Let there be light

Around 5.30 this afternoon, dusk now a good 90 minutes off, I walked down Duboce to Valencia to see the progress of the Central Freeway demolition. And it's amazing: where less than a week ago there was an unending slab of hulking concrete casting shadows below, now there's nothing but empty space and sunlight.

The sketchy underpass that used to prevent me from walking the final stretch of Valencia past dark is gone, gigantic jackhammers stabbing away at the pylons bit by bit. I walked to Elgin Park and watched through a gate as concrete turned to rubble, then to dust. I asked the policeman standing sentinel at the scene when the section of the freeway that crosses Market will come down; he shrugged and said, 'Not sure, but sometime within the next four days.' That means Octavia can't be far behind.

It's true that the closing and demolition of the Fell Street off ramp hasn't been without its resultant headaches. It took me 20 minutes to travel about a mile up 9th Street last Tuesday, clogged with hundreds of other westbound travelers as it was. And we haven't even begun to see how the construction of the Octavia Boulevard will wreak havoc on parking in the neighborhood. But seeing that empty expanse of sky today--nothing but blue, headed almost imperceptibly toward gold--made me slightly giddy with anticipation of the rest of the demolition. I'd gotten so grudgingly used to the darkness that I didn't entirely realize until today how excited I am for the light.

All the flowers in the morning through the fog

My friend Mike teaches high school English over in the East Bay. He forwarded me a message from one of his colleagues, who teaches a course called English Language Development (ELD) for students still learning to speak the language. She wrote

'I couldn't resist sending these out to you. They are examples of some of the many beautiful things my ELD 2 students wrote in response to an essay prompt: "Is it better to die young or old?" Enjoy.'

And perhaps it's hormonal imbalance, or the lingering frustration following my car break-in this morning, or this whole war mess, but I couldn't read these without getting a bit teary. They seem so much greater than the sum of their grammatically odd parts.

"I don't want to die old. My dream is to be a policeman and have a big family with 12 kids at least. When am old, I want to go to dances, movies, shopping for cars, go to the park with my babies and hear them call me papi." - Gabriel C.

"It is best to die between fifty or sixty years old. When you retire, you can come back to your country where you were born. You can wake up at six o'clock in the morning and go to the garden near your house and look at all the flowers in the morning through the fog. If you don't want to do that, you can play Chinese chess, and drink tea with any friends you know in the garden."- Cuong N.

"One day I saw my grandma died and I didn't like to see that, she just said adios, and that's it, she left. I miss her but I remember when I was talking to her the last time, I loved her." - Cesar L.

"You know the reason I really want to die young? at my age: 14. Because I like to make a wish with my life to my personal god because I like to change the people of all their bad attitude. This is my wish. To create good and beauty to sacrifice myself so people make peace and are good." - Rinna G.

"The people in Yemen, they are not afraid of death. All the men in my country are strong. My grandfather died when he was 120." - Hussin A.

"When I marry, my husband and me go to the gym each night to the dance." - Yessenia G.

"I want to die old so that when my daughter, son, and me husband from school or company come back home, I will say: "Are you come back?" They will say: "Yes, I'm come back!"- Joey C.

Day Two

(1)
The helicopters are still chopping over San Francisco this morning. I don't know whether they stopped overnight or whether I lost track of them when I fell asleep. I drifted off to them last night and woke up to them this morning, a rather disconcerting alarm clock. They're there to watch the protestors downtown, I know, but there's still something vaguely unsettling about the idea that the city must be kept under surveillance.

(2)
All of the war rhetoric being issued from Washington makes my head spin, but none moreso than the claim that the U.S. is invading Iraq in order to ensure America's security. People believe that, I know, but it seems to me utterly untrue: since when do we claim that Hussein is a threat to us? Since when is the issue not his despotic and destructive rule (and destruction) of his own people? I'm sure it's better PR to tack the 'defending America' excuse onto this military action, but I find it utterly insulting, both to the Iraqi people and to Americans, who the Bush Administration assumes can't be counted on to be intelligent enough to refute that claim.

(3)
Bush made a speech yesterday afternoon in which he gave an update on the bombing in Iraq (though of course not in such a direct manner), then rattled off this bizarre laundry list of domestic affairs his Administration is supposedly attending to: we're still gonna take care of Medicare, and I know there are lots of people in America who need jobs, and lots of kids who can't read, and so on.

But who does he think he's fooling? What intelligent American can truly believe Bush cares a whit about domestic policy when the country is dumping billions halfway around the world while the FDA threatens to fine companies who help people get cheaper prescription drugs from Canada? While unemployment rates continue to rise, and our deficit continues to bloom? While schools and non-profits and social service agencies still scramble to cover basic needs?

I'd almost rather hear the Administration come straight out and admit that its priorities lie solely in matters of defense, and that the American people are largely on their own as far as domestic affairs go (except, of course, for corporations, but that's another rant altogether). Then at least we'd hear something truthful, rather than a condescending and insulting mess of spin.

Utterly unlike the snow

First Sight

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

--Philip Larkin

Point of Disgust

A few weeks back, someone on the Low list asked whether the lyrics to Point of Disgust posted on the site were accurate:

Point of Disgust
once, i was lost
to the point of disgust
i had in my sight
lack of vision
lack of light
i fell hard
i fell fast
mercy me
it'll never last

then, in the dust
all the things
we discussed
were thrown to the wind
so at last
we begin
'cuz we fall hard
we fall fast
mercy me
it'll never last

He was asking, he said, because for all the world it sounds like Mimi's singing, in the first verse, not 'fell' but 'held,' which changes the meaning. Someone replied that 'fell' it was, but agreed with the other guy's hearing.

I do, too. The words seem to roll under her tongue as she sings, muddying (perhaps intentionally) both the pronunciation and the import. And while I like the verse with 'fell,' I like it even more with 'held'.

I have, and I have, and I have.

Linden

Back in December, in the house on Sanchez, part of Abby's ceiling fell in. It happened suddenly--during a particularly windy rainstorm, as I recall--and was clearly only due to structural problems with the house. So we got in touch with the landlord and told him what was up (or no longer up, as it were); about three and a half weeks later, after he ambled by to take a look, after he jokingly told Dee Dee that he was glad he had insurance, and after he offhandedly mentioned that he wouldn't sleep there if he were Abby (after which she didn't, for about a week), he brought in contractors to fix the increasingly gaping hole.

They fixed it, sure, but they also ran up $50 in long distance calls to El Salvador on Abby's phone.

So it's no small relief to have a new landlord who's as close to the opposite pole as can be. When I called to report that my heaters (and what a luxury to actually have heat!) didn't seem to be working, he dispatched Jacques the handyman to have a look. Jacques came and fixed not only the heaters, but also the garbage disposal, the half-hooked shower curtain, and burned-out bulbs in the kitchen and bathroom. He tried to clean the paint left by the former handyman on the bathroom window, but reported that it would take a lot of malodorous chemicals, so he'd just replace the window instead. He mentioned this morning that, within the next few weeks, he'll be installing track lighting in the kitchen, a new shower head, and perhaps a new overhead light fixture in the living room. He walks through the house and finds things to fix--things that might be small annoyances but certainly cause no great headaches--and rails in his thick accent against the man who did the work before him. I am speechlessly pleased.

Add these improvements to the fact that I no longer wake up in the morning and have to time my visit to the bathroom to beat my housemates, no longer come home to find dishes multiplied in the kitchen sink, no longer have to step around (or clean up) anyone else's mess, and no longer have to fight for space in the fridge (indeed, I have relative miles and miles of my own now), and what you get is an unmeasurably happier me. It's true that I'm paying for the pleasure, but to cop a line from MasterCard, the bliss of living alone really is priceless.

What I'm Trying to Say

On the train en route to the airport Sunday night, as we're slipping out of the Portland city limits, Val says offhandedly that we should create a 'zine about our travels, noting that whenever she, Monique, and I go anywhere, our days seem to be focused on walking and eating. It's funny: I've just been chewing on the same 'zine idea, likely because of our trip to Reading Frenzy earlier in the day. It seems like something worth considering further.

But then, once we're in the air, I start reading Dream Whip (#12), this brilliant chunk of paper and text written by some guy in Texas (I think his name is Jeremy). He writes (literally, as in hand writes) about his travels around the US, focusing on the prairie states, and his words manage to be both uplifting and unspeakably sad at the same time. And I realize that he's captured the heart of being on the road, of being in an unfamiliar city, of both wanting to keep going and wanting to return home.

An excerpt, this one called Borealis:

'We stay up late watching the Northern Lights. I say they're just city lights reflecting off the clouds, and she points out that there aren't any cities out here, near the Badlands of North Dakota. The lights are dim and blue, something between smoke and starlight along the horizon. It's like some chasm out there, the place where summer goes in September, all those sunny days and citronella candle nights being incinerated on the horizon. In the morning, I crawl out of my tent while she sleeps in the tent next to mine. It's still summer this morning, so I put on my shorts; the sweet dregs of summer, sad seconds and thirds, hand-me-down days from June and July that are well-worn now, faded and fraying. I take a walk along the ridge line. That girl doesn't love me. And even if she did, I still couldn't stop. I'd keep moving as fast as I could, which isn't nearly fast enough. I'd go as fast as the sunlight if I could. And when I finally made it home for a visit, it'd be 10,000 years later, because that's what happens when you go that fast. It'd be 10,000 years later, and there wouldn't be anyone waiting for me, because who could wait that long?'

I read that and think, sure, we could write about our hundreds of mini-adventures, our moments of frustration and being lost, of stumbling upon things we hadn't expected, of knowing when we've reached the point at which we're ready to go home. But could we get to what all of those things are like when you strip away the surface layers, when you finally understand what they really mean?

I think Jeremy's gotten there long before us.

With a Chance to Make It Good Somehow

In his opening essay in Songbook, Nick Hornby explains his tendency not to associate songs with a specific time or place thus:

'[I]f you love a song, love it enough for it to accompany you throughout the different stages of your life, then any specific memory is rubbed away by use. If I'd heard "Thunder Road" in some girl's bedroom in 1975, decided that it was okay, and had never seen the girl or listened to the song much again, then hearing it now would probably bring back the smell of her underarm deoderant.'

To a certain degree, I can see his point: there are many, many songs that don't particularly mean much to me that can instantly bring me back to a specific moment. Pat Benetar's 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot' reminds me of lip-synching to the 45 of same in Tammy Kennison's bedroom, using cans of hairspray as microphones; anything by Blondie makes me think of sitting in Greg's room with our first record player, listening to Best of Blondie on repeat; 'When Doves Cry' will be forever associated with the warm summer night, windows open, when I heard the song for the first time on RI-104.

But there are just as many--if not more--songs that both serve as mile-markers in my life and have come along with me for the ride, growing and changing and turning right along with me. 'Thunder Road' (Hornby's most listened-to song) is foremost among them.

I can't remember the very first time I heard it--Mom and Dad had given me the Springsteen live box set for Christmas the year it came out (1985?), so I must've heard TR sometime that winter, at least--and it's entirely possible that I didn't love it at first. But I know that it soon became the sort of song I could listen to ad nauseum without the nausea, and I have an incredibly sharp memory of playing it over and over again on the portable tape deck in Gommy and Poppa's travel trailer, moored in the yard at Twin Chimneys, the following summer.

I can't recall who was there with me (likely Heather, and possibly Greg), but I know I spent the better part of an hour listening, rewinding, listening, rewinding, and all the while aching as only a girl in her early teens can. I ached for someone to want me only; I ached to be summoned from a porch to a waiting car that would drive me somewhere, anywhere; I ached for the day when I might have both a group of boys I'd sent away and a graduation gown to lie in rags at their feet.

I still think of that night (muggy, so many crickets, a nightgown feeling like entirely too much clothing), that trailer, those aches every time I hear the song. But now I also think of all the associations that have come since: the sadnesses somehow soothed by those harmonica strains and Springsteen's growling, soaring voice; the miles driven with the song on my stereo (still only cassette); the confusing but shakingly pleasant realization two years ago that I'd met a man who could not only quote TR right back to me, but also had his own interpretations of it.

And having put several years and a good deal of experience between the girl in her grandparents' backyard and my current self, I've changed the way I hear the song. It's no longer just a plea to escape ('it's a town full of losers/and we're pulling out of here to win'); it's also a reminder, sometimes wistful, of what we had and gave up, often for good ('they scream your name at night in the street/your graduation gown lies, in rags, at their feet/and in the lonely cool before dawn/from your room, you hear their engines roar on/but when you get to the porch they're gone/on the wind').

It suggests that there's value in romanticism ('well show a little faith/there's magic in the night'), but also sets limits on that value('you can hide 'neath your covers and study your pain/make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain/waste your summer praying in vain/for a savior to rise from these streets').

But more than anything, I think, TR still resonates with me (quite possibly now more than ever) because of the balance it strikes between resignation and hope (true, in fact, of much of Springsteen's work). There's so much uncertainty, so much imperfection, so much that could be so wrong: 'Don't turn me home again/I just can't face myself alone'; 'So you're scared and you're thinking that/maybe we ain't that young anymore'; ''All the redemption I can offer, girl,/is beneath this dirty hood'.

But throughout the song all of that is slowly balanced, and then ultimately overshadowed (if only by the smallest of margins) by all that might (and perhaps can) just be right:

'...with a chance to make it good somehow
hey, what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window and
let the wind blow back your hair.
Well, the night's busting open
these two lanes will take us anywhere.
We got one last chance to make it real,
to trade in these wings on some wheels.
Climb in back.
Heaven's waiting down on the tracks.'

While I can't be sure I've similarly got the location of heaven pinpointed, and I don't know whether it's waiting, I do think there's a chance to make it good somehow--be it what it may.

The ride's not free (is it ever?), but the door is open. What's waiting inside (and beyond) still seems promising.

Emmett

After Emmett Till was murdered in rural Mississippi in the summer of 1955, his mother Mamie had his mutilated and decomposing body shipped back to Chicago, where she insisted on an open casket funeral, so 'the world [could] see what they did to [her] boy.'

Emmett's killers were acquitted by a jury of their white male peers, and the two men later went on to sell their confession to Look magazine. Mamie lobbied extensively for a federal trial, but her requests were denied. Despite the lack of justice in the case, though, Emmett Till's murder is widely regarded as one of the watershed moments in the civil rights movement.

For the rest of her life, Mamie Till spoke out about her son's murder. In an interview she gave last summer, six months before she died, she noted that despite the sickening nature of the crime against her only child, 'I have not spent one minute hating.' Anyone wanting to understand the central tenet of nonviolent protest need look no farther than those words.

Hedwig and Heaven

On the thought-provoking entertainment tip, the last two things I've seen--Hedwig and the Angry Inch (in play form) and Far From Heaven--keep tugging at my brain. Each has a lot to say, I think, about the various shades of intolerance of which humans are capable. For all of her railing against her own repression, it's not until the end of the story that Hedwig understands she needs to let Klaus be himself; and while Kathy's best friend Eleanor in Far From Heaven offers up a seemingly sympathetic and supportive facade when Kathy admits that Frank has come out, she does an abrubt about face when her friend confesses her feelings for her black gardener.

Both also speak to the ultimate futility of trying to force yourself to be something you're not (or trying to hide what you really are), and to the idea that there's something to be said for working through the painful, messy, achy parts of life to get at what lies beyond. Neither work has an ending that's markedly happy, but the endings *are* hopeful, and unmistakeably forward-looking. Therein, I think, lies the promise.

Movin' Out (?)

The prospect of moving--albeit only a few doors down, literally--has induced in me what I can only describe as the perfect combination of elation and terror. Do I bite the bullet more than I already have (with a hold deposit) by actually relocating myself to the beautiful hardwood floored, multi-roomed, sweetly charming house with a few flaws (an old stove is fabulous in the historical sense, but would it drive me insane in the day-to-day? And will the equally historical outlets be able to handle the demands of a modern electricity consumer? And, really, the rent is more than I was hoping and planning to pay), or do I let this chance slip from my fingers and wait for something cheaper to come along? Which holds the bigger chance of regret?

Am I rushing things, or am I rather moving at a quick clip and not dragging my heels?

Where do assertive and foolhardy intersect, and where does one overtake the other?

Plus ca change...

I was all set to write about inertia and entropy and how chaos, when channelled just so, can be supremely useful. But then I found myself standing in front of the office's first aid cabinet for a good five minutes, puzzling over the intricate differences between the various generic drugs offered therein (Pain-Aid? SinuTabs? Un-Aspirin?), and I realized I just don't have the mental wherewithal today to pen anything remotely thoughtful.

For now, then, I'll just note that my decision to strike out on my own housing-wise has come at the same time as Monique's plans to jettison the Rookie (in a kind and caring way, of course) and Val's announcement that she'll be moving to Japan in the fall. Something (quite possibly the turn of the year) has spurred us to action now, and while this all feels more or less like chaos now, we hope (and trust) that we'll eventually find ourselves thankful for the heat and light said chaos generates.

Beginning

At the start of 2002, I copied this from somewhere (Sinister?), because it just seemed really wise:

'Things have been better this year than ever, but I shan't bore people with all my "and then in May I did this ace thing, oh, and June was pretty good too....". Just that for a while I was in the wilderness and I finally feel like I've got an atlas to my life now. Or maybe just a wee map scrawled on the back of a beer mat, but that's enough for now.'

I'm not sure I can claim to have an atlas of my life now (or perhaps I do have one, but it's several years old, and still shows Yugoslavia and the USSR as whole countries), but I do know that in many respects, last year I stumbled through a sort of wilderness from which I've only recently emerged. And everything I had to do to get out of those woods--learning to find my way without clear trails, forcing myself to accept and deal with setbacks, coming to understand what's worth carrying and what isn't when my load gets too heavy--has proved useful.

There are any number of cliches I could add here--words about how much I've grown over the past 12 months, about the epiphanies I've had, about how the memories of the year have been etched so deeply in my mind's core I can't imagine them eroding--but none of them quite seem to do the trick. For now, then, just this: all told, 2002 was the most spectacular (and the most difficult) year I've had in recent memory. And I think he of the terrible dreadlocks and unacceptable facial hair was right: there is indeed reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last.

Holiday

After a sweet and goofy reunion with Ian and David; after lunch, gossip, and coffee-flavored Italian gum with Rosanna; after an hour of nothing but tiny baby Isabella warm and asleep in my arms; after a visit to one of Connecticut's only wineries; after a game of Trivial Pursuit by candlelight on our electricity-free Christmas night; after running through the snow in Old Chatham with Sarey at my side; after a surprisingly good Indian dinner in Waltham with Paula; after tooling around Boston with John as we threw out ideas for our next European adventure; after a week of swimming in love, presence (and presents), and unhinged happiness, I feel ready to take a deep breath and dive into whatever comes next.

NYC

There's something to be said for the ability to find a restaurant that will serve you a full, proper meal at 11.30 on a Friday night, or to sit in a tranquil Japanese tea room occupied mainly by people actually speaking Japanese (and eating all manner of sweets composed of sugared bean pastes), or to be openly sarcastic without drawing looks of censure or perplexion. So New York can be great.

But the streets in winter (at least in Manhattan) are wind tunnels, turning a gust into a gale, which is chilly at best and painfully frigid at worst. The subway stations are grimy (as we step off the train in Chinatown and are hit with the overpowering odor of urine, Ry notes, 'Damn, it's not usually this bad'). The general brusqueness of the populace, while refreshing for a brief while, soon wears on me; I don't need the counter girl in a coffee shop muttering words of malediction simply because I've asked for a glass of water. And, really, there's too much grey.

So as much as I miss my New York-based friends, as much as I love the city's culture, and as much as I'm happy to visit, I'm reminded of why I am so enamoured of the West coast. I won't be leaving it anytime soon.

In the Stars

Thus spake the Yahoo! oracles (Yahoo!racles?):

You are a free person and you are used to waking up every morning single, dear Cancer. But today, you will be confronted with commitment. Indeed, this period will incite you to change your life. The time has come to change your sentimental life. The times are difficult and you must make the right decisions in order to find your equilibrium.

Have a Nice Day

The BBC reports that Britons cringe at the thought of American-style customer service (of the friendly, familiar, 'Have a nice day' sort) landing on their shores. 'Hazel Duffy and her fellow diners were perplexed,' the article notes, 'when the waitress in a West Midlands branch of a US restaurant chain squatted down almost to the point of kneeling to take their orders.

"We asked her what on earth she was doing, why she was crouching down like that," she said. "Her reply was that they had been trained to do it, so that they could be on the same level as their customers." '

Thanks but no thanks (or perhaps Cheers but nae), said Hazel and her meal mates. Serve us; don't be our friend.

It's no secret that American-style shop and restaurant service doesn't necessarily translate well in the rest of the world (Safeway's policy in the US that employees must walk you to any item whose location you ask about would surely send Europeans fleeing). But, as the article notes, surely there's a middle ground to be found between our in-your-face style and the UK's ask not what your clerk can do for you style; I would gladly go for a touch of the latter (especially in clothing stores), while the comments at the end of the BBC piece suggest that Brits wouldn't mind a taste (a taste, mind) of the former.

It's odd that we're so infamously treacly in matters of commerce and dining while we're such assholes in matters of everything else. Such as, say, our current administration's attempts at world domination.

A coalition of Canadian peace groups called Rooting Out Evil has announced its intention to send an international team of volunteer weapons inspectors into the United States later this winter. A recent press release explains the group's decision:

'"Our action has been inspired by none other than George W. Bush," said Christy Ferguson, a spokesperson for the group. "The Bush administration has repeatedly declared that the most dangerous rogue nations are those that:

1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons; 2) ignore due process at the United Nations; 3) refuse to sign and honor international treaties; and 4) have come to power through illegitimate means.

"On the basis of President Bush's guidelines, it is clear that the current U.S. administration poses a great threat to global security," said Ferguson. "We're following Bush's lead and demanding that the U.S. grant our inspectors immediate and unfettered access to any site in the country - including all presidential compounds - so that we can identify the weapons of mass destruction in this rogue state," added David Langille.'

When so much of the news is dominated by the bluster-filled and hypocritical things Bush and his minions say, it's a breath of fresh air to know that people are making attempts (however improbable) to shine some light on all the things the US is fucking up. This seems like as good a place as any to start.

Thankful

On the Op-Ed page of yesterday's Times, Judith Martin, better known as Miss Manners, castigated Americans (gently, of course) for our generally unthankful ways. And she's right: we're remarkably adept at complaining, whinging, naysaying, and fault finding, and much less so at actually feeling--much less expressing--gratitude. While I won't claim that I can (or have any desire to) completely drop my sometimes cynical ways (as long as the Republicans are in power, I will continue to complain), I agree with the lovely Miss Manners that I should make some room for pure, unadulterated thanks.

So I'm thankful, first and foremost, for the lives of Poppa and Nonnie (literally, where would I be without them?), and I'm thankful that those lives ended more or less painlessly and peacefully. It goes without saying that I'm thankful for the rest of my huge, crazy, adoring family, thankful for their incredible insistence on bearing me up when I needed it most this year, thankful for the time I've been (and will be) able to spend with them.

I'm dazedly thankful for what seems to be the stubborn persistence of love, despite (or perhaps because of) the complications and messes and uncertainties that get in its way.

I'm thankful that when I sat down the other day to write out the invite list for my holiday party, I was pleasantly amazed by how quickly it grew long, a subtle but unmistakeable sign that however alone I might occasionally feel, I really am surrounded here by a sweet and ever-present group of friends. I'm further thankful for the knowledge that that list would grow exponentially were I to include friends who don't live here.

I'm thankful for how much of the world I've seen this year--the Mediterranean, the Corbieres, the wonders of Barcelona, the mountains of Slovenia, two Canadian provinces at the same time from the top of a mountain ridge--and how much there is to see in the years ahead.

And finally, finally, I'm thankful that Otis was dead right when he told me, sitting in the Bar on Castro at my lowest point this year, 'The human body is built to survive.' Indeed, it is so built, and this one, at least, is surviving. For that, Miss Manners, I am humbly, unquestionably grateful.

Al-turk-natives

I was tempted for a while this morning to write something serious here, something about the 39th anniversary of JFK's assassination, something about how different the political climate seemed then (at least, to one who was not even remotely there)--more promising, more inclusive (or on its way to inclusive), less dreadful.

But truth be told, all of the thinking and moaning and grieving I've done about politics over the past few weeks has left me knackered, and I'm aching for a break. So I'll turn away from Bush, away from Iraq, away from the still-extant bin Laden, and will focus instead on turkey alternatives.

Indeed, after years of consuming Franklin's proposed national bird for Thanksgiving, the American populace is clearly clamoring for something new. Something slightly more exotic, perhaps, something surprising, perhaps something distinctly turkey-less. While some of my countrypeople may forego poultry (real or pseudo) altogether next week, opting for other flora or fauna, it seems entirely possible that those with access to a skilled (and willing) butcher and six hours of cooking time to kill will seriously consider a turducken, which Amanda Hesser described in detail in Wednesday's Times. (Dana and her band have shamelessly taken advantage of this cultural turducken zeitgeist with a song about the delicacy.)

Of course, those of us not inclined in the turkey (or duck, or chicken, or any combination thereof) direction might opt instead for the adorable and painlessly delectable Tofurky, complete with tempeh drumsticks, faux turkey gravy, wild rice stuffing, and--new this year!--a tofu jerky wishbone. Many a pleasant Thanksgiving meal have I spent in the company of a Tofurky, and this year's promises to be no exception. Val, Monique, and I will carve up our sweet little soy-based bird, dig into the stuffing, and give profuse thanks.

Dig a Shallow Grave

Two notable deaths of the past week: Lawrence Rainey and Myra Hindley.

Rainey, who died last Friday, was the sheriff in Neshoba County, Mississippi, when, in 1964, three civil rights workers passing through the area disappeared. The three--Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney--were part of the Freedom Summer Project, intended to help the state's black residents register to vote. On June 21, the three were stopped in Neshoba County on their way back from investigating a church fire, jailed for a few hours in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and then released. On their way out of town, Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were killed by the sheriff's deputy and a group of local men. (The murders were portrayed in both Mississippi Burning and the more accurate and engrossing Freedom on My Mind.)

In the days and weeks that followed, before an informant led the FBI to the men's bodies, buried and decomposing in an earthen dam, Rainey famously declared of the missing rights workers, 'If they're in Mississippi, they're just hiding out somewhere and trying to get a lot of publicity out of it.' After the bodies were found, the case was eventually brought to federal court (the state, not surprisingly, wouldn't touch it). Although Deputy Price and six other men were convicted of the crime, Rainey, widely suspected of involvement in the murders, was acquitted. After his term as sheriff ended in 1967, he became a security guard at a supermarket and a shopping mall. Historical evidence, investigations, and the testimony of several witnesses to the contrary, Rainey's son John, who still lives in Meridian, claims that his father was misunderstood: 'He was a good man. He had nothing to do with what happened that night.'

Myra Hindley, half of England's Moors murderers pair, died yesterday of a chest infection, after 36 years in prison. With her boyfriend Ian Brady, Hindley was responsible for the deaths of five children in northwestern England in the mid-60s. The killings were especially shocking for the youth of the victims (the oldest was 18), their sudden disappearances, and their grisly deaths--some of the victims were sexually abused, tortured, and buried in a remote moor.

After she was convicted and jailed, Hindley maintained that Brady had blackmailed her into helping him with the murders, threatening to kill members of her family if she didn't cooperate. In prison, she became a practicing Roman Catholic and received a humanities degree; she also admitted that 'my conscience will follow me to my dying day' (we may be dead and we may be gone/but we will be right by your side/until the day you die/this is no easy ride).

But, as the Times notes in its obituary, she also 'insisted that she had paid her debt to society, and she yearned to be released. "I know I could be out one week before someone assassinated me," she said. "But at least I would have had a week of freedom."'