eight votes and the senate bill still hasn’t passed.“
Why I Can't Support Sarah Palin
"You have to read this, Rachel,” my mom said, showing me the NYTimes Week In Review. “You’re younger than me, you’re smarter than me, and you’re more articulate than me (Note: it’s times like these when I doubt this the most). You have to be able to speak up to the people who support her!” I know whom she’s referring to. Like a god who’s name need not be uttered to instill reverence or fear, Sarah Palin is the “Her,” the “That woman,” who spent time on every television in my house last week. She’s a moose-killing, pregnant-child-rearing, lipsticked pitbull from Nowhere Alaska, and even my 53 year-old mother in Southern California is afraid of her bark.
Of course, my mom is not the kind of voter McCain was after when he chose Palin as his running mate. She’s pro-choice, anti-war, and pretty indifferent when it comes to marriage as an institution for anyone. She’s also a voracious New York Times reader who grew up on the East Coast and has consistently voted Democratic.
I’m the kind of voter Sarah Palin hopes to lure in, along with the Jesus fish and hockey-moms. I’m young and female, a first-time voter who thinks women could run the world if they would just take their heels off. I’m hopeful about the future (if not then I wouldn’t be writing this). And I want change for this country so we can stay ahead. But I’m not necessarily buying the kind that packages itself as the candidate for “Hope” and “Change.”
John McCain is 72. Reverse those digits and you get the age I will be in eight-years, possibly at the end of Sarah Palin’s second-term as president of the United States. Let me tell you why I don’t think anyone my age should risk that eight-year investment:
She speaks in tongues
It doesn’t bother me that Palin supports the U.S. troops in Iraq (her son will soon be joining them), as long as she listens to advisers who tell her it’s time to pull out. It also doesn’t bother me that Palin is against abortion, or that her 17 year-old daughter Bristol chose to keep her pregnancy. Good for her. As long as Palin will let less-fortunate teenage girls get abortions. But like a Pentecostal preacher channeling a higher power, she’s speaking about these issues in tongues. And this time it’s not God’s language, it’s the Republicans’.
As a student at the University of Chicago, I’m a bit caught up in the growing, libertarian leave-me-alone youth-culture. You know, the idea that people should do whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t harm others. It used to be called conservativism. So I can’t support a candidate who thinks that there is only one way to do things: God’s way. Iraq is not God’s war; it belongs to the Republican Party, whose year 2000 presidential candidate wanted to start it and 2008 presidential candidate wants to continue it. God did not call upon Sarah Palin to run for vice-president, McCain did. And while we’re straightening things out, no, I don’t think Barack Obama is the Democrats’ savior.
The Palin Doctrine
If this My Way or the Highway mentality sounds familiar, that’s because it’s straight from the Bush Doctrine. Sarah Palin didn’t recognize the term when Gibson asked her about it in her first interview, and this supposedly highlights her lack of knowledge and experience when it comes to foreign policy. But she actually knows the doctrine that mired our country in war with a nation that didn’t attack us and spent seven years fear-mongering to unite Americans against “unpatriotic” dissenters very well. She just knows it as the Palin Doctrine, or her instincts.
Palin told Gibson she supports Georgia in its conflict with Russia and wouldn’t mind making Georgia a NATO country (meaning the U.S. would have to go to war with Russia to defend it), Palin and McCain are also still pushing for “victory in Iraq,” and linking the conflict to al Qaeda seven years after 9/11 even though Gen. Petraeus and the Iraqi people are calling for time-tables for troop withdrawal.
She doesn't blink
That’s what Sarah Palin told us of her decision to accept the vice-presidential nomination in her interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson. But that lack of eye-batting has also made her very good at swatting lies right at us.
*She lied about supporting the "bridge to nowhere."
Palin supported the project until it became unpopular and garnered national notoriety, then she spoke out against it.
*She lied about saving Alaskans money by selling the government’s executive plane on eBay. The plane ended up selling at a loss, and now Palin is charging the state for all her trips on commercial airlines, including her trips home.
*She lied about her decisions to fire government workers, including her ex-brother-in-law. Now She’s using her executive power to override the Freedom of Information request made for the emails she exchanged during those firing periods.
Palin v. the Supreme Court
Excuse my ageism (there’s a word that’s taken a backseat to racism and feminism on the Straight Talk Express in the past months), but McCain could die, very soon, and so could several of our venerated but varicose Supreme Court Justices. If this happens, Sarah Palin will likely have the opportunity to influence the courts rulings on reproductive rights, the definition of marriage, and the sanctity of life—all issues that divide the country along religious lines.
I have a lot riding on this election. In the next four years I will graduate college, enter the workforce and face the impending economic recession. I don’t want a pig with lipstick or a woman with egg on her face leading me through the most formative years of my life.
Of course, my mom is not the kind of voter McCain was after when he chose Palin as his running mate. She’s pro-choice, anti-war, and pretty indifferent when it comes to marriage as an institution for anyone. She’s also a voracious New York Times reader who grew up on the East Coast and has consistently voted Democratic.
I’m the kind of voter Sarah Palin hopes to lure in, along with the Jesus fish and hockey-moms. I’m young and female, a first-time voter who thinks women could run the world if they would just take their heels off. I’m hopeful about the future (if not then I wouldn’t be writing this). And I want change for this country so we can stay ahead. But I’m not necessarily buying the kind that packages itself as the candidate for “Hope” and “Change.”
John McCain is 72. Reverse those digits and you get the age I will be in eight-years, possibly at the end of Sarah Palin’s second-term as president of the United States. Let me tell you why I don’t think anyone my age should risk that eight-year investment:
She speaks in tongues
It doesn’t bother me that Palin supports the U.S. troops in Iraq (her son will soon be joining them), as long as she listens to advisers who tell her it’s time to pull out. It also doesn’t bother me that Palin is against abortion, or that her 17 year-old daughter Bristol chose to keep her pregnancy. Good for her. As long as Palin will let less-fortunate teenage girls get abortions. But like a Pentecostal preacher channeling a higher power, she’s speaking about these issues in tongues. And this time it’s not God’s language, it’s the Republicans’.
As a student at the University of Chicago, I’m a bit caught up in the growing, libertarian leave-me-alone youth-culture. You know, the idea that people should do whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t harm others. It used to be called conservativism. So I can’t support a candidate who thinks that there is only one way to do things: God’s way. Iraq is not God’s war; it belongs to the Republican Party, whose year 2000 presidential candidate wanted to start it and 2008 presidential candidate wants to continue it. God did not call upon Sarah Palin to run for vice-president, McCain did. And while we’re straightening things out, no, I don’t think Barack Obama is the Democrats’ savior.
The Palin Doctrine
If this My Way or the Highway mentality sounds familiar, that’s because it’s straight from the Bush Doctrine. Sarah Palin didn’t recognize the term when Gibson asked her about it in her first interview, and this supposedly highlights her lack of knowledge and experience when it comes to foreign policy. But she actually knows the doctrine that mired our country in war with a nation that didn’t attack us and spent seven years fear-mongering to unite Americans against “unpatriotic” dissenters very well. She just knows it as the Palin Doctrine, or her instincts.
Palin told Gibson she supports Georgia in its conflict with Russia and wouldn’t mind making Georgia a NATO country (meaning the U.S. would have to go to war with Russia to defend it), Palin and McCain are also still pushing for “victory in Iraq,” and linking the conflict to al Qaeda seven years after 9/11 even though Gen. Petraeus and the Iraqi people are calling for time-tables for troop withdrawal.
She doesn't blink
That’s what Sarah Palin told us of her decision to accept the vice-presidential nomination in her interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson. But that lack of eye-batting has also made her very good at swatting lies right at us.
*She lied about supporting the "bridge to nowhere."
Palin supported the project until it became unpopular and garnered national notoriety, then she spoke out against it.
*She lied about saving Alaskans money by selling the government’s executive plane on eBay. The plane ended up selling at a loss, and now Palin is charging the state for all her trips on commercial airlines, including her trips home.
*She lied about her decisions to fire government workers, including her ex-brother-in-law. Now She’s using her executive power to override the Freedom of Information request made for the emails she exchanged during those firing periods.
Palin v. the Supreme Court
Excuse my ageism (there’s a word that’s taken a backseat to racism and feminism on the Straight Talk Express in the past months), but McCain could die, very soon, and so could several of our venerated but varicose Supreme Court Justices. If this happens, Sarah Palin will likely have the opportunity to influence the courts rulings on reproductive rights, the definition of marriage, and the sanctity of life—all issues that divide the country along religious lines.
I have a lot riding on this election. In the next four years I will graduate college, enter the workforce and face the impending economic recession. I don’t want a pig with lipstick or a woman with egg on her face leading me through the most formative years of my life.
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