el cuarteto de nos

El Cuarteto de Nos is in heavy rotation chez H&L. They're a band that Leo "discovered" a few years after his cousin Javier recommended them.

Cuarteto is the oldest active Uruguayan band and has gained praise by transcending local culture through universal themes and engaging everyday pathos in a humorous light.

Here are some of our favorite songs ...

Ya No Sé Qué Hacer Conmigo

Ya tuve que ir obligado a misa, ya toque en el piano "Para Elisa"
ya aprendí a falsear mi sonrisa, ya caminé por la cornisa.
Ya cambié de lugar mi cama, ya hice comedia ya hice drama
fui concreto y me fui por las ramas, ya me hice el bueno y tuve mala fama.

Ya fui ético, y fui errático, ya fui escéptico y fui fanático
ya fui abúlico, fui metódico, ya fui impúdico y fui caótico.
Ya leí Arthur Conan Doyle, ya me pasé de nafta a gas oil.
Ya leí a Bretón y a Moliere, ya dormí en colchon y en somier.
Ya me cambié el pelo de color, ya estuve en contra y estuve a favor
lo que me daba placer ahora me da dolor, ya estuve al otro lado del mostrador.

Y oigo una voz que dice sin razón
"Vos siempre cambiando, ya no cambiás más"
y yo estoy cada vez más igual
Ya no se que hacer conmigo.

Ya me ahogué en un vaso de agua , ya planté café en Nicaragua
ya me fui a probar suerte a USA, ya jugué a la ruleta rusa.
Ya creí en los marcianos, ya fui ovo lacto vegetariano.
Sano, fui quieto y fui gitano, ya estuve tranqui y estuve hasta las manos.
Hice el curso de mitología pero de mi los dioses se reían.
orfebrería lo salvé raspando y ritmología aqui la estoy aplicando.

Ya probé, ya fumé, ya tomé, ya dejé, ya firmé, ya viajé, ya pegé.
Ya sufrí, ya eludí, ya huí, ya asumí, ya me fuí, ya volví, ya fingí, ya mentí.
Y entre tantas falsedades muchas de mis mentiras ya son verdades
hice fácil adversidades, y me compliqué en las nimiedades.

Y oigo una voz que dice con razón
"Vos siempre cambiando, ya no cambiás más"
y yo estoy cada vez más igual
Ya no se que hacer conmigo.

Ya me hice un lifting me puse un piercing, fui a ver al Dream Team y no hubo feeling
me tatué al Che en una nalga, arriba de mami para que no se salga.
Ya me reí y me importó un bledo de cosas y gente que ahora me dan miedo.
Ayuné por causas al pedo, ya me empaché con pollo al spiedo.

Ya fui psicólogo, fui al teólogo, fui al astrólogo, fui al enólogo
ya fui alcoholico y fui lambeta, ya fui anonimo y ya hice dieta.
Ya lancé piedras y escupitajos, al lugar donde ahora trabajo
y mi legajo cuenta a destajo, que me porté bien y que armé relajo.

Y oigo una voz que dice sin razón
"Vos siempre cambiando, ya no cambiás más"
y yo estoy cada vez más igual
Ya no se que hacer conmigo. (bis)

Nada Es Gratis En La Vida (Note: Not a music video, it's a series of Argentine photos laced with social commentary and futbol, but the song quality is pretty decent.)

Mamá compró y se le rompió
El forro del que naci yo
La plata no pudo juntar
Y el embarazo cancelar

Ella invirtió en mi educación
Pero con una condición
Porque le tuve que jurar
Que de vieja no la iba a internar

Dificil de creer
Dificil de explicar
Dijo un troyano ojo con un griego que trae regalos
Sea con dinero o no
Siempre se paga un favor
Y si veo que algo es facil
Yo dudo enseguida

Pague antes o despues
La cuenta va a aparecer
Y esta claro de que nada es gratis en la vida

Papá pago una mina en un bar
Cuando me llevo a debutar
Y por curarme se endeudó
De la peste que me contagió

Sí sí ya se
Esperma done
Pero pobrecito el destinatario
Yo tengo alzheimer hereditario

Y como el jefe comento
Despues que mi sueldo aumento
Si la limosna es de cuatía
Hasta el santo desconfía

Sea con dinero o no
Siempre se paga un favor
Y si veo que algo es facil
Yo dudo enseguida

Pague antes o despues
La cuenta va a aparecer
Y esta claro de que nada es gratis en la vida

Si sera asi que lo jodi
Al diablo cuando le vendi
Mi alma que no vale un billete
Se la canjee por un clarete

Ni honorario ni voluntario
Soy un sicario y cobro salario
Y no pidan solidaridad
Que yo no hago caridad

No es gratis mi salud
Ni gratis sera mi ataud
Si es que no pide su tajada
Es que no vale nada

Sea con dinero o no
Siempre se paga un favor
Y si veo que algo es facil
Yo dudo enseguida

Pague antes o despues
La cuenta va a aparecer
Y esta claro de que nada es gratis en la vida

... nada es gratis en la vida
... nada es gratis en la vida
... nada es gratis en la vida
... nada es gratis en la vida

Hoy Estoy Raro

Hoy estoy raro, y no entiendo por qué,
Si nada extraño me tuvo a maltraer.
Hoy estoy raro, no sé lo que hacer.

Será que hoy me puse a recordar
los días de mi infancia cuando siempre estaba mal
hijo único de la casualidad
mi padre era hippie y mi madre era punk

Ah, capaz...fue por esa niñera
que para que no llorara ponía en mi mamadera
valium, y salio un día con sus amigos
y volvió con esa manga de drogados,
y acelerados, en un rito satánico
después de torturar a mi hamster cocinaron.
Fue un infierno, me lo hicieron probar.
¡Y no era tierno!

Depende, ahí yo era un jopende,
como dijo mi tío que es un tipo que me entiende:
el que no sufre no aprende,
y ahí me bajó un diente de una patada
y me robó la plata que el ratón dejó bajo mi almohada.
Todos se reían cuando arrastraba la erre.
Mi abuela me pedía que si moría no la entierre
y que subiera más:
"Quizás, quizás, quizás"

Hoy estoy raro, y no entiendo por qué
si nada extraño me tuvo a maltraer
Hoy estoy raro no se lo que hacer.
Sentarme a esperar, que se me pase y chau

Y ta, capaz, fue que quede marcado
por ser hijo de padres divorciados.
¡Qué tarado!, no lo había pensado,
pero si fuera así todos seriamos traumados.

Y yo a media luz, ponía un blues
y la abuela a Jesús le pedía que Gardel
no fuera de Toulousse.
Yo pinchaba con su cruz, los granos de pus
por mi alergia al mousse.

Achus!!! Será que fui a cenar
con la novia de mi padre,
que me invitó pero me hizo lavar las cacerolas,
y al ver que mi hermana desfilaba medio en bolas
me dijo: Mirá, las modelos son todas trolas.

Y se enfurece,
¡justo ella!, que cuando toma se emputece.
Me tuve que rajar cuando después del cuarto vino
me empezó a toquetear
y se rió y le vino...hipo

Y me contó como anticipo
que va a dejar al viejo por el tipo
que le pagó la lipo.
Será por eso que estoy sensible,
la vida es impredecible.

Hoy estoy raro, y no entiendo por qué,
si nada extraño me tuvo a maltraer.
Hoy estoy raro no se lo que hacer.
Sentarme a esperar, que se me pase y chau

Capaz que no le hizo gracia
al de la farmacia
cuando dije que yo defiendo a muerte a la eutanasia.
Decía que si todos se morían se fundía,
y me tiró con un frasco de homeopatía.

O en una de esas,
como decía el peyote estoy mal de la cabeza.
Pero no, el doctor que me curó me juró
que la herida del frascazo en la nuca ya cicatrizó.

Será ese copetín que tomé en el cafetín,
picando un salamín, escuchando led zepellin
o fue esa moza, con pinta de viciosa
que de babosa echó en mi vaso alguna cosa

¡Qué pedazo de guaso!
Si rompió el vaso
cuando mi faso
le quemó el brazo,
y por mi torpeza
dejó el barril gigante de cerveza mal cerrado
y el bar quedó inundado.
Qué acertado,
pensar que yo me quise levantar a la nami
hablando del tsunami,
y baldeando me dijo: "¿Viste? Volvé por donde viniste,
el cielo no existe".

Hoy estoy raro, y no entiendo por qué
si nada extraño me tuvo a maltraer.
Hoy estoy raro no se lo que hacer.
Sentarme a esperar, que se me pase y chau.

Pobre Papá

Papito tiene que ir a trabajar
no quiere
papá no quiere ir
pero tiene que ir igual
papito dice si es lo q papi adora
papito no nació para las 8 horas

Papá no quiere trabajar
pero lo obligan
papito prefiere quedarse panza arriba
papito quiere una vida mas relajada
papá quiere quedarse en casa
y no hacer nada

Pobre papá (Pobre papá)
Pobre papá (Pobre papá)
a él no le gusta trabajar
Pobre papito (pobre papito)
pobrecito papa (Pobre papá)
nunca lo dejan descansar

Papito no quiere trabajar tan seguido
papá preferiría ser un mantenido
papá piensa que un día manda todo al carajo
pero no encara eso porque es mucho trabajo

Pobre papá (Pobre papá)
Pobre papá (Pobre papá)
A él no le gusta trabajar
Pobre papito (pobre papito)
Pobrecito papa (Pobre papá)
nunca lo dejan descansar

Siempre pensé que trabajar
no era moderno
si el trabajo es salud,
que trabajen los enfermos
si el trabajo es salud,
que trabajen los enfermos.

mr. clean, meet mr. electrolyzed tap water

I love science. This seems like such a no-brainer that it would be great if consumers like me could purchase it for home use.

Simple elixir called a 'miracle liquid'
Electrolyzed water cleans, degreases -- and treats athlete's foot. The solution is replacing toxic chemicals.
By Marla Dickerson

February 23, 2009

It's a kitchen degreaser. It's a window cleaner. It kills athlete's foot. Oh, and you can drink it.

Sounds like the old "Saturday Night Live" gag for Shimmer, the faux floor polish plugged by Gilda Radner. But the elixir is real. It has been approved by U.S. regulators. And it's starting to replace the toxic chemicals Americans use at home and on the job.

The stuff is a simple mixture of table salt and tap water whose ions have been scrambled with an electric current. Researchers have dubbed it electrolyzed water -- hardly as catchy as Mr. Clean. But at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica, some hotel workers are calling it el liquido milagroso -- the miracle liquid.

That's as good a name as any for a substance that scientists say is powerful enough to kill anthrax spores without harming people or the environment.

Used as a sanitizer for decades in Russia and Japan, it's slowly winning acceptance in the United States. A New York poultry processor uses it to kill salmonella on chicken carcasses. Minnesota grocery clerks spray sticky conveyors in the checkout lanes. Michigan jailers mop with electrolyzed water to keep potentially lethal cleaners out of the hands of inmates.

In Santa Monica, the once-skeptical Sheraton housekeeping staff has ditched skin-chapping bleach and pungent ammonia for spray bottles filled with electrolyzed water to clean toilets and sinks.

"I didn't believe in it at first because it didn't have foam or any scent," said housekeeper Flor Corona. "But I can tell you it works. My rooms are clean."

Management likes it too. The mixture costs less than a penny a gallon. It cuts down on employee injuries from chemicals. It reduces shipping costs and waste because hotel staffers prepare the elixir on site. And it's helping the Sheraton Delfina tout its environmental credentials to guests.

The hotel's kitchen staff recently began disinfecting produce with electrolyzed water. They say the lettuce lasts longer. They're hoping to replace detergent in the dishwasher. Management figures the payback time for the $10,000 electrolysis machine will be less than a year.

"It's green. It saves money. And it's the right thing to do," said Glenn Epstein, executive assistant at the Sheraton Delfina. "It's almost like fantasy."

Actually, it's chemistry. For more than two centuries, scientists have tinkered with electrolysis, the use of an electric current to bring about a chemical reaction (not the hair-removal technique of the same name that's popular in Beverly Hills). That's how we got metal electroplating and large-scale production of chlorine, used to bleach and sanitize.

It turns out that zapping salt water with low-voltage electricity creates a couple of powerful yet nontoxic cleaning agents. Sodium ions are converted into sodium hydroxide, an alkaline liquid that cleans and degreases like detergent, but without the scrubbing bubbles. Chloride ions become hypochlorous acid, a potent disinfectant known as acid water.

"It's 10 times more effective than bleach in killing bacteria," said Yen-Con Hung, a professor of food science at the University of Georgia-Griffin, who has been researching electrolyzed water for more than a decade. "And it's safe."

There are drawbacks.

Electrolyzed water loses its potency fairly quickly, so it can't be stored long. Machines are pricey and geared mainly for industrial use. The process also needs to be monitored frequently for the right strength.

Then there's the "magic water" hype that has accompanied electrolyzed drinking water. A number of companies sell so-called ionizers for home use that can range from about $600 to more than $3,000. The alkaline water, proponents say, provides health benefits.

But Richard Wullaert, a Santa Barbara consultant, said consumers should be careful.

"Some of these people are making claims that will get everybody in trouble," said Wullaert, whose nonprofit Functional Water Society is spreading the word about electrolyzed water. "It's time for some serious conferences with serious scientists to give this credibility."

Most of the growth has happened outside the United States.

Russians are putting electrolyzed water down oil wells to kill pesky microbes. Europeans use it to treat burn victims. Electrolyzing equipment is helping to sanitize drinking water in parts of Latin American and Africa.

It's big in Japan. People there spray it on sushi to kill bacteria and fill their swimming pools with it, eliminating the need for harsh chlorine. Doctors use it to sterilize equipment and treat foot fungus and bedsores. It's the secret weapon in Sanyo Electric Corp.'s "soap-less" washing machine.

Now Sanyo is bent on cleaning up Japan's taxis with a tiny air purifier that fits into a car's cup holder. The device uses electrolyzed water to shield passengers from an unwelcome byproduct of Japan's binge-drinking business culture: vomit.

"There was some concern about the spreading of viruses and bacteria via the taxi, not to mention the . . . stinky smells," Sanyo spokesman Aaron Fowles said.

Sanyo's taxi air washer isn't yet available in the U.S.; commuters will have to hold their noses for now. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have approved electrolyzed water for a variety of uses.

PuriCore of Malvern, Pa., and Oculus Innovative Sciences of Petaluma, Calif., have developed treatments for chronic wounds. Albuquerque, N.M.-based MIOX Corp. sells municipal water-purifying systems. EAU Technologies Inc. of Kennesaw, Ga., caters to both ends of a dairy cow, with alkaline water to aid the animal's digestion and acid water to clean up its manure.

Integrated Environmental Technologies Inc. of Little River, S.C., is working with oil companies to keep wells free of bacteria and with high schools to sanitize sweaty wrestling mats and grungy football equipment that spread skin infections.

Electrolyzer Corp. of Woburn, Mass., is going after the hospitality market. The Sheraton Delfina purchased one of its machines. So has the Hyatt Regency Chicago and the Trump International Beach Resort near Miami.

Patrick Lucci, Electrolyzer's vice president of marketing, likes to bombard prospects with scientific studies, then give 'em the old razzle-dazzle. He'll swig the processed salt water before he mops the floor with it.

"Try that with bleach," he said.

The unit in Santa Monica looks a little like an oversized water heater, with two tanks side by side -- one for making the hypochlorous acid sanitizer, the other for the sodium hydroxide cleanser.

Rebecca Jimenez, director of housekeeping, heard grumbling from the cleaning staff when the hotel brought the machine in last fall. Housekeepers doubted that the flat, virtually odorless liquids were really doing the job. Some poured the guest shampoos into their bottles to work up a lather.

"If it doesn't suds up, it doesn't work," Jimenez said. "That's the mentality."

Still, she said, most have come around and are enjoying working without fumes and peeling skin.

Minnesota food scientist Joellen Feirtag said she was similarly skeptical. So she installed an electrolysis unit in her laboratory and began researching the technology. She found that the acid water killed E. coli, salmonella, listeria and other nasty pathogens. Yet it was gentle enough to soothe her children's sunburns and acne.

She's now encouraging food processors to take a look at electrolyzed water to help combat the disease outbreaks that have roiled the industry. Most are dubious.

"This sounds too good to be true, which is really the biggest problem," said Feirtag, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota. "But it's only a matter of time before this becomes mainstream."

smoke this recession

It's high time we did this. Bring it, Governator.

Smoke This Recession
It's simple: First we tax the booze. Then we legalize the pot. Done.
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, February 20, 2009

It is a time of strange bedfellows and bizarre contortions and extraordinary responses to extreme situations, all overslathered with gobs of panic and dread and oh my God, I might have to sell the Range Rover.

In other words, it is a time -- like you don't already know -- of plentiful alarmist rhetoric, resulting in weird outbursts of ingenuity and wanton ethics-loosening, all in a desperate effort to suck up some much-needed cash.

Translation: Money's tight, baby. City's in trouble. State's deep in the hole. Nation's broke.

Solution? Upend the system. Think differently. Get creative. Demolish Ye Olde Ways. And maybe get a really nice buzz on while you're at it.

Where to begin? How can the city/state refill their empty coffers and further gouge the populace to make ends meet? Increased bridge tolls? A new per-mile driving tax? Heavier parking fines? State parks abandoned and left to seed? Child's play, darling.

You want to raise funds in an instant? You want a sure-fire, double-barreled source of nearly limitless funds from a wary, burned-out citizenry? That's easy. Go after its biggest vices, its most beloved balms.

Up first: booze. Already local governments are quietly proposing jacking up the alcohol tax and loosening sales restrictions because, well, why the hell not? Aren't you, right this very moment, as you prepare your taxes and weep over your gutted portfolio and stare down one very bleak 2009, more in need of a drink or three than at any time in recent history except for the entirety of the last eight miserable, Bush-stabbed years? Well, there you go. Tax increases on cocktails, here they come.

But it's not just governments. Check out the happily shameless TV networks who, for the first time in a whocares number of years, are allowing ads for alcohol and K-Y lube during prime-time programming. Oh the outrage! Oh the debauchery! Who, pray who, will protect the children? Oh wait, the children are out buying daddy some more beer and applying for a job at Starbucks to help pay rent. Never mind.

New taxes on the other Great American vices: porn, gambling, prescription meds, pro sports, obesity, Mylie Cyrus? Watch for it.

Now, let's get serious. Because there are, of course, bigger fish to fry in the sea of potentially lucrative, all-American inebriates. There is a far more potent, obvious solution to the state's budget woes, a huge, untapped revenue source, and now might be the perfect time to, you know, light it up.

Really now, could there be a better time to decriminalize/fully legalize pot? Or, more fully, to decriminalize pot, and then spread respectable pot shops and vending machines and dispensaries far and wide, instill quality control and decent oversight and then tax the living hell out of the glorious, stress-reducing goodness, as we stop wasting billions fighting its grand ubiquity and instead sink into profitable pools of warm, hazy progress? Don't you already know the answer?

It's difficult to imagine that some intrepid legislator hasn't already walked into Arnie "Pot is not a drug" Schwarzenegger's office and said, "Governator, now is the time. Light it up. Inhale the new reality. Pot is, by a huge margin, the single largest cash crop in the state unless you count porn stars and celebrity rehab. It rakes in upwards of $14 billion a year -- maybe a lot more than that -- and that's just from five clever hippies and a couple intrepid grandmas in Ukiah. Imagine what we could do if we went all-in."

Are the discussions ongoing? Are they passing the bong of possibility around the state Senate chambers? You're damn right they are. What's holding them back? Probably the usual: the negative PR, looking "soft" on crime, encouraging permissiveness, pressure from prison lobbies, and so on. Don't worry, Sacramento. Everyone's already plenty drunk/high on prescription meds trying to alleviate fears of losing their job to care about that nonsense right now. Get to it.

There won't be much pushback from D.C. President Obama's already stated that his upcoming appointee to head the DEA is going to knock it the hell off with the insidious raids of harmless medical pot shops in California, and wants to quit using federal resources to bash hippies and circumvent state laws.

Look. Is there really anyone left who doesn't already know the "War on Drugs" is a pathetic joke, an abject failure and a taxpayer nightmare, and the only reason it survives at all is to fund the CIA and fellate the prison guard unions and support a shameful prison system, and to let politicians say they're "tough on crime" so they can to deflect all those uninformed parents who relentlessly whine about pot in public schools just before dashing off a wine-tasting party to snort a nice line of Bolivian coke?

Anyone left, furthermore, who doesn't know that pot is far safer than booze, less addictive, nonviolent, more transportable, easier to light, and generally won't interfere with your ability to crawl across the carpet and lick cookie crumbs from your lover's thighs? And sure, while heavy, daily usage can make you slow and stupid and rather useless to the world, well, so can a six-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper and six hours of TV every day. Gateway drug? That's on Channel 2, right after "Oprah."

And another thing. Maybe it wouldn't be merely tax 'n' puff. Maybe California, already the pot-growing capital of the nation, could become something more. A hub. A world-class research center. Pot education, study, medicine, import/export, the works. We could ship our crop to various nations in desperate need of chilling the hell out, like Israel. Palestine. Pakistan. Russia. The N-Judah on a Friday afternoon. We could become the largest research and manufacturing center in the world. How proud we would be. You know, sort of.

Let's phrase this grand scenario in another way: Why the hell not try it? What have we got to lose? What, we could go more broke? We could get more desperate and anxious? Fact is, economic nightmares need not breed only miserable stories of lost homes and lost jobs and shuttered businesses. They can also spawn creative solutions, innovative thinking, widespread munchies. Now is the time.

Let's not get carried away. Pot's only one little inebriate, one mild and -- let's just admit it -- relatively boring feel-good plant. California is $40 billion in debt and we're running low on water and we can't give away those hideous tract developments out in Stockton. Milking the pot cow for all she's worth might net us, at best, a few billion a year. To get out of this massive hole, we'd have to legalize Ecstasy too. (Someday, honey, someday).

But it's something. It's radical new thinking that's not the slightest bit radical, or new, and in fact the notion is now even more obvious than it's been for the past 30 years. What are we waiting for? A match?
Via Aaryn

hey jealousy

I'm going to go out on a limb here and ask "baths, Sandra? Really?"

Chimp in Conn. attack had unusual bond with owner
By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, February 19, 2009
(02-19) 22:56 PST Stamford, Conn. (AP) --
Travis the chimpanzee's relationship with his owner was closer than those of some married couples.

Sandra Herold gave him the finest food, and wine in long-stemmed glasses. They took baths together and cuddled in the bed they shared. Travis brushed the lonely widow's hair each night and pined for her when she was away.

If she left the house alone, Travis would give her a kiss.

"If I left with someone Travis would get upset," Herold said Wednesday.

Experts say the unusually human relationship would have been confusing for any animal. It may have also played a role in Travis' savage attack Monday on Herold's friend, 55-year-old Charla Nash of Stamford.

"This is a crazy relationship," said Stephen Rene Tello, executive director of Primarily Primates, a sanctuary for chimps in Texas. "He was probably very bonded with her. I can kind of see it in his eyes this is his surrogate mother."

And chimps like 14-year-old Travis, who was shot and killed by police, protect their mates and turf.

"If there is another person entering his space, he might consider it a threat to his territory, or even his mate," Tello said.

Police say Travis attacked Nash when she arrived at the house to help lure the chimp back into Herold's house. Herold speculated that Travis was being protective of her and attacked Nash because she had a different hairstyle, was driving a different car and held a stuffed toy in front of her face to get the chimp's attention.

Nash suffered massive injuries to her face and hands, requiring more than seven hours of surgery by four teams of doctors to stabilize her. She was transferred in critical condition Thursday to the Cleveland Clinic, which two months ago performed the nation's first successful face transplant.

Hospital officials say Nash is being treated for her injuries and it's unknown if she will be a candidate for a face transplant.

Monday's attack was not the first time Travis bit someone, a former Stamford resident now living in Atlanta said Thursday.

Leslie Mostel Paul told The Associated Press the chimp grabbed her hand and bit it hard enough to draw blood in 1996, while the animal was sitting in Herold's car in a Stamford office parking lot. Paul said she had tried to shake Travis' hand after Herold gave her permission to say hello.

Paul described Herold as being more aggravated than upset about the incident, and said she had to get rabies shots because Herold was slow in producing Travis' medical records.

"My impression was she was more like, 'Oh, this is gonna be a pain in the neck,'" Paul said.

Paul said she reported the incident to police but received no follow-up calls.

"I told them this was serious," said Paul, who spoke by phone from New York, where she was visiting relatives. "If it was a child, it could have ripped the hand off or an arm out a socket."

In an earlier interview on NBC's "Today" show, Paul said, "I honestly believe if they had followed through, maybe the laws would have been changed sooner and this other woman wouldn't be in the hospital, fighting for her life now."

Herold did not return a call seeking comment Thursday about Paul's claims. Police say they have no record of complaints, aside from a 2003 incident where Travis escaped from a vehicle and led police on a two-hour downtown chase before he was caught.

Authorities have not said whether Herold will face criminal charges. Connecticut state law allowed her to own the chimp as a pet, though several state leaders are calling for tighter restrictions in the wake of Monday's attack.

Herold, who was known to buckle Travis in her car for rides and dress him in baseball shirts, tried to rescue Nash by stabbing Travis and hitting him with a shovel. "I stabbed something I raised as a son," she said Wednesday.

It's not known why the chimp suddenly attacked. Herold has given differing accounts on whether she treated the agitated chimp with Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug that had not been prescribed for him. She has also said it suffered from Lyme disease. A test for rabies was negative and results from a necropsy won't be available for weeks.

Lynn DellaBianca, a former Stamford animal control officer, said Thursday that she warned Herold after the 2003 incident that the pet's behavior was worrisome and that she needed to make sure he was kept under control.

"Certainly my concern was for public safety," DellaBianca told The Associated Press. "Male chimpanzees once they reach maturity can be aggressive. I'm sure I did express that to her."

Herold told her she expected to eventually have to give up the chimp, DellaBianca said.

"She did say that herself. She knew someone day he would probably have to go to a sanctuary," DellaBianca said. "She knew chimpanzees, they can get more difficult to handle as they get older."

Mental health professionals say a strong bond between pet owners and their animals is generally good because it can be therapeutic and comforting. The boundaries get blurred, though, when owners treat the animals like humans rather than pets, and expect a reciprocal relationship similar to what they would have with a family member.

David Baron, professor and chairman of the Temple University School of Medicine's psychiatry department, said in cases such as Herold's, the grief of losing loved ones could have made it easy for her to view Travis as a surrogate child and friend. Her husband died in 2004 and her only daughter was killed in a car accident several years ago.

"I wouldn't say that she shouldn't have a pet, but this may be something that should be looked at as part of a grief reaction that's beyond normal," he said.

Earl Mason, whose son married Herold's daughter, remembers when Herold got Travis. The chimp would ride a tricycle.

"He grew up like a youngster," Mason said. "He did everything a kid would do. He was a cute little guy."

Travis loved ice cream and even knew the schedules of the ice cream trucks, Mason said. He ate breakfast at the table with Herold and her husband.

But even was the chimp was a baby, Mason was amazed at his strength. When Travis would jump on him, Mason said he would slam into his chest.

"To me he was beating the crap out of me," Mason said. "He had just tremendous strength."

Don Mecca, a family friend, said Herold knew chimps became more difficult to handle as they get older, but she had a hard time parting with her beloved pet.

"Sandy would always say he would will himself to die if they were separated," Mecca said.

Mecca was reluctant to criticize his friend.

"I think he was lost," Mecca said of Travis. "He belongs in the jungle with the rest of them."

right-wing extremism, average writing skills and susceptibility to snow jobs

Zealotry + denial = hypocrisy.
As usual, Aaryn's Citybeat column made my morning. But I think she's being too generous on the writing skills.

Nefarious claims
Can we all just finally agree that the Holocaust didn’t happen?
By Aaryn Belfer

“At JP Catholic we have an event called On Mission. The night consists of a guest speaker speaking about living out your Catholic faith in business or media, and after that there is confession and Eucharistic Adoration.”

So begins a Feb. 9 student blog post on the website of the unaccredited John Paul the Great Catholic University located in Scripps Ranch. Now, maybe you’re snickering about the “speaker speaking.” Or perhaps the mention of “Eucharistic Adoration” gives you a mysterious hankering for a Carr’s Water Cracker followed by a session of heavy petting.

But what’s notable in the post is not the redundancy in an opening paragraph by a kid who needs the guidance of a publicly validated learning institution. Nor is it a sudden, overwhelming hunger for crudités and kink. Rather, it’s the who who spoke, and what he said.

“Recently at JP Catholic,” the blogger continues, “Jim Holman, founder and editor of The San Diego Reader and a pro-life supporter, recently spoke to the students about the recent election cycle and Proposition 4 in California.” I think it’s fair to say our author effectively established that the speaking happened recently.

“He made an interesting comparison that rocked my world,” the blogger wrote of Holman, whose speech centered on his beloved-yet-failed parental-notification initiative last November. The conspicuous overlord of the gay-loathing, right-leaning, dressed-up-in-alt-weekly-clothing publication best used as an Ambien substitute—since it’s both sleep-inducing and non-addictive—inspired this student to “stand up vocally” on behalf of the unborn, by comparing abortion with the Holocaust.

Which raises the question: Didn’t Holman get the memo?

Pssst! Holman! The Holocaust never happened! And I’m not just making this up on a whim. This information is all over the news lately and is being spoken about quite matter-of-factly by a representative of the very church to which you and Blogger Boy belong.

The newly re-embraced Bishop Richard Williamson has stated repeatedly—and, it should be noted, recently—that roughly 200,000 to 300,000 Jews died in World War II and not the radical, yet widely accepted number of 6 million. It is tough to get one’s head around a number that big. It seems so entirely impossible that it must be. Williamson also has it on good authority that there was never any gassing. Auschwitz, mouschwitz.

Certainly, there are the conspiracy theorists falling over themselves to ostracize the bishop. These wild-eyed Holocaust historians seem to have him outnumbered; their outcry was so deafening that Williamson was removed from a seminary post last week in response to his unwavering comments.

But these folks are mere outliers in a giant fairytale, the nutty hook-line-and-sinkers demanding Williamson recant his denial of what purportedly took place at Auschwitz-Birkenau. And Belzec. And Chelmno and Majdanek and Sobibor and Treblinka. Who can pronounce those words, anyway? As if innocent human beings really died there: Men, women and children separated from family, huddled naked with strangers and dumped, still clinging to each other, into mass graves. It’s preposterous. Never happened.

Bishop Williamson is nothing if not open-minded. Though he doesn’t have any plans to stand with ghosts while touring the Auschwitz showers or contemplate his reflection in the ash pools there, he’s agreed to give the record another long-distance glance down his turned-up nose. The bishop would like historic evidence.

It’s not unreasonable for Williamson to demand proof. After all, this is a stance he’s maintained for more than three decades. Williamson is a proof-or-pudding kind of guy, not a show-me-a-miracle kind of guy. It’s not as if he bases his entire existence on something as flimsy and unreasoned as faith. For example, rather than relying on stories originating with Jews, I’m sure he has impervious proof of Jesus’ existence, more solid even than a crematorium, more permanent than tattooed registration numbers. The bishop must have in his possession a shroud. Or some DNA. Or at least a hair sample. Or a rusty nail with dried blood stains.

Speaking of blood stains, I disagree with the self-important Jim Holman when he equates the mass deaths of human beings to the removal of a clump of unviable cells from a uterus. In fact, not only do I support a woman’s right to choose every single time, but I’m in favor of retroactive abortion—an abortion time machine, if you will.

It could be made available to people like, say, Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother. Or Dick Cheney’s. Or Hitler’s. Then again, that last one may be unfair given the Holocaust fable. In reality, Adolf was probably little more than a misunderstood regular guy, looking for a girl to love him. Sure, it sounds like something straight out of Notting Hill, but the only thing more improbable than Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant falling in love has got to be the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and extermination of 84.5 Qualcomm Stadiums-full of Jews.

But it didn’t happen, and if the Holocaust didn’t happen and the Catholic leadership backs this notion, then comparing abortions with it at a Catholic “university” seems to be a self-defeating analogy. An educated person would be skeptical of, and offended by, such an argument. Unless that “educated” person holds a degree equivalent to one earned from Sally Struthers, in which case, it’s world-rocking material. Thanks to JP Catholic and its speaking speakers, we can be assured of a whole bunch of mini-Holmans flooding the business and media industries in the near future with their right-wing extremism, average writing skills and susceptibility to snow jobs.

Write to aaryn@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.

crazy little thing called love

quotable

Holding grudges against people is like taking poison and expecting someone else to die. (You only hurt yourself. The other person is usually clueless.)

Via Kristen

it's probably time

oaf of office

I'll admit that I've got a nasty case of corrective tourette's. But I would never dream of modifying something as important as the Presidential oath of office, as written in the United States Constitution, much less eschewing notes and doing it from memory. Too bad Chief Justice John Roberts did. And that he flubbed it and had to re-administer it later.

Op-Ed Contributor: Oaf of Office
By STEVEN PINKER
Published: January 21, 2009

IN 1969, Neil Armstrong appeared to have omitted an indefinite article as he stepped onto the moon and left earthlings puzzled over the difference between “man” and “mankind.” In 1980, Jimmy Carter, accepting his party’s nomination, paid homage to a former vice president he called Hubert Horatio Hornblower. A year later, Diana Spencer reversed the first two names of her betrothed in her wedding vows, and thus, as Prince Charles Philip supposedly later joked, actually married his father.

On Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the Flubber Hall of Fame when he administered the presidential oath of office apparently without notes. Instead of having Barack Obama “solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States,” Chief Justice Roberts had him “solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully.” When Mr. Obama paused after “execute,” the chief justice prompted him to continue with “faithfully the office of president of the United States.” (To ensure that the president was properly sworn in, the chief justice re-administered the oath Wednesday evening.)

How could a famous stickler for grammar have bungled that 35-word passage, among the best-known words in the Constitution? Conspiracy theorists and connoisseurs of Freudian slips have surmised that it was unconscious retaliation for Senator Obama’s vote against the chief justice’s confirmation in 2005. But a simpler explanation is that the wayward adverb in the passage is blowback from Chief Justice Roberts’s habit of grammatical niggling.

Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual. Nonetheless, they refuse to go away, perpetuated by the Gotcha! Gang and meekly obeyed by insecure writers.

Among these fetishes is the prohibition against “split verbs,” in which an adverb comes between an infinitive marker like “to,” or an auxiliary like “will,” and the main verb of the sentence. According to this superstition, Captain Kirk made a grammatical error when he declared that the five-year mission of the starship Enterprise was “to boldly go where no man has gone before”; it should have been “to go boldly.” Likewise, Dolly Parton should not have declared that “I will always love you” but “I always will love you” or “I will love you always.”

Any speaker who has not been brainwashed by the split-verb myth can sense that these corrections go against the rhythm and logic of English phrasing. The myth originated centuries ago in a thick-witted analogy to Latin, in which it is impossible to split an infinitive because it consists of a single word, like dicere, “to say.” But in English, infinitives like “to go” and future-tense forms like “will go” are two words, not one, and there is not the slightest reason to interdict adverbs from the position between them.

Though the ungrammaticality of split verbs is an urban legend, it found its way into The Texas Law Review Manual on Style, which is the arbiter of usage for many law review journals. James Lindgren, a critic of the manual, has found that many lawyers have “internalized the bogus rule so that they actually believe that a split verb should be avoided,” adding, “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers has succeeded so well that many can no longer distinguish alien speech from native speech.”

In his legal opinions, Chief Justice Roberts has altered quotations to conform to his notions of grammaticality, as when he excised the “ain’t” from Bob Dylan’s line “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” On Tuesday his inner copy editor overrode any instincts toward strict constructionism and unilaterally amended the Constitution by moving the adverb “faithfully” away from the verb.

President Obama, whose attention to language is obvious in his speeches and writings, smiled at the chief justice’s hypercorrection, then gamely repeated it. Let’s hope that during the next four years he will always challenge dogma and boldly lead the nation in new directions.

Steven Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard and the chairman of the usage panel of The American Heritage Dictionary.

'cause it's my right

This morning, as Ruby was kissing me after her walk, I started singing "Passionate kisses" to her. Then I asked Leo if he could play the song. He explained that the country version by Mary Chapin Carpenter was actually a cover of Lucinda Williams' original. And then he played both, kissed me, and headed to the gym.

Is it too much to ask?
I want a comfortable bed that won't hurt my back
Food to fill me up
And warm clothes and all that stuff

Shouldn't I have this,
Shouldn't I have this?
Shouldn't I have all of this, and
Passionate kisses
Passionate kisses, whoa ohh oh
Passionate kisses from you

Is it much to demand
I want a full house and a rock and roll band
Pens that won't run out of ink
And cool quiet and time to think

Shouldn't I have this,
Shouldn't I have this?
Shouldn't I have all of this, and
Passionate kisses
Passionate kisses, whoa ohh oh
Passionate kisses from you

Do I want too much?
Am I going overboard to want that touch?
I shouted out to the night:
"Give me what I deserve, 'cause it's my right!"

Shouldn't I have this,
Shouldn't I have this?
Shouldn't I have all of this, and
Passionate kisses
Passionate kisses, whoa ohh oh
Passionate kisses from you.

the best prayer nobody heard

Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson is the first openly gay, non-celibate priest to be ordained a bishop in a major Christian denomination.

He gave the invocation at Sunday's "We Are One" concert, kicking off this week's inaugural events. The big Lincoln Memorial show was billed as the "We Are One" concert, intended to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama with a spirit of unity. But his prayer was excluded from HBO's coverage.

Here is his awesome prayer.

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire
Opening Inaugural Event: Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

mission accomplished

I can't remember the last time I watched an inauguration. That's because, until yesterday, I never had.

I and about 150 of my colleagues sat in the cafeteria and watched as history was made, agendas were outlined, and hope was personified. I've never been prouder to be an American than I was yesterday.

Op-Ed Columnist
Radical in the White House
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: January 20, 2009

For one day, for one hour, let us take a bow as a country. Nearly 233 years after our founding, 144 years after the close of our Civil War and 46 years after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, this crazy quilt of immigrants called Americans finally elected a black man, Barack Hussein Obama, as president. Walking back from the inauguration, I saw an African-American street vendor wearing a home-stenciled T-shirt that pretty well captured the moment — and then some. It said: “Mission Accomplished.”

But we cannot let this be the last mold we break, let alone the last big mission we accomplish. Now that we have overcome biography, we need to write some new history — one that will reboot, revive and reinvigorate America. That, for me, was the essence of Obama’s inaugural speech and I hope we — and he — are really up to it.

Indeed, dare I say, I hope Obama really has been palling around all these years with that old Chicago radical Bill Ayers. I hope Obama really is a closet radical.

Not radical left or right, just a radical, because this is a radical moment. It is a moment for radical departures from business as usual in so many areas. We can’t thrive as a country any longer by coasting on our reputation, by postponing solutions to every big problem that might involve some pain and by telling ourselves that dramatic new initiatives — like a gasoline tax, national health care or banking reform — are too hard or “off the table.” So my most fervent hope about President Obama is that he will be as radical as this moment — that he will put everything on the table.

Opportunities for bold initiatives and truly new beginnings are rare in our system — in part because of the sheer inertia and stalemate designed into our Constitution, with its deliberate separation of powers, and in part because of the way lobbying money, a 24-hour news cycle and a permanent presidential campaign all conspire to paralyze big changes.

“The system is built for stalemate,” said Michael J. Sandel, the Harvard University political theorist. “In ordinary times, the energy and dynamism of American life reside in the economy and society, and people view government with suspicion or indifference. But in times of national crisis, Americans look to government to solve fundamental problems that affect them directly. These are the times when presidents can do big things. These moments are rare. But they offer the occasion for the kind of leadership that can recast the political landscape, and redefine the terms of political argument for a generation.”

In the 1930s, the Great Depression enabled Franklin Roosevelt to launch the New Deal and redefine the role of the federal government, he added, while in the 1960s, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and “the moral ferment of the civil rights movement” enabled Lyndon Johnson to enact his Great Society agenda, including Medicare, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

“These presidencies did more than enact new laws and programs,” concluded Sandel. “They rewrote the social contract, and redefined what it means to be a citizen. Obama’s moment, and his presidency, could be that consequential.”

George W. Bush completely squandered his post-9/11 moment to summon the country to a dramatic new rebuilding at home. This has left us in some very deep holes. These holes — and the broad awareness that we are at the bottom of them — is what makes this a radical moment, calling for radical departures from business as usual, led by Washington.

That is why this voter is hoping Obama will swing for the fences. But he also has to remember to run the bases. George Bush swung for some fences, but he often failed at the most basic element of leadership — competent management and follow-through.

President Obama will have to decide just how many fences he can swing for at one time: grand bargains on entitlement and immigration reform? A national health care system? A new clean-energy infrastructure? The nationalization and repair of our banking system? Will it be all or one? Some now and some later? It is too soon to say.

But I do know this: while a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, so too is a great politician, with a natural gift for oratory, a rare knack for bringing people together, and a nation, particularly its youth, ready to be summoned and to serve.

So, in sum, while it is impossible to exaggerate what a radical departure it is from our past that we have inaugurated a black man as president, it is equally impossible to exaggerate how much our future depends on a radical departure from our present. As Obama himself declared from the Capitol steps: “Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed.”

We need to get back to work on our country and our planet in wholly new ways. The hour is late, the project couldn’t be harder, the stakes couldn’t be higher, the payoff couldn’t be greater.

white like me

Op-Ed Columnist
White Like Me
By FRANK RICH
Published: January 17, 2009

I cannot testify to what black Americans feel as our nation celebrates the inauguration of our first African-American president. But I can speak for myself, as a white American who grew up in the segregated nation’s capital of the 1960s. Barack Obama’s day is one that I never thought would come, and one that I still can’t quite believe is here.

Last week I joined a group of journalists at an off-the-record conversation with the president-elect, a sort of preview of the administration’s coming attractions. But as I walked some desolate downtown blocks to the standard-issue federal office building serving as transition headquarters, ghosts of the past mingled with hopes for the future. The contrast between the unemployed men on Washington’s frigid streets and the buzzing executive-branch bees inside was, for me, as old as time.

My particular historical vantage point is a product of my upbringing as that odd duck, a native Washingtonian whose parents were not in government. The first presidential transition of my sentient lifetime, Kennedy’s, I remember vividly. Even an 11-year-old could see that the sleepy Southern town of the Eisenhower era was waking up, electrified by youth, glamour and the prospect of change.

But some of that change I didn’t then understand. J.F.K.’s arrival coincided with Washington’s emergence as the first American city with a black majority. Many whites responded by fleeing to the suburbs. My parents did the opposite, moving our family from the enclave of Montgomery County, Md., into the city as I was about to enter the fifth grade.

Our new neighborhood included the Sidwell Friends School. My mother, a public school teacher, decreed that her children would instead enroll in the public system that had been desegregated a half-dozen years earlier, after Brown v. Board of Education. In reality de facto segregation remained in place. Though a few African-Americans and embassy Africans provided the window dressing of “integration,” my mostly white elementary, junior high and high schools had roughly the same diversity as, say, today’s G.O.P.

I wish I could say we were all outraged at this apartheid. But we were kids — privileged kids at that — and out of sight was out of mind. Except as household help, black Washington was generally as invisible to us as it was to the tourists who were rigidly segregated from the real Washington while visiting its many ivory marble shrines to democratic ideals.

Gradually we would learn more — from our parents and teachers, from televised incidents of violent racial confrontations far away, and from odd cultural phenomena like the 1961 best seller “Black Like Me.” In that book, a white novelist darkened his skin for undercover travels through deepest Dixie, whose bigotry he then described in morbid firsthand detail to shocked adolescents like me.

Surely such horrific injustices could not occur in our nation’s capital.

But as an unintended consequence of Washington’s particular brand of Jim Crow, white public school students got a tiny taste of what racially mandated second-class citizenship could mean. In those days, the city didn’t even have the bastardized form of “self-government” it has now; it was run as a plantation by Congressional District panels led by racist white Southerners (then Democrats). These overseers didn’t want to lavish money on an overwhelmingly black school system, and they didn’t. By the early 1960s, per-student spending in Washington was less than that of any state, impoverished West Virginia and Mississippi included.

If Washington’s white schools received a larger share of that meager budget, as they no doubt did, it was still obvious that our teachers had far fewer resources than their suburban and private school counterparts. Extracurricular activities could be curtailed by the costs of light and heat. The curriculum was also abridged, lest anyone get too agitated by America’s racial inequities. In my history class, the Civil War was downsized to a passing speed bump. In English, we read “Tom Sawyer,” not “Huckleberry Finn.”

Now that we were teenagers, we had both the curiosity and mobility to investigate the strangely undemocratic city that dealt us this hand. In the words of Constance McLaughlin Green, a Pulitzer Prize-winning urban historian, the District’s black population had long occupied “a secret city all but unknown to the white world round about.” We wanted in on the secrets.

There was so much we didn’t know, so much Americans still don’t know. Take the Lincoln Memorial, to which the Obama family paid so poignant a nocturnal visit this month. If you look up coverage of the memorial’s 1922 dedication ceremonies in The Times, you can read of President Harding’s forceful oration commemorating the demise of slavery. You also learn that Dr. Robert R. Moton, the president of the Tuskegee Institute, was invited to pay tribute to Lincoln “in the name of 12,000,000 Negroes.”

Here’s what The Times did not report about Moton: “Instead of being placed on the speaker’s platform, he was relegated along with other distinguished colored people to an all-Negro section separated by a road from the rest of the audience.” So wrote Green in “The Secret City,” her landmark history of race relations in Washington. This was no anomaly. A local Ku Klux Klan had been formed months earlier, with no protests from either Congress or the white press, and the young Harding administration had toughened the exclusion of blacks from the city’s public recreation facilities.

The eye-opening “Secret City” recounting this secret history was not published until 1967, some four years after the Lincoln Memorial served as a backdrop for “I Have a Dream.” It was also in 1967 that I graduated from Woodrow Wilson High. As a valedictory, a bunch of us on the school paper voted to publish an editorial in favor of home rule for D.C. “Washingtonians have to beg, plead and cajole members of Congress for funds to renovate slums and slum schools,” it read. That was putting it mildly; we still had much to learn. But the editorial was enough of an irritant that our principal tried to censor it, which prompted a brief civic kerfuffle (“Student Editorial Banned at Wilson” read the headline in The Washington Post) and jump-started a few starry-eyed careers in journalism and political activism.

It was one year later that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and Washington’s secret city exploded. The fires and riotscame within a block of the building where the Obama transition set up shop.

One would like to say in the aftermath of the 2008 election that everyone lived happily ever after. But the American drama, especially when it involves race, is always more complicated than that.

Looking back at my high school years, I’m struck by how slowly history can move. The great civil rights legislation of the Johnson administration had been accomplished in 1964 and 1965, but by the time of my graduation the impact was minimal — even in the city where the laws were written and passed. Today the nation’s capital still has no voting representation in Congress and is still a ward of the federal government, reduced to begging, pleading and cajoling for basic needs. Some 19 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and that 19 percent remains a secret city to many who work within the Beltway.

Washington is its own special American case, but only up to a point. For all our huge progress, we are not “post-racial,” whatever that means. The world doesn’t change in a day, and the racial frictions that emerged in both the Democratic primary campaign and the general election didn’t end on Nov. 4. As Obama himself said in his great speech on race, liberals couldn’t “purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap” simply by voting for him. And conservatives? The so-called party of Lincoln has spent much of the past month in spirited debate about whether a white candidate for the party’s chairmanship did the right thing by sending out a “humorous” recording of “Barack the Magic Negro” as a holiday gift.

Next to much of our history, this is small stuff. And yet: Of all the coverage of Obama’s victory, the most accurate take may still be the piquant morning-after summation of the satirical newspaper The Onion. Under the headline “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job,” it reported that our new president will have “to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind.”

Those messes are enormous, bigger than Washington, bigger than race, bigger than anything most of us have ever seen. Nearly three months after Election Day, it remains astonishing that the American people have entrusted the job to a young black man who seemed to come out of nowhere looking for that kind of work just as we most needed him.

“In no other country on earth is my story even possible,” Obama is fond of saying. That is true, and that is what the country celebrates this week. But it is all the tragic American stories that came before him, some of them still playing out in chilly streets just blocks from the White House, that throw both his remarkable triumph and the huge challenge ahead of him into such heart-stopping relief.
Via Aaryn

i've got it something fierce

Then again, it might be the jetlag ...

Kitchenheimer's: When you're in the kitchen going around in circles because you can't remember what you were doing there.

I was in the kitchen this morning walking around in circles wondering what the hell I was looking for when the microwave beeped reminding me I was heating up my cup of coffee. My Kitchenheimer's is getting worse!
Via UrbanDictionary.com

and a totally insufficient dowry ...

I'm admittedly behind on Christmas and other things, given my trip to Southeast Asia. Anyhow, this 12 days of (Indian) Christmas video from Aashish killed me. Be sure to watch the whole thing.

Via Aashish

gone walkabout

Leo and I are headed to Southeast Asia for a spell. We'll do our best to post photos and share our adventures along the way.

le tour du chocolat

For future reference, includes map.

Journeys: Le Tour du Chocolat
By AMY THOMAS
Published: December 14, 2008

THE French have elevated many things to high art: fashion, flirting, foie gras. Chocolate is no exception. With boutiques that display truffles as rapturously as diamonds, the experience of visiting a Parisian chocolatier can be sublime.

The problem, of course, is squeezing in as many of these indulgent visits as possible while also giving the rest of the city its due. My solution: devote one full day to chocolate boutiques, and do it in style. So, on my last visit to Paris, I took to the city’s Vélib’ bike system and mastered a two-wheeled circuit of eight of the chocolatiers that had the best reputations and most glowing reviews in city guidebooks and online message boards. It was exhilarating and exhausting, not to mention decadent. It was a chocoholic’s dream ride.

The Vélib’s — industrial-looking road bikes that are already icons of Parisian-chic just a year and a half after the city initiated the program — made the moveable feast more fun. Progressing from pralines to pavés, I spun by the Eiffel Tower, zipped across the Seine and careened through the spindly streets of St.-Germain-des-Prés alongside other bikers: Parisians in summer dresses and business suits, their front baskets toting briefcases, baguettes and sometimes even Jack Russell terriers.

Practically speaking, the bikes were all but essential. How else could I cover five arrondissements in as many hours, while simultaneously countering a day of debaucherous extremes?

The hedonism began in the center of town with the oldest master on my list, Michel Cluizel (201, rue St.-Honoré; 33-1-42-44-11-66; www.chocolatmichelcluizel-na.com), who has been making chocolate since 1948. A short distance from a Vélib’ station at the intersection of Rues de l’Echelle and St-Honoré, I passed luxury stores flaunting billowy gowns and four-inch Mary Janes and stepped inside what was just as divine: a store where molten chocolate spews from a fountain and the shelves are stocked with bars containing as much as 99 percent cacao.

Mr. Cluizel has a single American outpost, in Manhattan, at which I’ve indulged in hot cocoa made with a blend of five cocoa beans. At his Parisian shop, managed by his daughter Catherine, I discovered the macarolat (1.55 euros, or about $2 at $1.29 to the euro). A chocolate version of the macaroon, it has a dark chocolate shell filled with almond and hazelnut praline, the nuts ground coarsely to give a rich, grainy texture. It was two bites that combined creamy and crunchy, snap and subtlety. But it was just two bites; I wanted more.

A quick spin west landed me at the doors of Jean-Paul Hévin (231, rue St-Honoré, (33-1-55-35-35-96; www.jphevin.com). A modern blend of dark wood cabinetry, slate floors and backlit wall cubbies where cobalt-accented boxes of bonbons are displayed, the space would feel intimidating if not for the shopkeepers, who are both numerous and gracious as they juggle the crowds ogling mango coriander macaroons and Pyramide cakes. After considerable debate — would it be ridiculously gluttonous to have a “choco passion,” a cocoa cake with chocolate mousse, chocolate ganache and praline puff pastry, so early in the day? — I settled on a caramel bûche (3.20 euros). Larger than an individual bonbon but smaller than a Hershey bar, the silky caramel enrobed in delicate dark chocolate hit the sweet spot.

With the choco-salty taste lingering on my tongue, I picked up a bike outside the Hôtel Costes, craning my neck to spy any A-listers — were Sting and Trudie in there? Beyoncé and Jay-Z? — and set out for the 16th Arrondissement.

Just beyond the Place de la Concorde I veered onto Avenue Gabriel. It is a curving street that winds past both the United States Embassy and Pierre Cardin’s showcase for young artists, Espace, before eventually turning into a narrow cafe-lined passage where you have to weave around double-parked delivery trucks. Hoping to avoid throngs of wide-eyed tourists on the parallel Champs-Élysées and cars haphazardly zigging and zagging on the rotary around the Arc de Triomphe, I took the residential backstreets to Avenue Victor Hugo.

It was on this street that I found the most eccentric chocolatier on my list: Patrick Roger (45, avenue Victor Hugo; 33-1-45-01-66-71; www.patrickroger.com). It’s not just the chocolate sculptures (a life-size farmer, for example), seasonal window displays (a family of penguins, also life-size) or snazzy aquamarine packaging he’s known for: his intensely flavored bonbons are as bold as they come.

“I do think Patrick Roger is outstanding since he combines new, unusual flavors,” said David Lebovitz, an American chocolate connoisseur, author of “The Great Book of Chocolate” and a Paris resident. But, he added, Mr. Rogers “isn’t doing weird flavors just to be trendy, like others tend to do in Paris nowadays.”

I sampled a few to confirm. The Jamaica has a rich coffee flavor from ground Arabica coffee beans; the Jacarepagua blends sharp lemon curd and fresh mint, and then there’s the Phantasme, made with ... oatmeal. Each costs less than 1 euro.

About 90 minutes in, I had tasted creamy, salty and tart and had traversed a good stretch of the city. I was high — on Paris and sugar — coasting beneath Avenue Kléber’s towering chestnut and plane trees toward the Place du Trocadéro in the 16th Arrondissement. Winding my way down the steep hills of the Rue Benjamin Franklin and the Boulevard Delessert, past romantic cafes and limestone edifices, alternately beige and gray depending on the light, I felt as though I was in a quaint Gallic village, not the capital city. That is until I was spit out across the river from the grandest Parisian landmark of all: the Eiffel Tower.

Digital cameras flashed, souvenirs were hawked and regiments of tour buses idled in one big mechanical whir. It was as if every foreigner had descended on the monument at that very moment. I didn’t exhale until I entered the quietly sophisticated Seventh Arrondissement.

Michel Chaudun (149, rue de l’Université, 33-1-47-53-74-40) is wildly talented as an artist and chocolate sculptor (his watercolors decorate the store along with chocolate Fabergé eggs and African statues), to say nothing of his reputation for being one of the world’s best chocolatiers. After 22 years of turning cacao into sublime bonbons, he’s responsible for influencing many of the city’s newer generation of chocolatiers.

His pavés are particularly worshipped. They’re sugar cube-size squares of cocoa-dusted ganache that you deftly spear from the box with a toothpick and then allow to melt a little on your tongue a little before biting into the rich creaminess. Fresh and luscious, they’re also hypersensitive to warm temperatures. Which meant — tant pis — if I tried to save any for later, they would wind up a choco-puddle.

Hopping on and off the Vélib’s so often courted a certain amount of trouble. Parisian cynicism reared its head when a disgusted man at a station told me that 90 percent of the bikes don’t work. I wouldn’t say the defective bicycles were that frequent, but I learned an essential checklist: Are the tires inflated? The rims, straight? Is the front basket intact? Do the gears work? Is the chain attached? With these things checked, you’re good to go, as I was after savoring the last pavé from my modest box of six (3.40 euros).

Cutting across the square fields in front of Les Invalides I glided by college students throwing Frisbees and old men playing pétanque. To my right, the gilded dome of Les Invalides; to my left, more gold crowning the ornate Alexandre III bridge. This was a decadent journey indeed.

Finally, in the Sixth Arrondissement, it seemed I could toss an M & M in any direction and hit a world-class chocolatier. There was the whimsical Jean-Charles Rochoux (16, rue d’Assas, 33-1-42-84-29-45; www.jcrochoux.fr), where gaudy chocolate sculptures of garden gnomes belie the serious artistry of his Maker’s Mark truffles.

Christian Constant (37, rue d’Assas, 33-1-53-63-15-15), a Michelin-starred chef and award-winning chocolatier, excels at such spicy and floral notes as saffron and ylang-ylang. Pierre Marcolini (89, rue de Seine, 33-1-4407-3907; www.marcolini.be), the lone Belgian of the group, offers 75 percent dark chocolate from seven South American and African regions. Buzzing, I intended to finish the circuit in grand style.

The line snaking out of Pierre Hermé’s slim boutique (72, rue Bonaparte, 33-1-43-54-47-77; www.pierreherme.com) told me I was doing the right thing. When I made it inside the snapping automatic doors, it was (forgive me!) like being a kid in a candy store: pristine rows of cakes adorned with fresh berries, coffee beans and dark chocolate shavings.

“Un Plénitude, s’il vous plait.”

I took my treasure to a nearby park and tucked into the dome-shaped cake filled with chocolate mousse and ganache, crunchy caramel and fleur de sel. I relished the fluffy whipped richness, the bite of dark chocolate and the tang of salt. Had I died and gone to heaven? No, it was just a rapturous day in the City of Light and dark chocolate.

PEDALING FOR PAVÉS

After doubling the number bicycles since the program started last summer to 20,600, Paris’ Vélib’’ (www.velib.paris.fr) is now the largest free bike program in France. There are 1,451 stations in the city, or one approximately every 900 feet. Each station has about 15 to 20 bikes. The bikes are simple: three speeds, an adjustable seat, a bell and basket and a headlight.

By purchasing a one-day or weeklong pass at the kiosk located at a station, you can hop on any bicycle and drop it at your next destination. To unlock a bike, you punch in your personal access code at the kiosk.

Though it’s called a free bike program (Vélib’ is short for vélo libre, or free bike), a day pass costs 1 euro. The first half-hour on the bike is no additional charge, the second half-hour is 1 euro, and the third half-hour is 2 euros. After that, it’s 4 euros every half-hour. The shorter your trips, the lower the cost. My total cost for five hours was 12.60 euros, or about $16.15 at $1.29 to the euro.

orange-scented roasted root vegetables

Leo and I had lots of carrots, turnips, onions, and some sweet potato to use up before our vacation, so we looked for a root vegetable recipe. This one knocked our socks off tonight with chicken piccata, some roasted green beans, and viognier.

Orange-Scented Roasted Root Vegetables This no-fuss side dish roasts while you're tending to the rest of the meal.

4 cups (1-inch) cubed peeled sweet potato (we had 2 cups)
3 cups (1-inch) cubed peeled rutabaga (we used 1 1/2 cups of turnips)
2 cups (1-inch) sliced parsnip (we used 2 1/2 cups of carrots)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (we used grapeseed)
2 medium onions, each cut into 8 wedges
Cooking spray (we omitted this)
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons orange marmalade (because we were out of orange marmalade, we used the last of the Navarro vineyards cranberry pinot noir wine jelly that Diana L. sent us. We also added 1 TBSP orange zest to give it an orange aroma)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon sweet honey mustard (we used organic yellow mustard and added honey)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper (we forgot this)
Dash of ground nutmeg (we forgot this)

Preheat oven to 400°.

Combine first 5 ingredients in a bowl; toss. Arrange vegetables in a single layer in a shallow roasting pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 400° for 45 minutes; stir twice.

Combine sugar and remaining ingredients in a small saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer 1 minute. Pour over vegetables; toss gently. Bake an additional 15 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

Yield: 7 servings (serving size: 1 cup)

CALORIES 229 (11% from fat); FAT 2.8g (sat 0.5g,mono 0.7g,poly 1.1g); IRON 1.4mg; CHOLESTEROL 0.0mg; CALCIUM 84mg; CARBOHYDRATE 50.7g; SODIUM 148mg; PROTEIN 3g; FIBER 4.9g

Cooking Light, NOVEMBER 1997

you're the one that i want

Leo and I were enthralled as we watched this. Ruby, not so much.

And for the record, it's Canine Dancesport, not dog dancing.

Getting two dogs to do it (and different moves at that) is more than my brain can process at the moment.

no more pencils, no more books. no more teacher's dirty looks.

I just crossed another item off of life's to-do list: getting a graduate degree.

Three and a half years have passed since I started, and I'm relieved to be done. Now, it's time to get back to the rest of my to-do list.

just ask ruby

Research News: Dogs Understand Fairness, Get Jealous, Study Finds
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
Morning Edition, December 9, 2008 · Dogs have an intuitive understanding of fair play and become resentful if they feel that another dog is getting a better deal, a new study has found.

The study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at how dogs react when a buddy is rewarded for the same trick in an unequal way.

Friederike Range, a researcher at the University of Vienna in Austria, and her colleagues did a series of experiments with dogs who knew how to respond to the command "give the paw," or shake. The dogs were normally happy to repeatedly give the paw, whether they got a reward or not.

But that changed if they saw that another dog was being rewarded with a piece of food, while they received nothing.

"We found that the dogs hesitated significantly longer when obeying the command to give the paw," the researchers write. The unrewarded dogs eventually stopped cooperating.

Scientists have long known that humans pay close attention to inequity. Even little children are quick to yell "Not fair!" But researchers always assumed that animals didn't share this trait.

"The argument was that this is a uniquely human phenomenon," says Frans de Waal, a professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta and a researcher at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

That changed in 2003 when he and a colleague named Sarah Brosnan did a study on monkeys. Monkeys had to hand a small rock to researchers to get a piece of food in return. Monkeys were happy to do this to get a piece of cucumber. But the monkeys would suddenly act insulted to be offered cucumber if they saw that another monkey was getting a more delicious reward, a grape, for doing the same job.

"The one who got cucumber became very agitated, threw out the food, threw out the rock that we exchanged with them, and at some point just stopped performing," says de Waal.

In that experiment, the monkeys considered the fairness of two different types of payment. But when Range and her colleagues did a similar study with their trained dogs, testing to see if dogs would become upset if they only got dark bread when other dogs received sausage, they found that dogs did not make that kind of subtle distinction. As long as the dogs got some kind of food payment, even if it wasn't the yummiest kind, the animals would play along.

Dogs, like monkeys, live in cooperative societies, so de Waal was not surprised that they would have also some sense of fairness. He expects other animals do as well. For example, he says, lions hunt cooperatively, and he "would predict that lions would be sensitive to who has done what and what do they get for it."

sleep with the right people

"Gay, straight, black, white ... marriage is a civil right!"

Leo and I shouted this with D and Ophy at a protest Saturday night. We walked from A-1 Storage on PCH to the Manchester Grand Hyatt. A-1's owner gave $750K to Yes on 8. Doug Manchester gave $125K to Yes on 8. (Side note: Manchester ostensibly donated the money to support marriage ... yet he and his wife are separating and getting divorced. Yes, folks. Karma can be a beeeyotch.)

Anyhow, the coalition of marchers included Latino hotel workers and white gay boys (and girls), uniting as part of Sleep With The Right People.org. I found it very encouraging that Latino hotel workers seeking to unionize and get a fair wage and fair working conditions could get behind gay rights (and vice versa). It leaves me hopeful that the gay community and African Americans can get on the same page, as well.

Op-Ed Contributors: Showdown in the Big Tent
By CAITLIN FLANAGAN and BENJAMIN SCHWARZ
December 7, 2008
Los Angeles

THE attitude of white, liberal Hollywood toward African- American churches has long been one of almost participatory respect. Whether it’s Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard, or the Blind Boys of Alabama on the iPod, or a serious — reverential — mention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference over dinner, the understanding is clear: the black church is a foundational institution in the history of the civil rights struggle, and its music (although it makes reference to Jesus Christ as a personal savior) is smoking hot.

It was only recently that the A-list discovered that this love is unrequited. Last month, Proposition 8 passed, making gay marriage illegal in California, and the demographic that lent insult to injury was the state’s African-American voters.

They came to the polls in record numbers to support Barack Obama, and they brought with them a fiercely held and enduring antipathy toward homosexuality: 7 in 10 blacks voted in support of traditional marriage. Whether that was the game-changer or not is a question for near-constant debate. Many gay activists have begun quietly to suggest that had Hillary Clinton been the Democratic nominee, Prop 8 would not have passed.

Of the values progressives hold dear, none can be as central or as cherished as the promotion of diversity. It is a word that has become almost a term of art. When a private school champions its embrace of “diversity,” parents understand that the admissions office is not dying to enroll the son of a white evangelical minister or the daughter of a founding partner of a white-shoe law firm. Rather, we know that the school makes an intentional effort to include children of certain minority groups among its student body, and that most important among those groups are African-Americans and the children of gay families.

Left-leaning California’s horror about this newly revealed schism between two of its favorite sons is a situation that cries out for a villain, but the one that liberal white Hollywood has chosen for the role probably won’t make it all the way to the third act.

“It’s their churches,” somebody whispered to one of us not long after the election; “It’s their Christianity,” someone else hissed, rolling her eyes. Apparently the religion espoused by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is now the enemy, at least among the smart set, and if this sounds like a regional issue, it’s not.

What we in California have been forced to confront, before anyone had even had the chance to sweep up the tinsel or plop the first Alka-Seltzers into the glasses of water after that heavenly night in Grant Park, is that there’s a big difference between coalition politics and rainbow party politics.

A coalition is composed of groups that may dislike — or even hate — one another, but who understand the shared political expediency of standing together. Rainbow party politics involve bringing together masses of people who are identified by being burdened by a particular grievance. Soon enough — in groups forged of such friable bonds, and almost always when matters of morality and lifestyle come into play — you will discover that one oppressed group does not necessarily support the goals of another oppressed group.

Hollywood, of course, is a city full of statesmen and moral authorities, and many of them ran to their pulpits and Web sites to get on the right side of this issue, but there was no way to hold both truths together in a position that was both acceptably liberal and coherent. “At some point in our lifetime,” said George Clooney, “gay marriage won’t be an issue, and everyone who stood against this civil right will look as outdated as George Wallace standing on the school steps keeping James Hood from entering the University of Alabama because he was black.”

To the opponents of Proposition 8, this kind of analogy is a rallying cry; but as white Hollywood has recently discovered, to the blacks who voted for the measure, it’s galling. Comparing the infringement on civil rights that gays are experiencing to that suffered by black Americans is to begin a game of “top my oppression” that you’re not going to win. The struggle for equality — beginning with freedom from human bondage (see: references to the book of Exodus at the Gospel Brunch) — has been so central to African-American identity that many blacks find homosexual claims of a commensurate level of injustice frivolous, and even offensive.

Furthermore — and perhaps even more painfully for those of us who support gay marriage and all that it represents — Christian teaching on marriage is not the only reason so many blacks supported Proposition 8. Although it has come as a shocking realization to many in this community, a host of sociological studies confirm that many blacks feel a significant aversion to homosexuality itself, finding it morally and sexually repugnant. And here in essence is the problem with the Democrats’ big tent, as well as the grounds for a wholly new kind of culture war that is probably going to make us long for the clear lines and simple enmities of the old one. The New Deal coalition was a mass movement based on building a more just economic and political order, embracing Protestant evangelicals and Catholic immigrants, segregationists and integrationists, radical left-wingers and unionized working men from the steel belt, all holding their noses with one hand and pulling the lever with the other. Many of us who voted for Mr. Obama want the same things that the New Dealers wanted; we aren’t trying to advance a cause as much as we want to regain so much lost ground.

“This is our moment,” the president-elect has told us, stirringly. This is our time to stand shoulder to shoulder, the hipsters of Washington Square and the minivan moms of Minnetonka. Our nation is seeing huge numbers of its citizens slide into actual — and virtually intractable, if we keep hold of President Bush’s policies — poverty. We can stand together on these big issues, or we can balkanize ourselves with the help of good old-fashioned identity politics, which didn’t serve too well the last time around.

As anyone who ever had to sit through a lecture on “the paradox of tolerance” can tell you, it’s possible to create a vast utopian society forged of many previously disenfranchised groups — but you don’t want to ask too many questions.

Caitlin Flanagan is the author of “To Hell With All That.” Benjamin Schwarz is the national and literary editor of The Atlantic.

beyond gay and straight: mexico's muxe

I thought this article (and the accompanying slideshow) were fascinating.

A Lifestyle Distinct: The Muxe of Mexico
By MARC LACEY
Published: December 6, 2008

Mexico City — Mexico can be intolerant of homosexuality; it can also be quite liberal. Gay-bashing incidents are not uncommon in the countryside, where many Mexicans consider homosexuality a sin. In Mexico City, meanwhile, same-sex domestic partnerships are legally recognized — and often celebrated lavishly in government offices as if they were marriages.

But nowhere are attitudes toward sex and gender quite as elastic as in the far reaches of the southern state of Oaxaca. There, in the indigenous communities around the town of Juchitán, the world is not divided simply into gay and straight. The local Zapotec people have made room for a third category, which they call “muxes” (pronounced MOO-shays) — men who consider themselves women and live in a socially sanctioned netherworld between the two genders.

“Muxe” is a Zapotec word derived from the Spanish “mujer,” or woman; it is reserved for males who, from boyhood, have felt themselves drawn to living as a woman, anticipating roles set out for them by the community.

Anthropologists trace the acceptance of people of mixed gender to pre-Colombian Mexico, pointing to accounts of cross-dressing Aztec priests and Mayan gods who were male and female at the same time. Spanish colonizers wiped out most of those attitudes in the 1500s by forcing conversion to Catholicism. But mixed-gender identities managed to survive in the area around Juchitán, a place so traditional that many people speak ancient Zapotec instead of Spanish.

Not all muxes express their identities the same way. Some dress as women and take hormones to change their bodies. Others favor male clothes. What they share is that the community accepts them; many in it believe that muxes have special intellectual and artistic gifts.

Every November, muxes inundate the town for a grand ball that attracts local men, women and children as well as outsiders. A queen is selected; the mayor crowns her. “I don’t care what people say,” said Sebastian Sarmienta, the boyfriend of a muxe, Ninel Castillejo García. “There are some people who get uncomfortable. I don’t see a problem. What is so bad about it?”

Muxes are found in all walks of life in Juchitán, but most take on traditional female roles — selling in the market, embroidering traditional garments, cooking at home. Some also become sex workers, selling their services to men. .

Acceptance of a child who feels he is a muxe is not unanimous; some parents force such children to fend for themselves. But the far more common sentiment appears to be that of a woman who takes care of her grandson, Carmelo, 13.

“It is how God sent him,” she said.

Katie Orlinsky contributed reporting from Juchitán, Mexico.

caucasian anyone?

The WT Russian scares me.

White Russians Arise, This Time at a Bowling Alley
By STEVEN KURUTZ
Published: December 2, 2008

AMONG the significant dates in the history of Kahlúa, the Mexican coffee liqueur, surely March 6, 1998, rates a mention.

That was the release date of “The Big Lebowski,” the Coen Brothers movie about an aging slacker who calls himself the Dude, and who, after a thug urinates on his prized rug, becomes caught up in a Chandleresque mystery.

Played with slouchy brio by Jeff Bridges, the Dude’s chief pursuits involve bowling, avoiding work and drinking White Russians, the sweet cocktail made with vodka, Kahlúa and cream or milk.

The movie was a flop when it was released, but in the decade since, “The Big Lebowski” has attracted a cult following, and as the film’s renown has grown, so has the renown of the White Russian, or, as the Dude calls them, “Caucasians.” The drink is the subject of experimentation at cutting-edge bars like Tailor, in SoHo, which serves a crunchy dehydrated version — a sort of White Russian cereal. The British electro-pop band Hot Chip, meanwhile, recently invented a variation named the Black Tarantula. Not long ago, the cocktail was considered passé and often likened, in its original formula, to an alcoholic milkshake.

“When I first encountered it in the 1970s, the White Russian was something real alcoholics drank, or beginners,” said David Wondrich, the drinks correspondent for Esquire. Now, ordering the drink is “the mark of the hipster,” he said.

Americans’ renewed appreciation for coffee, spurred by Starbucks, which now markets its own coffee liqueur, may have also contributed to the White Russian’s comeback.

To see the White Russian renaissance in full bloom, it is instructive to attend a Lebowski Fest, the semiannual gatherings where fans of the movie revel in the Dude’s deeply casual approach to life. There, the White Russian is consumed in oil-tanker quantities.

This was much in evidence at a fest held last month in New York, where 1,000 or so “achievers,” as the movie’s buffs call themselves, took over Lucky Strike Lanes, a bowling alley in Manhattan. The White Russian demand was such that, in addition to two bars, a White Russian satellite station had been set up and bartenders were in back mixing vats of reinforcements.

It turned out that management was following a directive from the event’s organizers. “When we line up a venue, we always have the White Russian talk,” said Will Russell, a founder of the Lebowski Fest.

Mr. Russell has learned from experience to lay in provisions. He recalled an incident at an early festival in his hometown of Louisville, Ky.

“Milk sold out within a one-mile radius of the bowling alley” where the event was held, he said. “We had to go to every local mini-market and gas station to satisfy the requirements of the achievers.”

At Lucky Strike Lanes, the line at the White Russian station was often 10 deep, and it wasn’t uncommon for someone to sidle up to the counter and say, “I’ll take four.” The bartender would lift a 12-quart plastic tub, straining to hold it steady as the mud-colored liquid sloshed.

Several people were dressed in character, including four men who showed up as white Russians: white painter pants, white T-shirts, brown fuzzy hats. Each drank their namesake, except one guy, who nursed a bottle of Miller Lite. “I’m lactose intolerant,” he said.

The White Russian is not for the faint of stomach. “The cream is going to build up,” said Ted Haigh, the author of “Vintage Spirits & Forgotten Cocktails.” “If you’re drinking these all night, the sugar will build, too, and you’ll have a hell of a hangover.”

If not an expanded waistline. A popular deviation is the Slim Russian, made with either soy or low-fat milk.

Still, some prefer the drink precisely because it is so rich. “I’m one of those fat guys that guzzle milk by the gallon,” said Steve Barber, 28, an antique motorcycle restorer from Saugerties, N.Y., who was attending his first Lebowski Fest and came dressed in a flak vest like the Dude’s Vietnam veteran buddy, Walter. Unlike a lot of Lebowski fans, Mr. Barber has a taste for the drink that predates his viewing of the movie. Several years ago, he said, he used to mix himself a White Russian every day for breakfast: “I called it the ‘Big Boy Milkshake.’ “

Lebowski viewers often develop a taste for White Russians that carries beyond the film or the festivals.

“I’d had them before, but not regularly,” said Don Plehn, 39, a district court clerk from Baltimore. “I drink a lot more of them now.” Mr. Plehn took a sip of his third White Russian of the night and said, “It’s a slow-sippin’ drink.”

Lebowski adherents may have vaulted the White Russian to icon status, but serious cocktail enthusiasts still deride it for being simplistic and overly sweet — a confection designed to appeal to unserious drinkers.

“It’s hard to think of a more boring drink, except, perhaps, when it’s spraying from the Dude’s mouth,” said Martin Doudoroff, a historian for CocktailDB.com.

Skeptics like Mr. Doudoroff would probably blanch at a variation called the White Trash Russian. “You take a bottle of Yoo-hoo,” Mr. Russell said, “drink half, then fill it with vodka and enjoy.”

Believed to date to the 1950s or early 1960s, the White Russian has no great origin story; its culinary precursor is the Alexander. Having been popular in the disco ’70s, the cocktail is, in the words of Mr. Doudoroff, “a relic of an era that was the absolute nadir of the American bar.”

As it happens, this was the period when Jeff Dowd was living in Seattle, driving a taxi and doing a lot of “heavy hanging,” as he put it. Mr. Dowd, 59, an independent film producer and producers representative, is the inspiration for the Dude — a character Joel and Ethan Coen created by taking what Mr. Dowd was like back then and exaggerating a bit, although the White Russians preference is spot on.

“There was a woman I lived with named Connie,” Mr. Dowd said, by phone from his office in Santa Monica, Calif., beginning a rambling oration that was highly Dude-like. “She and her boyfriend, Jamie, were mixologists. We were hanging out and drinking at that time. We went from White Russians to Dirty Mothers, a darker version of a White Russian. It was a very hedonistic period.”

Mr. Dowd moved on from White Russians years ago, but has started drinking them again, mainly so as not to disappoint fans. “When I first met Cheech at the Sundance Film Festival,” he said, referring to Cheech Marin of the comedy duo Cheech and Chong, “the first thing we all wanted to do is smoke a joint with him so we could tell our grandchildren, ‘Hey, I smoked a joint with Cheech.’ Well, people want to say they had a White Russian with the Dude. I don’t want to turn them down, which has added a little extra tonnage to me.”

It has become customary for achievers to scrutinize “The Big Lebowski,” parsing the film’s most trivial details for deep meaning. Which begs the question: Why is the White Russian the Dude’s chosen beverage, beyond the fact that Mr. Dowd briefly drank the cocktail years ago? Theories abound.

“The Dude is very laid-back and the White Russian has a laid-back element,” Mr. Russell said. “You can’t just grab it and go. There’s a ritual to it.”

Mr. Barber said: “The Dude almost holds himself to a higher class than he’s in, which could explain the White Russian. It requires more thought than just popping a top.”

Then again, the reason could be even simpler.

“When I do drink a White Russian, it does go down easy,” Mr. Dowd said. “It actually is a good drink. It’s essentially a liquefied ice cream cone that you can buy in a bar.”