AmbivaBlog

Time Warp

It's a hot Saturday afternoon, Memorial Day weekend in Chapel Hill, but we're in burning Bucharest in the middle of a night in December 1989. 

Jacques started asking me what happened to Ceausescu, Romania's Stalinist dictator, and where we were when it happened. We were in New York, watching the events of his overthrow astonished on TV -- and taping it.  I dug up the tape and we're playing it.  There are the roaring crowds filling plazas from shore to shore, the smoking torches, flags with a hole cut in the center, the jubilant announcement that Ceausescu had been caught, attempting to flee the country for China or Iran.  It meant the world to me at the time; now it seems archaeologically remote.

Jacques of course thinks it just happened-- he's watching it, isn't he? -- and that we barely got out in time.  I haven't written much about him and us lately, because he's been on a plateau, holding his own, fluctuating a little, but making some progress physically -- this morning he grabbed the walker and stood up three times with no assistance at all; I didn't touch any part of him.  First time in, oh, six months? 

This is largely --no, it is solely -- due to the perseverance of his Feldenkrais teacher, who has worked tirelessly with him, recommended a gym for strength work once a week and a warm pool with a water wheelchair for weightless walking practice; borrowed or loaned us all kinds of apparatus (a lift chair, a rocking chair, a bath bench, a gizmo you can sit in a chair and pedal). We're both kind of passive; I feel as if I should carry on her good work with him on the days when we don't see her, but most of the exercise I do with him centers around "activities of daily living" -- stand up so I can pull your pants up kind of thing.  I am disorganized and undisciplined, tend to get online and read, communicate and blog in the morning,when he's asleep, which is the only time I can make progress on my writing-for-hire jobs.  I need to get up and work while he sleeps, then get him up and do something fun and active with him, wear him out so he goes back to sleep and I can work some more.  On the days when he has a scheduled appointment it pretty much works that way. 
'
Days we're alone together all day, I falter under the burden that he cannot do anything -- even brush his teeth, shave, turn over or sit up in bed -- unless I do it with, to, or for him; and I quail at the physical and logistical labor involved in getting him up, dressed, into his chair, into the van.  When I let him lie around and watch TV so I can get work done, I feel gnawing guilt and worry that he's losing ground.  Or if he's feeling well, there is constant interruption because he wants to converse and interact -- which is good!  Since he's been better, he's better company and more demanding, both.  And a third thing:  he's disorienting because he's disoriented.  I'm constantly having to be his bridge to the 21st century, to remind him (repeatedly and in vain) that he's not in New York in 1965 or Romania in 1940, but in Chapel Hill in 2007, and after a while the latter begins to seem unreal to me, too.

We just had this conversation:  "You had a nice shave today."  (By me, with the electric.)

"Your husband shaved me."

"My husband?  You're my husband. . . . Who do you think I am?"

(Incredulous scowl)  "ANNIE!  But . . . who's the guy in your life with the blue hat?"

Oh well, it's sundown.  And we've already been to Bucharest and back.  And, hallelujah, he's sitting up and clipping his own nails.

Forewarned Is Fartshadikt.*

This speaks for itself.

WASHINGTON — Two months before the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies twice warned the Bush administration that establishing a democracy there would prove difficult and that Al Qaeda would use political instability to increase its operations, according to a Senate report released Friday.

The report, issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee, brought to light once-classified warnings that accurately forecasted many of the military and political problems the Bush administration and Iraqi officials have faced since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

These warnings were distributed to senior officials with daily access to President Bush and others at the very top of the administration, the report states.

Although many names were left blank to protect members of the intelligence community, the report's 81-page list of who received the predictions included figures throughout the national security bureaucracy.

One of those was then-deputy national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley, now the national security advisor.

Reaction to the report is (guess what!) divided along party lines (although Snowe and Hagel joined the Democratic majority on the committee in approving its release, 10-5):

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), said the report demonstrated that "the intelligence community gave the administration plenty of warning about the difficulties we would face if the decision was made to go to war."

He added: "These dire warnings were widely distributed at the highest levels of government, and it's clear that the administration didn't plan for any of them." [...]

The committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, criticized the report, saying that it highlighted only elements that seemed important in retrospect and that it distorted what was presented to policymakers in 2003.

He said the committee's inquiry into the intelligence community's prewar assessments "has become too embroiled in politics and partisanship to produce an accurate and meaningful report."

At a news conference Thursday, Bush was asked about the impending release of the report. He responded that "going into Iraq, we were warned about a lot of things, some of which happened, some of which didn't happen.

"I weighed the risks and rewards of any decision," he said, reiterating his view that removing Saddam Hussein from power was worth the price.

Bush also said, "Al Qaeda is going to fight us wherever we are."

Bush is right that not all the report's predictions came true:

One assessment disclosed in the Senate report missed the mark; it predicted that heightened terrorist threats worldwide stemming from the war would decline, after an initial spike, in three to five years after the invasion. That decline has not occurred, according to State Department officials who monitor such threats.

*Yiddish:  "Confused, bewildered, befuddled, as if by fumes, gas."

Penis Envy.

"I'd rather be able to use my own body to write my name in the snow."

Michael Moore Cleans Up His Act.

On Bill Maher, Moore looks a lot less like an unmade bed after a three-day bender.  He still has a double chin, but his hair is neatly cut and shiny, his skin is actually approachable, and he appears to have shaved.  He says that in the course of making "Sicko," a film that blames the shamefully poor quality of American health care ("slightly ahead of Slovenia") largely on the greed of insurance companies, he realized that it was hypocritical not to be taking better care of himself, and that doing so would be a way to "beat the system."   He started walking for half an hour a day, and "discovered these things called fruits and vegetables!  Amazing!"  He recommends to "Midwestern guys like me who will never go on a diet or join an aerobics class" that they "get up and move around, turn off the TV," and try eating a few new things.

He reports with consternation that Republicans approached him after the new film aired at Cannes and shook his hand.  He likes Al Gore for president (one of the subjects that comes up in the new Ann 'n' Annie Show at Bloggingheads, which will probably be up sometime Sunday). 

Font of (Provisional) Wisdom.

Courier. Amazing how many writers prefer to compose in it -- the idea of the typewriter as humble craftsman's tool, enshrined in the writer's mind.

Jonathan Lethem: I dislike the temptation of making a raw draft look like it's already typeset. Before computers, I wrote three novels on a typewriter, and there can never be anything but 12-point Courier (double-spaced) forever: I write on an eternal Selectric of the mind.

Nicholson Baker: The main thing [...] is to use some nonproportional typewriter-style font—you need the sentences to look their worst until the dress rehearsal of the galleys . . .

Kind of the way ballerinas rehearse in ratty old leg warmers and T-shirts that say "Pig-Out Market Bar-B-Q."

Luc Sante:  I like Courier because it seems provisional—I can still change my mind—whereas Times New Roman and its analogues look like book faces, meaning that they feel nailed down and immovable.

Andrew Vachss:  Since I cannot control the font the (eventual) publisher selects, what do I care how it looks on my screen? Courier 12 is the Type-O blood of fonts [...] Not only is it the easiest to convert, it's the least pretentious, so the writing has to stand (or not) on its own.

Anne Fadiman: Although it's a thrill to see my words printed in [...] elegant fonts, I'd never actually write in them. I'd be afraid that my prose would become too precious [...]  I attempt to counter my natural tendency to overwrite by printing out my work in an aggressively foursquare version of Times Roman.

Caleb Crain: Obsessing about fonts is a form of procrastination, so of course I have indulged in it [...] My goal has always been a legible font with a neutral personality, as appropriate to flower arranging as to triple homicides. No fussiness and no quirkiness.

Maile Meloy: [W]hen I finally got a hand-me-down Macintosh, I developed a deep and grateful attachment to Times. It had the look of honesty about it [...B]y now I'm so used to Times that other fonts look strange and unfamiliar. It might as well be my own handwriting on the page.

There's more.  Writers, of course, impute personality and specific sensuous qualities to different fonts.  Anne Fadiman finds Garamond "precious," but judge-author Richard Posner likes it.  Another favorite:  Palatino.

I never got attached to Courier because I never composed on a typewriter; I went straight from writing by hand to the computer, and there was no reason not to compose in a typeface that was clear and pleasant to look at -- with serifs, which, if they're not too ornate, give a font the timelessly traditional quality of Shaker furniture.  Without serifs the letters are too slick and industrial-looking, like Bauhaus furniture made from metal tubing.  I used Palatino for a long time, but it always seemed too small and conservative to me.  Now I use Lucida Bright.   

"[M]any people really like Americans."

Locals would cross the street, smiling, and ask, "Are you American?" If I sat down [...] young people would come up to talk about culture and life in the States. They all had satellite dishes. "Sure, they're illegal," they'd say, "but everyone on my street has one." One young bearded man told me he particularly enjoyed The Simpsons but was baffled by Fox News. Students gave me their e-mail addresses—Yahoo and Hotmail—wondering if I would help with their English homework. "Can you tell me what American writers to read?" asked one youth.

This is Iran.

Hillary, Obama Vote "No" On War Funding Bill

Because it lacks a timeline for troop withdrawal.

Given that the bill was going to pass, this was a purely symbolic, base-stroking gesture.  If the vote had been a squeaker, do you think these two would have voted this way?  Could it even have been a coordinated strategy:  the majority agrees to vote for the bill so that the top candidates can symbolically vote against it?

Rudy's Pros and Cons

In The New Republic Online (free registration required), Thomas B. Edsall writes about Mayor Giuliani's surprising positives -- and persistent negatives. 

On the positive side, Edsall asserts, the influence of old-guard social conservatives in the Republican party is waning.  It's not that most rank-and-file Republican voters are tolerant, like Rudy, towards abortion and gay marriage -- on the contrary.  But those issues have been pushed into the background by three that take precedence:  September 11 (which Rudy "owns" like no one else) and toughness in the war on terror; tax cuts (especially important to the Republican élite who superfund campaigns); and managerial competence.  Rudy may do surprisingly well in a primary state like South Carolina, because -- as a Georgia pollster not affiliated with any campaign told Edsall -- "Giuliani is an authentic American hero, and Southerners love American heroes."  His campaign also has a very sizable Texas wing, which neither McCain nor Romney can boast.

On the negative side, of course, there's Rudy's advocacy of gun control as well as his social liberalism and personal peccadilli.  But beyond that, the TNR article is hostile towards Giuliani from a populist, social-justice point of view, and as selectively fact-based propaganda it was successful in turning this centrist-voting New Yorker's stomach.  For example:

• Polarization.  Rudy is a master of it, and has hired other masters of it who apprenticed under Karl Rove.  Rather than seeking to bridge or diminish the gulf between the two Americas, Rudy rallies his people by the hatred of liberalism.  What he said at a recent New Hampshire rally is true enough:

To hear him tell it, the election will pit weak-kneed Democrats against hard-line Republicans. "I listen a little to the Democrats, and, if one of them gets elected, we are going on defense," he recently told an audience in New Hampshire. "We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation, and we will be back to our preSeptember 11 attitude of defense."

That sounds, however, as if he will hew to the Bush-Gonzales line on civil liberties and torture -- his famous "authoritarian streak" -- and we centrists want a candidate who will find the difficult balance between fiercely protecting us and protecting who we are.

• Heartless hypercapitalism.  Even people who believe in self-reliance and personal responsibility might find this a bit much, and out of touch:

A Weekly Standard article recently quoted Giuliani as saying that Democrats want "a no-risk society." Explaining his opposition to health care mandates, he said, "We've got to let people make choices. We've got to let them take the risk--do they want to be covered? Do they want health insurance? Because ultimately, if they don't, well, then, they may not be taken care of. I suppose that's difficult."'

• Sucky personal family values.  Giuliani "loves to say 'no government program can replace fatherhood'"; meanwhile, his own son hasn't spoken to him for a year -- fallout from his ugly public brawl with his kids' mother, ex-wife number two, Donna Hanover.

• High living on the speaking-engagement trail. Rudy gets $100,000 a pop, but, Edsall reports, his demands don't stop there:

[H]is contract [...] includes the following language: "[T]he private aircraft MUST BE a Gulfstream IV or bigger. ... The client agrees to supply two large sedans or SUVs and 1 van for luggage. ... Client agrees to provide Mr. Giuliani with a pre-registered, large, two-bedroom, non-smoking suite with a king-sized bed, on an upper floor, with a balcony and a view, if applicable."

• Icky friends.  Rudy continues to defend a childhood pal who is a priest accused of ("gentle") pedophilia.  Then there's Bernie Kerik.  As one personally acquainted with Judith Regan, I couldn't help getting a Schadenfreude kick out of this:

[A]ccording to Kerik's former girlfriend, the book publisher Judith Regan, this friendship could come back to haunt Giuliani's campaign. She told one of my TNR colleagues that Kerik and Giuliani would frequently discuss "sketchy" activities in her presence "as if I weren't there." Regan told my colleague that she would reveal the contents of the conversations in the event that Giuliani's presidential campaign took off. (Of course, Regan has her own scandal-ridden past. But she also has enough p.r. acumen and notoriety to win an audience for her accusations.)

Only a woman could be such a loose cannon.  I love it.

I was in New York on September 11, and if you were, you can't help loving Rudy in spite of it all.  If he's the candidate, running against Hillary, I will vote for him -- but with a heavier heart than before I read this piece (the first, I'm sure, of many more to come).  Politicians are like restaurant food:  you don't want to know too much about what's in them.

"The failure of genetic determinism."

Is this the next frontier in biology?  Richard Strohman thinks so.  He's professor emeritus of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and he has a book coming out called The End of the Genetic Paradigm (which has, however, been "soon to be published" for about 8 years).

When the highly anticipated sequencing of the human genome was completed in February, a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle announced: "Genome Discovery Shocks Scientists." The discovery was that many fewer genes were found (30,000) for the human genome than had been expected (100,000), and discussion focused on the wonder of it all: that a fertile human egg could create such a different organism than a mouse egg, where the human egg had only 300 unique genes not found in the mouse. [...]

If the program for life is not in our genes, then where is it, and what is it? Many of us have been saying for years that there is no program in the sense of an inherited, pre-existing script ready to be read. Rather, inside each cell there are regulatory networks of proteins that function to sense or measure changes in the cellular environment and interpret those signals so that the cell makes an appropriate response.

 

[G]enetics alone does not tell us who we are, or who we can or will be. The new findings of epigenetic or dynamic regulatory systems in cells describe an information management system that we have known about for quite a while but are only now beginning to understand. While, as [the late Stephen Jay] Gould says, the genetic reductionist theory has collapsed, the epigenetic, or dynamic, point of view retains genetics as part of a new theory or paradigm for life, one that has striking implications for the future of the life sciences. [...]

[W]e do not now how organisms make themselves. We are still, as many developmental biologists have said, in the dark ages about how organisms regulate their genomes to produce adults. [...]

We thought the program was in the genes, and then in the proteins encoded by genes. But [...] knowing all the individual proteins would not reveal a program; for that you need to know the rules of protein networks that are coextensive with the cell itself. The program location is the cell as a whole, and the cell, through signaling pathways, is connected to larger wholes and to the external world.

Another case of "the more you know, the more you realize how little you know."

Turning 50, VI: Nature Is Your Best Friend ... NOT.

I'm skipping ahead to the last of these essays (which I wrote about 9 years ago, in my early 50s), because I was really kind of on a roll when I wrote this one.  I'll still go back and fill in the missing 3 -- on the death of youth, the effects of gravity, and the contemplation of cosmetic surgery -- and put them all in a sidebar, soon.

*******************

You've noticed how I take a nasty little swipe at Nature every chance I get.  This is a whole new attitude for me.  In fact, it's a 180.  It is the fury of a lover scorned.

I come from a generation of notorious nature-worshipers.   In reaction to the crude techno-exuberance of the 'Fifties -- decade of DDT, the tailfin and  the mushroom cloud -- the 'Sixties counterculture had no higher word of praise than "natural."  If you were a hippie, that was the statement made by your long hair and/or untrimmed beard; if you were black, it was the other name for your Afro.  Hair clippers were the personal-grooming equivalent of bulldozers:  diabolical devices that destroyed in the name of improvement.  Nature's pristine creations, we believed, needed no improving.  Nature was innocent and good.  Nature could do no wrong.  It was the drive to control and dominate Her that was evil.

A young urban journalist in real life, I was a hippie wannabe and armchair back-to-the-lander:  my tiny Manhattan studio apartment was piled high with back issues of the Mother Earth News.  I reviewed ecology books and wrote reverently about Indians and whale-watching.  My childbirth, needless to say, was going to be natural; my medicine, natural (in the unlikely event that there was anything a natural lifestyle couldn't prevent); my diet whole-grain, vegetarian, organic; my far-off old age, sage and serene.  I pictured myself one day gazing out over the Earth with a face wise and weathered as a Navaho grandmother's, peacefully awaiting my return to Her.

So what's wrong with this picture?  Don't we live better, and probably longer, when we learn to work with, not against, nature?  Sure.  I'm grateful not to have PCBs in my drinking water, and impressed by what homeopathy has done for my cat.  You won't see a "Nuke the Whales" bumper sticker on my car.  But neither will you find me throwing any ceremony to celebrate my "cronehood."  Like the frosts and pests that drove most real back-to-the-landers back to the city, the oh-so-natural aging process will disabuse you of any lingering sentimentality about Nature.  Turns out it's easy to be a nature-worshiper when you're young, because it's a mutual-admiration society:  nature worships you, too.  But it's nothing personal -- a fact that is artfully concealed from you as long as nature has a use for you.